Grandma lowered her hands and looked into Oma’s eyes.
“And if you do go,” Oma went on, “all will be well. They have many who care for them here. So many who have watched them grow and who love them. And you can love them from wherever you go. That will never change.”
“How will I tell them?” Grandma asked. “They’ve needed us for so long. How can I tell them I’m leaving? Especially after Frank . . .”
She didn’t finish.
“You are not responsible for what Frank has or has not done for them.” Oma glanced at the door and nodded, letting me know I should come in. “They will understand if you need to go. They will want what is best for you.”
I knelt next to Grandma’s chair and she put her hands on my face, using a thumb to wipe a tear off my cheek.
“Your aunt Rose has invited me to live with her in Grand Rapids,” she said.
“It’s all right, Grandma,” I answered. “We’ll be okay.”
“Are you sure?”
I wasn’t. But I told her I was anyway.
Fort Sam
Texas
Dear Y’all (as they’d say down in these here parts),
You know, a fella lives his whole life without much excitement. Then he goes off and joins the Army and his family has all kinds of switch-ups and changes without him. I can’t believe Grandma’s moving away. That will be hard for her, I’m sure.
Send her my love, will you? Please. And tell her how much I miss her.
Tell her that I promise I’ll come to see her at Aunt Rose’s while I’m home.
Speaking of which, I’ll be home October 10 for a whole week of fun. Mom, buy some extra groceries. Joel, clean the room. Annie, dust off your camera. We’ll want to preserve all the memories we can before I ship out for at least a year of adventure in the far-off land of Vietnam.
That’s right, folks. I got my orders. I guess I didn’t hit the stay-at-home jackpot after all.
Sorry this is a short one. There’s not too much to say.
I’ll see you soon.
Love,
Mike
Dear Mike,
Sorry I didn’t write you back before. It’s been busy, getting Grandma’s house ready to sell and all. She’s being a bit crabby about the whole thing, which makes matters much worse. She did, though, ask me to tell you that she looks forward to seeing you in a few weeks.
Just a few more weeks! We’re all jazzed for you to come home.
Mom wanted me to ask if you would like us to at least try to have Frank come see you. No promises that he will or that he’ll even call or write us back. But it’s worth the try, right? Or not right? You let me know what you want.
Either way is fine by all of us.
Joel told me to write that he’s in a real rock ’n’ roll band with a few guys from school. They’re all right for a bunch of eighth graders. Mom is looking for a place for them to practice that isn’t our living room. So far, no luck.
If we are all still able to hear by the time you get home, it will be a miracle of the highest order.
Love you, brother.
Annie
PS: We’re all praying that Uncle Sam realizes that he doesn’t really need you in Vietnam after all. Oma keeps insisting on praying for God’s will. Let’s just hope that God’s will and the Army’s agree with letting you stay in America. Wouldn’t that be something?
27
Aunt Rose had arranged everything for Grandma’s move. She’d hired a cleaning lady to scrub every surface of the house, to oil all the woodwork, to tidy all the rooms. A real-estate man to show it to buyers. A moving company to pack everything and load it all onto a truck. She’d thought of everything.
Everything except for how Grandma would feel about the better part of her life being handled by strangers.
“It’s all under control, Mother,” she’d say in her clipped and icy voice whenever Grandma asked where such and such a thing had gotten off to. “Trust me.”
From the way Grandma glared at her, I didn’t think she was so inclined.
It didn’t take long for a new family to buy the house. By the third week of September, Grandma was leaving with promises of trips to come and see us, provided we agreed to drive over to Grand Rapids once in a while to visit her.
I knew, for all the promises we made on both sides, we still wouldn’t see much of Grandma.
Mom had gone to bed and Joel was watching Herman’s Hermits on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. I sat on the porch swing, reading with my flashlight glowing on the page, an afghan over my lap.
I lifted my eyes from the book when I heard the tremolo of a loon coming from the direction of Old Chip. It was a faint call, dampened by the trees and houses between the lake and my front porch. Right in the middle of “Green Street Green” the television turned off.
The screen door squeaked open and Joel came out, lowering himself to sit on the top step of the porch. He reached his arms around his knees, lacing his fingers together.
“You didn’t want to listen to the Hermits anymore?” I asked.
“Nah. I wasn’t diggin’ it,” he answered. “They’re a little mellow for my taste.”
“They aren’t the kind to play guitar with their teeth, are they?”
“Not even close.” He pushed up his glasses. “The loons are noisy tonight, huh?”
“Yup.”
“When I was a kid, Mike convinced me that there was a ghost in the lake.” He shook his head. “I believed him for a long time.”
“He’s just a big bully.”
“Why do you think God made their voices sound so sad?”
“I don’t know.” I stood, holding the afghan around my waist. “Scoot over so I can sit by you.”
“I’m sure there’s some kind of scientific answer.” He moved to one side, letting me have room. “Will you share the blanket with me? Please?”
“Oh, all right, if I have to.”
We sat close, the blanket covering our legs. We listened to the loons for a few minutes, and I wondered if anyone else in the town was out doing the same as we were.
