Volt: Stories (18 page)

The letter was in Wesley’s neat slanting print. Vernon cleared his throat. “‘Dear Mom and Pop,’” he read. “‘How’s everything on the green side of the world? Everything is great here aside from the war,’” Vernon read, without expression. There was a picture of a smiley face, and Vernon showed Martha. “‘And the sand is killing me. Sand and more sand. I’ll never go to the beach again. When I get home—’” Vernon’s throat caught on the line, and he tried again. “‘When I get home, I’m taking my rifle to Ed Munsen’s woods and sitting in a deer stand for a month. Man I miss the woods. I’ll even take the snow. It’s cold here, but no snow. There was a sandstorm last week that took the paint off the trucks. No kidding. I keep fixing the same trucks. Just cleaning out sand from every tube and casing. It’s been long days lately.’” Vernon held up the letter and showed Martha where Wesley had drawn a cross-eyed face with a wriggly mouth. She said nothing, turned back to the window.

“‘I’d go crazy without the kids,’” Vernon read on. “‘Whenever I get a break from the shop I head over to help. Me and Sergio helped paint the school last week. Kids just follow me around—got my own platoon.’” Another smiley face drawn beside this. “‘I asked my sergeant if I could take off my flak jacket and helmet because I want the kids to know I trust them. But sarge said to be a good soldier and—’” Vernon had to stop. He set the letter on the table. It was what he’d feared. He pinched the bridge of his nose.

Without a word, Martha plucked the letter from the table. Her lips moved as she found her way down the page. “‘But sarge said to be a good soldier and keep my brains in my head where they belong,’” she read. “‘The kids call me Rocket because I raced a few and dusted them. Still got my track legs. It’s a mess over here. There’s more talk of us moving to BSA. Keep your fingers crossed. I miss short pants. I’ll wear shorts all winter when I get home. I’ll go shirtless for a year. I’ll sit naked in Ed Munsen’s woods. Sometimes writing these feels like I’m just writing to myself. Got the care package. Tell Ms. Peerman’s class thanks for the batteries.’” Martha’s voice took on a weariness. “‘Tell Muggie and Sam hey—’” Martha glanced up at Vernon. Her eyes scanned the page, her lips stiff.

“What’s it say?” Vernon asked.

Martha stared a moment into Vernon’s eyes, then turned back to the page. She was crying now, and wiped her cheeks with a tissue. “‘Send me some underwear, Ma,’” she sniffed. “‘Nothing fancy. Boxers. Anything that won’t hold sand.’”

Martha laid down the letter. Vernon took it up from the table, stared at the handwriting until it blurred. He grabbed the next envelope and sliced it open.

Inside was a flattened cardboard box, the packaging for a beef stew dinner—on one side a picture of a steaming bowl of stew, and on the back a short message in red marker.
Here’s all I eat!!!
In large script across the bottom,
MY LEFT NUT FOR A PEACH COBBLER!
along with a doodle of a smiley face with devil horns.

“Let’s hear it,” Martha said.

Vernon handed it to her. He watched her turn it in her hands, watched her wet cheekbones rise. “Never serious,” she said, almost proudly.

“Bet he was hoping we’d put it up on the bulletin board.”

Martha grinned, dabbed at her eyes.

Vernon grabbed up the last letter. Thick, dog-eared, it sat weighty in his palm. He stared at his own name on the outside of the envelope, his address. Had the words Hamby, or Krafton, ever been written from so far away?

“Go ahead, Vernon,” Martha urged.

Vernon pried up the edge with his thumbnail. He slid in a finger and tore the top. He unfolded several sheets of cream-colored construction paper. They were crayon drawings. A brown rectangular house and stick people playing soccer. A lion on its hind legs, standing atop a rock, its mouth wide and full of jagged teeth. A hooded man raising a sword beneath a huge rainbow. An egg-shaped soldier, an egg in combat fatigues, madly flapping his arms, either to fly out of, or keep from falling into, a giant smoking skillet.

Vernon held the egg-soldier picture up to Martha. She squinted, nodded. Vernon set the page on the table between them. Written on a diagonal in the corner of a page, it said:
Meet G.I. Humpty! The others are by my kids. Hard to make them smile. Pray for us!

