Putting Things Together

I had a Hess Truck as a kid. A tractor trailer. Working headlights. Cool stuff. I loved the damn thing. I got it for Christmas and used to play at night on the kitchen floor in the dark. Just the headlights on the truck lighting the way into my imagination. I could go on about that truck, but this is the story of the summer day in Maine when I let the truck roll off the picnic table in Maine.

I was playing by myself in the yard. I did that a lot. Still do. It was August. Hot. This was our second summer in Blue Hill Bay. We wouldn't ever go back. I was seven. I had my Hess truck up on the picnic table and was playing out some story. I was always telling myself stories.

The truck rolled away down the table and, before I could react, it crashed to the ground.

The batteries and switch were in the trailer, the headlights in the cab. When I reached the truck where it had fallen, the cab had come apart from the trailer. A bundle of wires stretched between.

I felt oh-no pressing hard on my chest.

I can fix this, I told myself without believing it.

I pushed. I fed the wires back in. I turned it this way and that. I tried. I really tried. But it wouldn't go back together.

The truck was broken. I had broken it. Stupid, irresponsible idiot, stupid jerk, worthless fool. On the other side of the house were Mom, Dad, and my brother. I couldn't let them know what had happened.

I put that truck in the garbage can by the back door. I hid it. Under bags of other garbage. And it was gone.

Last week I told my brother this story for the first time. Thirty-four years since. He said, "Dad and I could have fixed that for you."

I know.

They would have had it together in no time and been happy to do it. But they couldn't fix the anxiety, the shame I felt. I couldn't imagine anything fixing that. So I buried it. But even now, 34 years later, I can see it in two pieces as I push it down. I can still feel the shame. And still I can't imagine asking for help.

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I Couldn't Fix It

I had a Hess Truck as a kid. A tractor trailer. Working headlights. Cool stuff. I loved the damn thing. I got it for Christmas and used to play at night on the kitchen floor in the dark. Just the headlights on the truck lighting the way into my imagination. I could go on about that truck, but this is the story of the summer day in Maine when I let the truck roll off the picnic table in Maine.

I was playing by myself in the yard. I did that a lot. Still do. It was August. Hot. This was our second summer in Blue Hill Bay. We wouldn't ever go back. I was seven. I had my Hess truck up on the picnic table and was playing out some story. I was always telling myself stories.

The truck rolled away down the table and, before I could react, it crashed to the ground.

The batteries and switch were in the trailer, the headlights in the cab. When I reached the truck where it had fallen, the cab had come apart from the trailer. A bundle of wires stretched between.

I felt oh-no pressing hard on my chest.

I can fix this, I told myself without believing it.

I pushed. I fed the wires back in. I turned it this way and that. I tried. I really tried. But it wouldn't go back together.

The truck was broken. I had broken it. Stupid, irresponsible idiot, stupid jerk, worthless fool. On the other side of the house were Mom, Dad, and my brother. I couldn't let them know what had happened.

I put that truck in the garbage can by the back door. I hid it. Under bags of other garbage. And it was gone.

Last week I told my brother this story for the first time. Thirty-four years since. He said, "Dad and I could have fixed that for you."

I know.

They would have had it together in no time and been happy to do it. But they couldn't fix the anxiety, the shame I felt. I couldn't imagine anything fixing that. So I buried it. But even now, 34 years later, I can see it in two pieces as I push it down. I can still feel the shame. And still I can't imagine asking for help.

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Remembering That It Could

It's raining and dark when I leave the YMCA after playing badly. I'm sore and in a foul mood that has settled over and stayed with me. I get in the car and start my drive home not wanting to arrive anywhere. These are the signs of me sinking. I'm not clinically depressed, but my moods plotted on a graph would look like the sine curve, an even wave up and down, each crest followed by an equal trough.

I used to navigate the waves on my own by writing and thinking, but that hasn't worked. I'm in therapy now--not in the car driving home, but once a week with a woman named Beth. We're working on my feelings which I avoid as much as I avoid the song "Feelings." I have been and remain an analytical guy. Emotional reactions elude me. Beth and I are figuring out that I suppress most of my anger, sadness, and regret. That would be problem enough, but I also have all sorts of trouble feeling joy, passion, and satisfaction. Thus the fact that it is raining on my car and inside my head. William Stafford said, "the darkness around us is deep." I say that the darkness inside us is deeper.

Even when I'm not in therapy I'm working on this. I've been trying to feel things and part of that is trying to understand the misery I feel right now and let it be. Maybe then it will be an on-ramp instead of a caution light warning me away. This metaphor would be apt enough for any occasion but works even better now as I am driving toward a construction zone and warning signs. The road is torn up and shifted about. I could turn left and avoid the mess by taking a longer trip home, but I'm here, and though bumpy, the road is passable. I drive into it.

