Chapter 22 Summary

Tim says that he feels sometimes stories can both save people who are still alive and bring people back from the dead. He feels he can dream them alive. He mentions Kiowa, Ted Lavendar, Curt Lemon, someone named Linda, and the dead Vietnamese. One of these dead men, an old man they found in a burnt down village, was his first dead body of the war. The other men make a big show of shaking the old man's hand and talking to him, even toasting him, but Tim cannot join them. Later, Kiowa commends him for being able to stand up to them, but Tim says he wasn't being brave, he was scared. "Same difference," Kiowa tells him. Tim tells Kiowa that seeing the body reminded him of his first date.

Linda, we learn, was Tim's first love. They were nine, and he...