Dad don't talk about the war much.

At first, I couldn't get it. It was just a war, like the stuff they talk about in the history textbooks. What was so bad about it? The reporters that came were willing to pay money to hear Dad's story. And they'd come a long way, all the way out to the dry place on the outskirts of town were everything was just flat and dirt and brown, all the way out to the eye could see, 'cept for to the east were the town was a big smudge on the horizon. We live in a beat down little log cabin-like place, with a fireplace for times when it gets cold and a big, sputtering electric fan that's missin' two blades out of four for times when it gets hot. That thing ain't much use to us. So we got use to just kind of ignoring the heat, like we ignore the cold. But the reporters came all the way out here, to where you can see heat waves wavering out in the yonder and the near, and where the sky wherever you look is kind of a bright, light blue that hurt the eyes to see, and where you can't look nowhere, not even down at your own shoes, and still not squint for the bright, bright sun. And then, these people were willing to pay money for Dad's part of Vietnetiv.

But he said no. Invited them in like they were some normal neighbors droppin' by, offered 'em a drink of our good water, sat down with 'em at the kitchen table, listened to what they had to say, and then told them to leave.

I didn't get it.

And I didn't get why Dad's eyes would stop.

He wouldn't often be doin' somethin' when they stopped, and now that I'm a bit older and wiser I think that must be the reason. If he isn't focusing on something, one of his times will just sneak up on him and take him away to some foreign off-where place. Take him away-back to Vietnetiv.

It isn't much, really. He'll just stop, and slowly, if he's holdin' something, he'll just put it down real slow like, as if there was some magnet on the ground gently pulling his hands down. And I'll have to watch him, 'cause often he'll just let go and drop it and I'll have to catch whatever it was 'fore we lose another good mug or plate, or drinking cup, or sometimes I'll catch his pipe to keep it from hittin' on the floor and setting up a fire. Then, his eyes will just kind of...well, there's a kind of something in people's eyes. It's a something that's them, and normally, it's there right behind their eyes. But what happens with Dad is that something will kind of sink back into Dad, deep back, back into the memories of his Veitnetiv, and then he'll be there for a little while.

Remembering.

That's what I thought it was, when I first really became aware of what was happening. But it isn't just that. Remembering's what happens when you just wanna think about something that happened before right now, and that's not what is with Dad. With Dad it's...somethin' different. He don't want to remember, he tells me. He tried to fight it, even, at first. But it just happened and he can't stop it. So he's learned to live with it, he said. And he said I should too, and, well, that was the end of that.

And after a while, I got to understand.

It was Mrs. Brady that helped me. She'd been in Netiv too, as a nurse. She'd loved a man, and lost him. She said it wasn't usual for a lady to be in a place like that. But Mrs. Brady was a woman, and women go where they go and do what they do. She said she'd never loved another after the man she lost, and at first I thought well that was silly, because he was gone now and why shouldn't she move on? But as she told me about it, I got to knowing. I got to knowing why she wouldn't leave him off her mind or heart, why she just couldn't let him go.

It's hard to explain, and an inferior explanation just makes the understanding all the harder. But it's gotta be said, I know. Problem is I just don't know how to say it.

You just gotta know that people at times can't be let go. She talked about him with me, helped me understand. Told me about the love they had, and why she could never have it with another.

It's simple to understand if you know it, but if you don't, well, you just can't know until you do know and then...

It was a good love. A right love. People don't love like that nowadays, Mrs. Brady told me, and I know she was danged right. People don't love in a way that they are alive just being next to each other, like they feel joy and like they're gonna just float off and up and away because they're so full of love with each other. Not anymore. But that was the kind of love Mrs. Brady said she ahd with that man, and I decided right then, at my age of six, I was going to either have that kind of love or no love at all. Because I didn't want any other kind of love. There just isn't any love what can take the place of that kind.

Mrs. Brady described it to me. What it was like.

"It starts small, first," she began. "You just kind of look at each other and think 'I want to know that person', but you don't just walk up to them right then and there, of course. You both just sort of start to edge away from others and closer to each other. And you meet, and you talk to each other, get to know one another, and you both pretend like you haven't been watching the other ever since you saw them and had that first thought about them. Then, you both come back to your friends and talk to them, and you think everything's back to normal and your friends think so too, but it's not. You tell your friends about the other person, what you know about them, and they do the same with their friends. And then you start edging back to close again, a bit faster this time. And time goes on, and you both decide that you are quite right friends, and that you like doing things with them and them with you. And you get easier with them, tell them jokes, laugh with them, start asking them little questions you might ask your normal friends, like 'Have you seen Rick?' or, 'Could you tell me real quick this and this?'. Things like that. And then...it really happens. Starts."

I blinked at her, leaning over my cup of hot chocolate on the table.

"What?" I asked. "What happens? Starts?"

She smiled, off in the distance, and for a moment, her eyes went away, but not in a bad way like Dad's did. I let her, waiting.

"Then...it's a casual thing. It may be different, and they're just little things. But it's only one that starts it."

"What?" I asked, anxious to know. I wanted to know, in case this was ever happening with me.

