Portrait of Memories

Portrait of Memories
By Jeff Fields McCormack

The stunning reds and golds of the inferno sent shadows fleeing into the far corners of the room, hoping to hide their faces, with the hope of the preservation of their fortress of permanent darkness. The crackling of the fire seemed as if the fire was laughing at the heart throbbing fear that it was putting its opponent, the darkness, in. Each time a log cracked, the inferno laughed even harder at the darkness that had fled to the wee corners where light could not penetrate. Every time a log cracked, the shadows had a cold shiver run up their spine, and they would jump a little further into the sanctuary of darkness.
The glow of the mortar and brick combination presented the outline of a old wooden rocking chair, which sent a screeching sound emanating from it with every methodical rock of it. In that chair sat an elderly man, his back to the fire. His face, from my vantage point, was soft. I could tell this much, even in the dimly lit room from which he and I sat. The tips of his mustache spread slightly apart, for he had a decently thick mustache, which followed itself on down to mere stubble near his chin area. He was usually clean shaven, but he let it grow out on the weekends. Come Monday morning, he would be found in the bathroom with a razor to his face, solemnly removing the subtle reminder of what was once a great beard.
He had a cigar in his mouth, Cuban if I remember correctly. He always used to smoke those. They seemed to be his only break from the world, even if they do a number on his lungs. The sweet smoke from the cigar took its path towards me. I didn’t, and still don’t, smoke, but I never will forget the sweet aroma that always arose from Grandpa’s Cubans.
He was rocking back and forth with his grimy, suit covered conductors uniform still on, although several of the upper buttons had been retired from their position, exposing the hair on his chest. He always had a toothy grin, and could easily make any man smile. He was great like that. Grandpa had a great sense of humor. He loved to tell jokes anytime anyone would spare him the time, which with me, was quite often. I loved to hear all of his old stories about when he was my age, about what he had done as a kid, etc. It was amazing to see how similar we were, even though the technology that had surrounded us was so different.
I sat down with my school books in one hand, the other free. After sitting my books beside me, I look up at Grandpa, expecting him to make another one of his timeless jokes, but he just sat there and stared at me, an inquisitive look cast upon his face.
After a moment, he seemed to wake from his trance like state and began to tell me about something that I had never heard anyone speak of before. While I may have forgotten many of his long ago war tales, or the type of cigar he smoked, this tale he told still rings clear to this day. This is the tale he told me on that cold autumnal day:

“Son, there are many things in this world that we cannot explain. Would you agree to that? Yes, I thought you would. I always loved how you were so open to the possibility of anything Johnny. You remind me of myself as a young lad in many ways, you know?”
Yes, alright, I will get back to the story. I remember when I was walking through the fields back in Vietnam, the bullets whizzing past me in a steady bombardment that threatened to take us all to an early grave. My days in Vietnam were among the worst that I have ever endured. It did teach me one thing though: courage, no matter what the situation.
Many a time, I thought that I would never again see your grandmother. Yet here I am, a good fifty something years later, still alive and well. Haha, those days really made me think about what was possible, and stretch the boundaries of what I believed was impossible.
I remember the day that it all occurred so well… It was a muggy Spring day. The ground was wet with a mixture of the previous night’s rain, and the blood of my brothers in arms. It was hard to keep our footing secured without slipping on the slick grass that was in the fields, but we had to remain deadly silent. We feared that another attack was just over the horizon, and that one false move could ultimately cost us all our lives.

We felt that our every step could very well be our last out on that desolate field. Many Hail Marys could be heard playing their methodical tune off of the grimy lips of my comrades. We had to watch exactly where we stepped, for many a time, I would look up and see a soldier take that final step. There would be a loud ‘boom’, a plume of dust and miscellaneous plants and debris would spin in the air, and once the dust settled, my group was down another soldier. As always when this happened, I ducked out of reflex, shivered, but continued nonetheless. None struck me very hard until it happened to the man that had been at my side for those long, forlorn years.
He had wanted to be a high school science teacher back home in Houston. Yes son, back before the Houston Revolt. This was quite a few years back. I remember the first time that we ever met…
Johnny, or Mr. Jacobs, as his students referred to him, was a grand old boy. He was in my graduating class back then. We’d had each others’ backs since we were kids. Anything from school yard bullies to girls, we were there for each other. The first time I met him, my mom had just passed away and my grandparents moved to Houston when I was in grade school. I was in a real deep depression. I had just lost my mother, and I was forced to leave everything I knew behind to come to Houston, a town that I had never heard of.
I was sitting all alone on one of the swings in the town park, and a really big kid stomped his way over to me. My face was buried in my hands, and I almost wouldn’t have even noticed him if his hateful voice hadn’t emanated from that gaping hole of a mouth he had.

