Author’s Note
Of the fifty-odd short stories I’ve written since retiring in 2011, Survivor strikes closest to home. An incident related to me by my daughter Alex, an Army veteran who served as an MP in Afghanistan, supplied the original idea. As often happens, the story developed in unexpected ways but for me it remains full of real-life echoes, some distant, others close at hand. Like me, Steven Davis is a polio survivor, a Vietnam veteran, and a long-serving member of the Army Reserve—though I was never a first sergeant, nor did I serve in Iraq. The story is a homage to the veterans of my daughter’s generation, many of whom I’ve had the pleasure of meeting, and to them I dedicate it. As for its theme, a good friend who read “Survivor” in draft cited trust and PTSD—as usual from that source, a perceptive evaluation.
“Survivor” is included in my second short story collection, The Double: Twelve Stories and a Poem, which is available on Amazon as a Kindle edition and a paperback edition. If you read and enjoy this story, I hope you’ll share it with family and friends, and perhaps even go on to read the other tales that comprise The Double.
Survivor
A Short Story by Thomas Gregg
“These days you’re not a victim or a patient.” said Jerry Wilson. “You’re a survivor. Ever notice that? Breast cancer survivor, heart attack survivor, you name it.”
“Victim, patient, survivor, whatever,” someone said. “It comes down to the same thing, right?”
“Yeah, sure.” Wilson laughed. “Like cancer. You survive it until it kills you.”
“Or marriage,” said Wilson’s wife, rolling her eyes.
It was a glorious end-of-summer afternoon. Most of the people who lived on Crescent Street were congregated on the patio overlooking the Wilsons’ spacious, well-kept back yard: chatting in small groups, sipping drinks, grazing on the array of appetizers that Rita had set out. Later Wilson would toss steaks — marinated top sirloin — onto his elephantine gas grill. These would be accompanied by sautéed mushrooms, Caesar salad, French bread, and good red wine. The Wilsons’ annual Labor Day party was a neighborhood tradition, of which there were many. Every Halloween, Jenny and Eric McDonald would transform their Cape Cod into a spooky haunted house. After a winter storm, Bob Shea would clear the snow off people’s driveways with his plow-equipped pickup. Diane Pirelli, who was a widow and lived alone, provided free after-school care for the children of several working couples. Crescent Street was that kind of neighborhood.
“Yeah, but survivor — you call yourself that and ba-da-bing! You’re a hero instead of a victim or a patient or collateral damage,” Wilson went on. “Hey, Steve, you’re a survivor, right? A survivor of Vietnam.”
“I was a supply clerk,” Davis replied. “Not the most dangerous job in the Army.”
“What are you drinking?” Wilson asked, noticing that Davis's glass was empty.
“Brandy and ginger ale.”
“Another Horse’s Neck for our hometown hero,” said Wilson to his wife. Rita grimaced as she pivoted on her heel.
“So you didn’t get shot at?”
Davis didn’t answer right away. He’d served in a supply and transportation battalion, and as a matter of fact they were shot at fairly often while conducting convoy operations. No one in Davis's company got killed during his year in country but several men had been wounded and one guy lost a foot to a booby trap.
“Once or twice,” Davis said.
“That must have been exciting,” someone behind him said. Davis turned. It was Tim Larson, who with his wife Jill had just moved to the neighborhood. They were some years younger than most of the couples who lived on Crescent Street. He was a second-year associate in the city’s largest law firm; she taught sixth grade at a Catholic high school. Tim was blonde, tall, blocky, with an off-kilter nose he’d acquired in the boxing ring during college. Jill was an exceptionally beautiful redhead. No doubt she’d pass on Wilson’s top sirloin. Davis's wife had told him that Jill was a fitness fanatic whose diet excluded red meat, processed food, white bread, salt, and sugar in favor of fish, free-range chicken, whole grains and organic produce.
“Exciting? Well, I suppose so,” Davis said. “Anyway it was a long time ago.”
