Juan

Thursday, July 25 - lunch stop in Fort Stockton, Texas

Sturdy dude, about age 25, with arms full of tats, a neatly trimmed full goatee with pencil thin moustache, and a black baseball cap turned sideways. Looks a little bit chollo.

Dude: Hey, is that a good book?

Nerd, late 40s, absorbed in reading a book in the children's play area of the bus station Mickey D's because screaming brats are less annoying than "The View" on widescreen TV

Bucky: (closing book to show cover) Yeh, it's pretty good. It's about the decision to drop the Bomb on Japan in World War Two.

Dude: Oh yeh, we studied that in school. That was kinda fucked up.

Bucky: I guess. It was a war.

Small talk occasionally interrupted by screaming children falling off the tube maze. The young dude keeps steering the conversation back to war.

Dude: Yeh, war fucks things up. You ever been in a war?

Bucky: No. I'm a teacher. A lot of my kids joined military.

Dude: How you feel about that?

Bucky: I dunno. It's complicated. I mean, you see some kids, they really need the discipline. And they get something. They grow up faster, or maybe catch up growing. But, you know, all the wars these days.

Dude: Yeh. That part sucks.

Bucky: You ever join the army?

Dude: Naw, I'm a barber. I cut some guys' hair. Some marines, you know?

Bucky: Oh sure. They're always the hardcases. They're the ones with the most discipline, you know, based on what I've seen from my students when they come back to visit.

Dude: A lot visit you?

Bucky: A few. One of my ex-students came back from Iraq, and he was pretty messed up. He'd killed a young kid at a checkpoint once... and he found out later that little kid was his little brother's age. Fourteen. That messes up your mind.

Dude: (nodding) You know, the Japanese bombed us at Pearl Harbor. And then, later, we dropped a couple of Bombs on their cities, and that ended it. But then, after Nine-Eleven, we got bombed... and we went over there. But we didn't drop any A-bombs on them. And now that's still going on.

Bucky: Well, it wasn't quite that simple back then. They didn't know that dropping the Bombs would end the war. They were still gearing up for an invasion, and they were hoping, the generals were, that they could use the A-Bomb against the Japanese armies, and then send our guys in after a few days to mop them up. That was their plan.

Dude: Just a few days? That's fucked up too.

Bucky: Well, they didn't know much about what radiation could do.

Dude: But still, treating their own people that way... (pauses) But you know, the Bombs still ended the war.

Bucky: That's what us teachers are supposed to teach you. But that's not really the whole story. The Japanese were really ready to fight on. They were fascists and they didn't care that much about their own people dying.

Dude: But they surrendered.

Bucky: They surrendered cause they were afraid of the Russians. They didn't want to be occupied by the Russians, so they gave up only to the Americans.

Dude: Oh.

Bucky: You have friends in the army.

Dude: Not the army. My wife is in the Marines. She just signed up for another hitch.

Bucky: Wow.

Dude: She just made sergeant.

Bucky: She must be doing pretty good.

Dude: Yeh, I guess. She's real eager to go fight, you know? I tell her she oughta look for a desk job, but she wants to get in there.

Bucky: She's in a combat unit?

Dude: Not yet. But she wants to go. A lot of the Marines, I cut their hair, and they like want to go get into it. Fight and kill and all.

Bucky: You don't sound too up on it.

Dude: No. look, I support her and all. This is her life and I guess the Marines treat us pretty good. But our new base, there's not as many Marines there, so my business is pretty slow now.

Bucky: Do yall ever stay stationed long enough for her to take classes?

Dude: Oh, that doesn't matter. She mostly takes those online classes. She'll get a degree out of this. But, you know...

Bucky: You worry?

Dude: We got three kids. I'm having to take off to work with my cousin for a couple of weeks, just to get some extra money. He's got a construction business.

Bucky: She's deployed now?

Dude: Not yet. She's watching the kids. We don't know when she's gonna go back over. She's done two tours.

Bucky: And she upped for a new enlistment.

Dude: While she was over there.

Bucky: Afghanistan?

Dude: Kuwait. But she wants to go fight. It's their culture, the Marines. Everybody wants to go kill.

Bucky: Hardcases.

Dude: No shit.

Bucky: I don't think we're going to be over there much longer. Or we're not supposed to be.

Dude: That's what I was saying. If we had just dropped the Bomb on them, it would've been over.

Bucky: I think that mighta caused more problems than what we've got now.

Dude: I don't know. I think it needs to be over now.

Bucky: Amen. Of course it's always more complicated than that. There's always gonna be something going on somewhere in the world. You sound like a good father.

Dude: Thanks. (thinks quietly) No, that shit just needs to be over with.