It’s a rainy day in June and a good morning for writing. For the last several years, most of our rains have fallen in the spring, and our summers have been long and dry and searing. Searing summers in the Ozarks breed things with spikes and spurs and stingers: brown recluses, copperheads, ticks, briars, brambles, and even scorpions. But this summer is shaping up to be different: more amphibious and less pestiferous, more red-eared sliders and fewer red wasps. And perhaps more writing, though writing these days is a damn near superfluous activity. I am reminded of the old Nilsson song: “Everybody’s talkin’ at me; I can’t hear a word they’re sayin’, only the echoes of my mind.” I ask myself why someone would want to read the reminiscences of an old man, and the truth is, maybe nobody does.
But then my mind drifts back to a clapboard farmhouse outside Forum, Arkansas, and the weekend I spent there with Jade and her father, and suddenly, I find that I’m telling another story into cyberspace and wondering if anyone is out there.
By the time we pulled up to Jade’s house, night had settled completely on the hills, and the lightning bugs looked bright enough to mean something. Mr. Stone turned off the truck and the headlights, and the only sound was the trilling of the spring peepers and the only light was shining through the kitchen windows. I climbed out of the truck, carefully, I might add, but Jade had already walked up the steps and was trying to open the storm door at the same time she was cradling Onny. She managed to wedge herself between the storm door and the kitchen door, but she found it impossible to turn the knob, so I ran up to help her, stubbed my toe on the bottom step, swore, and stepped up beside her. When I reached around her and opened the door, I could tell that no one else was at home. I don’t how I knew, but I did. I guess an empty house communicates loneliness like that. I followed Jade into the kitchen and started to close the door, but she said, “Leave it open for my dad.”
The kitchen was a mess: A frying pan with a film of whitish grease and bits of congealed meat, plates stacked in the sink, newspapers and magazines in a jumble on the table. The wallpaper by the phone had been torn away and numbers were written on the sheetrock. The linoleum had crease lines and open patches where the wooden floor showed. Stuffed between the stove and the refrigerator were a couple of dirty pillows, and Jade knelt down and laid the beagle on them. He closed his eyes and made a licking sound. A heavy thumping came up the outside steps, and I turned to see Mr. Stone standing in the doorway. Only then did I see that his right arm ended at his elbow and his right foot was in a large rubber boot. Looking past me, he asked, “Is he gonna make it?”
“I don’t know. I’m gonna give him some milk.”
“If he dies, tell me, and I’ll take him out to the woods.”
“I can do it.”
“All right.” He stumped into the kitchen, and I stepped aside to make some room. “What are you looking at?” he asked.
“Nothing, sir.”
“‘Nothing, sir.’ You probably look at a lot of nothing, don’t you?”
I thought, What the hell could that possibly mean? but it sounded hostile, so I said, “All I did was call to say I found your dog. It was your daughter who invited me to stay.”
“She’s always taking in strays. That’s how we got him,” and he gestured with his stub toward the beagle.
Talking to this guy was like catching your leg on a barbed wire fence. No fun at all. I said, “I’m not a stray dog, if that’s what you mean.”
He was quiet after that, and he turned to stump into the front room. He called out of the dark, “Jadie, I’m going to bed.” Then he came back and said, “Boy, you may think I’m too crippled up to do anything, but I swear to God if you put your hands on my girl, I’ll kill you. Is that understood?”
“Yes, sir. I would never do that.”
“I’m sure you wouldn’t. How old are you?”
“Seventeen. And my name’s Otis.”
“Seventeen. When I was seventeen, I was pouring steel at a foundry. By the time, I turned nineteen, I had married, had a son, parachuted into hell, and lost half my arm and a foot to a mortar round. I didn’t have time to bum around with a guitar like some kind of hippie.”
I thought about telling him I got kicked out of school for mooning an army recruiter but figured that would be a bad idea. So, instead I said, “Mr. Stone, I’m sorry that happened to you. But thank you for fighting the Nazis.”
“I wish the rest of your generation would show a little gratitude. I see those long-haired freaks out there protesting Vietnam and burning their drafts cards and taking for granted everything we fought for. You don’t know what it’s like to see your buddies blown apart right beside you, to have a shell land in foxhole ten feet away and next morning find the head of a man you shared a cigarette with the day before. Your generation doesn’t know a damn thing about sacrifice.”
