The Signal Flame

by Andrew Krivak

  I know it, she said. Heard about your truck.

  Someone from the kitchen yelled, Order up, Ash!, and she nodded and walked off.

  She came back a few minutes later with eggs and bacon and coffee, and when they were finished and Bo asked for the check, she said, This one’s on Burne. You’re all set.

  It was just after ten when the tow truck from the garage dropped them off at Hollis’s yard. Bo was wondering how they would pass the time on those grounds when the flatbed from the mill pulled in. A kid Bo had hired in the summer was behind the wheel, and Bo asked him how he got down there so fast.

  I left last night, he said. Mr. Lamoreaux gave me directions and the keys to the truck, so I just got in and drove. I’d have been here sooner, but I stopped at a rest stop when I started weaving at about four.

  Bo cursed under his breath. All right, he said. Let’s get that saw loaded and tied down, then. You can sleep on the way home.

  They used a pallet jack and ramp to move the saw and got it onto the truck. Hollis helped, but not much. The kid tied it down and covered it with a tarp and secured the corners, and Bo gave Hollis the balance he owed him. Then all three got in the front seat of the flatbed, and Bo pulled out onto the road heading east.

  They called Hannah from the mill at seven o’clock that evening, and she drove over in the Dart and took them back to the farm. She had supper for them, and they sat down and ate. Afterward, Bo seemed to cast about for some way of recounting what he had found down there. He told his mother about the fat man and the saw he bought for the mill, the diner, and the way his truck sounded when he tried to turn it over after it had stalled out on the side of the road.

  Bo, she said, her tone short. Don’t give me the goddamn background stories. I want to know what the captain told you about Sam.

  She listened without a word as he told her what Grayson had said about the ambush when they left the village in Quang Tri. Nothing else. He took no more than a few minutes, and when he was done, Hannah turned to look at Ruth as if to check whether Bo had left anything out, but Ruth stared down at the table and said nothing.

  Is that it? Hannah asked.

  You wanted to know what happened, Bo said. That’s what the man getting shot at said happened.

  But he saw him? she said. Grayson saw Sam.

  Yes.

  I don’t mean earlier in the morning or when they set out. Or at a distance on the ground.

  She said this with some excitement. Not like she was trying to assuage her grief but like she was making a good argument, as if to herself. I mean that the last he knew, Sam was alive. Fighting.

  Yes, Bo said again.

  Hannah took a sip of her tea and looked disappointed that it had gone cold. She put it down and called Krasna, and when the dog came, she petted her head and said, Let’s go outside, girl. Then she stood and turned and went out the front door with the dog.

  Bo could hear the slats of the chair creak as she sat down, and he listened for the rumble of the rocker against the wood of the porch, but it never came.

  Will she be all right? Ruth asked.

  She won’t talk to us for a while, Bo said. Don’t take it personal. It’s just the way she works these things out.

  Days?

  Maybe. Is that going to bother you?

  No.

  Bo stood and put on his coat and reached into his pocket. Damn, he said.

  What’s wrong?

  I need to get home and to work in the morning, and I don’t have a truck anymore.

  Hop in the car, Ruth said. I’ll drive you.

  That’s all right. I can walk. It’ll be a nice night for a hike over the mountain. But if you could come by in the morning, I’d appreciate a lift to the mill.

  I’ll be there bright and early, she said, then leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. That’s for yesterday. And today.

  He put his head down and said to the floor, I was glad you came. When he looked up again, she was smiling, and he smiled back.

  Good night, Bo, she said.

  He nodded and put on his hat.

  There was no moon up, so it was dark, but he never used a flashlight in the woods because of what it shut out of his peripheral vision. He walked and waited for his eyes to adjust. The smell of rotting apples in the orchard gave way to leaves as he picked up the path and moved away from the reach of the lights on in the kitchen of the house.

