After the Nam 

Everybody changes and gets somewhere. Everybody grows, but not me. I'm inverting, like a child now. Movies make me cry, the Olympics make me cry. 

I'm over at Five Points with Cap'n and Deke, and then Cap'n goes home. We'll catch a ride later, we say, after some more pool, a few more beers, but we don't.

And what the hell, nice night, all starry and wide open sky, a little cold in the fall, so what. We got Jack in the Bottle, and that's warm. We choose: the dirt road sees a car not very often this late; the tracks cut angle across to Sutterville. We take the tracks, what the hell, seven miles, Jack in the Bottle, what the hell. We talk, old friends, old dreams, all of them broken.

Deke wanted to join the Army, shoots straight and true at rabbits, at pool, at targets at the fair, ever since he's a kid. Deke, a big heavy guy. They won't take him now - he's overweight and there's no war, no need. He tells me his sad life story like it's over, like can't I feel his pain, his quaking voice, this great big man with hands like turtle shells.

I take a drink and speak of that little Russian girl who won gold in gymnastics; such a cute little kid, so proud and tough and alone. It makes me want to cry, so happy it worked out right for her, so fretful it would not. Deke drinks and yells at the black of the sky, and agrees. He saw that too. He felt that too. She won, and almost our victory with her. And that's all we ever won.