Butterfly's Shadow - Lee Langley [112]
‘We’re proud of you, son. Welcome home.’
Joe went ahead of Nancy up the stairs – the fifth tread still creaked with that sound like a parrot’s squawk, the banister was ridged with wood-grain under his fingertips the way he remembered. He opened the door to his room: it was dustfree and smelled of wax polish and lavender; all his things in place, smooth white sheets on the bed. He felt a squeezing sensation in his chest, an unaccustomed pricking behind his eyes.
‘You didn’t change a thing.’
He threw his bag on the bed and looked around.
‘Funny, I remember it smaller. I’ve slept in some pretty cramped places since I left here.’
He stretched out on the bed and said again, wonderingly, ‘Nothing’s changed.’
‘You’ve changed,’ she said.
She remembered when he left for the internment camp they embraced and he touched her cheek in a brief gesture of goodbye; smooth fingers, the hand of a boy who spent his days in the classroom or the sunshine, nails clean, skin lightly tanned, faint golden hairs on the back of his wrist. The hand she held in hers now was hard, seemed bigger, the nails ragged, fingers rough. A jagged line like a badly stitched repair ran across the back of his hand, up his arm, a scar where shrapnel had torn the flesh. He too was scarred. For a moment she was unable to speak, swallowing, patting his damaged hand. Finally she asked about France . . .
In the Vosges, he said, like a lecturer offering a statistic, life expectancy was seventeen days . . .
He’s screaming for a stretcher for Otishi, man here needs a stretcher. Through the cacophony of guns and obscenities, shouted commands order him on: dead men don’t get stretchers. The attack continues. Men stumble as they run, treading the pulpy bodies of the fallen underfoot. And the Texans are rescued; the mission is pronounced a success.
‘Tell me about France,’ Nancy said, again. He shook his head. He brushed his hand along the line of books above the bed. ‘Nance, you remember Whitman: “I play not marches for accepted victors only—”.’ She joined in, her voice chiming with his, ‘“I play marches for conquer’d and slain persons”.’
‘Right. But then he says he plays also for the generals. The generals? Assholes like Dahlquist and Mark Clark and MacArthur, who sent men to die while they made notes for their memoirs? March for the generals? Shit.’
He had not intended to burden her with these thoughts.
‘You know what we dreamed of ? Over there? A good cup of coffee.’
‘Coming up,’ she said.
As he released her hand, he saw she was wearing a ring: a broad band of gold delicately chased and enamelled with dark blue. He touched it lightly.
‘I never saw this before.’
‘It was a goodbye present. From a friend.’
‘Nice.’
She went carefully down the steep staircase. When he had rested, returned to normal life, there would be time to talk about his future: the GI Bill gave men the chance to plan, make choices – a privilege the vets never had.
In the kitchen she slipped the ring from her finger and studied the words engraved on the inside: Il buon tempo verrà. The good time will come.
‘The ring is old,’ Charles had told her. ‘I had the words engraved. It’s what Shelley had on his Italian ring.’
She had only once broken their pact of inhabiting a bubble sealed from the world’s woes: when she received the letter from Joey telling her he had enlisted, was on his way to the Front. She was in tears when Charles arrived and he had comforted her, listening while she wept and talked, not only of Joey in the war zone, but of Ben, the beautiful swimmer who drowned in the scummy waters of the Anacostia.
He produced a folded handkerchief, carefully wiping away her tears.
‘We had a march in England a few years ago. Two thousand miles, Jarrow to London; men demanding work. The younger ones are probably at the Front now.’
Charles was rarely direct; his job not spelled out, his explanations oblique, hazy. Things were ‘complicated’ or ‘difficult’ in his life, even his departure to do with ‘things’ that involved the Embassy. Not for discussion. But that day he was different,