“But you must think about it,” said Jill. She hesitated, a bit embarrassed, perhaps, for prying. “I mean…”
“Now and then I do,” said Davis, smiling to put her at ease. “Mostly on drill weekends when I pull the war suit out of the closet.”
“Oh, right,” said Tim. “You’re in the National Guard.”
“Army Reserve. Although next weekend’s my last hurrah.”
“Here’s your drink, Steve.” It was Rita. “How are you to settling in?” she asked Jill.
“Very well, thank you.”
“Your last hurrah?” said Tim.
“I’m retiring,” Davis replied.
“Hey, congratulations! How many years have you put in?”
“Thirty-two,” said Davis, sampling his drink.
“Wow.”
“There you are.” Davis's wife Kate stepped to his side, raising an eyebrow at the glass in his hand. “And how many of those have you had, darling?” she inquired.
“Just starting on my second one.” Davis smiled. “Darling.”
“Steve was telling us that he’s retiring from the Army Reserve,” said Tim.
“That’s right,” Kate replied. “After next weekend he’s all mine. No more shall I be compelled to share him with the big mean green machine.”
“Kate’s been very understanding over the years,” Davis added. “A model Army Reserve wife.”
“Mostly I’m interested in his military pension,” she said.
“Even though I can’t start collecting it until I turn sixty.”
“Will you miss the Army?” Jill asked.
“You can’t bullshit me, First Sergeant, you’re going to miss it.” Paul Sowinski, the company commander, leaned back in a creaking office chair. “The fun, the travel, the adventure. I mean come on. What the hell are you going to do with all that free time?”
“Catch up on my reading, sir,” Davis replied. “Bang my wife.” They were sitting in the orderly room, drinking coffee. “And while I may miss the people — some of them, anyway — I definitely won’t miss the bullshit.”
Captain Sowinski laughed easily. They were old friends, having served together in the 299th Quartermaster Company for more than twelve years,
“I hear that, Top.” Sowinski said. “Christ, as of November I’ll have twenty-four good years. The pension’s locked in. Should I stick around long enough to make major or just say fuck it and quit?”
“You know you love it.” Davis said. “You’ve found a home in the USAR…”
Sowinski snorted.
Davis's final weekend passed as home station drill weekends usually did. He spent most of it in his office, tidying things up for the benefit of his yet-to-be-named successor. By mid-afternoon on Sunday his desk was clear. With nothing more to do before final formation he wandered around the reserve center, shaking hands, saying his goodbyes, taking things in for the last time. Eventually he found himself out in the motor pool, alone among the ranks of parked vehicles and trailers. Davis put his hand on the hood of a Hummer and stood there for a while, thinking back.
Thirty-two years. Davis smiled. When he was nineteen, face to face with the draft, his mother had prayed— actually prayed in church to the Virgin Mary — for a deferment.
But Steven, you had the polio when you were a little boy. The Army would never take you.
Mom, there’s nothing wrong with my legs.
Well, darling, I’m praying for you. After the polio you shouldn’t have to go off to fight in this awful war of theirs.
The polio. One night in August 1956 young Steven Davis had gone to bed with a fever, and he woke up the next morning with paralyzed legs. He’d only been six at the time but Davis remembered it all: the ambulance ride to the hospital, his parents’ faces— Mom’s frightened, Dad’s stoic — the polio ward with every bed occupied, the months of crude physical therapy, mostly administered by his father on the kitchen table. In some ways he remembered the polio more vividly than Vietnam.
Davis especially remembered the boy in the bed next to him, who used to cry in the night because he’d never climb another tree or chase another ball or take another bike ride. He was a boy of about Davis's age — six or seven— who shouldn’t have understood what had happened to him. But he did understand, perhaps having seen the truth in his mother’s eyes, perhaps having detected it in the tone of his father’s voice. He knew what he’d become: a little boy who would not walk again, and that’s what he repeated to himself in a choked whisper through the dark hours of the night: I won’t, I won’t, I won’t ever walk again… Davis would cover his ears then, and shut his eyes tightly, and promise himself that he would walk again. And he did — becoming, as Jerry Wilson might put it, a survivor.
