by Andrew Lanh
The young black enlistee from Biloxi, Mississippi, was then the young husband of the old woman dressed in black who now stood stiffly next to her son, Jimmy Junior, the toddler left behind when his father went overseas in 1968. A tall lanky man, Dodson’s son, he stood with one arm around his wife, the other around his mother. He whispered something to his mother, who was sobbing. Twin girls, perhaps ten or eleven, dressed in identical pink dresses, stared at the confusing scene. At one point their grandmother bent down to embrace the girls after they started, nervous, when the gun salute began.
No one spoke in the living room. We held our breaths. I could sense Dustin’s body tense up as the casket was interred. The casket that held bone fragments, but also a dog tag. I reached over and grasped his shoulder. He flinched but turned his head for a second and smiled at me.
When it was over, Grandma was the first to speak.
“I never expected to die in America.”
“Grandma,” Hank said nervously.
She held up her hand. “It’s not a bad thing. You have to die somewhere. But we’re all exiles in America. Wars are like a hard wind that blows flower petals far and wide.” She sighed. “But it’s the people who are blown across the earth.”
Dustin’s words were scratchy. “That war will never be over, will it, Grandma?”
Grandma reached over and squeezed his hand.
“Flower petals,” she whispered. “Blown by the wind.”
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