We Were Beautiful Once (13 page)

A mile from the post, Trent, steering with his left hand, rounded an uphill curve at fifty miles per hour.  He glanced at Dawn's thighs, while his fingers negotiated the loose elastic.  When he looked back at the road, he was blinded by high beams.  In the strange way the mind works, Trent registered that both cars were traveling the same side of the road in a symmetry that destroys two bodies vying for the same space.  He dug deep into his athleticism, steered toward a twelve-foot embankment between the road and the dark vast prairie, and jammed his foot on the brake.  Back wheels locked, the car skidded—rotating right.  Trent wrenched the wheel left, then sharply right to get it straight again, but the car careened toward the embankment.  A telephone pole snapped into the headlights, followed by a lightening crack and blue and white sparks as power lines lashed the car's steel body.  The force of impact impaled the chassis on the pole's stump and slammed Jack into the backside of the front seat, twisting his neck.  Trent's head struck the windshield's side post gashing his temple as Dawn met the dashboard.  She never had a chance.  The horn blared into the rain-soaked, cosmic grassland.  Everything stopped except the pendulum swing of a tiny pink ballerina shoe hanging from the rearview mirror.

“What the fuck!” moaned Trent.

Crawling out the back on all fours, Jack grabbed his neck, moving it side-to-side.  He saw Trent, head down, hand to his forehead.  Jack reached in and put his fingers on Dawn's neck; he saw she was out cold.  No sign of life. Jack went to the driver's side and tugged at the jammed door until it opened.

“You okay?  Anything broken?”

“No, but my knee whacked the goddamn column.”

“Get out, you're smashed.  Get your ass back to post.  Stay out of sight.  Let me take care of this...  I'll catch up in a few minutes.”

“Whatcha gonna do?”

“Never mind...  get the hell outta here!”

Trent said nothing, limping off into the rain.

From the driver's side, Jack wrestled Dawn's limp body into position behind the driver's seat.  She had an indentation in her forehead, and her eyes were restfully shut. Mascara blackened lashes and Vaseline coated eyebrows looked almost perfect.

The impact jolted a farmer and his wife out of bed.  He told the police, “I dreamed that my horse was fallin' through the roof.  I woke up and heard nothing.”

In his gray and white striped pajamas, the farmer ran out to see a soldier tugging at a woman behind the wheel of a wreck.  “You okay, son?”

Jack looked at the farmer in horror, he knew it was too late to bolt.  He jumped from the wreck, “Yeah, we were driving back to the base, and...  ”

The bright headlights from Dawn's car beamed spaceward.  The farmer peered at a body slumped over the wheel.  “Is she hurt?”

 

Trent got back to the barracks about twelve, slipped through the back door and into his bunk.  The thought of getting caught terrified him.  He did not know for sure, but Dawn's stillness had been eerie.  Did she need an ambulance, or would she only suffer a bad headache in the morning?  He wondered if she would mention his name.  Then there was old Jack.  When would he get back?  He figured anytime now.  Minutes passed into the quarter hour and Trent began to sweat.  He kicked off the covers.  Adrenaline coursed through his veins the more he thought about the downside possibilities.  Maybe Jack did not get away.  Maybe Dawn needed a doctor.  If Jack did not get away, what would he tell them?  Eventually, with no sign of Jack, he fell asleep.

About one in the morning, a man in the communications shack heard about a fatal crash on the police frequency.  He called the commanding officer, who ordered bed checks.  Wally found Jack's bunk empty.  He stuffed a pillow beneath the blanket, then searched latrines and phone booths.  The CO called back forty-five minutes later asking if everything was in order.

“Well, sir, no.  There's a guy missing,” Wally answered uneasily.

He had hoped he might cover for Jack, but within minutes of putting down the phone, Wally heard the deep voice of a drill instructor crack the air, “Ten-hut!”

The following day, MPs escorted Jack from the hospital to the post in handcuffs.  AWOL and implicated in the fatal accident, he was court-martialed.  His short army career was over.  Stripped of his gold bars he had a choice: a general discharge or enlist as a private.

Six weeks passed, and Jack hadn't heard from Trent.  His letters to Tracy explaining what had happened went unanswered.  He saw an end to more than his military career. He chose to enlist.