Afternoon sun slanted across the motor pool, warming the back of his neck. Davis made a fist, rapped the hood of the Hummer once, and headed back to the drill hall for final formation.
On the following Tuesday morning, he was behind his desk at the fulfillment center he managed, armpit-deep in a statistical analysis of warehouse operations, when the phone rang. It was Gwen, his administrative assistant.
“Steve,” she said in a voice that quavered. “Steve. Have you heard? Have you seen?”
“Gwen, what’s wrong? Has there been an accident down on the floor — ?”
“People are going to the conference room,” Gwen said, cutting him off abruptly. “There’s the big TV in there. Please come.”
Davis put down the phone and gave the mouse a jog to kill his computer’s screen saver. He clicked on the news site shortcut, read the AP bulletin. Then he picked up the phone again and called his wife. Kate answered on the first ring.
“My God, Steven, have you seen what’s going on in New York?” Her voice trembled. “At first they were calling it an accident but…”
“I just heard,” Davis said. “Listen, I’ll come home.”
“No, don’t do that. I’m fine.” Kate sighed. “You’re the boss over there, Steven. You might need to make decisions about closing down or staying open or what the hell. Come home when you can. I’ll be fine. It’s just…”
“Anna,” Davis said. Kate’s sister lived in New York. “Have you spoken to her?”
“Yes. She’s all right, thank God. Her office is nowhere near the Trade Center.”
“I’ll be home as soon as I can.”
Davis then called his district manager, who authorized him to suspend operations for the rest of the day. The man’s voice shook as he spoke of the things he was seeing on the TV in his office.
The conference room was a large space with high windows giving a panoramic view of the wooded hills to the west of the city. People sat around the big table, mute with shock and fright, watching the catastrophe unfold in New York City. Davis arrived just in time to witness the collapse of the South Tower. “Jesus Christ!” someone cried. “What the fuck?!”
He found himself standing next to Gwen, who was sitting at the end of the conference table with tears streaming down her face. He put a hand on the young woman’s shoulder.
“Oh, Steve,” she whispered, looking up at him. “What is this? What’s going to happen to us?”
“I don’t know,” Davis replied, choosing candor over false comfort — though he was pretty sure he knew what was going to happen to him.
“Stop loss,” the unit administrator said.
“So nobody gets discharged, nobody retires.”
“That’s the word, Top, and since your actual retirement date is 26 September…”
“Okay,” said Davis. “Sure. Lucky me. Any word on activation, Leo?”
“Nothing official yet. I’ve got a feeling, though.”
“Don’t we all?”
The 299th was placed on alert in April of 2002 and was ordered to active duty three months later.
“It’s really not fair,” Kate said. “Steven, you’ve done your part. Vietnam. And thirty-two years.”
“Hey, I managed to miss Desert Storm,” he pointed out. They were having dinner in Kate’s favorite downtown bistro, but she was just pushing the food around on her plate. “Besides, we’re not airborne Rangers, just a bunch of rear-echelon clerks and jerks. My biggest worry will be paper cuts. Look on the bright side, it’ll count as another good year toward retirement. More dollars in that monthly pension check.”
“I don’t want you to go,” she said quietly.
“And I don’t want to go,” he replied, taking her hand. “But those are the orders.”
Since 9/11 Kate’s face had acquired signs of stress and worry, but that night she reminded Davis of the pretty young woman he’d met in college after Vietnam and persuaded to marry him. And things had worked out pretty well, despite the difference in their ages and backgrounds. Davis had seven years on her and whereas Kate had grown up amid the comforts of upper middle-class Long Island, Davis's parents were plain Midwest working people. There had never been children but maybe there’d been no need of them; he and Kate together seemed to constitute a unit, whole and complete. She’d worked for a big credit union before striking out on her own several years before, doing contract audit work for financial institutions, and he was proud of her success.
