[5,125 word short fiction]

~1975~

“Listen, you two, careful on your way. Which way do you kids take to school, you still use the big trail along the lake?  I want you to use the sidewalk. I know it’s longer, but just by a few minutes, and I really don’t know some of the neighbors along there, okay? It’s just safer along the streets and sidewalks.'

Papa's edict was met with silence and raised brows.

“Look, I mean, I just don’t like that fella. I hear he’s a crazy old man, maybe he’s got an arsenal up in that house, okay? Guns. We don’t want you two around that typa stuff, you hear me? Your Grandpa was killed in action in WWII.  I have a knot under my ribs just thinking of it. Thank God your Grandma was a strong lady. But a lotta your guys do make it home from war, and often times they’re pretty upset. Upset in here, you see, on the inside. They cram their hard war-time problems and whatever they remember up here in their attics, where it can fester and leak out! Now, that’s too bad and all, but we can’t have small young men such as yourselves subject to that leakage. Certainly when the man’s got God knows what kinda stuff all up in his house, on his back porch. We tend to like you kids, ok? Intact.”

“K, Pop,” said Michael, bucking up.

“K, Papa,” said Jeff, whining a little.

“Now there’re some good boys.”

~ 2005 ~

Patch Singer was 83 years old, and though he’d lost a fair chunk of his hearing, was a sharp young man if he did say so himself. He used to be a bit more of a goof because he loved to be funny and entertaining, but he noticed people attributing that streak in him to his age, lately. He began wondering if his schtick actually was a little lame these days, and settled for being more or less a friendly old man. His house was dusty and cluttered and none too lovely on the outside, but essentially clean. He woke up mornings with the crossword and a small breakfast, coffee of course; afternoons were for knockin’ around the shop or running errands in his ’94 Tercel. He took good walks in the evenings to keep everything well oiled. And though he didn’t watch a lot of TV, what with some of the garbage you found on there lately, he did have a bit of the news and the late night comedy before heading off to bed. There were plusses to a life on one’s own, and when lonesomeness got under his skin he just prayed some and got over it. It passed, like everything else. He did go to church on Sundays and had pals in the parish, and he did make a generous handful of terrific toys for the Christmas Drive every year. His mechanized pets, clocks and banks were coveted as the handiwork of a treasured local artisan. Every week, Father Tomas or one of the more involved parishioners would stop by the old house for a visit. Well, today was Tuesday so he wasn’t expecting anyone. Lunch was just for him: some Campbell’s chicken noodle getting warmed on the stove, tuna all decked out with relish and mayo, bread in the toaster. Lotsa coffee, always the good stuff, since way before having the good stuff was hip. He learned about truly excellent coffee in San Francisco some 40 years back. He thought he heard someone coming up the steps. Hey, maybe it isn’t Tuesday? No, he was sure it was, just got done with the newspaper not too long ago. Maybe a meter guy or some such, or maybe Father Tomas or somebody just got bored. If these were pity visits, as Patch gamely suspected they were, you could never tell for the grace of these very nice people. Maybe they really did take some pleasure in coming to visit some old geezer, he laughed. Indulgences for them, anyhow! So he thought he could probably stretch his lunch stuff and show off his fine cuisine; he hoped Father Tomas liked his dolphin-safe without too much mayo.

Michael Waters parked his Civic at the end of the cul-de-sac he grew up on and checked out the old house. He walked past the pavement of the ‘sac’ and up a slight grassy incline, crested it and stepped carefully down the slope to the trail. If he’d wanted, he could cross the trail and walk up the other side, go through somebody’s property and down to the lake. Michael decided just to walk north on the trail, his old route to school. It wasn’t terribly well kept but it was walkable, all the way to Kennedy it looked like. So he meandered along, checked out the school and walked back. It was on the way back that he noticed – and he couldn’t believe this – the barbeque! It was so rusted now it had literally fallen apart at the seams, but for God’s sake there it was. Looks like the War Guy was still kickin’. He loped up the hill toward the house and went around to the proper front steps, on the lake side. He collected his thoughts for a moment, stepped up and knocked on the door.

