Before I moved east, I worked a summer harvest in a town called Lewiston, the sort of town built by a halted migration, rusted trailer parks along the rapids of the Snake River inside Hell’s Canyon. 

In the morning, the hands picked us up in the valley and drove us to the day’s field.  The van was always quiet, except for Jake who could always turn a conversation back to the time when he was almost an olypmic weight lifter twenty years earlier, before the car wreck.  The radio tinned up front with the day's news.  The van's shocks moaned from the dust.

The road dissolved.  The wide asphalt Grade up onto the Palouse.  A two lane county road to gravel. A service road to dirt and finally to the mud and scruff that was the edge of what we would harvest.  

The rest of the day was solitary.  Grease the header.  Sweep out the hopper.  Open the choke and start the engine.  At the edge of the field lower the header and make sure the feeds are working right.  Circle. 

******

At the VA center, a piano echoes.  No one plays it, but the keys drop in a beautiful rhythm.  It’s by the security guard who hands out the stickers that say “Visitor.”

I’m watching the piano.  I watch the people. I’ve just come from mental health, who has sent me to behavioral health, but there was a paperwork problem, so I wait.  In a few minutes I’ll go.

The man on the bench next to me, his leg shakes.  For him it was a three hour bus ride to get here.  He was in mental health with me.  He also had a paperwork problem.  He was in Vietnam.  He calls it Vietnam, not The Nam like John, but it’s easy to know what he’s talking about because that’s all he says.

******

The thrasher is the mechanism that separates the pea pods from their vine.  From there the pods are shaken against a taut piece of cloth.  The bouncing splits the pod and the peas collapse to the bottom of a conveyor belt where they are carried to the hopper. 

*******

Static fills the air.  There are echoes in the lobby, and the security guard tells the people to quiet down.  A woman clears her throat and it is amplified over the intercom.  There is more static.  Then she says this is September 11^th. 

The man’s leg stops shaking.  Other people are still talking.  The security guard asks them to be quiet and the place quiets down.

She says eight years ago terrorists attacked three locations in the United States.  She says the names.  Washington, DC.  New York City.  Shanksville, Pennsylvania.  She says she will ring a bell at 8:46 to signal the first plane striking the first tower, and after that will follow a moment of silence.  She rings the bell.

The piano plays.

******

My father was in Vietnam.  I am twenty-seven years old, a combat veteran, and he has rarely ever talked about what he experienced.  Before I deployed, I knew nothing except that he was in Intelligence, and that it was his job to find American Prisoners of War.

He said it was the most frustrating job of his life.  This man, my father.  He said sometimes they would raid camps, and the fires would still be warm.  They never found anyone.

It was my job in Iraq to interrogate detainees, and then determine whether they should get released or not.  Sometimes they went away for years.  Some still are in prison.  Some of whom whose guilt I wasn’t so sure about.  I’m still not.

A year later, this past July, my father asked me if I was getting better.  I said I was angry.  Son, he said, you always will be.  It’s what you do with the anger that counts.

*******

When the hopper gets full after a number of circles I stop and raise a small orange flag.  The engine idles at a lower RPM and it is quiet.  In the distance a two-ton truck starts and turns toward me, slowly bumbling across the field.

*******

There was a man, a Sunni, he looked like my father. 

*******

At behavioral health, the woman asks me who I saw killed.  I say no one.  She asks me about thoughts of suicide, about thoughts of hurting others.  I say no again.  She asks me if I have recurring thoughts about my experience in Iraq. I say yes.  She asks me what I do with those thoughts.  I say I think about them. All the time, she doesn't look at me.  She types.  She focuses on the screen.  

There are more questions. She hands me a pamphlet and says someone will call me from the trauma center.

 I walk out.  I walk past the veteran and his leg is shaking again.  I say goodbye and his head rises up, delayed.  I walk out through the foyer and the piano drifts off behind me as I walk outside.  I look up and smell rain.

******

I reach back into the hopper and I pick a pea and put it in my teeth.  It is cool and moist.  I mash it between my teeth and suckle on it and close my eyes and lean back in the chair.  I don’t remember what I would have thought then, but I know now. 

The truck comes and I push the hydrologic lever down.  The hopper moves out over the truck and the force of gravity sends the peas down into it until it is empty.  I retract the hopper and the truck drives off.  I lower my flag and I keep circling.