“Just please take care of yourself,” Kate said, looking into his eyes. “Please be safe, Steven.”
“Look, we’re just going down to Atterbury for training,” he said, “and we’ll probably never leave the States.”
It was an hour to dawn when Davis emerged yawning from the tent he shared with 299th’s three other senior NCOs.
“All set, Top,” PFC Harding said.
Davis didn’t ask if she’d performed PMCS on the Hummer. Harding was a good soldier: bright, contentious, squared away. But he checked the Hummer’s logbook anyway. Then he inspected Harding to make sure that she was properly geared up: helmet, flak jacket, protective mask, LBE.
“Weapon?”
“Full mag, no round chambered.” Davis nodded. He’d already checked his own weapon, a 9mm pistol, which he was carrying with a round chambered in violation of the company’s standard operating procedures. But nobody checked on the First Sergeant.
“We on the net yet?” he asked her.
“Doing that right now, Top.”
Captain Sowinski ambled up. “Ready to move, First Sergeant?”
“Affirmative, sir” Davis sketched a salute.
“Let’s make sure we don’t bitch this up, Top.” The Captain grimaced. “Our gallant battalion commander, that ring-knocking West Point fuck, isn’t too keen on the Army Reserve.”
“Didn’t Donald Rumsfeld explain to the colonel that he has to go to war with the Army that shows up?”
“Har-de-har.”
Captain Sowinski lit a cigarette. He’d quit smoking years before but here in Kuwait he’d taken up the habit again.
“Word from the MPs is, the route’s secure,” he said. “So you shouldn’t have a problem. The main body will be released as soon as you notify the battalion TOC that the advance party’s on the position. Be ready to spot the vehicles when we arrive.”
“No sweat sir,” Davis said. The 299th was a quartermaster repair-parts company. Once in place it would start processing requisitions from the main support battalion of the 3rd Infantry Division. The advance party’s job was to secure the position and guide the rest of the company in. For that purpose Davis had thirteen soldiers in four Hummers and one deuce-and-a-half.
“Okay, Top.” The company commander studied his wristwatch. “Thirty minutes to oh-seven hundred. Good luck.”
“Victor two bravo three-seven, this is victor two bravo five-niner,” chanted Harding in the patois of the RTO. “Request permission to enter the net, over.”
“Bravo five-niner, this is bravo three-seven,” the Hummer’s radio blared. “Roger out.”
“You up for this, PFC?” Davis asked his driver as she replaced the mic and adjusted the radio’s volume.
“I guess I’m a little nervous, Top,” she said, running a hand over her face. PFC Harding was black, twenty-three: a slight, lithe girl who looked younger than her years. She’d joined the USAR to help pay for school and was now a semester away from becoming her family’s first college graduate.
“Welcome to the biggest club in the Army,” Davis said. “We’re all members.”
“Aw, come on, Top. You did this same shit in Vietnam.”
“Which is why I’m nervous,” said Davis. PFC Harding laughed.
They were hit a hundred miles inside Iraq, just after sunset.
The ambush was sprung by a rocket-propelled grenade that took out the lead vehicle. Davis saw a puff of smoke, a bright, fast-moving dot and three soldiers diving out of the Hummer. Then came the roar and flash of an explosion that lifted the Hummer into the air and flung it off the road.
“Out, out, out!” Davis yelled. He and Harding bailed out of their Hummer as a storm of automatic weapons fire descended on the column. From somewhere up ahead Davis heard a scream. He yanked his pistol out of its holster and thumbed the safety off.
“What do we do, Top?” Harding cried. “What the fuck do we do — ?!”
“Over there!” David pointed to a rocky outcropping some twenty yards off the road in the direction of the hostile fire.
They sprinted for the rocks, Davis in the lead. He dived for cover and turned just in time to see Harding spin around and slam to the ground. On the road an RPG struck another Hummer, sending a fireball boiling up into the air. By its light he saw that Harding was still moving.
