Warday

I remember, during the famine, I would have to go out and barter funerals for food. Now isn’t that a hell of a note? But I was watching my own kids die. And Jennine did die, that’s my wife.

That was the flu as much as the hunger. And Ed’s not right, we don’t know why. He’s gone what they call catatonic, and the GP is saying it’s against the law for him to have hospital care. I guess it won’t be long before we put that boy to sleep. The hospital’ll do it for free since he’s on the triage due to mental incompetence. Or I could take him to a private practitioner. That death clinic over on Eleventh, the one called Sunshine House, is real nice. They have a live country-and-western group that does your favorite song, and you just go to sleep. “She’ll Be Comin’ ’Round the Mountain” would be for Ed. He used to love that song back before the war.

Jennine’d sing it to him at bedtime, and he’d laugh his little head off. Then I’d give him to Weedon’s. I couldn’t do the funeral myself. I remember that boy used to bring me my lunch for a quarter when he was on holidays. Oh Lord. He was a line kid. Full of imagination and fun. Getting good at Little League.

I’ve gotten real close to the Good Lord. I pray all the time. My whole heart and mind is a prayer. I’m burying more than people now, I’m burying a way of life. Praise the Lord. I am burying a world that was so fair.

Whitley Dallas, October 10, 1993, 2:15 A.M

I am home again, sitting at the kitchen table with my notebook and a fresh pencil. It is two o’clock in the morning. I arrived home at nine, but so far I haven’t been able to sleep. Jim came back with me but he didn’t stay long. He has nothing like this, and must find it hard to be with another man’s family. The worst losses are those without end, where there is only the question. His own wife is such a loss.

I have seen my wife and son to bed, and now I am alone.

Being on the road so long has made me sharply aware of ordinary household things: the refrigerator’s humming, the kitchen clock’s ticking. Through the window above the sink I can see the moon hanging low in the sky. The night is rich and warm and fills me with expectancy. There is a faint smell of flowers on the air.

I have in my mind’s eye a picture of Anne on the front porch when I came home. At nine the shadows were already dense. I could see the white of her head against the red brick wall of the house. She did not cry out, but came quickly across the lawn, through the tall grass. Then she was standing before me, and I opened my arms and took her in them. She uttered a long sound, soft, and then laid her head against my chest. When she raised her eyes to look at me, I kissed her.

I gave her the little vase from our apartment. She held it a long time, examining it in silence. When we went into the house she put it in a drawer, and I understand that.

That was hours ago. I look at the drawer beneath the kitchen counter, wondering if before Warday any object could ever have been charged with such a combination of remembrance and threat that it could neither be displayed nor discarded.

A mockingbird sings, leaves rustle. I respect how tine a moment the world can yet make. We have been in shattered years, but there is peace in our consciousness now. I saw it in the eyes of the ones we interviewed, heard it in their voices, felt it in the gentle shuffle of traveling America. We are not like we were before. Now our habit is more often to accept and heal rather than to reject and punish. Would things have been different if our postwar consciousness had, by some miracle, arisen before the war?

My son came up to us when we were still standing together in the front yard, and put a surprisingly big hand on my cheek.

“Dad,” he said, “we’re in good shape.”

“Good, Andrew,” I said, and I was glad to feel his name on my tongue. “Andrew. Anne.”

They fed me an enormous supper of fried chicken, green beans, biscuits, and, for dessert, egg custard. Afterward I took out my notebooks and read to them for a time of our experiences on the road. Anne and Andrew told me the chronicle of their life here at home.

The bus service into town is improved.

Andrew has started his sophomore year in high school.

The price of bread went up twice last week, so Anne is back to making her own.

I have eight orders for gardens, and I think I’d like to get back to that.

It was nearly midnight when we went to bed. I do not think I have ever felt anything as good as lying down beside my wife in the dark and feeling the softness and warmth of her.

I expected to fall into deep black sleep after our intimacy, but I did not. The voices of the road came back to me, all the words at once, softly, persistently possessing me.

I got up, stood looking long at the shadow of my wife in our bed, filled with an emotion so rich that it hurt. I went past my son’s room, listened to his heavy sleep, and then came down here to try to write this last little bit.