Morning Glory

Chapter 19

Calvin Purdy dropped Will at the end of his driveway.

"Thanks a million, Mr. Purdy."

"No thanks necessary, Will, not from a GI. You sure you don’t want me to take you the rest o’ the way on up’t the house?"

"No, sir, I was always partial to this little stretch of woods. Sounds good to walk through the quiet alone, if you know what I mean."

"Sure do, son. Ain’t no place prettier’n Georgia in May. You need any help with them crutches?"

"No, sir. I can manage." Leading with both feet, Will worked his way out of Calvin Purdy’s ’31 Chevrolet while Purdy retrieved Will’s duffel bag and brought it around, then laced it over Will’s shoulder.

"Be more’n happy to take your duffel up," Purdy repeated accommodatingly.

"’Preciate it, Mr. Purdy, but I kinda wanted to surprise Elly."

"You mean she doesn’t know you’re comin’?"

"Not yet."

"We-e-e-ll, then I understand why you want to go up alone… Corporal Parker." Grinning, Purdy extended his hand and gripped Will’s tightly. "Anytime I can give you a lift or be of any he’p, just holler. And welcome home."

After Purdy pulled away, Will stood for a moment, listening to the silence. No cannonade in the distance, no bullets thuppinginto the earth beside him, no mosquitos buzzing, no men screaming. All was silence, blessed May silence. The woods were in deep leaf, heavy green weighting down the branches. Beside the road a patch of wild chicory created a cloud of blue stars. Nearby a clump of wild clover startled, livid in the heat of its summer blush. Some creature had feasted on a smilax vine, spreading a scent like root beer in the air. A yellow warbler did a flight dance, landed on a branch and sang its seven clear, sweet notes, eyeing Will with head atilt.

Home again.

He moved up the driveway beneath the arch of branches that allowed the azure sky entry. He tipped his head and admired it, marveling that he need not cock an ear for the sound of distant engines, nor squint an eye in an effort to identify a wing shape or a rising red sun painted on a fuselage.

Forget it, Parker, you’re home now.

The driveway was soft, the air warm, his crutches poked holes in the red earth. They must’ve had rain recently. Rain. He’d never much cared for rain, not in his early life when he’d lived mostly in the open, certainly not on the Canal, where the damned rain was ceaseless, where it filled foxholes, turned tent camps to fetid quagmires, rotted the soles off sturdy leather boots and fostered mosquitos, malaria and a host of creeping fungi that grew between toes, inside ears and anyplace two skin surfaces touched.

I said, forget it, Parker!

The odd thing was, though he’d been Stateside for six months he still couldn’t acclimate to it. He still scanned the skies. Still listened for stealthy movement behind him. Still expected the telltale clack of two bamboo stalks rubbing. Still flinched at sudden noises. He closed his eyes and breathed deep. The air here had no mildewy smell, instead it held a tang of wild tansy which seemed familiar and welcoming and very native. During his drifting years whenever he’d caught a cold he’d brewed himself a cup of tansy tea, and once when he’d gashed his hand on a piece of rusty barbed wire he’d made a compress of it that cured the infection.

Walking up his own road amid the smells of tansy and smilax, he let the fact sink in: he was home for good.

At the sourwood tree he stopped, let his canvas duffel bag slip down and lowered his left foot to the ground. Real, solid ground, a little moist maybe, but American. Safe. Ground he’d shaped himself with a mule named Madam while a little boy sat and watched, and the boy’s mother brought red nectar and a baby brother down the lane in a faded red wagon.

He resisted the urge to drop his crutches and ease onto the bank where the grass was green-rich and wild columbine blossomed. Instead, he shouldered his bag and moved westward toward the opening in the trees where the clearing lay.

Reaching it, he paused in surprise. During his stretch in the South Pacific, when he’d pictured home, he often saw it as it had first been, a motley collection of scrap iron and chicken dung beside a teetering house patched with tin. What he saw today made him hold his breath and stand stone still in wonder.

