A crisp wind was blowing when I left the house this morning, stinging my cheeks like aftershave, rustling the already fallen leaves that lay between me and the Buick. It felt great to be alive, a part of all things beautiful. I gave Catherine a kiss and wished her luck. She was to introduce a new business to her investment club today, a small banking software company with little debt and strong sales. She told me tonight that the group voted to purchase 100 shares on her recommendation, after which the stock closed the day a quarter-point higher. I smiled at the news without having to try, congratulating her with another kiss, but she knew right off that something was troubling me. She didn't ask. She knows me too well, so she'll wait until I'm ready to talk. I'll tell her soon, maybe even show her before she hears about it from someone else. But not tonight. Tonight we celebrate! Beer and banking software!
Elizabeth Brower caught my ear just as I reached my car this morning. She and Silas are in their late seventies and live next door to us. Their three bedroom, brick ranch has a nice central vacuum system and polished hardwood floors. In the half-bath, just off the master bedroom, the medicine cabinet smells of menthol shaving lotion from the used razor blades Silas slips into the slot in the back panel, a handy disposal system engineered into all medicine cabinets many years ago. I'll bet the spent blades inside that wall are two feet deep.
I knew right off what Mrs. Brower wanted, so I laid my briefcase on the roof of the Buick and hurried next door. This time it was one of the light bulbs in her kitchen.
"It just popped right when I turned it on this morning," she told me excitedly. "It's a wonder I don't have glass all over the kitchen."
"It's only the filament, Mrs. Brower," I told her. "No danger of flying glass."
"See," she assured Silas, as if to say: I told you he would know.
At the kitchen table, Silas looked up from his coffee and newspaper, his eyes rolling, apologizing to me again for his wife.
Mrs. Brower had a sixty-watt bulb waiting for me on the kitchen counter, and a step ladder. I didn't really need the step ladder--at six-two I can reach the light easily enough--but I used it anyway, for the same reason I change her burned out bulbs--just to make her comfortable. She's terrified of electricity. Tricky stuff, and very dangerous! But since I sold vacuum cleaners while in college, that makes me an expert on how to change out a light bulb without electrocuting myself. At least that's her reasoning. Silas, a mere pharmacist by trade, would certainly burst into flames the minute he touched a light bulb.
"Now you be careful," Mrs. Brower said, as I stepped up on the first rung and began unscrewing the spent bulb.
"Yes, Ma'am," I answered, fighting the urge to suddenly stiffen, then vibrate madly. I thought of doing this not to scare or mock her, but to hear Silas laugh for a change and not be embarrassed for his wife.
I changed the bulb without incident and said my good-byes. As always, Mrs. Brower told me I was a "good boy" for changing out the bulb.
My son Dean was killed in Vietnam. He would have been forty-six-years-old this past May. I sometimes wonder, were Dean alive today, would I still see him as a "boy," just as Mrs. Brower sees me?
I pondered this briefly on my way to the office, as I drove past the cemetery. Out of habit, my eyes found Dean's marker, as they always do--fourth row past the gate, fifth stone back. The flowers Catherine and I placed on his grave two weeks ago were no longer visible, buried under thousands of red, yellow and orange maple leaves. On top of the marker, however, were a bunch of fresh flowers, arranged so the petals drooped over the top edge, kissing Dean's high school picture. I turned my eyes back to the road and thought of Michelle and the kids. They will be at Octoberfest tonight. Michelle and Dean were Morgan Grove High's Homecoming King and Queen. They had planned to marry after college, but Dean was called to service and was killed two weeks before his tour of duty was up.
Michelle married late in life, well after college and well into her career at the bank. Before they divorced, she and Mike had two children, the grandchildren Catherine and I might have had. Ava and Jake are sweet kids, almost teenagers now. Sometimes I find myself searching for fragments of Dean in their eyes or smiles or actions. That's how close he and Michelle were--two bodies, one spirit. Even now, it's hard to separate them. That's probably what came between her and Mike.
I drove on to the office, turning my thoughts to Dr. Cal Weymouth, a gentleman about five years my junior, though you'd never know by looking at us. Catherine says I look half my age, crediting my half-Cherokee grandmother for giving me my light beard and high cheekbones. I credit jazz saxophone, with an occasional splash of Polka, for keeping the gray hair and wrinkles to a minimum. Perhaps Catherine still sees in me a bit of the young man she met in college.
Cal is a widower, his wife having passed last Fall. He came to town a couple of months ago, saying he'd like to buy a retirement home. He's been staying at Stratford Inn, a stately old Victorian bed and breakfast just off the town square where he and Celeste used to stay when visiting. We have a standing appointment for every Friday morning. Mostly, we just drive around and talk about whatever comes to mind--storms of the past, the greatest plays in baseball history, or maybe fly fishing for trout on cloudy days. Occasionally we look at a house to justify our time together, but I can tell he's really not interested in buying. He'll probably just pull the covers up around himat Stratford Inn, dream of Celeste, and call it home from now on.
