I sat there in the truck a couple minutes, trying to figure things out. Why had Pops lied to me? Or did he really believe the fountain was still there?
It didn’t take me long to come to an understanding. I drove like a bat out of hell after that, even though I knew it wouldn’t do me any good.
It wasn’t until the next day, when I called Pops’ doctor, that I found out about his heart. “Last time I saw him was three weeks ago,” the doctor told me. “We found evidence of at least two previous infarctions, both fairly recent.”
Knowing Pops, if the climb itself didn’t do him in, he had plenty of time to go back down and up again, or to jog in circles around the top of that hill, whatever it took until he got what he went there to get. All I know for sure is that he was looking up into the sky when I found him. And he was grinning that grin of his, showing his beautiful white teeth, looking like he knew he’d put something over on me again.
I’m going to have to delete all this soon, Spence. I can’t be keeping all this on my computer for somebody to find. I’ve known it a long time now but I really hate to do it. If you were here I bet you’d have an explanation for that feeling. I don’t remember anything you couldn’t eventually puzzle out.
The thing is, deleting this is going to feel like I’m the only one left anymore. I’m not saying that exactly right, I guess. What I mean is that all the people I counted on for advice from time to time will be gone forever now. First Mom. Then Gee. Then Pops. And now you.
And now I can almost hear you laughing at me. “Pull on your big boy pants and get to work,” you’re saying. “You keep sitting there with your creamy white ass hanging out, that big hairy elephant’s going to sniff you out for sure.”
So okay, I guess this is it. I just wanted you to know I’ve decided to keep paying rent on Pops’ storage unit. Keep things the way they are for a while. I like to go there sometimes, just to sit in the darkness with the door closed, surrounded by those few things Pops and Gee and Mom cared about enough to keep, all those little pieces of the lives they lived and the ones I was lucky enough to share. That’s where I am right now, in fact. Sitting here with my laptop on my knees. Trying to say another goodbye.
I just need to be by myself sometimes. Knowing now what I am, what I’m capable of, it’s the best thing for me. So I’m lucky I have this place. This we’ll defend, right? This we’ll defend.
I especially like it here on cool fall days like this one, when the rain is beating down on the metal roof, and even a box of concrete and steel starts to smell like something fresh again, like maybe it really is halfway possible to box up the past and still enjoy it, still remember the good things and the good people, all the laughs and the love we shared together, without letting yourself be crushed flat by all the bad stuff behind it and all the bad stuff up ahead.
Despite everything that’s happened, I still enjoy the rain. But I don’t look at it anymore the way Gee did. She said it’s God’s way of washing everything clean and starting again. Me, I’m not so sure. I guess I believe we don’t get anything like forgiveness in this lifetime, no matter how hard we pray for it. No matter where we hide the bad things we’ve done. Once done, they’re always done. We can try to make something good out of it, which is what I intend to do with that drug money, though nothing for me. Not a penny of it for me. But even so, forgiveness is pretty much out of the question in the here and now. In this vale of tears, as Gee used to call it, all we get is the rain.
So I guess that’s it. That’s about all I’ve got to say. I won’t be writing to you again, stirring up all the ashes of the past. It’s time for me to put my shoulder to the wheel and concentrate on my little ones.
So long, my brother.
Spin and die . . .
And maybe, just maybe, who knows? Live again, butterfly.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
“The Caterpillar,” by Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830–1894) is the source of Russell’s lines about butterflies and caterpillars.
My thanks to my editors, Jessica Tribble and Charlotte Herscher, for their enthusiasm for and close attention to this novel. A book is only as good, or as wretched, as its editors. Over the course of my career, I have experienced both types. The wretched ones drag their heels, kick up the sod, and trail mud across every page, or else do nothing at all. The good ones tread lightly and tenderly through the writer’s garden, pruning and replanting only when it heightens the reader’s experience. Jessica and Charlotte occupy the latter group. My gratitude to both of you.
Few writers these days find prosperity in the literary thicket without an intrepid guide and champion, and mine is my agent, Sandy Lu. Without her machete-wielding skills opening the path for me, I would still be lost in the brambles, picking thorns from my flesh.
I am also deeply indebted to Lieutenant Colonel Troy C. Bucher of the US Army for his assistance with this novel. Now a Professor of Military Science at Oklahoma State University, LTC Bucher’s more than twenty-six years of military service have included three deployments to Iraq, and three years of teaching at the NATO antiterrorism training center in Ankara, Turkey. Thank you, Troy, for not only correcting my use of outdated and inaccurate military terms but also for your many insights into the mind of a modern soldier. Your generosity of time and experience personify the code of selflessness and sacrifice that distinguishes the men and women who serve our country.
It has been my honor over the years to teach a few dozen young men and women who were current or former members of our military forces. I have read their stories and essays and poems, and many times sat with them as they quietly wept while recounting their experiences. And while I have often disagreed with the policies that send these extraordinary individuals off to war on foreign soil, and with the way they are treated when they return from those wars, my esteem for them is in no way diminished. Most of them leave their homes for service to this country with the noblest and purest of intentions; that they too often return to us with those intentions subverted and scarred only increases my respect for the beauty still intact deep in their hearts and souls. This book is dedicated to every one of them and their colleagues.
Although words and ideas from these individuals have found their way into this novel, the sentiments expressed are mine alone. Those sentiments were formed first as the son of a World War II Marine who, on duty in the South Pacific, never got to see his firstborn son, who passed away before our father could return home; then as a young man who, thanks to the luck of the draw, was awarded, to his relief and disappointment, a draft lottery number of 322 on December 1, 1969, when the jungles of Vietnam were in full flame; then as the friend or acquaintance of young men who came home from Vietnam forever changed, if they came home at all; then as an avid reader of Hemingway, James Jones, Mailer, O’Brien, and Caputo, all once young soldiers too; then as a father blessed with two cherished sons; and, finally, as a teacher of some of the bravest young men and women I have ever known. Thank you all, and God bless you all.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo © 2016 Maddison Hodge
Randall Silvis is the internationally acclaimed author of more than a dozen novels, one story collection, and one book of narrative nonfiction. He is also a prize-winning playwright, a produced screenwriter, and a prolific essayist who has been published and produced in virtually every field and genre of creative writing. His numerous essays, articles, poems, and short stories have appeared in the Discovery Channel magazines, the Writer, Prism International, Short Story International, Manoa, and numerous other online and print magazines. His work has been translated into ten languages.
Silvis’s many literary awards include two writing fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts; the prestigious Drue Heinz Literature Prize; a Fulbright Senior Scholar research award; six fellowships for his fiction, drama, and screenwriting from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts; and an honorary Doctor of Letters degree awarded for “distinguished literary achievement.”
Randall Silvis, Only the Rain
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