Flowers! Everywhere, flowers… and all of them blue! Gay, uncivilized blossoms, clambering unchecked without a hint of order or precision. How like his Elly to sow wildly and let rain and sun-Will smiled-and all those years of chicken manure do the rest. He scanned the clearing. Blue-Lord a-mercy, he’d never seen so much blue! Flowers of every shade and tint of blue that nature had ever produced. He knew them all from his study of the bees.

Nearest the house tall Persian blue phlox bordered the porch, thick and high and tufted, giving way to Canterbury bells that bled from deepest royal purple to a pale violet-pink. At their feet began a rich spread of heliotrope in coiled blue-violet sprays. Against the east wall of the chicken house a clematis climbed a trellis of strings. There, too, began a carpet of long-stemmed cornflowers, as deep and true as the sky, continuing along the adjacent chicken-yard fence in a wall of royal color. At the shady border beneath the trees, pale violets began, giving way to deep-hued forget-me-nots which ranged in the open sun, meeting a spread of blue vervain. On the opposite side of the yard a wooden wagon wheel had been painted white and stood as a backdrop for a stand of regal larkspur which covered the blue spectrum from purple to indigo to palest Dresden. Before them, much shorter and more delicate, a patch of flax-flowers waved in the breeze on fernlike stems. Somewhere in the conglomeration purple petunias bloomed. Will could smell them as he moved up the path, which was bordered by fuzzy ageratum. Where that path led around the back of the house a new pergola stood, laden with morning glories, their bells lifted to heaven. Birds darted everywhere, a chirping cacophony. A ruby-throated hummingbird at the morning glories. Wrens lambasting him with music from the low branch of a crabapple tree, and appropriately enough, a pair of bluebirds near one of the gourds. Spotting them, he smiled, recalling Donald Wade placing the bluebird figurine on the windowsill for just this reason. Well, they had their bluebirds now.

And bees… everywhere, bees, gathering nectar and pollen from the sea of color they loved best, humming, lifting on jaconet wings to move to the next blossom and join their wing-music to that of the birds.

Only as he neared the house did Will find a ruddy splash. Several feet off the last porch step stood a washtub, painted white, bulging with cinnamon pinks so thick they cascaded over the sides-crimson and heliotrope and coral and rose-so fragrant they made his head light. On the porch steps lay a cluster of them, crushed, wilted. He picked them up, held them, smelled them, glanced around the clearing before depositing them where they’d been, carefully, as if they were the trappings of a religious ceremony.

He raised his eyes to the screen door, mounted the steps and opened the screen, expecting any moment to hear Elly or the kids call, "Who’s there?"

The kitchen was empty.

"Elly?" he called, letting his duffel bag slip from his shoulder.

In the answering silence wands of sunlight angled across the scrubbed floor and climbed the mopboard. The room smelled good, of bread and spice. On the table was a crocheted doily and a thick white crockery pitcher filled with a sampling of flowers from the yard; on the windowsill, the bluebird figurine. The room was neat, orderly, clean. His eyes moved to the cupboard where a white enamel cake pan was covered with a dishtowel. He lifted a corner of the cloth-bars, unfrosted, half-gone. He tucked a pinch into his mouth, then poked his head into the front room.

"Elly?"

Silence. Summer afternoon silence, stretching into Will’s very soul.

Their bedroom was empty. He stood in the doorway imbibing familiarities-the Madeira lace dresser set, a slipper-shaped dish holding bobby- and hair-pins, a stack of freshly folded diapers… the bed. It was not, he discovered, disappointing to arrive to an empty house. He’d had so little time alone. These minutes, reacclimating, seeped within his bones in a wholly healing way.

Neither was anyone in the boys’ room. The crib, he noted, had been moved in here.

Back in the kitchen he cut an enormous square of the moist golden bars and took a bite-honey, pecans, cloves and cinnamon. Mmmm… delicious. He anchored the remaining piece in his teeth and stumped to the door, then outside.

