A War Story
by Dean Metcalf
I.
We came from naked Indians
walking into a red sun
to naked cowboys
shivering under a blue sun.
II.
Here's how it started:
A boy, I ran the rabbit trails of
southern Oregon,
hand‑whittled sapling spear‑shaft
cradled lightly at the
balance:
shaft notched for fire‑hardened
wood point
(hand‑whittled too from orange crate
slat),
point lashed in place with
leather bootlace.
Feathers and amulets!
I touched artifacts of manly power
so old their age was told
by the half‑life of the carbon in them,
and something in my blood
was already akin to the flint
of the arrowheads
my little‑boy's hands
wiped dust from.
I sneaked across the housing project
lawn
with homemade bow
and one precious storebought arrow
and shot a robin in the ass.
The robin wobbled, tried to run,
dragged the arrow, screaming
like any being,
shot.
III.
The afternoon of my childhood
I went to war.
The manchildren of our side and the
manchildren of their side
hammered our ammo into words
of smoking brass
and copperjacketed lead
and we talked about death.
Here's what we said:
‑They told us you were different
when they sent us here:
they spoke of your animal eyes
and your strangely foul body odors.
‑ah! They told us the
same
about you. But
last night
when we were
killing each other,
grunting in the
mud
bayonet and
hatchet lunging
steel cutting
steel
parried blades
wanting bone
we came up locked,
straining,
arm to arm
face to face
and I saw your
eyes.
Sure, they were
animal:
they reflected
mine.
‑Yes. I saw it.
And your smell was strangely foul,
as they said, but no different
from mine. That second set of sweat‑glands
that fear engages
secrete some smelly stuff.
‑Yeah, fear is democratic.
It has us smell
alike
and feel alike
and diminishes our
differences.
All warriors still
alive
know this.
‑That is why we have more in common
with you, our enemies,
than with the leaders who sent us
here.
‑It's the nearness of
death
that does it.
Death is the
greatest teacher.
Getting close
enough to feel
death's chill breath
teaches us that life's worth more
than all the flags
and anthems
we keep trading it
for.
‑Death gives power, too:
death is a wall
you can put your back against
and push, moving heavy things.
‑The problem is that
death's teaching
and death's power
in life
come only when
death is close:
when death makes
us all the same.
‑Those dead ‑ yours and ours commingled
atop that rockpile
since last week's fight ‑
they look all the same.
‑Yup. Once the sun and
flies
have been at it
awhile,
you can't tell a
dead black man
from a dead brown
man
from a dead white
man
from a dead yellow
man.
‑Dead children are different, though:
smaller.
(Chorus of warriors from their side and
our side):
"DEATH MAKES US ALL THE SAME."
IV.
And death is close.
The new artifacts of manly power
have a less friendly half‑life
than the carbon 14 of arrows and spears
and the death they own
makes us all the same.
Years after the combat,
I stood, in dream, on a wide plain.
Many arrows came out of the sky,
singly,
each perfectly aimed
at my heart.
I dodged each so narrowly
that the feathers brushed my side.
The perfect cadence of their coming
made my jumps a spastic dance,
like one of Chaplin's:
funny, but urgent.
Now I, as warrior, know:
I am the robin that I shot. I am the boy,
the bow,
the archer,
the arrow.
And my death is close.
And your death is close,
close enough now for death to be a
teacher,
close enough for death to be a stout
wall
to put our backs against
and move the heavy things
that we must move.
It is ourselves
that we must move.
Our fear of one another
and of our very selves
is the finger on the button
calling down that impersonal
killing
which will become,
for each of us,
such a personal death.
We are the strike plan,
the rocket engine.
We are the target.
We are the bomb.
Look,
it comes to this:
we are all different, and
we are all the same.
What life wants is diversity,
but if our way of life
holds the differences between us
so profound that only
death will make us all the same, then
death will make us all the same. ©
Dean Metcalf 1983, 2013
