‘We tried,’ he said in my ear. ‘Don’t you ever forget that, Pete. We tried.’
I suppose we did. In her way, Carol tried harder than any of us and paid the highest price . .
. except, that is, for the ones who died. And although we’ve forgotten the language we spoke in those years — it is as lost as the bell-bottom jeans, home-tie-dyed shirts, Nehru jackets,
and signs that said KILLING FOR PEACE is LIKE FUCKING FOR CHASTITY — sometimes a word or two comes back. Information, you know. Information. And sometimes, in my dreams and memories (the older I get the more they seem to be the same), I smell the place where I spoke that language with such easy authority: a whiff of earth, a scent of oranges, and the fading smell of flowers.