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Henry was late and he knew it. We all knew it. He set his festive bag down by the tree and slithered past a flurry of snowy heads that watched his movements tersely. I was the lucky one that he sat next too.
His aroma overwhelmed me: too much aftershave, it covered up a woman's perfume, cigarettes and canned soup.
“Could you pass the potatoes,” he whispered to me. I could smell the booze on his breath and I grimaced. He smiled at me with yellowing teeth and bright blue eyes.
You know how uncles are a dice roll? Henry was a snake eyes. The perpetual flush in his cheeks and yellowing fingertips, the matted hair and unkempt beard and the way he looked at me like he knew me, I hated it. I thought it told me all I needed to know about the uncle I never saw but for one time a year.
He tucked into Christmas dinner. No one else volunteered to pass him anything. Grandmother sighed.
“We haven't prayed yet,” Father said. Henry swallowed and bowed his head.
We all joined hands. Henry's felt like rough cut wood.
“Father God,” my father began. “Thank you for bringing us all together safely. I pray that you would forgive us for our sins and help us to be thankful in this coming year for the many blessings you afford us. Amen.”
Henry snorted.
Grandmother looked up.
“Still drinking then, Henry,” she said from the other side of the table.
“Mom, please,” dad said. These two began a muffled argument while Henry did his best to blend into his plate and chair.
I looked around. Mother cupped her forehead in her hand and picked idly at the mashed potatoes in front of her. Grandmother growled silently at my uncle over her cup. Henry was staring now. He looked off into the tree. There were blue and red lights flashing there. I could see his reflection in the glossed red ornaments. He could too.
I squirmed. All the polite conversation that had twittered around the table a few minutes ago was gone. Henry disturbed the peace of the group. Once the argument wrapped up, they all stared like vultures waiting for Henry to die. My uncle looked around and flashed a smile.
“Everyone's so serious,” he burst out. He laughed. No one else did.
“We weren't expecting you,” my mother replied.
“I didn't want to miss all the Christmas cheer,” Henry said. He grinned over the table at her and sipped from the glass in front of him. My mother stared daggers at him.
“Come on,” he continued. “How about a joke then? It might cheer you all up. What do you call a three-humped camel?”
“What,” I said without thinking.
“Pregnant,” he shouted. He laughed again and slapped me on the back.
“Don't touch my son,” my father said. He started to stand. My mother stopped him.
Henry put his hands up then put them to work on his plate. I watched him and my parents. My father whispered angrily to my mother. Henry reached for his glass again. His sleeve pulled up and showed a faded globe and anchor tattooed on his forearm. He drank from the glass and smacked his lips.
“This is some fine punch,” Henry said.
“I didn't think you'd even remember the taste of something made with water,” my mother snapped.
“I try to find friends wherever I can. Bottle's just the most consistent.”
“That's fine if you want to kill yourself,” my mother said.
“Maybe,” Henry said. “I'll let you know when I get there.”
My mother turned to me.
“Sweetheart, don't pay attention. Your uncle Henry is only a good example of what not to do.”
Henry slammed his cup down on the table. The silverware jangled.
“Maybe you should have thought of that before you divorced me and married my brother.”
“Henry, that's enough,” my grandmother snapped.
“Actually, I think it's far too little,” Henry replied. “It used to be a crime to covet another man's wife.”
“He was there for me,” my mother said back. “He loved me. And where were you? What did you know about caring for me?”
“Iraq,” my uncle shouted. “Protecting the people, the places, and the liberties that I cared most about. Protecting you!”
“Fighting a politician's war,” my mother said. She was starting to cry. My father wrapped an arm around her. “You left me here alone and pregnant.”
She gasped and clapped a hand over her mouth. My father stood up and pulled her back until he was between Henry and her. Henry crossed his arms.
“Get out of this house,” my father boomed.
Henry tossed his fork down on the plate. He wiped his face on the table cloth and knocked his chair away. His issue boots shook the floor with their stomps.
“Have yourself a merry Christmas, you degenerate assholes.”
The door slammed shut behind him. I looked over to my parents.
“Dad, do I have a brother or sister I don't know?”
“No, son,” my dad said without facing me. He cradled my mother in his arms.
It dawned on me slowly. The next thing I knew I was running. My mother called after me, but I didn't care. Henry was leaning against his car beating on the roof. He took a break as I approached to take a pull out of a flask.
“Damn it. I was hoping that last bit would last me into the new year.” He looked at himself in the mirror. “Merry Christmas, you bastard.”
