O'Brien's - Good Form

     It's time to be blunt.
     I'm forty-three years old, true, and I'm a writer now, and a long time
ago I walked through Quang Ngai Province as a foot soldier.
     Almost everything else is invented.
     But it's not a game. It's a form. Right here, now, as I invent myself, I'm
thinking of all I want to tell you about why this book is written as it is.
For instance, I want to tell you this: twenty years ago I watched a man
die on a trail near the village of My Khe. I did not kill him. But I was
present, you see, and my presence was guilt enough. I remember his face,
which was not a pretty face, because his jaw was in his throat, and I
remember feeling the burden of responsibility and grief. I blamed myself.
And rightly so, because I was present.
     But listen. Even that story is made up.
     I want you to feel what I felt. I want you to know why story-truth is
truer sometimes than happening-truth.
     Here is the happening-truth. I was once a soldier. There were many
bodies, real bodies with real faces, but I was young then and I was afraid
to look. And now, twenty years later, I'm left with faceless responsibility
and faceless grief.
     Here is the story-truth. He was a slim, dead, almost dainty young man
of about twenty. He lay in the center of a red clay trail near the village of
My Khe. His jaw was in his throat. His one eye was shut, the other eye
was a star-shaped hole. I killed him.
     What stories can do, I guess, is make things present.
     I can look at things I never looked at. I can attach faces to grief and
love and pity and God. I can be brave. I can make myself feel again.
     "Daddy, tell the truth," Kathleen can say, "did you ever kill anybody?"
And I can say, honestly, "Of course not."
     Or I can say, honestly, "Yes."