Sorrow’s Memory Is Sorrow Still
by Bill Carpenter
It’s been said that life is a gift. Yet under unflinching—perhaps cynical—analysis, it seems less a gift and more a loan. It is given us with the uncompromising promise that we must someday surrender it. The fulfillment of that grim promise was made evident to me at the funeral earlier in the afternoon. Thankfully, it was now a part of the past.
Once back at the house, friends and neighbors came and left, offering condolences and casseroles. There was no questioning their sincerity, respect and concern, but from the miasma of my grief they felt intrusive. I nodded, smiled, thanking them dumbly, unable to condemn them.
Tomorrow would begin the painful process of sorting through my father’s belongings. My mother would have the burden of deciding what she might want to keep. It was understood we could reclaim any gifts we had given him over the years. Whatever remained was left to our discretion as to what we might want, the rest would be sold off or given to charity. I simply told them any decisions they made were acceptable to me. Although Meg was the oldest child, I was the oldest son. That might lead one to conclude that I would be the one making the critical decisions. You might also think that, given that, I would also be the most overwhelmed by sorrow at the loss of our father. On the first point I suppose I fell short. On the second, I would have to agree.
My father had taught me many things over the years: from how to tie my shoelaces when I was a boy to how to deal with loss when I was a young man. From him I learned the toughness that was sometimes essential in overcoming the adversity that life—occasionally or repeatedly—might throw at you. He never had to teach me about the joys that life offered. His simply nodding, smiling or laughing with me when they occurred was all that was necessary. That’s not to say he didn’t praise me when praise was due. Because he did, and I gloried in it. We were at odds only when his skepticism butted up against my idealism. Now, with the luxury of hindsight, I prized the knowledge and insight he had given me. I only hoped I passed such wisdom on to my own children.
I studied the gathering as I stood in a corner nursing my second Jack Daniels–two fingers, neat. My father’s younger sister, Aunt Arlene, sat forlornly in the chocolate-colored leather wingchair that had always been identified as his. Her son—drinking what I thought was probably Scotch and soda, stood near his wife. They chatted indistinctly, their expressions unreadable. Moments earlier their two young boys had disappeared into the dining room apparently looking for treats. My grandson tagged along.
Across the room my mother sat in a bentwood rocker, padded with needlepoint cushions, which had always been a favorite of hers. Around her were my daughter-in-law Allison, my wife Karen, and Lucille. She and her husband Chet had been family friends for as long as I could remember. As they conversed, the expressions on the faces of the four women struck me as wistful. Then, apparently because of something one of them said, they laughed, a soft laughter I couldn’t even hear, but only observed on their faces. At first I thought their laughing was inappropriate, but then I realized that my self-centeredness was making me judgmental. Perhaps they were laughing at the recollection of something my father had said or done. I even considered it might have been the mention of a common fault in their men they found so annoying that the only recourse was to laugh at it. Regardless, there could be little doubt it brought them respite from their grief. There was poignancy in that moment and I accepted it.
On the other side of the room, my sister Meg was talking animatedly to her husband, a glass of wine in her hand; their daughter, Kelly and her husband sat nearby, attentive, on the couch. I wondered if she was telling them charming anecdotes about her childhood as my father’s only daughter. Growing up, I had embraced my older sister’s pompous attitude because it made her protective of me. I smiled thinking of how annoying it became as I grew older.
My brother, Harry, was nowhere to be seen. Meanwhile, his wife Janette sat in the big wine-colored easy chair not far from me, staring at the floor. Several of my father’s closest friends were there. To the casual observer, keeping track of all the attendees might prove as complex as a soap opera; and on this day, even I found it difficult. To be fair, I found I couldn’t fault anyone. Funerals seem preordained to leave everyone feeling awkward. I took a swallow of my drink savoring its heat.
After I returned from my tour in Vietnam, my friends and family seemed incapable of understanding why I was so distant, at times hostile. The exception had been my father. There was little doubt it was because of his wartime experience. Growing up, I remembered occasions when he became distant, distrustful, even angry, as if detached from our family. Adolescence is a difficult, confusing time and I tried to understand his behavior from that perspective. Only after I returned from the war could I fully empathize. Now my family seemed to accept my withdrawal as an element of my bereavement. For that I was grateful.
Meanwhile, what had been a boy’s curiosity now once again beckoned me to the attic. Throughout my childhood and adolescence, I had made many clandestine excursions up there, undeterred by cobwebs and dust, eager to explore. More than anything else, I was drawn to my father’s mysterious locked footlocker. During my childhood years, I had believed he brought it home with him from the war. Now, I realized that there was little doubt he had bought it at an army surplus store specifically for the purpose of storing his war memorabilia. After my discharge from the army I was only allowed my duffel bag containing military gear, dress uniform—which I had worn on the flights home—and my own suitcase. I had always felt a hunger to know what my father’s trunk contained. Now my curiosity extended beyond the what and into the why. Sacrosanct as that trunk had been in my childhood, I decided now was the time to open it.
