Sing Them Home

by Stephanie Kallos

  They’d arrive in the middle of nowhere—which is where these accidents always happened, on some unpaved, unlit country road hemmed in by corn or milo, a no-man’s-land of uncertain jurisdiction. City? County? State? People could die in the amount of time it took to figure out who to call, but if they phoned that young doc from Emlyn Springs and his nurse, they’d come, they’d come right away, they’d be there in no time.

  One night, someone, some grateful farmer said, You two, you’re like one of them mobile army surgical teams we had overseas, and Viney wondered, What’s the time difference between Nebraska and Vietnam? and from that night on she wasn’t here, she was over there, and she and Welly, they only looked like civilians: they were really on standby, waiting to work a mission, and when the calls came, they were summoned to the Dak To runway, to the burn unit of the evac hospitals in Vung Tau, to Brigade Headquarters in Pleiku City.

  She replaced the family Bible with Webster’s and her vocabulary grew and grew; on the same page as Vietnam was vignetting: a reduction in intensity of illumination at the edge of a field of view, and as more boys died over there, what she did was, she started saving them over here, they were all Wally, and she was grateful, grateful when one of them lost a leg or an eye because then they’d be 4F, they couldn’t go. Their mothers and fathers would rather have them home and disfigured than gone forever, bones and teeth and nothing more.

  From then on and for some time, it only looked like Nebraska to everyone else. Where other people saw overturned threshers and mangled cars and dense fields of cattle crops, Viney saw a landscape of bomb craters and burned helicopters.

  There were no cornfields after that, only rice paddies.

  It was the night Hope told Llewellyn she was pregnant again: 1970 then, had to be, because Bonnie was born in April of ’71.

  So that’s when it was. That’s when it happened.

  There’s been an emergency, Hope said. Llewellyn is on his way.

  By this time, Viney had logged so many hours that she could tell from the first syllable whether Hope was calling as a friend or a dispatch officer. It’s true that Hope’s voice sounded especially tight, strained, but Viney didn’t remember that until later, when Llewellyn told her that they’d had a fight.

  Viney hung up, got into uniform, left a note for the girls, and took up her medical kit. She was already waiting outside for Llewellyn when he pulled up in the van and off they sped.

  On the way—they’d be driving well north of Emlyn Springs, on two-lane highways and back roads—Llewellyn shared what little he knew: car crash, single vehicle, possible amputation, possible fatality. They fell silent after that. That was usual. There was nothing out of the ordinary about his behavior.

  It took nearly an hour to get where they were going. The boy had lost a lot of blood. Wasn’t wearing a seat belt, had been thrown from the car. One of his legs was crushed, the other severed above the knee.

  No military service in this one’s future, Viney thought.

  They did what they could, got him ready to travel. Even though it was obvious that reattachment would not be an option, for the family’s sake they collected the leg and packed it in ice and then headed to Lincoln.

  Llewellyn rode with the boy in the back of the van; Viney drove; the family followed. The boy died en route.

  Viney expected them to go back to Emlyn Springs once they’d spent some time with the family.

  And yet, when she returned from the cafeteria with fresh cups of coffee, she found Welly on the phone with Hope, saying nothing of the fact that their patient was DOA—severely injured were the words he used.

  “Viney and I are going to spend the night at the hospital,” he was saying, “stay with the family while he’s in surgery, make sure he’s stable.”

  Maybe he didn’t die after all, Viney thought. This made more sense than believing she was listening to Dr. Jones lie to his wife.

  Llewellyn went on to say that either he or Viney would check in with her in the morning, give her an update, let her know when they’d be coming home.

  “I can’t go back tonight,” he explained after he hung up.

  “I’ll drive if you’re too tired,” Viney offered.

  “No, it’s not that.” He’d looked at her then, and she could tell that he was genuinely exhausted—but more than that: afraid. Of what? “I can’t see her tonight,” he said. “We had a terrible fight before I left, she’s pregnant again, and …”

  “What? Llewellyn, what is it?”

  “I can’t face her, Viney. I can’t. Let’s just find someplace to spend the night.”

  Did they plan for it to happen?

  No. They did not. They were just tired, both of them. It had been a long, terrible night. They needed to get some sleep. They needed a rest.

  And yet, Llewellyn had lied, and she could have chosen a motel in town, close to the hospital and to the southbound route they’d take when they drove back to Emlyn Springs, but instead she took them out on West O, to the outskirts of Lincoln, where there were big noisy clubs with live road bands that attracted a rough crowd, a seedy crowd; where if the wind was right you could smell the packing plant; where they were sure to pass under the radar.

  He’d barely managed a few steps into the room before sinking onto the edge of one of the beds. “Hope is sick,” he said. “She has MS.”

  He sat slumped, with his back bowed like an old man, eyes downcast. The room had stained red indoor/outdoor carpet and smelled faintly of beer, ammonia, and feces.

  “She doesn’t know,” Viney said.

  “No, but she’s starting to suspect something’s wrong.”

  She’d been sick a long time, he told her, ever since Larken was born, maybe even longer, and it would get worse and worse and now she was pregnant again—it was his carelessness, his fault—and she wanted this baby, of course she did, but when she came to him with the news he couldn’t pretend to be happy. Not this time. Not again.