He stomped over, like I said, and said in a gravelly voice, “Hey, punk, what’re you balling about? Miss your mommy? Boo hoo. Poor baby!” He said these words with an accent that made my bad time even worse, making me feel humiliated and childish. He then continued his tirade by giving me a good smack across the face, commenting “that should get your head up” before spitting at my feet, continuing his verbal abuse.
He reared back and gave me another hit, and when this one connected, I saw stars and fell flat on my face. Tears were mixing with the blood running from my mouth and nose, making it nearly impossible to make out any of the moving blobs before me. I dark red haze was cast over my vision. While laying on the ground and viewing the world sideways did not help me distinguish my surroundings, the red haze created by my blood made it unfathomable to understand what was going on. I just lay there, anticipating a loss of consciousness, which, to my luck, never arrived.
I saw a dark black shape move towards my face, almost in slow motion. I realized, only too late, that it was his boot. It connected with my face, and the pain was excruciating. I was dangling on the edge of consciousness. One more swift kick would have surely done me in.
Then, just as I began to let myself fade, to accept my fate, I heard a voice that I later found out belonged to Jim. As it came closer to my position, I could make out a few words: “Hey… stop… you’ll kill him… what’s wrong with you?…” “Gus!… I’ll take you on if you leave him alone… Yeah, you heard right…”


What happened next may have very well saved my life that day. Jim took on the bully (Gus, as I later found out his name was) and made him back off. Jim got in a few good shots, and being smaller and more agile, he was able to dodge the slow, intentional hits from Gus. For every missed hit, I heard Jim strike one back in retaliation. Gus only got one good hit on Jim, and that gave Jim a mean black eye that stayed with him for a long time.
I heard Gus let off a string of words that your ears don’t need to hear me repeat, and Jim smacked him square and fell the mighty Goliath of a boy.
For a terrifying moment, I had feared that Jim had been the one that had fallen, but then I heard a shuffle of quick feet and Jim kneeled beside my battered body. He asked if I was okay, but when all I could do was mumble and spit up blood, he did what I never would have expected. He lifted me onto his shoulders, and carried me the agonizing four mile trek back to his farm.
He rushed in and slammed the screen door, placed me on their sofa, and yelled to his mother. When she inquired what was wrong, obviously scared at his tone, he repeated that she needed to come quickly, and she did, never thinking to question her son further.
When she seemingly flew into the room, (my vision was going from black to red and repeating this cycle, allowing me to see only bits of my surroundings, leaving me to trust my hearing,) she gasped and ran out of the room, returning a moment later with a basketful of towels and a brown glass bottle labeled “HYDROGEN PEROXIDE.”

I was immobile, and they stripped me of my clothing and dressed my wounds with the towels, dabbing the peroxide on where it was necessary to fight the fear of infection. I felt limp, like a large blood soaked paper weight, not being able to move anything, no matter how hard I willed myself to do so.
Once the majority of the bleeding had been constricted with the towels, allowing only a minimal trickle here and there, I was urged to stay very calm and still. I, only being a few years old at the time, feared that I was being prepared for my own funeral. The limpness of my body, mixed with the constant pain that was all throughout my body, seemed to be showing themselves off as evidence of that theory.
I heard his mother, Mrs. Jacobs I later found out, ask in a high pitched, panting voice, “What in the world happened to that poor boy?” In response, Jim looked up at his mother, her once beautiful flowery apron now covered with a sickening mixture of flour and blood, and said, in an even, flat tone, “Gus.”
Mrs. Jacobs eyes widened to the size of saucers at the mention of the school bully’s name. “Gus? Where is he now?” She cast an inquisitive, nervous glance to Jim, who’s expression had changed from one of fear to that of pure hatred. “I left him face down on the ground.” When his mother asked him how badly injured Jim was, he quickly glanced to the other side of the room, hoping that his mother would not see the gash that had carved its mark into his right cheek. He wiped the blood off of his face onto his shirt sleeve. “I’m fine, Mom. Worry about him, not me,” Jim replied, and pointed to me, lying there on the couch, a miserable wreck of a person.

