In the hour of the wolf, I awaken. The sheets are bunched beneath me like writhing snakes, and my pillow is damp with sweat. I was dreaming about what happened yesterday, something I can't yet speak about.
Outside on Ngo Duc Ke Street, all is deceptively quiet, as though all is well. I go to the window and look out.
Instead, what I see is the street where I grew up, the broad, oak-shaded sidewalks of the Maine town I finally escaped and seldom remember. I do not believe the reefer I smoked last evening could've caused this hallucination.
Maybe it's because my mind is twisted with guilt about surviving. Kady the Hun told me, "Zeke, it's simple. It was their time. Not ours."
I loved Sunni for many reasons, not least because she understood. What we do is far more than simply documenting what we see. What we do is bear witness. Every image is like a prayer. Honor and reverence.
Here there is such beauty, such heartbreak. Saigon, Paris of the East. This old French colonial house on Ngo Duc Ke Street is more home to me than anything back in the world.
I'm dreaming a dream within a dream. There is what happened yesterday, the dream I've awakened from. The dream in which once again Sunni and Gus step to the side of the trail for the perfect shot. A moment's inattention, the sudden blast of the landmine, and then-- the ultimate price to pay for truth.
Surrounding that dream is the dream I'm in now, where I wake up back in the world. I do not want to go back there, to feel insignificant and endlessly only half alive.
From my dresser, I pick up a framed photo: Sunni and Gus and Kady the Hun and me in front of our house, necks draped with cameras, all of us looking far too jaunty to be in the middle of a war.
Kady and I will go on. We will remember.
I replace the photo and look up. There is a reflection in the mirror, but it's not mine. Maybe me forty years from now, hair thinning and jawline sagging with the Mallory family jowls. I touch the mirror. Cool and smooth. And too substantial to be a dream.
Now I understand.
After straightening the sheets and reversing the pillow, I reach for my sleeping pills and swallow hard. Then I lie down and close my eyes. I wish, or maybe pray. And here I am, twenty-three years old again, on Ngo Duc Ke Street with Sunni, heading home.