The Signal Flame

by Andrew Krivak

  When they knocked off at eleven and sat down on the log near the creek side and drank the rest of the coffee from the thermos, Rovnávaha broke the silence and asked Bo how he had been doing since August, when he and the priest had driven Ruth across the valley back to Dardan.

  Bo told him that aside from his trip down to West Virginia, it was all work all the time. And that’s not a bad thing, Father, as far as I’m concerned.

  I heard about your truck, the priest said. I like the new one.

  I stuck with Dodge, Bo said. It’s a stripped-down D100. No radio. No bumper, even. Just a spare tire. I wrote a check for twenty-three hundred dollars and drove it off the lot.

  The priest pulled one his cheroots from his vest pocket and lit it. That’s the old man in you.

  Some things he taught me stuck, Bo said.

  From what I hear of it, the house up there is another one. Hannah tells me it’s a beaut now that you’re done.

  It was a good house from the start, Bo said. The Youngers knew how to do things right in their time, didn’t they?

  It’s what they say, Rovnávaha said, and puffed on his cigar and watched the smoke carry away on the breeze. So what’s on your mind, Bo?

  Bo looked upstream away from the priest, then back to him. I went down to West Virginia hoping I might hear something about Sam that was more than what’s in those letters Hannah gets from a bunch of pencil pushers. I don’t know. Something like, I saw him crawl away, or VC carried him off, or He’s in a prison somewhere and only the locals know about it. But his commanding officer didn’t tell us any of those things. He told Ruth and me that Sam just disappeared. He called him a ghost. No more to go on than that.

  Bo stood and walked over to the water and crouched down at the edge. He picked up a mayfly from a stone and came back and held it out to the priest.

  Nice little olive, Rovnávaha said. Seems I was using the wrong fly.

  Bo launched the ephemera into the air and sat back down on the log beside the priest. How long do we wait for my brother, Padre, before someone says he’s dead and we can let him go?

  Rovnávaha smoked like a chieftain and considered the question placed before him by this man of whom he was so fond.

  That’s not for me to tell, Bo. We can press the Navy Department, but they have protocol. I thought this Grayson fellow was part of why Sam’s status is still missing.

  Bo shook his head. It doesn’t matter to him anymore. He’s out.

  Have you talked to your mother? Rovnávaha asked. She’s the one who writes to them every other week.

  She’ll just keep on writing. What does she get if they type a letter that says, Corporal Samuel B. Konar, killed in action, seventh of October 1971? There’s no body. No casket. Nothing to tell her she’s got her son back.

  The priest rubbed his silver goatee and adjusted the tin cloth hat he wore on his head. What do you get out of it? he asked.

  Bo kicked at the stones beneath his feet and turned to the priest. It’s not for me. It’s for Ruth.

  I see, Rovnávaha said. That is a conundrum. Only for Ruth Younger? You don’t have any interest in the matter whatsoever?

  I wouldn’t say that.

  Well, what would you say, then?

  Is this confession?

  Not unless you need it.

  All right. I want to be with her.

  Like man and wife?

  Let’s not rush it, Padre.

  How long have you known?

  I don’t know. Weeks? Months? The first time I saw her walking down that hill toward my house I knew.

  Rovnávaha nodded and stubbed his cigar out on the bark of the log and dropped it on the ground. Bo got up and walked back to the creek side as though he needed some distance.

  Listen, Bo, Rovnávaha said. I’m not surprised at all by this, and I doubt Hannah is, either. Your mother and I have watched the two of you all summer, wondering when you’d come around. But just take your time. I say that not as a priest but as your friend. You promise me?

  Bo stood by the water, staring into it as though some answer might be floating below the surface. Then he turned and said, All right, Padre.

  They broke down their rods and wrapped them in cloths, and Rovnávaha said, It’s nice to see Ruth in church with Hannah.

  Is that your doing? Bo asked.

  I am a man who does the Lord’s work, Bo. Not my own.

  They go to the cemetery afterward, you know.

