A Good Car

by Julia Proud

  * * *

  Sometimes the weather aligns itself to match a person's mood. Other times, it plays tricks and mocks a dreadful and sad occasion with warmth, brilliance, and a peaceful stillness in the gentle winter air.

  "I'm sorry for your loss," was being said countless times, in many voices, in many gazes, and with every gesture.

  But there was no consolation for the father that had just watched his son slowly being lowered into a hole in the frozen, ruthless ground that was then covered by strangers with their old shovels.

  Ed didn't know what to say. He didn't even know why he had showed up at the funeral in the first place.

  That morning he had gone downstairs to that old Ford and tried to start it up again, hoping he could drive it to the South Side Graveyard, where Jake's funeral was being held, and then just leave it there for Mr. Barnes to take it back whenever, if ever. The flivver wouldn't start so he had showed up without it, and without any excuse to be there.

  Ed didn't want the dead kid's car. He didn't want to think about the kid anymore in any way.

  But he was having nightmares about Jake and there was no getting away from those.

  It had been two days since Ed and Mr. Barnes had found Jake's body buried underneath a day's worth of snow, frozen and scathed, staring up at the sky with an empty bottle of hooch in his right hand.

  The cops and Mr. Barnes agreed that the cause of death had been the low temperature coupled with the high amount of alcohol Jake had probably consumed that night. Stuck outside until daylight, the kid just drank himself into a state of stupor and simply hadn't noticed that he was freezing to death.

  What a way to go . . .

  Whenever he closed his eyes, Ed saw Jake's body. In his nightmares, the kid was in Codroipo, just one of the many young soldiers Ed had seen dead there. And it was a race with the rats to get to the bodies first, before the rodents feasted on the dead, before they chewed their faces off.

  And even if they got to the bodies in time, the battle with the rats wasn't over. The 332nd Infantry Regiment of which Ed was a part of, took shifts guarding the bodies from vermin, trying to preserve their fellow soldiers as best they could, until the army could send them off in boxes to travel back to the States, or to France or to other parts of Italy, back home to their families. But not all bodies were friendlies - some were the remains of their enemies. Even after the ceasefire, some guys from Ed's regiment didn't care much for those bodies and didn't bother guarding them, especially in front of the German war prisoners.

  Ed couldn't decide what was worse - being dead or being alive and having to deal with so much death. It intoxicated your flesh with that stench, imbued your spirit with unbelievable fear, and poisoned your youth and future years with the knowledge - the knowledge of how a body decomposes, the knowledge that you had brought death to some of them yourself, that you are capable of such deeds, and that you had gotten a rush after each kill.

  The nightmares had come and stayed with him over the years, ever since Valenti had returned from the Great War - he was only 20 then, barely a man. Now, roughly eight years later, Ed had added another ghost to inhabit his nightmares.

  The birds were chipping and the sun flickered over the sparkling snow mounds scattered over the graveyard, among the gray, desolate tombstones. Ed smiled bitterly and found nature's attitude both amusing and inappropriate, considering the event it was witnessing.

  There were a lot of people there, showing their support for Mr. Barnes; shaking hands, patting his back, whispering soft words of comfort, and lamenting the young age at which Jake had left. Ed wasn't one of those people. He had chosen to stand a few rows away, among the tombstones of strangers, watching the ceremony, unable to pull himself away from the view.

  Mr. Barnes was a wreck. His pale complexion now neared the gray of the gravestones, and those dark circles around his eyes made the old man look like he was going to kick the bucket any time now, and join his son for an early and welcomed reunion.

  Ed felt helpless and lost, and even when Mr. Barnes remained alone, standing by Jake's fresh grave, the Italian didn't move. He didn't approach the old man to offer his condolences. He was stuck.

  After a while, Mr. Barnes turned around to leave and that was when he saw Ed. The old man tipped his hat to Valenti, and started to slowly, but surely walk up to the reluctant man.

  "Thank you for coming," was the polite greeting Mr. Barnes hoarsely voiced as they shook hands.

  Ed was startled by the cold and dry sensation the old man's palm left upon his.

  "I had to, I think…" the Italian uttered uneasily, and he ended the handshake, slipping his shaky hand back into his pocket.

  "You didn't have to. You didn't have to do anything, yet you did - you helped me find him. Thank you, Ed," Mr. Barnes said nodding, and smiling faintly, while a tear lingered stubbornly in his blue, unsettled gaze.

  Mr. Barnes sniffled and looked away, keeping his pale, skinny hands busy with a cigarette that he intended to smoke. Ed stroke a match and helped the old sleuth light up the ciggy.

  Don't thank me. I wasn't enough help. I was too late. Actually, if I hadn't won that damn flivver, your kid would have been able to use it for shelter that night, and he wouldn't have frozen to death.

  Ed wanted to say all that. Ed would have liked to say all that, but he didn't and Mr. Barnes and him stood among those sad looking graves, under that cheerful winter sun, stuck in uncomfortable silence, each absorbed by unwanted, all-consuming emotions that they didn't share. Mr. Barnes drew deeply from his ciggy while Ed sipped moonshine from his silver flask.

  "The damn Tin Lizzie didn't start. It's still in front of my building if you want it," Ed heard himself break the silence.

  Mr. Barnes looked at Ed with his gray eyebrows raised, and he asked without real interest "You can't make it run?"

  Ed shook his head.

  "Neither can I. Only Jake knew how to give it just the right nudge," Mr. Barnes remembered with a lost look settling over his face.

  Valenti didn't know what to say, sure that anything he'd add would be worthless or just wrong, so he didn't say anything.

  After a long moment of silence, Mr. Barnes threw away what little was left of his cigarette and offered Ed his farewell, before swiftly turning around and walking away.

  Ed remained still, unable to do anything other than watch and occasionally drink hooch from his silver flask. He stared at Jake's fresh grave until it started to snow, and a dreadful cold wind was unleashed from the heavens upon the graveyard. The birds had stopped their chirping, and the sun had given up on shinning his warm light upon the cold, unforgiving earth, that embraced the dead, consuming them.

  Finally, Ed was able to move and leave the graveyard - not because he knew where he was going, but simply because he had plenty to run away from.