"Elly?" he bellowed from the top of the steps, pausing, listening. "Ellllleeeee?"

From beyond the barn a mule brayed as if objecting to being awakened. Madam. He headed that way, found the beast but no Elly. He checked the chicken coop-it was clean; the storage sheds-their doors were all closed; the vegetable garden, it was empty; and finally the backyard, passing under the pergola with its bonnet of morning glories. Nobody at the clothesline either.

With all these flowers and the warm temperatures, undoubtedly the honey would be running. He’d walk down the orchard to see, to pass the time reacquainting himself with the bees while waiting for Elly.

The earth wore a mantle of heavy grass but he made his way easily with the crutches, following the overgrown double-trail compacted long ago by Glendon Dinsmore’s Steel Mule. Everything was as he remembered, the hickories and oaks as green as watermelon rind, the katydids fiddling away in the tall redtop grass, the dead branch shaped like a dog’s paw, and, farther along, the magnolia with the oak growing from its crotch. He topped a small rise and there lay the orchard on the opposite hill, steeping in the warm May sun, smelling faintly of other years’fermented fruit and the flowering weeds and wildings that bordered the trees and surrounding woods. He let his eyes wander appreciatively over the squat trees-peach, apple, pear and quince, marching around the east-sloping hill as if in formation. And along the south edge, the hives, rimmed in red and blue and yellow and green, as he’d painted them. And halfway down…a… a woman? Will’s head jutted. Was it? In a veiled hat and trousers? Filling the saltwater pans? Naw, it couldn’t be! But it was! A woman, working in fat yellow farmer gloves that met the cuffs of one of his old blue chambray shirts whose collar was buttoned tightly and turned up around her jaws. Toting two buckets in the boys’ wagon. Bending to dip the water with a tin dipper and pour it into the low, flat pans. A woman-his wife-tending the bees!

He smiled and felt a surge of love strong enough to end the war, could it have been harnessed and channeled. Jubilantly, he raised a hand and waved. "Elly?"

She straightened, looked, looked harder, lifted the veil up, shaded her eyes… and finally the shock hit.

"Will!" She dropped the dipper and ran. Flat-out, arms and feet churning like steel drivers. "Will!" The hat bounced off and fell but she ran on, waving a yellow glove. "Will, Will!"

He gripped his crutches and stumped toward her, fast, hard, reaching, his body swinging like a Sunday morning steeple bell. Smiling. Feeling his heart clubbing. His eyes stinging. Watching Elly race toward him while the boys spilled out of the woods and ran, too, taking up the call, "Will’s home! Will! Will!"

They met beside a rangy apple tree with a force great enough to send one crutch to the ground and Will, too, had she not been there to clasp him. Arms, mouths, souls combined once again while bees droned a reunion song and the sun poured down upon a soldier’s hat lying on the verdant ground. Tongues and tears, and two bodies yearning together amid a rush of kisses-deep, hurried, unbelieving kisses. They clung, choked with emotion, burying their faces, smelling one another-Velvo shaving cream and crushed cinnamon pinks-joined mouths and tongues to taste each other once more. And for them the war was over.

The boys came pelting-"Will! Will!"-and Lizzy P. toddled out of the woods crying, left behind.

"Kemo sabe!Sprout!" Will bent stiffly to hug them against his legs, circling them both in his arms, kissing their hot, freckled faces, clasping them close, smelling them, too-sweaty little boys who’d been playing in the sun long and hard. Elly warned, "Careful for Will’s leg," but the hugging continued in quartet, with her arms around Will even as he greeted the boys, everybody kissing, laughing, teetering, while down the lane Lizzy stood in the sun, rubbing her eyes and wailing.

"Why didn’t you tell us you were comin’?"

"I wanted to surprise you."

Elly wiped her eyes on the thick gloves, then yanked them off. "Oh, lorzy, what am I doin’ with them still on?"