Dean was five years older than Millicent and seven years older than Brian. I guess if he and Brian had been closer in age, they might have spent more time together, playing catch, listening to Cardinal games on the radio, and sneaking out of the house before sunrise to go fishing. Instead, it was Dean and me. We used to stand on the bank of the Gasconade, casting our fly-lines upstream, then watch them float slowly past, waiting for that hit--all the while taking about storms of the past, the greatest plays in baseball history and fishing for trout on cloudy days. It wasn't the subject as much as it was the conversation, the camaraderie.
Dean, twelve-years-old, standing next to me on a cold, pre-sunrise morning, after twenty minutes of half-awake silence, says, "Listen, Dad. Hear that?" I listened and heard a slight rustling in the leaves behind us, probably a rabbit or squirrel. Then he says, "My butt finally caught up with us."
Laughing. Always laughing.
Cal was sitting on the oak bench outside my office when I arrived. With him was Ray Gathers. I've always considered Ray a friend, not a close friend, but a friend just the same. I sold him a small Cape Cod twenty-five years ago when he first moved to Morgan Grove. He paid cash for the home and spoke only a handful of words from the day we met until we closed on the property. After that, I would see him in town from time to time, always dressed like a retired stock broker in his black wing-tip shoes, gray suit and matching fedora. He might be picking up something at Brower's Drug or cashing a check at the bank, keeping to himself the whole time. He was a quiet man with quiet thoughts, choosing his words as if they were rationed. His loneliness seemed to fit him well, as if he preferred it that way, pitiful as it was to see him walking alone, his short legs moving like he spoke, hesitant and delicate, as if he were apologizing to the sidewalk before each step.
When our paths would cross, however, there was a distinct change in Ray's personality. His eyes would light up a bit, a faint smile would sneak across his face and he would walk a little more boldly, his head up, his eyes embracing mine as he greeted me warmly. He seemed eager for a conversation neither of us could jump-start; our hellos would lead to a few sputtering observations about the weather or the price of gasoline, then fizzle out with a "take care," and a "see you around." Still, I would have told anyone who asked that I knew Ray Gathers, because, well, there just didn't seem to be much to know about him. He was a simple man living a simple life.
I'm embarrassed to say, I didn't know Ray Gathers at all. Looking back now, it seems obvious: Ray Gathers wanted--no, he needed to pour his heart out to me. He just didn't know how or where to start.
The last business I had with Ray was ten years ago when he walked into my office and inquired about the old Colson Quarry, about six miles out of town, between here and Highway 54. The quarry had lain dormant since Colson Construction went bankrupt after completing the highway project back in the 50s. As far as I knew, no one wanted the quarry, much less had a use for it, so Ray asking me if it was for sale struck me as curious. I sat back and plopped my shoes up on my desk while I pondered his question and mine, then decided I wanted an answer to mine first.
"What do you want with that big hole in the ground, Ray? I mean, you can't stock it with fish--it won't hold water, for whatever reason. Not enough to amount to anything anyway." Ray didn't answer. "Besides," I went on, knowing my fish theory had missed by a mile, "it's been condemned by the state. According to them, it's not even fit to be a landfill, because of the drainage."
Ray scooted to the edge of his chair and mumbled something about a "new mint."
I dropped my feet to the floor, noting his serious expression. "Excuse me?" I said.
"I want it for my monument," he said.
I didn't ask any more questions. I mean, Lester Carlyle has in his study a copy of every record the Classics Record Club has ever produced, nearly a hundred thousand of them. He's got 33s pressed into shelves that line all four walls from floor to ceiling. You mention a song to him, like Fly Me To The Moon, and he can not only find it, he'll tell you how many times it's been recorded, who recorded it, and the length of each version. Then there's Miss Amesbury at the library, who has not only read every book under her charge, but has corrected, with a red pen, all the bad grammar and punctuation that somehow slipped past the publishers. So if Ray Gathers wanted to own a big hole in the ground for his monument, who was I to question it?
I helped him with the purchase, following reams and reams of red tape through a multi-leveled, bureaucratic maze, until, six months later, Ray Gathers owned a big hole in the ground.
After the closing, Ray promised I would be the first to see his monument once it was completed. Then that was the end of it; I never heard another word from him about it. I brought it up once while standing in line at the bank, but he said something under his breath that I didn't catch, his eyes avoiding mine as if he were embarrassed that someone else in line might overhear. So I dropped the subject and it never came up again. That is, until this morning, when I found him sitting with Cal Weymouth outside my office, sheepishly hugging one arm of the bench.
