Souvenir (45 page)

“So, what’s it like, being here?” Chris said.

Clay wiped condensation away on his window, and stared out through the streaks. “Feels like something I had to do, but now that it’s done, it’s just sad. Not awful anymore, just so sad. I’m sorry, Chris, sorry that this ate up so much of me. I’d always worried I’d turn out to be like Pa.”

“Dad, you know all those chores I hated that you used to make me do at the Tavern? When you were watching me like a hawk?”

“Yeah.”

“No matter how much I bitched, the God’s honest truth is I just wanted to be with you.”

Clay didn’t speak, not right away. He remembered Addy telling him that, decades ago. He couldn’t believe it then, just plain couldn’t, but he’d never forgotten her words. Now Chris laid it out for him, the simple, beautiful truth. Wiping at the condensation again he rubbed the cool dampness on his fingers across his eyes.

“It’s all I wanted too, Chris.” It was the absolute truth, and it spread across three generations anchored by Clay, his son to his left and his long dead father haunting the home of his memory on the right. Looking at the newly exposed red brick, like a skin flayed raw, the bright flowers and the yellow tricycle, he finally could know this shiny clean house in the spring sunshine was somebody else’s home now. It was a fair trade; overwhelming sadness and the vision of this young family replacing Pa, Alice, deep shame and fluttering red-trimmed curtains.

“Let’s go,” Clay said. “It’ll be good to get home before dark.”

“Are we done here?”

“Yep.”

Chris did nothing but nod, and pulled away from the curb.

Route 209 took them right to Interstate 81, and after gassing up the Jeep they headed north, riding in silence. Clay lowered his seat a bit, closing his eyes. Exhaustion pressed down on him but he couldn’t sleep, only rest and listen to the hum of tires and traffic on the highway. As the miles spun away Clay felt a comfort filling the space between him and his son. There had always been a tension, a tightness in his gut, even at the best of times. But now, he felt lighter than he ever had, as if he’d left a ten-pound iron weight behind on that sidewalk. He had told his secret and it hadn’t been a disaster, hadn’t blown up in his face, hadn’t sent Chris running in disgust. Maybe somehow it would all make sense to Chris, why his old man acted so crazy for all those years.

Still, it might not have sunk in. Maybe tomorrow, Chris would come to realize what it all meant, and look at him differently, masking disgust was politeness. Maybe not. Maybe tomorrow, he’d tell him about the other guy in that picture. Yes, tomorrow, he’d tell Chris all about him.

How many days back then had he wondered how tomorrow would go? He’d made it through so many tomorrows, but it hadn’t meant a thing, because there was always another one to get through. They all had made it through more than their share, but that only increased the odds that the next one would be it. You couldn’t win. It was bad luck to have stayed alive for so long. It only meant your number was bound to be up. They had known, they had all known that last day. He looked down at the road, a blur under their wheels, the white line at the side of the road dancing closer, then farther away as Chris steered the Jeep. How he took riding in a car for granted, soft seats, heat, even coffee cup holders. Time was, a wood bench in a canvas-covered deuce-and-a-half was the height of luxury. Especially when it was headed away from the front.

On the way back from Clervaux, they’d been headed in the opposite direction, minus Miller, and no one had talked. They’d pulled over for a piss stop, all of them lined up at the edge of the road, watering the ditch. An odd sound rose from the east, a screaming engine in the sky. They looked up, watching a V-1 rocket arc across the sky, bright flame shooting out, stubby squared off wings dark against the light gray sky. He’d thought then, how oddly beautiful war could be, a thing to inspire awe as well as terror. As the sound faded in the west, they buttoned their pants and turned back to the truck, not a word passing between them.

Closer to the front lines, artillery had thundered the air. They were stopped at the edge of a small field, M.P.s telling them that the Germans had the open section of road ahead zeroed in. They hadn’t found the OP yet, so it was pedal to the metal or walk through the woods. The driver revved the engine, spun his tires, took off like a bootlegger making for the state line. The sound of a shell ripping through the sky tore at his ears and he wanted to yell
incoming
…

He woke with a start, his body shuddering, his skin damp with sweat.