  They have a lot in common out there, the priest said.

  They forded the creek and walked back up the hill through the field, Bo out in front so that he had to stop and look back every twenty yards or so, to make sure Rovnávaha was not tiring, and to show him he was listening as they spoke of the town and the church. Of those who no longer graced the doors of St. Michael the Archangel. Those of another generation who had passed on. And those of this generation who had not found in the church the same peace and meaning their parents had found. Yet the priest said that he would deny there was no longer faith to be found among those whom the devout called fallen away. Grace was given, but faith was an act, and who was to say that God did not have some larger plan for all actions, by young and old, devout and questioning?

  At the top of the hill they watched a small herd of deer walk through the clearing and disappear back into the woods. Rovnávaha said, It’s beautiful land you’ve got here, Bo. The heaven of heaven is the Lord’s. But the earth He has given to the children of men.

  One week later, the first Friday of November, Hannah cooked dinner for Ruth and Bo at the farm, and when Bo got up to drive back home, Ruth walked him out to his truck.

  When am I going to see you again? she asked him.

  Whenever you’d like. Let’s go out to Ricketts Glen tomorrow and hike the falls trail. Probably be the last chance to get out there before the winter.

  Can’t, Ruth said. Hannah’s going to teach me how to can red beets.

  Why don’t you come up for dinner, then? Bring some of those beets.

  She said she would and took his hand in both of hers and held it. When he began to pull her in to him, she smiled and let go and watched him as he got into the truck and rolled down the window.

  I left you something in your room, he said. To read.

  Good night, Bo, she said, and waved, and he backed down the drive.

  Before dinner, Hannah had raised the embers in the living room fireplace back to a fire and was sitting down and reading the paper when Ruth came in.

  I’ll see you in the morning, Hannah, Ruth said.

  Is everything all right?

  Everything’s just fine, she said.

  The leather-bound ledger was leaning against the door to her room. She picked it up and found a note inside the front cover that read, There is no more to it than this. Bo. The faint smell of wood smoke came up the stairs from the fireplace, and she sat down in a chair she kept by the window, turned on the light, and began to read.

  She had been poring over the pages for half an hour, slowly going back and forth over entries, searching Jozef Vinich’s spare notes for some clues about her own family, when she came to a bookmark that she knew Bo had put in there. It was the map that Ashley the waitress had drawn of the road up the mountain to Grayson’s house. It was placed by the entry that recorded the purchase in 1930 of the house and land at the top of the hill that Jozef Vinich had left to Bo, and she understood now why her father had spoken so rarely and with such disdain for his own father.

  She read on through the ledger without stopping. Of the afternoon Becks Konar came to the farm. Of the night Helen Vinich died. Of the day her grandfather went from this world and a family’s last hold on their land was lost, Paul Younger’s own words recorded there and telling her why she had grown up in a house on the Flats. I’ll be no sharecropper, Vinich.

  At the entry dated March 20, 1951, she read words that she could not decipher. Bexhet, Boh t’a miluje. She did not know what they meant, but they sat on the page alone eno
ugh for her to believe that the one who had written them was no longer simply recording the externals of his world within the boundaries of lined paper. After that, there were two whole pages left blank, and she thought this a strange sort of emptiness, if not waste, from someone so meticulous about his holdings. Nineteen fifty-nine began at the top of a new page with a string of entries noting that Bo was going off to college in the fall. Sam had shot his first turkey in the open of the meadow. And in December, Driving to Wilkes-Barre to pick the scholar up at the bus station. Then, January 1960, Bo working at the mill.

  She closed the book and placed it on the chest of drawers and lay down on the bed. No more than this. But it had told her nothing in the end. So why? For that reason alone? That there was no feud. Not anymore. Not among anyone alive. And that they should get on with their lives. With their life.

  And so Bo was not surprised to see her at his door on Saturday.

  I thought you were with Hannah all day, he said.

  She stood on the porch in her coat and he could tell she had walked there.

  I asked her if we could do it another day, Ruth said. There was somewhere I needed to be.