I drive past hundreds of cones and dozens of lights, over bumps and ruts, the car rumbling as I go. Soon I'm back on smooth pavement and the rain has stopped. I open the window and turn on the radio for some distraction. If only my mood was so easy to get through, if there were cones marking the way and a sign reading "end construction" to let me know that I was almost there. But instead, as the radio scans through the stations, there is Benny Mardones singing his one top forty hit.

This is a voice from the past. Mardones is a guy who almost made it big but was only able to conjure one hit, "Into the Night," which I'm listening to now and that reached number 11 on the Billboard charts. He never found a wide audience but had niches of intensely devoted fans, most of them in Syracuse, this city in which I reside. I saw him in concert once. A fat little man, balding and homely, who was popular mostly with largely unattractive people who wanted only basic rock and roll. His was a predictable style that resembled Eddie Money and 38 Special even as he dreamed of being Bruce Springsteen. He rose above mediocrity only once or twice and "Into the Night" was his greatest achievement. It's not everyone who makes it to number 11.

"Into the Night" is a song my wife has hated since before we met, and in deference to her, I'm about to change the station. But she's not in the car and with that thought I forget about her and take a moment with Benny Mardones. It takes only that moment for Gina Marie to join us. Back in high school and for a while thereafter, Gina Marie loved both Benny Mardones' music and me. This was the song we danced to at Senior Ball. This was playing when I first kissed her. This song accompanied my first experience with love that was true and dear.

Most of that was due to Gina Marie, the way she looked and how she made me feel. Part of it had to do with Benny Mardones. And another part was Tom Hayes' doing. Mr. Hayes was my eleventh grade English teacher and a man of exquisite cynicism. He chafed against all rules and tended to laugh in the face of authority. I once watched our principal suggest to Tom that he get up and move around the cafeteria while on duty. Tom laughed, slapping his hands against his stomach while the principal stared. Tom pulled himself together. "Oh," he said, "you aren't joking." And so by June of twelfth grade Tom was cleaning out his room for an early retirement to the pizza joint he owned with another retired, frustrated English teacher.

I visited his room on the last day of school as he was talking with a student teacher I knew well. All three of us were happily moving on. I was headed for college, the student teacher was leaving Syracuse for France, while Tom was just getting out and that was enough to give him joy. We talked, laughed, and Tom kept pointing to a poster he had reversed on the wall and written on. It doesn't get any better than this, it said. That was our punchline and the final word on most everything, and each time he pointed we laughed as if those were the funniest words ever written on the back of a poster on the last day of school. Later, I told the story to my friends and to Gina Marie and it became our running gag.

We were still laughing about this, still feeling the joy of completing high school at Senior Ball when "Into the Night" came on and Gina Marie said that we just had to dance. We did and it was as romantic as anything in high school could be. She wore a gown of ivory lace while I was in a tuxedo. I had never held anyone so closely for so long and it was both wondrous and frightening. I wanted to kiss her but wasn't sure she wanted me to. I have to be sure of such things before I take a leap.

Not being sure of anything, I fell back on the punchline. "It doesn't get any better than this," I told her. I smiled and she smiled back, but she also looked at me in a way I had never seen before or since. She said, "It could." And she smiled a little more. So I kissed her and it was the best thing I had ever done in my life.

Most times when I think back on this I get wistful about what was and isn't anymore. I think about everything Frost meant when he said "how way leads on to way" and we never get back. But tonight I'm not doing that.

"She was lovely. Just lovely," I hear myself say.

I think again of her eyes and how she tilted her head back to look up at me as she told me that it could get better. She looked absolutely lovely, which is to say filled with love. Tonight, driving home, I realize that it was a moment of grace and that a person can't expect to have very many of those.

I'm almost home and still feeling some rain even though it's no longer falling. Benny Mardones is signing: if I could fly, I'd pick you up and take you into the night and show you a love like you've never seen, ever seen, oh-oh. It's complete cheese in the way top forty hits are and it's worse on the page than on the radio. The song doesn't matter though, none of this is about that. It's the memory, the moment of grace that matters. I picture Gina Marie's face and I'm the person I was, the person she saw. I pull into my driveway thinking, it doesn't get any better than this. The song is still on and there's Gina Marie telling me that it could get better. There's the memory of how things really did get better even without me thinking or figuring out anything at all.

I turn the radio off before the song is over. I don't want to hear it end.

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Dancer

Jacob dances so that we won't die. The dance is simple. A shuffle of his feet, a throw of his hand, a bobbing of his head. Jacob dances in his house while the television plays the news. He dances at breakfast after coming awake suddenly, flushed with guilt. Jacob dances to the store, dances in line at the DMV, and he dances in his therapist's office during their sessions.