I spent the rest of the day with the Jacobs’, and by the time that I had fully come to, (I must have at some point drifted off on the couch,) my grandfather was standing over me, scrutinizing my wounds. When questioned, my mouth was to swollen to speak, and all I could do was make a painful, pathetic groan in response.
Grandpa thanked the Jacobs’ for their help, and asked if I needed to leave. Mrs. Jacobs’ was a simple, “No. He is staying on that couch until is well enough to move around.” Grandpa said okay to her, and he slept on the floor beside me that night, refusing to leave my side for anything. He wanted me to feel total comfort, regardless of how much I could understand or remember.
The next morning, my jaw was swollen worse that the preceding day, but I was able to speak, though it was quite slurred, as if I had had a few too many to drink. Grandpa was already awake when I came to, and he offered me a cup of hot chocolate, which he helped me hold as I drank it. The warm liquid warmed my insides, and I soon heard Jim trot down from his room above to see how I was doing.
Jim informed me that Gus had been booked into the county jail for assault, and that Constable Gillespie had been here last night to ask a few questions to Jim when Gus had brought up his name. “We didn't want to wake you, so we just told him that when you were well, we would allow him to return, or we would come to him, whichever worked,’’ Jim told me.
Through the swelled jaw, I managed “Brug ‘m er.” Grandpa, understanding what I was attempting to say, interpreted: “He says that he wants you to bring the Constable here. He will talk to him.”
Although Mrs. Jacobs was did not approve of it, the Constable’s car pulled into the drive of the farm about an hour or so later. Jim met him at the door, and brought him around to where I was lying on the couch. Constable Gillespie pulled up an old wooden chair, pulled out a pen and a pad from his pocket, and began to question me on what happened.
I do not remember all of the questions the Constable asked me, but they were the usual ones; “Where were you?, Why did he attack?, Did you provoke the attack?”, the likes. With every question asked, the Constable’s mustache bounced upon his worn face, adding emphasis to the questions that a clean shaven man could never have done.
Then the Constable, thanking us for our time, left in his car. Time seemed to have a mind of its own during the interrogation. I could not honestly tell you, son, how long the Constable was at the Jacobs’ farm that day.
Later that day, I was taken by the Jacobs’ and my Grandpa to the local hospital to be checked out and evaluated. It turned out that my nose had been broken in multiple places, I had a major concussion, and several of my internal organs had been battered.
I spent the next week in the hospital, constantly being fussed over by doctors and nurses at all hours of the day. The whole time that I was in the hospital, Grandpa had refused to leave the room unless he needed to use the restroom. He got all of his meals from the hospital cafeteria, and brought them back up to keep me company while I was there.

Every day after school let out, Jim would come to my room, knock, then enter. He helped keep my mind off of my condition when Grandpa would finally allow himself a little sleep; even though it hardly qualified under the label of a nap. Jim and I would laugh for hours on end, even getting the doctors to snicker on more than one occasion.
When I was finally released, it felt great to get to smell the fresh air, to hear the cry of the birds above me as they made their annual Southern migration, racing against the bitter cold of Jack Frost, which was already beginning to make its mark on the air that seemed to engulf me as I stepped out of the double doors that read “HOSPITAL” in bold red letters. The color so strikingly reminded me of the red that I had been seeing just a few days earlier.
The trial was scheduled for later in the week, and Gus was found guilty of assault and sentenced to several years in the state prison. The thought of that cold courtroom still sends chills running along my spine. That gavel hitting its mark, sentencing my assailant still rings clear to this day. The Jacobs’ and Grandpa both were alongside me, along with the doctor that had tended to me at the hospital, when the guilty verdict was passed. The weight of that decision seemed to have hung in the air for the longest time, before Gus was finally escorted out of the courtroom by two officers, and the court was adjourned, releasing us to go home.
Ever since that day, me and Jim had been really close, sticking together through whatever life threw our way. And trust me when I say that life threw us many a curve ball.

On the day, that I got the letter in the mail stating that I had been drafted, I was nervous, but was ready and willing to serve my country. A teen fresh out of high school, I was barely beginning to comprehend the way the world worked when I was snatched from it and dumped in the Army.
When I boarded the train, steam and black smoke billowing from its chimney, I looked to both sides, casting glances all across the station, but seeing no one that I recognized, I simply boarded with the rest, and rushed down the aisle to find the first seat that was not occupied by two soldiers, eagerly talking about current things such as who was going to win the Super Bowl, what chances the Cardinals had of winning the World Series, and the likes.
As I approached the end of our compartment, I found an empty seat next to a young lad that had seemed to be nearly my age, based upon what I could see. He was staring out of his window, a downcast look situated upon his face. When I asked if the seat was open, he informed me that the seat, “had no other occupant,” and I sank down beside him, ready for the long ride to the base, where we would undergo the transformation from simple man, to a soldier that was prepared to go to war for their country, fearless of whatever risk they may be walking into, solely prepared to give the ultimate sacrifice without so much as batting an eye.
The seat number, which was written in bold letters above my head, read 27A.

