Mrs. Bartolo’s house, down the hill from Uncle G’s, had a pointy witch-cottage roof and a lazy garden with lingering vines along the fences and loose-leafed plants that intertwined and fell away from each other like green waterfalls. There wasn’t a hedge in sight. Lucy had loved it from the moment she discovered it a few weeks back when she’d delivered meatballs for Papo Angelo. There were lavender monkey flowers and red-branched manzanitas and a flagstone path that went off in different directions. A tire swung from the thick branch of a live oak, and there was an explosion of bird feeders. At the corner of the house, under one of the windows, were two large wooden barrels filled with water, water lilies floating on top. Flying all around the barrels was a heaven of dragonflies.
Mrs. Bartolo gardened her wildflowers in a bed just outside the shade of the oak. She wore a floppy hat, overalls and bright orange flowered gloves. When she stood up, her smile was welcoming, if a little sad. Milo sat in a short beach chair next to her looking through the pages of a sketchbook, all skinny legs and arms.
Uncle G shouted out Lucy’s open window. “Okay if Lucy spends some time with Milo today?”
“Of course!”
Lucy opened the door just as Milo stood up. He wore the same cutoff jean shorts, an oversized red T-shirt hanging over the waistband. He raised a hand, and she raised one back.
“Lucy.” Uncle G scribbled an address on a piece of scrap paper. “If you follow the creek for a little while, about a half mile or so, you should see the house I’m talking about. There are a couple of tents in the backyard. Tell them I sent you, and tell them what you found.”
“Why are there tents in the backyard?”
“It’s a mystery. Don’t you just love a good mystery?”
Lucy did not like mysteries. She liked the answer to a good mystery.
“Remember, serendipity,” Uncle G said.
When she hopped out of the truck, she slipped her hands into her pockets and quickly counted her stones—onetwothreefourfive-sixseveneightnineten—and some of the pressure went away.
“I was so sorry to hear about your dad,” Mrs. Bartolo said as Lucy walked up. She wasn’t much taller than Lucy and wore her long black and white hair in a loose braid that hung over one shoulder. She was tan, her skin the color of a Bartlett pear.
“Me too.”
Mrs. Bartolo took both Lucy’s hands in hers. “You and Milo will be good for each other—”
“Grams!” Milo shouted, startling both Lucy and Mrs. Bartolo. “There’s a blue jay in the oak tree.”
“What? Where?” Mrs. Bartolo hurried for the porch and grabbed a broom. She zoomed back to the tree and looked up through the branches.
“Grams hates blue jays. They eat other birds, and she won’t stand for cannibalism, she says.”
“Damned right,” Mrs. Bartolo said.
Milo’s sketchbook was open on the seat of the plastic chair, a red dragonfly drawn midflight. It was extraordinary. But Lucy didn’t get to look long because Milo closed the book and shoved it into a canvas rucksack, then shouldered it.
Uncle G gave a couple toots of the horn as he drove away. Lucy and Milo waved, and Mrs. Bartolo circled the oak tree, thrashing the broom around and mumbling about no-good rotten cannibal birds and how she’d show them a thing or two with the business end of her broom.
Lucy explained Uncle G’s idea about finding the owner of the flight helmet.
“Which sounds impossible, I might add,” Lucy added.
“Impossible just means you haven’t found the answer yet. That’s what my dad says.”
Even Lucy couldn’t argue with that. “I don’t like the idea of digging it up, though. It feels like digging up a body or something.”
“Come on.”
Milo led her around to the back of the house, which was just as colorful and lush as the front. There was a fenced vegetable garden, lemon trees and a grassy yard half as big as a soccer field. He set his rucksack on the round patio table and took his sketchbook out. He flipped to the back and showed Lucy a perfect version of the helmet with the insignia and everything. “We don’t need to dig it up if it makes you feel weird.”
“Wow. You drew that from memory?”
Milo flushed red as he pushed the book back into his rucksack. “I like to draw.”
“I don’t have any talents,” Lucy said, although she longed for one.
“There must be something,” Milo said. “Everyone has a talent. Maybe you just haven’t found yours yet.”
