It is the dark wall of this country. It is a black hole, some name enters and is gone from the universe. Some people cry here, some talk. Thomas would never find words for what he is feeling. Anger, fear, guilt. But he’d had to live with what he did and return home. For a passing moment he thought about his world, his real world. Stone. In the A’atsika stories there is an account where the stones speak and tell a lost boy the direction home. So it is with this one. It says name after name of the boys and men of America, a generation broken, some now still lost, some who found their way home covered with a flag. He thinks of the song, “Can’t Find My Way Home.” For him, this stone is a direction home, speaking to him.

The morning light on it is reflection on water. The first name of one who died, and is remembered, is found by Dwight. Then he hears Dwight. “John Doe. That really was his name.” He laughs.

Thomas thinks there must be a mixture of happiness and grief in finding a name. It asserts that at least the man had once existed, and there is also the sorrow for knowing what it meant, but in truth none of the men there on this day knows how to feel, what to feel. To see the wall is to witness numbers of the unmeasured sacrifice, countless more than ever should have been, and Thomas has a strange feeling in him, a mixture of dread and sorrow, love and hate. He watches a man touch a name as if it is a human being and cry and walk away. Everyone touches The Wall. Touching it you feel you touch a human being. A name is more than just a name. Thomas hadn’t counted on that.

After all this time of solitude he begins to understand something. “I knew it,” he says, feeling he is alone.

“What?” asks Dimitri.

Thomas turns toward the voice. “I knew what it would be like, I guess.”

A woman holds a flower next to the name of her son and her husband photographs it.

He knew it would be memory: It was the monsoon season. There were walls of rain. He was pushed out of the helicopter to certain death. “I’m sorry, man,” said the sergeant pushing him out. He spread his arms and tried to stay in the door. He thought he was a coward. He opened his arms to hold on for dear life. Trying not to cry, terrified. The man pushing him would have cried, too, but he had no more tears, and he would always hate himself even though he had to follow orders. He was trapped in his work, a part of the killing. If he quit, he would be thrown, maybe without a parachute. He thought each man he pushed fell to his death. He never heard what happened to them. The smell of chemicals was in the air. And on the way down Thomas remembered thinking, This is it. This is it. He wished he could at least hold Ruth one more time. He felt the reality of her body, the physical warmth of it, the length of her next to him all the while he knew it was the end.