I. The File with No Name There is a file in my apartment that has no name on the tab, because I do not know

I. The Two Letters There are two letters on my kitchen table in Alexandria tonight, side by side under a good light, and they are

I. The Lighter In May of 1993 I received a letter from a man in Paducah, Kentucky, and a Zippo lighter wrapped in two socks.

I. What Arrives Since I published the first of these accounts, things arrive. They come by mail, mostly, in envelopes with no return address, postmarked

The Army is very good at counting.

It counts boots and bullets and body bags. It counts days remaining on a tour down to the hour. It counted 58,220 names onto a black granite wall in Washington, and it counts, still, the 2,646 men it lists as unaccounted for in Southeast Asia. My father is one of them. Sergeant First Class Patrick J. Corrigan, missing since March 14, 1970, somewhere over the border in a country we were not supposed to be in, on a mission that does not officially exist.