Souvenir

by James R Benn

  “Is Al DePaoli there?”

  “Who wants to know?”

  “Just tell him it’s the call he’s been waiting for.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  2000

  Sunlight slanted across the kitchen table, a diagonal shadow cutting off the corner of the tabletop where Clay let his left hand lie. He set down the coffee cup held in his other hand as he heard Addy’s footsteps behind him. He leaned back in the chair and turned his head to greet her, the sound of her feet on the floor familiar and comforting.

  The room was empty.

  He’d dreamed of her too, the same kind of dream he’d had turning the war. Drinking coffee with guys who had been killed, sitting around a table, everyone quiet, until in his dream he remembered they were dead, and the dream ended. He had that dream about Addy, seated at this table. Even while he was awake, the house echoed with her footsteps.

  “Morning, Dad.”

  “Coffee,” Clay said, gesturing with his thumb to the aluminum pot on the stove.

  “Two to one. Not the worst ratio,” Chris said, pouring coffee for himself.

  “What?”

  “Words.”

  “Four to three,” Clay said.

  “Well, you can still do the math. You always had a head for numbers, Dad.”

  “Is that supposed to be joke?”

  “No,” Chris said, laughing as he realized what his father meant. “I mean at the Tavern, doing the books and everything.”

  “Oh, oh yeah.” Then he laughed too. “I like numbers. They calm me down. They don’t surprise you, they are what they are.”

  “How do you feel this morning?” Chris asked, watching his father carefully.

  “Fine,” he said with a shrug. “Like it never happened.”

  “Really?”

  “Scout’s honor. Go ahead, go to work, I’ll be fine.”

  “No, I took a couple of personal leave days. Paperwork’s done, so I’ll stay here for now.”

  “No need.”

  “Not for you, maybe. But I’m staying.”

  “Prepare to be bored.”

  “Maybe you’ll finally tell me about the guys in the photo. You still have it, don’t you?”

  “Yes. And don’t start going through my stuff. I’m not dead yet.”

  “Listen, Dad. I don’t really have much to do besides work, so no one’s missing my company. And this attack you had scared me. So let’s hang out a couple of days and not make a big deal about it, okay?”

  “Fine. I got nowhere else to go.”

  “Me either. Couple of sad sacks, aren’t we?”

  “You and me both, you got that right,” Clay said, trying to summon up energy he didn’t feel. He knew there would be more questions, more subtle interrogations, and he didn’t know if he could hold out. He couldn’t deny his own son his company, didn’t want to, but felt Chris’ eyes on him, watching, seeking out a weakness he might well find this time.

  Cla-ay, Addy had said, nearly every morning at this table. I’ll al-ways want just one more da-ay with you.

  Now, Clay was left alone, remembering how they sat, holding hands as the morning sun rose, warming the kitchen and shoving the shadow on the table aside, one more morning of light and quiet joy together.

  He didn’t want to think about how many mornings like this were left, unsure if he feared there were too few or too many. The spring sun shone brightly outside, coaxing out buds and grasses watered by yesterday’s rain. Spring and summer, surely he’d have spring and summer, and then fall, with its rotting crispness hinting at the burden of cold to come. He shivered, feeling that old cold inside him, the frigid air of the last century, the deep cold of the Ardennes, the cold that never really left his bones. Winter. Would he make it through the winter, and sit here again, alone in the spring, the first year of the next thousand years?

  The shiver came again, a shiver of sadness that he was down to this, counting out the seasons left to him. Not decades, not years, but seasons. He didn’t want to think about it. Looking out the window, he raised his eyes toward Lamentation Mountain, the crumbling rocks and the granite peak. He knew now that everything changed, slowly crumbling over time, nothing staying the same, not even the face of a mountain.

  And certainly not him. So little time left, and so much to set straight. There were things Chris wanted to know, but Clay knew what was even more important was that he had to tell him. Tell him before it was too late, too late for the both of them. But could he?

  “I’ll make breakfast, Dad. What do you want?”