Then there were no more words, and the anchor whose ship was battered by a yearlong storm broke free from the reef of Vernon’s heart. He felt as if he were seeping heat, as if his chest had cracked wide, then the tiles rose up and he found himself on the floor, Martha over him, pleading,
“Oh, get up, hon. Get up—”

Her hands beneath his arms, Martha helped him stand. His legs felt numb. He couldn’t see through his tears. He staggered, Martha a crutch beneath him. Then they were in a dark room and he plopped down upon a bed. She untied his shoes and took them off. His tie came loose from his neck, and Vernon lay back on the bed, rain splashing against the window and light from outside glittering across the ceiling.

Then Martha was beside him, the length of her body warm against his. She whispered into his ear for him to settle down, and he lay his cheek against hers and closed his eyes to the rain-bleary darkness.

Wind gusts rattled the windows. Vernon blinked, light from the courtyard swaying on the ceiling. He wasn’t sure how long he’d slept. Martha lay in his arms, her face against his chest. Vernon carefully slid his arm from beneath her, rolled out of bed. The bed stand clock read 4:46. Every lost and wounded part of Vernon wanted to crawl back in beside Martha. Instead, he found his shoes by the door, his tie draped over a chair, and carried it all out into the hall.

The lights in the main room were still on, Wesley’s letters strewn across the kitchen table. Vernon picked one of the children’s drawings off the floor, the hooded swordsman beneath the rainbow. He ran his fingers along the arc of the rainbow, then set the drawing on the table and crossed to the cupboards.

He filled a glass with water. The kitchen window looked out over the lot behind the complex, an auto yard bathed in a greenish light. The wind bowed the power wires. Light posts rocked. Vernon dug aspirin from his pocket, swallowed them with the water. He retrieved his suit jacket from the front door, rolled up his tie, and stuck it in his pocket. He switched off the lights as he walked back down the hall to lean in the bedroom door.

Vernon had come here to open Wesley’s letters, hoping Martha would forgive him and come back home and be his wife again. But she’d been right: even opening the letters had not been for her. Watching Martha sleep, her lips parted as if singing, and still in her clothes, in her nest of covers, Vernon felt more love for her than he’d ever felt for anything. So much of a life they’d shared, so many laughs, so many touches. But there were things people should never share, and he and Martha had those things between them, too.

He slunk back into the kitchen, studied the letters on the table. He thought of leaving Martha a note. But even if not spoken, everything had finally been said. He folded up Wesley’s drawing of the egg-soldier flailing above the skillet, tucked it into his pocket.

The little fountain gurgled by the picture window. Outside, the sycamore limbs tossed and whirled. Vernon crossed the dark room, put on his hat and overcoat. When he opened the door, light slashed in from the hall, and he quickly stepped out to shut the door behind him.

The roads were slick and the one-hour drive from the city took two. At the Krafton exit, daylight flashed off the corrugated walls of the old McCallister mill. Vernon surveyed the sparkling land, playing in his mind the knobs beyond the mill, naming who lived on what road, knowing them by their fields, by their barns and kitchens and drawing rooms, knowing kids from parents, aunts from cousins, naming them each by their pains and praises. There wasn’t a shadow in this town over which, at some point, he hadn’t prayed.

Cattle huddled steaming by Trace Mattison’s fence. Fields of winter wheat flanked the road, humped white land receding into a spread of homes, the Ollies and Nordquists, the Klangmans and two families of Borgs, smoke from their chimneys staining the blue.

Vernon slowed as he drove the long hill down into the strip of brownstones, cars parked in the ice-tracked shade between Freely’s Diner and Freely’s General. John Erickson’s rusted Bronco. Gage Trudeau’s pickup with the jib crane in the bed. Stu Bacon’s old Charger with the dent in the door.

He trolled by the SuperAmerica, a plow filling at the pumps, Mavis Strandhort in his orange cap, a cigarette in the gap of his beard, raising a hand to him. Vernon waved back. On the right, he passed the Old Fox Tavern, its lot empty but for a black Ford up on a jack and missing a tire. Then Vernon clipped over the freight tracks, the road ahead clear and straight.

He sped faster, the power wires blurring against the peerless sky. Soon came the crooked elm alone on the ridge, then the windbreak of pine, the headstones glistening in the graveyard.

Someone had plowed the drive. Vernon eased down to park at the parsonage. He stared at the big house, a light left on in the kitchen, thought of his bed inside. But the day was bright and he regarded the sunlight on the sanctuary’s stained glass. He trudged across the yard to the chapel, unlocked the door, clomped up the stairs.

He loved the smell of this place, the scent of pine cleaner and old books. So much he’d miss. In the foyer hung a bulletin board covered in paper snowflakes, notices of choir programs, folks selling tack and cordwood and bluetick pups. Vernon took Wesley’s drawing from his pocket, cleared a place center-square of the board, and pinned it up. Then he removed his wet shoes and pushed through the heavy doors and into the sanctuary.