“Hello, there, young fella, haven’t seen you before, you must be a new guy! Let’s get you all set up with a nice cuppa joe, you want lunch!”

“No, sir, you know what, I just had lunch like a half an hour ago, but thanks, though,” Michael smiled.

“CreamSugar!”

“Oh, no, it’s perfect just the way it is, thanks.”

“Good boy, straight up. So you’ll sit down, then!”

“Sure, what do you mean, the new guy?”

“Aren’t you here from St. Alphonsus?”

“No, sir, just an old neighbor kid. An errand took me so close by the old stomping grounds, I thought I’d come take a look around. Yours is an old familiar house, looked like it was still you, so,” Mike got an awkward half-second, “So, hi!”

“Fine!” Patch grinned delightedly. “Now what was your family name?”

“Waters.”

“Ah, ok, believe your dad’s name was Dave?”

“Sure, you remember us!”

“Well, I’d see your parents, Dave usually, at the auto supply store, the drugstore, what have you. Nice fella, little reserved.” Patch looked at Michael warmly.

Michael caught himself before saying that ‘reserved’ not exactly how he’d describe his dad, but then considers that some of Dave’s preconceptions might have made his demeanor different around this man. “Sir, what is your name? What should I call you?”

“Patch!”

“Patch?”

“Patch.”

“I’m very pleased to meet you, Patch. My name’s Michael.”

“Pleasure to have you ‘round, I’m sure,” Patch enthused, “Wouldn’t be at all upset if you were to make a bit of a habit of it, no, sir. Nice you came ‘round, now how’s that joe?”

“Great, actually.” Mike was surprised and impressed. This was not little old dude coffee.

“Well, there you are.”

“How’d you get ‘Patch’? Is that a nickname?”

“’T is, yeah, a moniker that stuck on me for good in ‘38-’39 when we joined the service. I fought for our country in the Second World War, and me and my school friend Bike joined the army together just after graduating. We just barely didn’t have to lie about our ages. We had birthdays in the summer.”

“Bike?”

“Bike. David Lawrence Nixon, and a fine man, too. He got just fanatical over motorcycles when we were just small boys. He wanted to talk about them all the time. He thought there would be nothin’ better in all of this life than riding one down a stretch of road, middle of nowhere. He wanted them to look just so, to ride just so, feel just so, sing to him. He had pictures, he drew pictures, and he had such clever ideas he figured he’d like to go to work designing bikes for Harley-Davidson! That was his big pie in the sky.

“See, he and I really got on in the mechanical stuff department, as I like any type of machine. Not that we ever didn’t get along. We knew each other like books, watched the other guy’s back and were friends, such a nice fella. And he was tall and affable, so the girls always found a thing or two to say to him.” Patch surprised himself feeling a little choked up telling about Bike, missing him. Because it was falling on a fresh pair of ears, he supposed. The thought gratified him; Michael seemed so engaged and like he cared about this, it felt a little like Bike had a new brain to knock around in. Father Tomas and his other war-story victims listened to him, he knew, because he was an old man who wanted company, not because they truly cared about what he said. It’s funny how you can tell these things about a stranger, Patch mused.

“Is Bike no longer with us, then?”

“No, son, he died in that war, it murdered him in North Africa, during Operation Torch. His mother, though nearly 100 years old bless her heart, is still around, living out in one of the older houses in Kirkland. But Bike seemed so damn wise and easy-going about everything, he paid attention, he learned, he got things in his head just right. I say that because I think of all people he’d have been the first to make sense of it all, make peace with it all.”

“How bout you, Patch?”

“Well, son, it took me a very long time. Very long time. But you know, I took some pages from my friend’s playbook, and you what? I’m all right. Don’t think about it quite as much as I used to. And when I do, it’s all right. Seems a messy war’s part of every lifetime.”