  Bo asked her if she wanted to come in, and she said, No, I want to stay out here. I want you to stay out here with me.

  They sat on the porch facing the hill, the sun in the late-morning sky, and she took his hand in hers and looked out at the small shoots of wheat.

  We have to go slow, she said finally.

  We’ll take what time we need, he said.

  And they sat there on the porch and spoke of what they would do together, where they might travel, but always coming back to the house they knew now belonged to both of them. There were long stretches of time when they sat and said nothing, just watched the sun track across the sky until it looked as though it had perched at the top of the hill, the days shorter, daylight saving time over, and that same herd of deer drifted across it in silhouette.

  They went inside and he put a pot of water and a fry pan on the gas range, then gathered up some peppers, onions, and mushrooms and chopped and scraped them into the pan on the stove. He took a leftover pot roast out of the refrigerator and cubed the meat and stirred that into the pan and let the contents simmer. He began poking through a spice rack built into a cubby in the pantry, found what he was looking for, and shook the contents of the entire container into the mix. Then he reached for a bottle of sweet wine, poured a glassful over everything in the pan, and put a lid over it. The water had come to a boil, and he emptied a bag of noodles into it, gave it a stir, and said, A poor man’s goulash. The paprika is the secret. We’ll be ready in ten.

  After supper they sat on the couch Bo had brought over from the house and talked into the evening in front of the fireplace, then said nothing at all for a long stretch when they watched the flames consume the logs, listened to them crack and burn and settle into their bed of embers, until there was nothing but dark outside and Bo asked if Hannah would wonder where she was and if she needed to get back to the farm.

  Ruth was quiet and he thought that she might have fallen asleep in the silence, but when he turned to look, she was staring into the embers over which flames flicked intermittent and low, and she leaned back and pulled the blanket they had brought down from the upstairs room around her shoulders.

  Hannah knows where I am, she said.

  CHAPTER

  SEVENTEEN

  THE KITCHEN SMELLED OF FRESH thyme and turkey stew made from the bird Bo had shot at the top of the field two days before Thanksgiving. He had asked Hannah and Ruth if they could come to his house early on the day to help with the meal he was to prepare, and the two women arrived in the Dart at nine o’clock in the morning with baked bread and pumpkin pie, and Krasna in the backseat.

  They had coffee together. Bo told his mother that Father Rovnávaha would be over after he said Mass, and Jeff and Angie Lamoreaux would arrive at noon. Then Ruth stood and began cleaning up and putting away dishes and ingredients that Bo had left out. Hannah watched her. She knew where everything went. When Bo stood and walked over to the stove, Hannah could see that the two had a way of moving so as not to hinder the other, yet they never remained at a distance for long, swinging back to each other’s side as if some center pulled at them. And perhaps it did.

  What can I do, Ruth? Hannah said.

  Ruth showed her where there were plates and silver and water glasses on a sideboard, and Hannah set a table in the living room for six. When she was done, she came back into the kitchen and refilled the percolator and watched Krasna pace back and forth in front of the door.

  The two of you don’t know what to do with yourselves when you’re not at the farm, do you? Bo said.

  I’ll take her for a walk, Hannah said. We’ll be back. She put on her coat and boots and called the dog and said, All right, girl, let’s go. It’s too nice a morning for us to be in here.

  Outside, Krasna bolted for the barn and sniffed along the edge of the doors where she knew there would be mice looking for a way into the warmth. Hannah lifted her coat collar and gazed up at the sky. She reached into her pocket for gloves and clicked her tongue twice. Krasna, pod’me, she said, and the dog came to her side. The two of them walked through the wet grass to the edge of the field and set off in the direction of the woods.

  The sun was getting higher and melting the ground frost so that the earth was soft and slowed Hannah down as she sank into it. The wind made a sound across the field like a distant and constant wave, and she raised her hands and let her palms brush the young wheat as the heads bent away from her. She kept her eye on the back of the old dog, who had seemed more spry to her these past months, more game to get up and move, which Hannah attributed to the attention Ruth had paid the Lab all of August and into the fall.