  “I couldn’t tell her, how could I?” he asked, over and over. “And now she’s guessed something is wrong, she knows I’ve been hiding something from her, and she hates me, Viney. Hope hates me. We’ll never get past this, I know it …”

  Viney could hear drunks carousing in the parking lot outside, a couple in the next room having a fight.

  My wife, back home, he said, or something like it, and that was when Viney realized that they had passed into yet another country together, one where civilian rules did not apply. “My wife, back home, she despises me.”

  The room was small and dark and closed and there was so much feeling in it, too much, and it had to go somewhere so it went into her body.

  “How could anyone despise you?” she said, kneeling beside the bed and pulling his hands away from his face. “You’re a doctor.”

  She examined his hands. A field surgeon’s hands, she had seen them in action. He could do anything with these hands. He could stanch blood, set bones, reattach limbs, transplant hearts probably, given the opportunity, and then suddenly he was pulling her heart out of her chest because he’d seen right away that she needed a new one.

  There was blood on his clothes, blood of the dead. He needed to get out of them.

  Home and wives and children were so far away. They’d lost that boy tonight in spite of everything and didn’t they have the right? Hadn’t they earned some comfort?

  And then she was aware that they were both of them tearing at cloth, grasping hunks of muscle and healthy flesh that was alive with arterial blood, venous blood, bruising each other’s bodies with the bone-on-bone force of this, their first time. She had never been with her husband like this, but it was right, this violence. It was what she had needed. Love and gentleness is a luxury of peacetime and they were living in a country at war.

  And the next morning, when Viney called to say they were still in Lincoln and would be staying for a while longer, and Hope asked, Is there something wrong with me? Viney took her to mean, Is that why you and Llewellyn slept
together? and an icy panic assaulted her. She could barely speak.

  But of course that wasn’t it. That wasn’t what Hope meant at all.

  Such good fortune for them, the new adulterers! At the precise moment when the wronged wife might have sensed, might have guessed (and Viney in her raw fear might even have given them away had Hope not hung up on her), she was preoccupied with the only other thing that could supplant such intuitions: She was pregnant with a baby her husband didn’t want her to have. Why would that be?

  They’d mastered without trying the magicians’ art of redirection. They got away with it.

  So they stayed in that rank-smelling room with the do not disturb sign on the door and had sex all afternoon. They weren’t fooling anyone, the couple registered as Mr. and Mrs. Jones, but then, they didn’t need to. They could make as much noise as they wanted. They were comrades-in-arms, off-duty, on leave. It was only R&R. It meant nothing.

  And that’s how it went, for years: It was just the guiltless screwing of soldiers in wartime. They felt affection for each other, of course, but it was their relationship on the battlefield, not in bed, that defined them: a paradigm of morality and professionalism.

  When Hope encouraged them to have an affair—even though she didn’t know she was lending her support for something they’d begun long ago—it felt as though they’d been forgiven. They could start over. They could reinvent their first time.

  They came to each other differently after that, with tenderness, with joy.

  This is why Alvina Closs has not-remembered the truth. In her mind, she and Welly had their real beginning years later, in 1976, when Hope made possible the thing that would never have happened otherwise, and that none of them, least of all Hope, ever expected. It was Hope who released Viney and Welly from their tour of duty, allowing them to finally fall in love.

  The phone in Viney’s hospital room starts ringing. It’s the children calling, one after another, asking what happened, is she all right, does she need them.

  They are good children, caring, responsible children, and they are behaving exactly as they should.

  But Viney hears the fear in their voices as well. She senses a level of play-acting in their collective behavior. Underpinning their mature concern is fear—the primal fear of childhood: They are calling to see if she still belongs to them, if she is still their mother, alive and well in mind and body. Adults all, they still need reassurance that their world is stable and safe.

  She tells them that she’s fine, really, there’s nothing to worry about, she just hasn’t been taking good care of herself, let herself get run down. Stupid, foolish. The doctors are keeping her for twenty-fours, for observation, to perform a few tests, but it’s likely she’ll be home this evening. No, they needn’t come to the hospital. She’ll call again later, give them an update, let them know if and when she needs to be picked up.

  When Bud Humphries calls, Viney is reminded that he is the most guileless, least nosy person she knows, and so she asks him to do her a favor.

  He arrives about an hour later, carrying a grocery bag containing fresh fruit, a change of clothing, and a file folder she directed him to track down in Welly’s study.

  Bud stays with her for a while, holding her hand, saying little—it is just the thing she needs—and then lumbers away when the nurse comes to take her vital signs, reminding her that he expects a phone call when the hospital releases her. It’s no trouble. He’ll turn right around and come get her whenever she’s ready to come home.

  Viney extracts the file folder.

  NOBODY’S GODDAMN BUSINESS BUT YOURS AND MINE …

  She stares at the angry words, the barricade of exclamation points, scrawled with such vehemence that they seem to represent a “Do Not Enter” injunction.

  She remembers writing those words. She remembers how she felt. She might be asking for trouble by opening this file, inviting that terrible anger back into her body. There’s really no way to know.

