The Train of Small Mercies (19 page)

D
elores had always preferred Ethel to Jackie. Jackie's beauty made her seem unreal, somehow, as if she belonged under glass or behind a velvet rope in a museum, whereas Ethel looked like she could have been a fun roommate or the head of fund-raising for the PTA. Bobby and Ethel, Delores had read, liked to throw parties that could turn raucous. Once, Ethel had jumped into their backyard pool with her clothes on—to the astonishment of her guests. Soon, Bobby was in the water with his clothes on as well. It was said that Bobby and Ethel's kids could be a little rough around the edges, and Jackie eventually forbade Caroline and John John to play with them. Delores didn't remember seeing Ethel in a little pillbox hat even once.

Delores had once believed she would be the wife of a politician herself. During her freshman and sophomore years at Penn State, she dated a boy named Darden Clayton, who had attended Delores's rival high school. Darden's dream was to become mayor of their hometown by the time he was thirty-five. He planned to run the town council by thirty, and before that he was counting on being the youngest alderman in the town's long history. He liked to tell Delores what, as wife of the mayor, she would be expected to do: be involved in children's charity work, perhaps, to organize the mayor's Christmas party for the town's most prominent citizens, to attend with him the openings of a new hospital wing, a retirement home, a new Little League field. Their sophomore year Darden was elected class president, but it proved to hold little training for Delores, as there were few responsibilities to which she, as his girlfriend, was obliged.

Delores took comfort in knowing so clearly what was ahead for her; the idea of having so visible a role in a small town made her sit through classes with a kind of dreamy distance. She enjoyed her psychology and behavioral studies and Introduction to Classical Music classes, but she could no longer invest herself in the course work the way she had in her first semester there. If Darden was going to be mayor by thirty-five, he said, he'd want to have children old enough so that they could sit still and listen intently during his swearing-in ceremony and pose properly when asked by a newspaper photographer. If all went according to plan, by the end of their first year of marriage Delores would be pregnant.

Darden Clayton didn't yet understand that in politics, so little goes according to plan, but he understood that in times of crisis, a politician must be decisive and steer away from anything that can be damaging. In the spring semester of their sophomore year, Delores believed that she had missed her period. She waited a week before she mentioned this to Darden, though she knew that the more sensible step was to see a doctor first. They were walking in the campus quad, holding hands, and all around them young Alpha Delta Pi pledges in matching blue T-shirts were linked arm in arm and singing “Alley Oop” as a couple of senior sisters led them with the grand, sweeping arm movements of a conductor. Delores felt so keenly happy at that moment, and the possibility of a baby seemed to her, suddenly, like one more reason to be grateful for the direction her life was going. Without breaking their stride she told Darden about the late period. If it did turn out that she was pregnant, she said, they could simply get married early. As she spoke, she was sure he would be impressed with the way she had thought it all through. “I've been so distracted by it the last couple of days—but not in a bad way,” she said. “I sit in class and I don't hear a word the professor says.”

Darden's face tightened, but already he liked to practice a mayoral sense of calm, and he squeezed Delores's hand before saying, “Well, we'll find a way to deal with it, if you are. It's a whole lot easier to get this kind of thing fixed these days. I know a couple of guys whose girlfriends have done it. It's not true that your only choice is to drive down to Mexico.”

Delores nodded, and as Darden looked on at the singing pledges, she squinted to push back the hot rush of tears. “You know, it's just, you don't start your career in politics by getting your girlfriend knocked up in college,” he said. “You do that, you can look forward to working as a middle manager at the local water plant. Politics is just that tough. But everything will be fine. If you are—if your period doesn't come—I'll help you through everything. I'll be there for you. We just have to think like a team.”

Five days later, Delores's period came, but her weepiness over the course of that week had been inexplicable to him, and he became uncertain about Delores as a mayor's wife. She was too unstable for him, he decided, a possible liability.

Two years after graduation, a girlfriend convinced her to come along on a blind double date. Arch King was just back from Korea and starting up in the tire business. He was large and unapologeti-cally loud, and when he laughed he slapped his wide palm across the table. At the end of their first date Delores was surprised by how easily she let him kiss her—wet, with Arch moaning slightly—and the toothy grin he flashed when they said good night made her feel alive and beautiful.

“I think you're going to be seeing a lot of me, Delores Banks,” he told her on the front steps of her apartment building, called Langley Arms. When he was walking—backward—to the car, where his buddy sat waiting behind the steering wheel, Arch noticed the sign and flexed his muscles like an old-time circus performer. “You belong in
Arch's
Arms.” His laughter exploded into the night air, and when Delores got upstairs and found her roommate still awake, she said, “I am
floating
!”

By the time they had picked out a chapel for the wedding and arranged the accommodations for a five-day honeymoon at Lake Erie, she had long convinced herself that being the wife of a politician would have given her a rather empty life—an endless parade of gestures and poses that served everyone but herself; with Arch, everything was what it appeared to be. He had no secrets, no deeper aspirations but to work for himself and provide comfortably for his family. He liked to prop his size thirteen feet up wherever he was, and anyone who showed too many table manners was a bore and possibly a snob. And like Darden Clayton, he knew exactly what he wanted and didn't want for himself. Fighting in Korea, which he generally talked very little about, made you know exactly who you wanted on your side, he said. He and Delores had been married for two months when he told her that—they were tucked into their little backyard table, eating steaks he had cooked to well done. In a year he would get the loans to open up his Tire King shop, and six months after that they would have a baby boy. Dwight D. Eisenhower was still president. He had gotten Arch's vote both times.

R
oy took a few pictures of Jamie pulling the bowstring back to his ear. “There's never a reason you should miss,” Jamie said. “Once you work out the physical mechanics, which aren't that hard, the only thing that can screw you up is your mind.” Jamie had just hit eleven bull's-eyes in a row, but now he seemed tired. He put the bow down and closed his eyes.

