by Craig Davis
The Wonderful Moments of Youth
Col. Cobb’s head was topped by a magnificent shock of white hair, which is just the right word for it. A startling comb of lustrous white, it stood at attention upon his crown. When faced with this marvel of nature, only one thing could lure Poncey’s eyes away: the luxurious, European-style mustache the Colonel had cultivated all these years as well, also pure white.
Growing up in the house next door, Poncey could not recall his first encounters with Col. Cobb. His earliest memories grew out of the old gentleman rocking on his porch, teaching him to salute and calling him “soldier.” But even before that the Colonel had passed long hours entertaining the tiny lad, squinching his eyes shut, then popping them open with the cry, “Peep eye!” This game never failed to send young Poncey into hysterics. Col. Cobb would grin broadly in return, every wrinkle in his worn face drawing a frame around the glowing smile.
The Colonel spent years as a routine fixture in Poncey’s life, a mundane presence like a street lamp or the kitchen table, until one day when the boy found dozens of people and flags and a rostrum with bunting filling the street out front. All of Skullbone had turned out to honor the ancient warrior’s one hundredth birthday. Magnificent words and praises arose as Col. Cobb sat before everyone in embarrassed silence, and Poncey was duly impressed by the hotdogs and ice cream. At that moment he realized this old man was somebody different, and he gained a new sense of wonder.
“You’re really old,” the child informed the elder.
“Yup, life can be long sometimes,” he replied. “But death is always longer.”
Though he carried a cane – a twisted and knotty length of oak cured black – the Colonel still walked well, only slightly stooped. The way he carried himself even yet reflected the strapping man he had been in his youth. Sharp gray eyes had seen much, peering deep into thoughts and motives, and his tongue never hesitated to make a judgment. Age and arthritis had gnarled his hands, and one usually rested in the other as he sat and considered his world. Most days he wore a button-down shirt and non-descript trousers, and house slippers, all generally some thirty years old, the last clothing that his wife had bought for him.
“My wife died when she was 70,” he told Poncey. “We thought we were old then, but she was just a spring chicken. She’s been dead now almost as long as we were married.” He stared at the street beyond the porch. “I sure miss her.”
A slight twist in the alignment of his nose suggested perhaps a boxing match that had gone badly; high cheek bones were chiseled by the sunken flesh below, and supported well-defined bags under his eyes. His eyebrows grew long and adventurous, several hairs looking like they had struck out to explore his forehead. Yellow teeth clamped down on a beaten and burned pipe, a constant presence whether smoke swirled out of the bowl or not. And then there was that shock of hair.
“What turned your hair white?” Poncey asked one day.
“That’s the question, Soldier,” the Colonel stroked his clean-shaven chin. “Ain’t nothin’ but life. Ain’t nothin’ but life do a thing like that to you.
“It mighta even been all the way back in Wilmington. Wilmington, Delaware, that’s where I started out, a little tyke like you. Dirt poor, we were, but back then so was everyone. That’s just what was expected. Family had a room in a buildin’ made of white stone, so as far as we were concerned, we had it made. Whoo-ee, I still remember that stone,” he whistled through his teeth. “I’d stand there on the stoop and just caress it, read it like Braille. There’s nothin’ like the feel of stone – the rough face of it, the points of beauty sparkling in that weathered toughness. It’s just dirt made hard over the ages, that’s all, the world pressin’ down on it, just like a man.
“Don’t remember the room that well. Forgot everything ’bout it. But the other room, an’ the man in it, him I can’t forget, no matter how I’ve tried. ‘Bogey Man’ they called him. Alfred Fall – dapper guy, in his bowler an’ tie. Just like everyone else. Kidnapped a girl and ate her. One door down the hall.
“Fall, what a piece of work – he liked to write creepy letters to women, threatenin’ things and tellin’ ’em he had taken their children. After they took him out of that house, he wrote to my mother, claimin’ he’d eaten me. Course I was right there, so she didn’t believe it. Still, who does such a thing? She couldn’t sleep a wink that night. We bugged out of that house fast as she could pack us up.
