Home Fires Burning

by Robert Inman

  “But you agree they could make a mistake?”

  “Well …”

  “There are odds, you said. It’s not a dead certain … excuse me, I didn’t mean to make a pun … it’s not a sure thing.”

  Whalen thought for a moment. “The Army has a good system,” he said. “I saw it myself at Normandy. Every man wears dogtags. Like these.” Whalen unbuttoned two of the buttons on his khaki shirt and pulled out his dogtags, two small pieces of metal on a long chain, and held them out so Jake could see his name, rank, serial number, blood type, and religious affiliation stamped on them. Jake nodded and Whalen stuck the tags back and buttoned his shirt. “Even if a man gets killed, the dogtags stay with him. The Graves Registration detail makes sure of it.”

  “What if the chain gets broken?” Jake asked.

  “Well, they … ah … they wedge one of the dogtags between his teeth. Look, I don’t want to upset you …”

  “No matter. I’m the one who asked.”

  “So, you see, it’s a good system and they’re very very careful about it.”

  Jake let it lie there for a moment, and then he said, “How about the ones who are blown to bits?”

  Whalen’s jaw sagged. “Blown to bits?”

  “Sure, Lieutenant. You’ve got artillery, don’t you? And land mines? All sorts of high explosives. Don’t some men just get literally blown to bits?”

  “Yes sir,” Whalen said quietly.

  Jake could see the hurt in the boy’s eyes and he knew the carnage at Normandy had been horrible. Jake’s conscience told him to let this lie, to leave the boy alone; but the unthinkable thing deep inside made him press on.

  “So some of ’em are blown to bits,” Jake continued. “Nothing left but pieces. This piece, that piece. Who belongs to what? Who’s to know? So the Army takes a leg here, an arm there, puts ’em in a metal box, ships ’em home and says, ‘Here’s so-and-so.’ “

  “No,” Whalen said, suddenly very sure of himself. “That’s not the way it happens at all. In a case where there’s nothing identifiable, they just list the man as missing in action. They don’t send anything home if there’s nothing to send home.” He hesitated for a moment. “Believe me, Mr. Tibbetts, that’s your son’s body in there.”

  Jake took a deep breath and held it in for a moment, then said, “Why don’t we open the casket and find out.”

  “No!” Whalen said sharply.

  “Why not?”

  “My God, the man’s been dead six months. He’s your son, for God’s sake. You don’t want to see him like that. Do you?”

  “No,” Jake said. “No, I don’t.” And he truly didn’t. He would give anything not to. It would be like prying into the most intimate secrets of a man’s soul, to look upon his long-dead face. That was almost as unthinkable as the need to know that it was indeed Henry Tibbetts they would lay to rest tomorrow with all his baggage, once and for all. Sure, it made no sense. Henry was dead, wherever he lay. But there was something about bringing him back here in death to Jake Tibbetts, who had washed his hands of him. Jake had to be sure. Not to be sure, that would be the ultimately unthinkable thing.

  “I don’t,” Jake repeated, “but I have to.”

  Grover Whalen stared at the floor. “This is crazy,” he said.

  “Can it be done?” Jake asked.

  Whalen didn’t answer.

  “Can it?” Jake insisted.

  Whalen nodded. “It takes an order from a health official. And a special tool.”

  “A what?”

  “Tool. A wrench.” Whalen wasn’t looking at Jake. “The casket is sealed with special bolts. About forty of ’em. It takes a particular kind of wrench to undo ’em.”

  “You have one?”

  “Yes,” he mumbled. “They gave us all a wrench,” he said bitterly. “They said, ‘You won’t have to use it, but just in case …” They said nobody’s gonna want to open a casket.” He looked up at Jake a finally. “That’s what they told us, Mr. Tibbetts. Nobody’s gonna want to open a casket.”

  “I’m sorry,” Jake said.

  There was a knock on the door then, and Rosh Benefield stuck his head in, and Lieutenant Grover Whalen looked immensely relieved.

  “Jake, you all right?” Rosh asked.

  “No,” Jake said.

  Rosh stepped inside the small office and closed the door behind him, glancing over at Whalen and then back at Jake. “What’s the matter?”

