When we departed Omaha I sat across from Wilfred, pointing one by one to the empty seats, “There sat Everet Haskell. And there Billi Callico! And Teardrop was there: Tahira, we never knew her last name. They were real, weren’t they, Wilfred?” He radiated, “Oh, yes!”

When we arrived in Chicago I said, “I’m in no hurry, you?” He swung his head. “May as well see the town.” I stowed my duffel bag in a locker and we walked, shoulder by shoulder, almost as if we were in route step march. We tramped down Lake Shore Drive, wandered out onto Soldier Field and had a time deciding whether to go into the Museum of Natural History or the Adler Planetarium; we shuttled up and down the road that connected the two — about a thousand feet apart — three or four times, changing our minds like schoolboys on a slim allowance. Finally we decided on an open carriage ride. It took us up Michigan Avenue and into a bitter wind, but we cared only for what our craning heads took in. We came to a magnificent cathedral, and Wilfred gripped my arm. I tipped the coachman and we got out.

“This was the last church I ever stepped foot in. When I was here in ’52.” We walked round it, enthralled by every chiseled detail in the great limestone. And then we entered. “It is exactly as when I left.” There were a few people sitting in pews, praying, and about as many sightseers, milling, and the two of us. Wilfred asked for some time alone, and I waited outside for him. When he found me again, he bore a better calm than I have ever known.

We ate in a little pub nearby and it grew dark. When we were out again on the sidewalk, we heard the voices of a choir. We passed again the great cathedral. It was a rehearsal. I booked a room in the hotel directly opposite the clerestory of the cathedral, and that night we opened wide the windows, despite the fierce cold, and savored the repeated verses of the choir.

Later, Wilfred wrote long into his book. “Your epic?” I asked. He looked up and pulled out Everet’s Discharge card, his wish. He fell asleep smiling, the book clasped to his chest.

Neither of us wanted to speak of our departures. And so the next day when we stumbled on an arcade photo-booth we took it as providence. “A photo before we go?” We both squeezed onto the little round seat and the machine flashed four times. When we stopped laughing he signaled, “One of you for me to keep.” I stepped into the booth. Then I said, “One strip for me.” He stepped in. I had no more change and so turned into the newsstand behind us.

I returned shouting, “Bob’s your uncle!” As I was about to drop in a quarter I noticed a strip already in the return slot. “You had change!” I waited for him to come out, studying his smiling face. I called. And then instantly I was struck with that same dread I’d felt at Norden. I looked beneath the brown velvet curtain. Then I snatched it back and found the seat empty. On it lay his ticket to Tucson, a stuffed envelope with my name, and Everet’s Discharge card, which now bore some strange validation mark.

I sat there, on a curb as cold as my heart was raw, reading. It was a fat letter. But I found my own letter — the one to my parents — tucked inside his; my note was filled with marginalia in his hand.

His letter began: “Dear Luke, I thank God for you. Without you I could not have come this far. I go now to die.” I read of the events of 1914. He hadn’t told me he was an officer. A day after the Christmas truce his unit had encountered an enemy squad outside a Belgian farmhouse. He ordered an assault. It was long and fierce. When it was over, they recovered six German soldiers, all dead, including one possessing a box of evaporated cranberries. Inside the farmhouse he also found a farmer, his wife and three small children, all bearing British bullets. He wrote, “I’ve never had a day without sorrow since. I struggled, I never found rest. You answered plainly what I should have known, Luke. For 55 years I’ve wished that my life had ended that Christmas Day, so that my order and my rifle of the next would have had no accomplishment.” I had to pause. “Then you came in on Shanks pony. I was a coward until then. Peace may not come through my act, nor yours, but at least our souls will pass chaste and uncorrupted. You’ve been my friend and teacher. Now, you’ve a home to get to. Merry Christmas, Your Servant, W. J. F-W.”