Davis made himself move. Crouched over, breathing hard through his mouth, he sprinted to Harding, grabbed the harness of her LBE and began dragging her toward the protection of the rocks. He was almost there when a blow to his right thigh knocked him sideways. Davis rolled onto his belly, grabbed Harding’s harness again and dragged her the rest of the way to the rocks. Her M16, its sling tangled in her LBE, had come along. Davis dropped his pistol, seized the M16, jerked back the charging handle to chamber a round and crawled left. Peering around the side of the outcropping he saw muzzle flashes. Not bothering to take careful aim he returned fire, emptying the rifle’s magazine in a series of three-round bursts. Off to his left, some of the others were returning fire as well.
Harding moaned. Davis moved back to her, fumbling for the field dressing in its case on his harness. There was blood — a lot of blood. Harding’s eyes were open but unfocused. She looked up at Davis and said, “Daddy?”
“Okay,” Davis panted, ripping open her flak vest. “Okay, you’re okay, Janine. Hang in there now.”
“Daddy what happened?” Harding asked. Her voice was that of a little girl. Then she looked past Davis. Her face assumed an expression of vast surprise.
“Stay with me, Janine!” he panted, taking her hand and squeezing it. But Harding closed her eyes, stretched herself out, exhaled, and died.
Only then did Davis become conscious of the enormous pain in his leg. Gasping with the agony of the effort, he used the field dressing that PFC Harding no longer needed to staunch his own wound. He inserted a fresh magazine into her M16 and hit the bolt release. But then the strength flowed out of him and all he could do was lie by Harding’s side, holding her nerveless hand, gritting his teeth against the pain, while the firefight raged around them.
There they remained until the MPs of the quick reaction force, responding to the scene, found and secured them. Davis protested, none too articulately, as they moved him away from PFC Harding’s body. “Don’t worry, First Sergeant,” said a female MP as she checked his field dressing. “You rest easy, now. We’ve got this…”
“It could have been worse,” said the battalion commander, a tall, spare lieutenant colonel with black hair and a face like a hatchet blade. He was twisting his West Point class ring around on his finger. “It could have been a lot worse, First Sergeant.”
“I guess so, sir,” Davis replied. He cleared his throat. “Three dead, five wounded, yeah, it could have been a lot fucking worse.”
He knew his tone was insubordinate, but Davis didn’t care. Anyhow, the colonel affected not to notice. He just nodded.
“It was the Fedayeen Saddam that hit you.” The colonel sighed. “Regime militia. They stayed behind when the Iraqi Army bugged out, and they’re raising hell with our supply convoys.”
“The route was supposed to be secure.” To this the colonel made no reply. Well, Davis thought, what could he say? Shit happens? He repeated it aloud and the colonel nodded.
“How are the rest of my people?” Davis asked after a moment.
“Not too bad,” the colonel said. “Sergeant Gruber lost two fingers from his left hand but that’s the worst of it.”
Sergeant Gruber had been moaning as the MPs loaded him into the ambulance. Davis himself was already aboard, strapped in a stretcher, cruising on morphine. The pain was still there but it seemed far away. Remembering that PFC Harding lay dead somewhere nearby, he told Gruber to shut the fuck up. No one looked his way, though, and Gruber kept moaning, so that Davis wondered whether he’d actually spoken aloud.
After that, things had gotten hazy.
“Captain Sowinski was here yesterday,” the colonel said. “But you were pretty out of it. The company moved up this morning, so…”
“I guess I’ll see them all on the other side.”
“Anything I can do for you, First Sergeant?” The colonel, realizing that he was twisting the ring around, clasped his hands behind his back.
“My wife,” said Davis. “Has she…?”
“That’s taken care of. And you’ll be seeing her soon. They’ll evac you to Rhine-Main and then to the States as soon as the doc here signs off on the move.”
