SUMMER, 1955
We sat at the end of the dock, my father and me. Early morning fog hovered over Chippewa Lake, so thick I couldn’t see to the other side. As far as I could tell we were the only two awake out of all the people in Fort Colson. It wouldn’t have surprised me to learn that we were the first up in the whole state of Michigan.
My father was having a good day, I’d known from the moment I came out of my bedroom. For one, he smiled as soon as he saw me. For two, he asked if I wanted to sit on the dock with him. Last, he’d poured two cups of coffee, his black and mine mostly milk and sugar.
“Don’t tell your mother,” he’d whispered, his voice soft and deep, his dark eyes full of mischief. “Promise? She wouldn’t approve of a six-year-old drinking coffee. She’ll worry that it’ll stunt your growth.”
“Will it?” I had asked, pushing my cat-eye glasses up the bridge of my nose.
Loose shoulders, easy smile, teasing words, sparkle in the corner of his eyes. He was having a good day, all right.
Good days didn’t come along very often for him, not since Korea.
Melancholy was what my mother called it. When I asked her what that word meant, she told me it was a longer word for sad. When I asked why my father was sad, she told me that war made people that way. When I asked her how war did that, she told me I’d understand when I got older.
It little mattered that morning, though. I was beside my father, sitting Indian style on the dock and listening to the loons call to each other. Their trilling and yodeling filled the air, echoing off the trees that lined the shores of the lake.
“You know what she’s saying?” my father asked.
I shook my head.
“She’s calling out to another loon. Maybe her mate, maybe her chick. Either way, the other has strayed off and she’s searching for him.” He sipped his coffee. “She says, ‘Hey, where are you?’ Then the other one answers, ‘Don’t worry. I’m right over here.’”
“Then they find each other?”
He nodded, looking out into the first-of-the-morning fog.
“Dad?” I whispered.
“Annie.”
“What if the lost one doesn’t call back?”
He hesitated, nodding his head and pushing his lips together the way he did when he was thinking.
“Well, I suppose the first one yodels out louder, ‘You get back here, you loon!’”
I laughed and he smiled and I thought I saw a glimpse of how I imagined he’d been before the war. I’d been too small then. I couldn’t remember.
We sat in the quiet a few minutes longer, the loons still calling back and forth through the fog that thinned as the sun brightened, burning it away. We drank our coffees, the bitterness of mine cutting through the milk and sugar just enough so I’d know it was there.
That night, while the rest of us slept, my father packed a few of his things and drove away in his Chevy pickup truck. I waited for him the rest of that week, sitting alone on the dock with my feet dangling over the edge, toes disturbing the stillness of the water. He hadn’t left a note, and I was sure he’d come back any minute. I wanted to be there when he did.
The next Wednesday his letter came with no return address.
Gloria, I can’t be who you need me to be, it read. I have to see if I can walk off the war. Tell the kids I’m sorry. —Frank
After that I stopped waiting for him. We all did. It was easier that way.