The service was at the veteran’s cemetery in Poplar Bluff. His 
brothers were, as ever, theatrical in their mourning. Tony sobbing 
noticeably. Verbally. Cinematically. His children at arms-length 
uncomfortably morose and bored. Tyke hugging Tim 

tighter than I have seen humans hug anything but life
preservers. Tyler weeping onto the shoulder of a woman 
he did not know. Her blouse fading uncomfortably to a darker black. 
The artillery of thunder, rain making shrapnel 

on the concrete drive and the roof. Rain pattering handgun fire 
on umbrellas held by those who did not fit in the small chapel.    
Our house was 6 hours away and you were racing, but the dead,
despite all evidence to the contrary, don’t like to wait. And so it started 

without you. Veterans lined the room and stood around in the rain 
outside, waiting on something personal that had already arrived. 
The seated crowd, mostly civilians who had never been to war, 
listened to short, too kind speeches, 

whispered almost inaudibly by men gone sensitive for once 
in their cold lives. Many men I knew who sometimes said things so vile 
that were it not for the dead man at the front of the room, and my mother
sitting next to me, would have caused me to stand in the rain 

waiting on you, who had not yet arrived.   

The first notes of Taps startled most of us. The plaintive bugle 
softened by the weather. Tony moaned the first fermata. 
I turned and saw the uniformed old bugler draped in black neoprene.
Backdrop of clouds over a cemetery as if they belonged together.      

The guns startled all of us.