Finishing my drink and setting the glass on a nearby table, I walked through the kitchen out the side door into the garage. From a pegboard holding a variety of tools, I took a large screwdriver. Retracing my steps through the kitchen across the dining room and into the hallway leading to the bedrooms, I stopped under the attic door. Even with the formidable tool in my hand, no one seemed to have noticed me passing by.
I ascended the stairs. Crouched under the sloped roof, I found the familiar beaded cord and switched on the light of the naked overhead bulb. Nondescript boxes and a few discarded pieces of worn-out furniture occupied the dimly lit space. The corner where the trunk lay drew me like the Sirens’ song. And there it sat, cloaked in tattered shadows, as enigmatic to me as when I was a boy. Neglect had left it more covered in dust and cobwebs than I remembered. Perhaps I was the only one who was aware of its existence. I knelt in front of it.
My war was Vietnam, his had been WWII. The changes the war had made in him were as unknown to me as any boy’s knowledge of his father’s past. I brushed away the residue accumulated over the years. The key for the brass lock was undoubtedly long lost—or misplaced—and I levered the screwdriver to break the hasp. There was never a moment when I thought of the act as intrusive.
Our family wasn’t really what could be called a military family. My dad had joined a couple of years after Pearl Harbor. My son Chris had been ten on 9-11. But the repeated images on TV of the collapse of the Twin Towers left an indelible impression on him. He joined right out of high school. Me, I’d been drafted. That’s another story.
Regardless of what war, this was an act that seemed inevitable. Opening the footlocker hardly seemed any different to me than informing a family their son had been killed in combat and returning his personal possessions.
A quick wrench of the screwdriver and the hasp snapped. I raised the lid. What immediately caught my attention was a German Lugar in the top tray. Next to it was an ornamental dagger, the stainless steel blade engraved with intricate designs. The hilt appeared to be made of ivory or some similar material and below it the bronze guard was the familiar Nazi symbol of an eagle with spread wings clasping a wreath emblazoned with a swastika. There were several coins with similar Nazi symbols. I wondered if my father had found them or taken them from the soldiers he had killed. I knew there were places where these kinds of souvenirs would be forbidden.
The tray held a packet of letters, a rotten rubber band barely holding them together. The printed return address on the top one made it obvious that they were military correspondence. Among the miscellany were a shoeshine kit, an army-issue sewing kit, foot powder and bandages. Along with a number of battalion and rank patches and brass lapel pins were his dog tags. In a pair of small cases, I discovered a Good Conduct and a Purple Heart medal. He had never mentioned earning the Purple Heart.
A five-by-seven college graduation picture of my mother caught my attention. I held it thinking I had never known her when she was this young and pretty, but had known that enchanting smile my entire life. Beneath it were snapshots. I picked them up and saw that the first was of her in front of the University Library. In the next she was standing in front of the Student Union. She was wearing a long winter coat in both pictures and I guessed they had been taken at the same time, while she was a student. The last two were a pair of nearly identical snapshots of my father, wearing fatigues with sleeves rolled up, sitting in bright sunshine on a wooden staircase outside a barracks, looking youthful and cocky. His posture projected a familiar male arrogance with elbows on spread knees. A mischievous grin spread across a mouth clamped down on a cigar.
Replacing the pictures, I removed the tray and set it aside. Most of the items in the trunk didn’t surprise me. A set of fatigues and a dress uniform, neatly folded, both with master sergeant’s stripes. Nearby was a pair of polished black dress shoes covered with a light patina of dust. Next to them was a pair of scuffed brown combat boots.
A shoebox in the corner with a Buster Brown logo on top piqued my curiosity. I removed the shoebox and opened it. Inside was a journal about the size of a paperback, its cover stained and its edges frayed. Beside it lay another packet of letters. At the bottom was a key.
I took up the journal, opened it near the middle and began to read. 8/8/44. More fire from the fifties. Little hope for Stanley. The crabbed scribbling on the pages seemed frantic, desperate. 8/10/44. We’re in a bad position. Lester hit last night, bad shape. Because my father had made it home, it was like reading a story where you knew the good guy would survive. 8/15/44. Stanley and Lester gone. I’ll miss Lester’s stories about cavorting with Oklahoma outlaws. Believed he was so tough. Only five of us left. Waiting reinforcements.