"Come here." He snagged her waist, kissed her again amid the scrambling boys, who still had him shackled and were peppering him with news and questions: "Are you stayin’ home?… We got kittens… Wow, is this your uniform?… I got vacation… Did you kill any Japs?… Hey, Will, Will… guess what…"

For the moment both Elly and Will were oblivious to the pair. "Oh, Will…" Her eyes shone with joy, straight into his. "I can’t believe you’re back. How is your leg?" She suddenly remembered. "Here, boys, back off and let Will sit. Can you sit on the grass-is it okay?"

"It’s okay." He lowered himself stiffly and breathed in a great gulp of orchard air.

Down the lane Lizzy continued bawling. Donald Wade tried on Will’s garrison cap, which covered his eyebrows and ears. "Wow!" he crowed. "Lookit me! I’m a Marine!"

"Lemme!" Thomas reached. "I wanna wear it!"

"No, it’s mine!"

"Ain’t neither-I get it, too!"

"Boys, go get your sister and bring her here."

They dashed off like puppies after a ball, Donald Wade in the lead, wearing the hat, Thomas in pursuit.

Elly sat on her knees beside Will, her arms locked around his neck. "You look so good, all tan and pretty."

"Pretty!" He laughed and rubbed her hip.

"Well, prettier’n me in these durn britches and your old shirt." They couldn’t quit touching each other, looking at each other.

"You look good to me-good enough to eat."

He tasted her jaw, nipping playfully. She giggled and hunched a shoulder. The giggling subsided when their gazes met, leading to another kiss, this one soft, unhurried, unsexual. A solemnization. When it ended he breathed the scent of her with his eyes still closed.

"Elly…" he prayed, in thanksgiving.

She rested her hands on his chest and gave the moment its due.

At length they roused from their absorption with one another and he asked, "So, what’re you doing out here?"

"Tendin’ your bees."

"So I see. How long’s this been goin’ on?"

"Since you been gone."

"Why didn’t you tell me in your letters?"

"’Cause I wanted to surprise you, too!"

There were a thousand things he wanted to say, as a poet might say them. But he was an ordinary man, neither glib nor eloquent. He could only tell her, quietly, "You’re some woman, you know that?"

She smiled and touched his hair-it was long again, streaky yellow, bending toward his face just enough to please her. She rested her elbows on his shoulders and wrapped both arms around his head and simply held him, bringing to him again the scent of crushed cinnamon pinks from her skin. He buried his nose in her neck.

"Mercy, you smell good. Like you been rollin’ in flowers."

She laughed. "I have. I didn’t like the mint, but your pamphlets said cinnamon pinks worked just as good so I smeared myself with them. Guess what, Will?" Exhilarated, she backed up to see his face, leaving her arms twined about his neck.

"What?"

"The honey is runnin’."

He let his eyelids droop, let his lips soften suggestively and closed both hands upon her breasts, hidden between them. "Y’ damned right it is, darlin’. Wanna feel?"

Her blood rushed, her heart pounded and she felt a glorious spill deep within.

"More than anything," she whispered, nudging his lips, but the children were near so he sat back with his hands flattened against the hot grass while she angled her head, tasted him shallow and deep. He opened his mouth and remained unmoving as her tongue played upon his in a series of teasing plunders. He returned the favor, washing her sweet mouth with wet kisses, sucking her lower lip.

"What you guys doin’?" Donald Wade stood beside them, holding Lizzy P. on his hip while Thomas approached, wearing Will’s hat.

Leaving her arms across Will’s collarbones, Elly squinted over her shoulder. "Kissin’. Better get used to it, ’cause there’s gonna be a lot of it goin’ on around here." Unrattled, she dropped down beside her man on the grass, raising her hands for the baby. "C’m ’ere, sugar. Come see daddy. Well, goodness gracious, all those tears-did you think we all run off and left you?" Chuckling, she brought the baby’s cheek against her own, then set her down and began cleaning up Lizzy’s tearful face while the little girl trained a watchful stare on Will. The boys plopped down, doing the things that big brothers do. Thomas took Lizzy’s palm and bounced it. "Hi, Lizzy." Donald Wade brought his eyes down to the level of hers and talked brightly. "This’s Will, Lizzy. Can you say, Daddy? Say, Daddy, Lizzy." Then, to Will, "She only talks when she wants to."

