"Bringing 'Em Home"

"Crazy days, don't you think?"

"How do you figure, Jesse?" I flicked a tiny hunk of meat from a toothpick while Jesse talked at me. I knew from long experience that when we set on the bench in front of Sam's place, we weren't so likely to have a conversation as much as I was going to be the straight man for a soliloquy. I shifted in my seat as to make myself more comfortable and took a pull of cream soda from the bottle.

"How do you not figure, Augie? You got your troops out there in that desert place..."

"Ee-rock."

"Yeah. Eye-rak. What are we doing there?"

"That's what a lot of people are asking these days, Jesse."

"Well, I'll tell you what we're doing there. We're there because the folks in Washington want us to take our eye off the ball, if you know what I'm saying."

"I'm not sure I do, Jesse. Maybe you better help me out." As I talked, I couldn't help but to smile. I took out my notepad and started to sketching a picture of him, just for fun, sitting there in his John Deere cap and overalls, even though he'd never done a lick of farming in all his years, which must have been more than 70 or so.

"What I'm saying is...and maybe you'd better take notes here, Augie...what I'm saying here is that we're over there so the terrorists won't go bother us over here. What I'm saying here is that the longer we're over there, the terrorists will be happy to kill as many of us over there as they can, while the folks here are safe in their comfy beds."

"Well, maybe we'll get 'em home soon, Jesse."

"Get 'em home? Why would we do that? Hell, at least out there, it's a fair fight. Our boys have got guns and tanks and air support and the Green Zone and all that. What have we got here? Nothing! Those Al Qaeda guys ..." He made the name of the terrorist group sound like a fellow that lived down the street. "Those guys can just slip in here and 'boom'! We'll never know what hit us!"

"Pretty damn scary, that is."

"So you want to keep our boys out there? Hell, see that's the problem. We don't want 'em to stay out there -- it's just not right. But mark my words, soon as they come home, all that stuff that's happening there? It's going to be happening here."

"You think so?" I said, scuffling my pencil on my notepad to darken the shadows under Jesse's cap.

"Mark my words, son. Mark my words. We're taking our eyes off the ball."

"So you said. You ought to explain that part."

"Look, Augie. Those boys...and the girls, too... they're the best America has to offer out there, right?"

"Sure."

"Wrong! They're great people, don't get me wrong. I've been there, you know that right? Army, 1953."

"Sure, Jesse."

"What I'm saying is, we've got to show these people the real America. The America that's about folks helping other folks. About letting people be who they want to be, and be ruled by who they want to be ruled by. The America that when we invade a country and screw up, we leave 'em better than when we found them. If it was me, I'd kill 'em with kindness, that's what I'd do. Get every last one of us thinking and working about how to make that country better, and then make it our mission to help those terrorists see that we're here to help. Make sure people know that we're the good guys. Stop at nothing. That's what I'd do.

"Sounds a little Pollyanna to me, Jesse. Maybe those folks just plain hate us, you know?"

"Ah, Augie, I thought you were smarter than that."

"I am what I am, Jesse."

"What are you scribbling at there, anyway?" Jesse asked peering over to my side of the bench. I showed him. A not-half-bad sketch of an old man in a John Deere cap, standing at attention, arm raised in a stiff salute, flag waving in the background.

Jesse chuckled, clapped me on the shoulder, and stood up.

"You're all right, Augie."

"You, too. You take care now."

"Oh I will."

And I watched him go, on his proud, creaky legs, marching home.

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