I paused, leaned back against the rough wooden beam behind me and recalled my own experience in the spring of ‘68. Our patrol had gone out from base camp into “Indian country” and been pinned down by VC snipers. Within moments, we heard the familiar whistling sound. Someone shouted, “Incoming,” as the mortar fire came raining in. We lost two of our men to the Charlies and two others sustained minor injuries in the first twenty minutes of the firefight. That left ten of us trapped. We radioed HQ giving our coordinates requesting we be extracted. We continued to hold off the enemy. The firefight continued for at least another twenty minutes. Three more in the squad suffered injuries before we heard the familiar whop whop whop as two Huey gunships arrived just as the hostile mortar fire seemed to be zeroing in. We popped a smoke bomb to signal our position. One chopper circled, strafing the enemy positions with machine gun and rocket fire. The other dropped into the hot LZ and picked us up. The return flight left me with time; time to marvel at my luck in surviving. My father’s curious advice came back to me: You can only survive by being a survivor.
A noise from downstairs returned me to the present. I remembered Chris’s last email from Afghanistan. My son was stationed in Kabul. As dangerous as his situation might be, he rarely talked about the patrols. IEDs are a bitch, he once wrote, almost casually, while complaining about breakfasts of powdered eggs. Trivial incidents had never seemed to annoy him while growing up. I wondered how much he would be changed when he came home.
Curiosity brought me back to the journal and I turned the pages to earlier entries my father had made.
12/12/43. Hurry up and wait. The Army way. Don’t know where we’re headed. The boys all seem to think it’s Africa.
From experience I knew the drudgery of waiting. My other painful experience was that when it came, combat was chaotic and brutal.
The next entry was more personal, even tender. 12/18/43. Haven’t heard anything from Misty. Hope she got my letter.
Misty was the pet name my father had given my mother. I remembered him calling her that from time to time when I was a kid. As a teenager, I finally asked them about it. Funny. She claimed it was because the evening they met the thick mist in the air seemed to have brought them together. He said it was because she became emotional watching sentimental movies. I liked both versions.
I thought about my own letters to Karen. There had never been any doubt in my mind I would make it back. Even as my buddies . . . .Renfro stepping on a mine a little over twenty feet from me. The blast had slammed me to the ground. Hardly more than ten feet away, Dellarosa lay on the ground, legs quivering, having partially shielded me from the blast. I was splattered with blood and gore and wondered through my pain how much of it was my own. I was deaf for ten minutes before sound began seeping back in. I had crawled over to discover Dellarosa was dead. I remembered thinking—or maybe bellowed into the silence—in denial, as if I could bring him back, Sonofabitch. You can’t be dead. You still owe me five bucks on that Red Sox game. My legs and shoulder still carry scars as a bitter souvenir. For that I received my own Purple Heart.
I stared at my dad’s journal while recalling a line near the end of an email from Chris. He had simply stated: I lost a friend today. No more details. It surprised me because I was all too familiar with the reluctance of a soldier to speak of such things; even to family. I couldn’t. My father’s journal only reinforced this. These were things of which he had never spoken. I turned back to the later accounts near where I had been reading earlier.
The page was slightly stained. 9/2/44. Holed up in a hotel. It’s partially bombed out, but we managed to stay out of the rain. Moxie found a stash of wine and we celebrated. Celebrated nothing except we’re alive. Not sure if the Krauts have us surrounded. I wondered if the stains were from rain or a splash of Rhine wine. At this point I realized I had no idea if his accounts were about events that had occurred in France or Germany.
The mention of wine triggered another memory as I sat back recalling a mortar attack on our base camp. Corky, Brooklyn, Patchee and I had been stoned on weed. One might think the drug would have left us dull and incapacitated, but we reacted as if we were invincible. Adrenaline, pot and the belief that our youth made us immortal fueled our bravado. My God, we stormed out of the barracks with our M-16s, angry as hornets at the intrusion and ready for a firefight. It was if we thought we were some kind of comic-book superheroes. The attack turned out to be another incident in the ongoing harassment by the VC and the perimeter was immediately secured. We returned to the barracks still jacked up on adrenaline and joked and toked while downplaying the whole incident. Could that flippant attitude have been a key to our survival or had we been fools with fortune on our side?
I turned the page. 9/8/44. We killed a German major and a sergeant who stumbled into the hotel today. The surprised look on their faces was priceless.
Had the Lugar, dagger and coins he brought back been taken off those dead Germans? I looked across the attic at the dusty relics thinking how his term “priceless” seemed an antithesis to the truth. Those we love and have loved are priceless. Killing is not priceless. Death is not priceless. Once again my thoughts turned to my own experience and the “gooks” I had killed, and how satisfying it had felt at the time. Hatred became the driving force.
