Memorial Day Read online

  Memorial Day and Other Stories

  Paul Scott Malone

  Copyright © Paul Scott Malone, 2000

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Malone, Paul Scott.

  Memorial day and other stories / Paul Scott Malone.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 0-87565-218-2 (cloth :alk paper

  ISBN 0-87565-219-0 (pbk :alk. paper)

  1. United StatesSocial life and customs20th centuryFiction. 2.

  Young menUnited StatesFiction. I. Title.

  PS3563.A432464 M46 2000

  813'.54dc21 99-048286

  Illustration and book design by Barbara M. Whitehead

  Acknowledgements

  "Memorial Day, 1987: A Holiday Story" first appeared in the Southern Humanities Review; "When It's a House" in Black Warrior Review; "The Solitary Heart" in Blue Mesa Review; "Her Name Was Sheila Wells" in Hawaii Pacific Review; "Family Photos," Part I, in The Tucson Weekly.

  Contents

  Copyright

  Acknowledgements

  Dedication

  Memorial Day, 1987: A Holiday Story

  When It's a House

  Naming Mansfield

  The Solitary Heart

  Her Name Was Sheila Wells

  Family Photos

  Dalrymple's Jackpot

  For CK,

  again and always,

  and for Greg

  and for Danny Frank

  and for KJ

  Also for

  my mother

  Lillian Annie (1924-1996)

  Memorial Day, 1987:

  A Holiday Story

  1

  Something's churning. Hardly slept last night and ever since I got up I've been racing around, looking for something, thinking thoughts so fast I've already burnt up a pack of Camels.

  So now I'm in the attic scrounging for the flag. The Stars and Stripes. My Old Glory. Memorial Day is on Monday. Today is Saturday and we have no plans for the holiday but I'm as patriotic as the next guy and this year I want to show the flag. In a place called Flagstaff, Arizona, it ought to be a law.

  Besides, we've had tragedy. As a nation, I mean: three dozen young sailors shot to pieces on an American warship in the Persian Gulf. A deadly mistake, says Brokaw, by the pilot of the Iraqi jet who fired the missiles; he thought he was killing Iranians. And on top of that an entire town in my home state of Texas was blown to Oz by a monster tornado. Children crushed. Grandmothers crippled. Twenty-nine dead. The TV shows incredible devastation, a flattened town on a flat desert prairie. In remembrance of fallen sailors, brave and true, and of dead Texans, old and new, I want to fly the flag.

  I rip open a box marked MISC. On top are diplomas framed in wood and glass. Sarah's three are first, then my two worthless now. I dig into the box. Here we go: red and white stripes wrapped around the multi-jointed pole. Digging deeper I find the string from which the flag hangs and the flagpole holder that you fix to the wall. But a part is missing. I keep scrounging. The flag was a gift from my dad when I returned from the war in '71. He had served in the Pacific during W.W. II, came home with only a stump for a left arm. Still on every holiday he flew the flag, the one the Army gave my grandmother after the funeral of my Uncle Bill. Uncle Bill died in Korea the month I was born.

  Down below Sarah's making a racket with the vacuum cleaner. I call down through the hole in the ceiling, "Where'd we put the little knob?" and to my surprise the vacuum grinds to a stop. Some flagpoles have eagles; mine has a knob.

  Sarah appears in the square hole. She's standing on the ladder. "What?" she snaps. I tell her what I'm searching for, and she offers up a look to match her tone. "A knob? I have no idea, William, I'd forgotten you even had a flag," she says and eases herself to the floor. Soon the vacuum starts up again.

  We've been together for three years and two rent houses and I've never flown the flag in her presence. "That's not us," she says and she has a point. She's liberal; I'm agnostic. In all the years I've had it my flag has been outdoors only once Independence Day, 1980, for the hostages in Iran. I was married then to a woman named Marge but that was our last July 4th together. My daughter Joy who is twelve will call tomorrow as she does on the Sunday of every holiday weekend, and that's on my mind too.

