Dewey, Come Home
In 1950, when Dewey got orders he was shipping out to Korea, he went home for a brief visit and gave his mother a picture he’d had taken when he was promoted to Corporal. He was dressed in his formal military uniform, the cap tilted right covering most of his jet-black hair, a trait he’d inherited from ancestors, mostly Creek Indians who lived along the Ohoopee River in Southeastern Georgia. His thin-lipped smile and his black eyes revealed a young man full of life and ready to see the world which the Army promised. He was happy to get out of Southern Georgia, didn’t have to fool with cropping tobacco, making turpentine, or running the still on the island in the Okefenokee Swamp full of gators and snakes.
His mother cried and hung his picture on the wall of the unpainted dog trot house. She worried about Dewey everyday while keeping house, doing chores, while sweeping the dirt yard with a homemade broom, while her husband was out hunting for deer, or rattler, or raccoon, or whatever he could get.
But when the military vehicle drove the long dirt road, and she saw the dust cloud moving closer, she knew it wasn’t time for the mailman or a joy rider and sat in the straight back chair praying, “No, not my only child.” The man in a freshly pressed uniform handed her the telegram and said, “I’m sorry, ma’am”, and she could see his Adam’s apple swallow and knew he was. Dewey’s daddy came out of the Deer Woods pulling a gopher turtle, and when he saw her sobbing, he knew.
At night, she hoped to see Dewey in her dreams, maybe see his whole battalion led by General Douglas MacArthur advancing along the eastern banks of the Chosin Reservoir in North Korea where they’d come under attack, were taken prisoner, brutally beaten, and tortured until dead, but she never saw him, didn’t hear his screams, or feel his pain, but her husband heard her whispers and cries at night, “Dewey, come home.”
The absence of Dewey in her was filled by a tumor in the spring, and she was buried at the Wayfare Cemetery where generations of their family were covered by the white sand along the Alapaha River, where Dewey’s daddy would join her ten years later after a cousin found him in his truck in the ditch, the old truck’s engine still running to get him to a hospital fifteen miles away.
Nearly seventy years after Dewey went to Korea, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency received thirty-three boxes of remains from North Korea, which were sent to the Central Identification Lab in Hawaii to undergo forensic analysis. One of the sets of remains was identified as a 31st RCT soldier killed near the Chosin Reservoir. To identify Dewey’s remains, scientists from the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System used mitochondrial DNA (mt-DNA) and Y chromosome (Y-STR) analysis.
His coffin with remains landed in Jacksonville, Florida, and a caravan of military and law enforcement vehicles, flanked by fire trucks flying the American flag on their ladders outstretched toward heaven lined the highway bordering the Okefenokee Swamp. Town folk removed their ball caps and held them across their chests. A handful of senior citizen cousins who only had vague memories of Dewey’s short life sunk their shoes, canes, and walkers into the sand at Wayfare while Dewey came home.
Niles Reddick is author of a novel, two collections, and a novella. His work has been featured in over 500 publications including The SaturdayEvening Post, PIF, New Reader, Forth, Citron Review, Right Hand Pointing, Nunum and Vestal Review. He is a three time Pushcart, a two time Best Micro nominee, and a two time Best of the Net nominee. His newest flash collection If Not for You has recently been released by Big Table Publishing.