by Neil Gaiman
He continued down the path that crossed the field and split the trees. As he went, he tried to remember exactly where his house was and how it looked and how it smelled, and most important, how he felt when he was inside it. He tried to remember his wife and how she looked and how he felt when he was inside her, and all he could find in the back of his mind was a cipher of a woman younger than he was in a long, colorless dress in a house with three rooms. He couldn’t even remember her nakedness, the shape of her breasts and the length of her legs. It was as if they had met only once, and in passing.
When he came through the trees and out on the other side, the field was there as it should be, and it was full of bright blue and yellow flowers. Once it had been filled with tall corn and green bursts of beans and peas. It hadn’t been plowed now in years, most likely since he left. He followed the trail and trudged toward his house. It stood where he had left it. It had not improved with age. The chimney was black at the top and the unpainted lumber was stripping like shedding snakeskin. He had cut the trees and split them and made the lumber for the house, and like everything else he had seen since he had returned, it was smaller than he remembered. Behind it was the smokehouse he had made of logs, and far out to the left was the outhouse he had built. He had read many a magazine there while having his morning constitutional.
Out front, near the well, which had been built up with stones and now had a roof over it supported on four stout poles, was a young boy. He knew immediately it was his son. The boy was probably eight. He had been four years old when Deel had left to fight in the Great War, sailed across the vast dark ocean. The boy had a bucket in his hand, held by the handle. He set it down and raced toward the house, yelling something Deel couldn’t define.
A moment later she came out of the house and his memory filled up. He kept walking, and the closer he came to her, standing framed in the doorway, the tighter his heart felt. She was blond and tall and lean and dressed in a light-colored dress on which were printed flowers much duller than those in the field. But her face was brighter than the sun, and he knew now how she looked naked and in bed, and all that had been lost came back to him, and he knew he was home again.
When he was ten feet away the boy, frightened, grabbed his mother and held her, and she said, “Deel, is that you?”
He stopped and stood, and said nothing. He just looked at her, drinking her in like a cool beer. Finally he said, “Worn and tired, but me.”
“I thought…”
“I didn’t write cause I can’t.”
“I know…but…”
“I’m back, Mary Lou.”
THEY SAT STIFFLY AT the kitchen table. Deel had a plate in front of him and he had eaten the beans that had been on it. The front door was open and they could see out and past the well and into the flower-covered field. The window across the way was open too, and there was a light breeze ruffling the edges of the pulled-back curtains framing it. Deel had the sensation he’d had before when crossing the field and passing through the trees, and when he had first seen the outside of the house. And now, inside, the roof felt too low and the room was too small and the walls were too close. It was all too small.
But there was Mary Lou. She sat across the table from him. Her face was clean of lines and her shoulders were as narrow as the boy’s. Her eyes were bright, like the blue flowers in the field.
The boy, Winston, was to his left, but he had pulled his chair close to his mother. The boy studied him carefully, and in turn, Deel studied the boy. Deel could see Mary Lou in him, and nothing of himself.
“Have I changed that much?” Deel said, in response to the way they were looking at him. Both of them had their hands in their laps, as if he might leap across the table at any moment and bite them.
“You’re very thin,” Mary Lou said.
“I was too heavy when I left. I’m too skinny now. Soon I hope to be just right.” He tried to smile, but the smile dripped off. He took a deep breath. “So, how you been?”
“Been?”
“Yeah. You know. How you been?”
“Oh. Fine,” she said. “Good. I been good.”
“The boy?”
“He’s fine.”
“Does he talk?”
“Sure he talks. Say hello to your daddy, Winston.”
The boy didn’t speak.
“Say hello,” his mother said.
The boy didn’t respond.
“That’s all right,” Deel said. “It’s been a while. He doesn’t remember me. It’s only natural.”
“You joined up through Canada?”
“Like I said I would.”
“I couldn’t be sure,” she said.
“I know. I got in with the Americans, a year or so back. It didn’t matter who I was with. It was bad.”
“I see,” she said, but Deel could tell she didn’t see at all. And he didn’t blame her. He had been caught up in the enthusiasm of war and adventure, gone up to Canada and got in on it, left his family in the lurch, thinking life was passing him by and he was missing out. Life had been right here and he hadn’t even recognized it.
Mary Lou stood up and shuffled around the table and heaped fresh beans onto his plate and went to the oven and brought back cornbread and put it next to the beans. He watched her every move. Her hair was a little sweaty on her forehead and it clung there, like wet hay.
“How old are you now?” he asked her.
“How old?” she said, returning to her spot at the table. “Deel, you know how old I am. I’m twenty-eight, older than when you left.”
“I’m ashamed to say it, but I’ve forgotten your birthday. I’ve forgotten his. I don’t hardly know how old I am.”
She told him the dates of their births.
“I’ll be,” he said. “I don’t remember any of that.”
“I…I thought you were dead.”
She had said it several times since he had come home. He said, “I’m still not dead, Mary Lou. I’m in the flesh.”
