The party is in full swing at my college apartment in Charlottesville. Cigarette smoke, spilled beer, and the sounds of Joan Baez, The Beatles, and Kingston Trio fill the room.
It's loud. Guys are bull shitting about UVa football games, road trips to Sweetbriar, the Paris peach talks, combat missions, final exams, formation flying, Martin Luther King, space shots, basic training, the Cuban Missile Crisis, Presidents Kennedy Johnson and Nixon, movies, cars, cobras, bar girls, R&R, the Freedom Bird, fraternity rush, flares over the Ho Chi Minh Trail, Bobby Kennedy,
It's crowded. Rudolph Nunn, my mentor and ROTC instructor is there. So is Mark Chenis who tried to steal my girl at pilot training. No problem, I would have tried to steal his given the chance. Burt Beach's entire tanker crew are tilting back brews in the corner. A couple guys I tutored in first year math are leaning precariously against a wall. Guys I took classes in economics with, a guys I studied Spanish with, and others I went down the road with are enjoying Budweiser in the quart from the local Seven Eleven. A freshman football player from the dorm floor below me in Page Hall is having trouble navigating to the head.
It's loud. It stinks of smoke, spilled beer, and sweat. It's crowded. Good guys, young, warriors. Full of themselves, fearless, full of life. They never could have all been in the same room together, but that never occurrs to me.
The music stops. The room goes quiet. Everybody turns to me. One of them asks me, "Why did we all have to die?" I look back at them all and realize I am the only survivor in the room. I can't answer the question. Not then, not now, not ever.
I wake up. My pillow is soaked. I turn it over. My wife asks me if I'm OK. Yes, I say. It's only a dream. She drifts back to sleep.
It's loud. Guys are bull shitting about UVa football games, road trips to Sweetbriar, the Paris peach talks, combat missions, final exams, formation flying, Martin Luther King, space shots, basic training, the Cuban Missile Crisis, Presidents Kennedy Johnson and Nixon, movies, cars, cobras, bar girls, R&R, the Freedom Bird, fraternity rush, flares over the Ho Chi Minh Trail, Bobby Kennedy,
It's crowded. Rudolph Nunn, my mentor and ROTC instructor is there. So is Mark Chenis who tried to steal my girl at pilot training. No problem, I would have tried to steal his given the chance. Burt Beach's entire tanker crew are tilting back brews in the corner. A couple guys I tutored in first year math are leaning precariously against a wall. Guys I took classes in economics with, a guys I studied Spanish with, and others I went down the road with are enjoying Budweiser in the quart from the local Seven Eleven. A freshman football player from the dorm floor below me in Page Hall is having trouble navigating to the head.
It's loud. It stinks of smoke, spilled beer, and sweat. It's crowded. Good guys, young, warriors. Full of themselves, fearless, full of life. They never could have all been in the same room together, but that never occurrs to me.
The music stops. The room goes quiet. Everybody turns to me. One of them asks me, "Why did we all have to die?" I look back at them all and realize I am the only survivor in the room. I can't answer the question. Not then, not now, not ever.
I wake up. My pillow is soaked. I turn it over. My wife asks me if I'm OK. Yes, I say. It's only a dream. She drifts back to sleep.
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