The Eyes of the Doe

by Patricia Taylor Wells

  “Oh, Ross. Nothing’s going to happen,” Mother said.

  “You don’t want to be downtown today, not with all the nuts around. There’s always some idiot who will do anything for attention. And I’m telling you, those secret service guys shoot first and ask questions later. You could get caught in the crossfire just being there. You’re better off staying at home.”

  After Daddy left for work, I begged Mother to take me to the parade. “We’ll never have a chance like this again,” I pleaded. A few hours later, we were standing shoulder to shoulder in the excited crowd, waving tiny flags with stars and stripes. It had rained earlier, but now the sun was out. The air was clear and already the temperature was near seventy degrees. The crowds were eight to ten people deep, but we had secured a front row view, hoping more than anything that Mrs. Kennedy would look our way. When we saw the motorcade approaching, the crowds moved forward into the street like a wave coming ashore. We were quickly ushered back into place by Dallas police who were tasked with making sure no one got too close. When the President’s midnight blue limousine crawled past us, we barely noticed the man we had come to see. Our eyes were fixed on the pink mohair suit and matching pillbox hat that Mrs. Kennedy wore. We were almost close enough to touch her and were exuberant over seeing her, unaware that our inattentive, last glimpse at her husband would be the world’s last glimpse, too.

  Daddy was wrong, I thought as we nudged our way through the thinning crowd after the parade. I had kept my eyes open the whole time, watching the crowd for signs of trouble. But all I had seen were people like me—people who were just as excited as I was about seeing the President and First Lady of the United States in person.

  When we dropped Marilyn off at her home, Mrs. Davis insisted Mother and I come inside so we could tell her all about the parade. Before we could even sit down, the telephone rang. Marilyn hurried down the hall to answer it.

  “Hello,” Marilyn’s voice floated back to us. “Heard what?” There was a brief silence. “But . . . we just saw him . . . Mother! Turn on the TV!”

  “What is it?” Mrs. Davis yelled back to her. “Who’s that on the phone?”

  “Hurry! Turn on the TV. Something bad has happened.”

  We all crowded in front of the television as the announcement came: The President is dead! For a moment, I was more stunned over seeing a grown man on live air choking back his tears than I was by the magnitude of his words. He had barely finished his sentence and already a dark cloud was beginning to envelop the entire country. It would take years for it to vanish.

  “What about Mrs. Kennedy?” Mrs. Davis asked. “Is she all right? That poor woman and her two children. What suffering has come upon them—on all of us.”

  JUST THINKING ABOUT that day made me uneasy. If Daddy knew that something bad was going to happen when Kennedy came to town, then it was also possible he could sense something dire about Jake’s health. I tried not to think about it as I pushed my plate aside and covered it with my crumpled napkin. I thought about bringing up the cantata again, just to break the ice that had followed Daddy’s outburst. I hoped Mother would let Jake leave the table; then maybe I could, too. None of us wanted to be here now that Jake’s changing appearance and behavior could no longer be ignored.

  CHAPTER SIX

  At some point, the truth of who we are is always revealed.

  Jewell

  “I HAVEN’T HEARD you say anything about feeling bad,” I said as I glanced at Jake. “You aren’t coming down with a cold, are you?”

  “Just tired,” he mumbled.

  Ross got up from the table and stomped out of the room.

  It worried me that Jake hadn’t eaten much. Was he trying to hide something? I couldn’t see any pink in his cheeks and his eyes were dull and had dark circles beneath them. It was a little early in the season for the flu bug and I quickly ruled out mono. Jake was too young for kissing games.

  Most of the time it was Holly who came down with something before giving it to her brother: measles, chicken pox, a bad cold. The only thing Jake hadn’t caught from her was polio. I’ll never forget how scared I was having an infant son who could have also been stricken.

  I was probably worrying over nothing. Maybe Jake was tired from too many activities. That would explain why he had been coming home after school and going straight to his room; why he was spending time alone rather than playing outside with his friends. I hadn’t really given it much thought until now.

  I decided it was useless to expect Jake to finish his supper, so I excused him from the table. It wasn’t until he stood up that I noticed how thin he looked. It hurt, what Ross said about my paying more attention to my job than my children.

  “Do you want me to help with the dishes?” Holly offered.

  “No, you have homework to do.” I didn’t want her help. I needed time to think things over and it was easier to hide my worries amid the clatter of pots and pans.

  Holly shrugged and spread her books on the freshly cleared table. I had hoped she would go upstairs to finish her lessons.

  I wished we had never moved to Dallas. The only family we had here was Ross’s brother Drew who lived across town. I’d rather be in Land of Goshen right now, trimming back my rose bushes for winter; or watching Ross go out to the pasture to see after his beehive. Ross looked like someone from a science fiction movie in his white bee suit, veiled hat, and the long gloves he wore to avoid being stung. He had ordered everything he needed, including the queen bee herself, from the Sears & Roebuck catalog.

  Ross kept a large rock on top of the hive to keep Jake and Holly from trying to open it when he wasn’t around. They enjoyed watching him calm the bees with his smoker so he could rob them of their honey. I really missed those days.