“The old job at the garage is still there if I want it,” he said. “Standing offer from Jurrel. Same crew's still there. Lonnie and Dave. Fat Phil. Mr. Jurrel said take my time, let him know by July if I want to come back. Basically, if you're leaning over an engine or underneath the car, one leg's as good as two. It might be charity, but he knows I know what the hell I'm doing.”

Jamie traced one of the arrows with his fingers. “Maybe Sutton and I will get an apartment together.”

Roy wrote in his notebook. “You said ‘charity,' a second ago, talking about how some people respond to the war and wounded soldiers. What's it been like for your family—your coming back under these circumstances? How would you say they've responded?”

“Look, what am I really going to say to you, a reporter? Huh? They're completely flipped out, in case you haven't already picked up on that. They're trying to do the best they can, you know, but my mother and Miriam, it's like I'm some sickly little kid, all the touching and hugs and . . . They don't know what to do, but, you know, that's not for your story. My dad's different. He's been cool, but for this little article here, let's say this. Here you go: they've been great. Really supportive, just treating me like nothing's different. They're glad to have me back home, of course. But they don't treat me like a cripple, and I don't think that's how they see me in their eyes. There, that's the stuff you're looking for, right?”

“I'm just looking for anything you want to tell me,” Roy said. “Whatever the truth is, or whatever version of the truth I can get.”

Jamie opened his eyes. “Well, that's the version you're getting.”

 

 

 

When Roy interviewed Ellie, they were sitting in the same spot in the backyard where he and Jamie had.

“Oooh, I'm so nervous,” Ellie said. “I know that's silly, but I just want to say the right things.”

“Oh, there's nothing to be nervous about,” Roy said. “Just think of it as a conversation. And that's what it is, really. I just want to get your perspective on a few things, your thoughts about Jamie.”

He asked her about her initial reaction to Jamie's being drafted, and she said, “Joe served in World War Two—he was stationed in the Philippines—so we believe—and Joe in particular—in serving your country. So that's a real pride in this family. Now, that said, Vietnam is—” She stopped herself, because she and Joe had had some disagreements about Vietnam, and she didn't want to say anything that he—or others in the community—could take issue with. “—is a different kind of war.” And she thought she should leave it at that.

He asked her how they had stayed in touch with Jamie before his injury and how they found out about his leg. He asked her how she thought Jamie was coping. And in every answer she spoke carefully, like a child reciting from memory. Everything she told him was what he mostly expected her to say, but he pursed his lips in a show of admiration as he wrote down some notes while his tape recorder turned its slow cogs. When he finally told her that was everything he could think to ask her, she began to cry.

Roy's mother had cried frequently when he was a child—for reasons he rarely understood. Sometimes he found her dabbing her cheeks with a tissue when he walked into the living room or the kitchen, and sometimes she began to tear up when she dropped him off at school. “Don't mind your crazy mother,” she would say, but he wouldn't step out until she recovered herself. When she pulled away, he could see her waving good-bye until she was all the way down the street.

“I know it must be tough,” Roy said, at last, to Ellie. “I guess all my nosy questions don't help any.”

“What Jamie has been through is traumatic—and we can't pretend like everything is the same,” she said. “Because it isn't.”

D
elores knew she should check in with her mother-in-law. She pulled into an Esso station and put a coin in the pay phone, all the while watching Rebecca wrap her red crepe paper around her finger.

“Hey, Mama, it's me. I thought I'd stop to see how everyone's doing. It is so
hot
.”

“Are you on your way now?” the old woman said. Delores thought she could hear the television in the background.

“I'm not able to just yet,” Delores said. “But soon. I have one last thing that should finish up in just a little. I just wanted to make sure the boys were doing okay. Are they behaving themselves?”

“Oh, dear. I didn't know it'd be the entire day.”

“You don't have to entertain them, Mama. They can entertain themselves.”

“And they can't ride with you in what you're doing?” the woman said. “Did Arch know about this being the whole day?”

“I'll be by just as soon as I'm able,” Delores said. “It really is so helpful, your taking them like this. Rebecca and I went by the church earlier for delivering meals.”

“Well, we'll be waiting, I guess. Do I need to feed them supper, too? I don't know that I have anything that would suit them. They don't like to eat what I eat.”

“I'm going to get them for supper, Mama. Don't worry about that. Don't worry about anything.”

When Delores got back in the car, Rebecca puffed. “I want to see the
train
,” she said.

“So do I,” Delores said, cutting back on the air conditioner. “Right now that's
all
I want.”

S
utton arrived in his Dodge Charger, whose engine he and Jamie had rebuilt before Jamie was drafted. They liked to open up the hood and contemplate what else they might try to modify. Since Jamie had gotten home, Sutton was eager for them to work on it together, but they hadn't gotten past talk.

“So what are you writing about Jamie?” Sutton asked Roy, when Jamie and his mother had gone to the yard's edge to ask their neighbor Emma Wilkinson about her husband, who was leading a platoon in Suoi Da.

“I don't know exactly,” Roy said. “I'll sit down and see what all the interviews add up to. Do you want to tell me something about Jamie, something I might not know yet?”

“I don't want to be quoted or anything like that—you know, official. That would be weird, since we're buddies and everything.” Sutton swiped at something. “I was just curious.”

“You're sure? Could be good for the story. That's what I'm doing—talking to the people who know him best.”

“Yeah, I know,” Sutton said. “I mean, but I don't know what it's like to fight in a war or kill anyone. He tells me things, you know, so I sort of get what he went through, or how he's doing now. I don't know. I wanted to go over there myself, but my damn leg.”