On graduation day, Trent donned his dress uniform, zipped his hair to the scalp and erased all evidence of facial hair. By nine, he and his graduating cohorts had assembled in front of the barracks.  They marched to the parade ground, the army band leading the way with  “Washington Post March.”  Two hundred people, mostly parents and wives, came to see their sons and husbands graduate.  They were unaware that these staunch soldiers had just completed something like a mass stupefaction, a descent into Hades, to be reincarnated in this bloodless public birth.  Chests out, eyes right, a military cadence guided the lieutenants past a reviewing stand, cutting the wet morning with a crispness the spectators would remember long after the troops were deployed.

The drizzle had turned to rain by the time the post commander mounted the lectern.  His voice boomed over two loudspeakers at each end of the reviewing stand, “Men, the Commander in Chief confers upon each of you the authority to carry out your soldierly duties on behalf of America and our way of life.”  For the next twenty minutes, in a soaking rain, he spoke about duty, exaltation, adventure and imagination—ironic, given that the past weeks were spent wringing out the notion of independent thinking from each of the men, now too disciplined to come out of the rain.  The lieutenants were in another world—tomorrow's—thinking about the leave that would come before their new duty posts.  Trent thought about strutting amongst his friends in Fairview in full army dress, or his father taking him around the bank to shake hands with the men that he would someday manage.  And, he thought how hungry he was for a woman, any woman.  Maybe he would call on Anna, or any one of a half-dozen girls who would be impressed by his uniform.

The Army delayed orders for several days after graduation.  The men sat around the barracks reading paperbacks and playing cards.  With so much time on his hands, Trent went from cards to listening to the radio to thinking about Jack and Dawn.  Nearly two months had passed since that night on Route 29, and all that he knew was that Jack had been busted down to a private and Dawn, a woman whose face he had a hard time picturing, had died.

Finally, for Trent, the wait ended.  The Army took interest in his Chinese fluency and assigned him to the Military Intelligence Training Center at Fort Holabird in Baltimore.  He welcomed the Holabird assignment, but for the first time, railed openly about Jack's “bad luck,” as he preferred to call it.  

“Shit! Goddamn. Shit!”  He carried on for an hour.  

That night he called his father about his new station and explained he wasn't going home on leave.  Both men discussed the Korean conflict and agreed that unless MacArthur restored the 38
th
parallel, most soldiers would be heading to Korea.  Trent asked his father if he had heard from Jack.  He claimed that he had, a month or so earlier, and told Jack he had called Congressman Bickford.  

“Trent, Bickford didn't sound encouraging, and honestly, after the lies he told Tracy, I'm not sure we should be too quick to follow up,” his father counseled coldly. “More importantly, Bickford asked if the Army had any more questions for you.”

“None, not after I called you.”  

“Well, let's close the book on this.”  The men turned to how things were shaping up around the upcoming election for governor.  

The next morning Trent received his first and last letter from Anna,

Dear Trent,

It has been several months since we last spoke, that morning before you left.  I cried knowing I would not hear from you again.  I was right.  I thought our last time would have been different.  But, if I am truthful to myself, I realize that every child born of a body, a mind and an emotion must eventually be set free to discover how dissimilar things fit together.  You are off on that journey.  Off to find a purpose, or a sacred place, kinship, or even a mate to solve this individual puzzle.  I hope you find what you are looking for. Some never do.

Fondly,

Anna

Trent rolled the letter into a ball and pitched it down the barrack's bay, unaware that Anna's swollen desire for him had slowly dissipated as her attachment to that last night stretched thinner and thinner.  Over time, an icy resignation set in with the realization that she must eke out a life alone in silence, carrying the seed that could not, in her mind, be unplanted: Trent's child. She would name him William.

 

Between that last morning with Anna and her last letter, nations around the world had turned their sights in an ominous direction.  The calendar read June 26, 1950.  Men and women were dying on the Korean peninsula, and Trent's transfer to Fort Holabird was cancelled.  Two days later orders were posted to “... Transfer to Army HQ, Pusan, Korea, for assignment  3457th Intelligence Service Detachment... ”

1945-1950

 

 

WHEN THE O'CONNERS DIVORCED, MARY took the children and moved in with her parents, Libero and Rosa Prado.  One afternoon, Libero brought home a scuffed leather case containing a violin he had received for rewiring the widow Esposito's attic.  Julie was setting the table and Jack was in his room boning up for a chemistry exam. Sliding the supper dishes aside, Libero put the open violin case smack in the middle of the kitchen table.  “The old lady had no money.  She gave me this instead.  Maybe it's worth something.”