“You are. You certainly are.”
She didn’t eat what was on her plate. She just sat there looking at it, as if it might transform.
Deel said, “Who fixed the well, built the roof over it?”
“Tom Smites,” she said.
“Tom? He’s a kid.”
“Not anymore,” she said. “He was eighteen when you left. He wasn’t any kid then, not really.”
“I reckon not,” Deel said.
AFTER DINNER, SHE GAVE him his pipe the way she used to, and he found a cane rocker that he didn’t remember being there before, took it outside and sat and looked toward the trees and smoked his pipe and rocked.
He was thinking of then and he was thinking of now and he was thinking of later, when it would be nighttime and he would go to bed, and he wasn’t certain how to approach the matter. She was his wife, but he hadn’t been with her for years, and now he was home, and he wanted it to be like before, but he didn’t really remember how it was before. He knew how to do what he wanted to do, but he didn’t know how to make it love. He feared she would feel that he was like a mangy cat that had come in through the window to lie there and expected petting.
He sat and smoked and thought and rocked.
The boy came out of the house and stood to the side and watched him.
The boy had the gold hair of his mother and he was built sturdy for a boy so young. He had a bit of a birthmark in front of his right ear, on the jawline, like a little strawberry. Deel didn’t remember that. The boy had been a baby, of course, but he didn’t remember that at all. Then again, he couldn’t remember a lot of things, except for the things he didn’t want to remember. Those things he remembered. And Mary Lou’s skin. That he remembered. How soft it was to the touch, like butter.
“Do you remember me, boy?” Deel asked.
“No.”
“Not at all?”
“No.”
“’Course not. You were very young. Has your mother told you about me?”
&
nbsp; “Not really.”
“Nothing.”
“She said you got killed in the war.”
“I see…Well, I didn’t.”
Deel turned and looked back through the open door. He could see Mary Lou at the washbasin pouring water into the wash pan, water she had heated on the stove. It steamed as she poured. He thought then he should have brought wood for her to make the fire. He should have helped make the fire and heat the water. But being close to her made him nervous. The boy made him nervous.
“You going to school?” he asked the boy.
“School burned down. Tom teaches me some readin’ and writin’ and cipherin’. He went eight years to school.”
“You ever go fishin’?”
“Just with Tom. He takes me fishin’ and huntin’ now and then.”
“He ever show you how to make a bow and arrow?”
“No.”
“No, sir,” Deel said. “You say, no, sir.”
“What’s that?”
“Say yes, sir or no, sir. Not yes and no. It’s rude.”
The boy dipped his head and moved a foot along the ground, piling up dirt.
“I ain’t gettin’ on you none,” Deel said. “I’m just tellin’ you that’s how it’s done. That’s how I do if it’s someone older than me. I say no, sir and yes, sir. Understand, son?”
The boy nodded.
“And what do you say?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. Manners are important. You got to have manners. A boy can’t go through life without manners. You can read and write some, and you got to cipher to protect your money. But you got to have manners too.”
“Yes, sir.”
“There you go…About that bow and arrow. He never taught you that, huh?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, that will be our plan. I’ll show you how to do it. An old Cherokee taught me how. It ain’t as easy as it might sound, not to make a good one. And then to be good enough to hit somethin’ with it, that’s a whole nuther story.”
“Why would you do all that when you got a gun?”
“I guess you wouldn’t need to. It’s just fun, and huntin’ with one is real sportin’, compared to a gun. And right now, I ain’t all that fond of guns.”
“I like guns.”
“Nothin’ wrong with that. But a gun don’t like you, and it don’t love you back. Never give too much attention or affection to somethin’ that can’t return it.”
“Yes, sir.”
The boy, of course, had no idea what he was talking about. Deel was uncertain he knew himself what he was talking about. He turned and looked back through the door. Mary Lou was at the pan, washing the dishes; when she scrubbed, her ass shook a little, and in that moment, Deel felt, for the first time, like a man alive.
THAT NIGHT THE BED seemed small. He lay on his back with his hands crossed across his lower stomach, wearing his faded red union suit, which had been ragged when he left, and had in his absence been attacked by moths. It was ready to come apart. The window next to the bed was open and the breeze that came through was cool. Mary Lou lay beside him. She wore a long white nightgown that had been patched with a variety of colored cloth patches. Her hair was undone and it was long. It had been long when he left. He wondered how often she had cut it, and how much time it had taken each time to grow back.
“I reckon it’s been a while,” he said.
“That’s all right,” she said.
“I’m not sayin’ I can’t, or I won’t, just sayin’ I don’t know I’m ready.”
“It’s okay.”
“You been lonely?”
“I have Winston.”
“He’s grown a lot. He must be company.”
“He is.”
“He looks some like you.”
“Some.”
Deel stretched out his hand without looking at her and laid it across her stomach. “You’re still like a girl,” he said. “Had a child, and you’re still like a girl…You know why I asked how old you was?”
“’Cause you didn’t remember.”