“Cooked and ate a girl. What a thing for a little boy to know – that’s enough to turn anyone’s hair white. ‘The sorrows of death compassed me, an’ the floods of ungodly men made me afraid.’ I don’t think I ever looked at the world the same again, even then.” He glanced around the bland homes of his neighbors. “You never know what’s goin’ on in someone else’s house.”
Rain poured off the eave of the porch roof.
Col. Cobb gripped one arm of his rocker tightly and shifted his weight. He grimaced, and his chair and joints creaked in complaint.
“It’s not that I have anything ’gainst the rain,” he grumbled. “I’ve just seen enough without it fallin’ today.
“We bumped around with no roots a little while. Mama, she kept us alive on just beans an’ popcorn, some days. We’d live outa tents or cabins – I couldn’ta been a happier boy, campin’ every day. She could do anything, my Mama. When we ended up in Dayton, I thought I was in heaven, livin’ in the very same town as the Wright brothers. I spent every day starin’ up in the sky lookin’ for biplanes, expectin’ to see one buzzin’ ’round, but never did. Did see the storms rollin’ in, though, 1913. Gettin’ to be a young man by then, ’bout to turn old.
“That rain fell constant, for days, fillin’ up the rivers. ‘His pavilion round about him was dark waters an’ thick clouds of the skies.’ Dayton’s got four rivers, all four of ’em spreadin’ out over the land. Burst the levees, an’ the town was twenty feet under water. Then the gas lines busted, an’ half the town burnt down. Town’s under water, an’ it burns down.
“Three hundred fifty dead. Dayton, Ohio. I spent the next three weeks lookin’ for my ma. Finally gave up. I still miss her. Whole different world for me after that.”
The day lasted exactly as long as the night. Raindrops pattered against autumn leaves, only in death their true colors revealed. Unrelenting showers finally beat them off the limbs and to the ground, creating a brown mush. The wind took a brisk northerly turn, and dusk hung heavily on the horizon. Gray November mourned the onset of nature’s burial.
“Heya, Soldier, come here – take a look at this. Found this in a box today. They call this the cro-eeks dee grrr.” He opened his hand, holding a faded military ribbon, from it dangling a cross intersected by two swords.
“What’s that on it?” Poncey asked.
“That’s a palm leaf. It means somethin’ – don’t remember what. The French pinned this on me in the Great War. Those French, they love medals.”
“You were in World War I?”
“War to end all wars, they called it, at least for awhile. They were wrong ’bout that – wrong ’bout a lot of things. You ’member me tellin’ you ’bout Dayton? Well, after I lost Ma, I was so mad, I was crazy. Mad at the world, mad at everyone in it – mostly mad at God, for all He’d done to me. Thought He was finished. The war began, and I figured I’d take it out on some Germans. I was crazy, I hated God so much, for everything He’d made me see. I fed on that anger, an’ He made me choke on it.
“I was the longest-servin’ American in the war. As soon as I heard it started – I wanted to get out of Dayton so much, I ran to Canada to sign up. Lied about my age, lied about my citizenship, an’ to be honest, they didn’t check that closely. So I served from beginnin’ to end. I tell you what, they sent me to France with the other guys, an’ that was the biggest mess I ever heard. French an’ Italian gibberish, an’ even the Limeys and Canucks didn’t talk right. They tol’ me I sounded funny. But it was the Ozzies that said the craziest stuff – never did figure out what they were t
alkin’ ’bout. What a mess. I don’t know how anybody knew what was goin’ on, it was such a babblin’ mess. But it’s where I picked up this,” and he stroked the mustache. “Wasn’t a complete loss.”
Poncey decided to learn everything about World War I, but he couldn’t. There was too much to know.
A rush of blackness ascended from the trees, accompanied by an explosion of wings against the air. Hundreds of starlings etched the sky, breaking as one in one direction, then the next, like a foreboding cloud. Col. Cobb started at their sudden flight, and shuddered slightly as they soared overhead and beyond the porch roof.
