Another tear fell down his face and his voice broke as he said, “In all my years, I had but one brother. Later when Mama remarried, I got some step-siblings, but there was only one man that I would trust my life and the lives of my wife and daughters to.
“In Korea, Jack saved my life more times than I can count. Without him I have no doubt I would be nothing more than an unmarked grave in the countryside.
“I spent my life trying to make it up to him, but in the end there was nothing I could do. Cancer crept into his body and depleted him in a way that only he ever knew about. Just like Jack to the very end, he never said a word about his pain or suffering.
“None of us even knew how bad he was until the last days, the days when his weakened form betrayed him, when he could no longer hide his shriveled state or inability to do some things for himself.”
Tears streamed down my uncle’s face, dripping off his cheeks and down onto the front of his jacket. Watching his heart break before me tears began leaking from the corners of my eyes and ran slow and fat down the sides of my face.
Several long minutes passed as my uncle cried for his fallen brother. I didn’t make a sound and as if the world knew what was happening, it didn’t either.
I hadn’t noticed the house behind us grow quiet, but I looked back to see faces lining the screened windows along the porch. Tears ran from the eyes of my mother, my aunt, my grandmother, as my uncle sobbed for the passing of his brother Jack.
“You saw me place the flag on Jack’s coffin didn’t you?” my uncle asked, his voice no more than a whisper.
Tears continued to run down my face as I cast a glance to the front windows and nodded my head.
“The reason I did that was because that’s how Jack and I decided a long time ago we wanted to be buried. The only way a soldier should be buried.
“Wrapped in scars and stars.”
Those were the final words my uncle uttered, the tears falling even harder from both of us as the last shard of daylight burned from the night sky.
The porch screen door opened behind us and the sound of feet could be heard coming towards us.
My great grandmother walked straight to us and grabbed both of us in a hug. She pulled us tight and the three of us together sobbed into the autumn night.
We sobbed for the loss of an uncle, a son, a soldier.
A brother.
Chapter Forty-Eight
There is only one tiny piece of the album that was not put there by my uncle. I put it there myself a little over eleven years after that afternoon on the porch.
The winter of 1995 was far and away the worst of the entire time I lived in Ohio. From November through April, not a single week went by without an excused absence for snow. Each week a new storm would swing down from Canada and blanket the region in fresh powder. Gusty winds would follow and whip it around for several days, pushing and piling it to perilous levels.
That kind of weather can wear on a person and I was no exception. I was two months into wrestling season my junior year. Each day I would rise in darkness, drive to school in treacherous conditions, go to practice all evening, and return home again in darkness. I went weeks at a time without seeing daylight and my body and psyche ached.
On Tuesday January 19th I stayed late after practice to get some extra lifting in. The league schedule was opening that weekend and I was looking to face several rivals in the area.
I arrived home to find my family milling about in the kitchen, worried looks on their faces. My brother paced in the dining hall and as I passed I asked, “What happened?”
He cast a glance around the room and said, “Uncle Cat passed away today.”
My eyes bulged as I looked to my parents. “I didn’t know he was sick.”
My mother shook her head and said, “He wasn’t. He had a stroke sometime early this morning and died shortly thereafter. Nobody even knew anything was wrong until he didn’t show up for a dentist appointment.”
“When he didn’t show,” my father added, seeing my confusion, “the office called his daughter to see if everything was alright. She went over to check on him, found him still in bed.”
“That’s awful,” I murmured as numbness crept through my body and for a moment I stood in the middle of the room. My duffel bag remained in my hand and I still wore the gym clothes I had left practice in.
Looking around the room I asked, “So, why are we standing in the kitchen? Is someone here?”
My mother walked to the dining room table with a box in hand. She sat it down on the table and said, “This came for you.”
It was large and square and atop it written in large block letters was “TO BE OPENED BY AUSTIN ROBERTS ONLY.”
Surprise crept across my features as I stared down at the box. I twisted my face and tried several times to find the words, but none came to me.
“Austin, it’s alright,” my mother said. “You take it upstairs and open it whenever you like.”
I looked at each of them in turn and let the gym bag slide from my fingers to the floor. It landed with a dull smack as I picked the box up and looked at it.
Only one place made sense for me to open it and I walked from the kitchen out onto the front porch and lowered myself into a rocking chair. The cold air bit at my face as I sat the box on my legs to open it.