“I did take a mime class once. It comes from the word pantomimus. It’s what the ancient Greeks called the person doing the mime. But I had more fun researching than actually miming. The teacher said I was too stiff. Plus I couldn’t move my eyebrows independently.”
Lucy considered her inability to move her eyebrows independently to be a great failure of coordination, and worked on it sometimes before she went to sleep.
Lucy and Milo walked side by side through Mrs. Bartolo’s grassy yard, kicking up swarms of tiny spit bugs as they went, to the back gate and creek beyond. All Lucy could think about was Dad, of course. She wondered how long Fitz would stay, and if Dad was cooperating or being stubborn. Appendage Prosthetics explained the role of a good prosthetist was to keep the prosthetic arm well fitted and comfortable at all times. They were there to make sure the skin didn’t rub raw, as sometimes it took a while for feeling to come back to the healed area and an infection could set in. But since Dad wasn’t even wearing the arm, did they just sit there and stare at each other?
Onetwothreefourfive-sixseveneightnineten.
Milo picked up a long, thin branch and swished it back and forth at foxtails. Swish, swish. “Did you know dragonflies can fly on shredded wings?”
“I didn’t.”
He went on, “There’s this one called a wandering glider. It knows how to use its wings to work the currents in the air. They ride the wind for thousands of miles and pop up now and then on ships far out at sea. If I had to be something else, I’d for sure be a wandering glider. What about you?”
“I have actually thought about this before,” Lucy was happy to say. “And if I had to choose something other than human, I’d like to be a naked mole rat queen, because...queen.”
Milo blinked at her.
“The naked mole rat queen fights herself to the top, the same way queen bees do. They live in small naked mole rat towns, and they have rooms in their towns for absolutely everything, even bathrooms. They also live for thirty years, and their incisors move independently, like chopsticks.” Lucy held her index fingers up to her mouth and moved them around to illustrate.
The edge of Milo’s mouth twitched. He was clearly trying not to laugh. He must not have tried very hard, though, because he quickly bent over with the force of it.
“Well, I don’t see how it’s any different than wanting to be a dragonfly,” she said. Lucy picked at the cobalt yarn around her wrist.
Then Milo laughed all over again. “Maybe you could be a naked mole rat queen . . . who mimes?”
Lucy cracked up. She couldn’t help herself.
Once they’d gotten quiet again, Lucy asked, “Why are you so obsessed with dragonflies, anyway?”
“I’m not obsessed. I just like them. Some people like keeping track of the birds they’ve seen; I like keeping track of dragonflies. It’s something me and my dad do together.”
“What’s the name of the red one in your book?”
“It’s called a golden-winged skimmer. It’s the last one I drew before I left North Carolina.”
“Why?”
“I’ve been drawing birds for Grams. She likes to hang them all over the place. She says they bring the outside in. Even though she already has the outside in. She’s got more plants in her house than a nursery. She thinks they’re helping keep her alive with extra doses of oxygen.”
“Do you usually spend the summer with your grandma?” Lucy asked. She was curious about Milo, like why he’d wanted to see her dad come home, and if maybe he knew someone in Vietnam. But before he could answer, they rounded a bend along the creek path and Lucy saw the two backyard tents Uncle G had told her about. One on the right and one on the left.
“That’s it,” she said.
“Why are there tents?”
“It’s a mystery.”
The backyard was on a slope. Uphill from the tents was a neat two-story white house with a bright red back door between picture windows. Men sat at wooden picnic tables on a cement patio smoking cigarettes, playing chess or cards. More men sat in chairs under the trees, reading newspapers and magazines. One slept in a hammock. Eight in all.
Shabby men. Scruffy men. Men in need of scissors, razors and soap.
Just as Lucy and Milo reached the low backyard gate, two more men came out of one of the tents, struggling with a large rolled carpet. One was tall, bald and stooped, the other short, sturdy and wearing an eye patch. The tall skinny one looked like Ichabod Crane from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.
Where, exactly, had Uncle G sent her? To her doom?
Milo said, “Maybe it’s a body. I watched that on Ironside once.” Then he waggled his eyebrows independently from each other.
“Show-off,” Lucy said. “Come on.”
As they let themselves through the rickety gate, an enormous German shepherd came running at them from out of nowhere, barking and barking and barking.