Sure, it’s a racist word. I’d wager you wouldn’t hesitate to resort to racism if those killing your friends were of another race. There were times I struggled with the word myself, remembering Hachiro, my Japanese study partner in college. He was nisei, second-generation Japanese-American. One night, after finishing a particularly difficult test, we had been drinking and he told me about how his family had been held in an internment camp after Pearl Harbor. He never went into detail but they had undoubtedly been subjected to racist and hate-filled taunts during their confinement.
I returned the journal to the shoebox and picked up the packet of letters. They were tied together with a narrow pale blue ribbon in a neat bow. The letters were addressed to my father and I recognized the return address as my mother’s in Joplin, where she was living at the time. I looked at the cancellation stamp on the top one and saw it was March of '43.
That sparked a memory of my time in ‘Nam and the letters I had gotten from Karen and how intimate and endearing they had been. For that reason I saved them. Now looking at the blue ribbon which tied these letters together I was mystified. It would be uncharacteristic of my father to use a ribbon to bind the letters. He would more likely use a rubber band, a piece of string or even a shoelace. Did that ribbon hold some significance of which only they were aware? Staring at the packet, I realized that the blue ribbon said it all: my parents’ past life was theirs. It seemed certain there was an intimacy in those letters to which I was not entitled, as if I were still a boy. I returned the packet to the shoebox, covered it with the Buster Brown top and returned it to the footlocker.
I attempted to pull together my confused emotions. These days, all our correspondence with Chris was by email. A painful thought occurred: were Allison’s emails to him being deleted and gone forever? Did he print them and save them? Even then, I wondered, how could Times New Roman compare to Karen’s elegant left-handed cursive script on her cream-colored stationary? Perhaps the words in the emails were enough.
“Gary, are you up here?” Meg’s question and her sudden appearance startled me. She’d entered through the trap door at the other end of the attic and only her head and shoulders were visible.
“Yeah,” I answered. “I’ll be down in a minute.”
“You okay?” she asked, concern in her voice.
“I’m fine. I’ll be down in a minute.”
“Okay. Just wondering why the ladder was down. No rush. Take your time.” She disappeared down through the attic door.
Time: A concept which puzzles and troubles us when we try to analyze its nuances too deeply. Replacing the tray and closing the trunk, I began my return to the wake. It became all too evident to me that I would ask my family for the footlocker. In time I might ask my mother if she wanted the packet of letters tied with the mysterious powder-blue ribbon.
I made my way back to the attic ladder, pulling the chain to turn off the light as I passed. My descent was met with an urgent tug at my pants leg.
“Gramps, you’re missing all the fun.” Below me was my four-year-old grandson Kevin. What fun could a boy find on a day when his great-grandfather had been buried?
“And what fun is that,” I asked, hardly able to contain an unwarranted harshness centered on my own sense of loss as I glowered at him from the ladder.
“Farley,” he said, looking up at me with a big loopy grin on his face.
“Farley?” I asked, hoping the boy would overlook my grumpiness as I finished my descent, stepped off the ladder and returned it to its overhead position.
“Farley, he’s so funny. Silly dog. I think he wants to be everybody’s friend.”
“Farley?” I asked again with a crusty curt tone. He tugged at my sleeve pulling me toward the living room. This is about a dog? I thought in disbelief.
“There,” he answered, pointing to a terrier mix which I had to admit looked cute even with his back to us. He sat at the entrance to the living room, looking keenly from one person to another as they talked, seemingly catching snippets of conversation. Apparently, he had taken a break from whatever shenanigans Kevin had found so entertaining.
“Farley?” I asked for the third time, hardly able to hide my irritation. At the sound of his name, the mutt’s ears perked up and he looked at me over his shoulder with black-button eyes and smiled a doggy smile. His innocence and ignorance of the day’s gravity forced a grin out of me in spite of myself.
“He is cute. Is he yours?” My thought was that Allison may have gotten him the dog to provide some comfort during his father’s absence.
“Nah, Farley belongs to everybody and nobody,” was Kevin’s childish Zen-like answer.
“That’s fine, Kevin,” I said as his nonsensical reply brought me back to the sorrowful reality of the day. There seemed little reason to point out that if he knew the dog’s name it must belong to someone. Tired and brooding, I entered the living room and dropped into the easy chair where Harry’s wife had been sitting earlier. I hardly had time to take a breath before Farley was in my lap.
“Farley. Farley!” I chastened in a sharp voice that made me feel even more the curmudgeon. A quick self-conscious glance around the room assured me no one had noticed.
Ignoring me, he curled up into a comforting light brown ball in my lap in less time than it had taken to admonish him. Once settled, he chuffed contentedly as if certain he had found where he felt he belonged.