  They reached the edge of the woods and moved into the trees that made up the border and toward the brush that grew along the edge of the creek. The water was low, and she crossed in her Wellingtons along exposed stones near the rapids and came out on the opposite bank, where the old log rested in the gravel and leaves and limbs that had washed up on the high water in the spring.

  The wind had not been blocked entirely, but it was quieter in the cover of the woods. The trees stripped bare this late into fall stood like sentries in the mottled silver and greenish-black armor of their bark, and she thought of how she used to walk here in the middle of winter with her father, the two of them on birch snowshoes, and he would stop and make her listen to the sound of those trees in the cold, the pops and groans that punctuated the frozen stillness as they swayed. Loud and startling for the thinness of the air. Then silence. Until the next crack.

  When she was a girl, before Becks had come from the old country and stayed, her father took her to the top of Rock Mountain, wanting to show her all of their land. She could see into Dardan and through the pass, so vast had the clear-cutting been of trees for the railroads and the mines. This will be yours, he said to her as they sat on an outcropping of stone like newcomers in an old world. By the time she and Becks walked the same path years later, the land had changed, the forests growing, mountainsides of timber slowly reclaimed. And now when she walked those woods alone or with Krasna, all around it was the forest again, not as tall or as dense as the trees had grown generations before but a forest nevertheless. It has been that long, she would think, then stop to look up at the leafless tops of oak and maple and beech, and down at the path she was on, the same path she had always walked on. Although now some sections were overgrown or changed altogether beneath the many years of leaf fall, so that, as she kept on, she had to slow in places and reorient herself before moving in the direction of the creek. When she came to the end of the ridge and hiked down the escarpment at its farthest point, she would move toward the sound of the water, where she would sit alone on the log. She did that again this day.

  The sun came down through the bare trees and she left her collar up but opened her coat for the warmth, closed her eyes, and
raised her head and felt it on her face. She sat like that until she heard the rustle of brush on the far side of the stream, and when she looked, she saw a bear pawing at the inside of a rotten stump. She stood and the bear sat back on its haunches and sniffed the air. It was black with a brown nose and a white crescent shape on its chest. Hannah sat down again slowly (the water the only thing between them) and looked around to see if there were any signs of cubs wanting to help with a den, or something else that would make a mother less tolerant of another’s presence, but the bear was alone, and Hannah thought it likely a traveling male, so she sat as still as she could and waited. The bear turned back to the log and poked its nose at what ants or grubs it found there, licked its paws and snorted, then lumbered away up the hill along the edge of the forest.

  Hannah called for Krasna and could see the dog had wandered down into the large stand of white and red pines that grew below the bend, beyond the cattails of the upper creek. Krasna was sniffing around at the floor of needles. Hannah called out to her and again told her to come. The dog kicked up a spray of dirt with a hind paw, turned, and trotted back to Hannah, who was walking in the direction of the escarpment, away from the field. The wind was coming down the hill, so the bear would not have gotten the scent of the dog. And the bear seemed unconcerned enough, so she pointed Krasna toward the cliff side and said, That way, girl.

  The rocks at the base of the drop, which held remnants of their orogenic past in the outlines of ancient and fossilized fauna, had been sheared off by time and weather and were larger and harder to walk on in her boots. She looked up at the steep side of the cliff, which had a switchbacked trail cut into it for as long as she could remember, and (for the sake of the dog) decided not to climb but to take the path along the bottom, in the direction of the old hardwood grove, farther away from the bear.

  As she walked, she could hear what she imagined was a world of mice and chipmunks and tiny rodents living beneath the leaf fall, and she knew that this was the result of the warm autumn. Out of habit, she looked up for any birds of prey but saw none. The creek and the pines were a good distance behind her, neither one audible any longer. She hiked farther into the section of Vinich land that pushed into the state lands, and she finally reached the grove, a swath of old forest with towering oak and beech that looked primeval in stature and face.