~1942~

“’Operation Torch’, I like how that sounds, man, we’ll fuckin’ torch us some Krauts!” Said James, “But on the other hand it’s kind of a hot-sounding name for a place like Tunisia. I’ll see you your two and raise you two, so how do you like them apples.”

“I say I’d like it a hell of a lot better if only these here Good & Plentys were indeed apples, y’askin’ me”, opined Matt. “Can’t stand me no lickrish. I’d ‘torch’ me an apple, have me some pie’s what I’m talkin’ about. The candy’d do better as poker chips.”

“Pie…” Bike rolled his eyes back in pleasure at the thought.

“It’s not exactly hot here, right now, you may have noticed? Merry Christmas?” Murphy pointed out.

James usually enjoyed smart-assing Murphy down to his right and proper place among ‘us dogs, you know, the proletariat’, but he really wasn’t quite up to it. “I wish I could say I hadn’t noticed this rain. Feels freezing after no time, once you’re soaked. Hey,” he said, noting the time, “it is officially Christmas, just barely. God rest ye merry, gentle-dogs!”

“I’d settle for any real rest whatsoever, the best present I could get,” Bike laughed. “Getting soaked takes no time at all, but it takes all the way until the next squall comes along to dry out again, if ever. Check.”

“Ooo, say that agin, just so,” said Matt, chuckling.

“I don’t know how you boys can take it all so easily,” said Murphy, who nearly always managed to make criticism of others out of his own whining. But any way, even that sort of way, of coping with one’s fear was tolerated to some extent. “We sleep wet and filthy, we watch people get shot, gutted, blasted all to hell every day and somehow you sit there and chuckle. See you, raise you one, Matthew.”

“Well, yer highness talk like I ain’t payin’ no mind. Truth is, what else can you do? Maybe’s the last chuckle the Good Lord gonna see fit to give me,” Matt countered.

“I think I try to fight the gravity of all this during the moments I possibly can, because gravity tends to win a lot of the time. It’ll always be happy to, if you let it, so I let it sometimes and I don’t let it sometimes,” Bike said diplomatically.

Matt’s ears perked up, alarmed. All eyes on Bike, a Corporal. James mouthed, “Oh, hear that!” Everyone looked eastward and lowered their bodies instinctively hearing two long, low whistles, arcing lower. “Nasty whistle – oh, there it goes!” – A menacing, low double-blast, one shell right on top of another. Four pairs of dog tags clinked and threw faint flashes as the boys’ bodies rocked and flinched with the thunderous fire. After a moment: “Lord, who are the Krauts seeing? Couldn’t be us. Or maybe that was just a general ‘Season’s Greetings’ to whomever may be listening,” whispered Murphy.

Then… nothing. A particularly ominous silence. Eyeballs glanced around at each other and big paws full of playing cards lowered a bit. Of higher rank, Bike and James rose quietly and turned to walk in the direction of their sergeant, Terry Allen. Just to check in. “You want to go, or you want me to go with you?” James offered, deferring.

“No, you baby-sit these varmints,” grinned Bike. “I’ll be right back.”

So far, it really did seem to be nothing; regular fire had just died out suddenly with that extra-big fire at the end, like a double exclamation point. “Maybe the Germans had to go to the bathroom,” Said Murphy, further trying his hand at levity. Everyone gave him a grin. A minute and a half later, eyes began hunting around for Bike. James got up and walked a few steps toward Sgt. Allen’s location due south of here. Then James saw a flash of light right on the ground, 150 yards ahead of him to the ESE. Shit, was Bike off course? Before its sharp, uneven crack-crack even finished sounding, he knew, he just knew. He saw the silhouette bound upward and spill down to the ground unheard, like a rag doll. James sank and bowed over, cursing God that he’d have now to go over there, begging the same God that Bike was dead right now, already, please God, the moment he stepped on it. If we don’t get to have him and you do, you have some of your mercy on him, if you truly have any, if you’re truly there! Fuck you, anyhow. Just fuck you. His mind shifted gears half a dozen times in the next 150 yards; halfway there, he couldn’t help but think, the Krauts stole our fucking Bike, now how’re we supposed to get around? He wanted to be shocked and angry at himself for thinking of a joke at this moment, except he knew Bike himself would’ve laughed.

