The Best of Me (26 page)

Amanda and Dawson,

Thank you for coming. And thank you for doing this for me. I didn’t know who else to ask.

I’m not much of a writer, so I guess that the best way to start is to tell you that this is a love story. Mine and Clara’s, I mean, and while I suppose I could bore you with all the details of our courtship or the early years of our marriage, our real story—the part that you’ll want to hear—began in 1942. By then, we’d been married three years, and she’d already had her first miscarriage. I knew how much that hurt her, and I hurt, too, because there was nothing I could do. Hardships drive some people apart. Others, like us, grow even closer.

But I’m drifting. Happens a lot when you get older, by the way. Just wait and see.

It was 1942, like I said, and for our anniversary that year, we went to see
For Me and My Gal,
with Gene Kelly and Judy Garland. It was the first time either of us had ever seen a flicker
show, and we had to drive clear to Raleigh to do it. When it was over, we just sat there in the seats after the lights came up, thinking about it. I doubt you’ve ever seen it, and I won’t trouble you with the details, but it’s about a man who maims himself to avoid going off to the Great War, and then has to woo back the woman he loves, a woman who now believes him to be a coward. By then, I’d received my draft notice from the Army, so there were parts of it that hit home a little bit since I didn’t want to leave my girl to go to war, either, but neither of us wanted to think about that. Instead, we talked about the title song, which had the same name as the flicker show. It was the catchiest, prettiest thing either of us had ever heard. On the drive home, we sang it over and over. And a week after that, I enlisted in the Navy.

It’s kind of strange, since, as I said, I was about to be drafted into the Army, and knowing what I do now, the Army probably would have been a better fit, considering what I do with engines and the fact that I didn’t know how to swim. I might have ended up in the motor pool making sure the trucks and jeeps could roll through Europe. Armies can’t do much if vehicles ain’t running, right? But even though I was nothing but a country boy, I did know that the Army puts you where it wants, not where you want to go, and by then folks knew it was only a matter of time before we hit Europe for good. Ike had just gone into North Africa. They needed infantry, men on the ground, and as excited as I was about the thought of taking on Hitler, the thought of joining the infantry just didn’t sit with me.

At the enlistment office, they had this recruiting poster on the wall. For the Navy. Man the Guns, it said. It showed a shirtless seaman loading a shell, and something about it just spoke to me. I can do that, I thought to myself, so I walked over to the Navy desk, not the Army’s, and signed up right there. When I got home, Clara cried for hours. Then she made me promise to come back to her. And I promised her I would.

I went through basic training and ordinance school. Then, in November 1943, I got posted to the USS
Johnston,
a destroyer out in the Pacific. Don’t ever let anyone tell you that being in the Navy was less dangerous than being in the Army or the marines. Or less terrifying. You’re at the mercy of the ship, not your own wits, because if the ship went down, you died. If you went overboard, you died, because none of the convoys would risk stopping to rescue you. You can’t run, you can’t hide, and the idea that you have no control at all just gets into your head and it sticks there. In my time in the Navy, I was never so scared in my life. Bombs and smoke everywhere, fires on the deck. Meanwhile, the guns are booming and the noise is like nothing you’ve ever heard. Thunder times ten, maybe, but that doesn’t describe it. In the big battles, Japanese Zeros strafed the deck continually, the shots ricocheting all over the place. While this is going on, you’re supposed to keep doing your job, like nothing unusual is happening.

In October 1944, we were cruising near Samar, getting ready to help lead the invasion of the Philippines. We had thirteen ships in our group, which sounds like a lot, but aside from the carrier, it was mainly destroyers and escorts, so we didn’t have much firepower. And then, on the horizon, we saw what seemed like the entire Japanese fleet coming toward us. Four battleships, eight cruisers, eleven destroyers, hell-bent on sending us to the bottom of the sea. I heard later that someone said we were like David against Goliath, except we didn’t even have a slingshot. And that’s about right. Our guns couldn’t even reach them when they opened fire. So what do we do? Knowing we didn’t stand a chance? We engaged. The Battle of Leyte Gulf, they call it now. Went straight for them. We were the first ship to start firing, the first to launch smoke and torpedoes, and we took on both a cruiser and a battleship. Did a lot of damage, too. But because we were out front, we were the first to go dead in the
water. A pair of enemy cruisers closed in and began firing, and then we went down. There were 327 men on board, and 186 men, some of them close friends, died that day. I was one of the 141 that made it out alive.