Rosa moved her finger across the body, carving a line in the dust.  

“We don't need another piece of junk,” she moaned.

Libero held the stringed bow lengthwise to his eye studying its straightness.  He shrugged.  He dropped it into its case and laid it in the corner of the room.  Rosa poured canned string beans into a saucepan.

“That thing won't pay the rent,” she harangued.

Libero, in blue workpants and a gray shirt with Prado Electric embroidered over the pocket, sat in front of a plate of pasta, a rumpled paper napkin, glass of red table wine and a serrated knife to cut the provolone.  He picked up his fork, stabbed a sardine from a can, yanked a hunk of bread off a loaf and stuffed it into his mouth.  As he chewed, he jerked his head in the direction of the violin.

“Tomorrow, I'll ask Santoro if he wants to buy it. He could rent it to one of his students,” he declared with an air of optimism.

That night Julie, who had just turned thirteen, asked the old man to show her the violin again.  His big beefy hands lifted the featherweight instrument from its purple, velvet-lined case.  He plinked the strings with his chubby fingers and held it under the floor lamp in the corner.  He put his eye to one of the
f
-shaped sound holes and made out a hand written label:
Joseph Kloz, 1805
.  The next day Julie and the old man went to Mr. Santoro.  The evaluation was swift.

“Libero my friend, don't quit stringing wires.”  Santoro tuned it up and played a short Chopin mazurka. “Not bad.”

He put the violin in its case and when he looked up, Julie caught his eye.  She smiled.  He nodded in her direction and turned to the old man.

“Libero, maybe your granddaughter might like to learn.”  He turned to Julie.  “Would you like to play the violin, little girl?” he prodded eagerly.

A toothy smile overcame her.  “Oh, yes, Mr. Santoro, I would.”

He suggested, “My friend, why don't I give her a few lessons?  At least you can enjoy the music, even if it doesn't put food on the table.”  Santoro lifted the violin from the case and handed it to Julie.

“Here, put it under your chin,” he said soothingly, fitting it tight against her neck. “Now take this bow and come down across the strings, straight.”  She adjusted the instrument, brought the bow to the taught strings.  She yanked it down.  A screech reverberated off the walls.  The teacher smiled and sheepishly turned to the old man.  “Libero, lessons are only a dollar a week.”

 

In the next few weeks, under Santoro's mentoring, the screeching subsided and the sound turned to something resembling music.  And within the next few years, Julie played with fluidity rare among young violinists.  Through a stuck-open window in the cubbyhole off the kitchen, neighbors heard her practicing at all hours—most suspected the girl was driven by the music in a not-so-healthy way.  They often heard the violin and her soprano voice, such as the first part of the Concerto No. 3 in G major followed by Puccini's “Un Bel Di Vedremo,”
a capella.  
They never clapped.  And if Julie were to meet a neighbor they would never hear a civil “hello”—merely a throat-clearing cough, while she looked away.  Although they admired her talent, they thought her rude, eccentric and obsessed.  Reaching out with an opened hand the old woman across the alley gossiped, “How could this uncivil creature make such beautiful music?”

Mr. Santoro knew about Julie's dedication to music, one that may have bordered on the pathological at times, but he felt his job wasn't psychiatry—it was music.  He recommended that she be enrolled at New Haven's Conservatory of Music when she graduated high school.  For the family it represented training by the best the state had to offer, and because of their income and her talent, the school offered a scholarship.

 

One Friday in mid-August 1948, after finishing her lesson, Julie decided to visit the Yale Art Museum.  At seventeen, she was, by all accounts, a plain looking girl, and she carried her scuffed violin case past the young security guard unnoticed.  She wore no makeup, and uncut, her hair grew to uneven lengths over her small shoulders.  But behind the unadorned face, she had a well-proportioned nose and chin, a petite frame, and eyes, like two lime-green emeralds that pierced through strands of auburn hair.  She stopped at a portrait labeled “Equestrian Portrait of the Duke of Lerma,” and seconds later heard a voice.