“Well, yeah, there was that. But on account of you don’t look none different at all.”
“I got a mirror. It ain’t much of one, but it don’t make me look younger.”
“You look just the same.”
“Right now, any woman might look good to you.” After she said it, she caught herself. “I didn’t mean it that way. I just meant you been gone a long time…In Europe, they got pretty women, I hear.”
“Some are, some ain’t. Ain’t none of them pretty as you.”
“You ever…you know?”
“What?”
“You know…While you was over there.”
“Oh…Reckon I did. Couple of times. I didn’t know for sure I was comin’ home. There wasn’t nothin’ to it. I didn’t mean nothin’ by it. It was like filling a hungry belly, nothin’ more.”
She was quiet for a long time. Then she said, “It’s okay.”
He thought to ask her a similar question, but couldn’t. He eased over to her. She remained still. She was as stiff as a corpse. He knew. He had been forced at times to lie down among them. Once, moving through a town in France with his fellow soldiers, he had come upon a woman lying dead between two trees. There wasn’t a wound on her. She was young. Dark haired. She looked as if she had lain down for a nap. He reached down and touched her. She was still warm.
One of his comrades, a soldier, had suggested they all take turns mounting her before she got cold. It was a joke, but Deel had pointed his rifle at him and run him off. Later, in the trenches he had been side by side with the same man, a fellow from Wisconsin, who like him had joined the Great War by means of Canada. They had made their peace, and the Wisconsin fellow told him it was a poor joke he’d made, and not to hold it against him, and Deel said it was all right, and then they took positions next to each other and talked a bit about home and waited for the war to come. During the battle, wearing gas masks and firing rifles, the fellow from Wisconsin had caught a round and it had knocked him down. A moment later the battle had ceased, at least for the moment.
Deel bent over him, lifted his mask, and then the man’s head. The man said, “My mama won’t never see me again.”
“You’re gonna be okay,” Deel said, but saw that half the man’s head was missing. How in hell was he talking? Why wasn’t he dead? His brain was leaking out.
“I got a letter inside my shirt. Tell Mama I love her…Oh, my god, look there. The stars are falling.”
Deel, responding to the distant gaze of his downed companion, turned and looked up. The stars were bright and stuck in place. There was an explosion of cannon fire and the ground shook and the sky lit up bright red; the redness clung to the air like a veil. When Deel looked back at the fellow, the man’s eyes were still open, but he was gone.
Deel reached inside the man’s jacket and found the letter. He realized then that the man had also taken a round in the chest, because the letter was dark with blood. Deel tried to unfold it, but it was so damp with gore it fell apart. There was nothing to deliver to anyone. Deel couldn’t even remember the man’s name. It had gone in one ear and out the other. And now he was gone, his last words being, “The stars are falling.”
While he was holding the boy’s head, an officer came walking down the trench holding a pistol. His face was darkened with gunpowder and his eyes were bright in the night and he looked at Deel, said, “There’s got to be some purpose to all of it, son. Some purpose,” and then he walked on down the line.
Deel thought of that night and that death, and then he thought of the dead woman again. He wondered what had happened to her body. They had had to leave her there, between the two trees. Had someone buried her? Had she rotted there? Had the ants and the elements taken her away? He had dreams of lying down beside her, there in the field. Just lying there, drifting away with her into the void.
Deel felt now as if he were lying beside that dead woman, blond in
stead of dark haired, but no more alive than the woman between the trees.
“Maybe we ought to just sleep tonight,” Mary Lou said, startling him. “We can let things take their course. It ain’t nothin’ to make nothin’ out of.”
He moved his hand away from her. He said, “That’ll be all right. Of course.”
She rolled on her side, away from him. He lay on top of the covers with his hands against his lower belly and looked at the log rafters.
A COUPLE OF DAYS and nights went by without her warming to him, but he found sleeping with her to be the best part of his life. He liked her sweet smell and he liked to listen to her breathe. When she was deep asleep, he would turn slightly, and carefully, and rise up on one elbow and look at her shape in the dark. His homecoming had not been what he had hoped for or expected, but in those moments when he looked at her in the dark, he was certain it was better than what had gone before for nearly four horrible years.
The next few days led to him taking the boy into the woods and finding the right wood for a bow. He chopped down a bois d’arc tree and showed the boy how to trim it with an axe, how to cut the wood out of it for a bow, how to cure it with a fire that was mostly smoke. They spent a long time at it, but if the boy enjoyed what he was learning, he never let on. He kept his feelings close to the heart and talked less than his mother. The boy always seemed some yards away, even when standing right next to him.
Deel built the bow for the boy and strung it with strong cord and showed him how to find the right wood for arrows and how to collect feathers from a bird’s nest and how to feather the shafts. It took almost a week to make the bow, and another week to dry it and to make the arrows. The rest of the time Deel looked out at what had once been a plowed field and was now twenty-five acres of flowers with a few little trees beginning to grow, twisting up among the flowers. He tried to imagine the field covered in corn.