  “I … ah …”

  “He wants to open the casket,” Grover Whalen said.

  Rosh Benefield stood there, massive and imponderable, his small, bright eyes sweeping back and forth between Jake and Whalen, blinking slowly. “Why do you want to open the casket, Jake?”

  “To make sure it’s Henry.”

  Rosh turned to Whalen, put his hands behind his back, leaned forward in his best courtroom manner. “Is it Henry?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “How do you know it’s Henry?”

  “The Army says it is,” Whalen said.

  “What are the odds it’s not?”

  “A million to one.”

  Rosh nodded. “Lieutenant, why don’t you go on back in yonder and keep the Tibbetts ladies and young Lonnie company, tell ’em Jake and I are having a discussion, and we’ll be along in a moment. All right?”

  “Yes sir.” Whalen got up and left and they could see, as he closed the door behind him, the dark sweat stain soaking the back of his khaki shirt.

  “Let’s get some air,” Rosh said.

  There were only two cars in the small parking lot behind the funeral home — Rosh’s Packard and Cosmo Redlinger’s somber Buick. The snout of Cosmo’s Cadillac hearse poked from the small wooden garage next to the open space. A squadron of night bugs and moths flapped and darted around the bare bulb above the back door that bathed the area in a weak puddle of light. The night was warm, but nothing like the sweaty oppressiveness that July and August would bring.

  Jake leaned against the back wall of the building as Rosh opened the door of his car and fished a pint jar of Lightnin’ Jim’s Best from under the front seat. He held it up in the light and watched the amber liquid flash gold, then he unscrewed the lid and passed the jar to Jake. Jake drank and felt nothing. He waited for a moment and took another sip and felt the fire building in his throat as the whiskey broke through the fevered numbness that had encased his brain since early this morning. He passed the jar to Rosh, who took a big swig, closed his eyes, swallowed, and smiled painfully. “We step from the cradle looking for ways to kill ourselves,” Rosh said.

  He passed the jar back to Jake and they both took another swig, then Rosh put the jar down on the fender of his Packard and leaned against the hood.

  “You are about to shit in your own nest, Jake,” he said.

  Jake hung fire for a moment, and then he said, “You heard him. He doesn’t know if that’s Henry in that box or not.”

  “So?”

  “So, what if it’s not.”

  “Bury him and be done with it. The dead have no names.”

  “But I have to know.”

  “Why?”

  Jake shook his head. “I don’t know why. I just have to know that it’s Henry. I have to put him to rest, Rosh.”

  “You never seemed to care before,” Rosh said quietly.

  Jake felt a flush of anger. “That’s not so. I cared, but it didn’t do a damn bit of good. You know what Henry was. You of all people.”

  Jake could see it again, as clearly as if it were happening right this moment at the edge of Cosmo Redlinger’s parking lot, the searing flash of flame devouring the car wrapped around the pine tree at the bottom of the gully with what was left of Hazel Benefield on the hood, Rosh slumped in the front seat of Hilton Redlinger’s patrol car, stupefied with grief. And Henry, cowering in the darkness of his living room.

  Now, he could see the pain of remembering flash across Rosh Benefield’s massive face.

  “You saw it, Rosh. You saw wh
at the bastard did.”

  “We’re all bastards in one way or another, Jake. We spend our lives trying to find a way to live with that.”

  “Don’t tell me you forgave him.”

  “I didn’t forgive him or not forgive him,” Rosh said. “I just got on with things. And right now, I think you need to get done with burying whomever is in that steel box in yonder and get on with things. I tell you this for sure,” Rosh leaned toward him, a mountain moving, “if you persist in this business about opening the casket, you will destroy Pastine.”

  Jake wanted to turn and walk away, to escape back through the hallway to whatever was left of the mumble-muttering press of curiosity seekers in Cosmo’s parlor. But he was rooted to the spot. He could feel the skin of his face tightening around his bones.

