As my eyes began to adjust to the darkness, I could just barely make out an immense silhouette looming before me. I sat upright in bed with a start and immediately flipped on the switch of the little white plastic lamp on the wooden nightstand beside my twin sized bed. Light flooded my modestly sized room, and my lack of interior designing skills were instantly apparent. The once snowy white walls were now stained with smudges from various incidents throughout my childhood, and the only decorations that covered my bare walls were the thumbtack marks from the posters that had adorned my walls in my adolescent years. My ancient comforter was faded grey and falling apart, as I had always been too lazy to go out and purchase a new one.
I shifted my attention to the brawny man before me donned in military attire. His piercing blue eyes were faded grey and his stubbly hair was shaved so closely to his head that I could just barely tell that it was blonde. His crooked nose had obviously been broken at some point, and his dirty face was covered in faded scars that were soon to disappear. The man looked familiar. I was sure that I had seen him before, but I couldn't place him. I leaned back against the headboard in an attempt to increase the distance between us, fearful of this familiar stranger who had somehow found his way into my room in the dead of night. With subtle movements, I slowly inched myself to the side of the bed closest to the door. Just as I was about to make a run for it, the man spoke.
"Little brother," the man before me nodded his head in greeting. I suddenly paused in confusion. Who was this intimidating man before me who called me 'little brother?' I only had one brother, and this was most definitely not Kyle. As I examined the man's face, I suddenly saw a flicker of my older brother in his eyes. There it was, that wild sense of adventure, but this time it was accompanied by a look of defeat and rebellion rather than excitement. If I didn't know any better, I would have claimed there was a little bit of fear in there too. So this was Kyle after all. The man in front of me may have been Kyle, but he was no longer the brother I had grown up with. The Kyle I so fondly remembered was the average pretty boy, lean and pale with shaggy blonde locks that had to be falling in his eyes before he was willing to cut them, and a boyish grin had always graced his face like there was some joke that only he was privy to. As I continued to examine his face, Kyle's blue eyes became placid and indifferent once more, the spark gone.
My heart felt heavy, and I averted my eyes. I couldn't bear to look at what the war had done to my brother. "Kyle," I finally breathed out. The air was weighted with tension. "W-what happened to you?" I turned my head to look at him, breaking the silence.
"Vietnam," he sat down on the end of my bed, just like he used to before he was drafted. His eyes were no longer distant and guarded but distressed and tormented. "Vietnam happened."
"W-what happened in Vietnam?" I cautiously inquired, and I couldn't help but feel that I was on the verge of treading on broken glass. The already broken pieces would shatter, and I would be splintered.
"I feel like I'm losing my sanity," Kyle hoisted his feet up on the bed and wrapped his arms around his legs. "Over in Vietnam, it's all about fighting," he muttered with distaste. "It's not just fighting the enemy as one would expect in war. When we aren't in combat with the Vietcong, we're at odds with our own. The men are pugnacious, and therefore we are always picking fights with each other. I'm ashamed to admit that I've grappled with a few other soldiers myself. The violence spreads like wildfire, man. We've all just stopped caring. I never agreed with this war from the start, never disliked the Vietcong in the least, yet I find myself killing the enemy without a second's deliberation. It just frightens me, you know?" Kyle paused and glanced over at me, awaiting a response.
"Wow, that must have been terrible," I tentatively responded, unsure of how to react.
"It was," Kyle nodded his head in agreement. “And that’s not even the worst of it. Over in Vietnam, we live in constant fear. The Vietcong partake in so much radical guerrilla warfare that we never know what to expect. Wherever we go, there are land mines covering the ground. Just last week, a good friend of mine was blasted to smithereens by one of those landmines, right in front of all of his friends.” His voice softened to a whisper. “He never saw it coming. Death was always present, but it never seemed like reality to him until that last moment when he saw his life flash before his eyes. In that moment, he realized that he would never see his mother, father, or brother again. He realized that there was so much more out of life that he could have gotten, so much that he had never experienced. Yet by that time, it was too late and he was dead.”
