CHAPTER SEVEN

 

The sweetest dreams are those that hush the anguish we have harbored in our hearts all day.

 

Ross

 

I WAS ABOUT to doze off when I heard someone enter the room. I could barely make out Holly walking toward me. She reached over my head and switched on the floor lamp next to my chair. I shielded my eyes with my hand as the sudden bright light pierced my pupils, almost blinding me.

“Why did you do that?” I asked. All the muscles around my eyes tensed and the slight throbbing that had plagued my temples most of the evening rose to icepick intensity.

Holly picked up the ashtray I had filled with butts and placed it under the clump of ash that was about to drop on the chair cushion.

“You should watch what you’re doing,” she warned as she took my smoke away from me and crushed it in the ashtray. “You could fall asleep and burn the house down.”

Holly should talk. I remember when she was just a child and I caught her and Jake playing with fire inside a closet. Holly had snatched a book of matches lying next to my ashtray and run off with it. When I realized it was missing, I went looking for her. I could hear Jake and Holly giggling behind the closed door where they were hiding. A strong whiff of sulfur irritated my nostrils when I yanked open the door. Holly had just struck a match and was holding it ominously close to Jake’s lips so he could blow out the flame. Now here she was, years later, scolding me like a small child who didn’t know any better.

“It’s after ten. Why don’t you go to bed?” Holly asked.

I looked up at my daughter before slumping in my chair. She didn’t look anything like her mother, but she sounded like her. Jewell was a world class nagger.

“I’m not ready to go to bed,” I grumbled. “I’ve got a lot on my mind.”

I finished off my drink. I may have had three or four, but I wasn’t numb at all and the constant pounding in my head reminded me of the torment I had carried in my heart all these years.

“I’ve been through more hell in my life than you can imagine,” I uttered.

“Yes, I know, you were in a war somewhere in the Pacific.”

The war had been over for almost twenty years, but my memories of it were like an incurable savage pain that never left me. I had witnessed all kinds of atrocities in the Pacific. The raw images of men who had been tortured, men whose bodies were wasting away, and men who were better off dead than alive still haunted me; still woke me in the middle of the night.

“You wouldn’t even be here if I had died.” It hurt that Holly was so cynical and disrespectful.

“Why do you always have to talk about the war, like it’s the only one there ever was? Lots of guys are getting killed in Vietnam.” She insinuated that their sacrifice carried the same weight as mine.

“It’s not the same kind of war,” I said. No one from my generation would have fled to Canada to avoid having to fight. We were all proud to serve our country, even if it meant laying down our lives.

Holly sat down opposite me. We could now argue at eye level.

“Jake could be drafted in a few years if there’s some war like ‘Nam going on,” she said.

“No, he won’t. He’s going to West Point. If he does get orders to go, he’ll be a commissioned officer, not some foot soldier who got drafted.”

“Is that what Jake wants?” Holly challenged me.

Before I could answer, Jewell stuck her head in the doorway. She was wearing my flannel robe, which she preferred to her old terry cloth wrap-around. Her hair was swaddled in toilet paper so she could keep her hairdo in place between weekly visits to the beauty parlor. She looked ridiculous.

“Why are you two still up?” Jewell asked. “It’s time to go to bed.”

“I’ll be up later,” I told her.

“I don’t want you sitting down here by yourself.”

“Well, that’s what I’m going to do,” I argued.

“Come on, Ross. I have to get up early and so do you.”

“Holly and I are talking,” I stated.

“Go on up,” Jewell ordered Holly. “I’ll take care of your father.”

“Damn it!” I raised my voice. “There’s something she ought to know.”

“Like what?” Holly’s skepticism rubbed me the wrong way.

All I wanted from Holly was her respect. I wanted her to know that the horrors of war could leave behind invisible wounds that were just as devastating as a missing arm or leg. I wanted her to know about the five hundred POWs I saved from horrendous death—all because that Filipino, who stood outside our camp for days trying to get someone to listen to him, noticed me going in and out of General Krueger’s tent. The Filipino was so persistent, so frantic, that I finally heard his story. He told me that the Japs were holding American prisoners and were planning to slaughter them.

Those men would have perished in that godforsaken prison if I hadn’t been an intelligence specialist; if I hadn’t had access to quarters that were off limits to most enlisted men. I was the one who reported this critical piece of information, the one who got the attention of the general. Without me, those men who had survived the Bataan Death March would’ve never been rescued. Only a handful of people knew or would remember the role I had played. I never received a medal of honor, but that didn’t matter, as long as my children knew what a hero I was.

“We don’t need to hear about the war right now,” Jewell said.

“I know you don’t give a damn,” I accused her.

“Well, it’s late and Holly has school tomorrow.”

“What the hell do you know? I was a soldier, by God! You never served your country the way I did.”

“You’re getting yourself all worked up over nothing. Here, let me help you up the stairs.” Jewell took hold of my arm and tried to pull me up from my chair.

“Damn it! Leave me alone.” I pushed her arm away from me.

“He’s going to set something on fire if he stays down here,” Holly worried.

“I told you to go to bed,” Jewell reminded her. “I can take care of him.”

Jewell waited until Holly had gone upstairs before starting in on me.

“I don’t know what your problem is,” she began, “but I’m sick and tired of losing sleep every time you open a bottle. I’ve been upset all night over what you said about Jake. Why would you even bring up something like cancer in front of the kids? Then you have to come in here and get all worked up over the war. What does the war have to do with anything? You’ve just about bled that excuse to death.”

“Well, you goddamn bitch!” How could she be so callous when she knew better than anyone what I had been through during the war? She had witnessed every demon that had ever possessed me in the middle of the night, when I woke up in a sweat, ready to go hand-to-hand with some slant-eyed, yellow monkey Nip. That’s how I got my souvenir rifle, after seizing it from the damn bastard who tried to slice my arm off, then bayoneting him with his own weapon.

“I’m not in the mood to put up with you,” Jewell argued.

“Then why don’t you just go ahead and leave me?” Her nagging was the tinderbox of our marriage.

“I’ve a good mind to,” she responded coolly.

“Like hell you will!”

“No one’s going to leave anyone,” Jewell said as she helped me out of my chair. “Let’s go to bed.”