After the battalion commander left, Davis lay in his bed, contemplating the three letters he’d have to write. Or would he? Wasn’t that the company commander’s job? Let Sowinski handle it, he thought as he drifted off to sleep…
At the stateside hospital to which he was eventually transferred they told Davis that he’d been lucky. “The bullet didn’t strike bone,” the surgeon said. “The wound should heal all right and with some physical therapy — ”
“I’ll be as good as new. Right.” Davis turned to look out the window. It was a wet afternoon; he wished he could get up and take a walk in the rain.
“Well, First Sergeant, I have to be honest, that leg’s never going to be one hundred percent.” The surgeon shrugged. “You’ll probably be dealing with some residual weakness and pain. But with physical therapy and as long as you’re not planning to run the Boston Marathon…well, it could have been worse.”
“People keep telling me that,” said Davis.
Later in the afternoon Kate came to see him. She bent down to kiss him, first on the forehead, then on the lips. The fraught expression with which she’d greeted him on his return had faded as she realized that Davis was going to be all right. Now she smiled. “You’re looking better,” she said, sitting down by the side of the bed.
“I’m ready to get the hell out of here,” he replied.
“Have they said when?”
“A few days. Maybe a week. I can walk pretty well now. Still need the cane, though, and it aches like a mad bastard afterwards if I overdo it.”
They talked of this and that until Davis’ dinner tray arrived. Kate stayed quiet while he ate. Only recently had Davis rediscovered pleasure in his food. Even the indifferent hospital fare tasted good to him now.
“I was talking to Jerry Wilson,” she said as he sipped his tea. “He asked after you.”
“Good old Jerry.” Davis laughed. “I’ll even be glad to see that bastard.”
“Their Labor Day garden party’s in a couple of weeks.” Kate picked up a sad little cookie from her husband’s tray and nibbled at it. “You’ll be home by then.”
Time passed, but the three letters that Davis had decided he didn’t need to write remained much on his mind. Several days after Kate brought him home Leo called from the reserve center to let him know that his application for retirement had been approved. He was done with the Army at last.
“I was so afraid they’d want you back,” Kate said.
“A guy my age with a gimpy leg?” Davis laughed, mostly for her benefit. “No way.”
Still, though, there was the VA hospital. Davis hated going there. His leg was nearly healed and he didn’t think that the physical therapist was doing anything for him that he couldn’t do for himself. The other patients — young men and a couple of young women — treated him like the grand old man of the Army. Holy fuck, Top, over fifty and you got yourself shot up in a fucking firefight? You have got to be crazy, my man… Jibes like that came from guys with missing legs and arms, or terribly disfigured faces, or brain injuries that made them weep periodically for no reason. Compared to their wounds he’d barely been scratched, Davis thought, but still they granted him membership in their company of fortitude and pain.
“Sometimes I feel so ashamed,” he told Kate when he felt able to talk about it with her.
“You have absolutely nothing to be ashamed of,” she said, and Davis knew that Kate was right. But what he knew would never change how he felt.
So Davis decided to visit the families of his three dead soldiers. None lived more than four hours away; that was the Army Reserve for you. He got the phone numbers from Leo, the unit administrator, who said only, “Sure you want to do this, Steve?”
Davis wasn’t sure. But he made the calls.
Specialist DeVore’s wife reviled him bitterly down the phone, crying that he and the fucking Army has killed Paul, made her a widow, robbed their son of his father — and when he tried to offer some words of consolation, she hung up on him.
Sergeant Levin’s parents agreed to see him. They received him politely, listened to what he had to say, asked no questions and thanked him for taking the time to visit. But Mr. and Mrs. Levin seemed preoccupied, as if listening for a voice from the next room.
PFC Harding’s mother was a small, slender woman, about Davis's age, whose eyes and smile reminded him very much of her dead daughter. She introduced him to the other woman present, Janine’s older sister Alana. Again Davis noted the family resemblance.
“Why don’t we make ourselves comfortable in the front room?” Mrs. Harding said, showing him through the door. She and her daughter sat down on a sofa: Davis took an armchair. He looked around the room. It was small but neatly kept. One wall was covered with framed family photos and he noticed several of Janine. In one she was wearing her Army greens; it had probably been taken on the day she graduated from training.
