They gathered for the velija feast that evening at six o’clock in a slow parade to the door. First Rovnávaha, who brought wine and brandy and said he would have to leave early to prepare for the vigil Mass at midnight (though he always stayed to the end, so that midnight Mass at St. Michael the Archangel began each Christmas Eve at five minutes after twelve), then Jeff Lamoreaux and his wife, Angie, who carried the black-forest cake she baked every year. They brushed snow from their coats and came inside, and Hannah greeted them as though expecting more. Six seemed like too little to her, and she wondered if there was anyone she had forgotten, someone who might be alone on this night, someone she might offer a seat at her table, but she knew there was no one. Even Aunt Sue had wanted to stay in Brookside with the Posols now that Jozef was gone, and as she said to Hannah, You don’t need an old lady underfoot. Hannah thought she felt Krasna push past her, and her hand moved to pet the dog’s head, but it touched nothing. It was just the wind against her pant leg. She closed the door.
They sat down at a table set with a white tablecloth, under which there rested lumps of straw in the middle, with one candle burning and seven place settings, the empty one at the head. Dinner began with grace and the blessing of the oplatky wafers, which everyone ate with honey, and a toast of white wine that the priest gave, after a blessing of the food and a moment of silence to remember all those who had gone before them that year.
Though they were few, Hannah made it a feast nevertheless. She served sour mushroom soup, potatoes, cabbage rolls stuffed with rice, prune pirohy, and trout broiled whole and stuffed with lemon and sage. She apologized for not having the traditional twelve courses, but said anyone wanting to make that up in brandy after the meal was more than welcome. Father Rovnávaha said, Amen. And drank off his wine. Then everyone around the table tucked in to the feast.
The conversations that arose did not range widely. They avoided talk about the flood and the war and instead asked Ruth about her chickens and Bo about the direction of the mill in the New Year. Hannah said little and watched and listened to her guests. The gregarious priest. The shy and thoughtful mill supervisor who seemed downright blushing in the presence of his wife of fifteen years who still did not look a day over twenty. Bo, who sat closest to the empty place setting that they had put out last year, too, and who kept moving his arm to touch the side of the plate as he talked with Angie and Father Rovnávaha about Nixon’s victory over McGovern, how he had never liked the president much, though he could not say why. It was Ruth, though, who seemed to Hannah the youngest and the oldest one there. Ruth, who had lost in one day that year more than anyone at the table would lose in a lifetime. And yet there was a radiance to her face (her hair tied back to reveal eyes moss-colored and wet, as though she had just come back from a place where she had been crying), and Hannah wished in her heart that she would not be left alone there in the house in the New Year. But she saw now the way Ruth and Bo looked at each other, and thought, Why shouldn’t they? There was more life left in the two of them yet. She was lucky—blessed, Father Rovnávaha would say—to be able to see one of her sons with this beautiful young woman whom the Lord in some mysterious way had taken by the hand and led through loss in order to sit at this table on this day. It was the velija feast. The last moments of Advent. The waiting nearly over. And here there was beauty, still, in those who remained in these hours with her.
It was eleven-thirty by the time the meal was over. Father Rovnávaha had gone to the church, and Jeff and Angie lingered on the porch in the light and spoke romantically of the snow. How they had missed it until now and hoped that it was the harbinger of a good winter.
Good snow year is a good spring year, Jeff said, and tapped a cigarette from a pack and lit it. Bo thanked him for checking on the mill earlier in the day, and Jeff blew a stream of smoke into the porch light and said, All tucked away. That new saw’s working out pretty good. We’re going to need a new kiln, though.
Bo agreed and pointed at Jeff’s cigarette. Still trying to quit those things?
He can’t, Angie said. Promised me he’d get down to two a day, and this is his third that I know of.
Ah, hell, Jeff said. So I had one over at the mill. I was just sitting there on the edge of the woods, thinking about how much I like it here, Bo. How lucky I feel to have found your grandpa and this place.
He took Bo’s hand to shake it, and Bo said, Don’t go getting all misty on me now, partner. There’s a lot more we got to do over there.
They said their goodbyes for the night and Bo went back inside, where Ruth and Hannah stood in the foyer with their overcoats on. Hannah handed Bo his coat and they walked out onto the porch, down the steps, and climbed into the cab of the truck, Ruth next to Bo and Hannah by the passenger window.
He took his time driving down the hill in the snow and made the right turn at the feed mill by the old railroad bed that led into Dardan Center. Hannah spoke of a Christmas Eve past when she was a girl and nearly two feet of snow fell between the time Father Blok arrived for dinner and when he got up to leave. And that snow was on top of another twelve inches that had fallen during the day.
