When Madeline Was Young (38 page)

I was surprised by how little Buddy said. The standard lines seemed to hold no interest for him. He was eating a pile of barbecued chicken wings and drinking his beer, nodding on occasion. I'm not sure he was really listening. Out of habit, it seemed, the friends tore into Bill Clinton, bandying around the details as if they were still fresh, the cigar, the girl, the stain on the dress, as if their hatred was an important part of our history. At one point Buddy did hold forth, giving a short oration about how difficult it was going to be to bring democracy to the Muslim nations, and how those people yearned for freedom. For an instant he spoke with an evangelist's fervor, breathing into the word "yearn," drawing it out. He talked about freedom as if it were a material thing, an item to own, an object that, if you could just put your hands on it, you'd have. "Once they get it," he said, shaking his head, "once they get it, they'll see."

He seemed to have spent what energy he'd had left after the service on that brief speech. He finished his seventh or eighth beer, and, nudging me, he said, "Let's get out of here, Brains." He tipped the bottle back to get the last drop. "Excuse us, boys. Help yourself to the Leinenkugel, all the way from Wisconsin, in the cooler there. It's a very special brew, very special." As we were going out the gate he said to me, "Quick, before the dogs see." The two St. Bernards, Saint and Sinner, did not like their master to stray far.

Through the neighborhood we went, past the solid stucco and clapboard three-story houses, houses that graced old suburbs the country over, houses that surely always must shelter children who play musical instruments, and parents who read books. There were halos around the street lights, the air was thick with the smell of the wet August vegetation, the heavy balls of hydrangeas drooped over the lawns, the phloxes and conefiowers and lilies were dashed by the rain. I stepped carefully around the puddles while Buddy sloshed through without seeming to notice. He asked desultory questions about the cousins, the condition o
f t
he Moose Lake house, and my work. He was neither nervous nor engaged, but he listened well enough to comment. "Corporate America. It's going down. Down the tubes."

"Seems like it," I said.

When I remarked that he had interesting, talented, and caring children, he muttered absently, "Yep, yep, aren't they great? They're great." Out of relation to anything we'd been talking about, he said, "You know why I re-enlisted, don't you?"

"Re-enlisted?"

"Why I re-enlisted."

"No, not really. That always seemed something of a mystery. I do remember my father saying you were well suited to the job."

"Well suited. That's a good one."

"Why did you?" I asked.

"I was lucky to be in support positions, basically a desk job the second time around. I'm not saying I didn't work hard. I'm not saying I wasn't important to the effort. You do end up having some guilt about being in safe spots, though. You can end up thinking you're chicken shit."

"Chicken shit?"

"You're probably going to tell me that I served, that I'm still serving, I shouldn't have any cause for psycho-bullshit. Sure, I'll buy that. The army then, the army now, it's as fucked up as any organization. It was a screwy time, all those guys at the base, some of them losing their marbles. That energy, the waiting around, it just about kills you." He crossed the street without looking to see if a car was coming, as if we were on a continuous path that wouldn't have any obstructions. "The thing is, you're decked out as a soldier, but you're the one guarding a collection of shitty hooches pretty much out of earshot of the fighting. You're the one sending the grunts canned beans for what could be their last meal. It seemed the least I could do, turn around and sign up again, pay my pound of flesh in time."

"You were decorated," I pointed out.

"Yeah, I had a moment. During Tet. We almost got our heads blown off, a bunch of us. No one expected it-on a holiday, for Christ's sake, the lunar fucking new year. It was the kind of thing, it happens, you don't even remember much of it. You're going on instinct, working blind. I figured I was going to die, so I'd better make my mother proud."

"You knew what to do and you had courage." I had told him that kind of platitude before, and usually with the hope that it didn't sound patronizing. I didn't mean it to now, in any case.

