Dear Will,
By the time you are reading this letter, you and I will have had a chance to say good-bye, because I didn’t want to leave without telling you face-toface. I think too much of you to have left without a proper good-bye, although no amount of explaining in person could alleviate the hurt you probably feel. But I am sure you will have discovered this letter in your hiding place in the barn soon after I left and, by now, you might be able to better understand.
As will become obvious from this letter, I found your Big Chief tablet and the writing you had been doing in it. I had noticed that you disappeared every day about the same time. The night I found you in the barn to tell you I was taking you to the movies, I realized the barn is where you disappeared to every day. It was not long after that when I decided to climb up into the loft. I discovered your writing quite by accident, and I want you to know that I didn’t invade your privacy, though I did read a couple of the beginning pages before I made myself stop—especially when I saw that you were writing about me. Even if I had never read a word, however, I knew that you loved me as more than a relative. I am both highly flattered by that, as well as rather sad—but not sad in the way you may think.
I am sad because of who you are and of who I am, which meant we could not become boyfriends because we are related by such close blood ties. The least important thing that separated us was the eight years difference in our ages; rather, it is the gulf of experience between your innocence and the terrible, terrible psychic toll the conflict in Vietnam had on me. Add to that my experience with Ted Seabrook and the fact that you must be a virgin, and you will come to understand that it also makes a difference.
But I never thought of you as “just a kid,” even though you might have thought so. I did have to keep the distance between us out of respect, not only for your parents, but out of respect for you, Will, more than anything else. I simply could not be the instrument by which you lost your virginity. Although some boys give it away with so little regard for the value being a virgin holds, I simply could not take advantage, either of your obsession for me, or your raging emotions, spurred on by the physiological changes your body was experiencing.
Had things been different, Will, I would have been honored for you and me to become “boyfriends,” as you so aptly put it to me on several occasions.
I had to grow up fast, once I was drafted into the army and was sent to Vietnam. I did not want that to happen to you, and still do not. As Arlene may have told you, I was inducted into the armed services straight out of high school; but I did get some valuable college credits in the army prior to being shipped over to Vietnam to be an office clerk out in the field. At least the ongoing training I had in the field offices over there supplemented my education.
Yes, I had my duties to patrol the perimeters of our field camp, was taught to handle an M-16, and was trained in combat readiness, in case our encampment was attacked by the Viet Cong. But I was lucky, in a way, too, that I was mainly a desk jockey.
I was also lucky in that most of my time spent in Vietnam was just plain boring, and I was never the sort of “man” who wanted to fight, either on the playground when I was a kid, or in the field of battle. I avoided fights. Unlike you, I was somewhat effeminate as a youngster, and was made to grow into my masculinity in boot camp—either that or be branded and harassed by my fellows.
Only one person saw through my thinly disguised machismo, and that was Theodore Seabrook, whom I met only four short weeks before he was killed in cold blood. But up until the time I re-met you as a quite good-looking (or as you prefer, “pretty”) young man, those were the very best weeks of my life. Ted and I fell in love with each other from the very moment we met. That such love is almost impossible, I do not doubt, and for that I was again lucky. When he stepped up to my desk to report to our colonel for duty, and I looked up from my work, our eyes met, and for a long moment, neither of us could speak. And when he was finished with the colonel, he stopped back by my desk and invited me out on the spot. Somehow, from then on we simply could not stay apart.
The real horror of that is, of course, that it took no time for the others in our company to pick up on the strong affection we felt for each other. We were blinded by our love for each other. We even slept together the first night of Ted’s arrival; neither he nor I could help it.
Yes, I know I told you not to have sex with the first boy who comes along, and I still think that is wise advice—considering your innocence. But that is precisely what Ted and I did. What eventually got him killed was the fact that we had sex as many times a day as we could get by with it. Everywhere. Once we even did it under a jeep in the middle of the compound! It was not quite as exposed as it sounds, but suffice it to say, it was reckless. We did it between tents; we did it in the bushes outside the safe zone on the outer perimeter of our camp, even though Cong had been spotted in the area. We were also fired upon once as suspected Cong and only narrowly missed being shot, until we could identify ourselves.
Ours was an impossible love, Will—Ted’s and mine. And I suppose what burns too brightly burns out more quickly. I would have preferred to have met stateside and to have taken things more slowly and privately, but given the time and place of our meeting and our impossibly ferocious love for each other, we were driven to recklessness when we were together, and driven to madness when we were separated.
It could just as well have been me who was shot in the chest by “friendly fire” as it was Ted, since we were walking together, coming from the latrine. Yes, we had even taken to going to the latrine together. This, however, is not as unusual as it sounds. Perhaps in some more stable military environment, like a fort stateside, it would have looked more suspicious, and would have been absolutely frowned upon. Still, it was probably just the thing that finally tipped the mental balance of the coward who took Ted’s life. He was never caught. No one even bothered to look.
