In the back seat of my car, my three-year-old daughter is crying because she has dropped the cracker she was eating, and I have no more to give her. Her high-pitched wails shatter my nerves. Beside her, my nine-month-old son is also in tears: frightened by his sister’s crying, tired of being confined to his car seat, and distressed that he is separated from me. His breath comes in hiccups, and his sweaty hair clings to his forehead.

It’s been a long day. I want to go home, drink a glass of wine, shower, and get some sleep, but instead I will spend the evening cooking dinner, giving bottles, cutting up food, cleaning up potty-training accidents, breaking up fights over toys, holding one crying child, then the other — sometimes both — reading stories, singing songs, and putting my children to bed. Then, after their bedroom doors are closed, my husband will turn to me wanting to make love. I feel irritated at the thought.

To drown out the sound of my children’s misery, I turn up the volume on the cd I’m listening to. It was given to me by a co-worker I have a crush on. Lately his company at work is all I have to look forward to. I tell myself that I’m attracted to him only because my life is so hard right now; that what I’m feeling is not love but a desire for escape. But this crush is threatening to turn into something more — if only for me — and, as I sit at the red light, listening to his favorite music and the cries of my children, I know I must get over him. It’s been fun, but it isn’t real, and the risks are unfathomable.

The light turns green, and I’m preparing to drive off when a white car in the next lane catches my eye. It’s my co-worker, waiting to turn left. My heart jumps, and for a second I imagine I could unbuckle my seat belt, open my door, and slip into his passenger seat, leaving my car and my children’s tears behind.

Then the driver behind me beeps his horn, and I accelerate through the intersection toward home. By the time I pull into my driveway, the kids have fallen asleep, but the cd plays on, and I’m still thinking of my co-worker in the car beside me, and the impossible possibility of going with him.

Name Withheld

In 1969 I was an infantryman in Vietnam. Our company was stationed near Saigon and patrolled the jungles just north of the city. We also set up nighttime ambushes in the peanut fields beside the main highway, near foot trails that disappeared into the surrounding jungle. More often than not, these missions were uneventful, uncomfortable, and wet. During monsoon season, you could set your watch by the slate gray clouds that rolled in just before dark and dumped sheets of rain.

On one such evening my squad of seven was assigned to set up an ambush beside a trail that wrapped around the base of a hill jutting from the jungle’s edge. The rest of the platoon — about thirty men — was camped on top of the hill. Rain dripping from our helmets, my squad and I waited for the cover of darkness so we could take up our ambush position behind a large log. Suddenly the crack of close-range gunfire broke the soggy monotony. One of us had come face to face with a Viet Cong who’d appeared out of the jungle. Just like in a B-grade western, the U.S. soldier had beaten the Vietnamese to the draw. With our position exposed, we abandoned the ambush plan and pulled back to the top of the hill with the rest of the platoon for the night.

At daybreak a column of North Vietnamese regular-army soldiers crossed the highway and snaked its way down the trail beside our hillside position. I estimated more than five hundred men, at least a battalion. We were close enough to hear them talking as they passed by. When they came upon their fallen comrade on the trail where we had left him, the column halted and sat down in front of us for twenty minutes. Impossibly outnumbered, we didn’t so much as twitch a muscle the entire time. After they’d disappeared into the jungle, we called in air strikes, but they were gone.

Our commanding officers were livid that we had not attacked. (Body counts were considered a sign of progress in that war.) Silver stars and purple hearts could have been won. Our platoon sergeant was sent away in shame. But I believe our platoon lived that day because that Vietnamese soldier — probably an advance runner — had happened across our path and gotten shot. Had we set up the ambush, that enemy battalion would have come right over the top of our position.

Thirty-nine years later I still think of that soldier’s crumpled body with a strange mix of gratitude and guilt. His death saved us.

Bill Wertz
West Harrison, Indiana

It’s a long drive to the airport at 5:30 in the morning, and there’s not much on the radio but songs that bore me and news I’d rather not know about. As usual, a fantasy takes over: I’m sitting on the plane and look up to see you walking down the aisle. Why you after more than twenty years? We spend the next few hours reminiscing, catching up, apologizing, forgiving, and telling truths that we weren’t able to tell back then.

In real life I get to the gate, sit down, and look around. I have a game I play of guessing what people are like by looking at their shoes. Across from me is a pair of men’s sandals, good chestnut leather, worn over tan socks. A personality is starting to take shape: Casual, a seasoned traveler. Cotton pants. New York Times. Well-worn leather briefcase. Fine hands. A face that looks like yours might at sixty or so. I look away. My heart pounds. No, it’s not you. I’m making it up.

A four-year-old girl across from you asks you where you’re going. I strain my ears but can’t hear the answer. You show her that trick where it looks like you separate your thumb at the joint. Yes, it must be you.

I try to read, but I’m stealing glances your way. I should just go up to you and say, “Excuse me, but I think I know you.” No, it’s too much of a coincidence, and it’s only because I was thinking about you. This man could be anyone. A couple of times I shift my position as if I might get up, but I chicken out. Once, our eyes almost meet. You stand up and start to walk in my direction, but you change course. Are you thinking the same thing?

We board the same plane and fly. From where I’m sitting, it’s hard to investigate discreetly whether it’s you. We land, and everyone stands up. Passengers take out their cellphones. You are holding Car and Driver. It has to be you. I walk the long passageway with you right behind me. Turn around! I say to myself. But I don’t. Four years later I still don’t know why I watched you walk away, back into my past, where you belong.

Julie Orfirer 
Ashfield, Massachusetts

As a female freshman in college, I volunteered at a group home near campus, assisting the boys there with their homework a few times a week. I became close with the five residents, aged twelve to fifteen, all of whom had been removed from abusive homes. I had grown up in a middle-class suburb, where I had been unaware of lives like theirs. By the end of the year, I’d changed my major from veterinary medicine to psychology-sociology. I wanted a career working with high-risk adolescents.

I graduated and got a series of jobs at detention centers and public schools. After six years, I went back to the same university to get my graduate degree. A woman in my program was volunteering at the group home where I had done my tutoring, and I asked her about the five youths I had worked with — in particular, Matthew, who I’d thought was bound to be successful. She said he had been convicted of rape and assault at the age of eighteen and was in prison. I was stunned and disappointed.

About a year after that conversation, I was walking to my car off campus late one night when I saw two tall figures coming my way. Other than them and me, the streets were deserted.

I turned off the sidewalk and walked between an old home and the strip mall where my car was parked. The two men split up: one came around the house in front of me, while the other followed behind. I tried to stay calm, but my stomach churned with fear. Then a parking-lot light above my car illuminated the face of the man approaching me. I recognized him immediately.

“Matthew,” I said, “it’s me, Rene,” and I went over and hugged him. He introduced me to his friend as his old tutor from years before. We laughed and chatted, and neither of us mentioned his time in prison. I got in my car and drove off, still trembling and astonished by my good luck.

R.R.
Bayfield, Colorado

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