fwriction

In my lifetime, the writing of Tim O’Brien has been some of the most penetrating writing regarding war that I’ve ever encountered. At times funny, O’Brien’s work always becomes, in the end, gut-wrenching and eye-opening. 

Though this story isn’t specifically about just war, I felt it appropriate to select Tim O’Brien as the story of the day. This piece, “What Went Wrong,” is an excerpt from his novel, July, July.

Enjoy, and a Happy Veteran’s Day to all those who’ve sacrificed in silence:

JUST OVER THREE WEEKS earlier, in a grassy clearing along the Song Tra Ky, David Todd had been shot through both feet.

Sixteen men lay dead.

David lay dying.

And for almost five days, sometimes unconscious, sometimes luminous, he’d waited for a miracle, listening to the river and the jungle gibberish and a low, cocky, smart-ass Texas drawl that seemed to come from deep in the Milky Way. “I could go on and on,” the man had whispered at one point. “I do, in fact. Name’s Ever.” During David’s ordeal at the river, and then in Japan, and now in the hospital, the guy kept babbling about this and that and all things between, the curvature of the earth, the reasoning behind pi, why Marla Dempsey did not truly love him and never would. 

“We often take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratitude.” —Cynthia Ozick