  The newest addition to the file is exactly where it should be, right on top. It was printed out at the Beatrice library with the help of Viney’s new ally in the world of computer technology and online communication: Sad Bison at Gee Mail Dot Com.Viney gave this document only the most cursory read before remanding it to the darkened file cabinet in Welly’s study.

  Dear Mrs. Closs, the e-mail begins. I was deeply saddened to learn of the death of Mayor Jones.

  Viney steadies her gaze, forces herself to read slowly.

  Thank you so much for letting me know of Dr. Jones’ passing. Odd as it may seem, in spite of the fact that Llewellyn and I never met face-to-face, I consider him to be one of my dearest friends. I shall miss him more than I can say.

  The stark appearance of the letter, with its To: From: Received: Date: Subject format and its narrow, unadorned font, strikes Viney as cold, officious, entirely at odds with its content, and (she now allows) with the person who authored it.

  It is true that Llewellyn longed to deepen the relationship between our communities …

  Viney realizes that every other letter of consolation came from someone she knows, someone she’s met, someone she can put a face and voice and body to.

  … I’ve taken the liberty of forwarding your kind invitation to the financial committee for their consideration. They will surely be in touch with you soon …

  Maybe she could ask Brother Henry to send a photograph.

  Although the original impetus for the correspondence between Llewellyn and me was businesslike in nature, over the years our discourse became concerned with personal matters …

  Or maybe she’ll just imagine what he looks like.

  Our friendship has exerted a profound influence upon my spiritual life—and will continue to do so, I am sure. I owe a great deal to Llewellyn for sharing the tribulations of his heart, and for posing questions that cannot be easily answered.

  Yes, No, Maybe. Not Likely. Try Again. Wait and See …

  Beginnings are so important. Enduring, deep relationships are forged in many ways—over cups of coffee, at football matches …

  At the scene of fatal accidents …

  … I’ve always suspected that Llewellyn would never have explored the deeper, darker places were it not for the fact that our relationship was epistolary in nature. Just as some people need the sanctuary of the darkened confessional in order to speak the truth, others can only reveal themselves freely on the page …

  Viney imagines Brother Henry’s hair as fuzzy, like unspun mohair.

  You know better than anyone I am sure what an intensely private man he was, how he struggled with the limits of his powers as a physician. More than once I was compelled to remind Llewellyn that the promise of “eternal life” does not apply to the body …

  She shakes Brother Henry’s hand. It is fleshy and large, like a farmer’s.

  Viney finishes reading this letter, and then travels back in time through the others, born into the past on page after page of handwritten correspondence, through words of harsh inquiry, comfort, condemnation.

  There can be no forgiveness for what I did … How could your God have let this happen? … I speak of these things with no one but you …

  Words of intended comfort …

  You faced extraordinarily difficult circumstances, and did so with love and bravery and pain. No one can ask more than that …

  These words, for better or worse, belong to her now. They are what Welly left.

  Did he mean for her to have them? Does it matter? Whether they represent kindness or callousness is for her to decide. Maybe she’ll decide one thing today, another tomorrow.

  Viney lets her gaze drift to the window. The clouds are gathered up in a scalloping formation, like bunting, and underlit with intense shades of orange and purple. Why do we always refer to the sun as rising, she wonders, when in fact it is the earth’s rotation that makes a sky like this possible? We, as the earth’s passengers, not the sun, are the bodies in motion.

 
She presses the Call button and picks up the telephone. Bud did say he’d turn around and come right back whenever she needed him.

  She’s ready to go home.

  Hope’s Diary, 1971:

  “Gwnewch Y Pathau Bychain.”

  It is St. David’s Day, on which we partake of leek broth, adjudicate the longest leek in town, humorously, and with many sly references to male anatomy.

  The children in Wales are out of school on this day. Not so here, but there was a special assembly at school, so I drove Larken and Gaelan into town this morning. They immediately forgot all about me, flinging themselves into that untamed territory known as the Playground—the tribal force of children loosed from civility and parental influence is always a revelation—and I was left loitering on the fringes with the other disenfranchised mothers.

  Never comfortable in this setting. Conversations always seem to turn immediately to achievements and special abilities—theirs, or their children’s. It’s that highly specialized form of territorial grandstanding that women do so nicely, smiling all the while. I never feel as though my efforts quite measure up. And of course there were the natural questions about how I’m feeling, when is the baby due, have we picked out names yet, and so on. I’m still reflexively superstitious when it comes to talking about my unborn babies. Wish Viney was still a playground mother.

  Anyway, made some excuse about forgetting something in the car, absented myself from the throng, and found a nice, sheltered, out-of-sight place next to the parking lot to sit and wait in peace for the bell to ring.

  March in like a lion this year—high winds, dramatic sky.

  It’s a lie what they say about spring, that it’s the time of new life and rebirth. Plants know the truth. Yes, there is all that new growth, those shocking shades of yellow-green, and the smells, but there are also the seeds emerging—and what are seeds but the symbols of desperation? Seeds represent foreknowledge of death like nothing else. It’s life admitting that death is not far off. Replication is required. Plants know the real story.