Souvenir (43 page)

He couldn’t believe Clay was dead, couldn’t believe he was doing this, couldn’t believe everything he had known had just come to an end. He felt numb, stunned, alone. Blindly, he groped for his M1, found it. He rose up, stood over Clay for a second, thinking of the dogtags with Jake Burnett stamped into them against Clay’s cold chest. A dead man, he turned, heading for the last sounds of battle, an empty vessel, moving forward, never again looking back. Everything was this one moment. Living or dying were both beyond his comprehension, there was only this, his rifle, Clay’s dogtags, the fight ahead. He had moved between lives, Jake Burnett left behind, strung around the neck of a dead man, a gift to the woman who bore him, the insurance maybe a way out for her. He was Clay Brock now. He felt detached, cast adrift, free, he couldn’t tell.

He crouched behind a low stone wall as the house burned behind him. He swung his rifle up and saw three Germans running down the street, trailing the tank. He aimed at the farthest one, slowly easing back on the trigger, just as Clay would’ve done. Deliberate, no wasted moves. The rifle kicked against his shoulder and the German dropped. Second shot, easy does it, squeeze, another kick, and the German was down, rolling in the street, writhing in agony.

It all happened in slow motion, and he wondered if he’d discovered some magical power. Was this real? Everything was in crystal clear focus, details in the smoke as sharp as if they were under a microscope. Noise was everywhere but nowhere too. He wasn’t sure if he heard nothing or everything all at once.

He’d shot at the furthest Germans so the one closest to him might not notice him right away, might not realize the other two were down. He turned his rifle, and fired off the rest of the clip at him. No more time for subtlety, he wanted the bastard dead and gone. The German fell back, a mist of red bursting out from his chest.

Dropping prone, he scurried away from the tank advancing towards him, toward the sound of rifle fire from the house down the road. Seconds later the stone wall exploded as the tank fired at his last position. Chunks of stone showered him, bouncing off his helmet and back. He wasn’t hurt, and he crawled even faster, wondering who he was and where he was headed.

Looking up, he saw rifles firing from the windows of the house across the narrow road. M1s, two of them. Running low across the street, he made for the door, willing his legs to run as fast as they could, to get to the cover of the house. As his feet pounded the road, noises dropped away around him and one sound emerged above the cacophony. A grinding, hydraulic whine told him there was no magic here. He was a soldier in someone else’s sights. His name didn’t matter, he had run out of luck. The only thing that mattered was the tank swiveling its turret, turning its cannon on the house in front of him. He heard the hydraulics whirr to a halt, and saw the round opening of the barrel, dark and black, a perfect circle, a bull’s eye aimed at him. It roared flame, cracked thunder, flashed white, and he was in the air, flying.

* * *

He felt the medic working on him. It was night. As his clothes were cut away it felt like tongues of flame licking at his skin, but he was too far away to scream. He thought of Clay, but it was a vague and distant thought, a shadow crossing over his eyes. Sulfa like snow falling. Or was it snow? He saw the frost on the half-moon window, felt the ambulance bounce in the ruts. The medic cut and cut, his scissors tied around his wrist with a shoelace. Compresses soaked red on his chest. Where was he? What had happened?

“What’s your name, soldier? Tell us your name.”

He hesitated. He didn’t know if he could, but something told him he had to speak. If he wanted to live. If he wanted to live this new life, to move forward, never look back. He couldn’t remember what to say, he was supposed to tell them—what?

Then he remembered. Clay, in the snow, dying. Remembrance. Redemption.

“Brock—Clay Brock.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

1964

“Addy, you’re right. There are secrets, secrets from long ago. I thought they didn’t matter. I never wanted to burden you—” He stopped himself. No more lies.

“No, no. I’m ashamed, I’m ashamed to tell you.” He lifted his head, looking for a sign that she could take it. All he saw was a stillness in her eyes, a patient waiting. She lifted an eyebrow, as if to say, go on, get it over with, let’s see.