“Doreen!” Ichabod Crane shouted, and dropped his end of the carpet. The dog stopped in her tracks, and sat, tail thumping the dirt. The man ambled toward her on stilt legs.
“You must be Lucy and Milo,” Ichabod Crane said. He held out his hand for both to shake. All bones. The other man came up beside him. “I’m Mac. This here is my friend Rodney, but we call him Cheese for obvious reasons.”
Cheese was black, the same black as his eye patch. He was missing the fingers on his left hand, the whole left side of his body covered in ropey burn scars.
“Giovanni gave us a call and said you’d stumbled onto a mystery,” Cheese said. “Why don’t you come tell us about it? You can help set up for the lunch crowd.”
“What is this place?” Lucy said.
“It’s a meeting hall of sorts. For veterans. Sometimes people need a place to stay, so we have the tents,” Mac said, gesturing as they walked past. “We like to furnish them with carpeting and foam cots. You caught us cleaning house.”
Mac and Cheese must been the vets Uncle G had been talking about. “People live in the tents?” Lucy said.
“No, some just pass through for a hot meal and a good night’s sleep. Most come for the meetings. Every night. Six o’clock sharp,” Cheese said.
Doreen had taken an interest in Milo, so he kept leaning down to scratch her behind the ears. These must have been the vets Uncle G had been talking about earlier.
“We’re serving hot dogs and hamburgers today. How are you two at squashing meat?” Mac said.
“I am a champion meat squasher,” Milo said quite sincerely. “My dad considers barbecuing to be a serious and important skill.”
Cheese flashed them a smile lopsided from the scars. He handed Lucy and Milo a pair of plastic gloves each for sanitary purposes, and they got to smashing and seasoning, the same way her family prepared meatballs, at which Lucy was an expert.
“How do you know Uncle G?” Lucy said.
“Hired his crew to do some work a while back. He’s been bringing leftovers from your grandfather’s deli ever since.”
Cheese lit the briquettes under the barbecue grill. “Your uncle said you found a helmet and a Purple Heart?” Lucy tried not to look at his burns, tried not to think about what might have happened. Only half his mouth seemed to work right when he spoke.
“We found them buried near the creek behind Lucy’s house,” Milo said.
Mac and Cheese both nodded as though he’d just said something normal and expected, rather than strange and mysterious.
Milo removed his gloves and took the sketchbook out of his rucksack. He flipped to the drawing of the helmet and insignia. He’d done a fine job re-creating the ram and the lightning bolt, from what Lucy could remember.
“Well, I’ll be. That’s the symbol for the Dirty Thirty. First airmen committed to combat in Vietnam,” Cheese said.
“But why would someone bury a helmet? And pictures?” Lucy demanded. These were not things to bury, she’d decided. They were things to save. Cherish, even. Evidence of a job well done, a sacrifice made.
“Sometimes the men who come through here leave things behind. As a way of letting go. There’s all matter of objects buried out in those woods.”
“Leave things behind? But there were pictures! Of a family!” Lucy said, feeling suddenly like she was at the carnival again. If not on the Giant Swing, at least waiting in line.
“Not everyone makes it back to their family,” Milo said.
Lucy took off her own gloves and plopped down on the bench beside Milo. She’d seen enough of the news to know that was true. But the way Milo said it made her feel it was personal. That maybe someone hadn’t come home to him. He didn’t say anything else, and she didn’t know him well enough to ask.
Mac nodded. “Some men . . . they don’t go back to their families. Or their families won’t have them.”
“Why ever not?” Lucy said.
“Going away for a year from your family, from your life . . . time goes on without you. And while you’re gone, you survive events, sometimes horrific events, that you don’t want to talk about with loved ones,” Cheese said. “It takes up space inside of you, all those horrible things. So, people come here to share their stories. Sometimes saying it out loud makes room for the good things again, like family and hope.”
Lucy had been so consumed with the worry that Dad might die or go missing in action that she hadn’t considered the war might turn him into someone who would leave his family. That whatever he experienced might take up too much space inside of him so that there wasn’t any room left for her and Mom. Lucy looked again at each of the men sitting around the tables and wondered if any of them had families they’d left. And if so, did it happen slowly, or all at once? Did their wives and daughters wake up one day to find them gone?