And of course, Ted’s death was the thing that sent me into oblivion. I went crazy, Will. Crazy with grief, crazy with hatred, and what got me the ticket out of Nam, I went suicidal. Lucky, a third time, the colonel really liked me, and he even knew about Ted and me. At least he indicated as much when he visited me in the camp infirmary, when I was pumped up on Thorazine. He was able to break through the haze of my madness and drug-induced state of calm to communicate his understanding. I remember he said: “I’m going to save your life, Corporal Martin, by sending you back home. There, once you are discharged, I hope you are able to find another Ted.”
That he said that to me was not a dream—at least I don’t think it was. I also found paperwork for disability among my stuff when I got stateside, filled out and signed by the colonel, himself. He did that for me, Will. Without it, I would not have been able to get back on my feet, once I was released from the hospital—nor to help out your parents with a few of the expenses.
I was a mess, as you well noticed. Once you’re identified as a nut case by “mental hygiene” (the military equivalent of psychiatry), they hold on to you; so I drifted in and out of depression and thoughts of suicide there in San Antonio for the final six months of my career as a soldier. And when I came out here, you helped me the rest of the way back. As I said the night we kissed, Will, you gave me back my heart.
I hope you don’t think I left so shortly thereafter because I was freaked. Had there been anything in Hachita for me (other than you), I would still be here. But I have things I need to do, important things to me, and I simply can not do them in the middle of nowhere.
Once I am settled and have an apartment, a phone, a job, and the beginnings of a life, I will get in touch, and then you can come stay with me. But let’s allow the smoke to clear, first. Okay?
Now, I’m thinking about things I want you to one day realize, even though right now you can’t, because you are probably hurt that I left. Just keep this letter and read it as often as necessary, and one day many more of my words will make sense.
First, both your mother and
father are gracious and wonderful people. I spent many summers with them when I was a kid, and your father was always helpful in teaching me things. Sure, he was impatient at times and, at others, so frustrated with the problems that raising a large family entails—the vicious weather that ruined his crops, the money-grabbing bankers (maybe)—that he was sometimes very hard to take. And when I was here this time, I feel that I overstayed my welcome. But please do not hold that against your father. He’s getting a little older and, if you haven’t noticed, his health is failing. I know he has ulcers. Farming will do that to a person, and he did not need the aggravation that my being here helped exacerbate. It is also true that he sometimes seemed to pick the arguments that we had. The day he decided the picture of me and Ted on my dresser was unsuitable and indicative of something perverse (remember he said we looked like “faggots”), I think he did have a glimmering of my own homosexuality and wanted to protect you from it. That is also why I often kept my distance from you. I did not want to prove to be the very thing your father feared. Again, it was both out of respect for him and your mother, but also out of respect for you. Only please do not think that being homosexual is something I’m ashamed of in any way; but as a famous general once said, retreat is sometimes the better part of valor; and I felt that this was one of those times. Had I foolishly challenged your father’s assumptions about me and Ted and that picture, I would have been gone the day we had the fight, and you and I would not have been able to watch that movie together, nor to have our long talk on the way home. And, most importantly, I would never have known what it was like to kiss you! I’m not kidding, Will. As I said that night, I might have been doing it for you, but I was also doing it for myself. And it helped me as much, if not more, than it helped you. So…No. I am not ashamed of my love for men, and you should not be, either. But sometimes, given the way things are in society, it’s not a good idea to always be so open.
We do both have that wonderful vision of the two men we saw at the movies in Deming, and I will carry around with me the notion that, even though they live in just as harsh of an environment as you and I, they were brave enough to wear their wedding bands. Perhaps you will be as extraordinary in the years to come.
Second, your mother has stresses that she keeps well hidden, as well. She was really more knowledgeable about my homosexuality than your father was and, hence, actually more of a danger to us being friends. You see, when I was a teen, not too much older than you are right now, your mother caught me in one of your wet-dream situations with another boy. Which is why I know to tell you to save yourself by not having sex with the first boy you meet who happens to want it. Losing your virginity is not all it’s cracked up to be if there’s not also love involved. So, even though your mother has this knowledge of my past, she probably kept it secret even from herself. She and I were raised in a strict religious household, and our father was much more on-the-lookout for such trouble than Roy.
Third, and probably more important in the long-term, Will, is how well you prepare to live the rest of your life. I’m talking about getting a good education. That’s also why I left, after coming to stay with your family for these few months. I have the G.I. bill to fall back on, and I plan to use it. While I will be close to thirty by the time I’ve gotten a degree, if you apply yourself in school, now, you will be far more ahead of the game when you’re my age than I am. So go for whatever courses your high school offers in college preparation. Just because you’re the son of a farmer does not mean you have to end up being one, unless that’s something you absolutely feel you must be. That is perhaps your own father’s greatest failing, Will. And that’s his distrust or dislike of “book learnin’.” Times are changing too fast for people not to have a good education.
If you haven’t fallen asleep with that little lecture, I’m happy. That’s why I’m writing you this letter. It’s something between just you and me. I’ll drop your parents a line and give them a few telephone calls, but you’re the most important person in my life, did you know that? Well, you are. You and I are buddies, and when you get out of high school, I hope you will consider coming to stay with me and go to college. I think we could have some really happy times.