“You can take a nap, Dad, I know the route.” Chris, keeping his eyes on the road, didn’t catch Clay’s frantic look as he emerged from the dream.

Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, calm down. “No, no thanks,” Clay said, raising his seat up. “I’m awake.” He worked to get his breathing under control, feeling his heart thumping in his chest. He wasn’t ready for any more of the past today, there were too many ghosts swirling around him already. It was time for the company of the living. Running his palm over his eyes, he counted to ten, then twenty. It calmed him, as it had so many years before.

“What did you think of Dr. Krause?” he asked Chris, struggling to keep his voice normal, resisting the temptation to keep counting to thirty. “Emily, wasn’t it?”

“Dad, don’t start with that.”

“Just making conversation. Okay, what do you think of the Yankee’s pitching this season? Is that better?”

“I thought she was very nice, and I’m even thinking of calling her. And c’mon, Clemens, Cone, Hernandez, Stanton, Pettitte, Rivera, how can they miss?”

They talked about pitching injuries, managers, the designated hitter rule, and about taking in a game when the weather got warmer. They didn’t discuss Minersville or the past, just baseball, letting the love they felt seep between the lines, unspoken but as certain as an easy throw to first.

Later, he closed his eyes again, and a breeze blew across his face, turning colder, deep, bone-chilling cold, and he pulled the rough wool scarf tighter around his neck. He saw Red kneeling, two fingers pointing forward, as the rest of them ran fast and low, darting tree to tree with graceful and swift strides, each of them so alive. Big Ned and Little Ned, Shorty and Tuck, followed by all the others, boots kicking up snow, moving out, heading up the line, going forward. The rhythmic noise of leather and gear bouncing on their bodies as they ran was pure music, a melody of canteens and grenades, ammo and knives, strapped like notes across their chests. A column of men moving with a single purpose, nimble and as fleet as angels. He looked for his buddy among them, but all along he had been right there, kneeling in the snow beside him, quiet and calm, that look on his face, that bit of a smile, still playing around his mouth, delight showing at the edges of weariness, as if he’d just gotten a joke that hadn’t even been told yet. Ain’t we something, buddy?

And then he was gone, off into the cover of the trees. He wanted to go with them, to move with determined purpose, to share their dangers, their fleetness and grace. But the wind died down, and the bitter frost vanished. He opened his eyes to green woods, the white lines of the highway, and the hum of tires on the road. Pretending to sleep, he turned in the seat so his son would not see him weep. There were still secrets to be kept close.

Epilog

2002

Chris found directions to the grave at the Visitor’s Center. Section and row number, right at the corner of Bradley and Marshall drives. Spring was farther along here, a rifle shot south of the Mason-Dixon line. Leaf buds popped out from branches, a gauzy yellow and green blurring the trees at the edge of the cemetery. A slight breeze blew pink flowers from a cherry blossom tree and sent them swirling in the air ahead of the two men, the petals shaped like tears.

So many names. They spread before them in rows that fanned out in straight lines like soldiers on parade, the morning sun casting long shadows like dark fingers toward the next row of markers, and the next, and the next. Tourists and mourners, the curious and the reverent, they all passed by, out for a stroll, seeing the sights or searching out a grave. They plodded on, the living on their right, dressed in every color possible, old and young, noisy, excited, awed, flowing in every direction, the vibrancy of life vivid around them. The dead to their left, stark white on green, rows and rows and rows of steady, unyielding reminders. Chris imagined ghosts at the end of each row, whispering to the visitors as they passed each grave.

See my sacrifice, my loss, the span of my life.

1846-1865. 1899-1918. 1763-1784. 1970-1991. 1950-1969. 1925-1944.