I smiled, and stroked his fawn-colored curly fur as I fought the tears that wanted to well up. “Farley, you’re so wise.”
Once back at the house, friends and neighbors came and left, offering condolences and casseroles. There was no questioning their sincerity, respect and concern, but from the miasma of my grief they felt intrusive. I nodded, smiled, thanking them dumbly, unable to condemn them.
Tomorrow would begin the painful process of sorting through my father’s belongings. My mother would have the burden of deciding what she might want to keep. It was understood we could reclaim any gifts we had given him over the years. Whatever remained was left to our discretion as to what we might want, the rest would be sold off or given to charity. I simply told them any decisions they made were acceptable to me. Although Meg was the oldest child, I was the oldest son. That might lead one to conclude that I would be the one making the critical decisions. You might also think that, given that, I would also be the most overwhelmed by sorrow at the loss of our father. On the first point I suppose I fell short. On the second, I would have to agree.
My father had taught me many things over the years: from how to tie my shoelaces when I was a boy to how to deal with loss when I was a young man. From him I learned the toughness that was sometimes essential in overcoming the adversity that life—occasionally or repeatedly—might throw at you. He never had to teach me about the joys that life offered. His simply nodding, smiling or laughing with me when they occurred was all that was necessary. That’s not to say he didn’t praise me when praise was due. Because he did, and I gloried in it. We were at odds only when his skepticism butted up against my idealism. Now, with the luxury of hindsight, I prized the knowledge and insight he had given me. I only hoped I passed such wisdom on to my own children.
I studied the gathering as I stood in a corner nursing my second Jack Daniels–two fingers, neat. My father’s younger sister, Aunt Arlene, sat forlornly in the chocolate-colored leather wingchair that had always been identified as his. Her son—drinking what I thought was probably Scotch and soda, stood near his wife. They chatted indistinctly, their expressions unreadable. Moments earlier their two young boys had disappeared into the dining room apparently looking for treats. My grandson tagged along.
Across the room my mother sat in a bentwood rocker, padded with needlepoint cushions, which had always been a favorite of hers. Around her were my daughter-in-law Allison, my wife Karen, and Lucille. She and her husband Chet had been family friends for as long as I could remember. As they conversed, the expressions on the faces of the four women struck me as wistful. Then, apparently because of something one of them said, they laughed, a soft laughter I couldn’t even hear, but only observed on their faces. At first I thought their laughing was inappropriate, but then I realized that my self-centeredness was making me judgmental. Perhaps they were laughing at the recollection of something my father had said or done. I even considered it might have been the mention of a common fault in their men they found so annoying that the only recourse was to laugh at it. Regardless, there could be little doubt it brought them respite from their grief. There was poignancy in that moment and I accepted it.
On the other side of the room, my sister Meg was talking animatedly to her husband, a glass of wine in her hand; their daughter, Kelly and her husband sat nearby, attentive, on the couch. I wondered if she was telling them charming anecdotes about her childhood as my father’s only daughter. Growing up, I had embraced my older sister’s pompous attitude because it made her protective of me. I smiled thinking of how annoying it became as I grew older.
My brother, Harry, was nowhere to be seen. Meanwhile, his wife Janette sat in the big wine-colored easy chair not far from me, staring at the floor. Several of my father’s closest friends were there. To the casual observer, keeping track of all the attendees might prove as complex as a soap opera; and on this day, even I found it difficult. To be fair, I found I couldn’t fault anyone. Funerals seem preordained to leave everyone feeling awkward. I took a swallow of my drink savoring its heat.
After I returned from my tour in Vietnam, my friends and family seemed incapable of understanding why I was so distant, at times hostile. The exception had been my father. There was little doubt it was because of his wartime experience. Growing up, I remembered occasions when he became distant, distrustful, even angry, as if detached from our family. Adolescence is a difficult, confusing time and I tried to understand his behavior from that perspective. Only after I returned from the war could I fully empathize. Now my family seemed to accept my withdrawal as an element of my bereavement. For that I was grateful.
Meanwhile, what had been a boy’s curiosity now once again beckoned me to the attic. Throughout my childhood and adolescence, I had made many clandestine excursions up there, undeterred by cobwebs and dust, eager to explore. More than anything else, I was drawn to my father’s mysterious locked footlocker. During my childhood years, I had believed he brought it home with him from the war. Now, I realized that there was little doubt he had bought it at an army surplus store specifically for the purpose of storing his war memorabilia. After my discharge from the army I was only allowed my duffel bag containing military gear, dress uniform—which I had worn on the flights home—and my own suitcase. I had always felt a hunger to know what my father’s trunk contained. Now my curiosity extended beyond the what and into the why. Sacrosanct as that trunk had been in my childhood, I decided now was the time to open it.