  Chris’ voice jolted him, bringing him out of the deep thoughts that seemed to carry him away more and more these days. The image of another winter stayed with him, watching Lamentation Mountain coated in ice and snow, covering the sliding shale. His hands felt chilled, and he rubbed them together, but the chill crept deeper, running from his fingertips into his palms and on into his joints. Shivering, the winter of 1945 came to him, as it always did with cold sensations, unbidden, drifting like ice floes through his mind. It played out slowly, a single scene of deep, strange coldness, a single chunk of jagged ice bobbing in thick, gray waters. He found himself speaking, his thoughts bubbling to the surface like the last gasps of a drowning man.

  “We found some men once. Frozen.”

  “What are you talking about? Who?”

  “Germans,” Clay said, his eyes focused on the mountain. Hardly conscious of speaking, he began to narrate the memory as it unfolded in his mind. “It was the strangest thing.”

  “Are you all right? Dad?”

  He looked at Chris as if he could hardly understand him. What was he asking? Of course he was fine. Now he had to get on with the story, or else it would move too fast and he wouldn’t be able to keep up with it. Driven to speak, a force deep inside him wanting nothing more than this tale to be told. With perfect clarity of thought, he understood, after all these years, that he had to be in control, tell the story, not to let it play like a film in his head over and over again.

  “Yes, I’m fine. I can’t remember where we were. Everyone was there, Red was still with us, so it must have been—aaw, it doesn’t matter.”

  “Dad,” Chris said, placing his hand on his father’s arm. “Are you talking about the war?” His face knotted up in disbelief, as he had given up waiting to hear him speak of the war long ago.

  “Yeah. The frozen Germans. It was cold, Addy, so cold that your teeth chattered all the time, and your whole body shook from deep inside, trying to get some heat built up. We’d been moving toward some village, through heavy pines. Big, thick trees, planted in neat rows, the ground cleared all around them.”

  “It’s Chris, Dad. Mom’s gone.”

  Clay didn’t hear him. He could smell the green fir; feel its needles brush against his helmet. He took in a deep breath, and his eyes rested on Chris, seeing his eyes wide, in shock or surprise. Clay couldn’t stop, he knew he had to keep going.

  “We got stopped in the late afternoon, not even close to the village. Kraut machine guns were everywhere, zeroed in on those open lanes between the pines. It was murder, plain murder. Guys got chopped up trying to go tree to tree, but the snow was two, three feet deep, so you couldn’t run fast enough. The orders kept coming all day, push ahead, push ahead. We lost two replacements we’d gotten the day before. The platoon on our left lost half their men in five minutes.”

  He looked out the window, and in the reflection saw visions of G.I.s laying in the snow, frozen hands clutching nothing as bullets cut through pine branches, showering green needles down over the brown-coated bodies in the white snow. He heard Red holler out an order to dig in, felt the crack of air as a bullet passed by his ear.

  “We dug in, but the ground was frozen solid and there were thick roots everywhere. We burrowed into the snow, laid there, three or four guys together, all huddled up. We’d take turns moving into the center, to get warm.”

  He felt the wind at his back, and could sense the warmth entering hi
s body as Little Ned crawled out from the middle and he took his turn inside.

  “We shelled the woods all night. We could hear the explosions and the trees cracking. Tree bursts, we learned that one from the Krauts. We stayed there all night long. First light, we got up, moved out.”

  “Dad.” He ignored Chris. He smelt burning pine.

  “We moved slow at first, but there was no firing. It was hazy, smoky from the trees on fire. We couldn’t see very well. Then Shorty spotted it. He had the best damn eyes of anyone I ever knew. He signaled and we all dove behind the thickest pine we could find. Once he pointed it out, you could see it plain as day. Kraut machine gun position. You could see the gunner, and three other Krauts, one with binoculars. It was strange. They shoulda had us, shoulda had us dead to rights.”

  “Why didn’t they shoot?” Chris asked, curiosity overwhelming concern.

