Vietnam is not a place the Birdsey family visits but a force that enters their lives through a neighbor’s death and the prospect of their own sons being exposed to war. Its influence links Ma’s concern for her children’s safety to the later presence of Vietnam casualties in an overcrowded psychiatric ward.

The War Comes Home

Billy Covington, four years older than Dominick Birdsey and Thomas Birdsey, had been a familiar presence in their childhood. He played tag, baseball, and Superman with the boys; after his father left, he often walked to their house after school while his mother worked downtown. Years later, after graduating from high school, he enlisted in the Air Force. He was killed during a bombing raid near Haiphong.

The news reached the Birdsey family as a personal loss, not an abstraction. At sixteen, Dominick was unmoved by Billy’s death, but Ma was devastated. On the way home from the memorial service, she expressed her anger at the war, startling her sons with the strength of her reaction. She kept Billy’s photograph among family portraits and prayed for his soul. Her grief also sharpened when she saw Billy’s mother passing their house in mourning.

Ma’s Response and the Boys’ Future

The year before Billy’s death, Ma had been saving green stamps toward a grandfather clock she wanted. With nearly 150 stamps accumulated toward the 275 required, she changed course and used them to get a typewriter for the twins. She presented the choice as an investment in their success; Dominick later understood that she also meant their safety. The typewriter, and the education it could support, stood against the possibility that the boys might share Billy’s fate.

Dominick’s later understanding gives Billy’s story a retrospective weight. To Ma, the boy who had once played Superman with her sons became a warning: even the seemingly invulnerable could be brought down. College represented a possible refuge from the war, though Ray Birdsey opposed paying for the twins’ education and worried about what colleges might expose them to. The household’s disagreement thus placed Ma’s protective hopes beside Ray’s resistance and Dominick’s memory of a neighbor who had not come home.

Vietnam’s Continuing Consequences

The war’s effects reappear at Three Rivers State Hospital. When Dominick notices camouflage clothing in Unit Four, a staff member explains that about half the ward’s population consists of Vietnam casualties. She also notes that many veterans are there without criminal records, in part because Veterans Administration hospitals are overcrowded and other programs have failed. The hospital is therefore presented not only as a place for individual patients but also as a destination for people left without adequate alternatives.

These scenes frame Vietnam through consequences rather than battlefield action: a young neighbor’s death, a mother’s effort to protect her children, and veterans placed in an institution amid overwhelmed services. The movement from Billy’s local memorial to Unit Four broadens the war’s reach. It has entered the family’s private calculations about the boys’ future and persists in the strained public systems that receive its casualties.