by Neil Plakcy
Then they went home and waited. Terry wrote to them every week, though he couldn’t say much about where he was going or what he was doing.
On his way home from the day shift at the Fisher Body Works in West Trenton, Harry often stopped at Saint Monica’s in the late afternoon, when the chapel was quiet, to offer up a private prayer. Kneeling there in the second row, in the warm glow of the stained glass windows, he shut out the sounds of the kids in the playground next door, of the cars going past on Main Street, everything except his concentration on the crucifix above the altar.
He had too much respect for his God to offer him deals. Instead, he simply prayed that God would see fit to bring his son home, strong and healthy. He prayed for Jane’s sake as much as his own, addressing special pleas on her behalf to the Virgin Mary, who knew what it was like to lose a son. Often he just sat there, in the stillness and warmth, watching the dust motes jump in the beams of colored light.
He parked along the alley beside the church, which connected Canal and Main Streets. One afternoon in the middle of August he pulled open the church’s back door and then paused when he heard voices in the alley.
He peered out the door. Nick Miller was standing with a young woman, barely out of her teens, in the corner where the church met the rectory, protected from the street, but not from Harry’s view.
In addition to their membership in the Stock Club, Nick had sold Harry his life insurance and homeowners’ policies too, and Harry knew immediately that the woman with Nick was not Carol. As he watched, hesitating in the doorway, Nick leaned down to kiss the woman.
Harry stepped back into the church, closed the door quietly, and returned to his pew. He repeated his prayers for Terry, and added a prayer that Nick would respect the sanctity of marriage. By the time he had finished, Nick and the woman were gone.
* * *
Harry read the newspaper every afternoon, sitting in his plaid recliner by the big front window looking out at Fairway Drive. He read the results of every battle, all the news analysis and the op-ed articles. Every time he saw the word Vietnam he slowed and read carefully, as if his attention to these details was all that was keeping Terry alive. In early September, when Ho Chi Minh died, he spent hours reading all the speculation on how this would affect the course of the war.
Indian summer flared up in a burst of warmth and glory at the end of September, and the CYO group at St. Monica’s sponsored a picnic in the church parking lot. Harry, Jane and Karen walked down Hill Street from their neighborhood, into the center of Stewart’s Crossing. Everyone wanted to know about Terry. Harry let Jane do the talking. She explained how little they knew, how his letters were censored. “But as long as the letters keep coming, we know he’s all right,” she told a woman from the Altar Society, who nodded sympathetically.
The small clapboard church, a hundred and some years old, faced the narrow canal that ran all the way from Bristol to Easton. Across the alley stood a gravel parking lot and a playground for kids in Sunday School. On Sunday mornings people parked all up and down Canal Street, many of them in the post office lot next door.
Harry had always found the church comfortable, snuggled into the heart of town behind the coffee shop, looking out over the canal toward the small residential district by the river’s edge, but today he felt stifled. Even the two- and three-story brick and clapboard buildings of Stewart’s Crossing seemed to press in on him. He longed for the feeling of Fairway Lane, for being able to walk out into his back yard and stare at the acres of green emptiness. Sometimes, when he closed his eyes, he could see Terry coming across the golf course, climbing to the top of a small rise, carrying his duffel bag. He put his hand up to shade his eyes from the sun, spotted his father and started to wave. Then the vision would disappear in the heat.
They had brought some burgers to grill, but Harry’s heart wasn’t in it. Even Karen didn’t feel like staying too long, so they all walked back up the hill together.
When they reached the crest of the hill, they could see down toward their home. Jane grabbed Harry’s arm. “Is that a car in front of our house?” she asked.
Harry squinted ahead. “Looks like.”
“Do you think it’s Terry? Maybe he got some leave. Maybe he’s surprising us.”
She started to run. Harry ran after her, grabbed her arm. “Slow down. You don’t know who it is.”
As they approached the car, a soldier in uniform got out. He was an older man, decorated, his chest holding a dozen medals. “Mr. and Mrs. Mosca?” he asked.