  I give up on the knob and crawl downstairs. I take my hammer and some nails from the junk drawer in the kitchen and head out front. I hammer up the metal flagpole holder. I assemble the pole, unfurl and string up the flag. I turn, walk a few steps and turn again and it's then that I remember my dad always saluted the flag at this point. He would come to attention, the stump rigid against his rib cage, a Chesterfield hanging from his mouth, and he would snap his hand up to his brow looking as serious as if he were on the rocks of Iwo Jima.

  None of my neighbors is out and Sarah couldn't see me where I am so I bring my hand up in a salute and then just as quickly make like I'm scratching an itch on my neck. And it's a good thing I was quick because here's Sarah coming around the corner of the house with Jocko. The dog prances up to me and sits. Then Sarah is with me. She slips her hand into the pocket of my jeans and the three of us stand there like an honor guard, motionless, staring at the flag as it whispers.

  <><><><><><><><><><><><>

  This is no way for a man to act. Sarah's at the grocery store, thank God, because I'm in front of the TV waiting for the Astros-Reds game to start and I'm having one of my little problems. It's Sammy Davis Junior singing the National Anthem at Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati and the sound of Sammy's voice bellowing out those words has me all stirred up.

  Sammy's building to the climax and I'm wiping away tears. I feel Jocko nudge my knee. I kiss his old forehead then spring up and turn off the TV. I need a shower.

  The phone rings while I'm rinsing but I dally and by the time I step out of the tub it stops. Might be Joy calling a day early. Might be Sarah calling to see if we need dog food or something. But I doubt it. The phone woke us this morning and just as Sarah got her leg out of the covers, on the third ring, it quit. Who lets a phone ring only three times?

  The Reds are stomping the Astros so I snap off the TV again and retake my position on the couch. I down a mouthful of beer to coat the insides and then light up a number, lean back.

  So now I feel better. And here's Sarah bringing in the groceries.

  And Jocko barking for his new rawhide bone. I mention the phone call. We speculate about who is calling but it's a puzzle we can't figure out. Then she says, "Let's get out of the house for a while."

  "You were just out."

  "I mean farther out."

  "The mountains?"

  "I was thinking the reservation."

  That's the Navajo reservation north of the mountains. She likes to shop at the lonesome stands the women set up along the highways. She's crazy about Indian clothing.

  "We'll take a cooler of beer and have a sunset picnic."

  "You better drive," I say, and she grins indulgently.

  <><><><><><><><><><><><>

  Let me mention this. It's background for what I know is coming. A rough period. I hate to but it's important.

  I was the first in my family to graduate from college. Did it with the GI Bill. All of my relatives showed up in Austin on commencement day, wearing string ties and Stetsons, sappy summer hats and lots of lace. I was a hero for once in my life. But they wanted more. So I went on to law school. Got a good job.

  Two years later when I was fired from the law firm in Houston, one of the partners, Mr. Jacobs, said, "You haven't the instinct for it, William. I've seen it before. Bright young men who just can't cut it when it comes to the doing." He declared me moody and inconsistent, judged against me as a "go-getter," ruled that I was lacking in matters practical.<
br />
  Humiliation settled into me like a cold settles into the lungs. I wanted never again to see the inside of a law office, never again to speak the language of jurisprudence. For a solid year I would hardly leave the house. In the second year Marge divorced me and returned to Austin with Joy. In the third my dad died of lung cancer; my mom died of grief, and leukemia.

  I emerged. I moved. First to Fort Worth where a college friend had a computer business. I kept looking. El Paso. Albuquerque. Santa Fe. In Tucson I got a job taking inventory at Safeway stores in the middle of the night. Work that suited me.

  One August day the company sent a team of us up to Flagstaff to inventory a new store, and I decided to stay. It's a pretty town mountains, the desert. And I met Sarah. She's a psychologist, not my psychologist, but she does some work at the charity hospital here. That's where the police took me the night they found me running naked down a busy thoroughfare. The officials called it an "incident"; my doctor called it manic-depression "finally making itself known in a big way." After six weeks they sent me home with a jar of lithium. Which helps balance my chemicals but I hate the stuff. It's like having to buy air to breathe. It's wrong, like a violation of my rights. As an American, I mean, I ought to be independent . . . don't you think?