She said, Papa picked Blok up at the rectory in a Ford he had back then and told him not to worry about getting to Mass. He could get through anything with that truck. But when the time came, they couldn’t even get down the drive. Papa backed out of the barn and the truck wouldn’t budge, the snow was so deep. I called the rectory but there was no answer, and old Blok kept insisting he had to get back to St. Michael’s for Mass and he would walk if he had to. So Papa said, Look here, Father, and gave him a pair of wooden skis he had bought from a man in Dingmans Ferry, and that priest set off down the mountain like he had known how to ski all his life, and he might have. Midnight Mass started at twelve-fifteen that year, but Father Blok was there for the fifty or so people in Dardan who got themselves to church that night.
Ruth laughed at the story and put her head on Bo’s shoulder, then lifted it off. He closed his eyes and opened them and thought, I’d go to church every Sunday and Christmas Day, too, if she asked me.
At the lights, where Center Street rose up the hill to the other side of town, Bo saw red flashers in his rearview mirror and heard a siren begin its low wail, then build until it was high and clear. He steered toward the snow berm the plows had made and slowed to let the fire truck pass. He saw a Dardan police car and another fire truck following the first one, so he pulled over and stopped.
Of all the nights, Hannah said.
Bo just sat there and looked out at the road and the snow. He did not know why, but he thought of his grandfather all of a sudden, the two of them in the kitchen by the stove, the old man telling Bo about his trek as a soldier almost a lifetime ago through mountains that lured and threatened him like an enemy exacting and ready to forgive in equal measure. Falling, Bo said, as though to himself.
Ruth and Hannah both turned. What’s that? Hannah asked and bent forward in the cab.
The snow, he said. It’s really falling. We’ll be buried by tomorrow.
Well, we’re almost there, Hannah said. Father Rovnávaha will be wondering where we are.
I know, Bo said. And he put the truck in gear.
At two o’clock on Christmas morning he pulled into the driveway of his house, walked through the snow that had drifted onto the porch, and went inside by the kitchen door. The stove was still warm, and he slid the vents open for a draft and placed kindling and some smaller logs on the embers and let them catch, then he went over to the thermostat on the wall and turned up the heat so that his bedroom would not be so cold. He sat down at the kitchen table while the house warmed and looked out into the early-morning dark, where only snowflakes against the windowpanes were visible. He could use some tea, he thought, and he could also get to sleep. He stood and placed another log in the stove, watched the flames and adjusted the draft, and sat back down. He slipped off his boots and kicked them in the direction of the door and thought again of tea, the
n he put his head down on his arms and fell asleep.
He was on the porch with Ruth, the two of them sitting next to each other, the sun bright above them, the day warm, the field green with high wheat. They did not speak. He was surveying the hill, gazing out at a vastness that seemed to stretch farther than he remembered. Or was he looking for something? Waiting. The same herd of deer he had always seen moved across the top of the field, and he was wondering why they were out and not bedded down in the cool of the cattails when he saw the figure of a man standing alone against the horizon line. Tall and distinct, in spite of the distance between them. Fear rose in him, but he thought, No. He waved to the man, who raised his arm slowly and waved back. Bo turned to Ruth in the chair and said, We have to go to him. And he stood. He looked to see that she had not moved or even spoken, and he said, Ruth? We have to go to him. And still she did not move. He turned away from her and began to walk across the grass, past the barn, and into the field, along the rows of wheat that were so tall they reached past his shoulders and he could not see any farther than one row of stalks in front of him. But he kept walking, feeling the rise of the hill as he did, the sun above, the ground (plowed and fertile) loose at his feet, knowing it was Sam at the top of that hill, his brother, and he was going out to meet him.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
THIS IS A WORK OF fiction. Any resemblance of characters or settings in this novel to actual persons or places is purely coincidental. Nevertheless, the author would like to thank the following for their generous help with many of the details that have shaped this novel: Thomas C. Alexander; Florentien and Tomas Bok; Dr. Samuel M. Brown, MD; Ánh Cao; Warren C. Cook; Amelia Dunlop; Mrs. Genevieve Harenza; Stuart D. Hirsch; John T. Krivák; Martin Krivák; Matthew M. Krivák; Thomas P. Krivák; David C. McCallum, S.J.; Carla Krivák Meister; Tom Murray at Rex Lumber in Acton, Massachusetts; Harvey O’Dell; Reverend Leonard O’Malley; Michael Pitre; Mokie Pratt Porter of the Vietnam Veterans of America; Rockler Woodworking in Cambridge, Massachusetts; Natalie Silitch; and Jeffrey Stachnick.
A number of books were consulted for historical background. Among them were Philip Caputo’s A Rumor of War; Frances FitzGerald’s Fire in the Lake; Charles Glass’s The Deserters: A Hidden History of World War II; Michael Herr’s Dispatches; Frank Kelly’s Private Kelly; Fredrik Logevall’s Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam; Jan Yoors’s Crossing: A Journal of Survival and Resistance in World War II and The Gypsies. The author must also acknowledge use of the Library of Congress’s extensive electronic collection of correspondences between service branches and the families of servicemen who were missing or killed in action during the conflict in Vietnam.