Cal rose as soon as I opened my car door. "Say, Paul," he said, "if you've got another appointment this morning, I can stop back later."
"No," I assured him. "We're still on." Then I looked at Ray and caught his eye. "Ray," I said, "how are you today? Something I can do for you?"
Ray rose slowly and seemed hesitant to speak with Cal present. "I just stopped by," he said. "To say hello. See how things were."
In twenty-five years, Ray Gathers never stopped by to "see how things were." Alarmed that something might be wrong, I excused myself from Cal and took Ray off a short distance to give us--him--some privacy. "Anything wrong, Ray?" I asked, genuinely concerned.
"It's done," he whispered, looking around me at Cal to make sure he didn't hear. "I finished it last night."
"Finished what?" I asked, honestly not knowing what he was talking about.
"The monument," he said, his small round eyes settling on mine and not straying.
I looked at my watch, trying not to show my frustration. My Friday mornings with Cal have become somewhat therapeutic, and giving that up to go traipsing off with Ray Gathers to look at whatever he had built in the bottom of his rock pit wasn't much of a trade off. I was a breath away from suggesting we do this some other time when I recalled that Ray promised me ten years ago that I would be the first to see his monument. He was proving to be a man of his word. I also recalled saying something like, "Sure, Ray. Love to see it. Just stop by anytime." Well, now it was my turn to prove that I, too, was a man of my word.
I apologized to Cal for having to cancel our appointment and offered to buy him lunch at Sandy's Three Squares Diner. It was my turn to buy, anyway.
All the way out to the quarry, Ray just sat there, staring straight out the window. I almost chuckled at one point, thinking if I hit a pot hole too hard he might just crumble and turn to dust right there in the passenger seat. Then my thoughts turned to "the man" sitting beside me and I felt a bit morose. All my years of knowing Ray Gathers and it never crossed my mind that he was passionate about anything. He wasn't married, had no children of whom he spoke, no hobbies--basically, no reason I could see for crawling out of bed each morning. I know that sounds cruel, but everyone needs a passion, a reason for facing the day. My passion is real estate and jazz. I'm also passionate about my family--spending time alone with Catherine, visits from my daughter Millicent and her family, my youngest Brian and his family, even Michelle, Ava and Jake. They all add to the pleasure of being alive. But Ray Gathers? He had no one close to him, no passion in his life, so far as I could see; he just didn't seem like the passionate kind.
Oh, sure, I could say, looking back, that he was passionate about this monument of his. But when he first told me about it, I disregarded it as a passing interest, something he may have thought about, but, in the end, would never see through to completion. Like my brother Stephen's sudden interest to play guitar at age sixty--two lessons and it was all over, his "dream" flat and dead like an old rusty E-string. Yet, here I was with Ray ten years after he first told me about his plan to build a monument, and he had seen it through. So he was passionate about something. Obviously, I had read him wrong.
When I rounded the last stand of maples to the quarry, I noticed a ten-foot fence around the perimeter. It was a simple chain-linked structure with rolled razor wire across the top. It reminded me of the type of fence one might see around a prison or concentration camp, except this one had a big hole where the buildings should be.
I sat in my car, looking through the windshield, through the fence, and across the vastness of the quarry. Ray's "monument" didn't rise above the rim of the rock walls; it was down in the quarry, which meant getting out of the car and walking up to the edge.
"Well," I said, smiling, wanting to get it over with, "let's take a look." He didn't smile, nod, or even look at me; he fumbled nervously with the handle until the door popped open.
I stood at the gate watching him try in desperation to slip the key into the padlock. Finally, I took the keys from his shaking hand and did it myself.
Together we walked toward the edge of the quarry, neither of us speaking. Ray was so nervous I thought his legs were going to buckle. My eyes were on him the last few steps, fearing he might stumble and topple over the edge, plummeting a hundred feet to his rocky death. Then he stopped and removed his fedora, as if we'd just stepped into a church. I turned my eyes to the quarry bottom and found myself staring at the most peculiar sight. My first reaction was one of indifference, then of utter contempt and outrage when Ray spoke.
"There are fifty-eight thousand, two-hundred and two of them," he said. "One for every boy and girl killed or missing in Vietnam."
On the quarry floor were Army helmets, not laid out in nice neat rows, running along the straight lines of the square quarry, but in a tall cluster, like bodies thrown into a mass grave without respect, tossed one on top of the other, every which way, until the pile peaked halfway up the quarry walls. All that was left to do now was shovel in the dirt, pat it down and walk away. Not even bother to mark it.