“It’s good of you to come see us, Sergeant Davis.” Mrs. Harding said.
“Please, call me Steven,” Davis replied. “I’m out of the Army now.”
They chatted for a few minutes. Davis learned that Mrs. Harding worked for a local bank, was in fact head teller, and that Alana was a dental hygienist.
“Well, Mr. Davis,” the mother said, opting to maintain a certain formality, “I am glad you came to call on us. My Janine, she spoke of you several times. And after you all went overseas, she wrote home about you.”
“Your daughter was my driver,” Davis said, smiling a little. “We spent a lot of time together.”
“Janine was fond of you,” Mrs. Harding said. “I thought you would like to know that.”
“I was fond of her.” Davis looked past them for a moment, remembering. “Your daughter was a good soldier. A good person.”
The mother nodded at that. The sister sighed and bit her lip.
“I know,” said Davis after a moment, “that nothing I can say or do could ever make up for your loss…or explain it…but…”
“There is one thing,” Alana said. “Mother and I wondered if you could tell us how she died. The commanding officer’s letter was very nice but…he wasn’t there, was he?”
“No.”
‘So if you feel able to tell us…Mother and I would be grateful.”
They sat there expectantly—and Davis believed that he couldn’t do it— couldn’t talk about it — he would make his excuses and leave this house — but they sat there expectantly —so Davis began to speak.
He began calmly enough, but as Davis went on the past rose up, asserting its iron authority. His stomach knotted and the blood drained from his cheeks and he felt the pain in his leg. In the neat front room with its signs of family he spoke in halting, broken sentences of the clamorous ambush, the exploding vehicles, the vivid flames, the rolling smoke. He spoke of his wounding, of Janine’s last moments, and his voice trembled then, and the shame he felt made his eyes burn. He feared what he would see when he raised his head, but when he stuttered to a halt and did so, Davis found that both women were looking at him with expressions of sad compassion.
“I think,” said Mrs. Harding, “that I would like a glass of port. Will you join us, Mr. Davis?”
“Well…” Davis cleared his throat. “Well, yes. A glass of port. Thank you.”
Alana went to the sideboard and filled three glasses.
“People have no idea, do they?” she said as she handed him his glass.
“No,” Davis replied, thinking of the VA hospital. He took a sip of the port. “No, they don’t.”
“And your leg is…? Mrs. Harper inquired, still with that air of formality.
“Fine,” said Davis. “Much better now.”
“There is one more question that I would like to ask,” she went on. “Did Janine…say anything, Mr. Davis?”
Daddy. Daddy what happened? Davis glanced at the row of family photographs again. No father figure. Divorced, probably. Maybe dead. Out of the picture. He thought of telling some merciful lie to comfort this grieving mother — for despite her composure she was grieving, he could see that. But such a lie would haunt him, Davis was sure of it. The fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters and husbands and wives and sons and daughters of the dead were owed the truth. And if he couldn’t tell Janine’s mother, her sister, the truth…why had he bothered to come?
So Davis spoke the words. He spoke them quietly. “She said ‘Daddy. Daddy, what happened?’ That was all.”
“Oh, my Lord,” Mrs. Harding breathed. “Oh, Janine…”
For the first time she was visibly distressed. Alana took her mother’s hand and looked at Davis, shaking her head.
“My sister loved him,” she said, “and just couldn’t see what he was. What he is.”
“No Mr. Davis, it’s not what you probably think,” Janine’s mother added. With a visible effort she restored her composure. “Not a divorce…” She shook her head. “John Harding is downstate, doing time for attempted murder. He’s been there eight years now and he’s got to do four more at least. He’s no good and that’s the plain truth. We married young, which was my mistake. Still, he did give me my daughters. Anyway, I promised myself that once he got out I’d divorce that man in a New York minute. The only reason I never did before is because Janine loved her daddy and it would have broken her heart if I’d thrown him over while he was still sitting behind bars.”