  My thoughts were interrupted when Ross came into the kitchen and began rummaging through all of the cabinets for the bottle of whiskey I had hidden a few days earlier after pouring part of it down the drain.

  “You’re not going to have a drink now, are you?” I asked, looking at the clock. It was after eight. Ross had already done enough to upset me for one evening.

  “Just one to relax,” he answered upon finding the bottle.

  “Can’t you leave that alone for tonight?”

  “I’ve got a lot on my mind.”

  “Well, I hope you aren’t going to stay up too late,” I said. “I’m really tired tonight and I can’t sleep until I know everyone’s in bed.”

  I moved out of the way as Ross grabbed a glass and splashed a generous amount of bourbon and carbonated water over ice. The sound of clinking cubes drowning in fizz grated on my nerves. The only thing that could irritate me more were Ross’s heavy sighs once he had had enough whiskey to fill the dark trenches of his soul.

  I had never thought of Ross as a drunk or an alcoholic. There were times when he drank too much, but only when something was bothering him. He had never gotten over the War. He had nightmares about it. It made him crazy; like the time he put on his old army jacket and tore through the closet where he stored his souvenir Japanese rifle with bayonet. He stormed out the door, gripping the rifle like he was going off to war. I knew it had no bullets but his behavior frightened me, so I locked him out of the house. He was outraged when he couldn’t get back in and busted the louver glass in the back door with the butt of his rifle.

  I didn’t call the sheriff; it would have only made matters worse. Ross’s family had a reputation to uphold and they would have blamed me for causing him to carry on that way. Besides, other than scaring us half to death, Ross had never done anything to harm me or the children. I did what I could to keep him sober, but I’d rather give him his bottle than have him get in the car and drive to a wet district to buy more Jim Beam. The one or two drinks he claimed would help settle him down were never enough. He kept on drinking until something in him snapped. There was no way to explain it, no way to understand how a man could turn so mean just thinking about his past.

  I’d always kept Ross�
�s drinking a secret, especially from his family. It was hard on Holly and Jake. I wouldn’t let them have their friends over if there was any chance Ross would be in an uproar. It was easier on all of us when he was working late or traveling out of town. But now, he was home every night. I guess I got what I asked for when I begged him to change jobs and move to Dallas.

  I finished putting away the dishes I had dried earlier and wiped off the counter top where one of the ice cubes Ross had dropped was melting. Holly had closed her books, but was writing something in a notebook. Her hand covered the top part of the page, preventing me from seeing if she was doing her homework or writing a poem. It annoyed me that she would waste her time on that kind of nonsense. When she was eleven, she insisted on reading a poem she had written in front of our friends, Betty and Hal Gibson, who had stopped by for a visit. The poem was too good to have been written by Holly. Hal said he was certain that Washington Irving had penned the verse Holly was claiming as her own. This hurt her feelings, so she threw the poem on the floor and fled from the room in tears. I was so embarrassed. Holly was always showing off, but it was unlike her to tell a lie. That was the last time she ever showed me any of her poems, but I know she still writes them.

  “I’m going to bed,” I told her. “Don’t stay up too long.”

  “I won’t,” she said as I patted her shoulder.

  Before going upstairs, I peeked in the den. Ross was sitting in his favorite chair, still nursing his drink and having a smoke. The room was dark, with only a narrow stream of light shooting in from the hall. I decided it was better to leave him alone than trying to persuade him to come to bed with me. I might as well take my bath and get some sleep. When he did come to bed, he would wake us all with his rant and rave.

  Stupid fool, he was going to break his neck one of these days trying to get up the stairs after one of his binges.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The sweetest dreams are those that hush the anguish we have harbored in our hearts all day.

  Ross

  I WAS ABOUT to doze off when I heard someone enter the room. I could barely make out Holly walking toward me. She reached over my head and switched on the floor lamp next to my chair. I shielded my eyes with my hand as the sudden bright light pierced my pupils, almost blinding me.

  “Why did you do that?” I asked. All the muscles around my eyes tensed and the slight throbbing that had plagued my temples most of the evening rose to icepick intensity.

  Holly picked up the ashtray I had filled with butts and placed it under the clump of ash that was about to drop on the chair cushion.

  “You should watch what you’re doing,” she warned as she took my smoke away from me and crushed it in the ashtray. “You could fall asleep and burn the house down.”

  Holly should talk. I remember when she was just a child and I caught her and Jake playing with fire inside a closet. Holly had snatched a book of matches lying next to my ashtray and run off with it. When I realized it was missing, I went looking for her. I could hear Jake and Holly giggling behind the closed door where they were hiding. A strong whiff of sulfur irritated my nostrils when I yanked open the door. Holly had just struck a match and was holding it ominously close to Jake’s lips so he could blow out the flame. Now here she was, years later, scolding me like a small child who didn’t know any better.

  “It’s after ten. Why don’t you go to bed?” Holly asked.

  I looked up at my daughter before slumping in my chair. She didn’t look anything like her mother, but she sounded like her. Jewell was a world class nagger.

  “I’m not ready to go to bed,” I grumbled. “I’ve got a lot on my mind.”

