The Big "Why?" — STEVEN HARDESTY

A reader writes, “Dear Sir or Madam or Other (whichever you prefer): Why do you write?” To which I reply, “Why do you read?”

To find something fresh to fire the mind, isn’t it? Ah, yes, so do I. Write for the same reason, I mean to say.

Billions of lovely books on library shelves, from Beowulf’s thoughtful memoirs to Superman comics. But only a scant few that really fire the mind, right? So you, the Dear Reader to whom I write this note, scour the offerings to find what you most need.

But I, perhaps a trifling year or two older and a year or two more worn by scouring bookshelves, choose to write the stories I can’t find to read. If you like to read what I like to write, then we’ve done a mindmeld and this planet continues to spin unwobby on its axis.

Of course, if I told you the true truth about why I write, wobbly would not describe what happens and you would run howling from my books and I can’t have that. I need the money.

My Dear Reader writes once again, asking timorously (lovely word, “timorously,” isn’t it?), “What, Dear Sir, etc., is the true why of why you write?”

Ah, as you’ve twisted my arm, I’ll admit it all: Every book I write, even those that seem least likely, is about the war. My war. Vietnam.

Everybody knows war is horrible. Everybody knows war is adventurous. Everyone of any age knows war appeals to the young – I mean to those chosen by the stupidity of youth to go to war by those old enough to know better:

And when the war is done and youth stone dead,

I’d toddle safely home and die – in bed.

– Siegfried Sassoon, “Base Details”

War can be noble. Mostly it is ignoble. War can get you pretty ribbons and fame and maybe even make you President (that last thing has happened too many times). War can get you chopped to pieces and send you home (if you still have a home after what war does to you) without your legs or your arms or your face or your brains.

Sometimes war just sends you home with bad dreams that never go away, day or night. Sometimes you cannot stop remembering war. This thing or that thing that happened there. The weary soldier on jungle patrol who fell asleep leaning against the track of an armored personnel carrier and when the engine cranked up the track ground his skull to mush. Or the helicopter pilot with whom you were radio-chatting who suddenly broke commo when his chopper fell out of the sky, no reason, bang! his life done.

Oh, sure, there were fun times in that war. There always are in war, aren’t there? Novels tell us that. Sometimes I remember them. Like riding holding onto the rear deck of a tank chasing the enemy when the tank jerks to a sudden stop and we realize we’ve run over our own barbwire and it’s so tangled in the road wheels the tank is stuck and the enemy is laughing at us and scampering away into jungle hiding. Oh, did we laugh about that. Later.

Now, Dear Reader, I’ve written four novels about the Vietnam war and the last, Poisoned Hearts, does the best job answering your question. But my historical Westerns, such as The Gunfighter and Broken Spur, tell a lot, too, set as they are in the years just after the collapse of Reconstruction when the West was filling up with Civil War veterans white, Black and Indian discovering their own shattering dreams.

Even In the Season of Poison, a psychological horror novel set in Burma in some bizarre forgotten time, is a breed of war story because it talks about personal treason. Also the wild space opera An Earthman Born about a young man’s thoughtless conquest of the universe. And, if Civil War history is your kick, Confederate Origins of Union Victory tracking through the colossal battles of Franklin and Nashville, Tennessee, in 1864, where too much horror was done that needn’t have been.

Well, you asked, and that’s my answer. If you read my books you may decide – before you take your own chance going to war, before you risk all the nights that follow remembering what you don’t want to remember – that you won’t make war except when the safety of your family and your country is honestly at stake, then you got my message.

Now go read a Harry Seaburn caper novel and take your mind off all this. Until the moment comes when war rears up before you and you have no choice but to decide.