Lizzy didn’t say Daddy, or Will. Instead, when he took her, she pushed against his chest, straining and twisting back for Elly, beginning to cry again. In the end he was forced to relinquish her until she grew used to him again.

"The orchard looks good. Did you have the trees sprayed?"

"Didn’t have ’em sprayed, I did it myself."

"And the yard, why that’s the prettiest thing I’ve seen in years. You do all that?"

"Yup. Me’n the boys."

"Mama, let me put seeds in the holes!" piped up Thomas.

"Good boy. Who built the archway for the morning glories?"

"Mama."

Elly added, "Me’n Donald Wade, didn’t we, honey?"

"Yeah! An’ I pounded the nails and everything!"

Will put on a proper show of enthusiasm. "You did! Well, good for you."

"Mama said you’d like it."

"And I do, too. Walked into the yard and figured I was in the wrong place."

"Did you really?"

Will laughed and pressed Donald Wade’s nose flat with the tip of a finger.

They all fell quiet, listening to the drone of bees and the wind’s breath in the trees around them. "You can stay now, can’t you?" Elly asked quietly.

"Yes. Medical discharge."

Keeping one arm around Lizzy’s hip, she found Will’s fingers in the grass behind them and braided them with her own. "That’s good," she said simply, running a hand down Lizzy’s hot hair while her eyes remained on her husband’s face, tanned to a hickory brown, compellingly handsome above the tight collar and tie of his uniform. "You’re a hero, Will. I’m so proud of you."

His lips twisted and he chuckled self-consciously. "Well, I don’t know about that."

"Where’s your Purple Heart?"

"Back at the house in my duffel bag."

"It should be right here." She lay a hand flat against his lapel, then slipped it underneath because she found within herself the constant need to touch him. She felt his heartbeat, strong and healthy against her fingertips, and recalled the hundreds of images she’d suffered, of bullets drilling him, spilling his blood on some distant jungle floor. Her precious, dear Will. "Miss Beasley told the newspaper about it and they put an article in. Now everybody knows Will Parker is a hero."

His look grew pensive, fixed on a distant hive. "Everybody in that war is a hero. They oughta give a Purple Heart to every GI out there."

"Did you shoot anybody, Will?" Donald Wade inquired.

"Now, Donald Wade, you mustn’t-"

"Yes, I did, son, and it’s a pretty awful thing."

"But they were bad guys, weren’t they?"

Will’s haunted gaze fixed on Elly, but instead of her he saw a foxhole and in it six inches of water and his buddy, Red, and a bomb whistling down out of the sky turning everything before him scarlet.

"Now, Donald Wade, Will just got back and you’re pepperin’ him with questions already."

"No, it’s okay, Elly." To the child he said, "They were people, just like you and me."

"Oh."

Donald Wade grew solemn, contemplating the fact. Elly rose from her knees and said, "I have to finish filling the water pans. It won’t take me long."

She kissed Will’s left eyebrow, drew on her farmer gloves and left the children with Will while she headed back to work, turning once to study her husband again, trying to grasp the fact that he was back for good.

"I love you!" she called from beside a gnarled pear tree.

"I love you, too!"

She smiled and spun away.