He had to look away for a moment, break the spell that the dates cast over him. A blur of faces ran through his mind, young boys under steel helmets, cheeks red from the cold, leather straps cutting into their shoulders, arms around each other, posing for a picture. The worn photo was in his pocket, but he wasn’t ready to look into their eyes, to bear witness to his health, his life, all the joys and creation they never beheld.

Emily took his hand, the curve of her pregnant belly graceful as he held her close. His father had seen the beginning, the first blossoming promise of a grandchild. He’d been at their wedding, felt the first quickening of their child, and then, one morning, he was gone, slumped over the kitchen table, a coffee cup shattered on the floor, Lamentation Mountain gray and forlorn in the distance.

Before them was York Drive, and they turned left, halfway there. Along the road they saw a white horse, harnessed to a caisson, a wooden wagon, from which soldiers in their dress blues had removed a flag-draped coffin. An Army burial. Drawing closer, they saw the interment site. No one there except the soldiers, a sergeant standing aside from them, eyes forward, the sun shining on the bright yellow hash marks down his sleeve. Who was being buried today? An old man, perhaps? From a nursing home with no family left? It was too far in to see the name, eight or nine rows in. They stopped to watch as the coffin was lowered into the grave, the ceremony as solemn as if a hundred mourners were gathered. On a small rise, thirty yards off, a line of seven soldiers raised their rifles and fired a volley. Once, twice, a third time, just as Chris had explained to Matthew at Bob’s funeral. Gray gunsmoke drifted over the trees as a bugler began the mournful tune, slowly, sadly, each note stretching out over the graves as the coffin settled into the ground. They covered their hearts with their right hands, Chris keeping his left under Emily’s elbow. They stood, side by side, until the silence following the last note took hold, and they walked on, the quiet pressing in on them.

They’d buried Clay in the cold of the winter, and Chris thought that was somehow right, from the stories his father had told him, about the war in the winter of 1945. It was only fitting that Clay Brock had been buried in that season.

“It should be over here.”

As they turned onto Marshall Drive, Chris felt dizzy from the mesmerizing flow of rows of gravestones, as they seemed to fly by. The rows blurred. He tried to look down each one but the rows changed direction, turning in different angles, going off to the horizon. He’d expected the ground to be flat, but it rolled like waves, each row riding the crest of the next, like wading into a sea of graves. The ground was damp, wet with springtime, the promise of growth and life pushing up through the soil. Life itself, rising up from the ground, wrapping itself around him, pressing his heels into the spongy earth.

“Look!” Emily pointed to the gravestone in back of Chris. He held her hand as so clasped hers under her belly, stepping gingerly on the soft earth.

Jacob Burnett. PFC. U.S. Army. World War II. 1923-1945.

“That’s it,” Chris said slowly as he knelt down beside the grave.

“Jacob Burnett,” he said. “Jake. No wonder he bought the tavern.”

Chris fumbled in his pocket, feeling more emotion than he had expected at fulfilling this last request of his father’s. He had asked Chris for this favor shortly after their return from Minersville, with no explanation. Chris had agreed, and no matter how often he’d asked why, his father had kept this final secret safe.

With a shaking hand he withdrew the dogtag. He held it for Emily to see, one last time. Clay Brock’s dogtag. She brushed her fingers against it and nodded. He pressed it into the ground at the base of the marker, until the notched top lay beneath the finely cut grass, as his father had directed. Patting the ground, he smoothed the grass and thought of a story his father had told him, of Tuck gently smoothing Shorty’s hair before they left his body in the woods.

Emily clung to him as they walked to the road. She stumbled once on the uneven ground, and he draped his arm across her shoulder, drawing her close. They stepped from the grass onto the walkway, and neither let go as he began to speak to his unborn child, telling him of his grandfather, who had been a soldier, and of the man who had been his friend. How they had walked across half of Europe together, shared everything, kept each other warm and alive, and cupped their hands around flickering candles beneath the earth. How his grandfather brought home souvenirs, which he had given to him, and which he would in turn pass on, explaining who each man was in the worn photograph. Truly, who they were.