  <><><><><><><><><><><><>

  So we're on the road. Sarah says, "Oh look," and she steers the car off the highway toward a huge sign: JEWELRY.

  The small dark woman behind the crude stand hardly acknowledges our presence as we scan her wares. I watch her watching us from the crate she's sitting on. Whether we buy or not, whether we're dead or alive, she doesn't care. She reminds me of one of Sarah's paintings at home. All about her is an air of ancient deprivation and solitude, oriental resignation, like some of the women I saw in the war. Flies are buzzing around and there's a grubby kid sitting in the dust at the woman's feet next to a box of Church's Fried Chicken bones, the bones bleached white.

  Sarah picks out a necklace of blue coral and liquid silver. The women bargain. They reach a price, $15, and I say to Sarah, "Let me get it." I press a $20 bill into the woman's hand before Sarah can protest. "Keep the change," I say and still the woman does not smile. She takes the money, sits on her crate.

  In the car Sarah gives me a kiss and thanks me.

  "Consider it an engagement present," I say.

  She grins, glances over, says nothing.

  "You want a beer?" I say, opening one for myself.

  <><><><><><><><><><><><>

  It's evening now. We're alone at a little park. Across the desert valley shimmers the sun on a hill like the flame on a match. The scene is vast and awesome. This is what we're here to see, the setting sun, and I understand again why the paintings of Native Americans are so mysterious, so strange.

  "Did you take your pill?" Sarah asks and I lie, nod my head.

  Sarah puts her elbows on the concrete table and leans against my shoulder. In the ice chest on the ground are the remains of dinner and several beer cans. I light a joint, pass it to her but she shakes her head no, says, "Go easy on that." So I sit and smoke, gaze at the sun, listen to the wind, the silence. The day is winding down. "It's beautiful, so peaceful," she says.

  I feel my little problem creeping into my eyes. I don't know for sure but I believe it has something to do with the concept of peace, how I long for it, what it would mean if I found it. The notion sort of overwhelms me with tenderness for myself and for Sarah and for everyone who has ever meant anything to me. Suddenly I miss everyone I have ever known; a parade of faces passes before me. In the sliver of sun that remains I can see my father and mother, my sister, Joy, and even Marge, and even some faces from the war, shimmering images, distant but clear, surrounded by mist and moving away toward a vanishing point like the faces in Indian paintings rising peacefully into the heavens.

  "You okay?" Sarah says and I stand up.

  "The sun's down," I announce in a croak. "Let's dance."

  She looks at me like I'm mad but goes along. I take her hand and help her onto the picnic table and then ease myself up beside her. We smile in the dusk light, move together. I take her in my arms and whisper, "It's that necklace." She pats my shoulder.

  2

  We've arrived at Sunday afternoon. Day Two, so to speak. All day I've been anxious, suffering premonitions of ill, certain that something terrible is about to happen. I've worried about Joy, Sarah, even Jocko, won't let either one out of my sight.

  "Why doesn't she call?" I ask Sarah.

  "Call her," she says, "if you're really worried."

  "No. I never call."

  She raises an eyebrow accusingly. And it's then that the phone rings. Sarah smiles. I light up and head for the second bedroom, our little office, to talk to my daughter. It rings for the third time as I cross the threshold, and when I snatch up the receiver silence greets me. The line is empty. I slam it down and sit at Sarah's desk, gaze out the window, wondering. There's the flag waving in the breeze at half staff, no knob on the pole, no one paying any attention to it, so I salute, hold it for a moment, and just as I'm snapping my elbow the phone rings again.

  "Hey, Mister Daddy," says Joy. "How's it hanging?"

  "You shouldn't talk like that to your father."

  "Like what?" she says in a tease. She giggles. I snub out my cigarette. Then we talk about the usual stuff. Her mother is fine, her stepfather is out of town on business as usual, the Mercedes is in the shop as usual, school went well this year (As and Bs) and now she is taking swimming lessons and dance lessons and piano lessons. Yes she received my birthday present; no it didn't fit but it will in a couple of years. Her little voice is clear and inviting, like bubbling water.

