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13
Peggy
JULY 1946
Before church on Sunday, I picked a handful of the wild daisies that were blooming among the weeds and rusted cars in our backyard and laid the bouquet on my mother’s grave in the churchyard. I hadn’t seen Pop visit the grave since Mama’s funeral, nor had he purchased a headstone. A flat iron marker, nearly buried in the wiry grass, told me where Mama and our baby had been laid to rest. Maybe Pop, like a lot of other people, didn’t like visiting cemeteries because they raised so many questions about life and what happened after death. And maybe that was why this cemetery and so many others were in churchyards—so we’d have a nearby reminder of heaven and God and the promised afterlife.
This church, which I’d been attending ever since Mrs. Barnett invited me years ago, was a neat white clapboard building that seemed to point to heaven like a beacon. Arched stained-glass windows in the front and along both sides curved to a point on top like an invitation to look up. Smaller arched windows above the doors also pointed up. Even the steep, peaked roof gestured to the sky. And the glorious bell tower, housing bells that were now clanging their Sunday morning invitation, was topped with a tall, central spire along with two smaller spires for good measure. Every week, the architecture reminded parishioners of the promise of heaven.
I remembered how hard it had been to carry my grief after Mama and our baby died. I had stumbled through the flat, lonely days all alone until Buster came along to console me. Jimmy probably mourned for Mitch and countless other friends who had died in the war, but who had consoled him? I could come to the cemetery to grieve and lay flowers, but he had no place to lay his grief. It suddenly occurred to me that Jimmy had tried to kill himself on May30—Decoration Day. Several young men who had died in the war had been honored with a small ceremony in this cemetery that day. Jimmy might have known them.
Decoration Day had been mild enough for me to open our windows. I’d heard the drum cadence, carried on a breeze as mourners walked to the cemetery. A bugler had played taps. There’d been a military salute with gunfire. And less than an hour later, I’d heard sirens as the volunteer ambulance corps arrived across the street.
Now, all of these thoughts distracted me from the Sunday service. I couldn’t have said what the sermon had been about. I nearly walked straight past the horse trainer from Blue Fence Farms, standing alone outside the church. It would be rude to ignore him a second time, especially since no one else seemed to have noticed him. I pushed past my shyness and greeted him, knowing it was what Jimmy would have done. “Good morning, Mr. Dixon.”
“It is a great morning, isn’t it? How are you today, Miss Serrano?”
“You can call me Peggy. And... and I’m fine, thank you.” But obviously terrible at making small talk.
“I hope you’ll call me Paul. Mr. Dixon is my father, who, by the way, doesn’t know the front end of a horse from the rear.” He grinned and so did I, but my smile didn’t last long as my thoughts returned to Jimmy. I didn’t know what else to say, so I waited to see if Mr. Dixon—Paul—could think of something. He was gazing out at the view of the distant mountains, turning the brim of his Sunday hat around and around in his hands. “This is such a pretty little valley,” he finally said. “I could look at those mountains all day. But I suppose people who’ve lived here all their lives don’t even notice them anymore.”
“I do. I notice them. And I’ve lived here all my life.”
“Someone told me I should drive up to the hairpin turn and the lookout to see the view from the top.”
“You should. I love it up there.” Did that sound like I wanted him to invite me along? Why hadn’t I just kept quiet? “I-I’m sorry to rush off again, Mr. Dixon—”
“Paul.”
“Yes. Paul. But I’m on my way to visit a friend in the hospital and...”
“I understand. It was nice seeing you.”
I was heartened to see Joe’s motorcycle parked outside Pop’s garage when I returned home from church. Joe had disappeared again after our visit with Frank Cishek three days ago. Now he was upstairs in our apartment, standing at our stove flipping pancakes and having a laugh with Donna and Pop. Donna shot me a stern look as I came inside, one that clearly said, “Now, don’t mess this up again!” I rolled my eyes and went into my bedroom to change my clothes.
Joe and I left on his motorcycle after lunch. Chaplain Bill and Frank Cishek were already waiting in the hospital’s parking lot when we arrived, talking quietly. The two men couldn’t have been more different: Frank tall and robust and earnest, the balding chaplain slumped and worried-looking. The four of us went inside together and found Jimmy sitting alone in the common room.
“Hi, Jim. Remember me? Frank Cishek?” he asked. He offered his hand and Jimmy shook it weakly in return. He seemed confused and wary as he looked us over, like a child facing four strangers, so I quickly introduced everyone as if he were meeting us for the first time.
“I told you those electric shocks are torture,” Joe muttered. There were enough chairs for all of us, so we stayed inside the building this time, sitting in a circle around a coffee table like campers around a bonfire.
Jimmy listened without responding as Joe and Frank and sometimes Chaplain Bill chatted with him, recalling some of the men they’d known and laughing over incidents that had occurred in basic training or on the voyage across the Atlantic or during their training in Wales. The men tiptoed very carefully over to France, not mentioning the horrors of D-Day. I watched Jimmy’s face for his reaction, but there was none. His three friends might have been describing a film they’d watched that Jimmy had never seen. I wondered if the shock treatments had erased all of those memories. At last, Frank grew serious.
“Those were hard years, I won’t deny it. We saw some pretty terrible things, Jim, things that I don’t think any of us will ever forget. Even now, the nightmares and bad memories keep coming back and it’s hard to shake them off sometimes. I’ll hear an airplane overhead or the sound of a car backfiring and my heart starts pounding and I break out in a sweat.”
“I know what you mean,” Joe mumbled. His growing uneasiness was apparent in the way he jiggled his foot and drummed his fingers on the arms of the chair. I sensed that any moment now, he would spring to his feet and bolt from the hospital. I knew that only his deep gratitude to Jimmy and Frank for saving his life kept him from doing it.
“But I’m learning to push those bad memories away with different pictures,” Frank continued. “It’s like turning to a different page in a photo album. In those pictures I see the people in France and Belgium and the Netherlands streaming out into the streets to greet us. I remember how they cheered and waved and thanked us—old people with white hair and canes, children who’d never lived in a world without war and famine and bloodshed. I remember how the pretty young gals would run up and kiss our cheeks and tuck flowers in our buttonholes and hop on the front of our tanks and trucks. Those are the people we fought to rescue, Jim. We gave them back their freedom. And whenever my mind flashes to the destroyed cities with nothing left but rubble, I remind myself that our families here at home didn’t have to suffer through bombing raids and artillery fire because of what we did. My hometown is intact and the people I love are free—and so are yours—because of our friends who gave everything.”
We were all looking at Jimmy, and I wanted so badly for him to nod his head and agree that Frank was right. But he didn’t. He had stared at Frank while he’d been speaking but his face wore no expression at all. He might have been looking straight through him.
“I’m finishing school on the GI bill and getting married in another month,” Frank continued. “I’d love to have you there, Jim. You and I were together through the good times and through the very worst that the war could throw at us. I thank God that we can all heal now and get on with our lives—”
“Mitch O’Hara can’t.” Jimmy’s voice was barely a whisper, but we all heard him. My heart began to thud as I held my breath.
“No, Mitch O’Hara can’t,” Frank said after a moment. We were all quiet.
Then Chaplain Bill spoke. “All of Mitch’s days were written in God’s book before one of them came to be. You used to tell me that, remember, Jim? And you were right. People die every day in all sorts of ways when it’s their time. But as Frank just reminded us, Mitch’s life and his death meant something. It wasn’t in vain. He helped bring victory and freedom to a warring world.” The chaplain leaned closer to face Jimmy. “And life in this world isn’t all that there is, Jim. Death isn’t the end of Mitch’s story.”