On the train east I hid myself in a sleeping berth, alone. My reverie was over. My adventure had collapsed into loneliness. It was me and the blank sky and nothing else. In Buffalo I got off the train; I couldn’t bear it anymore. It was now Christmas eve and I bought a bus ticket to Vermont. I had friends in the mountains. We made Rochester when the blizzard set in. Route 20 was as well known to me as was the Mississippi to Twain, but I saw only white from the cold window. Strangely, I discovered that my sense of hearing was growing more and more acute the closer we came to my hometown. I could hear the driver whispering low to himself. I scraped at the window as we neared a stop and realized that we were in Auburn already! Not knowing whether it was a good idea or not, I got off.

I stepped out of the blizzard and into Hunter’s, an old ’50s-style diner perched on I-beams and pilings over the Owasco outlet. I had taken my last meal here before shipping out; nothing had changed in that diner in years, but in my year gone everything seemed different. I sat at the counter, keeping to myself. I didn’t recognize a single person there.

Two deputies were sitting at a booth. From their name pins I recognized the family names — Harold Norman and George Crowther — but had not seen them before. Must be rookies. The waitress, Anna May, obviously George’s sister, was making every kind of eye at Harold, who was so oblivious to the signs that I wanted to go knock his hat off. A woman with a press badge came in, Linita Rebo. “About a hundred calls came in all at once,” began Harold. George added, “We figured it was just a little holiday fun. But then we heard the concussions. No one knew where it was coming from. We went up to the reservoir to spot.” Harold came in, “It was fireworks without the works. There was no spray of light in the sky. Only explosions. We were trying to pinpoint them when Frank Dickson called. And we mostly got the story from him; it was all on his property. There’d been an injury.”

Frank Dickson was a neighbor of ours on Pine Ridge Road, a toymaker who often paid me and my brother to help in his fields. The deputies continued, “By the time we arrived on scene, the explosions had ceased, but there were real craters out there, all right. Plenty. Frank was jumping out of his boots, and Paul, he just sat on the ground, gazing.” Who were they talking about? There were more Pauls per square mile in Cayuga County than there were Kelly’s in Ireland. I had a cousin Paul; my brother was named Paul, as was my father. But I did not want just yet to speak to anyone from home.

When I came out of Hunter’s, I raised my collar, and looked up to the building that abutted the diner; it was a four or five story whose side brickface still bore the faded paint of a long-gone advert: E & W Linens in letters 10 feet high. And I chorted, “Everet and Wilfred. God love ya!” Just then a cat racing west brushed my leg. I’d been gone a year, but I’d know Mutley anywhere: it was this old diabetic cat that lived up on Genesee Street, over in Skaneateles. And that cat was on a tear! It was partial to showing up dinnertimes at Stella Maris, a retreat house and convent on the lake. That’s how I’d known him; I spent a lot of time with the nuns there. And his passing gave me the idea of going to the convent: they’d let me stay till I figured out what was next. And so I thumbed my way into Skaneateles.

I got a lift from another soldier in a pick-up, whose radio was playing a household tune: Jim Reeves’ tearjerker “Old Tige.” I closed my eyes as we passed the turn off to my home. He dropped me off at the waterworks. I sat by the lake a long time, fumbling the heavy coin in my pocket. I heard the night guard from the Argus plant making his rounds. And then he was off duty. For the life of me I couldn’t see very far out into the lake, and so when he approached I asked, “Hey, Watchman. Is the lake froze over yet?” He looked at me curiously, “Not yet. See for yourself. We ’spect it t’be.” I tried to look south over the lake; I couldn’t make anything out beyond the shoreline. “Hey, tell me, Watchman: you see any stars out tonight?” He came closer, “Aye, many. But one shines. And higher yet that star ascends.” The cold had gotten into my eyes. Before departing, he put his hand on my shoulder and said, “Let thy wanderings cease.” Then he vanished.