  He loved the woods in autumn. Decay like a fulcrum on which the seasons sat at level, there seemed more life somehow as the balance began to tilt toward the stillness of winter, and all that lived in those woods knew it. As he began to climb, he thought not of his father but of Sam, how his brother had come to him one day when he was twelve and Bo had already been working at the mill for a few years. Sam asked if he could go with him into the woods the next day, a Saturday. Sam had something he wanted to show his brother. Bo said sure, and they were up early on this same path to this same place when Sam veered away from the rocks and detoured in a half-circle around the base of the ridge and they came into a grove of beech and mountain laurel invisible to anyone walking along the path that went up the mountain.

  I want to build a cabin here, he said to Bo. And I need you to help me cut and lift the logs.

  It was part fascination with the history of the westward expansion he was learning at school in his sixth-grade class with Mr. Bennett, and part desire to have a fort, a hideout of his own, he told his brother.

  You mean a log cabin? Bo asked, and Sam said yes. He figured it could be no harder than building with the Lincoln Logs he used to stack as a boy, but they would be too big to lift by himself once the walls got waist-high. He needed two more strong hands and a chain saw.

  No chain saw, Bo told him. Pop’ll hear us. Axes and a two-man crosscut.

  It was September when they started, the week before Thanksgiving when they were done. It was a nine-by-nine log hut with a door and one window built into one side wall, and they had pitched the roof so there was headroom as they came through the door, though Bo had to stoop some at the back. Every log was cut and notched in the surrounding forest and hauled to the fort and stacked. And when their grandfather wanted to know what the two of them were doing on their Saturdays, Bo said he was helping Sam with a lean-to. A lean-to? Jozef said. You can do better than that, can’t you?

  The Saturday in November when they nailed the last of the tarpaper shingles to the roof, Bo looked down to see the old man standing in the clearing with his hands behind his back and a leather firewood pouch slung over his shoulder. What’s going on in my woods? he asked, and Sam whispered, Oh, shit. Jozef came toward the cabin and inspected the walls, ran his hand along the door that Bo had fashioned and framed at the mill (along with a table that stood inside by the back window and on which they put their lunches and some tools). Then Jozef went through the door and, after a minute, called out, You boys better get in here.

  He had put a candle on the table and lit it, then pulled a bottle of Hires root beer out of the pouch along with three highball glasses. We toast babies and new houses, he said to Sam. He pointed to the candle on the table and said, Figured it would be dark in here. Looks like I figured right.

  Bo stood in the clearing that night and could just make out what was left of the cabin. Three walls stacked two high. It had remained intact for some years, Bo remembered, until Sam started playing football and then learned to drive, and Jozef took down the log walls with a chain saw one fall, carried the wood by himself back to the farm, and burned it all in the stove over the course of the winter. Bo could see the shadow of leaves piled like drifted snow into the corners of those logs, the hideouts now of mice and smoky shrews. Why his grandfather left those six, Bo never knew.

  He heard the whimper of a porcupine somewhere off in the dark, and he walked back out to the path that went to the top of the ridge, where he stopped again and listened to the night. He turned to look over his shoulder as though he might still see the kitchen light on at the farm,
see Ruth in the window washing up before she went to sleep, hoping that Hannah would come out of her melancholy sooner rather than later and be grateful for what she had, until he realized he was no better than she was, and he walked on.

  At the top of the field, the sky opened to a blanket of stars, and Bo’s eyes followed it down to the porch light he had left on. He stood in the wind on the hill for a moment and imagined what it would be like to wake in that house, his house, and see his brother standing where Bo was now, alive and home and coming to greet him, and he set off down the hill.

  He went in the door by the kitchen and lifted a lid on the stove. Cold. He took off his coat and rocked the ash in the fire grate and stuffed the box with papers and kindling and lit them. He put a kettle on the gas range, filled the percolator basket with coffee for the morning, and took a mug from the cupboard and some peppermint tea and placed these on the counter. Then he put a log on top of the blaze inside the stove and sat down to wait for the water to boil on the range. He touched his cheek where Ruth had kissed him, then put his elbows on the table and his head in his hands.