“Saw those same birds at the Somme. Funny what can set ’em off here, but they’d sit an’ peck on the ground through an artillery barrage there. Guess they got used to it, though I never did. Every time I see those birds take off, I get this creepy feelin’ that they know somethin’ I don’t. Somethin’ even worse than I recall.
“Soldier, the one thing you’ll be happy to remember ’bout your time in the army is your buddies. Sittin’ in trenches and shell holes with other men, you’re all in the same trouble, it pulls you together, like one body. Even if one man dies, the body survives, ’cause of your buddies. Somehow it gives you hope you’ll make it through to the end. Bonds you together like nothin’ else. You pick an’ choose those wonderful moments of youth, like life itself, fleeting youth that makes a man treasure every breath. Simple boys we were, expectin’ sunny picnics, or dances with girls, but thrown together out on the field, we didn’t get even the glory the politicians promised; we just got the blood and gore. Youth poured out on death and survival, an’ glad to be alive. You take what you can get.
“My gang started out in a barracks, then a bunker, then the trenches. When you fight shoulder-to-shoulder in a trench, movin’ a hundred yards forward, then a hundred yards back, you get to know your mates. I would do anything for those guys, give them anything, share my last biscuit with ’em. I remember ’em all – Christy, Lawrence and Winston, Alvin and Buster, Dashiell, and George. George Lawrence Price – never go a day without thinkin’ of him.
“Makin’ friends is dangerous, Soldier. A shell can wipe every trace of a man off the face of the Earth. I saw a man goin’ over the top take a direct hit – nothin’ left but boots, I swear, literally nothin’ but boots left standin’ there twenty feet from me. Hard way to lose a friend. Nothin’ a man can do then but keep his face straight. Keep goin’, an’ count your friends, an’ keep faith with the body.”
The storm droned, a shroud draped upon the town. A bolt of lightning drew a scar across the sky, top to bottom, and thunder lazily followed in the distance. The Colonel pulled his sweater closer to his throat, and lit his pipe again. “I just don’t have much use for the rain. Seen too much of it. Rain changes everything.
“The Germans knew it, the color of that muck. Those gray-green uniforms of theirs melted right into the mud, all that battleground blasted to hell and mixed with rain. You couldn’t see ’em, even when the damn rain stopped, they just blended right in. Sometimes one would die tangled in the barbed wire, and you wouldn’t even know it was a man until you got right up to him, right up in his eyes.”
Suddenly a light blared with a crackle, and the explosion came loud and immediate. Col. Cobb and Poncey both jumped at the thunderclap.
“That was close!” Col. Cobb grinned. “I’d say about a sixteen-incher. I could tell, by war’s end, how big a shell had gone off by how much the ground shook. ‘The Earth shook and trembled; the foundations also of the hills moved and were shaken, because he was angry.’ They fell like hail stones, Soldier, and that pounding went on and on, day and night. Drove some of the boys completely crazy, just plain crazy. The shellin’ turned the landscape into one hole after another, made of mud an’ filled with water. Wounded soldiers would fall in headfirst for cover, then drown in that putrid swamp. We’d be up to our elbows in water, flesh rotting away underneath, and those wretched guys were drownin’. Sometimes we’d wish for a shell to hit, somethin’ to just wipe everything clean.”
A scratchy record played through the front window. Col. Cobb had not changed his music for fifty years, and the album showed it. Somewhere between the snaps and pops a piano played lightly, a gentle minuet. The Colonel closed his eyes and seemed to dream, and Poncey’s mind wandered to other things he could be doing instead. With his eyes still shut, Col. Cobb whispered, “Amazin’ things can be done with a piano, in the right hands. Wonderful things.” Poncey, sitting upon the rail, kicked at the thin air and listened. “You ever seen a piano dropped from a building in a cartoon, Soldier?”
“Yeah, guess so.”
