"Hey, Mr. Weaver! What brings you down to the back forty?"
"Oh, I heard you pounding posts down here. Thought I’d better come see if you’re stealin’ my pasture or just my cows."
"You can keep the whole bunch. That brown one over there wandered up to visit my chickens, so I chased her home and came back to put the fence right. Did you walk all the way down from your house?"
"Yeah. I’ve still got some stamina, no matter what you hear."
"Looks like you do. How’s your son doing?"
"Well, Billy’s been moved over to an outpatient building at Walter Reed. Yesterday he said they got him up walking on a treadmill for a few minutes. First time."
"That’s progress. How about his arms?"
"Nothing’s been fitted yet. He has some, they gave him some temporary prosthetics, but his stumps are still pretty sensitive. The skin gets raw. A few more weeks they tell him, and it gets easier."
"What can he do with them?"
"He says they’re useless. They strap them over his shoulders, and make him lift them up and down, side to side, to get his muscles working. Says he feels like Frankenstein."
"Are they going to give him hooks? Clamps or something? So he can pick things up?"
"That depends on what kind of nerves and muscle are there when he heals up. They took them both off up above the elbows, right in theater, and there were some other wounds to his shoulders, so right now they want to see what kind of function is left."
"Damn. That’s a hard spot for anyone to be in, especially a young person."
"Oh, he’s still gung ho. Says he’d go back and do it all over again. I don’t know how long that’ll last. He’s only nineteen. I told him on the phone last night that he has sixty or seventy years to go, if he’s lucky, and he’ll see things completely differently every twenty years or so."
"It’s hard to convince a kid of that."
"Aw, you can’t. You can’t. When I was nineteen, I was driving ammo trucks in Viet Nam, and trying my best to get a transfer to a combat unit. I wanted to get out there in the bush so bad I used to lay awake nights just dreaming of getting my big chance to be a hero. Thought it would make me a man."
"Did you finally get your transfer?"
"I kept asking, and they kept losing the paperwork. Never happened. I figured I’d missed out. Even a couple months ago, I still felt that way. Then Billy got blown up, and now, I think back about all those bombs and shells I trucked around, and I wonder how many arms they might have taken off. Now when I see pictures of people who got hurt in that war, I just wish I never had any part in it. But you couldn’t have told me that back then."
"Forty years makes a big difference."
"Well, I knew the farm was waiting back here, and I guess I just wanted to see some real action before I had to settle down to driving a John Deere for a living. That’s the funny part."
"What part?"
"I never wanted to be a farmer. I wanted to sell the place as soon as my Dad gave it to me, and go see the world. He knew it, too. Wouldn’t give me title until Billy was almost seven. Not until he knew, I was a farmer. It’s the other way around with Billy. He’s always wanted the farm. Saw his whole life right here. He even tried to get me to give him half of it, as soon as he graduated. He couldn’t wait to get started."
"What about now? What about his arms?"
"The doctors say he'll be able to do a lot, after a while, but it's up to him how far he takes it. They talk to him about his career options, and he keeps saying he wants to get back to his outfit. The thing is, Billy’s really given up on the whole idea of farming now. He keeps telling me he’s never coming back here, no matter what. He says he wants to stay in, wants to get back to his outfit."
"That can’t really happen, Mr. Weaver."
"I know. He’s not thinking right just yet. He still keeps his guitar by his bed, so the nurses can trip over it. Thinks he’ll use it someday."
"It takes time. It takes quite a while."
"I don’t have a lot of time, you know, the doctors only give me a year or so. I smoked all my life, and it’s caught up with me real good now. He's going to have the farm to himself before too long, with no hands to work it. You see this pasture here? It was originally cleared about five years before the Civil War, all the way down to the creek there, where it’s growing in again. My great great grandfather cleared it by hand with three slaves and a team of mules. The farm is what kept him out of that war. They valued him more as a farmer than a soldier."
"And it’s stayed in your family?"
"Five generations now. The subdivision took about half of it, when my father sold the upland section in ’82, but the rest is the same ground my great great grandfather cleared."
"That’s quite a story."
"What worries me about Billy is if he doesn’t come around, that’s the end of the line. I was counting on him coming home again. It’s his farm. I’d hate to see him up and sell it for a bunch of houses, but I can't blame him now if he does. I can’t even feed the cows anymore without hired help. It’s his farm, and the thing is, he doesn’t want it. He won't even come home."
"There’s still time for him to come around. The doctors at Walter Reed will give him some hands, something to work with."
"I hope so. I don’t mean to gripe, but this damned Iraq war has really made a mess for us. It's just about ruined everything. I don’t even know if my boy will set foot in his own house again. He says he won’t. He doesn’t want me to visit him up there, and he says he’s not coming back here."
"That’s how he feels now."
"Yeah, well. We’ll see. We’ll see. It’s just a mess right now. A real mess."