  When he heard the kettle whistle, he stood to put two more logs in the stove, then took the kettle off the gas fire and poured the water over the tea in the mug and sat down at the table. He needed sleep, and he needed to get back on a routine at the mill.

  Good for what ails you, he said out loud, and sipped his tea.

  And when he was done, he piled some oak logs into the stove so that it would be warm in the morning when she came. He slid the draft closed and went upstairs to his room, leaving the porch light on and the side door open.

  CHAPTER

  SIXTEEN

  SHE MEASURED TIME NOW LIKE a whittled stick. The years, months, weeks, and days carved down to a point that she could hold not just in her hand but in two fingers and wonder from where had the knife come that bared this point and the sharpness that could not be made round and dull again. And so it was the hours that she reached for and clung to, the ordinary time, the counting down, the waiting. This she filled with the work of her morning (food, animals, gardens, the house), and in the afternoons she retreated to her room and the Underwood typewriter on her desk.

  Years ago—her father and Bo at the mill, Sam in school—Hannah prepared translations from Slovak of an inventor priest named Murgaš for Sister Peter Claver, who was writing a biography of the man. But when the nun was made mother superior of the convent at the college and put aside her studies, Hannah put aside that work, too. Then Sam left for boot camp, and the only letters she wrote were addressed to him. Parris Island. Camp Lejeune. The fleet post office number that found him no matter what jungle he had come out of in the highlands. The ones from Vietnam were the ones for which she waited with fear and then relief, the envelope with FREE written in the right-hand corner. She would take the letter upstairs before Jozef or Bo could see that she had received one, read how much or how little he had been able to write to her (I am just back from patrol and stealing a minute before the sun’s too hot), see his sweat stains in the ink, rub the paper between her thumb and two fingers so as to touch the dirt he had touched and left hiding in the folds, then sit down at the typewriter again and write back with news that was important to no one save that it came from her. Chýbaš mi, Sam, she wrote, because she had taught him what that meant, and it was true. She missed him. Then her closing, like a prayer, the only one she ever wanted answered. Come home. Until they told her that he was not coming home, not until they found him, and the letters she wrote after that were to men who sat at desks and typewriters of their own, not a trace of dirt or smudge of sweat on anything they sealed up and sent to her.

  The day after Bo and Ruth returned from West Virginia, Hannah came down to breakfast and found eggs and bacon in the warming tray. She ate, and as she was finishing, Ruth pulled up in the Dart and came into the kitchen by the back door.

  Bo needed a ride to work, she said, a little out of breath as she hung up her coat.

  Hannah nodded. I figured that’s where you were. Thanks for making breakfast.

  Ruth sat down and poured coffee and asked Hannah if she was all right after yesterday. Hannah said she was and would just need time to let what Bo had told her sink in.

  I thought about it all night, she said, shook her head, and rubbed sleep from her eye. Can’t you tell?

  You look fine, Ruth said.

  Well, I don’t feel fine. I feel like the first day they told me he went missing. Like I didn’t know which was worse. Knowing that I’d get my son back with a flag draped over him? Or not knowing and holding on to some hope that he might still be alive.

  She spoke in a level voice bereft of what emotion might be there, and Ruth reached across the table and took her hand and held it. It’s only time, Hannah. Everyone tells us it’ll all work out in time, but whose time? Bo asked Grayson if we should stop waiting, put up a marker and get on with our lives, and Grayson told us a story about some old Vietnamese woman who waited for her son for eleven years, even when everyone knew he was dead. I don’t even know if it was true. But I remember thinking, You were there and you still can’t tell us anything. I wanted to throw something at him.

  Ruth shook her head. She had raised a fire in the Pittston before she left to take Bo to work that morning, and it was getting colder in the room, so she stood and put a log in the stove and then sat down.

