We Warriors Resting

        by Tom Sheehan

That remembered day had gone over hill, hotter than gunfire, hotter than ever, but the still, blue light remained, cut with a gray edge, catching corners rice paddies lean out of. In the serious blue brilliance of battle, they'd become comrades becoming friends, just Walko and Williamson and Sheehan sitting in the night drinking beer cooled by Imjin River waters in August of '51 in Korea, we three men drably clad, but clad in the rags of war. Stars hung pensive neon. Mountain-cool silences were being earned; hungers absolved; a ponderous god talked to.

Above silence, the ponderous god's weighty as clouds, elusive as soot on wind, yields promise. We used church keys to tap cans, lapped up silence rich as missing salt, fused our backbones to good earth in a ritual old as labor itself, we men clad in the rags of war. Such an August night gives itself away, tells tales, slays the rose in reeling carnage, murders sleep, sucks moisture out of Mother Earth, fires hardpan, sometimes does not die
itself just before dawn, makes strangers in one's selves, those who wear the rags of war.

We had been strangers beside each other, caught in the crush of traceried night and starred flanks, accidents of men drinking beer cooled in the bloody waters where brothers roam forever, warriors come to that place by fantastic voyages, carried by generations of the persecuted or the adventurous, carried in sperm body, dropped in the spawning, fruiting womb of America, and born to wear the rags of war.

Walko, reincarnate of the Central European, come of land lovers and those who scatter grain seed, bones like logs, wrists strong as axle trees, fair and blue-eyed, prankster, ventriloquist who talked off mountainside, rumormonger for fun, heart of the hunter, hide of the herd, apt killer, born to wear the rags of war.
       

Willia Williamson, faceless in the night, black set on black, only teeth like high piano keys, eyes that captured stars, fine nose got from Rome through rape or slave bed unknown generations back, was cornerback tough, graceful as ballet dancer (Walko's opposite), hands that touched his rifle the way a woman's touched, or a doll, or one's fitful child caught in fever clutch, came sperm-tossed across the cold Atlantic, some elder Virginia-bound bound in chains, the Congo Kid come home, the Congo Kid, alas, alas, born to wear the rags of war.

Sheehan, reluctant at trigger-pull, dreamer, told deep lies with dramatic ease, entertainer who wore shining inward a sum of ghosts forever from the cairns had fled; heard myths and the promises in earth and words of songs he knew he never knew, carried scars vaguely known as his own, shared his self with saint and sinner, proved pregnable to body force, but born to wear the rags of war.

Walko: We lost the farm. Someone stole it. My father loved the fields, sweating. He watched grass grow by starlight, the moon slice at new leaves. The mill's where he went for work, in the crucible, drawing on the green vapor, right in the heat of it, the miserable heat. My mother said he started dying the first day. It wasn't the heat or green vapor did it, just going off to the mill, grassless, tight in. The system took him. He wanted to help. It took him, killed him a little each day, just smothered him. I kill easy. Memory does it. I was born for this, to wear these rags. The system gives, then takes away. I'll never go piecemeal like my father. These rags are my last home.

Williamson: Know why I'm here? I'm from North Ca'lina, sixteen and big and wear size fifteen shoes and my town drafted me 'stead of a white boy. Chaplain says he git me home. Shoot! Be dead before then. Used to hunt home, had to eat what was fun running down. Brother shot a man's cow. Kissed Momma goodbye, give me his gun. Ten years, no word. Momma cries about him all night. Can't remember my brother's face. Can feel his gun, though, right here in my hands, long and smooth and all honey touch. Squirrel's left eye never too far away for that good old gun. Them men back home know how good I am, and send me here, put these rags on me. Two wrongs! Send me too young and don't send my gun with me. I'm goin' to fix it all up, gettin' home too. They don't think I'm coming back, them boys back there. They be nervous when I get back, me and that good old gun my brother give me, and my rags of war.

Sheehan: Stories are my food. I live and lust on them. Spirits abound in the family, indelible eidolons; the O'Siodhachain and the O'Sheehaughn carved a myth. I wear their scars in my soul, know the music that ran over them in lifetimes, songs' words, and strangers that are not strangers: Muse Devon abides with me, moves in the blood and bag of my heart, whispers tonight:

Corimin is in my root cell, oh bright beauty of all that has come upon me, chariot of cheer, carriage of Cork where the graves are, where my visit found the root of the root cell: Johnny Igoe at ten running ahead of the famine that took brothers and sisters, lay father down; sick in the hold of a ghostly ship I have seen from high rock on Cork's coast, in the hold heard the myths and music he would spell all his life, remembering hunger and being alone and brothers and sisters and father gone and mother praying for him as he knelt beside her bed that hard morning when Ireland went away to the stern.

I know that terror of hers last touching his face. Pendalcon's grace comes on us all at the end. Johnny Igoe came alone at ten and made his way across Columbia, got my mother who got me and told me when I was twelve that one day Columbia would need my hand, and I must give. And tonight, I say, "Columbia, I am here with my hands and in my rags of war."

I came home alone. And they are my brothers. Walko is my brother. Williamson is my brother. Muse Devon is my brother. Corimin is my brother. Pendalcon is my brother. God is my brother. I am a brother to all who are dead, we all wear the rags of war.

And I see it all again through a son's drawing as he too Rests in Peace, Tom
Sheehan, Junior.