“She never could see him for what he is,” Alana said again, and the bitterness was plain in her voice.
“I’m sorry,” was all that Davis could offer.
“Don’t you be sorry, now,” Mrs. Harding said, looking straight at him. “It was you who held my daughter’s hand when she really needed to have it held. God bless you for that, Mr. Davis. God bless you.”
It was Labor Day weekend and most of the people who lived on Crescent Street were congregated on the Wilsons’ patio.
“Horse’s Neck,” Jerry Wilson called. “Horse’s Neck for our returning hero.” He was his usual mildly obnoxious self, but the other guests were more subdued. As Davis and his wife stepped out onto the patio they eyed him warily — at a loss, it seemed, for something to say.
It was Ted Larson who terminated the awkward pause, stepping forward and putting out his hand.
“Welcome home, Steve,” he said as they shook. “You look good. How’s the leg?”
“Coming along pretty well,” Davis replied as he accepted his drink from Wilson’s wife. “I actually left the cane in the closet today.”
“Good to hear.”
With that exchange the mood of the gathering lightened. The neighbors clustered around Davis, the women giving him hugs and pecks on the cheek, the men thumping his shoulder and shaking his hand. They welcomed him back, asked how he was doing and when he’d be returning to work. They remarked upon the glorious late-summer weather. But no one asked Davis about his time in Kuwait and Iraq.
“…and Jill’s expecting,” Kate said. “They found out just last week.”
“We’re so excited,” Jill Larson added with a beaming smile.
“How far along?”
“About two months…”
Jerry Wilson handed Davis his drink.
“…it is a little scary to be pregnant, though.” Jill was holding her husband’s hand. “You really have to be careful about your diet and your overall health.”
“Come on, Jill. If a fitness freak like you can’t deliver a healthy baby…”
There was great laughter. Davis looked out over the Wilsons’ well-kept back yard.
“Well,” Jill said. “It’s not just that.”
“…going to give us the lecture…?”
“It’s a serious thing,” Jill said, giving her husband a mildly reproving look.
“…autism, I’ve heard…”
“Doctors shouldn’t be bullying parents.” Jill’s voice rang with certitude. “Parents should make those decisions based on what they know to be best for their children.”
“…decision to vaccinate…”
“Wait a minute,” said Davis, turning to face Jill and Ted Larson. “What was that you just said?”
“I said, Steve, that the decision to vaccinate should rest with parents, not doctors or politicians.” Jill shook her head. “It’s too dangerous. And we certainly will not subject our child to such risks.”
“But you can’t do that,” Davis protested. His wounded leg had begun to ache.
“Steven — ” But he cut Kate off before she could say more.
“You can’t do that,” Davis said again. His voice was beginning to rise. “Haven’t you ever heard of scarlet fever? Whooping cough? Measles?” He thought of the boy in the bed next to him, weeping through the dark of night. I won’t, I won’t, I won’t ever walk again… “And polio. Have you ever heard of that?”
“Steven. Please.” Kate took his arm and squeezed it. “This isn’t — ”
“It’s bad enough, what can happen to a child in this fucked-up world.” Davis’s hand was shaking badly; the ice in his drink rattled. “But you’re willing to expose your child to fucking polio? Jesus Christ, what is wrong with you?”
The sound of his own voice, quivering with anger and distress, brought Davis up short. Everyone was looking at him and a shadow seemed to have fallen across the patio, though the sky was cloudless. Kate took the glass from his hand.
Davis found himself alone, confronting Crescent Street’s leafy, comfortable incomprehension, and he wanted to ask them all: What the hell are you looking at?
Tom this was a really enjoyable story. The flashback to the polio ward was well executed. And the ending was unexpected which tied the polio flashback in and also magnified a certain level of despair that the main character was feeling to the forefront about the loss of one of his soldiers. It was a complex story with carefully crafted trajectory. Nice work.
This is an extremely accomplished story. It will stick with me. Well done.