“Oh, my God.” Jane took Harry’s arm, and at that moment he wasn’t sure if he was supporting her, or if she was supporting him.
It wasn’t as bad as they thought. Terry was only missing in action, not dead. The soldier promised to let them know as soon as there was news. For days, the three of them walked around like zombies, not talking much, hardly looking at each other.
One night at dinner, Jane said, “Elaine Warner called today. Jenny Laroquette had a baby girl.”
“That’s nice.” Harry stared down at his pot roast.
“They’re going over to see the baby tonight. Do you think we could go?”
Harry frowned. “What for?”
“Why, to see the baby, of course,” Jane said. “And it wouldn’t hurt us to go out and talk to other people now and then.”
“I don’t have anything to say to other people. They’re going to ask about Terry, and what am I supposed to tell them?”
“They’re our friends, Harry.” Jane waited a moment. “Please?”
Harry looked at his wife. In that instant, he realized that she missed Terry as much as he did, maybe more. He turned back to the pot roast. “All right.” He speared a piece of meat that was too big, and it stuck going down his throat.
After dinner, they drove across the railroad tracks to The Lakes, where the Laroquettes lived in a Cape Cod a block away from Clear Lake. There were already a couple of cars in the driveway, so Harry parked on the street in front of the house. “You’re sure you want to go in there?”
Jane got out of the car. “Come on, Harry.”
The baby was in her crib in the living room. Elaine and Paul Warner were already there, and so were Nick and Carol Miller. The men clustered together in a corner by the big bow window overlooking the street. “So how’s business?” Harry asked Nick.
“Good, real good,” Nick said. “Working late a lot.”
Remembering the woman he had seen Nick with, Harry thought, “I’ll bet you are,” and then was surprised at himself, for having such an un-Christian thought.
“Any word about Terry?” Paul asked.
Harry shook his head. “I don’t see how they can misplace him,” he said. “In my day, the Army knew where you were every minute of every day. Had to. It’s the only way to keep all those boys in line.”
“Was he on patrol?” Paul asked.
Harry opened his mouth but no sound came out. He swallowed hard, then said, “We don’t know much. He was with his unit, on a patrol in the highlands somewhere. I think it must have been near that Ho Chi Minh trail they talk about.”
He paused. It was a little easier to breathe. “They got bushwhacked. Sniper fire. A few of the boys got hit, and Terry and a couple of the others got separated from the rest.”
“Jesus,” Nick said.
Harry was irritated. Nick Miller was a sinner, and here he was taking the Lord’s name in vain. But the look on the man’s face was all concern, and Harry softened. “It’s hard,” he said. “Not knowing. We hate to leave the house because we’re afraid we’ll miss a call.”
“If you need anything,” Paul said.
“Absolutely,” Nick said. “Anything.”
In the car on the way home, Harry was considering how easy it had been to talk about Terry, once he did. He’d thought that talking about the boy might put him in further danger, that it would hurt too much to consider the future. But it felt better. He felt closer to Terry, like they were in to
uch somehow. He smiled.
Jane said, “What a sweet little baby. Did you see those blue eyes?”
Harry turned to Jane. He’d forgotten to look at the baby. He didn’t know what else to do, so he nodded. “Pretty eyes,” he said.
* * *
Every time the phone rang, they jumped. Ninety percent of the calls were for Karen, and the rest were routine. Could the Moscas support the Police Athletic League again this year? Would Jane be able to help with the Altar Society bake sale? “I want to rip the damn phone out of here,” Harry said one night in October when it rang again. Terry had been missing for just over a month, and there had been no news.
“Now, now.” Jane walked over to the desk in the hallway and picked up the receiver. “Hold on.” She put her hand over the mouthpiece. “Harry, it’s for you. It’s Chuck Ritter.”
“I’ll take it in the kitchen.” They’d put in the wall phone by the refrigerator a few months before, to make it easier for Jane to get a call if she was cooking.
