“I never remember my dreams but this one Joe Sweeney was in, which is strange. I don’t remember my dreams usually, I don’t know, I mean I’m sure I have but I don’t know if I ever dreamt about him before. I must have, right? If I did, it must have been years ago, right around the time we split up. We were still in Jackson then and you were.”
“Mom, okay, get on with it.”
“All right so anyway so he’s standing outside on the front porch and it’s cold out, below zero, and it starts snowing, and he’s just... standing there. And the snow starts piling up on his shoulders and on the top of his head and I open the door and I say Why don’t you come inside Joe? It’s friendly, I think, my tone. And he shakes his head.”
“Do you remember did he look at you?”
“No I don’t think he did. I’m pretty sure he was staring straight ahead. So I go back to doing whatever I’m doing and the storm gets worse until it’s a blizzard and I go back and look out the window and there’s Joe Sweeney still standing there. I think it’s even dark by now, so I open the door and everything’s just, you know how it is during a snowstorm, and Joe Sweeney is buried up to his knees in the snow and I say You sure Joe you don’t wanna come in? And he just, same thing, shakes his head nope, and so at that point I give up and close the door. Oh and here’s another strange thing.”
“What’s that?”
“He was wearing army fatigues. He had on green army fatigues with a, maybe a patch or something on the shoulder and the little, there was a little strip over the left pocket that said Sweeney.”
“That’s not so strange.”
“You don’t think?”
“No. I mean the guy was in the army.”
“Was he? God, I guess you’re right. He was.”
“Just out of high school, I think. Before Vietnam was Vietnam.”
“God, I had forgotten. There are so many things about him I’ve just... forgotten.”