Chapter 2

Emmet Tyler Soapinski had always been in the center of everything, tenth in his high school class of twenty and second between two sisters.  He had been a “wild one” racing tractors and tipping cows, even smoking cigarettes he’d swiped from the jar on his parent’s coffee-table.  So it was kind of sad when, a year after he had returned from Viet Nam with his head shaven and a red, horseshoe shaped scar covering half of his skull, the doctors at the VA in Billings couldn’t say if he was just thinking about things for a really long time or if he had almost no attention span left to speak of.  And, not knowing if he could focus on anything for more then fifteen seconds at a time, folks just felt it was kinder to shorten his name; besides, they were plainspoken people and liked to call things as they saw them. 

In the first six months after EmT returned from Viet Nam his parents, Mort and Unis, signed up for the free monthly newsletter put out by the VA and Unis began corresponding with two women who were mothers with soldier-sons who had heads in various stages of being blown away by shrapnel.  Unis tried to share these exchanges with Mort but mostly he turned away saying, “These women aren’t doctors, you’re not a doctor, don’t pretend you know how to reach inside of my son and make him well.”  But Unis knew that Mort was hurting almost as much as EmT, and quietly kept on doing what she and the ladies figured might help their boys.

For the first year EmT just sat on the bed in his room with the blinds shut and the door closed.  Unis would try to open the windows but this seemed to upset EmT so much that she dropped that approach and, instead, after the dinner dishes were done she would come and sit calmly on the bed with him, doing her crocheting and humming softly to herself.  After about nine months of that Unis began suggesting that they go outside; EmT seemed to be afraid of bright sunlight so Unis had encouraged him come look at the moon. She got him to walk out as far as the upstairs hallway but it wasn’t until Mort came and put his arm around his son’s shoulder that EmT was able to walk out to the front porch.

By the time EmT was able to sit on the front porch swing for a few hours before running inside, his hair had grown out to the bottom of his collar.  Mort and Unis debated the idea of having a hippy-looking son; EmT still wasn’t speaking and might not care one way or the other. But in the end Unis thought that it made his angular face look softer and Mort said what ever made her happy was fine.