12
CIRQUE
Randol Bruns
Evaporated Jesus
I went to town to buy a sink and ended up in Vietnam. It’s funny how that happens. The “Associate” in the Kitchen Department, who is in charge of selling sinks, tells me his story about being in the Navy for 2 tours, after trying to get out of the draft by claiming he was a Quaker. A Quaker? But the local draft board, made up of his neighbors, would have none of it because they all knew him from childhood. All I am trying to do is buy a sink, I think do I really need to listen to your story? But I listen, because I am polite and also strangely interested in what my Associate has to say. I want a sink, stainless steel no faucet, just the sink yet I can’t help but think of the 2 and a half million Vietnamese, dead the 55 thousand US soldiers’ lives, all Evaporated, Jesus what were we thinking?
Personally, I am thankful, the Army overlooked me, in their mad search for warm bodies while I was “hanging” at the University sorta studying sorta, you know what I mean. I mean, the US Army left me alone for which I am eternally grateful that my name is not on that black marble wall in Washington, DC. Now, I know how noble it is to die for King and country: flag, honor, courage etc., but I wonder, how many of those whose lives were extinguished in Vietnam, now wandering in gray haze of eternity, would give anything for a single day to walk the empty isles of this Home Depot marveling, at the mystery of so many colorful sinks? Brenda Roper