“Well, that’s exactly what it really looks like.”
He let it lay there until Poncey was almost afraid to ask. This conversation had never once crossed his mind. Finally he couldn’t take it any more.
“How do you know?”
“Saw it happen. All the way from the fourth floor.”
Poncey listened.
Col. Cobb opened his eyes. “I wonder if anyone ever played this piece on it,” he mused. “Just before the Somme, some of the fellas broke into a collaborator’s flat in Albert – they don’t say it that way, but it’s just plain Albert. That’s all it boils down to. The man must have been rich, ’cause he had a heck of a nice piano up there. Rich on his German blood money. Goin’ into battle, soldiers don’t tend to be generous-minded. They knocked out the walls and windows overlookin’ the street, and flung that grand piano out like a drunk from a saloon. The sound it made when it hit, that was somethin’, like a whole orchestra, and it raised a cloud of dust like a stampede went through town. The keys flew of into the air, an’ strings stuck out everywhere – looked like a porcupine. Everyone cheered. Then they set it afire – had a big schnitzel roast. What a shame. The things that will make folks cheer, they just defy explanation.
“That was in Albert. What a curse, to live in Albert, right on the front line. The people of that town bought houses an’ raised families, then hell moved next door. By the end that place was not much more than a collection of rubble. One thing happened early on there that haunted us, put a lot of men in a superstitious confusion. I remember it well, the cathedral – a bombshell hit that cathedral and knocked the steeple over. On the top was a huge Madonna, a statue of Mary holding the Christ child up to the heavens. That statue tipped over, but somehow it hung on at the base. There they were, mother and child face down toward the ground, Mary holding out Jesus so He could see it all, He could see what we were doin’, He saw all the bloody atrocity.
“Some of the guys began to think the war would never end as long as that statue was watchin’ us, so they started tryin’ to shoot it down. Take your pot shots, boys, take aim at God Almighty! But there they stayed, mother and child, observin’ everything, judgin’ everyone, but not even blinkin’ at it. I have to say, I got so I couldn’t look at ’em. I wasn’t mad no more, just sick. I couldn’t bear to look, ’cause I knew what He saw. He never did anything ’bout it, ’cause He knew goin’ in. He knew Fall, He knew ’bout that flood, He knew all along.
“Finally it fell. Finally that whole cathedral was reduced to gravel, and the statue stopped accusin’ us. The statue stopped, but not Him.” Col. Cobb sighed.
He turned suddenly agitated. “J’accuse! That’s the only French I learned over there. All the French I needed, in Albert. Saw more than I ever wanted, there in Albert – right on the street, just passin’ by the square. This one poor chap, he’d left his post, never meanin’ any harm, but guilty as sin anyway. I could hear him blubbering as the firin’ squad lined up, an’ his commanding officer talkin’. My heart sank – I never heard anything in the trenches like his sobbing. The officer comforted him, tol’ him that he was givin’ his life for his country just like anyone else. He stood there shakin’, his whole body shakin’ out of control with fear, an’ I heard the officer blame it on the cold mist. There weren’t no mist. Some are weak, he says, and the man’s sacrifi
ce would make others stronger in doin’ their duty. He tells the man he’d sinned, against his king and countrymen, an’ the poor blighter nodded. He was spillin’ his blood for England, the officer said, just as much as some great patriot. His example would help win the war for jolly ol’ England.
“He didn’t die like in the movies. He didn’t hesitate on his feet an’ dramatically drape his body over the ground. He fell like a sack of sticks, a crumpled mess of useless waste. Somethin’ wrong with what a country thinks it can take from a man, leave him less than a slaughtered animal. I watched that officer walk away after the volley went off, an’ he was the one shakin’ then. It wasn’t ’cause of no mist, either.
“The things a nation does to buy and sell men’s souls. Does He not see?
“What the officer didn’t tell the poor guy was, not one of those men’s lives left in the ground meant a damn thing.
“More than a million killed at the Somme, more than a million all told. An’ for what? A million men traded for five miles of mud – mud and wire and corpses.”