“I was afraid I’d lose you if I told you the truth, that you couldn’t love anybody like me. You said sometimes you don’t who I am. Well, I haven’t been straight with you about everything, about my life before we met.”

“About the war, Clay?”

“Part of it,” he sighed. “Not all of it. It’s about my family.” He told her about Pennsylvania. About Minersville, and growing up there. About Ma and Pa and his sister Alice.

“I wanted to join the Army at seventeen. I needed proof of my age. Pa kept papers in his study, and he told me never to look through his things. But I needed that birth certificate, so I waited until they were out.” Clay sat, wringing his hands like they were soaking wet.

“Were you adopted?” Addy guessed, trying to read Clay’s expression.

“No,” he laughed. “No, not adopted. I wish I had been.” He stared at the wall, studying the curtains that hung around the window. They were gold, newly sewn by Addy to match the colors in the carpet design.

“Well?” she said.

“The name on my birth certificate was Alice’s. My sister. She was my mother.”

“Oh, Clay, I’m sorry. That’s too bad, but it’s not the end of the world. If a young girl gets in trouble, it’s not unknown for her parents to bring up the child as theirs.”

“That’s the problem, Addy. It—I was one of theirs. It was Pa. His own daughter.”

“Oh my God, Clay! That poor girl! And you—” She lifted her hands, opening them toward him, the gesture saying what she could not as the enormity of it all set in. “And Alice, whatever happened to her?”

“I don’t know. I never went back.” He shot up from the couch, pacing back and forth, his feet stepping between papers and cushions on the floor.

Addy leaned back and shook her head. “That’s why you didn’t want to have children,” she said, the truth of the matter dawning on her. “You were afraid. That’s why you never let up on Chris, always expecting the worst from him!”

“And why I couldn’t tell you the truth, I was afraid you wouldn’t want to have children with me, wouldn’t want to be with me. Addy, Chris is a better son than I deserve. You’re a better woman. After Chris came along, it got harder and harder. I’m sorry Addy. I could never tell you. And you have to promise me you’ll never tell another soul, ever.” She hesitated, drawing in her breath, looking into his eyes.

“I’ll leave that up to you, Clay, it’s your decision. But didn’t you want to know what happened to Alice? Didn’t you ever want to go back? Didn’t you care?” He could see Addy was still taking his measure, trying to figure out his behavior and what this revelation said about him.

“Wait a minute. I’ll be right back.” He walked to their bedroom, which was more of a mess than the rest of the house. From an open dresser drawer he pulled out the dogtag on its chain, mixed in with the photo, the battered Zippo lighter, cufflinks and tie clips.

“Okay,” he said, back on the couch. “Here’s the other part, the part about the war.” He took a deep breath, and felt the thin metal he grasped in his hand. He’d never spoken more than a few words about the war to Addy. He realized he didn’t know how to do it, how to actually put it into words for someone who didn’t know, couldn’t know. He looked at the thin metal in his hand, wondering how he could ever do it justice.

“There was a guy, my best friend. My buddy,” he said, his voice cracking as tears tried to force their way out. There was no way to tell Addy what that word meant. Now it was something you might say to anyone on the street. Hey buddy, got a light? A foxhole buddy was your partner. Your life. Your warmth. His skin went cold and the memory of Miller bringing him the SS officer’s coat swam through his mind, wet socks and cold feet on his torso, the wool coat like a quilt covering them in their hole.

“We were in basic together, shipped over to England together. Went over to France with him and the rest of the guys in our unit. That was in July. It was warm. I remember apples on the trees. By the first week in August, we were in action. It went on until late January, right after the Bulge.”

“That’s a long time.”

“Yeah.” He stared at the wall for a while, seeing ghosts instead of curtains. “A long time, especially in winter. He didn’t have any family back home, and we got to talking. We talked about everything. There was nothing else to do. Sometimes it was so cold you couldn’t sleep.” He realized he was making an excuse, worried that Addy would be mad he’d told somebody else before her.

“It must have been horrible,” she said. He nodded.