When he completed his mission, he went toward Terry’s location, but they stumbled across each other before he got there. So James and his Sgt Allen returned to the little camp together to tell these boys, a regiment parceled out from the mighty First Division to help out the Brits, that they’d lost Corporal David Lawrence Nixon. One of their best, and one of their own. They boys all folded down their own cards.  Matt picked up Bike’s five cards and just closed his eyes and held the hand in his hands for a moment. He passed it to Murphy and the other boys and Terry, who did the same. And thus began Christmas day 1942 here at Longstop Hill.

~~~

Bike Nixon thought he felt his left foot come loose; it got turned up and in so the arch touched the inside of his left leg. He noticed it pop like a chicken bone when you break the drumstick off the thigh. It was ok, but his body had just come to feel like hot, dry spray, and now that part was wet-hot spray instead. The skin broke apart funny, he was ripping and aloft, like two circus-hands had taken his feet and shoved him hard upward so he could reach the trapeze or something. He thought about cold mud being slathered onto the ripping part to make it feel better. Rain started coming down on his forehead and that was a sweet splattery wash. His arms wheeled back much too far to grab hold of anything, but that was ok, and he lost track of where the hands were aiming, anyway. The knees were coming up and he got some more skin coming open between his hipbones. Some sharp shards of stuff came up just under his ribs, he was sure, and then he couldn’t be quite sure. He felt searing right there and he wanted to tuck his body in, but his chin went backward, eyes up, and he couldn’t do it. But then it was ok and he didn’t have to. His eyes got very thickly wet. He wanted some of that rain on the too-hot ripping open skin or some mud, like icy mud, how it would be slushy. Oh, that sounded beautiful. He felt some tall, shadowy presences giving him the icy mud, slathering it on thickly with long hands like healers, quiet, helping, and he felt deeply moved. Gravity claimed his weight, the ground taking his left hip, left side.  It felt cool and he thought more of his skin wanted more of the earth, more cool. He wanted a muddy autumn park. The corner of the fence by where all the kids played stickball, that always filled up and made a soppy grass-laden schlop of dark soil when it rained. They’d stomp around in it, relishing a bit in the rolled eyes of their mothers, who were ready with a warm lunch and stuff to clean the floor. He wanted to let his back roll all the way onto the earth, but he couldn’t seem to make his body do the work. The long hands brought some cool icy mud up to all that hot skin on his back.  He felt rain skating down the side of his face. Now the healers took care of the ribs and lower lungs with those long arms, and he wasn’t afraid of their touch; he knew they’d have this cool medicine. It seemed to bubble away at first, so seared was that skin, but then it was just rills of slushy, icy thick relief. His eyes filled till they brimmed over like cups and got heavy with sleepiness. He could make out these long, tall healers better. He knew they knew him, and here of course they were, floating like blue giants. He could sense them love him with their medicine, in calm and warmth. It came from a well in his being, a sense of gratitude and connection, so profound and essential as to be luminous.  Whatever grace he had was all for them, theirs, his dignity full like a proud heart, for them; he felt urgently to give them everything, offer them himself, get folded inside their deep-water blue shadows. They gave him sweet stuff in his mouth and took him in, where he now felt some… something… suddenly grief. He was about to understand something, but he couldn’t quite yet…  after a moment, it came in lucid pictures: My sweet Beth, oh, no, Patch, Mama … Matt, James and Terry … Beth has a little one on the way, doesn’t she? Oh…no… Look, you, whatever or whoever you are, I can live with pain, I can handle being blind! I don’t need my legs, my ribs, I need my – my mom…! I need Beth! He felt horrified and outraged with a sense the shadowy blue healers had betrayed him: No, give me back! Give me back! He was never so powerless.  They listened carefully to him and let there be sorrow. When it was over, David heard an old familiar voice.  It was here, right here… He didn’t get really words from it; it just echoed toward him and he could just see this most familiar smile… the green sweater.  He smelled cigarettes, cedar shavings from making mom a box to store clothes, the friendly eyes and great big arms for hauling small people around… I could sit up on the workbench and watch if I wanted to…?  Sure you could, kiddo, come on there, time to come home.