The children examined Will’s uniform-buttons, chevrons, pins. Lizzy grew less cautious, toddling around in the grass. The sun beat down and Will removed his blouse, laid it aside and stretched out supine, shutting his eyes against the brightness. But the sun on his closed eyelids became scarlet. Blood scarlet. And he saw it happen all over again-Red, scrambling on his belly across a stretch of kunai grass beside the Matanikau River, suddenly freezing in the open while from the opposite shore enemy.25 calibers cracked like oxwhips, submachine guns thundered, and a ranging grenade launcher sent its deadly missiles closer and closer. And there lay poor Red, stretched flat with no cover, facedown, shaking, biting the grass, halted by an unholy terror such as a lucky Marine never knows. Will saw himself scrambling back out amid the strafing, heard the bullets’ deceptively soft sigh as they sailed over his head, the dull thud as they struck behind him, left, right. The earth rained dirt upward as a grenade hit fifteen feet away. "Christ, man, you gotta get outta here!" Red lay unmoving, unable. Will felt again his own panic, the surge of adrenalin as he grabbed Red and hauled him backward through mud and tufts of uprooted grass into a foxhole with six inches of muddy water-"Stay here, buddy. I’m going to get them sonsabitches!"-then going over the top again, teeth clenched, crawling on his elbows while the tip of his bayonet swung left and right. Then, overhead, the planes wheeling out of nowhere, the warning whistle, dropping, and behind him, Red, in the foxhole where the bomb fell.

Will shuddered, opened his eyes wide, sat up. Beside him the children still played. At the hive openings bees landed with their gatherings. Elly was returning with the wagon in tow, the two empty metal buckets clanging like glockenspiels as the wheels bumped over the rough turf. He blinked away the memory and watched his wife come on in her masculine apparel. Don’t think about Red, think about Elly.He watched until her shadow slipped across his lap, then raised a hand and requested quietly, "Come here," and when she fell to her knees, held her. Just held her. And hoped she’d be enough to heal him.

Their lovemaking that night was golden.

But when it was over Elly sensed Will’s withdrawal from more than her body.

"What’s wrong?"

"Hm?"

"What’s wrong?"

"Nothing."

"Your leg hurt?"

"Not bad."

She didn’t believe him, but he wasn’t a complainer, never had been. He reached for his Lucky Strikes, lit one and lay smoking in the dark. She watched the red coal brighten, listened to him inhale.

"You want to talk about it?"

"About what?"

"Anything-your leg… the war. I think you purposely kept the bad stuff out of your letters for my sake. Maybe you wanna talk about it now."

The red arc of the cigarette going to his mouth created a barrier more palpable than barbed wire.

"What’s the sense in talking about it? I went to war, not an ice cream social. I knew that when I joined up."

She felt shut out and hurt. She had to give him time to open up, but tonight wouldn’t be the night, that was certain. So she searched for subjects to bring him close again.

"I’ll bet Miss Beasley was surprised when she saw you."

He chuckled. "Yeah."

"Did she show you the scrapbook of newspaper clippings she kept about all the action in the South Pacific?"

"No, she didn’t mention that."

"She clipped articles only about the areas where she thought you might be fighting."

He chuckled soundlessly.

"You know what?"

"Hm?"

"I think she’s sweet on you."

"Oh, come on, she’s old enough to be my grandma."

"Grandmas got feelings, too."

"Lord."

"And you know what else? I think you kind of feel the same."

He felt himself blush in the dark, recalling times when he’d purposely charmed the librarian. "Elly, you’re crazy."

"Yeah, I know, but it’s perfectly okay with me. After all, you never had a grandma, and if you wanna love her a little bit it don’t take nothin’away from me."

He tamped out his cigarette, drew her against his side and kissed the top of her head. "You’re some woman, Elly."

"Yeah, I know."

He pulled back and looked down into her face, forgetting momentarily the haunting visions that sprang into his mind uninvited. He laughed, then Elly snuggled her cheek against his chest once more, and went on distracting him. "Anyway, Miss Beasley was wonderful while you were gone, Will. I don’t know what I would’ve done without her-and Lydia, too. Lydia and I got to be such good friends. And you know what? I never really had a friend before." She mused before continuing. "We could talk about anything…" She ruffled the hair on his chest and added, "I’d like to have her and the kids out sometime so you can get to know her better. Would that be all right with you, Will?"