Jade said, “Daddy, shhh. You’re gonna get worked up.”
He grimaced and said, “The sons of bitches asked me to sacrifice too much. Too goddamned much.”
“Daddy…”
“I’m goin’ to bed.”
We heard him thumping up the stairs and a door opening, then nothing but the smell of cigarette smoke.
I said, “I am sorry he went through that.”
Jade hung her head and said, “Yeah. Me, too.”
“Do y’all live here by yourselves?”
“Help me clean up, and I’ll tell you what happened.”
We started with the dishes, and while I dried and stacked the plates, she told me the story.
“My mom and dad grew up in the northeast, in Philadelphia. I’ve never been because by the time I came along, my grandparents were dead, and my dad said there wasn’t any reason to go back. My mom was a clerk in store called Wanamaker’s—she always made that sound like it was a big deal—and she met my dad when he was picking out a gift for my grandma. It was the early forties and the war was coming on, so they got married right away. Three months later, my dad got drafted and was assigned to the 101st airborne. He jumped into France before the boats landed on D-Day. About the same time, Ma found out she was expecting. My brother, Turk was born while Daddy was still fighting over in Europe.”
“Cool name. Do you have any other brothers or sisters?”
“I have an older brother, Mica, but we don’t know where he is. He’s like you, I guess.”
“What about your Mom?” I hesitated to ask, but Jade seemed in the mood to talk, so I went ahead.
“Well…you saw what shape my dad was in when they sent him home from the war. He drew a check from the government for his service, and he got a job back at the foundry teaching about safety to the GIs. Of course, he couldn’t do hard work anymore, but he knew how steel was made. Obviously, Mama stuck with him because they had two more kids.
“This is kind of funny. Dad’s real name is Grant, but Mama started calling him ‘Granite’ because she said that couldn’t nothin’ break him.”
“Granite Stone. That sounds like a name out of the Flintstones.”
“I wouldn’t let Daddy hear you say that.”
“Don’t worry. So, then what happened?”
“When Turk turned eighteen, he didn’t know what he wanted to do, so Daddy suggested he join the Marines. He said, ‘They’ll make a man of you, give you a sense of direction.’ Mama said, ‘Over my dead body will he join the military! The Stone family has given plenty to save the free world. No more!’ She said any fool that reads the papers could see war was coming to Vietnam, and Daddy said, ‘That’ll never happen. Never. Tell me how such a war would serve American interests! You gotta have more faith in our government than that.’ That was three years ago. I remember it was on my birthday, and Mama and Daddy were yelling at each other, and Turk said, ‘That’s enough! I’m enlisting, and that’s all there is to it.’ A year later and he was in Vietnam, but he wrote home not to worry, that the Vietnamese people were happy to see them. He sent a Polaroid of a little girl handing him flowers. But a month or so after that we got a telegram that Turk had been killed by a sniper. And that’s when Mama left. I begged her to take me with her, but it was like I wasn’t even here. Nothing was here anymore. Mama was gone before she left.”
“What happened to Mica?”
“He dropped out of school and went out West somewhere. He left a note saying he’s never coming back. A couple years ago, Daddy and me moved to Arkansas. He said he was sick of the big city, but I don’t see that he’s better off here. It’s just us and our beagle pup.” She started crying. “I hope he doesn’t die.” Jade looked at me. “If he dies, I’ll be by myself again.”
I wanted to take her in my arms and hold her, to tell her that she wouldn’t be alone, that I would always be there for her, that I would marry her and take her somewhere happy, and we would have kids who never went to war. But she was fourteen and I was seventeen, two lost kids in a stupid world we couldn’t figure out. At least, my parents were kind to me even after I was kicked out of school. Besides, it was my own fault for being stupid. But Jade hadn’t done anything to deserve her life. She was stuck in her dead brother’s story and paying a price for decisions she didn’t make.
I remember thinking, It’s not fair! She didn’t do anything wrong!
But then I realized, Neither did Mr. Stone. He lost an arm and a leg trying to do the right thing, to fight the Nazis. And he lost a son because he trusted his own government not to fight a pointless war.
And Jade’s mom, who could blame her when she saw what was coming and no one believed her? Was it her fault she lost faith?
People suffer all the time for sins they didn’t commit. When we finally get that through our heads, our redemption will be at hand.
Sometimes the night has to get damned dark before the lightning bugs have meaning.