~ Present Day ~

“Oh, hi Michael, to what do we owe the pleasure. Hi there, son,” Said Dave Waters.

“Hi, Pop, remember the big trail that went more or less along the lake?”

“Sure, sure, how bout that? Now, we’ve finished up, here, but you’re more than welcome to some leftovers or dessert if you like. I’m afraid you’ve missed your mom; she’s off to have a drink with Sophie.

“You know, I used to fish along there just off that trail. Yeah, just a quarter mile south of the house or so, you’d find some launches and a good spit at low tide, though rocky. No matter, caught some flounder there more than once, caught an errant trout once, had to toss ‘er.”

“S’ok, I’m eating later,” said Michael, “but can I have a cup of that coffee?” Pop nodded. “When we were in like second or third grade or so, that age, we used to take that trail to get to Kennedy.”

“Now wait a minute, I thought I told you kids to stop that, ok? No, now, I wanted you to take the – ”

Michael held up his hand and smiled, having steered Pop’s brain where he had meant to, “Before you told us that, Papa.”

“Ah, well, sure then, ok, sure.”

“So you remember why you wanted us to stop that and start taking the long way, the War Guy. We had this image of him as a scary old man.”

“He was a scary old man, why, who knows what kinda stuff he had up in there.”

“Jeff and I used to see his old barbeque that had tumbled halfway down from his house to the trail, and rusted there with all the overgrown weeds and stuff. We used to say, ‘Now how’ll he cook children!’ and laugh, and we used to tell Brian at school who picked on smaller kids and even girls, ‘We’re gonna feed you to the War Guy!’ We told him, ‘He has a barbeque.’ Brian was fat and stupid, so he was worried, and a few times a year we had a small crowd of eternally grateful six-year-olds. One kinda spindly kid in Jeff’s class said to me, ‘We love the War Guy!’”

Pop looked stunned, but he chuckled, “You’re joking, there, wow, how bout that. That’s, uh, well I guess that’s funny, I suppose.”

“We pictured him as a huge, vicious man all hunched over with a big, nasty grin.” Pop’s brow furrowed a bit. “We said he was like a massive old lobster: a big semi-automatic cannon in one hand, a little accurate stinger of a pistol in the other, waving ‘em around looking for fat kids.”

Pop opened his mouth. Michael waited with a contented half-smile, finally raising his brow, “Pop?”

Pop brought his jaw back up. “Son, well, son, it wasn’t quite that way…” He glanced around. “Son, we didn’t really know that man, okay? But you must know now that your imaginings as children were possibly slightly exaggerated? Here, let me top off your mug, there, Michael. Listen, have you ever heard of shell-shock?”

“Sure, Pop, they now call that Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.”

“Okay! Well, all it was is that this guy had some of that. And from what we understood, see, he liked and collected guns. We didn’t think he had a wife or anything, so. We just didn’t want to risk him one day thinking you two were The Enemy there traipsing your way to Kennedy. We tend to like you kids, you hear?”

“Did you meet him, ever?”

“Briefly, oh, we’d run into him here and there. Just cordial, how you doin’, that sorta thing. At the grocery store, the Burgermaster, what have you.”

Michael was bemused but slightly irked. He kept his half-smile and watched his dad. “You know what I did today, Pop? I walked along that old trail. I was down at Katterman’s pharmacy and it just hit me, since I was so close by, to go see the old house. I parked and went back toward the water and found the trail. It’s semi-overgrown, but I followed our usual stretch. Guess what? The barbeque was still there! I couldn’t believe it,” Michael laughed. “I poked around the school for a few – it has shrunk considerably since I was less than four feet tall – then walked back to the trail and found his front yard.”

Pop looked expectant.

Michael smiled.

Pop smiled.

“He’s a nice little old man, Papa.”

