by Dean Hughes
“That’s how I’ve got to look at life, Wally. I’ve got Anna and Gene now. How can I worry about things that are all in the past?”
“But some things don’t go away just because you tell them to. My war was all about surviving. And I saw a lot of death around me. But I didn’t have to go into battle.”
Alex looked into Wally’s eyes for a moment, liked the understanding, but he didn’t want to talk anymore. “Well, anyway,” he said, “I need to get moving ahead. Why don’t you give me something to do.”
“But sooner or later we need to talk some more, Alex. There are lots of things I’ve never told anyone, and it might be good to get some of that stuff off my chest. Maybe it’s the same for you.”
“That might be good, Wally. I’ve been trying not to say anything. But that might be good—you know, some time.”
“All right.” Wally grinned. “But not on Dad’s time.”
And so the brothers got busy. They spent all day together, and the truth was, Alex did feel better about the work by the end of the day. There was a lot to do, tracking orders and scheduling production, and it would occupy him, fill his head. On the way home, in the old Ford his dad had lent him and Anna, he told himself he could get through the summer just fine. What pleased him most was that he had enjoyed the time with Wally, finally in a situation where there was no competition. And that bit of shared understanding had been surprisingly comforting.
He found Anna in the kitchen. The house was full of the smell of baking bread and frying chicken. “I’m trying to be an American cook,” she told Alex. “I wanted to have something nice for you at the end of your first day at work.”
Alex walked up behind her, took hold of her shoulders and turned her around, away from the stove. He kissed her
and said, “Now that is my idea of something nice for me.”
“Ooh. That’s something nice for me, too. It’s so fun to have you here. This is what we’ve been waiting for, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is.” Alex knew he had been entirely too somber over the weekend. He couldn’t be like that all the time. He kissed her again, and then he laughed. “We need to make up for all those kisses we’ve missed the last couple of years.”
“Good idea.” But this time she only gave him a little peck and then turned back toward the stove.
Gene had been playing on the kitchen floor nearby. He came to Alex now, stood and looked up at him. Alex picked him up, and Gene smiled. On Sunday afternoon Alex had held Gene on his lap and read some storybooks, but this was the first time that the little boy had initiated a connection between them, and Alex loved it. “How about a big kiss for Daddy?”
Gene wrapped his arms around Alex’s neck, and he pressed his lips hard against his cheek. Then Alex hugged him tight. A few seconds later Gene squirmed and wanted down, but Alex felt that they had broken the ice a little. And Anna was especially pleased. “We love Daddy, don’t we, Geney?” she said.
Gene was already busy with a metal dump truck and some wooden blocks. The boy was full of energy, always moving about the house like a windup toy, never settled in any one spot for very long. Alex wasn’t used to such perpetual noise—or all the messes a little child could make.
Alex looked over Anna’s shoulder at the frying chicken, took hold of her again. “So how was work?” she asked.
“Fine. Wally’s trying to show me the ropes.”
“The ropes?”
Alex laughed. “That just means ‘show me how things are.’”
“Why ropes? What does it mean?”
“Actually, I don’t know. But he’s teaching me my duties, and he’s a lot of help. You know, I like Wally. It’s hard to think of him as the same kid I knew back before he left for the service.”
“Is he still going to move over to the car place?”
“I don’t know what they’re going to do about that. I’m sure Dad is hoping I’ll like the plant this time around—or at least the money—and stay.”
“Is that possible?”
“Do you wish it were?”
“No. I just wondered.”
Something hit the kitchen cabinets with a crack, and Alex turned from Anna to see that Gene had thrown a wooden block. He was standing now, smiling, as though he knew he had done something bad—and was proud of it.
“Gene,” Anna said, “what has Mommy told you? We don’t throw things. No, no.”
Gene bent and picked up another block. He waited, as though wanting to get the full reaction, and then he threw it. The block struck the oven and then clattered onto the linoleum floor. Gene laughed.
“Son, that’s enough of that,” Alex said. He wasn’t sure how much Gene understood sometimes—in either language—but the boy certainly knew he was being told to stop.
Slowly, Gene bent again, but this time Anna walked to him and took the block from his hand. “Mama is going to put your blocks away. You can’t play with them if you throw them.”
She began to gather up the blocks, dropping them into the little box she stored them in, but Gene set off a howl in response. Alex had still not gotten used to the volume of his shrieks.
“All right then,” Anna said. “If you want to play with them, don’t throw them.” She set the box in front of him, and his screaming stopped instantly.
Alex wondered whether that was the right approach. Maybe she should have put the blocks away and let Gene learn his lesson. But Gene plopped down on the floor again and began to push his truck, seemingly uninterested in the blocks he had just screamed about. Alex said to Anna, “So what’s been going on around here today?”
“I’ve tried to get some washing done, but Gene keeps me going. He didn’t want to take a nap today. And then, when I finally got him down, he didn’t sleep very long. That boy just never stops.”
“Don’t you need to have a set time for naps—and just keep the same schedule every day?”
Anna turned back around to look at Alex. “That’s easy to say, but a one-year-old has a mind of his own—especially that boy of yours.”