  "Listen," she says. "Mom wanted me to tell you that a man called here looking for you."

  "What man?"

  "It wasn't for money or anything. He said he knew you from the war. His name was Fred, let me spell it, M-A-R-G-O-L-I-S, from Toledo. We gave him your number."

  "Hang on," I say. I go for a smoke and linger coming back. Let's break in here. Fred Margolis is important to the story. Fred Margolis is the type of man who would let a phone ring only three times. He was in my outfit all the way through. He'd enlisted and would volunteer for anything. Last time I talked to him he was running three successful businesses at the same time. Real estate, appliances, and chickens or something. He owned two houses, several cars. Father to half a dozen kids.

  But here's the scoop on Fred Margolis and me: Fred and I killed a man once, face-to-face, on a patrol, at dusk, near a village that our guys later burned to the ground. We'd been close, Fred and I, the closest of buddies but after that I grew to hate him. He talked about it all the time, how the man's grimy face was so dumb with fear and surprise when he met us on the trail and how we beat him to the draw and how Fred got $5 for the watch he lifted from the dead man's wrist. It's funny: I remember the man's surprise, but I recall it as a happy surprise, almost a smile, like for some reason he was glad to see us, like we were all friends; as if he understood something we didn't know about.

  It was war, I know. But my idea of the war had been: you go, you keep your head down, do what you're told, you live, you come home. Fred's idea was something else, something I hadn't seen in him stateside. And here's the worst part. Fred tracks me down wherever I go. Every two or three years he calls, at all hours. He yells into the phone: Hey, is this Billy Boy Bosworth of Company B? Then he laughs. Every time it's a letdown, a chore to talk to him. He always asks what I'm "up to," where I've been, and where I'm going. The first time I was in college. The second, law school. The last time, Tucson, he was organizing a reunion of guys in our company, and he reported to me in crazy detail the fates of at least a dozen men, three of whom had since died.

  I pick up the phone again and say, "How did he find you?"

  "Who? Oh. Beats me," she says. "Maybe he's a spy."

  "Did he say anything else?" She indicates no and we go silent for a while. Then Joy says, "Listen, Daddy, when are
you coming to Texas? It's been two years, you know. That Christmas."

  "I know, darling. I don't know. Maybe this year."

  "Well don't wait too long or you won't even recognize me."

  "Soon," I lie. "I promise it'll be soon."

  Her response is one word, something harsh, and we go silent again, knowing we've said all there is to say. Already I miss her. We hang up. I sit in the chair at the desk. Outside the breeze has slackened and my old flag hangs limp.

  <><><><><><><><><><><><>

  The evening news is bad. Connie Chung's pretty face is solemn behind the screen. Sarah and I pick at our food and stare at the TV. The pictures show flag-draped coffins and wailing relatives. More young sailors have died from their wounds; more citizens of Saragosa have been found in the rubble.

  My chest is a whirlpool of emotion. It's simple: at this moment I love these people, all of them the sailors, the crushed children, even Connie Chung and the men reporting the stories from the scenes of devastation. The power of television allows me to share their grief, to hate the message but love the messenger. I have read that in some cultures such emotion can build to the point that brothers leap into graves begging to be buried alive with their loved ones and that mothers actually pluck out their eyes to prevent them having to see the empty world any longer.

  Ours is not such a culture; we prefer memorials, quiet and somber. To grieve alone, inside, with dignity. Tomorrow, I know, on Memorial Day, there will be pictures of quiet solitary Americans standing before the black granite wall of the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington. We'll see men in faded field jackets touching the chiseled names of their dead buddies; we'll see praying sisters dressed in black, children who never knew their fathers, wives without husbands, fathers without sons. I couldn't do it; I could never go to Washington and touch the stone.

  Then something comes to me, a great idea, a humanitarian effort. "I've just decided," I say to Sarah. "I'm going to Saragosa. I'm going to help with the disaster relief."