  I finished off my drink. I may have had three or four, but I wasn’t numb at all and the constant pounding in my head reminded me of the torment I had carried in my heart all these years.

  “I’ve been through more hell in my life than you can imagine,” I uttered.

  “Yes, I know, you were in a war somewhere in the Pacific.”

  The war had been over for almost twenty years, but my memories of it were like an incurable savage pain that never left me. I had witnessed all kinds of atrocities in the Pacific. The raw images of men who had been tortured, men whose bodies were wasting away, and men who were better off dead than alive still haunted me; still woke me in the middle of the night.

  “You wouldn’t even be here if I had died.” It hurt that Holly was so cynical and disrespectful.

  “Why do you always have to talk about the war, like it’s the only one there ever was? Lots of guys are getting killed in Vietnam.” She insinuated that their sacrifice carried the same weight as mine.

  “It’s not the same kind of war,” I said. No one from my generation would have fled to Canada to avoid having to fight. We were all proud to serve our country, even if it meant laying down our lives.

  Holly sat down opposite me. We could now argue at eye level.

  “Jake could be drafted in a few years if there’s some war like ‘Nam going on,” she said.

  “No, he won’t. He’s going to West Point. If he does get orders to go, he’ll be a commissioned officer, not some foot soldier who got drafted.”

  “Is that what Jake wants?” Holly challenged me.

  Before I could answer, Jewell stuck her head in the doorway. She was wearing my flannel robe, which she preferred to her old terry cloth wrap-around. Her hair was swaddled in toilet paper so she could keep her hairdo in place between weekly visits to the beauty parlor. She looked ridiculous.

  “Why are you two still up?” Jewell asked. “It’s time to go to bed.”

  “I’ll be up later,” I told her.

  “I don’t want you sitting down here by yourself.”

  “Well, that’s what I’m going to do,” I argued.

  “Come on, Ross. I have to get up early and so do you.”

  “Holly and I are talking,” I stated.

  “Go on up,” Jewell ordered Holly. “I’ll take care of your father.”

  “Damn it!” I raised my voice. “There’s something she ought to know.”

  “Like what?” Holly’s skepticism rubbed me the wrong way.

  All I wanted from Holly was her respect. I wanted her to know that the horrors of war could leave behind invisible wounds that were just as devastating as a missing arm or leg. I wanted her to know about the five hundred POWs I saved from horrendous death—all because that Filipino, who stood outside our camp for days trying to get someone to listen to him, noticed me going in and out of General Krueger’s tent. The Filipino was so persistent, so frantic, that I finally heard his story. He told me that the Japs were holding American prisoners and were planning to slaughter them.

  Those men would have perished in that godforsaken prison if I hadn’t been an intelligence specialist; if I hadn’t had access to quarters that were off limits to most enlisted men. I was the one who reported this critical piece of information, the one who got the attention of the general. Without me, those men who had survived the Bataan Death March would’ve never been rescued. Only a handful of people knew or would remember the role I had played. I never received a medal of honor, but that didn’t matter, as long as my children knew what a hero I was.

  “We don’t need to hear about the war right now,” Jewell said.

  “I know you don’t give a damn,” I accused her.

  “Well, it’s late and Holly has school tomorrow.”

  “What the hell do you know? I was a soldier, by God! You never served your country the way I did.”

  “You’re getting yourself all worked up over nothing. Here, let me help you up the stairs.” Jewell took hold of my arm and tried to pull me up from my chair.

  “Damn it! Leave me alone.” I pushed her arm away from me.

  “He’s going to set something on fire if he stays down here,” Holly worried.

  “I told you to go to bed,” Jewell reminded her. “I can take care of him.”

  Jewell waited until Holly had gone upstairs b
efore starting in on me.

  “I don’t know what your problem is,” she began, “but I’m sick and tired of losing sleep every time you open a bottle. I’ve been upset all night over what you said about Jake. Why would you even bring up something like cancer in front of the kids? Then you have to come in here and get all worked up over the war. What does the war have to do with anything? You’ve just about bled that excuse to death.”

  “Well, you goddamn bitch!” How could she be so callous when she knew better than anyone what I had been through during the war? She had witnessed every demon that had ever possessed me in the middle of the night, when I woke up in a sweat, ready to go hand-to-hand with some slant-eyed, yellow monkey Nip. That’s how I got my souvenir rifle, after seizing it from the damn bastard who tried to slice my arm off, then bayoneting him with his own weapon.

  “I’m not in the mood to put up with you,” Jewell argued.

  “Then why don’t you just go ahead and leave me?” Her nagging was the tinderbox of our marriage.

  “I’ve a good mind to,” she responded coolly.

  “Like hell you will!”

  “No one’s going to leave anyone,” Jewell said as she helped me out of my chair. “Let’s go to bed.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  No one will weep with you forever, not even your best friend.

  Holly

  I SPENT THE night at Marilyn’s on Friday evening. I gave in when she wanted to go to the roller rink, even though for me that meant sitting on the sidelines watching my friend and other skaters sail past me—laughing, falling, and turning circles on one leg.