Liberated By War

Last Sunday here it was cloudy and drizzly, and early in the morning, the village was deserted. In my walk I only met a young mother jogging and pushing a carriage. It was one of those with wheels as big as bicycle's wheels. She was moving at a good clip, and didn't say good morning, but the toddler gave me a toothless grin.

Then, a few minutes later, my friend Joe parked his truck across the street and waited for me. I think he wanted me to see that he had grown a beard because instead of saying good morning he asked if I noticed something new.

To be contrary, I said, "Yeah you washed your truck."

He shook his head, and called me an asshole.

"My wife likes it," he said.

"She should. It needed it. It needs painting too." His truck was red once, but now it has the color of a picture of Saudi Arabia taken from space. Joe is 85, and his truck is half his age, I think.

Joe was born In Brooklyn to Italian Immigrants, and he fought in the Pacific. He has told me more times than I care to hear it, how two guys in his platoon looked for Japanese wounded to finish them off after every battle.

Every time he tells me that, I say to him that they were Boddhisattvas sending Buddhists to Nirvana. I had to explain the joke a few times, but know he knows the terms, and we can discuss if his buddies were doing an evil, or good deed.

Joe was a Catholic, but what he saw in the war made him an atheist. He doesn't believe in life after death either. He is one of many soldiers liberated from superstition by war.