We grew up hearing war stories

We grew up hearing war stories. The man next door came to beside his downed plane, and discovered someone cutting off his finger for his ring. In the backyard, we shot the pistol he'd taken from an Italian officer. My father hunted men in the caves of Okinawa. His friend found the skull of a Japanese soldier there, polished it to a bright sheen, and sent it home to his father. Down the block, a neighbor gave his son a handful of photographs—women playing with their breasts, a man entering a woman from behind, a group of soldiers standing in a circle around someone with a sword. Such extravagant, incomprehensible gifts: the women, the gun, a man kneeling beside his own head, which had fallen a short distance from his body.