Alex had been a little annoyed in the evenings that Anna seemed to let Gene stay up so late. He remembered in his own family that children all had to go to bed at eight whether they wanted to or not. “My parents were always pretty strict about things like that. Kids have to know you mean it. I think I would have taken those blocks away, after he threw them, and not given in just because he started to scream.”
“Well, then, why didn’t you do it?”
Alex heard the flash of anger, and that was something he had never experienced from Anna before. “I’m sorry, Anna,”
he said. “I don’t mean to come in and start telling you how to do things. You’ve had to raise him by yourself up until now, and you’ve done a great job.”
But Anna was turning the chicken in the frying pan now, looking away from Alex, and she didn’t respond.
“Really, Anna. I’m sorry.”
“Alex, I try to do my best, but maybe I don’t do it right.”
“No, no. I’m sure you do. What do I know about raising kids?”
Alex walked to the kitchen table and sat down. He didn’t want this. He just wanted to relax and have some time with Anna. But now Gene was running his truck up against the corner of the cabinet, banging it over and over. It seemed such a stupid thing to do. “Gene, don’t do that,” he said. “You’ll scuff up the cabinets.”
Gene didn’t even seem to hear. He simply continued the rhythmic banging of the truck against the wood corner. Alex knew he couldn’t push things too far right now, not with Anna already upset, so he got up and walked to Gene, bent down and put his hand on the truck. “Gene,” he said, in a careful, patient tone, “don’t hit the cabinet. All right? No, no.”
But Gene grabbed the truck with both hands, and he pushed it with all his force. The thrust took Alex by surprise. The truck slipped under his hand and banged into the cabinet again. “Gene!” Alex said, his voice suddenly hard. “No, no!”
Gene
let out a scream and jumped up. Then he rushed to his mother. He was crying furiously, as though he had been struck. Anna reached down and picked him up. “Daddy told you not to do that. You mustn’t do it.” But she was folding him into her arms, giving him the love he wanted, and Alex could only think what Gene was thinking—that his mother had to protect him from this evil “Daddy” who had come into his life.
Alex walked to the two of them. He patted Gene on the back. “Daddy loves you,” he said, but Gene howled all
the louder, held to his mom.
“You have to do what Daddy tells you,” Anna said, but she was cooing this into his ear, all the while patting his back.
“I don’t want him to think you love him and I don’t,” Alex said. “All I did was tell him to stop doing that.”
“It’s just a little difficult for him right now,” Anna said. “He has to get used to you.”
Alex nodded, but he stood stiff, afraid to touch either one of them. And during dinner, when Gene wouldn’t eat, when he rubbed his food onto his shirt and dropped peas onto the floor, Alex didn’t dare say anything about that either. Anna hardly seemed to notice as she questioned Alex about his day, and then, when eight o’clock came, she didn’t put Gene to bed even though he was obviously getting tired and fussy. Alex didn’t dare create problems again, but he wanted some quiet. He had waited all these years for this time with Anna, and now they could hardly talk with Gene demanding his mother’s attention every second. Alex offered to read him a story for bedtime, but Gene took the book to his mother. Alex finally gave up and read the evening newspaper. By the time Anna got Gene to settle down, it was almost nine-thirty, and at that point, Anna told Alex, “I’m so tired. Do you care if I go to bed early?”
Alex did care, but he said he didn’t. And then he talked to himself, admitted that family life was complicated, and he should have known that, with all his little brothers and sisters. He knew it was stupid to let a one-year-old, just a baby, feel like a rival, but the boy did seem to know what he was up to. He wanted his mother’s full attention, wanted to keep Alex away from her—and he was good at it. It was hard not to feel like the odd man out.
On the following day at work, Wally gave Alex more paperwork to handle, and Alex was glad for the sense of busyness it created. He sat at his desk, aware that he ought to ask certain questions, but he worked his way through the forms on his own anyway. Mom came in and chatted with him for a few minutes, and she explained certain parts of the papers better than Wally had, which helped, but she also—like everyone else—wanted to know how he liked being there. Alex told her with manufactured enthusiasm that he was happy to be “back in the harness.”
“So what does Gene think about having a daddy around the house?” she asked.
Alex was tempted to talk to her about that, get her opinion on handling the situation, but he didn’t want to hint that he had a problem, and so he merely laughed and said, “All in all, I think he wishes I’d stayed in Germany.”
“That’s only natural, Alex. I’m sure he’s pretty jealous of you getting so much attention from his mother. It’s going to take him a while to get used to that.”
“What attention?” Alex wondered, but he wasn’t about to say that. Instead, he passed off the whole matter, and then he put his mind back to the task at hand—the paperwork.
Later that morning Wally called Alex to a meeting of department heads. Wally explained to everyone that Alex would be helping out for a few months, looking after “some aspects of production.” Alex actually had a lot of questions, but he kept his mouth shut. He didn’t want to slow down the meeting, and he didn’t want the department heads to know how little he really understood about the way the operation ran now. He knew a few of the men who worked out on the line, but he knew no one in this meeting.