Finally, the author is grateful to Kathy Belden and Betsy Lerner for their wise counsel, and, above all, patience.
A SCRIBNER READING GROUP GUIDE
INTRODUCTION
In their small town in northeastern Pennsylvania, Hannah Konar and her son Bo mourn the passing of patriarch Jozef Vinich. They were three generations under one roof, a family begun in America after the ravages of World War I in Europe, with deep roots in the community—Bo runs the local mill as his grandfather once did. But they are only one branch of an uncertain tree, war having left its mark on the family several times. Memory weighs heavily on Hannah and Bo, who try to lose themselves in the rhythms of work and caring for the land as they await news of prodigal son Sam, Bo’s brother, missing in action in Vietnam. Sam’s missing status has serious implications outside the family, and eventually Bo and Hannah are called upon not only to reckon with the past but also to find a way beyond it. An evocative portrait of how past generations inform the present and how resilience and faith can withstand great loss, The Signal Flame is a gorgeous tale of how time passes and shapes us.
TOPICS & QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. When young Bo asks Jozef, “Are we going to war?”, why does Jozef startle? Why might Bo think war has come to Dardan?
2. In his eulogy for Jozef, Father Rovnávaha points out that Jozef’s surname, Vinich, means “vine” in Slovak. How was Jozef a vine in his family and in the community?
3. Why does Ann’s death push Bo to give up on college? Why does Jozef allow Bo to stay without any argument?
4. After the crash, when Ruth goes to stay with Bo and Hannah, Ruth says to Hannah, “I’m just trying to keep it all together so you don’t think I’m some kind of flower girl who was too delicate for your son”. Why does this worry Ruth?
5. Bo is pleased to find that the house that Jozef leaves him needs work, as it provides an “ongoing conversation” with his grandfather. Later, Grayson reveals that Sam often had conversations with “the old man,” too. Why is it important to both Bo and Sam to speak to Jozef even though he’s not there?
6. Sam takes Ruth to Grayson so that she can say to herself, “Now there are two things I know”. What does she already know? And what does she want to know?
7. When Ruth can’t save the pullet from the hawk why does it affect her so? Why are the chickens so important to Ruth, and to Hannah?
8. What does Grayson seem to want Ruth and Bo to understand from his story about the Vietnamese woman who always thought her son was coming home the next day?
9. Hannah measures time “like a whittled stick”, and Ruth says, “Everyone tells us it’ll all work out in time, but whose time? ”. How do Ruth and Hannah treat time and waiting differently? How do they treat them similarly? How does Bo approach time?
10. Why does Krasna’s death loom so large over the family and their friends? How have dogs been important to the Vinich and Konar family?
11. The Signal Flame has several characters—Jozef, Sam, Bexhet, Walter—who are seen mainly through memories. How do these absent, yet at the same time very present, characters influence other characters and shape the narrative?
12. Is it fitting that the novel ends with Bo’s dream about Sam returning? What do you think the dream means?
13. Discuss the difference between carefulness and carelessness in the novel.
14. What is the significance of work for the Vinich family?
ENHANCE YOUR BOOK CLUB
1. Research Hurricane Agnes and the Great Flood of 1972 and discuss what it would have been like to live along the Susquehanna or Lackawanna River at that time.
2. Read Rebecca West’s Black Lamb and Grey Falcon as Hannah does early on in The Signal Flame. How does it color your perception of Hannah?
© DARIO PRAGER
Andrew Krivák’s debut novel, The Sojourn, was a National Book Award finalist and received the Dayton Literary Peace Prize for fiction, as well as the inaugural Chautauqua Prize. He lives with his wife and three children in Somerville, Massachusetts. The Signal Flame is his second novel.
MEET THE AUTHORS, WATCH VIDEOS AND MORE AT
SimonandSchuster.com
authors.simonandschuster.com/Andrew-Krivák
ALSO BY ANDREW KRIVÁK
The Sojourn: A Novel
A Long Retreat: In Search of a Religious Life
We hope you enjoyed reading this Scribner eBook.
* * *
Join our mailing list and get updates on new releases, deals, bonus content and other great books from Scribner and Simon & Schuster.
CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP
or visit us online to sign up at
eBookNews.SimonandSchuster.com
Scribner
An Imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2017 by Andrew Krivák
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or po
rtions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Scribner Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.
First Scribner hardcover edition January 2017
SCRIBNER and design are registered trademarks of The Gale Group, Inc., used under license by Simon & Schuster, Inc., the publisher of this work.
For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-866-506-1949 or [email protected].
The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event. For more information or to book an event contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at www.simonspeakers.com.
Interior design by Carly Loman
Jacket design by Jonathan Bush
Jacket Photographs: Landscape © Maria Tomova/Arcangel, Rain © Elena Schweitzer/Shutterstock, Car © Mauriziobiso/iStock/Getty Images
ISBN 978-1-5011-2637-6
ISBN 978-1-5011-2640-6 (ebook)
The Signal Flame Page 21