  “We couldn’t figure that out. Big Ned fired his BAR, but they didn’t move a muscle. We all got up at the same time and walked over to them. That’s when we found the G.I.s. We must’ve drifted over to the next platoon’s line of approach. We found ten of them, all around the Kraut position.”

  One of the G.I. corpses looked straight at him. Propped up behind a tree, he had tried to put a compress bandage on his leg, but it hadn’t worked. Blood from his thigh wound had spread beneath him and frozen thick on top of the snow. His eyes were open, staring straight at Clay, as if to ask, how the hell did this happen?

  “They were all dead?”

  “Frozen stiff as a plank. They’d all been wounded, or killed straight out. The Germans were the strange part. There were eight of them up there. In position, like a picture. One of them was crawling to another guy with a medic’s bag in his hand. The other Kraut was flat on his back, holding his belly. Their faces, their skin, it was all white, crystal white, as if they’d been frozen in a second. You could see the expressions on their faces. Fear, pain, grimness, calmness, everything you felt in a fight.”

  “How?”

  “Concussion, we figured. Must’ve been. A shell burst above them, but the trees were already down. One chance in a million, but there it was. No shrapnel, no wood splinters, not a drop of blood. Concussion from a shell that burst straight on top of them. They all died instantly, in position, and the cold did the rest. That’s how cold it was, cold enough to freeze a dead man in place. We left them there. None of us could touch them, not even for souvenirs.”

  Not even for souvenirs. Everyone wanted souvenirs, until they didn’t. Until the very trophy you’d taken turned and took you.

  He felt the snow crunching under his feet as he walked away from the frozen Germans, glancing back at them and wondering. Wondering if he’d end up like that, looking like he should be alive, but dead inside.

  And then it was gone. The cold, the scene in his mind, the immediate sense of memory, sight, sound and smell that always lingered. He sat and stared out the window, enjoying the absence of visions, enjoying the mountain, still there.

  “Dad,” Chris said, brushing his fingers against his arm. “Are you done?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I think I am.”

  They sat in silence, hands on the table, close to each other, but not touching.

  “Do you know,” he said, “that’s the first time you ever told me anything about the war?”

  He had to force his eyes from the mountain to Chris. It was a magical mountain, and he’d finally unearthed its secret. All these years, at the mercy of his own memories, and today, for the first time in five decades, he’d been in control. Speaking the words out loud, containing them within his mouth, letting them out into the air, instead of around and around in his mind, again and again, over and over. It was important that he said these words to Chris, he knew, but it felt like he could’ve been alone and it would have been the same.

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry about that too. I never knew, never thought—”

  “You never thought we could take it. You never thought Mom or me were as tough as you.”

  Clay felt like he’d been punched in the gut. He tried to speak, but couldn’t think of anything to say, except a denial, and he knew that would be wrong. He met his eyes, and saw the determination behind them, the desire burning there, the desire to understand, to pull out the memories, as Addy had pulled him through life, half alive, half whimpering in the snow, crippled by shrapnel and memories.

  “Jesus,” Clay said, holding his head in his hands, feeling the tears seeping through his fingers. “I don’t know what to do. I thought I’d be gone by now, that it would be all over.”

  Clay remembered Addy telling him to talk to Chris, tell him—he couldn’t even repeat Addy’s phrase in his mind. Who—no, he couldn’t say it. He’d avoided it ever since he’d stuffed it back into the corners of his mind and found the perfect escape. The words terrified him. Who he was. The words fell on him like a wall collapsing, revealing his past behind rotten, moldy sheetrock. Who he was. That depended on who his father was, making him the father that he was. Who he was. The thought circled in his mind like a mosquito driving him crazy on a summer night.

  “No, no, I can’t,” Clay said.

  “Can’t what, Dad? Are you sure you’re all right?”

  Clay remembered Addy leaning forward, in the chair where Chris now sat, forcing the words from her uncooperative lips, as if she willed them into coherence. Come out from under tha-at sha-adow. Long enough, long enough.

  He remembered what Miller had told him in Clervaux. Sometimes, the right thing to do grabs you and won’t let go, and you gotta do it, no matter how much you want to run. He wondered how much longer these distant voices would stay with him.