  Rosh bore in on him. “I don’t know where you got this crazy notion, Jake, but I imagine it has more to do with your own devils than it does with Henry. So I’m not going to let you screw things up for Pastine if I can help it. Pastine never gave up. She never let go. Right or wrong, she clung to that boy and it has cost her dearly. Now, she’s got to bury him. And so help me God, Jake Tibbetts, I will not let you screw it up. For once in your life, just goddamn well leave things alone!”

  They stared at each other for a long, long time before Jake finally spoke.

  “You and Pastine,” he said.

  Rosh’s eyes widened with shock and hurt and then he heaved a great body-shaking sigh. He picked up the jar of Lightnin’ Jim’s Best from the fender of his car, held it in his hand for a moment, and then poured the whiskey onto the ground between them, splattering their shoes and pants legs with whiskey and dirt. Then he tossed the empty jar into the scruffle of grass next to the building, where it landed with a dull plunk.

  “You sonofabitch,” he said simply and quietly, and left Jake alone in the night.

  Seven

  AT MIDMORNING it was already oppressively hot with the thick mugginess of June’s first heat wave, the promise of unbearable July. Young Scout sat sweltering, grimy, exhausted, in the thicket next to the open field — an expanse of green, freshly mowed, fragrant, alive with the chattering of insects. At the far side, heat phantoms shimmered from the granite and marble of tombstones. Young Scout hunkered behind a bush for a long time in perfect stillness, feeling his legs go numb under him, welcoming the numbness that spread through his body. He didn’t know how he had gotten here, or why. He just knew that it had gone badly in the night, that his mind was all fevered, that he was alone here when he should be someplace else, someplace important …

  And then Captain Finley was there, kneeling at his side, offering his canteen. Young Scout shook his head mutely, avoiding Captain Finley’s eyes.

  Finally, he spoke. “Where have you been?” Young Scout asked accusingly. “You told me to come. And I came. But I couldn’t find you.”

  Captain Finley didn’t answer. He crouched silently, looking out across the open field, eyes drawn to narrow slits by the blazing sunlight. There was something strange, distant about him. The way he had been last night, upstairs in the house.

  He had never been upstairs before. He had always called for Young Scout from the yard, where he and Muldoon and the hundred good and lusty men of the Lighthorse Cavaliers waited in their saddles; or had been waiting in the dead midnight of the parlor, sitting deep in the wing-back chair by the fireplace. But never upstairs.

  Young Scout sat bolt upright in bed, wide awake, when he heard the footsteps on the stairs, knowing instantly who it was and why he had come. For the first time, he was afraid.

  The door opened, and Captain Finley stood there, drumming his fingers on the stiff leather of his pistol holster.

  “You can’t come up here,” the boy whispered.

  “I can go anywhere I want to, boy,” Captain Finley said, loud enough to wake the entire house.

  Young Scout cringed. “They’ll hear you.” He couldn’t see Captain Finley’s face under the brim of the battered campaign hat. There was only shadow there, that and the stub of the cigar jammed between his teeth under the curving slash of his moustache. Captain Finley was not a man who was used to being indoors. He didn’t remove his hat. Long months in the saddle robbed a man of the social graces, that’s what Captain Finley said.

  “Up, boy, there’s business to do,” he said from around the cigar.

  The boy felt his face flush. “But I can’t,” he said. “They say I have to go with them.”

  Captain Finley spoke quietly now, his voice like smoke. “Nonsense. The dead got no relatives, boy. Don’t you know that? Besides, what do they know? Not a warrior in the whole bunch. Civilians, all of ’em. What do they know about burying a warrior? A warrior’s for battle, Young Scout. When he falls, they tote his rotting bones back home for the civilians to fawn over. It’s a trifling end for a fighting man.”

  “But …”

  “There’s fighting to be done tonight, boy. I need you.”

  There was a long silence between them and Young Scout could feel Captain Finley’s profound weariness.

  “I need you,” he said again, and was gone, vanished from the doorway, leaving the boy tangled in the bed sheets, a terrible wrenching in his gut. He got up after a moment and padded to the window and looked out into the soft June night, heard the shuffle and stamp of the horses in the yard under the oak tree. He stood there, feeling the dread deep in his gut. Then he heard Captain Finley’s voice drifting up to his window from beneath the oak tree. “Are you coming, boy?”

