Mark Trechock
Corporal True
The last time I saw Curtis True
he was twenty-two, a Vietnam veteran,
carrying a baby on his back,
and wearing the kind of button-down shirt
the white boys wore in high school,
while black boys like him favored
what we called continentals, tight pants
without a cuff, sheer silky shirts, and high-
polished, pointed black slip-on.
He was cool then, handsome.
Bedroom eyes, they used to say,
and with the boys a joker who
gave pointers about keeping your girl
by staying suave, not being
distracted, always controlling
the action with your look.
But now his eyes just would not stay
still, they darted across the crowd,
as it milled in search of the right cant
on the hillside for a blanket
to watch the Fourth of July fireworks.
True knew them all, but knew none.
He was alone, back in the jungle.
He lit one cigarette from another.
“Don’t let them send you over there,”
He said. “Do anything else.
You won’t come back right.”
Crash
His name was Arthur,
not a cool name
in the sixties
and he drove
a powder blue Rambler
also not cool,
which his mother
gave him when her new
husband bought her
that Cadillac. But after
the close call with the semi
and the crumpled fender,
we called him Crash.
He had this dopey
smile in school like
he always knew the answer
but he never raised his hand.
Later, after dropping
out of college he stopped
calling, and I was busy
with school and getting
engaged, and I didn’t call
although I should have,
and I found out later
he was in the hospital
for a month, and on
the day of his release, he
jumped off the railroad trestle
that spans the Mississippi.
I was a pall bearer.
Now I think of him
each fall when I
climb the rickety ladder
after my neighbor’s eighty-
foot silver maple has
clogged up my gutters, and here
and there the last leaves come
floating down noiseless to
the ground.
