She laughs just before falling asleep. During the night she holds on to him as if he will disappear. She dreams a helicopter, black as an insect, will come and take him away. She dreams he leaps out before it gets high enough to keep him in.

In the morning, she wakes and in their place the light is beautiful and almost green. The smells of America are gone. She is peaceful and she bows in front of the ancestors on the altar. Over the thick rich coffee she loves, she leans back on the wall behind the bed and talks to him. “It’s so good to be home. I didn’t like America. There is a shadow there.”

“There are shadows here, too.”

“Yes. But we know what they are. The shadows of rubber trees. Our loved ones. Our stolen ancestors. Our living.”

“When is he coming here?”

“I don’t know. It is just something I know he will do. He is very handsome,” she tells her husband. “But not as handsome as you.” She kisses him lightly. He grabs hold of her.

They laugh. He kisses her lips. “I had forgotten how much I could love. I missed you.” She feels her body, cell by cell, wanting to step into, walk into, that of her husband, that close. They lie down. They become the same. Her nipples love the feel of his skin, her stomach against his, his body moving into hers until they are one person.

PART THREE

THE WALL: THE NAMES

There are many kinds of walls, like the wall Thomas built in front of the water. There are walls of history, and the secrets of history. There are ones no one can breach or climb, the invisible boundaries of humans. Some walls seem righteous instead of ruthless. They don’t claim property or hold something in or out. They keep things separate, but now, in the District of Columbia, it comes together for Thomas Witka Just.

Here in this Washington is a wall of revelations. A strange word, Thomas thinks, like the end of the world in the Bible. But at The Wall, it is the ground he sees first, as if it is not possible to look up. So he sees a box of donuts; some boy’s favorite food. On the ground, a baseball sits before this portion of the wall. On it is written, For Dad. A batch of carnations sits, still in its wrapper, leaned up against the heat of it all. There is a letter to a soldier, even a gold button with a rhinestone on the ground as if to signify a blouse this man’s hands once unbuttoned?

Mementos. Poems are engraved on plaques. Someone took such care to write them, to preserve them. There are now nearly sixty thousand names and the reflection of light on one whole side of it. In the place of America it shines. The whole crying light of it.

Three single roses. People walking already feel the heat of black stone as if it holds the fire of yesterday and not today. Thomas feels it in his body, remembering the heat of another country.