“The only thing that made it bearable was your buddy, and your squad. We depended on each other. To stay alive, and to keep each other sane. We saw so many terrible things, Addy.” Did so many things, too.

“It wasn’t like the movies at all, was it?”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “No bloodless heroic deaths, no waving the flag. I can’t tell you, Addy, how many ways there are to die on the battlefield. It is simply unimaginable.”

“But you and your buddies, you knew, you shared all that. You must have been as close as men could be.”

He met her eyes, knowing she’d given him an opening. “Yeah. Real close. One night, I told him about my family, about my problem. He was good about it. He’s the only other person I ever told.”

“And?”

“He and I were going to head out west, maybe to California after the war. He wanted to go somewhere new, and I didn’t ever want to go back home. He wanted to start a family and do things right. His folks had died, his brother got it in the Pacific. It was important to him.”

“What happened?”

“He was killed. They all were killed, everyone but me,” he said, and his face broke, slowly, his chin quivering and lips tensing before sobs gushed from his throat, tears coursed over his face. Anguish burned in his chest. The snow, the tracers, the tank, the explosions, every memory exploded at once in his mind as he gripped the dogtag so hard in his hand that it drew blood. Addy took his hand into both of hers and held it, kissed it, her tears falling into the blood welling in the palm of his hand.

“I’m sorry,” he said, not knowing himself if he was apologizing for the truth of what he’d told her, the shame he felt, the blood on his hand, or the tears. Maybe all of that, maybe more, maybe for the truth he knew he’d never tell.

“No, no, no,” Addy said, opening his hand. “This is your dogtag, Clay, I’ve seen it before.” She looked confused, as if she’d expected a different story. She didn’t understand.

“No, no, it isn’t mine. It belongs to Clay Brock.” She looked at him as if he were the one confused, shocked by events. He must be wrong, she was thinking, the stress finally caught up with him.

“My name—my name is Jake Burnett.” These were the strangest words he’d ever said, after twenty years of not speaking his own name. “Jake Burnett. Clay Brock was my buddy. He died giving me covering fire, saving my life, down in some damn village I don’t even know the name of. He died in my arms. God, I miss him.”

“Was that when you were wounded?”

“Yes. That same day. Everyone else was killed or wounded, maybe captured, I don’t know. We knew every trick in the book, but that day it didn’t matter. We ran out of luck. After the Germans pulled out a medic found me and patched me up.” He looked down at his hand, the blood welling in the cut. He tried to make it sound like it was easy. There was the truth, and then there was too much of it, after all.

“So you came home as Clay Brock?”

“I did. No one left alive to say different, so I did what Clay wanted. Alice got ten thousand dollars, and I hope to God she used it to start a life for herself somewhere.”

“But she thought her son died.”

“Lots of mothers got that news. Happened every day. At least it gave her a chance to get away. Not to have me to worry about any more. About what I meant, reminded her of.” He remembered that as the best he’d made of it. A tragedy for Alice, but something of a blessing, perhaps.

“You’re a good son, Clay. Or is it Jake?”

“I made Clay a promise to pass on his name, and live a life for him. It’s my name now, as much as his.”

“Where does this leave us?” Addy said, moving away from him on the couch, giving herself room to move. “I don’t know what it all means. What does it have to do with us, now? You’ve always been Clay to me.”

“Maybe everything, maybe nothing,” he said. “I know it wasn’t right not to tell you, but I thought it was for the best. Then as time passed, it seemed harder and harder to ever bring it up. I was ashamed, Addy. Afraid of what you’d do.”

“Do you mean,” she said, slowly and deliberately, “like leave you?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I was about to, but because of how you shut me out of your life, not because of what happened to you in your life.” She stayed on her end of the couch, calm, her hands folded in her lap. He moved to her, took her hand in his, and promised himself that if she stayed, he’d be a different man for her. He knew it was too fragile a promise to even say out loud, to use as a persuasion. He willed her to understand. She squeezed his hand.