She waited, but he didn’t answer.

"Will?"

Silence.

"Will?"

"What?"

"Haven’t you been listening?"

He removed his arm and reached for another cigarette. She’d lost him again.

There was no doubt about it, Will was different. Not only the limp, but the lapses. They happened often in the days that followed, lengthy silences when he became preoccupied with thoughts he refused to share. An exchange would become a monologue and Elly would turn to find his eyes fixed on the middle distance, his thoughts troubled, miles away. There were other changes, too. At night, insomnia. Often she’d awaken to find him sitting up, smoking in the dark. Sometimes he dreamed and talked in his sleep, swore, called out and thrashed. But when she’d awaken him and encourage, "What is it, Will? Tell me," he’d only reply, "Nothing. Just a dream." Afterward he’d cling to her until sleep reclaimed him and his palms would be damp even after they finally fell open.

He needed time alone. Often he went down to the orchard to ruminate, to sit watching the hives and work through whatever was haunting him.

The smallest sounds set him off. Lizzy knocked her milk glass off the high chair one day and he rocketed from his chair, exploded and left the house without finishing his meal. He returned thirty minutes later, apologetic, hugging and kissing Lizzy as if he’d struck her, bringing by way of apology a simple homemade toy called a bull-roarer which he’d made himself.

He spent a full hour with the three children that afternoon, out in the yard, spinning the simple wooden blade on the end of the long string until it whirled and made a sound like an engine revving up. And, as always, after being with the children, he seemed calmer.

Until the night they had a thunderstorm at three A.M. An immense clap of thunder shook the house, and Will sprang up, yelling as if to be heard above shelling, "Red! Jesus Christ, R-e-e-e-e-e-d!"

"Will, what is it?"

"Elly, oh God, hold me!"

Again, she became his lifeline, but though he trembled violently and sweated as if with a tropical fever, he held his horrors inside.

Physically, he continued healing. Within a week after his return he was restless to walk without crutches, and within a month, he followed his inclination. He loved the bathtub, took long epsom salts soaks that hastened the healing, and always eagerly accepted Elly’s offers to scrub his back. Though he’d been ordered by Navy doctors to have checkups biweekly, he shunned the order and took over tending the bees even before he discarded the crutches, and went back to his library job in his sixth week home, without consulting a medic. His hours there were the same as before, leaving his days free, so he painted and posted a sign at the bottom of their driveway- USED AUTO PARTS & TIRES-and went into the junk business, which brought in a surprising amount of steady money. Coupled with his library salary, government disability check and the profit from the sale of eggs, milk and honey, which was constantly in demand now that sugar was heavily rationed, it brought their income up to a level previously unheard of in either Will’s or Elly’s life.

The money was, for the most part, saved, for even though Will still dreamed of buying Elly luxuries, the production of most domestic commodities had been halted long ago by the War Production Board. Necessities-clothing, food, household goods-were strictly rationed, at Purdy’s store, their point values posted on the shelves beside the prices. The same at the gas station, though Will and Elly were classified as farmers, so given more gas rationing coupons than they needed.

The one place they could enjoy their money was at the theater in Calhoun. They went every Saturday night, though Will refused to go if a war movie was showing.

Then one day a letter arrived from Lexington, Kentucky. The return address said Cleo Atkins. Elly left it propped up in the middle of the kitchen table and when Will came in, pointed to it.

"Somethin’ for you," she said simply, turning away.

"Oh…" He picked it up, read the return address and repeated, quieter, "Oh."

After a full minute of silence she turned to face him. "Aren’t you going to open it?"

"Sure." But he didn’t, only stood rubbing his thumb over the writing, staring at it.

"Why don’t you take it down to the orchard and open it, Will?"

He looked up with pain in his deep, dark eyes, swallowed and said in a thick voice, "Yeah, I think I’ll do that."