“Can I tell you something?” he asked.
“Of course.”
“I’m kind of sad that we can’t go over to Grandma and Grandpa’s house anymore.”
I nodded. “Me too, buddy.”
“Do you think she’ll be happy?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Aunt Rose is kind of snooty.”
“She isn’t all that bad.”
I nudged him with my elbow and snorted. “She’s horrible. Sometimes I wish I understood why she and Frank both turned out to be so selfish.”
Joel’s jaw tensed.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
“It’s kind of true, I guess.” He cleared his throat. “I thought that if I was good enough, I might be able to make him stay.”
The loons’ calls faded, seeming to recede to farther away on the lake.
“After he left the first time, I was sure it was my fault,” I whispered. “But it wasn’t. It took me a long time to figure that out. Frank left because he decided to. End of story.”
“What if he never comes back?” he asked.
“We’ll be okay. We were okay for a long time without him before. Nothing has changed.”
“But before we had Mike.” His eyes met mine. “And now we don’t.”
“For now,” I said. “In the meantime we’ll just have to be strong together. Okay?”
The loon song had gone quiet. Still, I knew they were there.
Fort Sam Houston
Texas
Dear Mom, Annie, and Joel,
It sure was a hot one here for September. I think it got up to eighty-five degrees. I complained about it to one of the doctors here who laughed right in my face. See, he got back from Vietnam a few months ago. He said I don’t know the definition of the word “hot” yet.
Oh boy. I guess I’m in for it.
Just a
week and a day and I’ll be home. I sure wish I was coming home to stay instead of just for a week. It’s going to be hard to leave you all, knowing I won’t see you for a whole year.
Mom, I know you’re going to cry when I go. If you want to know a secret, I probably will too. But if any of you tell a soul, I swear I won’t bring back any souvenirs once my tour of duty is done.
Joel, you’ve got one week to get all your stuff off my bed. Especially your stuffed puppy dog. I don’t want that stinky, raggedy thing on my pillow.
Annie, you’re going to need to drink some coffee when I’m there. I’ll expect some late-night chats with you. I’ve missed those.
See you soon.
Love,
Mike
28
It was less than half an hour, the news special. Less than half an hour of clicking and whirring film footage of tanks, explosions, guns. And boys wearing helmets, ducking and running or reclining against sandbags.
Two of them sat in a trench, shirtless, talking into the interviewer’s microphone. They were of smooth face, the kind that hadn’t yet seen the need for a razor all that much. One wore his hat at the back of his dark, curly hair.
“You can’t be safe. You can be lucky. That’s it,” he said.
“He could be Michael,” Mom whispered from her chair where she leaned forward as if to get closer to the screen. “Don’t you think he looks a bit like him?”
I didn’t answer her, afraid to miss something that the boy had to say. But the camera cut away, showing a man in glasses, tying his boot laces, telling the microphone about getting scared by the stuff the enemy kept throwing at them. Tying his boots, talking about war, and feeling lucky to be alive afterward.
Watching, hardly blinking, I bit at the inside of my cheek. Breathing shallow, I took in the images of war in black and white.
This is real. This is real. This is real, I thought.
The front door opened, Joel stepped inside, home from church youth group. “Whatcha watching?” he asked.
Mom shushed him, waving him off.
“It’s some place in Vietnam,” I answered, making room for him to sit by me on the couch. “Con Thien, they said.”
Explosions. Soldiers lay on their stomachs, tapped their fingers, waiting out the weapons aimed right at them. Then quiet. Bandaging of wounds, calls for something called a “medevac.” Powdering of feet, cleaning of weapons, writing of letters.
“Hey, who you writing to?” one boy asked.
“Grandmom,” the other answered.
Smoking and sleeping and joking around. Sitting in tall grass and walking along muddy tank tracks.
“You gotta just look to God,” a soldier said. “When I get scared, it’s about the only thing I can do.”
Planes flew through the clouds, letting loose hundreds upon hundreds of bombs. They fell, the cylinders, in graceful form, pirouettes dropping through the clouds. But when they hit the ground, fire burst upward.
I covered my mouth, hoping Mom hadn’t heard my gasp. That was someone’s death.
“Golly,” whispered Joel.
Mike Wallace narrated, but his words held no meaning for me. It was just a sharp undertone to the pictures that moved on the screen.
Two soldiers struggled to heft something onto the back of a Jeep marked with the American Red Cross. They lifted, rolled, and shoved it. It wasn’t until I saw the arm, dangling and lifeless, that I realized what it was.
I hardly made it to the bathroom to get sick. Afterward, I stayed there, my cheek leaning against the cool plaster of the wall, hoping to wait it out so I wouldn’t see anything else from that special report.
When I shut my eyes, all I could see was that arm.
A song from that morning’s church service echoed in my head.
Oh God, our help in ages past, our hope for years to come.
I breathed in through my nose and out my mouth. Eyes still closed. My mind couldn’t let go of the image. The struggle, the arm, the cross on the Jeep.
“He could be Michael.” Mom’s words in my mind.
Oh God, our help.
“He could be Michael.”
Oh God.
Mike. That could be Mike.