"Like I said, it's small. With me, it was when we were moving camp. I had to hike up a hill with a backpack of med supplies on my back. There wasn't enough room in the jeeps for everything, 'cause of course you had a right lot of gentlemen bein' soldiers what were riding in them too except for some, and so I carried some. Jamen-that was his name, a lovely name I always thought-had worked his way up to beside me, inconspicuous like, and I was rather a bit surprised when I saw him there out of the corner of my eye. But I was glad, because it meant when we paused to rest at the top of the hill for lunch break, I'd be able to sit right down and talk with him a bit and not sit off by myself eating alone 'cause I was too tired to really move. So, we reached the top, me and Jamen, and we sat on a blanket I'd stuffed, last-minute like, into the backpack 'cause I knew my uniform would stain easy like on the grass and dirt on top of the hill and while I didn't care much about clothing condition long as long as it fit comfortably and looked a way I liked it , I knew it wouldn't be respectable to be walkin' around camp with big green and brown splotches on my be-hind."

"And then what happened?" I whispered, eyes wide, dying to find out now.

Mrs. Brady smiled, and leaned back a moment, her eyes going away again while she took a sip of her tea.

Oh, I knew she was milking that moment.

"It was simple. Small. Just a little, little thing. I wasn't expecting it. He wasn't either, I know now. But there was a wisp of hair in my face, and I was about to brush it out of the way when he..."

Again, her eyes went away, and when they came back, they were sad. Oh, so, sad.

"He just reached across the blanket, and brushed it out of my face for me. Then he leaned back and I looked at him and he looked at me, and he was blinking, looking surprised, and a little bashful-like, like he hadn't meant to do it and like it was somethin' people like him just didn't do. Then he blushed, just a little bit, and looked down at his sandwich and started eating real fast like, and I knew he was embarrassed and oh Mayy..." her voice trailed off, and her eyes filled up and started flowing over, and she sniffed and I offered her a tissue from the box on the table before me. Then I went around to her and hugged her, real tight, so she could know I was there.

But she wasn't done. Not yet.

After a few minutes she was all done and she thanked me kindly for the tissue and I sat back down and waited hungrily for more. For I was hungry. I was starving to learn more about this love she was describing to me.

"And then, we just started seeing each other. Before everyone was called to his or her tent for bed, and early in the morning, and we would stand next to each other and watch the dawn. If he had time, we'd watch the sunset too. And then, it was like a fireflower blossoming." She sighed. I like fireflowers. All pretty with orange and red and yellow, and blending into each other and looking just like fire. "It was slow, at first. We'd sit next to each other, just be with each other. He started putting his hand on mine, laying it on gentle-like, and said he didn't care my skin wasn't soft and smooth like a freshly bloomed rose like all the other girls' was, he said he liked it better rough because it had texture, and well, when something has texture, you can believe in it. Then he'd start holding my hand, giving it a gentle squeeze right before every time he had to let go. And we started putting our arms around each others' waists and..." her voice trailed off again. Then she came back, stronger, but a bit wavery. "And then...one night we were alone, in the health ward tent, and I was the last one cleaning up and he was there because he'd been shot in the arm the day before. I'd been so scared when they brought him in, his eyes closed and his face pale, and I was just elated he was already sitting up and talking normally. He was a strong one, Jamen. And I went over to clean out his wound again and..." I waited, patient like, for her to finish. "And he just suddenly hugged me so tight and I hugged him back and started crying about how scared I'd been and then I looked up and he looked down and...we kissed. Just long and strong, just holding it, like how a real kiss should be."

I wanted that love. I wanted that love, and I knew I most likely would never had it because the only boys in our town were shallow jerks who didn't know nothin' about proper romance.

"And then we just loved each other so hard, and we both felt on fire with it all. And then one day..." she was crying again, and her eyes were gone but she was still talking, and tears were rolling down her cheeks, one after the other, but she held her head up and steady and looked on ahead, like how a woman cries. "They came back, and they had Jamen's body with them."

Then her eyes came back and she looked at me.

"So you see, May, it's why I just can't have another love. Love like that only comes once, and if it goes, it goes, and no one can bring it back. No one can ever bring back anything like it. Do you see, child?"

I gazed at her a long moment, and then slowly nodded my head of chocolate brown curls, my stormy grey-blue eyes all wide.

"Yeah, Mrs. Brady. I see it, why. I see it."

"Then you're a good child, May, and others will never understand you."

I looked up at her, all steady.

"I know, Mrs. Brady. They don't now."

Then I'd slipped off my chair and out her front door, head bowed as I looked at the ground and thought on all she'd said to me.

It was after I understood Mrs. Brady's love that I understood why Dad can't talk about the war. He can't do it because you make fast friends in war in three ways: one, you make 'em fast because you have to have people you can rely on. Two: they're fast friends because you trust 'em hard and will do anything for 'em. And three, it's the saddest reason: it's because you lose 'em fast.

Dad had made a lot of fast friends, and he'd lost them all. So I stopped pestering Dad and let it be, and just let his eyes stop.

And when the reporters come, I stop them at the door and send them away without letting them in. Money can't buy happiness, but sometimes the subject it's trying to buy sure can hurt a lot.

So we don't get a lot of reporters anymore.

And when we do get them, I don't call for Dad. I send them away.

I send them away.