  When did you stop believing? Hannah asked from across the table, and Ruth looked up, surprised by the question. I mean, Hannah said, when did you decide that he wasn’t going to come back?

  Ruth shifted in her chair. It was never a matter of belief for me, she said, and turned to look out the window as though she were alone in that room, talking to herself, figuring things out. Nothing any of us believes in would have changed what happened over there.

  Her gaze swept down to the floor, where she hoped she would find Krasna and the dog would come to her and nudge her hand, and with that simple touch Ruth Younger could tell Hannah Konar what it was she would have to say one day.

  It was always a matter of waiting, Ruth said, and looked up so that their eyes met. And I don’t want to wait anymore, Hannah.

  Hannah watched the girl and thought of herself sitting there at that age, a mother and a wife whose husband had gone to war, not knowing if or when he would ever return, and she thought, We are so nearly the same, and she looked away. I knew something had changed in you when we were on the dock out at the lake, she said. You didn’t just sound tired.

  Before that, Ruth said. It used to be every corner of Dardan conjured him for me when he left. Not a memory of him but him, and I thought that would be how I would keep him with me. But when he came home after his first tour, he had changed. He spoke of wanting to move to California. San Diego, I guess, and I told him I didn’t want to live in California. He was a little distant, too. I figured that was the training and the war.

  Ruth tilted back her coffee cup and looked at Hannah and said, Did you know he told you and his grandfather he had reupped before he told me?

  It was right here at this table, Hannah said. And when I asked him if anyone else knew, he shook his head. He understood I meant you.

  Ruth nodded. My father said he was doing the right thing. But when he left again, I didn’t see him where I used to see him. I didn’t miss him anymore. I kept writing him letters, same words from the same girl who had the same crush on him, but I could count on one hand the number of letters he wrote back to me. Then he called me in August to see whether I could meet him in Honolulu if he got the leave. Sent me the plane fare and everything. And when I got there, he talked about how things were going to be different, it was clear to him now, and when I asked him what things, he said, You’ll see. Then he took out a ring, told me he loved me, and asked me to marry him. And it was like he had rematerialized right there. The man I had missed for so long. And just as I was late in October and wondering, Am I going to have a baby? the casualty assistance officer and a priest were pul
ling into the driveway of this house.

  Krasna came into the kitchen then, and the two women watched as she walked over to her bed by the stove and lay down.

  I cried for two days straight after Bo came and gave me the news, Ruth said. I stayed in my room and my father brought me food and water and called the hardware store to tell them I had the flu, until I woke up one morning and walked out into the kitchen and he said, I heard. I told him I was pregnant, too, and he held me like he would fall down if he let me go. The Lord gives, was all he said.

  Hannah listened to the clock and thought of her own father’s words in those days when she cried for Sam, and she looked at Ruth’s hand and said, You don’t wear it anymore. The ring.

  I lost it in the accident, Ruth said. It was the first thing I reached for when I woke up in the hospital. And when I didn’t feel it, that’s when I knew.

  On a warm Friday afternoon in October, Bo called Father Rovnávaha from the mill and asked if he would like to come fishing at the bend in the morning.

  What’s the occasion? Rovnávaha asked.

  No occasion, Father. I haven’t seen you since August, and things are finally settling down for me. I thought I’d do a little fishing one last time this year, in this warm weather, and wondered if you might like to come along. For the old man, let’s say.

  For the old man, Rovnávaha said. I’d like that, Bo.

  Bo was up at five o’clock the next morning, and the priest’s Scout pulled into the drive not long after. They sat at the table in the kitchen and had a cup of coffee and Bo poured the rest of the pot into a thermos. Then they walked outside, hiked across the field and into the woods, and had their lines in the water by six.

  They split up on the stream. Bo took the faster water up top and fished with a muddler minnow. Father Rovnávaha worked a black ant in a lower pool where brookies were rising to terrestrials. In all this time, from house to stream, they had said no more than five words to each other.