When he turned from the window to me, recognition swept across his face, and mine I am sure. It was Jim, the child, (now turned man,) whom I had been buddies with since that fight in elementary. He looked almost the same as he had, just perhaps a little more facial hair around his chin. At this thought, I stroked my own cheeks with one swift movement of my right hand, realizing that in the rush to pack, I had forgotten to shave this morning. Jim saw this, and just laughed.
As we got to talking, we laughed, we cried, and then we laughed some more. We talked about all the grand times we had spent together, as if we hadn’t seen each other in years. I found out that he was finally planning a date for the wedding of he and his high school sweetheart, Ashley Miller. They had finally decided to tie the knot about a week before he had gotten his draft card in the mail. She was heartbroken, as he said, in an accent that was very similar to the Southern drawl I possess, “I have an obligation to Ashley. I promised her I would come home to her when everything was all said and done, and I intend to keep my word.”
At these words, a tear teased the corner of his eye, before finally releasing itself from its emotional holding cell, taking the trek of freedom straight down his cheek. I pulled him nearer me, and allowed him a much needed shoulder to cry on. He allowed himself to sob for only a few moments, before putting his head back up and drying his face with his sleeve. This moment was all I needed, however. In that instant, I realized that we were all in the same situation. We were all on equivalent turf, whether the fact was admitted to or not. We were all seen as equals, son, as brothers; good, hard working men that had been snatched from their families and forced to fight for their country without any time to prepare or plan.
When we finally arrived, he and I had exhausted our vocal cords from all of the talking and joking, mixed like a cocktail with the occasional tear. Time seemed to have had a mind of its own; it seemed merely minutes ago that we had departed from the Houston station, yet now our train was putting on the brakes as it pulled into Grand Central Station in New York City, a truly marvelous sight to behold. The ornately designed landings, and the intricate details paid to the architecture gave us the impression that we had stopped in a palace of some King from a far off land, rather than a train station in the center of New York City.
My platoon was released to have a look around the station. We were informed that we had only two hours before the bus would come to take us to the base, where we would be trained and equipped, before going on to ‘Nam.”
At this, Grandpa stopped his tale and got up from his rocker to pull a picture off of the mantle. It was small, less than six inches square, and black and white. When I inquired as to what it was, he said, “Son, this is Jim.” He pointed one crooked, shaking finger at the man on the left side of the picture frame. The picture showed two soldiers side by side, with large grins upon their faces. It was difficult to tell the men apart, but I recognized Grandpa on the right side of the photograph almost instantly.
Grandpa, after relighting his Cuban, which he had set aside earlier, continued. “This was taken at Grand Central shortly after we arrived there. Jim and I got a tourist with a Polaroid to take two pictures of us, one to send to each of our women back home. Flip it over on the back, and you will see the stamp and this house’s address, addressed to your grandmother. Yeah. Pretty neat, huh? Getting to see what your Grandpa looked like when I wasn’t but a few years older than you are now.”
He chuckled to himself, grinned at me, and took a long drag of his Cuban before returning to his narration. His first few words were outlined in the air by the smoke from the cigar. He always entertained me with the tricks that he could play in the smoke; the rings he created was my personal favorite.
“Son, when those Polaroids developed, which only took a matter of minutes, we took them over to the counter near the front, and asked if we could mail them home before we went off to war. The teller agreed with no hesitation, and when we tried to pay him for the postage, he simply smiled and shook his hand at us, saying that “it was the least I could do for you fine gentlemen.” We told him the addresses to send the photographs to, and to whom to address them, and he dropped them in the box himself, promising that they would arrive within a couple of days at their desired location.
We would have stayed and talked with the man, but we heard a familiar gruff voice, that of our lieutenant, come over the loud speaker and announce that “the platoon from Texas will be boarding the bus to your base soon. Do not miss your ride.” At these words, we thanked the teller, and hurried off to board the bus that would be the beginning of the worst thing we had ever encountered thus far.
The training was basically what we had all expected: a pure sweat fest. Nothing notable occurred during training, but Jim and I bunked together to lean on each other when we needed a soft shoulder. Many a time, we were near our breaking point, but that only brought the two of us that much closer to each other.