I’ll bet you’re wondering why I’m telling you this—you’re probably thinking I’m drifting again—so I might as well get to it. On the raft, with this big battle raging all around us, I realized that I wasn’t afraid anymore. All of a sudden, I knew I’d be okay because I knew that Clara and I weren’t done yet, and this feeling of peace just came over me. You can call it shell shock if you want, but I know what I know, and right there, under an exploding sky filled with gun smoke, I remembered our anniversary from a couple of years ago and I started singing “For Me and My Gal,” just like Clara and I did on the car ride home from Raleigh. Just boomed it out at the top of my lungs, like I didn’t have a care in the world, because I knew that somehow Clara could hear me, and she’d understand that there was no reason to worry. I’d made her a promise, you see. And nothing, not even going down in the Pacific, was enough to stop me from keeping it.

Crazy, I know. But like I said, I got rescued. I got reassigned to a crew ship and hauled marines to Iwo Jima the next spring. Next thing I knew, the war was over and I was home. I didn’t talk about the war when I got back. I couldn’t. Not a single word. It was just too painful and Clara understood that, so little by little, we settled back into our lives. In 1955, we started building the cottage here. I did most of the work myself. One afternoon, just after I’d finished up for the day, I walked toward Clara, who was knitting in the shade. And I heard her singing “For Me and My Gal.”

I froze, and the memories of the battle came racing back. I hadn’t thought about that song in years, and I’d never told her what happened on the raft that day. But she must have seen something in my expression because she looked up at me.

“From our anniversary,” she said before going back to her knitting. “I never told you this, but while you were in the Navy, I had a dream one night,” she added. “I was in this field of wildflowers, and even though I couldn’t see you, I could hear you singing this song to me, and when I woke up, I wasn’t afraid anymore. Because up until then, I was always afraid that you weren’t coming back.”

I stood there dumbstruck. “It wasn’t a dream,” I finally said.

She just smiled and I had the sense that she’d been expecting my answer. “I know. Like I said, I heard you.”

After that, the idea that Clara and I had something powerful—spiritual, some might say—between us never left me. So some years later, I decided to start the garden and I brought her up here on our anniversary to show it to her. It wasn’t much back then, nothing like it is now, but she swore it was the most beautiful place in the world. So I tilled more ground and added more seeds the next year, all the while humming our song. I did the same thing every year of our marriage, until she finally passed away. I had her ashes scattered here, in the place she loved.

But I was a broken man after she died. I was angry and boozing and losing myself little by little in the process. I stopped tilling and planting and singing because Clara was gone and I didn’t see the reason to keep it going. I hated the world and I didn’t want to go on. I thought about killing myself more than once, but then Dawson came along. It was good to have him around. Somehow he helped remind me that I still belonged in this world, that my work here wasn’t done. But then he got taken away, too. After that, I came up here and saw the place for the first time in years. It was out of season, but some of the flowers were still blooming, and though I don’t know why, when I sang our song tears came to my eyes. I cried for Dawson, I suppose, but I also cried for me. Mainly, though, I was crying for Clara.

That was when it started. Later that night, when I got home, I saw Clara through the kitchen window. Even though it was
faint, I heard her humming our song. But she was hazy, not really there, and by the time I got inside she was gone. So I went back to the cottage and started to till again. Got things ready, so to speak, and I saw her again, this time on the porch. A few weeks later, after I scattered seeds, she started coming around regularly, maybe once a week, and I was able to get closer to her before she vanished. But then, when the flowers bloomed, I came out here and wandered among the flowers, and by the time I got home I could see and hear her plain as day. Just standing right there on the porch, waiting for me, as if wondering why it took me so long to figure things out. That’s the way it’s been ever since.

She’s part of the flowers, you see? Her ashes helped to make the flowers grow, and the more they grew, the more alive she became. And as long as I kept the flowers going, Clara could find a way to come back to me.

So that’s why you’re here, and that’s why I asked you to do this for me. This is our place, a tiny corner of the world where love can make anything possible. I think that the two of you, more than anyone else, will understand that.

But now it’s time for me to join her. It’s time for us to sing together. It’s my time and I have no regrets. I’m back with Clara again, and that’s the only place I’ve ever wanted to be. Scatter my ashes to the wind and flowers, and don’t cry for me. Instead, I want you to smile for the both of us; smile with joy for me and my gal.

Tuck