“The code word is outhouse,” Chuck said when Harry picked up. Harry listened for the click that would come when Jane hung up. It took a minute longer than he expected.
“What are you, crazy?” he said, when the line was clear. “Jane could have heard you.”
“All I said was outhouse,” Chuck said. “I didn’t give the game away.”
Just the other day the newspaper had run a story about the Outhouse Gang, in which a local developer had offered an outhouse to the gang, if they would reveal who they were.
“What do you think about that offer in the paper?” Harry asked. “Maybe we ought to give up stealing and let this guy give us the outhouse.”
“Nah,” Chuck said. “That takes all the fun out of it. That guy wants to make a parade around the outhouse. Where’s the fun in that? Where’s the adventure? Where’s the danger?”
At the mention of the word danger, Harry’s stomach did a flip-flop. Terry was in enough danger for all of them combined. “So you’re planning to do it again?”
“Same time, same place,” Chuck said. “Though I have to tell you, Susanna is starting to get suspicious.”
“I don’t know if I can make it this year,” Harry said. “Without Terry, it just won’t be the same.” Terry had ridden with his father four times and was the oldest and strongest of the boys.
“We need you, Harry,” Chuck said. “You’re one of us.”
Too many people need me these days, Harry thought. He shrugged. “All right, I’ll be there.”
Jane was sitting on the sofa reading a magazine when Harry walked back in. “How’s Chuck?” she asked.
“Fine, fine.”
“What did he want?”
“Want? Just to say hello.”
Jane put the magazine down. “Harry Mosca, do you think I’m stupid? Or just blind?”
Harry sat down in his recliner, his back rigid, his hands holding tight to the armrest. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, I know where you’ve been going these last six years. I didn’t catch on the first year, and I’m not even sure about the second. But I know you’ve been in this Outhouse Gang, the paper calls it.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Don’t lie to me, Harry. Or have you forgotten all the commandments? Thou shalt not take false witness? I know you’ve forgotten the one about stealing.”
“It’s not stealing,” Harry said. “We just borrow it for a few hours.”
“Hmph.”
“You see, that’s why I didn’t tell you before. I knew you wouldn’t understand.”
“How many other lies have you told me? In December we’ll be married twenty years. What else have you kept from me?”
Only one thing came to Harry’s mind. The day in Connecticut when Terry had fallen down the hill. He felt that hollow feeling again. “Well, there is one thing.”
“What a strange look you have on your face, Harry.” Jane stopped, and it was as if a light had dawned on her face. “If it’s another woman, I don’t want to know.”
Harry laughed. “I’ve never looked at another woman since I married you.” He shook his head. “No, it’s about Terry.”
“Have you heard something?”
They had not discussed what might have happened to Terry since the day the soldier had come to the house. They had both been prisoner to their own thoughts. “No, this is old.” He told her about the fall.
“That’s all?”
“I could never tell you. I thought it meant I wasn’t a good father, that I was careless. I thought you’d never trust me with him again.”
“Oh, Harry.” She started to cry. “What will we do without him?”
“We won’t.” Harry got up and walked over to the sofa where she sat. He took her hand in his and held it tight. “He’ll be all right. He’s coming home to us. I know he is.”
He hardly realized the tears streaming down his own cheeks. Jane stood up and they embraced. They were still hugging each other when the phone rang again. Karen danced into the room, saying, “That’s for me, I know it is, Charlene promised to call me at eight o’clock sharp to tell me what Ruthann said about Bruce Ritter.”
She picked up the phone and fell into conversation with Charlene, her best friend. Harry and Jane laughed, and held on to each other.
That night, the men of the Outhouse Gang met at the hardware store at midnight, as usual. All the way there, Harry kept going over his conversation with Jane. It was wrong to steal; he knew that. And worse, he had been bringing his boy along. He had made this thing a part of their lives together, a secret they had shared.