  “Yeah,” said Clay, his voice barely a croak. “I’m okay.”

  They ate breakfast in silence. Chris cleaned up, more time passed. Clay thought about what to do next. Words were not going to be enough. There had to be a better way.

  Clay was watching Chris in the driveway, doing his stretches before a run, when he had an idea. If he couldn’t tell him, maybe he could show him. They could do it, if Chris were willing. It was time, past time, to be honest with his son, and this might be the only way. Time and age had left them drifting, not close, not estranged, not intimate. Clay had always worried about passing on the sins of the father, and it was time to give it up. His own sins were enough.

  How unfair. He hadn’t really been worried about Chris, it was his own shame that he was afraid of, and the more alone Chris was, the less chance for Clay’s shame to be revealed through him. Maybe he wanted Chris to fail, or maybe his son would’ve failed at relationships with no help from him at all. He waited, nervous at first, then calm. He watched Chris walk up the driveway, sweaty, his arms on his hips, his mouth drinking in the air.

  “I might need a ride,” Clay said, as the back door opened.

  “Where to, Dad?” Chris asked, walking to the sink and running the tap for cold water.

  “Out of state, maybe overnight.” Clay said.

  “What’s up, Dad?”

  “There’s some sights I’d like to see, things I want to show you. The place I grew up, to start with.”

  “All the way to Tennessee?”

  “Maybe not that far.”

  “But that’s where you grew up, Tennessee,” Chris said, his certainty reinforced by the pits and pieces of his past that his father had parted with.

  “Listen, it’s going to be easier to show you, I can’t explain it. It’s something to do with those guys in the photograph you’re always asking me about. Trust me, Chris, please.”

  “Okay,” Chris said, the promise of actual information about his father’s wartime photo overcoming his reluctance. “When do you want to make this trip?”

  “Now. Today.”

  “What? You were in the hospital yesterday, and now you want a road trip?”

  “Listen, Chris, let’s get into the car and drive. I’ll navigate. We’ll be back tomorrow night, no problem. It’s important.” />
  “Jesus, Dad, why do we have to go all of a sudden? How important can it be?”

  Clay spread his hands, unable to conceive of how to start telling his son why this was important. Chris shrugged his shoulders and raised his hands in surrender.

  “Okay. Do I have time to shower?”

  “That’d be worth the wait,” Clay said.

  “On the way out we need to stop by the office. There’s something I need to pick up. Won’t take a minute.”

  Clay was excited. Scared and nervous too, but at the heart of it, excited. He hadn’t felt that way in a long time. He realized Addy would have been excited too. Addy always had a plan for working things out between he and Chris, and this would have pleased her. He ached for her, but he also felt a lightness in his gut, like a tight, twisted cord gone slack. He felt a restful sense of being in the right spot, doing the right thing, at the right time, for the right reasons, knowing the consequences were less important than the act itself.

  He finally understood what Miller had said in Clervaux, and thinking about him again, saw the kid looking up at him, calmly explaining it as if it were the most rational thing he ever did.

  Chapter Sixteen

  1945

  Jake dreamed he was home, sitting at his kitchen table, looking out of the small window above the sink, the short white curtains with the red rose pattern his mother had sewn blowing gently in the breeze. She was chopping vegetables at the counter. Seated on either side of him were his father and his sister. His sister’s eyes were riveted to the table, his father’s to her. Little Ned and Shorty were there too, leaning against the counter, sipping coffee from the green-tinted glass cups that came free in boxes of Quaker Oats. They were dressed in clean, pressed khakis, infantry brass gleaming on their collars. Private First Class stripes were stitched evenly on their sleeves, fore and aft caps folded over their belts. They looked like they were on a forty-eight hour pass, ready to go out and celebrate, paint the town red.

  Jake looked down at his hands. His fingernails were black, grimy dirt dug in across his knuckles. His clothes were filthy, the green fatigues greasy and stained. Bringing a hand up to his face, he felt thick stubble scratch against his fingers.