I thought I had moved past the pain, that I had somehow, over time, come to terms with Dean's passing. But there it was again, the same pain, gnawing at me with the same ferocity as the moment I first learned of his death. I almost threw up. People say that without really meaning it, but I literally had one hand on my stomach, the other over my mouth, knowing I was going to puke. I stood on wobbly legs, fighting to catch my breath, fighting to stay on my feet, fighting the urge to strike Ray Gathers for having the audacity to suggest he understood the pain of even one of those deaths. And to treat them with such disrespect . . .
"My son is down there."
His voice carried the words gently, laying them before me as one would an offering. That was when I saw Ray Gathers for the first time. I forgot my own pain; I felt ashamed. I never suspected, never even considered that Ray might be--or was even capable of--experiencing such pain. But his heavy expression was all too familiar as he stood next to me, silent, his eyes focused on the helmets, his mind no doubt somewhere in the past. Perhaps he was recalling, as I had so many times, the nervous smile of a young boy who just said good-bye to his father for the last time.
Whatever anger I felt toward Ray Gathers instantly turned to empathy. I was no longer looking at an odd, little, passionless man, I was beholding a father who had lost a son.
"When Stanley died, I was lost," he confided, his voice soft and distant. "Lost everything." He looked at me and tried to blink, but seemed afraid to close his eyes, even for an instant. "I didn't know what to do, where to go, so I came here, to Morgan Grove. Stanley told me in his letters about the people here, about the trees in Autumn." He looked around and a smile stole across his face. "He said when he got back home we should come here. So that's what I did. Sold the business, the home, everything, and moved. I just wanted a little peace. Wanted to feel close to my son."
"Your son, Stanley, he used to come here, to Morgan Grove?" I asked.
"He only heard stories." He smiled at me sadly and removed some tattered envelopes from inside his suit jacket. "Your son, Mr. Northbridge, Dean, he would tell the boys in his outfit about Morgan Grove when they got scared. Stanley said when Dean Northbridge talked about home it always made him feel better, made everyone feel better. He said sometimes it was easy to forget that life was still going on back home. Doesn't that sound like something a scared boy would say? He was scared, so scared."
Ray Gathers broke down and fell into my arms, and we both stood there sobbing like babies. So many nights I sat up alone, in the dark of the living room, looking out the picture window to the east, wondering if Dean was okay, if he was thinking of home, of Michelle, of me--or if he was he fighting for his life, automatic rifle barking out rounds while he lay in the mud, a bullet away from his last breath. I knew he was scared. I was scared.
"Why didn't you tell me?" I finally asked.
Ray pushed himself away, the first indication of any strength in the man. "It wouldn't have been fair. You lost your son and didn't need me to remind you of that. And that's just what I would have become, nothing but a grim reminder, a dark cloud taking the beauty right out of this place, making your life miserable. But I knew I would tell you someday. I knew I would have to."
"But why now?" I asked. "Why this?" I pointed to the thousands of helmets below.
"You've seen The Wall in Washington, D.C., Mr. Northbridge? Your son's name, right along with all the others?"
"Yes," I said. Catherine and I made the trip shortly after it was dedicated.
"It's been eating me up for years. I guess I finally had to let it out, even if it hurt you. That's why I wanted you to see this first, and tell you about your son and mine, so you wouldn't hate me for it, for making you feel the pain again. I certainly hope you don't hate me."
I could only shake my head "no."
"The Wall is a beautiful monument," he went on, almost as if defending it. "Very nice. It's a respectful tribute. The boys and girls--they deserve it. But people don't understand. If they've never been in combat--if they've never waited at home while someone they loved was--they don't understand. They can't! They see the names, carved neatly in straight lines. It's a sight, it really is. But it wasn't like that. It wasn't nice and tidy. It was ugly. It was horrible!" He pointed a trembling finger at the pile of helmets. "I want them to see. I want them to understand."
I laid my hand on Ray's shoulder, still not knowing what to say. Oh, sure, people will come, they will see his monument, and they will marvel at the sight. But will they feel like throwing up? Will their knees buckle? Will they have to struggle for their next breath? Probably not. Not unless they were there. Not unless they loved someone who was.
I wanted to tell Ray that he could have told me about his son, about the letters, about Dean. I would have welcomed the intrusion. I would have appreciated anything that allowed me another glimpse of my son, even if it was through someone else's eyes.
Ray gave me the letters. Maybe I'll read them tomorrow, after I rake leaves, before he stops by for dinner.
Millicent is coming by tomorrow morning with the grandkids. I'll rake the leaves into big piles and they'll run through them, having the time of their lives, scattering the foliage back out into the yard to be raked again. And I'll rake them again, without complaint, just as I did when Dean was young, stick-guns in hand, chasing dinosaurs through the mounds of red, yellow and orange. Forever young. Forever my little boy.