Sunlight blazed through the stained glass, a mottle of colors cast over the pews. Shards of blues and purples. A glowing white dove carrying an olive branch. Greens and reds of Eden, the trees and fruit bright as jewels. A white lamb in a dark field, shepherds peering up at angels in bands of gold.

To the right were stairs. In socked feet, Vernon climbed into the balcony, a sloping box of four pews. He sat at the top and gazed out over the room. Next Saturday night all of these pews would be packed and they’d speak of him as if he were already gone and then there’d be a vote though none was needed.

Vernon suddenly felt buoyant, filled with the air of relief, the peace one feels when after much struggle and deliberation a course has, at long last, been set. The room was warm. Vernon slid gingerly down to lie in the pew, snugged his coat to his chin, and turned his hat over his eyes.

Vernon was awakened by the organ. He sat up, squinting, waiting for his eyes to take focus. Down beside the dais, Dillard Hurstenberg sat at the organ in the same green jacket, same skinny tie he wore at yesterday’s service. Beneath the bass pedal’s hum flourished a series of trilling notes. The music crackled, blossoming in gentle bursts. An eruption of song, whole chords rising octaves, higher, louder, Dillard’s body hunched but his arms alive.

Vernon had never heard this song. The music brimmed inside him. He found himself standing. He took the balcony stairs down into the main room. The music swelled, the sound vibrating through the floor. Vernon walked the side aisle, Dillard too possessed by his playing to notice.

Vernon stood behind the boy. His mother had died a year ago. An overdose. Then, one morning, Dillard was there in the pews, staring up at the cross hung above the choir loft. Others didn’t care for him, said they didn’t like his playing. Vernon allowed they could argue he was wild, say he’d dropped out of school, already been twice in prison, still drank and partied and chased after girls. But no honest man could argue the boy couldn’t play; Lord, he made that organ wail, his eyes shut, fingers clawing over the keys.

All at once the bombast broke to silence, a complete and breathless hush. Dillard’s hands dropped into his lap. His head swung low, his back shuddering. Vernon realized he was crying. He stepped forward and set a hand upon Dillard’s shoulder.

The boy flinched, startled, whirled about on the bench. “Pastor,” he huffed, and his shoulders fell slack. Dillard wiped his cheeks. “Thought I was alone.”

“No,” Vernon said.

His red eyes batted like those of a man slapped awake. “It’s all right. I mean, I’m all right.”

“You sure?”

Dillard sniffled, shrugged.

Vernon sat on the organ bench beside him, could feel the boy’s shoulder against his own.

“Pastor?” Dillard said.

“Yeah?”

Dillard glanced back over his shoulder, across the sanctuary, out over all of the empty pews. He hadn’t shaved and a bruise on his cheek showed through his whiskers. “I just feel so bad everywhere else,” he said. “But here I’m good. Here I’m all right.”

Vernon slid his arm around Dillard’s shoulders. He gave the boy’s shoulder a squeeze, leaned into him. “What was that you were playing just now?”

“That?” Dillard said. “Oh, just letting off some steam.”

“You wrote it?”

“Wrote?” he said. “Just played it, you know.”

“It was beautiful,” Vernon said. “It was about the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard.”

Dillard smirked. “You’re crazy.”

“Can you play it again?”

“You want to hear it again?”

“I want you to play it for everyone next Sunday. We’ll have a crowd for it. I promise it’ll be a crowd out the door.”

“You
are
crazy.”

Vernon nodded. “Maybe.”

The daylight was warm on his back, and Vernon didn’t want to let loose of the boy’s shoulders, and Dillard didn’t move.

“Pastor?”

“Yeah?”

Dillard’s head was bowed, his face twisted in thought. For a time the boy was silent, and then he began to cry again. “It’s ’cause of me, ain’t it?” he muttered.

Vernon knew what he meant. “No.”

“You leaving, though, ain’t you?”

Vernon stared up at a window lit in amber, Jesus serving the fish and loaves on a Galilean hillside. “Every day’s a new batch of crosses,” he finally said. “All of us taking our turn.” Vernon watched Dillard until the boy gave him his eyes. “Christ didn’t just die for our sins, son,” Vernon said. “Christ taught us how to be crucified. How to go off into the tomb. But then, after a while, that rock rolls away and the sun shines in and you get to go live some more.”