A Hero's Lament

by Samantha Weiss

July 27th. I won’t forget that day. I couldn’t if I wanted to. Mama held my hand to her

heart and told me she was sorry to leave me alone. She said she had held on for so long, for me, so that I wouldn’t have to face the world without her or my daddy. She made sure that I knew how much daddy loved me. She told me that he died in the war when I was a baby. He went to serve his country, like a good man should. When I was little, my mama made me remind myself of him, so I would always carry him in my heart. I remember how mama described his voice. It was gravely, like he was shuffling rocks around in his mouth when he spoke. I remember the story of how they met. She was a waitress at Marina’s. He was a soldier waiting for a train. I remember the story of the day he left. He kissed us both and promised us that he wouldn’t turn back, because turning around would make leaving even harder. I remember the flag that rested on the gravestone. It was draped over the fireplace for as long as I can remember.

The closest thing I have to my own memory of him is a dusty photo that mama kept on her bedroom mirror with his dog tags. He wasn’t smiling. He wasn’t crying. But he didn’t want to go. He was looking past the camera, not at mama. She was taking the picture. Just into the distance. I took the photo when she died and folded it into a locket with one of her. But how will I remember her? I remember her eyes. They were a brilliant green that glittered when the sun shone. I remember her favorite dress. It looked like someone had painted it with silver. I used to bury my head in the hem if I was scared. I remember the smell of her perfume. It filled the house most days. I remember how she held the picture and his dog tags in her fingers with her rosary every week at church. The same flowers. Mama would appreciate that. I bought her the same flowers she bought for daddy. The same flowers daddy bought for her on their second date. The same flowers he bought for the wedding. The same flowers daddy filled the house with on the day I was born.

I always feel like he is watching me when I am there. I mean, mama always said he is always with us, but when I am at the cemetery, it is stronger. Like he is standing behind me. I can’t feel her here yet. I still hadn’t quite grasped that she was too had left. Questions always swirl in my head when I think about him being there with me. Is he proud of me? Of mama? Does he miss me? What did he look like? What did war look like? When will I see him again? I never did get an answer. Even after all these years of asking them. 22 years of knowing he was never coming back. 22 years of praying he still would. Daddy, just one answer, that’s all I need and all those years of asking won’t be wasted. The breeze keeps rustling between the graves and I can imagine his voice.

Just like mama used to say: it sounded like he was shuffling rocks around in his mouth. I caught myself smiling and began wondering what he was saying. If he were talking to me, what would he be saying? If I were a girl again,

what story would he tell me? ‘“Hi doll baby,”’ that’s what mama said he called me. ‘“I have a story to tell you. Do you want to hear it?”’ Of course daddy. I could feel the little girl who grew up only knowing stories of her father rise up in me. I’ve always wanted to hear you tell me a story, daddy. Like all the other little girls. “Listen closely,” I could hear him say. I could swear it. “Your mom and I fell in love young. I had just turned 19, she was barely 16. She worked at Marina’s. Is it still there?”

I nodded in response; hoping he could see me. I couldn’t find the words to say. I spent every afternoon washing tables there since I was a kid. She worked there until she died. She loved the diner. Maybe because of daddy. But she would never have left, if she could have stayed.

“Good. I was waiting for a train out of town. I was supposed to meet my brother when he got off. Marina’s is right across from the tracks, so I thought I would get a drink while a waited.

It was August 14. It was the middle of the day. I think it was almost 100 degrees. My train was scheduled for high noon. I walked into the diner and to the counter. Without looking up, I ordered a coca-cola. She rung me up and slid the chilled bottle across the counter. I handed her the 50 cents and started to turn around. She smiled at me. ‘Have a great day, sir,’ she told me. And I was hooked. I sat and waited for her shift to end. I missed my train. We sat at the counter for hours and talked until the sun went down. I walked her home and said goodnight on the porch. And you’ll never guess what happened next. Your mother, your timid, quiet mother, wrapped her arms around my neck and kissed me. Not that I am complaining.” I could imagine him chuckling at his own joke. Mama said he did that a lot. “Then I had to find a ride to Anville. By that time, the train has stopped in Anville twice. I wasn’t on either of them. She wrote her phone number on a slip of paper and handed it to me when I left. We talked every day on the phone. She apologized for making me miss my train, but she was worth it. I took the train back to