"Tet gave me a good taste of combat. I fucking proved myself. So-fine. Bully for me. Stuff happens, the wailing of a woman, of a kid-I'm not going into it. Because you can't really tell someone about it, know what I mean? Don't worry, I'm not about to be all sensitive on you, I'm not going to have a movie-quality Vietnam-vet breakdown. You probably kill people every other day, right, Brains? A few too many aspirin in the IV drip?"

We haw-hawed.

"The thing is," he said again, "you've got everybody's idea of yourself as a soldier to uphold. That Silver Star made my mother wet her pants. Why come back Stateside to be a fuckup?"

"You weren't a f-"

"But Kyle, see, Kyle was different. He had real guts, my boy did. He put himself in situations-" We'd turned a corner, and without looking he said, "Nice houses, huh? Nice place to live."

"Very nice," I said.

"That kid was committed, that kid. Never seen anything like it. After the Twin Towers, he says to me, he says, 'Dad, I'm going to fight for what I know is right. I love this country.' My kid says that to me, how are you going to argue? There's nothing you can tell him. I'm trying to talk him out of enlisting, I'm thinking, What the fuck can I say? I felt like your mother, felt like Aunt Julia. 'Don't sign up, Kyle, don't go through officer training, don't love your fucking country, wait a few years, go to college, get yourself an education, then go in as a medic,
a d
octor, a nurse, who the fuck cares?' And he says to me, 'We gotta fight this war now, Dad. We gotta get the terrorists now.' "

When I didn't speak he said, "Yeah, I know, what's there to say?" He was brave as hell, my kid.

I would have liked to know Kyle. I wondered what, beyond the thin just-in-case letter, would show me the real boy. Were there other letters, or a drunken friend who might say more than the bromides, a girl who'd listened to Kyle's doubts? Buddy's sadness was in his tread, it was in the way his arms fell to his sides, the slope of his shoulders, the way he looked down at the pavement; it was in the squelch of his soaked shoes.

I could imagine talking and not talking, walking together through Fayetteville, maybe hooking into Sherman's trek, going all the way to Savannah and to the sea. I felt that long-ago pride to be with him, and possibly to be of some use as we walked. Maybe he understood that, because he said, "Thanks again, Brains, for coming. It's been too many years, way too many years." We'd reached another corner, a large dark house on a double lot. I remember thinking the place looked like a fortress, and noting the single green light up on the second floor, a computer terminal's watchful eye. "Let's cut across," Buddy said, veering into the wet grass.

I wondered, Cut across to where?

In the middle of the yard-and why should I have been surprised?-he hooked his arm around my neck, pausing behind me to enjoy the capture.

"Uhh," from my mouth.

He collapsed my knees, falling along with me.

"Oof!"

He pushed my face into the grass. How you going to get out of this hold, huh? Stick your ass up, your wimpy little ass, come on, use your legs, use your legs, what are you made of? He wrenched my arm across my spine. We boys of summer! I heard myself laugh. My cousin expertly torqued my shoulder, the acromioclavicular joint-"Christ!"-separating from the scapula.

"What's that?"

"Bastard!" Even as he pulled harder, the familiarity of the routine was a happiness. Tears smarted in my eyes, and I believe I said, to quote Jerry Pindel, "Fuck!"

"That's right."

It was like the repetition in a piece of music, the reprise that brings with it a deeper understanding of a thing you can't begin to name. I was suffocating from his weight and the grass up my nose. If I had been able to breathe, I would have laughed some more. If I wasn't about to suffer from either an AC separation or an anterior dislocation--I couldn't quite tell which one would come to pass--I would have laughed yet again at his ability to unravel the years, at the kindness of his gift. He held me for as long as he knew I could stand it, of that I am sure, his old instinct for precision serving him. When he let go it was slow, first releasing my arm bit by bit, and then rolling off me. He must have lain on his back for a minute, looking up at the few stars shining beyond the watery sky. It must have been a little while, my acromion settling back into position, the green computer light twinkling. As if nothing had occurred, we managed to get ourselves standing and dusted off. My glasses were bent and would need some adjusting back in real time. Without any more conversation, we walked the few miles to the Eastman yard where the Japanese lights, the colored globes, swiveled in the breeze.

