From the Arch garage, Gabriel drove north on I-70 and exited at Riverview Boulevard, where the highway turned, and continued north, moving eventually onto Lewis & Clark Boulevard at the city limits. Within another ten minutes he was pulling into the plowed parking lot of the St. Louis Veterans Home.
“Merry Christmas!” This from a young woman, high school age, at the reception.
Men were already moving toward the dining room. Some ably, some with canes or walkers, some in motorized wheelchairs. Some were not much older than himself. He joined them as they cajoled the slow movers down the hallway.
Gabriel found his father sitting ramrod straight at a table by himself, coffee-skinned and bespectacled, his walker, yellow tennis balls on its feet, behind him. Despite the overheated room he wore a blue cardigan sweater over a white cotton turtleneck. Even at eighty-five, he still had the hard glint in his eye.
“Keep your knife out,” he had told his son more than once. “Then no one will mess with you.” It worked for him. The other vets settled in at nearby tables allowing Sergeant Samuel Gabriel the dubious pleasure of his own company.
“Hey, Dad! Merry Christmas.”
The old man lifted his chin in mute reply. Gabriel sat.
He brought his father up-to-date on Tim and his great-grandchildren as the meal was served: passable turkey and stuffing along with canned cranberry sauce, grayish green beans, and pecan pie. His father listened without comment and, when Gabriel had finished his report, changed the subject to football.
“The Rams don’t look so good. They used to have some players. Marshall Faulk. Isaac Bruce. Now just ballerinas and fat boys. And they won’t let them play, won’t let them hit.”
He had been delighted when the team moved from Los Angeles to St. Louis in 1995. He had been a Rams fan in the ’50s and ’60s when he spent time in California as he shuffled back and forth to Korea and Vietnam.
“You got the book I sent?”
“‘NFL’s Greatest Players.’ You would have made a tight end, son.”
“I know.”
“You had the hands and the height.”
“They didn’t have football at Saint Louis U., remember? It was roundball that paid my way.”
“Still.…”
They stayed put as the others finished their dinners and moved off to the TV room and the card room. Soon Gabriel and his father were alone except for two women busing away the dishes. The old man told them to leave Gabriel’s pecan pie, which he hadn’t touched.
His father had not changed much with age, at least physically. He’d put on a few pounds and lost what minimal hair he’d had. His face sagged yet remained largely unlined. Even though his legs were shot he maintained his broad chest and powerful arms, using hand weights that he kept under his bed. Even now Gabriel figured his father could still take him at arm wrestling.
“Ollie Matson.”
“Huh?”
“Now there was a football player. Long before he played for the Cardinals and Rams, I saw him play at University of San Francisco when I was waiting to go to Korea. That was nineteen and fifty-one. They were undefeated but got no bowl game because Ollie was colored.”
Gabriel tilted his head. “Lots of changes since then.”
His father cast him a glance. “At first we had our own units. Then the Army disbanded the 24th Infantry Regiment, so we all fought and died together. Same in Vietnam.”
This was one of the mental changes: Now he talked about the past and about the wars. He had refused to when Gabriel was growing up. He would be gone for months or a year at a time then show up unannounced and suddenly be part of the family again. No, not part of the family but a haunting presence in their home, moving about like a sleepwalker, as if in a trance. Quick to correct any misdeed or mistake and quick to anger, as if a caricature of a drill sergeant. Gabriel had avoided him as best he could. And always, when they saw him off at Union Station, the old man would kiss his wife and daughters goodbye then turn to his only son. “My eye is on you, boy,” he’d say. Then he’d shake his hand, lift his olive-drab duffle bag to his shoulder, and step aboard the train.
“In Korea we had men, men who’d fought in World War II. In Vietnam it was different. Young fools right out of college or high school. You had to kick their butts to keep them alive.”
A philosophy that Samuel Gabriel had also applied to his own son: hard love, with only the hard part apparent to a child. It had always been a shock to young Carlo when his father appeared and took charge after being feted and pampered for months by his mom, who, like most Mexican mothers, treated her son like Christ Almighty. It was why—in addition to Gabriel’s skin color, which was a notch closer to his mom’s light bronze than his dad’s brown—that as a boy he identified more with her and clung to her.
But for all his parents’ seeming differences, they displayed only affection for one another with nary a caustic word between them, at least not in front of the children. They had met at the Fairmount Park racetrack across the river from St. Louis, where her father trained horses, when Samuel Gabriel was stationed in nearby Granite City. Love at first sight that never wavered.
“You did a good job of that, Dad, with your men.” And maybe even with his son.
“You have to fight the good fight to make your way. Be smart. Give it all you got. You making your way now, son? Or are they still messing with you?”
“Doing okay. Hoping to be back downtown soon.”
His father snorted. “You did right. You were taking care of your people. Civilians don’t understand.”
“No, they don’t.”
“Your men are your family. You’re responsible. You take care of your people. That’s why they call it service. Nothing wrong in serving. You don’t forget that, Carlo.”
His father, nonetheless, seemed to forget that Carlo was almost fifty-five and not fifteen.
“Yes, sir. I won’t.”