  He mustn’t. But he dreaded being here, too, dreaded what they must do come morning. Finally, he said, “Yes sir.”

  Then he could hear them moving off, Captain Finley and Lieutenant Muldoon at the fore, cantering as a single body down the road, their sound fading to nothingness, leaving the great stillness of night. The boy dressed quickly in cotton shirt and britches. He carried his shoes in his hand as he tiptoed past the rooms where the others slept — the others who wouldn’t understand a warrior’s need to be among warriors this night — down the stairs and out the back door into the darkness of early morning.

  But in the darkness, he couldn’t find them. They were gone, vanished into air. There was only blackness, night sounds that multiplied until they became a roaring in his ears, and finally nothing. Until now, until he found himself crouched in the thicket at midmorning, dazed and sweating. And now, Captain Finley was back. He put his hand on Young Scout’s shoulder, felt the boy flinch. “What’s the matter, boy? You hurt?”

  Young Scout could feel tears welling up in his eyes and he choked them back and shook his head.

  “What is it?” Captain Finley demanded.

  “I couldn’t find you,” he whispered. “I needed you and I couldn’t find you.”

  Captain Finley wiped his gloved hand across his eyes. “I’ve got my own war to fight,” he said, his voice dust-choked and raspy. “And the devil doing it. The war’s changed, boy. We’re fighting on borrowed time. The Federals, they’ve got iron in their britches now. There always was more of ’em, but now they’ve got the iron.”

  “You ain’t quittin’, are you?”

  He took a long time before he answered. “No. There’s the honor of the thing. Honor and duty.” He lowered his head then, stared at the ground by his booted feet. “Honor and duty,” he said again.

  Young Scout stared at him, and then he heard a noise across the broad open field.

  He tore his eyes from Captain Finley, squinted into the sunlight, saw the procession snaking its way from the main road through the winding double-rutted trail among the tombstones. They were far enough away that the procession moved like a ghost train through the heat shimmers from the baking earth. Their metal and glass danced in the sunlight. There was Grandaddy Rosh Benefield’s black Packard in front, then Redlinger’s long black Cadillac hearse right behind, and then the other cars, the muted rumble of their engines an undercurrent on the morning. They took a long time coming, a slow, torturous, shi
mmering journey through the tombstones.

  Lonnie watched as they stopped next to a green open-sided tent and then people began to get out of the cars, black-clad figures — Mama Pastine and Daddy Jake and Francine from the lead car, along with Grandaddy Rosh, who looked like a huge black elephant. They went straight to the tent and stood just inside its shade, and the rest of the people stood back a ways while a group of men got out of the third vehicle and opened the rear door of Cosmo Redlinger’s Cadillac hearse and pulled out the dull gray casket with the American flag on top and carried it, three black-clad men on each side, to the little platform under the tent. Then the rest of them clustered around, blocking his view, except for a squad of four men, wearing their American Legion caps and carrying rifles, who stood off to one side in a little ragged row.

  Lonnie stood, feeling prickles race through his numb limbs and rump. Over there, that was where he was supposed to be. That was where he belonged, no matter how hard …

  “Boy,” he heard Captain Finley say at his elbow, “I need you.”

  They were all in place now around the green tent and he heard the voice of the Methodist preacher drifting across the open field.

  “Boy …”

  And then he started running.

  Nobody saw him until he was almost upon the crowd. Then somebody called out, “Look a-yonder. There’s Lonnie.” And the whole blessed crowd of them turned around to stare at him, hotfooting it across the field, and the voice of the preacher stopped in mid-sentence. The crowd parted, drawing back so that he could see his own kin standing under the tent, looking at him like he was a ghost or something.

  “Lonnie!” Mama Pastine cried. He could see the awful wrath in her eyes, even through the thin veil she was wearing over her face. Godalmighty, it would go rough with him.

  “You! Young’un!” A different voice this time, a rough, deep man’s voice. Lonnie was in the middle of them now and a big strong hand reached out and grabbed his arm and spun him around and he looked with terror into the eyes of Police Chief Hilton Redlinger. “Where the devil you been? Got half the county out searching for you!”