We were shipmates when we were finally sent off to defend our country on the front lines of Vietnam. We were on that ship for what seemed the longest of times, for time does seem to have a mind of its own. I remember the cramped quarters, and the nerves that had been running away with us.
The ship finally made landfall, and we were all rushed off of the ship and onto land. Many of the pessimistic soldiers in our group, who had feared that we would be blown out of the water before we even reached ‘Nam, seemed to be glad that there was solid earth beneath their feet.
These emotional pleasantries were short lived, however. As we trekked through the forest, careful of any deadfalls and other traps, such as mines that may have been set for us, machetes in hand, whacking away at vines and limbs that got in our way, realization finally ran its cold course through our veins.
The distant popping of gunfire, mixed with the occasional bomb going off, made us all go white with fear. Our blood seemed to have frozen, draining our faces of whatever color may have remained.
After a few quick minutes, we had made our camp at the outskirts of one of the battlefields, we took turns keeping watch, for night had fallen, allowing us some shut eye for the first time in a long time.
In the early hours of the morning, before the Sun had risen from her sleep, we were shook awake by one of the men watching over us at the time. He claimed to have heard something, and we all stayed alert for the remainder of the day.
At one point, my platoon and I moved across the minefields, which were positioned all throughout the forest. One wrong move, and you never returned the the States.
While navigating the fields as best as we could, we were ambushed from all directions by a large horde of Vietnamese soldiers, outnumbering us nearly ten to one. We fired valiantly, downing the majority of them, while only loosing a few of our own men. I fired the last bullet to fall one of the Vietnamese. When the bullet hit true, the soldier fell flat, never to move again.
We made it through the fields without another ambush, luckily, but several of our men were lost to the mines. I, on many accounts, saw men in all directions of me get blown away in a plume of dirt, never to be seen again.
Jim was walking beside me, as usual, when I was suddenly covered in dirt and shrapnel. Jim had stepped on one of the mines. I cried out, and blindly looked for him through the cloud of dust, but to no avail. I could see nothing in the dust. I felt that I had just lost a brother, and sank to my knees and began to weep, my head buried in my hands, tears flowing freely down the length of my arms. I heard three more mines go off, finishing off the last of my platoon. I was all alone out here, a lone man with a rifle against an unknown amount of enemies, whom could come from any direction without so much as a whisper of a warning.
I saw Jim’s body lying face down in the dirt, his right foot blown clean off. Blood ran from a deep gash in the side of his head, where he had hit it when he fell, as well as from where his foot had once been.
I could not bear to leave him alone like that, vulnerable to whatever attacked him, whatever school yard bullies took advantage of his predicament. Visions of the fight from so many years back echoed through my mind. I knew what had to be done for my friend. I picked his lifeless body up in my arms, and carried him the rest of the way out of the minefields. Blood poured out of him as if someone had turned on a faucet.
Once we were out of the minefields, I laid him down on a rock, hidden from sight, and ripped my shirt off to try to constrain the flow of the blood from his sudden amputation. I then ripped a portion from my shirt to use as a makeshift bandage to wrap around his forehead, secured with a granny knot.
I put him back into my arms, shifted his weight around until he was slung over my shoulder, and made my way to the shore, where I placed him on a rock near the sand.
With his lifeless body resting on the rock, I hurriedly grabbed rocks and clams and spelled out HELP on the sand. I was unable to yell for help, for fear that one of the enemy would hear, and finish us both off, (provided Nature wouldn't beat them to it,) and his radio was not helping, for everyone was dead that his radio could contact. We had no choice but to simply wait it out, hoping that we could survive long enough for someone on our side to find us.
After a few days, it had to have been at least a week, I saw a ship on the horizon. I was leery at first, but when I saw Old Glory waving from the mast, I frantically waved to it, careful to watch my volume.
Several minutes later, the ship docked on the beach, and a number of soldiers raced onto the beach. A man, whom I took to be their Commander, walked over to me and asked me what had happened.
I cast my glance at the emptied clam shells that I had eaten, and that I had fed Jim, still holding onto the hope that he too was not a casualty of war, and decided to tell the Commander everything.
He listened intently, allowing me to finish before commenting. When he did, his deep, commanding voice simply said, “Son, thank you for what you have done. You may very well have saved Private Jacobs’ life.” A toothy grin splashed across his face, before turning his back to check on his men, whom were now loading Jim onto their ship. I was beckoned to, and followed the Commander onto the ship.
Jim was lain on a table inside the ship, and many doctors were fussing over him, and judging by their voices, they were not to optimistic on Jim’s chances of survival.
Before I could question anything, the Commander walked me to the living quarters of the sip, pointing to an empty bed, and asking me to get some sleep, and that he would, “take care of your friend Jim.” With those easing words of reassurance, I slipped off into the first good sleep I had had in months.
I was awoken three or four hours later by one of the doctors, who had a sullen expression on his face. Fearing the worst had happened to Jim while I had slept, I shot out of bed, running to check on him. The doctor watched me run out of the door of the quarters, and took off one of his gloves to wipe a tear from his eye.
When I made it to where Jim had been laid yesterday, I saw only a blank table with blood stains on it, which one of the doctors was trying to scrub off. I asked where Jim was to the doctor that was cleaning the blood, and he just told me to “ask the Commander,” before returning to his work.
I sprinted into the Commander’s chamber and demanded to know where Jim was. I think that I knew what had happened, and just, at that time, my mind was not willing to admit that as the answer. The Commander looked up from some paperwork he was filling out, a sad expression on his face. He stood up, strolled over to me very slowly, placed a hand on my shoulder, and asked me to follow him.
We went out of his door, and he led me down the hall to a room with a simple sign on the door that read MORTUARY. I tried desperately to ignore the sign, but realization had already began to gnaw at my conscious.
He walked me over to one of the cold, silver tables with a white sheet over it, which was concealing something. “Here,” the Commander said. “We did everything we could, but your friend didn’t make it. Son,” he said, and wrapped his arm around me, “I’m proud of you for what you did. You truly are a hero, kid.” I allowed a single tear to run down the length of my cheek, then wiped it away before the Commander saw it.
“There is nothing wrong with crying,” he told me.” Everyone does it. It just proves that you and I are human, and have feelings.” I knew in my mind that that was true, and allowed myself to cry into his shoulder.
I walked over to the body of Jim, concealed under the sheet, and the Commander nodded, and said, “Go on, son. You deserve to have a look for yourself if you want.” I folded back the sheet, exposing Jim’s face and neck. The color was completely drained from his face.