her town every weekend, And the one weekend that I missed it, I walked. I proposed on her 18 birthday. We married six months later, in her backyard. I bought her favorite flowers. We bought a tiny house on Molly Road. It had two rooms just big enough for beds and a person or two. You were born a year later. We spent every second we had playing with you. Our tiny house was much warmer with you there. “We didn’t fight much. Not until the day I found out I was leaving. Then everything was a battle. We found out shortly after I turned 23. You were nearly a year old. You had just started walking, well, falling rather. You spent more time getting off the floor then actually walking, but that is beside the point. “I’ll never forget the first time she yelled at me. I had gotten my orders. We were supposed to have dinner together at the diner. I was almost three hours late. She sat and waited patiently for me to arrive. She faced the window, so that when I came she would see the truck. I started to walk inside. “I am so sorry. The commander —” ‘“Let’s go home.”’ She said it so calmly that I

could have believed she was just tired. I could have believed that, until I saw the tears. “She didn’t say a word the whole way home. She always thought that fights were only appropriate in the home. Fights are private. For the privacy of a home. I respected that. I took a seat at the kitchen table and waited. “She walked around the table and laid you in my arms. Then she walked away. “‘Did you even think about your doll baby,”’ I could her say as she walked away. “I couldn’t have held you any closer. You started to cry when she left. It was almost like you knew what we were talking about. You could sense her despair. It seemed like you didn’t want me to leave. I like to believe that you didn’t want me to leave. I still hope that you didn’t want me to leave. But you were too small to make a judgment. Believe me, I wanted nothing more than to hold you forever at our kitchen table. To never leave. “I held you for a few minutes before she came back in the room and put a reassuring hand on my shoulder. I wish someone had taken a picture of the three of us at that moment, so you would

never forget how much we loved you.” “‘I know you don’t have a choice.”’ “That was the first and the last time we spoke of it. For the next four weeks, we simply ignored it. When I packed, she left the room. When I left for training, she acted like it was a normal day at work. When you cried, I would get out of bed and hold you close to me. I never dreamed that I wouldn’t get to do that again. “The day I left, she didn’t cry. She held you tight against her chest. She hugged me goodbye and watched me leave. “‘Come home soon,” she told me. It was an order, not a request. “We’ll write to you as often as possible. Make sure you write back. LeAnne needs something of yours to grow up with.” “She stood away from the other wives, whose reddened eyes and dripping makeup looked like something out of a horror movie. They cradled children and hung around their husbands’ necks and cried. They begged them to stay. They made a scene, while she stood stoic and off to the side. Some people would have seen it as cold, but I knew your mother. She was doing all she could to keep herself together.

“‘Formation,”’ one, two, three seconds to get in formation. “‘About face. Turn. March.” “Our commander yelled orders. The wives oowed and awed at the shows of their husbands’ strength. Then he called out his final order. “‘March on.”’ “Who knew words could be so powerful. Tears burst from the women’s eyes again. I turned and tried not to look at you. Then I left. “I turned and marched in the direction of the bus that sat at the end of the road. I promised myself that I wouldn’t turn around. The urge to run to your mother and scoop her up in my arms and hold her forever was too strong. Looking back would be too hard. “Wait, baby doll. Do you want to hear all of this? The whole story?” “Of course.” I can’t believe I just said that out loud.

I bowed my head and kept walking, hoping no one noticed me muttering to a question asked by the wind.

“OK. I’ll keep going then. I promised myself, your mother, you... I promised that I wouldn’t turn around, because if I did, I could never make myself leave. I wanted to see your face just once more, tear-stained or not. I wanted to kiss your mother just once more. But I couldn’t. I would never continue if I stopped. Then you cried. I could hear you, but I still wouldn’t turn around. I could hear your mother calming you, but you just quieted to a whimper. It wasn’t until you called for me that I couldn’t take it.” “‘Dada?” “You could hear from your voice that you didn’t understand. Why aren’t you rocking me, you seemed to ask. Why aren’t you standing here smiling at me? Dada? There was so much love and sorrow wrapped in that tiny word. I know that you can’t remember that moment, but I never missed you more than that moment, when you were only twenty feet away from me, but there was nothing that I could do. The other men had already passed out of view of their wives, but I could still hear you. I turned on my promise and turned around. I stared at your mother, too young to be alone. You, too

small to understand. She turned away from me. If I couldn’t keep my promise, she would keep it for me. Tears burned my eyes, then rolled down my cheeks, but no one would accept a soldier crying, so I did all that I could. I left.” There’s a bench in the cemetery where mama and daddy are buried. Mama has a picture on it right after the funeral. She is rocking me in the picture. No one else is anywhere to be found.

