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Authors: Jayne Anne Phillips
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mad and switched her with a birch switch. Don’t you know I regretted it for years. Only hit her a couple of times across the legs but shehollered like she was killed. I guess it bothered me too that these kids didn’t care anything about the farm—to them it was just a deserted old place. I still liked to go there. House and land were empty, but otherwise it was all the same—mining companies didn’t work that property till after the war.
I went to the farm before enlisting, one of the last things I did. Took a good look. Went out with Reb. We sat on the porch of the old house and drank a few beers. I wasn’t real happy about the army, but they were going to draft me. Reb had a wife and children, but they wouldn’t have helped if he hadn’t been a doctor. He said if all the docs in town hadn’t signed up on their own, he’d have paid them to enlist so he could stay home and deliver babies.
The farm looked pretty, wintry and frosted and quiet. I enlisted in March—March 2, ’42—so must have been late February. Grass in the fields didn’t sway, didn’t move in the wind. Everything was chill and clear. Reb finally said it was time to leave and not sit any longer in the cold like fools.
The war swallowed everyone like a death or a birth will, except it went on and on. I was gone three years. They dropped the atom bomb on Japan as our troop ship steamed into Oakland harbor. No one really understood what had happened at first; soldiers got on the trains and went home.
I had my thirty-fifth birthday on the train—cake with candles, and ice cream. Red Cross girls kept all that information on us, must have been their idea to celebrate. They were nice girls. The men got a kick out of it and joined in with the singing. The train was hitting rough track about then, and one of the girls (she was from Ohio, I believe) came walking down the aisle carrying a big square cake, lurching from side to side and trying to keep the candles lit. The way the car was jolting and shaking made me think of the boat crossing to the Philippines … April of ’45, how bad that night storm was. Raining and blowing, gusts of wind till you couldn’t stay on deck. Not a star in the pitch black and the boat tilting so you couldn’t keep food in a bowl. I looked out the train window as they were singing; we were crossing the Southwest. Flat, yellow land, and the sky was sharp blue, blue as it wasin Randolph County the summers on the farm. I thought I would go back there even though the farm was gone—just to see it. Go back to look at the fields.
But I didn’t go back for a long time, even though I wasn’t far away. When I was married and had my own kids I was down that country—selling cranes and bulldozers for Euclid to a strip-mine outfit. The land was all changed, moved around. There were a few buildings left from the Main Street of Coalton, used as equipment shacks and an office. But out where the farm was—almost nothing. Heaps of dirt, cut-away ledges where they’d stripped. Looking at it made me think I’d been asleep a long time and had wakened up in the wrong place, a hundred miles from where I lay down. Like I’d lost my memory and might be anyone. Only thing they left alone was the wooden church, all falling in on itself, and the cemetery.
I walked up by the stones, between the rows of names. Warwick. Eban. Ava.
Icie. What kind of name is that for a woman. You always asked why I didn’t try harder to find her. Why should I? She left me.
The cemetery was still and clean, though the grass was ragged. You know I thought of the leper; hadn’t thought of him in years.
I never saw the inside of that shack. What did he do all day. No country, no family, no job. No one. Maybe he wasn’t sure anymore who he was. He was a secret. I was the only one ever saw him. He could have stopped talking because I didn’t seem real either, only another sound he heard in the woods. A sound in his head. During the war I used to dream of
I went to the farm before enlisting, one of the last things I did. Took a good look. Went out with Reb. We sat on the porch of the old house and drank a few beers. I wasn’t real happy about the army, but they were going to draft me. Reb had a wife and children, but they wouldn’t have helped if he hadn’t been a doctor. He said if all the docs in town hadn’t signed up on their own, he’d have paid them to enlist so he could stay home and deliver babies.
The farm looked pretty, wintry and frosted and quiet. I enlisted in March—March 2, ’42—so must have been late February. Grass in the fields didn’t sway, didn’t move in the wind. Everything was chill and clear. Reb finally said it was time to leave and not sit any longer in the cold like fools.
The war swallowed everyone like a death or a birth will, except it went on and on. I was gone three years. They dropped the atom bomb on Japan as our troop ship steamed into Oakland harbor. No one really understood what had happened at first; soldiers got on the trains and went home.
I had my thirty-fifth birthday on the train—cake with candles, and ice cream. Red Cross girls kept all that information on us, must have been their idea to celebrate. They were nice girls. The men got a kick out of it and joined in with the singing. The train was hitting rough track about then, and one of the girls (she was from Ohio, I believe) came walking down the aisle carrying a big square cake, lurching from side to side and trying to keep the candles lit. The way the car was jolting and shaking made me think of the boat crossing to the Philippines … April of ’45, how bad that night storm was. Raining and blowing, gusts of wind till you couldn’t stay on deck. Not a star in the pitch black and the boat tilting so you couldn’t keep food in a bowl. I looked out the train window as they were singing; we were crossing the Southwest. Flat, yellow land, and the sky was sharp blue, blue as it wasin Randolph County the summers on the farm. I thought I would go back there even though the farm was gone—just to see it. Go back to look at the fields.
But I didn’t go back for a long time, even though I wasn’t far away. When I was married and had my own kids I was down that country—selling cranes and bulldozers for Euclid to a strip-mine outfit. The land was all changed, moved around. There were a few buildings left from the Main Street of Coalton, used as equipment shacks and an office. But out where the farm was—almost nothing. Heaps of dirt, cut-away ledges where they’d stripped. Looking at it made me think I’d been asleep a long time and had wakened up in the wrong place, a hundred miles from where I lay down. Like I’d lost my memory and might be anyone. Only thing they left alone was the wooden church, all falling in on itself, and the cemetery.
I walked up by the stones, between the rows of names. Warwick. Eban. Ava.
Icie. What kind of name is that for a woman. You always asked why I didn’t try harder to find her. Why should I? She left me.
The cemetery was still and clean, though the grass was ragged. You know I thought of the leper; hadn’t thought of him in years.
I never saw the inside of that shack. What did he do all day. No country, no family, no job. No one. Maybe he wasn’t sure anymore who he was. He was a secret. I was the only one ever saw him. He could have stopped talking because I didn’t seem real either, only another sound he heard in the woods. A sound in his head. During the war I used to dream of
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