Finishing my drink and setting the glass on a nearby table, I walked through the kitchen out the side door into the garage. From a pegboard holding a variety of tools, I took a large screwdriver. Retracing my steps through the kitchen across the dining room and into the hallway leading to the bedrooms, I stopped under the attic door. Even with the formidable tool in my hand, no one seemed to have noticed me passing by.
I ascended the stairs. Crouched under the sloped roof, I found the familiar beaded cord and switched on the light of the naked overhead bulb. Nondescript boxes and a few discarded pieces of worn-out furniture occupied the dimly lit space. The corner where the trunk lay drew me like the Sirens’ song. And there it sat, cloaked in tattered shadows, as enigmatic to me as when I was a boy. Neglect had left it more covered in dust and cobwebs than I remembered. Perhaps I was the only one who was aware of its existence. I knelt in front of it.
My war was Vietnam, his had been WWII. The changes the war had made in him were as unknown to me as any boy’s knowledge of his father’s past. I brushed away the residue accumulated over the years. The key for the brass lock was undoubtedly long lost—or misplaced—and I levered the screwdriver to break the hasp. There was never a moment when I thought of the act as intrusive.
Our family wasn’t really what could be called a military family. My dad had joined a couple of years after Pearl Harbor. My son Chris had been ten on 9-11. But the repeated images on TV of the collapse of the Twin Towers left an indelible impression on him. He joined right out of high school. Me, I’d been drafted. That’s another story.
Regardless of what war, this was an act that seemed inevitable. Opening the footlocker hardly seemed any different to me than informing a family their son had been killed in combat and returning his personal possessions.
A quick wrench of the screwdriver and the hasp snapped. I raised the lid. What immediately caught my attention was a German Lugar in the top tray. Next to it was an ornamental dagger, the stainless steel blade engraved with intricate designs. The hilt appeared to be made of ivory or some similar material and below it the bronze guard was the familiar Nazi symbol of an eagle with spread wings clasping a wreath emblazoned with a swastika. There were several coins with similar Nazi symbols. I wondered if my father had found them or taken them from the soldiers he had killed. I knew there were places where these kinds of souvenirs would be forbidden.
The tray held a packet of letters, a rotten rubber band barely holding them together. The printed return address on the top one made it obvious that they were military correspondence. Among the miscellany were a shoeshine kit, an army-issue sewing kit, foot powder and bandages. Along with a number of battalion and rank patches and brass lapel pins were his dog tags. In a pair of small cases, I discovered a Good Conduct and a Purple Heart medal. He had never mentioned earning the Purple Heart.
A five-by-seven college graduation picture of my mother caught my attention. I held it thinking I had never known her when she was this young and pretty, but had known that enchanting smile my entire life. Beneath it were snapshots. I picked them up and saw that the first was of her in front of the University Library. In the next she was standing in front of the Student Union. She was wearing a long winter coat in both pictures and I guessed they had been taken at the same time, while she was a student. The last two were a pair of nearly identical snapshots of my father, wearing fatigues with sleeves rolled up, sitting in bright sunshine on a wooden staircase outside a barracks, looking youthful and cocky. His posture projected a familiar male arrogance with elbows on spread knees. A mischievous grin spread across a mouth clamped down on a cigar.
Replacing the pictures, I removed the tray and set it aside. Most of the items in the trunk didn’t surprise me. A set of fatigues and a dress uniform, neatly folded, both with master sergeant’s stripes. Nearby was a pair of polished black dress shoes covered with a light patina of dust. Next to them was a pair of scuffed brown combat boots.
A shoebox in the corner with a Buster Brown logo on top piqued my curiosity. I removed the shoebox and opened it. Inside was a journal about the size of a paperback, its cover stained and its edges frayed. Beside it lay another packet of letters. At the bottom was a key.
I took up the journal, opened it near the middle and began to read. 8/8/44. More fire from the fifties. Little hope for Stanley. The crabbed scribbling on the pages seemed frantic, desperate. 8/10/44. We’re in a bad position. Lester hit last night, bad shape. Because my father had made it home, it was like reading a story where you knew the good guy would survive. 8/15/44. Stanley and Lester gone. I’ll miss Lester’s stories about cavorting with Oklahoma outlaws. Believed he was so tough. Only five of us left. Waiting reinforcements.