Alex had learned the day before that Wally and Richard often ate lunch together. It took too long to leave the plant to eat out, so they both usually brought a sandwich with them. This morning Alex had packed his own little lunch—stuck some of Anna’s leftover fried chicken in a sack, along with a carrot and an apple. He actually planned to eat in his office, but Wally came by and said, “Why don’t you walk over to Richard’s office with me? We can eat lunch together and talk about a few things you two will end up working on together.”
So Alex grabbed his sack lunch and walked with Wally down the hall. They found Richard bent over his desk, about the way Alex had been all morning, studying some sort of correspondence. “Oh, I’m glad to see you, Wally,” he said. “I can’t make heads or tails out of some of these Bendix letters. I swear, all I end up doing around here is shuffling paper.”
Alex didn’t feel that he had much sense of who Richard was. He was congenial but reserved. So far, Alex had the impression that Richard thought a great deal but rarely expressed those thoughts. That made for an intriguing combination, but it also made Alex a little nervous.
“So, Alex, how is it to be back?” Richard asked now.
Same question. “Fine. But everything has changed here at the plant, and I feel pretty stupid.”
“Well, that’s good to hear. I don’t want to be the only stupid one.” He smiled, and Alex was reminded of why Bobbi had fallen for him. He certainly was a good-looking man.
For the next ten minutes all the talk was between Richard and Wally. Richard had questions, and the two pored over a letter Richard had received. Alex had stolen one corner of Richard’s old wooden desk—a relic from the early days—and had unfolded his waxed paper on it, with his chicken. He knew he ought to listen to the discussion, to pick up things he would need to know, but he couldn’t get himself to concentrate on what they were saying. He was wishing that the afternoon would pass quickly and he could go home. He wanted to try harder tonight, to spend more time with Gene and see whether he couldn’t start to break down some of the resistance he was getting.
And then Dad appeared at the office door. “So this is where you guys are all hiding out,” he said. “There for a minute, I thought you had all gone to a picture show.”
“What’s playing? We might,” Wally said, and everyone laughed, but Alex thought he saw Richard retreat just a little. He got out his lunch, and he let Wally do the talking. Wally chatted with his dad about meeting the next deadline, about problems with shipping that Richard must have known first-hand.
“Well, we’ll be all right,” Dad told the three of them, finally. “We’ve still got ten days or so, and they know, back in the main office, that they didn’t get their specs to us on time. If we’re late, it’s their fault, not ours.”
“I just like to keep up our reputation for always shipping on time,” Wally said.
Alex thought of the Wally he had known long ago, the teenager who rarely did much of anything on time, who thought the main meaning of life could be found on the dance floor.
“I agree,” Dad said. “I’m glad you boys feel the same way.” Dad glanced at Alex, then seemed to think better of questioning him. Instead he said, “Say, boys, while I’ve got you all here, I want to ask a favor. I know this thing is pretty far off, but I have to give an answer right away. Some people in the Republican party know that all three of you returned from
the war and all have interesting experiences to relate, and they wanted you to share the time at a dinner we hold every spring—be the main speakers. It won’t be until next May, but would it be all right if I go ahead and tell them you’ll do that?”
“What would we talk about?” Wally asked.
“Well, it’s one of those patriotic things. You could tell them what it feels like to come back to your home after serving your country—you know, that sort of thing. A lot of people are interested to know what it was like in prison camp, and Richard, you were in the Pacific, Alex in Europe. There’s a lot you could say, but I’d just talk about your feelings about the country, more than anything.”
“Dad, I think I’d rather not,” Alex said. “I love my country, but I don’t have anything
new to say about that.”
“Talk about Germany before and after the war. People would find that very interesting. You saw more of that than anyone.”
But that’s not what people wanted to hear, and Alex knew it. They wanted war stories.
“Well, listen, you don’t have to give me an answer right this minute. Think it over. I have a meeting next week, and I do need an answer by then. I just think it’s a real honor that they would think of you.” He hesitated, looking at Alex. “I already told them that you don’t want a lot of talk about being a hero. You are a hero, as far as I’m concerned, but I understand that you don’t want a lot made of that.”
Dad still didn’t understand. He thought that Alex was only trying to be modest.
“Well, listen, I have to run,” Dad said before anyone could respond. “But it would mean a lot to me if you boys would do that. So don’t be too quick to say no. I respect the fact that all three of you don’t like to pound your own chests, but you wouldn’t have to do that. Anything you said would really please these people. They respect what you did—all three of you.”
Dad left, and Alex ducked his head. He didn’t want to give any speeches, but he didn’t want to be the one to say so. He hoped Wally and Richard might feel the same way.
“What do you think?” Wally asked.
Alex waited for Richard to respond, but when he didn’t, Alex finally said, “You know how they’re going to introduce us—no matter what Dad says. And you know how I feel about that.”
Richard was sitting across from Alex. He spoke softly. “Why does it bother you to be called a hero, Alex? You’re the one who came home with a Distinguished Service Medal and a Silver Star.”
Alex didn’t want to talk about this. “Medals are more about politics than heroism; you know that.”
“Sometimes they are. Sometimes, not.”
“Well, I’m not a hero. I was actually a pretty sorry excuse for a soldier, if you want to know the truth. What I want more than anything is to forget that the war ever happened.”