Now Terry was gone, and might never come back. Already the house felt different—his voice had stopped echoing in the halls, his clothes were no longer strewn around the living room. His friends no longer came by, and Harry had stopped looking for him at the dinner table. It was as if he was fading from their lives.
That had to stop, Harry thought, as he walked over to the truck. Harry had to work at keeping Terry a part of this life. If his own father let him slip away, there would be no reason for the Army to find him.
He nodded his hellos to most of the men. “Hello, Bruce,” he said to Chuck Ritter’s son. “You’ll be as big as my Terry soon, won’t you? How old are you now?”
“Sixteen,” Bruce said shyly. He looked to his father, who nodded. “Have you heard anything from Terry?”
Harry shook his head. “It’s a big place, that Vietnam. I’m sure they’ll find him soon.”
“Probably found himself a nice girl, and a nice hut out there in the woods,” Nick said. “A little R & R.”
Harry forced himself to smile. “I hope so.”
“Come on,” Chuck said. “We’ve got a drive ahead of us.”
The men started to climb into the truck. “Where exactly?” Tom asked.
“Just outside of Newtown,” Chuck said. “Sandy, Charley and I have scoured this neighborhood. Seems like most everybody’s got indoor plumbing these days.”
“That could take us a half-hour each way,” Nick said.
Harry found it harder and harder to suppress his nasty impulses toward Nick, but he kept remembering the concern in the man’s face over Terry. If Terry was going to get home, Harry had to be nice to everyone who cared about him. “We’ll manage. Come on, Nick, squeeze that long frame in over here.”
Nick clambered up onto the truck and pulled his son Fred up behind him. They sat across from Harry, who smiled at Fred. The boy looked shyly at his legs, and then looked up again, smiling.
Harry thought, if there was a place back in this world where Terry belonged, where he was missed, then that might be just enough to pull him back. He settled in for the long ride, knowing he had done as much as he could, and hoping it would be enough.
Nick: 1970
Nick Miller’s receptionist, Susie, lived in an apartment at the top of an old house along the river, at the northern edge of Stewart’s Crossing. Nick liked to lie there in her bed
after they had made love and look out through the treetops at the river glinting silver in the afternoon sun.
It was high summer, and everything in Stewart’s Crossing was fat, green and lazy. The air was thick and hot and hardly moved, even down by the water. “What are you doing this weekend?” Nick asked.
Susie was standing in front of the mirror examining her eye shadow. Her bra was tangled up with the rest of her clothes on the floor by the bedroom door, where she had dropped them. She was wearing a pair of white panties with lacy trim. “There’s a protest rally in Philadelphia on Saturday afternoon,” she said. “I’m probably going with a bunch of kids from the drop-in center.”
The drop-in center was across from Nick’s insurance agency, on Ferry Street in the center of Stewart’s Crossing. That’s how he’d met Susie in the first place—she was standing in front of the center, a hangout for teenagers, when he’d walked outside to post the help wanted sign on the front door.
His receptionist was pregnant and he had to replace her. Susie had walked over and asked about the job, and he’d taken one look at her round, firm breasts, unsupported by any bra, her tight little butt and her short but shapely legs, and hired her on the spot.
That was six months ago. It had taken them three months to get to bed, carefully at first, leaving the office in separate cars to sneak away at lunch time. Sometimes, Nick, sly as a thief, slipped away from home on the pretext of an errand or two and ended up at Susie’s apartment, rolling around with her under her muslin sheets.
“It’s almost two, Nicky,” Susie said. “We should get back.”
“Sandra will cover for us,” Nick said. Sandra was the secretary, a tall, plain girl Nick had never desired. “I don’t have any appointments this afternoon.”
“Well, all right.” Susie turned to face him, those wonderful round breasts glowing in the afternoon sunlight.
* * *
There was more work than Nick had remembered, and he didn’t get home until almost six-thirty. Carol was sitting at the kitchen table playing gin rummy with Fred, their thirteen-year-old. Nick wondered idly, kissing the top of Carol’s head, if Fred knew Susie. After all, she was only four years older than he was.