Dear Little Jo,
Mark says people are always asking him these questions. How was it? Did you kill anyone? Are you like one of those crazy Vietnam vets? Did you read about fill-in-the-blank that happened over there? What do you think about Abu Ghraib? How come you only did one tour? Aren’t you glad you didn’t end up in fill-in-the-blank?
Mark says these are all the wrong questions, but he doesn’t think there are any right ones either. He said he knew these two marines who died in Bagram because the magic mushrooms that one of the guys’ girlfriends sent him accidentally had a poisonous mushroom mixed in.
“Nobody wants to hear that story,” Mark said. “They never reported the cause of death either. Nobody wanted to know it was something like that.”
In a lot of ways, he told me, it was worse than somebody getting bumped in the line of duty. “There we were in all this danger all the time,” he said, “and these losers go and die in this ordinary way, just like someone could have died back home.”
Mark’s been talking to me a lot about PTSD. About how my trauma from being Uncle Viktor’s punching bag for so long likely triggered my blowup at Bron’s party, especially the part where I felt totally out of control and didn’t even know who I was hitting. But my brother says PTSD also likely contributed to the other blowups, like when I wrecked your bedroom or called you horrible names or attacked Dowell that time in the library. He says it’s probably what causes all my nightmares too. I mean I sleep on his sofa, so he hears it when I wake up yelling.
Mark talked to his VA social worker and got me on a waiting list for some counseling. He says counseling really helped him figure out how to trust himself again.
I told Mark about this old book I found in the library once called Nature’s Killers. It was from 1904. I’d memorized a bunch of the names in this book that people had given to various poisonous mushrooms: armed stinkhorn, jelly babies, bog beacon, scaly tooth, cramp balls, poison pax. There are lots of mushrooms in Minnesota you can die from. Even the smallest amount can paralyze you or give you severe liver damage.
It made Mark laugh, hearing the names. “We should discover a new mushroom,” he said, “so we can call it something insane like that.”
He got quiet for a minute. Then he said, “I’m serious. We should go on a canoe trip this summer, or something. Off in the woods.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Adam,” my brother said, “let’s not be the type of people who are afraid to live because we might die.”
Sincerely,
AK