He started to drink again, but stopped when he noticed me. His face softened and he knelt down to my level. The yellow teeth flashed again.
“Hey buddy. I think your mom might not want you out here in the cold,” he said.
I stood in silence. I searched his lined face for something, maybe a part of myself. He looked back and I think he understood that I knew. His expression changed.
“Don't ever join up, son,” he said as he opened the car door. “It'll mess up your life.”
I nodded. My tongue clung to the roof of my mouth.
He started the car and tossed the flask in the back seat.
“See you next Christmas, kid,” he said. Then he rolled up the window and drove away.
That Christmas was crippled, though the adults made it limp on. We had Christmas morning the next day and it seemed to drag for hours. It was the first Christmas that I wished would hurry up and leave. I never could look at the man who raised me the same way again. Nevertheless, Christmas ended and my parents started homeschool again.
Weeks later, a letter came. I found it myself when I checked the mail. It was addressed to me, but it had no return address. The paper was stained and splotched with dirty fingerprints.
“To my son,” it read.
“I am sorry. This isn't the way that I wanted you to find out who you are. But since you know now, I think you deserve to know who I am and know what kind of man you can choose not to be.
“I joined the Corps when I was 18, fresh out of high school. None of my grades were impressive, so I didn't have a shot at the Military Intelligence job I wanted. I went infantry instead.
“My training was hard, but I am proud of it. While I was in Pensacola, I met a beautiful woman who taught me things about myself I never would have found out otherwise. Her name was M-16. She's the finest performing firearm to ever grace the fighting forces of this nation. And I was proud to be armed with her when I prepared to leave our soil to fight America's enemies abroad.
“If you look on a map of the world, the real dense part above and to the right of Africa is the Middle East. The nobby looking thing sticking into the Indian Ocean is mostly Saudi Arabia. On top and to the right of that is a small country called Iraq. And if you look at a map of Iraq, there's a city with the funny name 'Fallujah.' That's where I went.
“It is a city full of Mosques, that's churches for Islamic people. It used to be home to a lot of Jewish Academies that taught all sorts of interesting things. It would have been beautiful if I had not seen it first in a dust storm.
“I spent time there. I learned things about what it means to kill another human being. It's nothing good, I found out.
“I remember that there was a time when we went into the city proper. This was a time with a lot of excitement for me. I was getting to do my job after training for so long. I anticipated and savored every moment until I kicked down my first door. Inside there was a woman with a small child behind her. She was holding an AK-47 pointed straight at my chest. She pulled the trigger and I was knocked off my feet.
“I remember feeling so exhilarated in that moment. I twisted onto my side when I hit the ground and put three rounds into the woman. She fell back with her finger yanking on the trigger. It sprayed the whole wall behind me with rounds and flopped behind her, pasted the kid against the wall. 30 rounds later, I looked up and saw my battle buddy Tim laying on the ground looking into nothingness.
“Right about the end of that day, your mother sent me a letter that told me she found someone else. That pushed me so close to the edge never thought I'd come back.
“Someday you'll read about the battle in school, and one of the things they might tell you is that the brass levied an investigation against the Corps. After battle observations showed an unusual percentage of head shots on the confirmed enemy kills. It turned out that Hadji decided that his head was the only thing he'd show to the Corps. So we blew it off every time. I can attest personally.
“To tell you the truth, I didn't want to live through it all and come back home, but I did. It turned out that it was very inconvenient for everyone.
“I'm not telling you this so that you hate your mother or my brother. I don't. I promise you. They've both done a damn fine job of raising you and I am grateful.
“But I wanted to tell you this so you would know that I did what I thought was right. And if I can ask anything of you as your father, it's that you would do the same. Whether I see you ever again or not, whatever you choose to be, do what you believe is right and God can sort out the rest.

“I love you,
Henry”

There was a picture with the letter. In it, there was a young man with a stripe of fuzzy hair down the middle of his head. He was clean shaven and smooth-skinned with a beaming smile on his face. He wore big plastic glasses that I would later learn were called B.C.G.s, Birth Control Glasses. And I recognized the eyes. That was my dad, Henry.
I didn't show any of it to my parents. It was too important, sacred almost. And they'd probably take it away. So I kept it hidden until I could think of an excuse to go to the post office. They sent me to the small rental on the bad side of town that my father had sent it from.
When I knocked on the door, no one answered. The windows were dark. The land lord said that he'd moved out a week and a half ago and didn't say where he was going.
So I decided that the day I turned 18, I would start looking. I would find whatever was left of my father.
He deserved that much.