Pop lowered his head, stifling a chuckle. Michael recounted his visit with Patch to his father. “You know, son, it hurts my heart for that man that he lost his friend and went through all that. Was Patch in Africa, too? ‘Bike’? That’s terrific. What’s his name-name?”

“No, Patch was in France. I don’t recall Bike’s name, nor Patch’s for that matter, but I’m gonna go back and visit him again soon. Write some stuff down. Patch clearly misses Bike, and I think it’d be invaluable for him to have some sort of a book of stuff: I’d take down whatever stories he wants to tell, see if I can track down the mom.  Who knows what could come of that! And whatever else, maybe copies of documents, photos, etc.

“But see, now I want to write your stuff down, too, and Grandpa Larry’s stuff. Do you have that stuff on Grandpa?”

Pop was quiet for a minute, then said, “Gosh if kids don’t surprise you sometimes, boy, growing up you think they’re not hearing a thing you say. My own experience in the service bothered me enough I didn’t even try to catch your ears with it, except to try and instill gratitude and respect toward the service in general, so. I never knew if it worked, and I counted it less important than your being excited about life, and safe and well, you know, son.”

“I know, Pop,” Michael smiled.

“Yes, well,” Dave lowered his head and smiled. “Well, here’s the deal on your grandparents, and you know your Grandma told me this story when I think I was nineteen or so. She was heartbroken.” Pop paused. “We don’t have any documents or medals or anything for your Grandpa Larry. Mom said to me that the ring on her left hand was a promise ring, a promise from him to marry her the very split second he came back home. They’d have taken care of it right then, but his current leave was too short, wasn’t enough time. So it was probably the next morning, May 1st, as he was shipping out and she was waving at him, or at least that’s what she’d like to think, that your old Pop was officially conceived.” Pop got a bittersweet smile, “Eight months later, he was killed. Mom’s family was none too happy, as you can imagine in those days. But your grandma’s one strong lady, and she made the best of being painfully excluded at a most vulnerable moment. She got a friend to help her manage, she got work as a secretary not too long after I was born, and she raised me herself on that. That old friend of hers would sit with me ‘til I was old enough to head off to school, and I’ll be damned if I remember her very well, such a shame. But I think she moved away, and I think I was one of your original ‘latchkey’ kids. I pioneered that movement!” Pop chuckled. “Well, you know some of that already, won’t bore you, point is, Grandma use to tell about my dad some, loving things and that he died for our country and stuff like that, but I wasn’t aware ‘til age 19 that they hadn’t been married. That used to be a bigger deal than it is these days, and your poor grandma was afraid I might think he was somehow less my father, maybe think less of her,” Pop looked sorrowfully frustrated at the thought. “I did my best to convince her she couldn’t be more wrong-headed, and didn’t she think I was just grateful to be here! That was a conversation. Anyway, unfortunately, although we have the one old personal photo and the one wallet size army portrait he gave her before he left, I don’t think we’re entitled to any of that documentation or other official stuff. I look just like him, nonetheless there’d be no way to prove anything.”

Michael chewed this over and looked at his father. He waited respectfully for a moment. “Pop, maybe we could look into it anyway, just to see…? See if we could come up with something?”

“I’ve thought about it, son, but I’d kinda let it go. But you seem so interested…well, I don’t know, maybe so…”

“And we could make a book kinda like the one I’d thought of for Patch. Just think, having something official saying ‘whatever-his-rank-was Larry Waters’ or at least let’s get that photo. I know it’s small but we could get a great frame for it…” Mike’s mind was racing, “Caption it with ‘(rank) Larry Waters’… Lets see what we can do, Pop!”

“Sure son, sure! Okay, but one thing I can set official for you right now: Waters is Grandma’s name, see. We have your Grandma’s name. But I did get something of his,” Papa smiled a private smile, now. “My father was US Army Corporal David Lawrence Nixon.”

C.T.Thatch

Copyright 2011