To the Captain I Saw at Cracker Barrel
by Richard R. DiPirro, VFP member
Welcome home. Welcome back, sir, and
welcome home. Welcome back to the world
you once knew, which looks entirely different
to you now, which resembles the world you
lived in before but seems drawn like a cartoon
now and scored with music you’ve never
heard. Welcome back to a civilization you
couldn’t wait to get back to, but isn’t what you
remember at all. There are people smiling and
shaking your hand and slapping your back –
actors in a bad play about the life of someone
who looks a lot like you. There are signs and
banners and parades and picnics and they whirl
around you. You are an observer at the center
of everyone’s attention. “Support the Troops!”
They yell until they’re hoarse – waving flags
and driving cars with yellow magnets, never
trying to explain why they weren’t with you
there, suffering 130 degree heat, shaking scorpions
from their boots and feeling the weight
of sand settle in their lungs. Welcome home,
sir.
I saw you at Cracker Barrel the other morning,
sir. I sat and ate my Old Timer’s Breakfast
and laughed with my wife and forgot about my
brothers and sisters living every moment of
thirteen months in their own hot hell. I would
have missed you if I hadn’t looked up when I
did from my hash browns and turkey sausage,
would have missed that moment I’ll never forget.
I saw your boots first, sir and the brown
and tan of your desert camouflage and then
your face – a face I knew like my mothers, like
my own. You scanned everyone as you walked
through the restaurant toward your table,
scanned their faces, evaluated their threat
potential and moved on to the next. Your eyes
held mine for only an instant, one of the
longest moments of my life, and moved on to
the kids at the table behind mine, content that
I posed you and your troops not present no
danger that morning. You sat alone then, talking
on a cell phone to a buddy, or a woman
who wouldn’t know you any more, and I struggled
to maintain the peace and happiness I had
with my wife only minutes before. That feeling
was gone, though – those minutes had
passed and I felt like I would never eat again.
Welcome home, sir.
I felt that thing inside – that thing I can’t put
words to – which spins and tugs and turns and
kicks me when it feels the need to. My wife
watched helplessly, trying as always to understand
that thing she knows she never will. I
stood and approached your waitress and paid
for your meal and she and the others smiled
and waved their flags and told me how sweet I
was, but I wasn’t feeling sweet. I wasn’t feeling
sweet at all. I stood and began to tremble
and needed to approach you and I stepped into
your line of sight and interrupted your phone
call and held out my hand. I asked you, but I
knew you had just returned, and I told you I
had been there eighteen years before as a
marine corporal and I looked past the false
smile you held and into those eyes that had
sent me back. Those eyes that were seeing me
now but still held the sight of whatever had
happened, whatever you had done over there.
Those eyes which would never see things in
fluorescent lighting, but forever washed out by
a bright foreign, guilty sun. You thanked me,
and I want to believe that just for an instant,
you knew I knew who you were. Welcome
home.
I felt like running out of there, but I walked
to the counter and paid my bill, and held my
wife’s hand as we left your presence. In the
car she stroked my head silently as I burst into
tears. God sir, I’m so sorry. I’m sorry I couldn’t
do more to keep them from sending you
over there. I’m sorry for what the rest of your
life will be like – for the burn scar you will
carry forever on your soul. I’m sorry for the
anger and frustration you will feel when you
think that no one understands, that no one
could possibly know what you had to do there.
I’m sorry you don’t know what has been done
to you. And I’m sorry for the tears you too will
shed one day when you do understand.
Welcome home, sir.
This article was originally published in the July 2008 VFP Newsletter.