The Colonel leaned back in his chair, his temper spent. “Happiness is like a sneeze in this world. But sometimes you’ll see somethin’ that turns your head. That first Christmas, all the troops called a one-day truce. All the shells stopped fallin’, an’ guys lit their cigarettes out in the open, not even cuppin’ ’em in their hands. Suddenly I could see heads bobbin’ up from out of trenches, across no-man’s-land, an’ voices singin’. Just a few months before I’d wanted to kill ’em so bad – I caught myself joinin’ in on ‘O Tannenbaum.’ Then Jerries came climbin’ out of trenches like clowns in a circus, callin’ out ‘Christus! Christus!’ Guys on our side started poppin’ out, too, the French an’ English, even my own Canadians, an’ gathered ’round with ’em. We slapped backs an’ passed ’round gifts – nothin’ more than a swallow of wine, or a picture from a magazine. But we shook hands and celebrated our Savior. Then the next day, we went back to blowin’ each other up.
“Headquarters sure didn’t take to that, once they heard. ‘Fraternizin’’ they called it, an’ strictly forbid it from then on. Nations don’t know what’s in a man, they only know how to use ’em, how to enslave ’em. They wanted us to stay crammed into those trenches. ‘The foreigners shall submit themselves unto me; the foreigners shall fade away, and be afraid out of their close places.’ Nations always stealin’ what doesn’t belong to ’em, then sellin’ it back at their own price, from Babylon on down.”
The Colonel began to look more haggard, and many days patches of white stubble jutted from his chin. Newspapers piled up by his door, ignored even as he shuffled to his rocker in the morning. A sprinkle made puddles glisten with rippling rings, and the sun struggled to break through the light overcast. Col. Cobb tried to warm his hands around the bowl of his pipe, long after the glow had gone out.
“Look here at what I found, Soldier,” he said. “I believe this is my wife. I carried this photograph all through the war, before we even got hitched up. See how serious she looks? Folks didn’t realize yet they could smile for pictures. I looked at her face every day, memorized it. Then when I got home, I didn’t recognize her there in the train station. I didn’t remember what she looked like. I remembered her picture, but not what she really looked like.”
He set the little frame upon the window sill. Rocking slightly, he scanned the sky hoping for some hint of light; the clouds seemed to gather thicker. An awkward silence grew longer.
“Because it took upwards of a minute to take a picture,” Poncey offered.
“What?”
“That’s why your wife looks serious, so her expression wouldn’t change.”
“Yes – yes, that’s right,” the Colonel stumbled. “But cameras improved by the war. Then folks could smile, if they’d wanted to.
“Amazin’ what folks can invent. The main change back then was cars replacin’ horses. An’ tanks! Those clatterin’ junk heaps! They looked like sardine tins, an’ they fought about as well. Monsters, awful monsters, while a horse is a thing of beauty. The first one I ever saw was a can with a door on each side. Gunners leaned out the doors and fired away with machine guns. Great idea, but funny how men can turn any idea into a horrible mistake.
“The strategy was to drive ’em over the top of a trench, straddle it an’ enfilade down both sides. Like shootin’ fish in a barrel. Them machine guns had a crank like a meat grinder, turnin’ men into hamburger. Fine plan, if you’re on the right trench. But one of our own tanks stopped right over where we were gathered. Those gun barrels turned and turned, round after round pumped into our own troops. I was directly below the beast, right under its belly, beatin’ on it with my rifle, screamin’ for ’em to stop, screamin’ and cursin’ them to hell, and me as well, at that moment I’d have rather been in hell itself. The bloody carnage ’round me, men fallin’ all over themselves to escape, trippin’ over dead mates. Inside the tank the men couldn’t hear anything, none of my vain pounding. They didn’t stop until they ran out of targets, and only then they realized. Finally they realized. How does a man live with such a thing?”
Col. Cobb took a breath. “Monsters. But a horse is a work of art.