Help.
29
Mom had spent the weekend buzzing about, busying herself with all manner of things to prepare for Mike’s arrival on Tuesday. She’d cleaned the house, filled the refrigerator with all of Mike’s favorite foods, had her hair done, and worried over how best to keep him entertained for his week of leave.
She’d found plenty of jobs for Joel and me to do as well. When she’d insisted that Joel clean out the gutters, he’d told her that he was sure Mike wouldn’t think to look there. That had only earned him a dirty look and the additional task of weeding around the sidewalk.
I was glad when Monday came and I could go to work to get some rest.
On my break after the breakfast rush, I sat on my stool behind the counter and cracked open a book I’d brought from home. It was worn, my copy of The Grapes of Wrath, the binding held together with strips of masking tape. The margins were full of my scrawling notes, black pen had underlined certain passages, and the corners of pages were dog-eared.
I couldn’t say how many times I’d read the story. But with each reading, it so consumed me I forgot myself, swearing that I could feel the grit of a dust storm in the air.
So engrossed was I in the story, I didn’t hear the bell over the door or the customer coming into the diner. I didn’t even know he was there until he was just on the other side of the counter, clearing his throat.
“What’s a guy gotta do to get a cup of coffee around here?” he asked.
I knew before I even looked up. Mike.
Dropping the book, not caring that the fall broke loose a few pages, I ran to the other side of the counter and threw my arms around his neck. He steadied himself so he didn’t fall over, laughing the whole time.
“You aren’t supposed to get here until tomorrow,” I said, stepping away from him.
“Well, I guess I better leave, then.” He made for the door, and I grabbed his arm. “I caught an early bus. You think Mom’ll be surprised?”
“I think she’ll have a heart attack,” I answered.
“What’s all that noise out there?” Bernie grumped, pushing his way through the swinging door from the kitchen, rubbing his hands on a dishrag and looking at Mike.
Mike was in his dress uniform, looking taller and broader than I’d ever seen him. His hair was short, buzzed into a flattop. If I hadn’t known better, I might have thought he’d aged at least two years in the months he was gone.
“Look at you,” Bernie said, tossing the rag onto the counter and rushing toward Mike, hand extended. “They sure did make a man out of you, didn’t they?”
“Despite my resisting, I guess they did.” Mike shook Bernie’s hand, looking up into his face the way a son would a father. “Annie been doing an okay job for you?”
“I guess she has.” Bernie nodded at Mike. “I hear they trained you to be a medic.”
“Yes, sir,” Mike answered. “I just hope I don’t have to put all I learned into practice over in Vietnam.”
“You never know,” Bernie said, crossing his arms. “You might get lucky.”
We hid Mike in the laundry room. Joel and I had already set the table with Mom’s best dishes, and we had chop suey from the Chinese restaurant in the oven, keeping warm. We stood side by side in the dining room, waiting for Mom to get home, as excited as we’d ever been as little kids with a present for her.
She finally stepped through the front door at five twenty, kicking off her kitten heels and tossing her purse onto the couch. Then she saw the two of us grinning like fools.
“What?” she said, her no-nonsense tone thick. Then she sniffed. “What are you cooking?”
“Nothing,” I said.
“Did you two get into trouble?” Crossing her arms, she stood, flat on her feet. “Whose window did you
break, Joel? What is that smell?”
“Chinese food,” Joel answered.
She stepped past us into the dining room. “There are four places set,” she said. “Don’t you dare tell me that Frank’s back.”
Joel and I turned to watch her rush into the kitchen. The laundry room door opened slowly and Mike stepped out.
The woman who had somehow come to expect anything life could toss at her was, at last, caught off guard.
That day, Mike managed to surprise her. First, she gasped then screamed. Then she ran at him, her arms spread wide to grab hold of him. Then she put her hands on his face, having to reach higher than she had before, making me wonder if they’d put him on some kind of stretching machine.
She cried. Gloria Anne Jacobson cried.
“But you aren’t coming until tomorrow,” she said before covering her mouth. “Did you lie?”
“No, I caught an earlier bus,” he said. “Come on. Let’s eat before your chop suey gets cold.”
“We got egg rolls too,” Joel said. “And some soup.”
“I don’t think she cares,” I said, patting his shoulder. “She’s got what she wanted. The food is really just for you.”
“Really?” he asked, his eyes lighting up.
“Well, you do have to share.”
I pulled the food out of the oven, placing the containers on trivets in the middle of the dining room table. Mom insisted on lighting her special tapered candles and turning off the overhead light.
“We may as well be fancy,” she said.
Mike said the prayer and we passed the rice and noodles and chop suey around, helping ourselves. Mom even agreed to try using chopsticks, failing miserably and laughing all the while.
“So, Mom, did you really throw a whole meat loaf at Frank’s head?” Mike asked before sucking a noodle in through his puckered lips.
“Not a whole meat loaf,” Mom corrected.
“Only half,” I said, taking a sip of water.
“At Frank’s head?” Mike grinned at me.
“Well, not at his head.” Mom pointed at him. “I’ll remind you that I am a lady.”
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