I paused, leaned back against the rough wooden beam behind me and recalled my own experience in the spring of ‘68. Our patrol had gone out from base camp into “Indian country” and been pinned down by VC snipers. Within moments, we heard the familiar whistling sound. Someone shouted, “Incoming,” as the mortar fire came raining in. We lost two of our men to the Charlies and two others sustained minor injuries in the first twenty minutes of the firefight. That left ten of us trapped. We radioed HQ giving our coordinates requesting we be extracted. We continued to hold off the enemy. The firefight continued for at least another twenty minutes. Three more in the squad suffered injuries before we heard the familiar whop whop whop as two Huey gunships arrived just as the hostile mortar fire seemed to be zeroing in. We popped a smoke bomb to signal our position. One chopper circled, strafing the enemy positions with machine gun and rocket fire. The other dropped into the hot LZ and picked us up. The return flight left me with time; time to marvel at my luck in surviving. My father’s curious advice came back to me: You can only survive by being a survivor.
A noise from downstairs returned me to the present. I remembered Chris’s last email from Afghanistan. My son was stationed in Kabul. As dangerous as his situation might be, he rarely talked about the patrols. IEDs are a bitch, he once wrote, almost casually, while complaining about breakfasts of powdered eggs. Trivial incidents had never seemed to annoy him while growing up. I wondered how much he would be changed when he came home.
Curiosity brought me back to the journal and I turned the pages to earlier entries my father had made.
12/12/43. Hurry up and wait. The Army way. Don’t know where we’re headed. The boys all seem to think it’s Africa.
From experience I knew the drudgery of waiting. My other painful experience was that when it came, combat was chaotic and brutal.
The next entry was more personal, even tender. 12/18/43. Haven’t heard anything from Misty. Hope she got my letter.
Misty was the pet name my father had given my mother. I remembered him calling her that from time to time when I was a kid. As a teenager, I finally asked them about it. Funny. She claimed it was because the evening they met the thick mist in the air seemed to have brought them together. He said it was because she became emotional watching sentimental movies. I liked both versions.
I thought about my own letters to Karen. There had never been any doubt in my mind I would make it back. Even as my buddies . . . .Renfro stepping on a mine a little over twenty feet from me. The blast had slammed me to the ground. Hardly more than ten feet away, Dellarosa lay on the ground, legs quivering, having partially shielded me from the blast. I was splattered with blood and gore and wondered through my pain how much of it was my own. I was deaf for ten minutes before sound began seeping back in. I had crawled over to discover Dellarosa was dead. I remembered thinking—or maybe bellowed into the silence—in denial, as if I could bring him back, Sonofabitch. You can’t be dead. You still owe me five bucks on that Red Sox game. My legs and shoulder still carry scars as a bitter souvenir. For that I received my own Purple Heart.
I stared at my dad’s journal while recalling a line near the end of an email from Chris. He had simply stated: I lost a friend today. No more details. It surprised me because I was all too familiar with the reluctance of a soldier to speak of such things; even to family. I couldn’t. My father’s journal only reinforced this. These were things of which he had never spoken. I turned back to the later accounts near where I had been reading earlier.
The page was slightly stained. 9/2/44. Holed up in a hotel. It’s partially bombed out, but we managed to stay out of the rain. Moxie found a stash of wine and we celebrated. Celebrated nothing except we’re alive. Not sure if the Krauts have us surrounded. I wondered if the stains were from rain or a splash of Rhine wine. At this point I realized I had no idea if his accounts were about events that had occurred in France or Germany.
The mention of wine triggered another memory as I sat back recalling a mortar attack on our base camp. Corky, Brooklyn, Patchee and I had been stoned on weed. One might think the drug would have left us dull and incapacitated, but we reacted as if we were invincible. Adrenaline, pot and the belief that our youth made us immortal fueled our bravado. My God, we stormed out of the barracks with our M-16s, angry as hornets at the intrusion and ready for a firefight. It was if we thought we were some kind of comic-book superheroes. The attack turned out to be another incident in the ongoing harassment by the VC and the perimeter was immediately secured. We returned to the barracks still jacked up on adrenaline and joked and toked while downplaying the whole incident. Could that flippant attitude have been a key to our survival or had we been fools with fortune on our side?
I turned the page. 9/8/44. We killed a German major and a sergeant who stumbled into the hotel today. The surprised look on their faces was priceless.
Had the Lugar, dagger and coins he brought back been taken off those dead Germans? I looked across the attic at the dusty relics thinking how his term “priceless” seemed an antithesis to the truth. Those we love and have loved are priceless. Killing is not priceless. Death is not priceless. Once again my thoughts turned to my own experience and the “gooks” I had killed, and how satisfying it had felt at the time. Hatred became the driving force.