“We tried to bury ’em all in the walls. Like usual, we just tried to bury ’em in the walls – all the room under the floor was filled. Seemed like we could never dig deep enough. Arms and legs – the bodies that still had ’em – never did stay buried, always danglin’ out again. One trench had an arm stickin’ out, an’ we’d pass by and shake its hand, ‘G’day, mate!’ an’ walk on. The things your mind will do to survive. An’ the boards under our feet would shift and rock, like we were walkin’ over barrels. The bones underneath pushed back against the boards, an’ every day we were walkin’ on our brothers. Then the rains came again.
“There is no hell worse than the rain. Up to our ankles, up to our knees the water rose, and washed away our walls until empty faces stared out at us. An’ the mud seeped up through the floor, washed with putrid flesh, mixed with blood and brains. The horrid smell, I still smell it, it clogged my nose, day and night no way to escape that smell. Where’s my pipe? Hand me that lighter, Soldier. An’ the rats ran across our faces at night, an’ the flies tormented us through the day, an’ every single man had dysentery. An’ the rain kept fallin’, kept fallin’ like tears.
“One day a fella brought a kit bag packed with baguettes. He’d been in town, a town called Albert – that ain’t the way they say it – and found a baker, and bought up all her loaves. Like a good fella, he was bringin’ ’em back to his buddies, but he caught a bullet right at the edge of the trench. He fell forward, an’ all the baguettes spilled out among us. He gave his life for a single good deed. We were standing in at least a foot of water, our feet rotting, an’ the bread hit it an’ floated like little battleships down the trench. ‘Then the channels of waters were seen, and the foundations of the world were laid bare at thy rebuke, O Lord.’ To a man, every soldier picked a baguette out of the muck as it passed by, an’ ate it down, glad to have it. May that man’s blessin’ to us be returned upon him. For all the waste and decay within that water, every loaf was eaten, an’ we were glad to have it.
“We just wanted it to stop. Just wanted a bite of bread not tainted with mud an’ guts. All most folks ever want is just to see a moment of grace.”
He stared blankly for a while, then turned his attention to the photograph again. “I think that’s my wife.”
The next time Poncey stopped over, the little picture frame was still on the window ledge. He began to spend less time with the Colonel, being drawn away by teen-age interests, and then even less still. He had nothing left to gain from the old man’s fractured memory, and had graduated into work and life, the sense of purpose that stultifies adults. Middle school morphed into high school, and serious avenues of study took the place of a worn out soldier’s reminiscing. And Col. Cobb appeared less often upon his porch as the years passed, as well. Occasionally the old m
an would come up in Poncey’s friends’ talk, usually as “Col. Cobbweb,” and Poncey wasn’t particularly shy about joining in the joke.
Random jobs and scattered interests dominated Poncey’s time. His focus bounced from girls to nature to football to anything else that came up, anything that might enhance his status. He was baptized into the world’s indifference with each attempt at a new aspiration. Each campaign fell into the mire of fleeting opportunity, and his memory of the old days with Col. Cobb faded.
Poncey’s best chance to leave a mark on history came on the football field, an important game late in the season. A steady autumn shower drew a curtain across the field, and four points separated the two teams. On defense, Poncey steeled himself to protect the lead. The opponent was ranked first in the state, and Poncey’s team was supposed to lose, to not even make a game of it. The final seconds ticked, and Poncey dug his cleats into the mud, determined to defend his ground. He led the squad in sacks that season, and stopping this final play would secure his team’s victory.
The quarterback dropped back to pass, and Poncey bounced off a couple of linemen. His feet churned through the muck, splaying water at each step. The ball rose above the quarterback’s head, lifted in his hand like a royal orb, and he scrambled to break clear. Poncey’s eye met the ball, like the first gaze of two lovers across a room, and they caressed each other with knowing scrutiny. The seconds extended into minutes and years as Poncey slid and skidded toward his target. His outstretched hands grasped for the quarterback’s jersey as the saturated ground mocked his cleats. He felt himself falling forward in slow motion, his eye following the arc of the football – and the football staring back – as it left the quarterback’s hand. Poncey fell face flat into the mud and did not move as the No. 1 team in the state celebrated a Hail Mary reception, a miraculous comeback victory.