When I saw him like this, it drove the stake of knowledge home. I sank to my knees and wept, throwing all regards to my surroundings away. I had just lost my child hood friend, the only true friend I had gained in school. He lay not five feet from me, the life taken from him.
I stayed like this for several minutes, weeping. The Commander knelt beside me, laying a gentle hand on my back, speaking to me in a calming, reassuring way. I eventually got up, and we walked out, returning to the quarters, where I stayed for the remainder of the voyage. One of the doctors tried to talk to me as I and the Commander sulked down the hallway to the quarters, but a furtive glance from the Commander quickly silenced any comment he had considered making.
I refused to eat anything the remained of the time, my depression taking over me. When we arrived back in the States, a journey of a good week by ship, I was sickly and tired. I boarded the same train, and sat in seat 27A, only now there was no one looking out the window to sit next to. I was alone on that long train ride, which seemed to last an eternity, rather than just a few minutes.
My girlfriend at the time, your grandmother, met me at the station at Houston, and jumped into my arms. I hugged her, glad to still have someone in my life. Jim’s fiance was standing near us, and I had to tell her the news. I sulked over to her, the same downcast look on my face that had been plastered there for the past week, and told her everything that had occurred. She broke down and began to cry there at the station, trying to muffle her sobs at first with her hand, before letting them, and the tears, run freely.
I also explained what happened when we got in the car to your grandmother. She seemed very upset, and expressed how “glad that I had come back,” she was. A tear or two ran down her cheeks too.
When we got home, she cooked a nice chicken supper for me, which I thanked her for, and I ate the first real meal I had eaten in several months that night.I talked all through dinner about what it was like in ‘Nam, and she intently listened, fascinated by my stories, all of which were true.
And now son,” Grandpa said to me, taking one last drag out of his Cuban before extinguishing it, “I want you to take a look at this picture and think about what life was like at that time. This is a part of your history as much as mine, son.”
I held the Polaroid photograph gingerly, afraid to mess it up. The two men in the picture seemed so happy together, yet they were extremely saddened when broken apart.