My wife is terrified of the Korean War Memorial in Washington, D.C.

In movies, when it comes time for the first shot of Washington, one of several things can happen:

• A stunning sunset view of the Marine Corps Memorial (Iwo Jima, flag rising)
• The Capitol rotunda at night with all the lights of Pennsylvania Ave. flying towards it
• Lincoln’s stoic gaze moving out over the city, nodding or shaking his head unmoving, depending on the tone

Location established, now we know where we are, let the power plays and/or espionage begin.

 No one thinks to show 19 men who call out to one another silently.  Their stares dart around them, looking at everything with the most horrendously frightened gaze.  All they see is families, shoes with wheels on the bottom that skitter across the ground, flashes of neon colors in the summer, heavy leather browns in the winter, or blacks. 

My wife, mind you, doesn’t care for mannequins, dummies or statues either.  But she can’t stop talking about these particular 19 men whenever I bring up Washington.

 They probably don’t see us, now that I think of it.  Men with stainless steel eyes can only see stainless steel men, I suppose.  And why not?  They need to be able to watch where they’re going at that less than snail’s pace.  They need only to see each other. 

Perhaps many people are unnerved by this memorial.  Leave the dead to the dead.  Put them in Arlington in 8 foot long boxes.  We will call their names on whatever day you choose, but don’t make us look at their faces.  Too real, too large.

I wonder if these men could point Korea, the two Koreas, out on a map, any map.  One with bright colors or not.  Pinks or oranges for those we dislike, a more soothing green or blue for ourselves and our allies.  North America on the left and the Rest on the right, like reading a book, this is first, everything else follows.  We lost a few countries in that danged binding, but no worries. 

Where are these men going?

It’s been a busy 100 years for death or Death, whichever. 

 Through a thick dense fog of green, heavy trees.  Possibly they walk right through the District of Columbia War Memorial where my wife stood at 16, before I knew her, her curls pouring down the pink straightness of her dancer’s back.  She is poised with her eggshell headband parallel to the ring around the dome above her.  But they have a right to march through her memories, they’re moving backward, a memorial dedicated to residents of D.C. who perished in World War I, the Great War which ended 91 years ago tomorrow.  They move right through it.  Maybe they think, “We were a little shyer about policing the world then,” but then again maybe they don’t.  At this point in their trek they march through their parent’s birthdays. 

As they cross Independence Avenue they stop for traffic, they are stainless steel, yes, but a car is a car.  It would be like hitting a deer at 120 miles per hour, few people get out of that one.  We don’t need anymore casualties, not today.  Not so much later or earlier, because we know there will be more someday soon. 

They’ve reached a curved piece of land, gently rounded and stretching out into a tidal basin.  The land becomes pregnant underneath the breast of the Independence Avenue bridge.  Now they can stand still for as long as they like.  Looking at across the swath of tea in front of them, Thomas Jefferson is across the way, there.  But he is bronze, so they can’t see him, either.

 It’s not really a peninsula, but it’s close – they would take off their boots first, hold them over their heads.  Hold their weapons up like mechanical infants – but no longer their only salvation. 

They don’t walk on water, no one is that sacred.  But at first, in their hesitant dips of toe, heel over again, they are as close as anyone has ever come. 

In the end though, like any group of disciples, they sink down more or less together, to the silt and to the bedrock of the Jerusalem in which they’ve been fixed. 

“There are certain things that shouldn’t be underwater,” my wife says on occasion, “skeletons and man-made objects, for instance.”

I’m no longer certain of who is what, which is which.