For every victor there is at least one vanquished. Poncey felt like life had led him blindly through its mine field. Still, he remained convinced that one day he would take a grand place in the scheme of things, and set about to serve that purpose by serving only his own ambitions. But Col. Cobb lived just next door, so there were still times when Poncey felt obligated to pay his respects.
The elements had left the little frame dirty and tarnished. The newspaper had been stopped, and a granddaughter, elderly herself, received all the Colonel’s mail, so the house looked abandoned. Poncey tapped gently on the storm door, and leaned in close with his ear, trying to detect movement inside. Eventually the interior door swung open, and through the screen a frail face with glistening white hair appeared, but the magnificent mustache had been trimmed to a scruffy stubble by an ambivalent caretaker.
“Hello, Colonel, how are you?”
The Colonel peered at him. “George?” His expression brightened as he gingerly stepped outside.
“George Price! Why are you here? I haven’t seen you since your funeral!”
“I’m Poncey.”
“I thought I’d never see you again! What a surprise! Never a day goes by that I don’t think of you, George. I went to your service all the way up in Canada – since you died in my arms, I thought I might help your family. It was a beautiful service – they gave you full military honors. But your family was too crushed, George, your mother’s and sisters’ hearts just broke to pieces. They couldn’t stay through the service; they couldn’t even meet me. I’m sorry, George, I couldn’t say anything.
“I remember, George, I’ve never forgotten that moment. Just two minutes before the Armistice, too. I never understood why that man pulled the trigger.
“Remember walkin’ through that Belgian town that mornin’, George, remember? Just waitin’ for the Armistice, eleven o’clock, an’ then you caught the bullet. You were tellin’ me ’bout Nova Scotia, how happy you’d be to see the bays an’ inlets again, an’ then that sniper fired. Hit you right in the heart. Your face just went pale, right in the middle of a word, an’ your blood splattered me – for all I had seen, it was your blood stained me most. Why did he pull that trigger, George, with two minutes to go? I never could figure that. Why has the world gone so wrong, George? Is there any place to find hope for this world? ‘He hath torn, and he will heal us; he hath smitten, and he will bind us up.’”
Poncey wasn’t sure what to make of this, but he felt a part of both his past and his future slip away. After that day he made himself scarce. Word got around eventually that the granddaughter had moved the Colonel into a nursing home in Jackson, and a “for sale” sign appeared shortly in front of the house. When the rains fell Poncey would remember something the Colonel had said at some time or other, and the smell of a pipe always brought him back to that porch. One day that summer his mother drew him aside after church.
“I talked with Edna Muriel today. The doctors say her grandfather is near to death.”
“Who?”
“Col. Cobb. You used to be so close to him.”
“Is he really?”
“Yes, he’s stopped takin’ water. She tells me he sleeps ’most all the time now. He may have only a few more days.”
“That’s too bad.”
“Maybe you should go see him – you two used to be so close.”
“Maybe.”
Poncey timidly edged the door open and crept into the room. The furnishings were spare: a dresser, a chair, a bed. Col. Cobb lay under his sheet, on his side with both knees drawn up, looking bare and frail, the splendor of his white hair and mustache now reduced to a scraggly imitation. Poncey walked lightly around the foot of the bed to better see his old friend; unexpectedly he awoke, and looked up with bright eyes that Poncey recognized. “Oh, hi Soldier,” he said in the same way he might have upon his porch years ago, as though he had forgotten to not remember. Within a time and space somewhere between sleep and waking, for a fleeting moment the Colonel dwelt in dream shadows of reality. But then the glaze returned, and he sat up like a shriveled toddler, gazing beyond Poncey in utter silence, before lying back upon his bed and sleeping again for one more week.