Sure, it’s a racist word. I’d wager you wouldn’t hesitate to resort to racism if those killing your friends were of another race. There were times I struggled with the word myself, remembering Hachiro, my Japanese study partner in college. He was nisei, second-generation Japanese-American. One night, after finishing a particularly difficult test, we had been drinking and he told me about how his family had been held in an internment camp after Pearl Harbor. He never went into detail but they had undoubtedly been subjected to racist and hate-filled taunts during their confinement.
I returned the journal to the shoebox and picked up the packet of letters. They were tied together with a narrow pale blue ribbon in a neat bow. The letters were addressed to my father and I recognized the return address as my mother’s in Joplin, where she was living at the time. I looked at the cancellation stamp on the top one and saw it was March of '43.
That sparked a memory of my time in ‘Nam and the letters I had gotten from Karen and how intimate and endearing they had been. For that reason I saved them. Now looking at the blue ribbon which tied these letters together I was mystified. It would be uncharacteristic of my father to use a ribbon to bind the letters. He would more likely use a rubber band, a piece of string or even a shoelace. Did that ribbon hold some significance of which only they were aware? Staring at the packet, I realized that the blue ribbon said it all: my parents’ past life was theirs. It seemed certain there was an intimacy in those letters to which I was not entitled, as if I were still a boy. I returned the packet to the shoebox, covered it with the Buster Brown top and returned it to the footlocker.
I attempted to pull together my confused emotions. These days, all our correspondence with Chris was by email. A painful thought occurred: were Allison’s emails to him being deleted and gone forever? Did he print them and save them? Even then, I wondered, how could Times New Roman compare to Karen’s elegant left-handed cursive script on her cream-colored stationary? Perhaps the words in the emails were enough.
“Gary, are you up here?” Meg’s question and her sudden appearance startled me. She’d entered through the trap door at the other end of the attic and only her head and shoulders were visible.
“Yeah,” I answered. “I’ll be down in a minute.”
“You okay?” she asked, concern in her voice.
“I’m fine. I’ll be down in a minute.”
“Okay. Just wondering why the ladder was down. No rush. Take your time.” She disappeared down through the attic door.
Time: A concept which puzzles and troubles us when we try to analyze its nuances too deeply. Replacing the tray and closing the trunk, I began my return to the wake. It became all too evident to me that I would ask my family for the footlocker. In time I might ask my mother if she wanted the packet of letters tied with the mysterious powder-blue ribbon.
I made my way back to the attic ladder, pulling the chain to turn off the light as I passed. My descent was met with an urgent tug at my pants leg.
“Gramps, you’re missing all the fun.” Below me was my four-year-old grandson Kevin. What fun could a boy find on a day when his great-grandfather had been buried?
“And what fun is that,” I asked, hardly able to contain an unwarranted harshness centered on my own sense of loss as I glowered at him from the ladder.
“Farley,” he said, looking up at me with a big loopy grin on his face.
“Farley?” I asked, hoping the boy would overlook my grumpiness as I finished my descent, stepped off the ladder and returned it to its overhead position.
“Farley, he’s so funny. Silly dog. I think he wants to be everybody’s friend.”
“Farley?” I asked again with a crusty curt tone. He tugged at my sleeve pulling me toward the living room. This is about a dog? I thought in disbelief.
“There,” he answered, pointing to a terrier mix which I had to admit looked cute even with his back to us. He sat at the entrance to the living room, looking keenly from one person to another as they talked, seemingly catching snippets of conversation. Apparently, he had taken a break from whatever shenanigans Kevin had found so entertaining.
“Farley?” I asked for the third time, hardly able to hide my irritation. At the sound of his name, the mutt’s ears perked up and he looked at me over his shoulder with black-button eyes and smiled a doggy smile. His innocence and ignorance of the day’s gravity forced a grin out of me in spite of myself.
“He is cute. Is he yours?” My thought was that Allison may have gotten him the dog to provide some comfort during his father’s absence.
“Nah, Farley belongs to everybody and nobody,” was Kevin’s childish Zen-like answer.
“That’s fine, Kevin,” I said as his nonsensical reply brought me back to the sorrowful reality of the day. There seemed little reason to point out that if he knew the dog’s name it must belong to someone. Tired and brooding, I entered the living room and dropped into the easy chair where Harry’s wife had been sitting earlier. I hardly had time to take a breath before Farley was in my lap.
“Farley. Farley!” I chastened in a sharp voice that made me feel even more the curmudgeon. A quick self-conscious glance around the room assured me no one had noticed.
Ignoring me, he curled up into a comforting light brown ball in my lap in less time than it had taken to admonish him. Once settled, he chuffed contentedly as if certain he had found where he felt he belonged.
I smiled, and stroked his fawn-colored curly fur as I fought the tears that wanted to well up. “Farley, you’re so wise.”
