The world of this shining black stone is shaped at an angle, a chevron, really, like the stripes on a military sleeve, an army shirt.

The black heat from the wall is powerful as he stands near it, then begins to walk.

One old man traces the names of many men. He couldn’t have known them. It is his existence. He is there for who knows how long. He has grief for the whole war, maybe for other wars. A woman visits the name of her man and presses her lips there. The Wall is a world, a time, a place. A young man in uniform walks about to see who needs help, the man in the wheelchair or a person searching for the name of one of the many gone.

Someone is reading the names in the background, but Thomas hears nothing. The names are anonymous, even his own. The grass has been replaced in patches as if someone has taken away part of the earth as a memory. Something, he thinks, is always covering up, hiding what is taken away. That’s part of the purpose of earth and walls.

Somehow he walks right toward the day of the plane crash. He stands up straight at attention before the names of the many killed in that crash, the one thing he survived. His name is not there, where it should have been. He didn’t know the others in that plane, but they were a noisy group; part of their noise was excitement, part of it fear. It was long ago, lifetimes. It feels like a century. He remembers the man who sat beside him, one eyebrow higher than the other, as if he knew something he wouldn’t tell. Until now he barely remembered this man took his hand as the shaking plane dropped, the overheads opening and everything falling, cameras flying, jackets falling, drinks rising to spill. The lucky bastards, Thomas thinks, all of them. They never even reached the war. The date; so long ago now. Some of those years he wished he’d been among those killed in the plane. And what did they do but put him on another one right away. He had swallowed his fear, just a boy still, and gone along with it when he should have walked away and said, The hell with it, what kind of people are you?

He moves slowly down the way, seeing the tall building reflected in the black stone. He sees an old president behind him, before him, but he carries his own reflections as he reads the names that withstand the elements long after the flesh and bones of the men and women are gone.

Then he looks up and down and all along the shining black wall and it is nothing but names. He follows to where they are constant, one name crowded together with another, and there is no break and everyone was killed at nearly the same time, just before the end of it all.