It hurt me not to tell you, when you asked me, what two guys do in bed. As I said then, I’ll say it now. I don’t want to ruin the experience for you by describing the merely physical details. But I will tell you that, yes, Will, it does involve taking off all your clothes and lying next to that person. If you already know what’s physically possible between a man and a woman, then it should not be too difficult to imagine what two men can do together. But the most important part—even in the physical encounter—is that you respect the other person. But even more important than thatis that you respect yourself.
I think I could go on writing forever, but I do have to end this letter somewhere, so I will end it with this. Remember when we were talking about how Ted died, and I told you I had to take something of his that would bring him back to me when I needed him, and I took his dog tags? Well, I’m giving you mine. You’ve probably already found them.
So, do me a favor, will you? Wear them. The guys at school will think they’re neat, but you will know that I’m lying next to your heart.
I know that we will see each other again, someday.
Love, Uncle Sean
Part Three
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The Spiral Notebook
In reading the spiral notebook, I was struck by how vastly improved Will’s writing was—his physical control of the writing instrument, itself, as well as all the other aspects of using the language and adhering to more traditional grammatical norms. So my job, here, has mainly been to transcribe the work into a computer. Again, I have taken certain liberties to divide the material into chapters for the benefit of the reader.
One
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When Uncle Sean left one hot July morning, just a little less than seven months after he got here, I was hurt and angry, and I didn’t take advantage of those couple of hours from when he told us he was leaving until he was standing by his car. I could’ve visited with him there in his room as he was packing, and I could have tried to make him feel it was okay, but I didn’t. Daddy didn’t even bother to go out to the car to say good-bye, and I guess Daddy was hurt, as well. His last words that morning to Uncle Sean still rang in the house: “You picked a damned fine time to leave, Sean, do you know that? Just when harvest season is about to start!” And Mama couldn’t go out to the car to say good-bye. She was too torn up. The girls followed him out there, and so did I, but after he hugged the girls, he said he wanted to be alone with me for just a minute. So once they were back indoors, Uncle Sean looked at me, though I could hardly meet his eyes. I could see the tears in his eyes, just like those that were in mine, which I’m sure he saw.
Only my chest was heaving, and I was biting my lips, and I wanted to plead with him not to leave, but I didn’t, because even though he wasn’t sobbing like a kid and I was, I knew he was hurting bad. I wish now, being seventeen, that I had known how much he needed for me to act more grown up about his leaving, to know he loved me, and to know he just had to get away. Things were too oppressive between him and Daddy, which came about only a short time after Uncle Sean took me to the movies.
I’m not going to write about that, except to say that Daddy heard from Nick Collins that the movie showing over in Deming was nasty and shameful, and it was that which broke Daddy’s trust in Uncle Sean. Afterwards, Daddy scrutinized Uncle Sean’s every act, especially when he and I might come back from working in the fields and we were laughing and slapping each other on the backs—anything like that was a sign to Daddy that Uncle Sean and I had an unhealthy, perverse relationship.
Back then, of course, I wanted so much more than Uncle Sean was willing to give me, but I stood up to Daddy, too, denying every accusation he made, tromping on him, really, at the least criti
cism of Uncle Sean. And that’s what drove a wedge between me and Daddy, I think, that never went away, even though it has been two years now that Uncle Sean has been gone. I turned fifteen the month after he left and entered high school, and I sometimes wish that I had been just a little older when I first laid eyes on him. Even a year would have made a lot of difference in the way I handled myself when he was leaving, and so it is with a little guilt that I look back on that day.
There were so many emotions raging through me as I stood facing Uncle Sean in the driveway, me wanting to scream out my pain at him, accuse him like Daddy of running away at the worst possible time, wanting to throw my arms around him and hug him so hard I could force him into my heart, and then he would never be gone! But I just stood there sobbing, as he said words I can’t recall. And when he stuck out his hand for me to shake, I took it and gave it a little squeeze, but I was so blinded by my own childish hurt, I turned and ran off and didn’t turn back even when he called my name.
The last thing I heard before I was out of earshot was him revving the engine on his car. The last thing I saw of Uncle Sean was a funnel of dust as he sped northward toward the interstate.
I didn’t go back to the loft in the barn, either, for a very long time. I just couldn’t make myself write down how I was feeling. I felt empty inside, as empty as outer space, maybe.
And when school started up in the fall of ’69, and I entered high school, my excitement was dulled by loneliness for him, for Uncle Sean. I had looked forward to becoming a freshman there at Animas for a long time. Kids from the farms and ranches—boys that is—grew up itching to join the football team, especially. Even though it’s a little school in the middle of nowhere, we usually win. We’re tough, like the barbed wire we string along the pastures and fields, like the steel of our muscles we get from working from the time we’re old enough to walk. Even the sissy boys out here in this vast, harsh desert are as tough as mesquite bushes with thorns that can puncture a pickup tire.
Uncle Sean Page 7