IOELLE WAS AT THE PATIO TABLE, clearing the chicken bones and th
e b
ottles, when we appeared. The enormous dogs barked their throaty wuf-wufs and leapt to their favorite. Once Buddy was in his chair, he started to laugh. In short order he became convulsed. I took myself to the far reaches of the yard, gathering plates and glasses from the few guests who remained. Joelle glanced at her husband, shook her head, and said, "Don't tell me. I don't want to know."

"Mac?" Diana cried, coming from the house. "Where have yo
u b
een? Why-why are there grass stains on your shirt? Your face is all-"

"Go clean up in the basement," Joelle said to her husband. "Calm down. Calm down! Get hold of yourself."

"That's, that's," Buddy heaved, tears running down his face, "where we, where we, wash the, the dogs."

Not too long after we'd recovered ourselves, doing the best we could to wipe the dirt from our clothes, after I'd bent my glasses to their original shape, we began the round of farewells, including the promise of many future meetings, vacations together, Club Med! Hilton Head! Orlando! A reunion of all the cousins, perhaps, at Moose Lake. Years ahead of communion, the men disappearing into their bacchanalian rites, thrown back into their adolescence, the women tidying and commiserating. It was past midnight when Tessa and Diana and I finally drove away from that house, where violence and salvation met so companionably.

"What, may I ask," Diana said on the way to the hotel, "were you doing with Buddy?"

Were there any words from literature that I could use to explain? In the middle of the journey of our life I came to myself in a dark wood where the straight way was lost. No, it wasn't that. So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. Diana had never warmed to The Great Gatsby, the book ruined by her high-school English teacher. Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks. I wasn't as far gone as Lear, not yet. Without God and with fractured love through the years, without much insight, I had relied on poetry and what I thought was kindness as my guide. Now, however, I could not come up with a line that would satisfy both my wife and me.

She said, "I was so embarrassed, you with your grass stains and dirty face."

Maybe I'd had a real mystical experience, a genuine revelation of eternity there with Buddy, nearly suffocated by his own hand on a stranger's ChemLawn. A person didn't have certainty and happiness on that order just every day. "Lamb?" I said.

"What."

"It was good we made this trip. Especially since Russia and my parents and Louise couldn't. Thank you for pestering me."

It must have been the praise, the acknowledgment that I'd been stubborn, that made my wife burst into tears, showing more emotion in the car than she had for Kyle in the church. She opened her purse and retrieved one, two, three, four, five fresh tissues.

"It's too bad," I went on, ignoring her display, "that Russia couldn't have been here. The funeral would have been the high point of her life. She would have had such pride in Kyle's sacrifice."

Russia had died in 1997 in a nursing home near her youngest brother, in Mississippi. She fought him every day during the years of his faithful visits, she was miserable to all her guests, she drove the staff to distraction. The last time I saw her there, she beseeched me to take her away. "I'll come and live with you, Timothy, won't give you a minute of bother, not one single minute."

"Of course you wouldn't."

"I'm not making my crossing from this place, you hear me? You tell Mr. Buddy to help me, you tell him Russia needs him to get to the Promised Land."

"I'll tell him."

Without either my or Buddy's assistance, she made her transition after a short bout with pneumonia.

WHEN WE ARRIVED at O'Hare from North Carolina, the day after the service, it was late afternoon, and at my request we drove to my father's house, not far away, to tell him about the relatives. He would appreciate the news, and also he would understand, in a way no other person could, the confusion of the ritual. We found him sitting out on the new deck with Madeline, the two of them having happy hour, he with his bottle of Schloss Saarstein Riesling and she with a glass of something fizzy. There was a dish of salty peanuts, a plate of Wheat Thins, and, with a nod to urban sophistication, one tomato bruschett
a e
ach. Although Russia had not included happy hour in the daily catechism, my father had become religious about this habit after Julia's death.