NARRATIVE. WHO: Charlie Clarence, family NPCs. WHAT: Vignettes on Veterans Day. Charlie wonders about a few things. WHERE: Personville (City Hall/Fairview) and France (The Ardennes). WHEN: November 11, 1954 and December 1944. STATUS: Complete. WARNINGS: Memories of/references to war, death.
"Thank you for your service."
Today, Charlie tries to avoid places where he'll hear that blessed phrase, but he's never completely successful. Someone always ferrets him out and -- yeah, you guessed it -- thanks him for his service.
He likes to think of himself as someone who was raised right, not by wolves. So, each time, Charlie Clarence summons up that patented nice-boy-from-Fairview smile and forces a ‘thank you’ for their thoughtfulness through his lips before he walks away.
He doesn't mean to be ungrateful. Charlie knows that they mean to be kind. It's just that he didn't serve so that he could be thanked. And, each time someone thanks him for his service, Charlie wonders, do they really understand what they are thanking him for?
One of these days, he thinks, he will either muster enough courage or have little enough temper that he finally asks that question aloud.
Charlie's desk phone rings. Again. When he finally finds the fortitude to pick up that receiver, the operator's identification of the caller has him sitting bolt upright in surprise.
"Chip. Just wanted to call."
"Chet." Charlie pauses. "Something wrong? Isn't it the middle of the school day?"
"Things are a little different when you're the one teaching the class," his little brother tells him, and they both laugh. "I wanted to talk, touch base. I know today isn't a happy occasion for you."
Charlie's mirth dies away. "Is it supposed to be happy? It's a day to -- remember." Why set an entire day aside? Charlie wonders. Do they really think that he needed a reminder? Or did they just need another excuse for a sale between Halloween and Thanksgiving?
The line is silent for a few more moments before Chet fills the void. "Just wanted you to know," his little brother tells him. "We're thinking of you, Louise and I both. We still admire what you did."
"Thanks, Chet." It's all Charlie can say. "Your turn. Tell me all about what you're doing in Urbana these days."
Chet obliges him, and Charlie numbs the discomfort of remembrance with his brother's scientific talk about complex terms he doesn't fully understand, something about airfoil and structural loads and how it could all work together to send a man to the moon some day.
The moon. The future. That's the ticket, Charlie thinks. The future has to be better than the past, at least for today.
His mother informs him that he's coming home for dinner this evening. When you are a bachelor, and you have a decision to make between a can of tomato soup and a homecooked meal, you arrive at the right choice very easily.
Nora Clarence is usually full of news she wants to share, but not tonight. When Charlie breaks the silence, he asks, "Have you ever wondered what things would've been like, if I hadn't joined up right away?"
"You know I wish you hadn't," his mother replies. The woman never pulled a punch. "You wish things had been different?"
"No. Well, maybe." If he had the choice to do it all over again, he would. Not because it was noble, not because it was what everyone else was doing, but because it was intolerable to do nothing, when the distinction between good and evil was so perfectly clear. Still -- "Sometimes I think about the time I would've had, if I'd just waited to be drafted."
"Time for what?" His mother asks.
"For school. For a career." Charlie pauses. "For Dad."
"Don't get maudlin on me, Chip Clarence," his mother says, reaching across the table to grasp Charlie's hand. "He didn't want you to go, either, but he couldn't have been more proud of you."
"I know," Charlie says, "But that's not a substitute for the time I would've had."
"You were spending it in an important way. One way wouldn't have been better than another. And your father was proud of you for the choice you made. Never forget it."
After one more reassuring pat on the hand, his mother rises from the table and scurries into the kitchen to get dessert, leaving Charlie by himself in the dining room with things unsaid, and regrets about things undone.
That night, when Charlie falls asleep, he is in the forest again. In the fog.
The clamminess of his hands is at odds with the frost on the ground, crunching as he puts one booted foot in front of another, mostly blind and half deaf as he tries to make his way through the gloom.
Voices muted by the fog struggle their way to his ears, a muffled chorus of who-goes-theres and I'm-over-heres and state-your-names.
One voice reaches out to him through the fog, demanding that he tell them who won the last World Series. "The Cardinals." There are impostors in the ranks. Only a genuine American would know that kind of information. "The St. Louis Cardinals." Then shots ring out, and Charlie adds his weapon to the barrage, rifle going rat-tat-tat at a shadow in the mist.
When Charlie finds the body, he kneels down to inspect it, but instead of the kid he killed, his brother's eyes stare up at him unseeing from underneath the helmet.
He wakes up with a start. As Charlie waits for his heart to slow down, he wonders if he'll ever be able to get back to sleep tonight.