How long did she wait there after the funeral? How many people stopped to console her while she held me and didn’t cry? Did she cry? I could swear before he started talking, he sniffled back tears. Can the dead cry? Can they feel pain too? “With nothing else to do, I walked on,” he caught a breath. “That was the last time I saw your mother and you. I was gone for months after that. A few letters were all that I had to sustain myself. Your mother had even less. “She told me about you growing up, the neighborhood, the family, her job, the war at home, the news she heard, the things that were

rumored. She asked about the war in Germany, the boys, the people, the rumors. But never once did she mention what would happen if I didn’t come home. It wasn’t a possibility. That wasn’t how your mother talked. That wasn’t how she thought. “I read the letters out loud... Most of the time. Some of the boys were too young to have a loving wife and child writing to them. Some had their parents to write, but those letters weren’t like the ones your mother wrote. She acted as if she were telling me the story of you getting bigger, so that when I came home, I could simply jump in. As if there was no time lost. We would just pick up where we left off and forget the war. So many people were trying to. “She always started her letters with ‘we miss you dearly here.’ “I always started mine with ‘dearest darling and baby doll.’ “Each letter reminded me of how long I had been gone and how much older you were getting. Would you recognize me? Would I recognize you? How could we move past me being gone?

“I saved every letter. There were 46. I wrote your mother 46. I sent them back to her in a cigar box when I was told I would be going home. I wanted her to know that her letters had gotten me through the brutality of war. “The final letter was less than a page long.

‘Dearest darling and doll baby, The letters you wrote me sustained me through this whole war. You could never understand how it felt to hold a piece of home in my hands when I was so far from anything that felt like home. I will be home in three weeks. But don’t tell, it is a secret! I can’t wait to be home, so I can truly hold home in my arms. Doll baby, I can’t wait to watch you walking; your mama says you are getting good at it. I can’t wait to hold your hand. You already have my heart. Goodbye, my beautiful girls, until I see you again.

Love you forever and always, John’

I recited the letter in my head. I had read them all so many times as a child. I read them all again after she died. I read what she sent him too. She talked as though nothing was wrong; he talked as though he had the solution to a problem that she ignored. The Army sent the last letter in the cigar box for daddy.

I still don’t know why she kept that damn letter. We didn’t need the regret letter. She yelled at me when I found the cigar box and started reading them as a kid. I ran down the stairs crying, waving that letter back and forth. “‘Mama, why would someone hurt daddy?”’ I just couldn’t understand why it was in the same box as her love letters. She sued to call it Pandora’s box, because it held all of her emotions locked up inside. Her happiness, her joy, her sorrow, all of her emotions. She said the final letter was just as important as all of the others. It summed up their love, that even when he had left them, he would be with them. His dog tags and bronze star would keep us company, until we saw him

again.

I carried that bronze star to school with me, inside my jacker every day. I moved it from coat to coat as I got older. His symbol of extreme valor in combat sat right above my heart from the time I could barely hold it for the weight, and still does. It hangs from my jacket and taps the locket that houses their pictures.

“They sent her a flag to rest on the grave, as a symbol of my service to our family and the country. She said she didn’t want it. She wanted a me, not a symbol of me. The man at the door didn’t know what to say. He handed her the flag and turned away. She bought the same flowers that I bought on our second date. The same flowers that I bought for our wedding. The same flowers that I filled the house with the day that you were born. Then she left. Just like the day that I left you, she promised to never turn around, because she would never be able to leave. She was stronger than me. She never did turn around.

A new voice, a softer one, intruded.

‘“I didn’t turn around because I loved you both too much. John, are you filling our daughter’s head with stories?”

In my mind, I could she him pick her up off the ground and spin her around until he nearly toppled over. Mama said he did that when she said yes.

I miss you both. Why did you both have to leave me,” I asked no one in particular. From my bench that is nestled among a cluster of trees at the cemetery, no one could hear me. No one could really even see me.

I unclasped the chain around my neck and turned it over in my hands. From dog tags to locket to dog tags. The letters were worn down from my fingering them so often as a child. I stuck my open hand inside my jacket and ran it over the bronze star that never left my side.

“We will always be here for you, doll baby. We didn’t get enough time, just the two of us, so we get it now. You will always feel us with you. You never plan to leave. And someday, we will see you again. We will embrace you again. We love you,”’ her voice trailed off.

I found myself reciting the lines that I did as a child. How will I remember him? How will I remember her?

I remember how mama described his voice. It was gravely, like he was shuffling rocks around in his mouth when he spoke, like when the breeze rushed through the cemetery. I remember imagining him telling me the story of how they met. She was a waitress at Marina’s. He was a soldier waiting for a train. I remember the story of the day he left. He kissed us both and promised us that he wouldn’t turn back, because turning around would make leaving even harder. But I cried and he turned around to see us for the last time. I remember the flag that rested on the gravestone.

I remember her eyes. They were a brilliant green that glittered when the sun shone. I remember her favorite dress. It looked like someone had painted it with silver. I used to bury my head in the hem if I was scared. I remember the smell of her perfume. It filled the house most days. I remember how she held the picture and his dog tags in her fingers with her rosary every week at church.

The End