The box was old and thin and the flaps fell away, allowing me to peer inside. In it were but two items.
A letter and the album.
I started with the letter, “Austin” written across the envelope in my uncle’s cursive hand. It crinkled in my hands as I opened it and pulled several sheets of white paper from within. Licking my lips several times, I unfolded them and began reading.
Dear Austin,
I’ve known for some time now my days were numbered. It wasn’t anybody’s fault and there wasn’t anything I could do about it. Some things just are the way they are.
As the end grew nearer I began taking measures to ensure that the things and people I care about in this world were taken care of. I made sure my daughters weren’t burdened with any funeral expenses and I left explicit directions to my attorney on how my things were to be doled out.
This one item though I didn’t trust even to him.
You are the only person that has ever seen the album or heard the story of your Uncle Jack and me. That day, the day I laid my brother to rest, was the only time in my entire life I had the strength to tell that story and I was truly lucky that you were there to hear it.
You were a blessing because you were a child. You hadn’t yet been tainted by the world or developed your own notions of war and brotherhood. Everything I told you I knew was touching you for the first time, like a golden sunrise on a clear morning.
What’s more than that is you too were given the gift of a brother. Watching the two of you grow has been like watching Jack and I again, you each with your own roles. You have always been old, even for your years. You are quiet and brooding and live your life from one calculated venture to another. Your brother is more of a free spirit. He lives his life from one second to the next and never worries on what tomorrow will hold.
Rely on one another, there’s a greater strength there than you will ever know.
You were the only person to ever hear the story and the only person I trusted to have this album. If I had given it to my daughters or anyone else they wouldn’t know what any of it meant and they wouldn’t be able to pass the story along the way you can.
I apologize for leaving you with such a burden, but this story is now yours. If Jack, myself, the other men in it are to live on it will be by your hand. I trust you’ll do what’s right when the time comes.
Sincerely Yours,
Richard ‘Cat’ Roberts
P.S. I trust also that you’ll see to it that I am laid to rest in a proper soldier’s burial. I believe you know what that means.
Three days later we laid my uncle to rest. The entire proceeding held an eerier similarity to the one
so many years before and I couldn’t help feeling like the same little boy standing in the warm autumn sun.
Despite my flashbacks, the two funerals couldn’t have been more different. We lay Uncle Cat to rest on a Saturday morning, clear and cold, during the only break we had from the snow that entire winter. For one hour the winds died down and the snowfall ceased, allowing us to bury our friend.
I stood shoulder to shoulder with my brother as the honor guard fired their salute. I held my mother’s hand as she cried.
The day before the funeral I went to the home of my uncle and removed the battered American flag he flew every day of the year. I folded it up tight and kept it in my coat and when every other person had marched by and paid their respects, I tacked it in place just the way I had seen him do it so many years before.
That night I made the last addition to the album.
I bought a fresh copy of the Birch Grove paper, cut out his obituary and placed it alongside the others. He and the eleven other men that went into the water that night at long last rejoined their platoon.
The final chapter in an incredible story over seventy years in the making was finally complete.
December 11, 2013
Eric,
When your mother arrived home she stood with
mouth agape for a moment, staring at a house that was barely touched. The look of shock and anger was soon replaced by understanding as I handed her the box you now have before you.
She didn’t need me to explain, didn’t need me to apologize or tell her how I had spent the week.
She knew.
If you are reading this now I trust you have made it through the story of your great-great uncles and the life they lived. I apologize again for not being able to share it with you in person but find solace in knowing the story has been passed on and rests in safe hands.
So many years ago I was entrusted to watch over the story, and now that task becomes yours. If the tale lives on it will be by your hand and if not it will be something the four of us alone share for eternity.
With that son, I must bid you adieu. Your uncle and I are going fishing and Lord knows I can’t be late for that. Afterwards, we’ll cook whatever we catch over an open fire, made using steel and flint, the old fashioned way, just like Uncle Cat taught us.
Here’s to being alive...
Your father,
Austin
About the Author
Dustin Stevens is the author of fourteen novels, including The Zoo Crew series, Just a Game, 21 Hours, Liberation Day, and Catastrophic. He is also the author of several short stories, appearing in various magazines and anthologies, and is an award-winning screenwriter.
He currently resides in Honolulu, Hawaii.
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