I walked up Genesee Street. As I passed Morey’s restaurant, jam-packed, I heard flying versions of the barrage that night. But when I peered in through the glass no face would come into focus. Finally I was onto the grounds of Stella Maris. And there, standing at the end of the drive, was Joe, the cook. “Luke! Has it been a year?” We shook hands. “I was fixin’ to go home,” he said, “but we’re waiting on this woman from Fosterville. This here’s her dog.” I hadn’t noticed the dog. It was a shaggy thing, unblinking and still as night, shivering slightly. “Just showed up here. Had tags on it. We called the owner. She cried, “how’d my dog get way over there?” Then she dropped a shocker: “That dog’s blind!” The sisters and I — we knew — it was Mutley that had led him; he’s always leading strays here.

Several figures emerged from the chapel study: faces I well knew. Coming into the light was Sister Celestine and Sister Gladys, their well-pressed habits crisp and austere. Between them a man walked unsteadily in their escort. At first I only noticed this fuzzy quality about him, as if he were recently shattered. Then in segments the man came into focus: in his shaky hand a blue tin with an unbroken seal. On his collar a white dove, the insignia of a peace union I had sent home. And then I saw, as lucid as morning sky, individual tears streaming down my father’s face. He shouted, “Son! Son, you’re home!” Then everything went dark.

I remembered it all: tracking back through the ant hills and elephant grass. Someone shouting that we were in the middle of one of our own fields. The blast. My buddy Leroy’s splintered leg. The sting on my face as if someone had thrown gravel into it. The maddening ringing in my ears. I remembered the doctors speaking of fortune: it had only been an M-14. I remembered their conference: “no penetrating ocular trauma.” I remember screaming, “Why can’t I see?” I recalled the cool answer: the blast wave itself had dislodged both retinas. “Only ever seen that once before,” one said. Then I remembered seeing nothing at all until walking off ship in San Francisco.

And there, as I listened to my father make his way across the room, I stretched my arms out into the pitch — and in the heavy dim of nothingness I patted around to find who it was that had brought me all this way.

Then my father embraced me. He had not shaved that day.

Epilogue:

It’s been nearly 40 years now since that day. Today I own a small factory that manufactures ploughs; we are expanding. I write poetry reviews for several newspapers. It is Christmastime and I am home again. My mother is rocking by the tree, my twins and their kids by her side. My father lies in the next room, dying. He calls me. I sit at his side. He asks to hear the story. Sometimes he asks for Billi’s tale. Sometimes Everet’s. He may say, “Teardrop’s narrative, I want to hear that.” I tell from beginning to end.

Then I ask him to tell me the old story. And he gives the account: of how on the morn of that Christmas Eve he had taken my brother to the new doctor, the emigre no one else would see, and how he opened his throat when a quarter hour later would have been too late. And how that afternoon he discovered in the corn fields two lines of massive, opposing trenches, appearing out of nowhere. And how that evening as he and Frank worked in the shop the bombardment began. He slows when he tells of how he rushed out to find a badly wounded soldier, a Brit who carried my photograph. And how, cupping the soldier in his arms, amid new shelling, he attended to his dying words.

And I say as I always do, still filled with fervor and yearning, “What did he sound like, Dad?”

“Oh, his accent. It was thick. All his s’s like z’s. He knew much about you. In the end, he said to me, ”I die not for my country, but for mankind. And for your boy — not your soldier son, but your younger one. And all the innocents.“ And he gave me the blue tin. He said, ”All men must die, but God will tend us.“ And then he opened his pocket; there was your photo. He said, “To refuse, that is the greater bravery. Thee canst not get more valiant than that.” Then he gazed at the great line of icicles on our barn, and he died smiling, saying, “tinklebobs.”

Then I remind my father of how we used to look into the registry of “The War Dead of The British Commonwealth,” and the Omaha phone book, finding all the principals. And how he would reflect, “Oh, what stories might have been written from ribbon never taken from its tin.”

He turns to me and speaks the refrain I wish he would stop repeating. “Son, I’m sorry; I mistook you for a brittle man.”

I lift my father’s head and cradle it in my arms, one hand coming round his neck, my fingers upon his collar, feeling there the silver and enamel dove, a piece that through all these years he’s never once removed.

I said, “Rest, Pop. Tomorrow is Christmas day.”




Click here to read the entire series