A Veteran’s Story
by digby
The woman walks toward the wall.
She presses a fingertip into the shiny, dark stone, traces it down the wall, left to right, left to right, name after carved name, a roster of the dead palpable against her skin…
Zwit knows this stretch of wall as well as he knows his scars, the pink welts that run from below his navel to his right nipple, the sinkhole of puckered skin where he once had ribs.
This is Panel 4W. The names of the eight men who died the night he earned his scars begin close to the bottom, at Line 123.
Robert. Jerry. Charles. Terry. Ronald. Rex. Paul. William.
Over the past four decades, Zwit has dedicated himself to finding their families so he could tell their mothers or fathers, their brothers or sisters or cousins, how they fought, how they died, and that they weren’t alone.
He has tracked down relatives of all the men. All except one. William. William Ward. No matter how he searched, every clue went cold.
The woman drops onto a knee. Zwit walks over, kneels down next to her, rests a hand on her shoulder. He feels the rustle of a dormant hope.
“Can I help you find something?” he says.