Suddenly, she was furious with Uncle G, and terrified of this new possibility. What in the world was Uncle G thinking by sending her here?
“How can you make someone stay with their family?” Lucy said.
Mac turned his palms toward the sky. “I wish I knew, Lucy. Wouldn’t that be something?”
Doreen leaned against Milo, her head in his lap as they all sat in silence.
“I have a German shepherd, too,” Milo said. “Her name’s Lola.”
Lucy reached out and scratched Doreen behind an ear. Doreen was smelly and had bad breath, but she was a comfort. Lucy had never had a pet. “I’m sorry. You must miss her an awful lot.”
“You come visit Doreen whenever you want, son,” Cheese said to Milo. He flopped the burgers on the grill, where they began to sizzle. “She’s a good dog. Always knows the ones who need her most.”
Lucy felt like a sack of broken crackers on the inside, all loose and crumbly. And when she felt like a sack of broken crackers, her mind turned to the small things around her. Those things Dad had asked her to pay attention to while he’d been gone in order to calm her nerves. So she counted her stones and closed her eyes and breathed in the scent of grilling hamburgers, a smell that felt like summer. She opened her eyes and watched as a man stood up from the picnic table, stretched his arms over his head, and then helped another man steer his wheelchair over the lumpy roots of the oak tree. She listened to the trickle of Penitencia Creek in the distance, the hush of leaves in the trees all around them, the laughter of two men playing cards.
After helping clean up the lunch mess, Mac and Cheese walked Lucy and Milo to the back fence.
“About that Purple Heart you found. We keep some records of the men who come through if they want to leave a forwarding address. Sometimes they identify their unit and batallion, like the Dirty Thirty. You’re welcome to them,” Cheese said. “You can also check with the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the American Legion to see if they are familiar with the Dirty Thirty. Not sure how helpful they’ll be, as some can be a little prickly about Vietnam veterans. But it’s worth a try. It sure would be nice to get that medal and those pictures home.”
Lucy looked at Milo. She thought about her dad, wondering suddenly if he had a Purple Heart and where it might be. And if he hadn’t made it home, would she have wanted it? Would it have made her sad? Or grateful?
“Those kids?” Milo said, as if reading her thoughts. “They’ll be wanting their dad’s Purple Heart.”
“How do you know? What if it’s an awful reminder of something they don’t want to think about? What if there was a good reason all that stuff got buried?” Lucy said.
Lucy had watched the Vietnam Veterans Against the War march in Washington on television just a couple of months ago. She had watched those men toss their combat ribbons, uniforms and helmets onto the Capitol steps in anger and frustration. She would never forget the way some of them cried. How some of them named friends they had lost into a microphone before throwing those medals and ribbons over the fence President Nixon had built right there on the Capitol steps to keep them out.
Milo shrugged. “All I know is I’d want it.”
It was too much. The stones around Lucy’s heart locked in place. She didn’t want to think about another family and what they might have lost.
“You tell your dad he’s welcome,” Mac said to Lucy. “And we have family meetings, too, on Saturdays, if you two ever want to come for that.”
Mac and Cheese seemed nice enough, but Lucy didn’t want her dad anywhere near this place.
Eventually, Lucy and Milo left with a promise to come back and look through their records. They were quiet as they walked back to Milo’s house. Lucy kicked pinecones along the path, and Milo picked up a new stick and decapitated weeds. When they got to Mrs. Bartolo’s garden gate, Milo invited her in to watch As the World Turns.
“You watch soap operas?” Lucy said, mystified. Her mother would never let her watch a soap opera. They were pointless and had no educational value.
“No matter how bad things get, those people always have it worse. Plus, Grams makes popcorn with butter.”
“No, thanks,” Lucy said.
“Suit yourself.”
Milo let himself through the gate and into the backyard. Then he turned around. “I’m going to find that family one way or another. Do you want to help me?”
Lucy’s feelings were all over the place, so she wrangled them as best she could and concentrated on being reasonable. She heard her dad’s reasonable voice in her head, guiding her. We should always seek to be an instrument in this life.
“I’ll think about it,” Lucy said. And meant it.