When he was gone, Elly sat down heavily on a kitchen chair and covered her face with her hand, grieving for him, for the death of his friend whom he couldn’t forget. She remembered long ago how he’d told her of the only other friend he’d ever had, the one who’d betrayed him and had testified against him. How alone he must feel now, as if every time he reached out toward another man, that friendship was snatched away. Before the war she would not have guessed the value of a friend. But now she had two-Miss Beasley and Lydia. So she knew Will’s pain at losing his buddy.

She gave him half an hour before going out to find him. He was sitting beneath an aged, gnarled apple tree heavy with unripe fruit, the letter on the ground at his hip. Knees up, arms crossed, head lowered, he was the picture of dejection. She approached silently on the soft grass and dropped to her knees, putting her palms on his forearms, her face against his shoulder. In ragged sobs, he wept. She moved her hands to his heaving back and held him lovingly while he purged himself. At last he railed, "Jesus, Elly, I k-killed him. I d-dragged him back to that f-foxhole and left him th-there and the n-next thing I knew a b-bomb hit it d-dead center and I t-t-turned around and s-saw his r-red h-hair flyin’in ch-chunks and-"

"Shh…"

"And I was screamin, Red!… Re-e-e-d!" He lifted his face and screamed it to a silent sky, screamed it so long and loud the veins stood out like marble carvings along his temples, up his neck and above his clenched fists.

"You didn’t kill him, you were trying to save him."

Rage replaced his grief. "I killed my best friend and they gave me a fucking Purple Heart for it!"

She could have argued that the Purple Heart was justly earned, in a different battle, but she could see this was no time for reasoning. He needed to voice his rage, work it out like pus from a festering wound. So she rubbed his shoulders, swallowed her own tears and offered the silent abeyance she knew he needed.

"Now his fianceé writes-God, how he loved her-and says, It’s okay, Corporal Parker, you mustn’t blame yourself." He dropped his head onto his arms again. "Well, doesn’t she see I got to blame myself? He was always talkin’ about how the four of us were g-gonna meet after the w-war and we’d maybe buy a car and go on v-vacation someplace together, maybe up in the Smoky Mountains where it’s-it’s c-cool in the s-summer and him and me c-could go-go f-fish-" He turned and threw himself into Elly’s arms, propelled by the force of anguish. He clasped her, burrowing, accepting her consolation at last. She held him, rocked him, let his tears wet her dress. "Aw, Elly-Elly-g-goddamn the war."

She held his head as if he were no older than Lizzy, closed her eyes and grieved with him, for him, and became once again the mother/wife he would always need her to be.

In time his breathing grew steadier, his embrace eased. "Red was a good friend."

"Tell me about him."

"You want to read the letter?"

"No. I read enough letters when you were gone. You tell me."

He did. Calmly this time, what it had really been like on the Canal. About the misery, the fear, the deaths and the carnage. About the "Last Supper" on board The Argonaut,steak and eggs in unlimited supply to fill a man’s gut before he hit the beach expecting to have it shot out; about boarding a rubber raft in a pounding surf that roared so loud in the limber holes of the sub that no man could be heard above it; about that bobbing ride over deadly coral that threatened to slash the rubber boats and drown every man even before they reached the Japanese-infested shore; about arriving wet and staying so for the next three months; about watching your fleet chased off by the enemy, leaving you cut off from supplies indefinitely; about charging into a grass hut with your finger cocked and watching human beings fly backwards and drop with the surprise still on their faces; about learning what three species of ants are edible while you lay on your belly for two days with a sniper waiting in a tree, and the ants beneath your nose become your dinner; about the Battle of Bloody Ridge; about watching men lay in torment for days while flies laid eggs in their wounds; about eating coconuts until you wished the malaria would get you before the trots did; about the twitch of a human body even after it’s dead. And finally, about Red, the Red he’d loved. The live Red, not the dead one.

And when Will had purged himself, when he felt drained and exhausted, Elly took his hand and they walked home together through the late-afternoon sun, through the orchard, through the flower-trimmed pergola, to begin the thankless job of forgetting.