Dear Little Jo,
Another letter you won’t receive till you’re back in town. It almost seems like there’s no point to writing except that what else am I supposed to do when I get torn awake from a nightmare? I have this one repeating nightmare of a fire burning down a barn, and I have to rescue a horse from it. This horse won’t come out of his stall. He just stands there looking at me while my lungs fill up with heat and smoke, and the look in his eye is what finally wakes me up because it’s so awful. That look says, This is your fault.
Sylvan told me that once Mark jumped out of his car right in the middle of traffic on South Eighth Street. He yelled at Sylvan to take the wheel, and then he limped right through all the cars, right across to the sidewalk. He still used his cane back then, but he didn’t wait long enough to grab it from the back seat. It took Sylvan a few minutes in the middle of all those honking cars to pull over and pass the cane to Mark through the passenger window. Then Mark puked in a flower box in front of the Gap. Sylvan said he wouldn’t get back in the car. Couldn’t.
Why do I dream about this horse? I mean I’m pretty sure I’ve never even seen a horse up close like that, in real life. I’ve never even been inside a barn.
Most veterans can’t afford cars, Sylvan says, but even if they have them they don’t drive them. In traffic is where people in Afghanistan got killed. A traffic jam meant a roadblock, meant suicide bombers or grenades dropped from the rooftops. Honking cars meant here it comes.
Sincerely,
AK