“Jacob,” she says. “Could you sit for a moment today?”

He shakes his head and wags his index finger at her as he smiles. She is a small child asking to stay up too late to watch David Letterman. No, no, no.

“Sharon, we've talked about this,” he says.

He shuffles back and forth, a soft shoe and his hands come together in front of him before they swing back behind and away from him. Sharon has convinced him that he shouldn't clap during these sessions and that was something of an accomplishment. Perhaps someday, the dancing. Jacob knows better and smiles as he executes a turn.

He asks her, “since you're asking that question again, should I assume that we will also be talking about Henry again? Is it time for re-runs already?”

“We can talk about Henry if you would like to, Jacob.”

“If you would like to, then we will. I would just as soon dance and not talk at all.”

Instead of talking, Jacob begins to hum. Sharon sits back in her chair and removes her glasses. She folds them carefully and places them in a grey folding case. She flips the lid closed, open, closed and open again. She repeats this three more times and then realizes that she is doing it. She sets the case on the coffee table before her and immediately wants to pick it up again to be sure that the glasses are in there and that she has closed it properly.

She shakes her eyes away from the case and turns back to Jacob who is still dancing and humming. The song is familiar, but she can't place it. Jacob is as thin as ever, but flushed and his face looks healthy. He wears his usual smile.

“You've eaten today?” she asks.

“Mm-hmmm.”

This, he hums, but it is clearly an answer to her question and not part of the song. He goes back to humming and she wonders again what it is.

She looks quickly at the case in which she is fairly certain her glasses lie.

“What and when?” she asks.

“Hmmm?”

She closes her eyes on the eyeglass case, turns her head and opens them on Henry who is looking puzzled.

“What did you eat and when did you eat it?” she asks.

“Egg sandwich and juice at breakfast. Burger and fries with a shake about half an hour ago.”

He goes back to humming.

“What song is that?” she asks.

It's not a therapeutic question, but Sharon is starting to worry that she has to know. The song is in her head now and she knows that it will keep her awake if she doesn't know what its name soon.

“I think it's called 'Good Morning, Good Morning,'” he says.

He keeps moving back and forth before her and sings a bit of it.

“Good morning, good morning. We've talked the whole night through. Good morning, good morning, to you.”

“Singing in the Rain,” Sharon says. She smiles and nods. The humming in her head is replaced by Debbie Reynolds' voice singing the familiar tune.

“That's the one,” Jacob says.

“We've talked the whole night through?” Sharon lifts an eyebrow and looks at Jacob for a moment. He sees and keeps dancing. He executes a series of turns and lifts his face up to the imagined rain.

“I love that movie,” he says. “Haven't seen it in years.”

“They stayed up all night,” Sharon says.

“They did.”

“And you?” she asks.

Jacob shrugs and then repeats the motion so that it becomes not so much a shrug as another move in his routine. He bounces his shoulders up and down as he glides across the carpet. He begins tap dancing on the soft pile.

Sharon asks, “how much sleep did you get last night?”

“A little,” he says, still shrugging and tapping.

He dances so that he is moving toward and then away from Sharon, keeping his face in profile. He watches out the window as the snow flies in the light of the street lamp burning at the corner.

“And the night before?” she asks.

“Some,” he says.

She asks how he slept Sunday night and Jacob doesn't answer. He dances faster, tapping harder at the rug and the floor beneath it. His breathing is audible now.

“Sunday, Jacob. How did you sleep Sunday night?”

She watches him dance and listens to the tapping and thumping. The dentist's office downstairs closed before Jacob's appointment. They won't hear Jacob's dance and wonder. Earlier, long before Jacob arrived, while Sharon worked with another patient who sobbed at the thought of two impending wars, a cold front moving through the region, and the opening of a new Wal-Mart super store, Sharon had heard the clear sound of a woman screaming from down there. The scream had come on quickly as Sharon's patient blew her nose, and had stopped suddenly. Sharon had heard the screaming and she looked to her patient to comfort her. It's nothing, she was ready to tell the woman. Just someone having trouble with her teeth. But her patient hadn't heard a thing. Sharon, for the rest of their session, could think of nothing else.

Sharon watches Jacob. He has not answered the question.

“Did you sleep at all on Sunday, Jacob?” she asks.

“I was, I, I was busy,” he says.

“Doing what?”

“Watching the television,” he tells her.

He keeps moving, tapping, shuffling and nodding. He has stopped humming and this dance doesn't go at all with the song from a moment ago.

“CNN?” Sharon asks.

Jacob nods. He holds his lower lip with his teeth and nods. He looks down at the rug and keeps dancing. His hands are up in front of him, in loose fists, pumping up and down.

“Slow down. It's alright,” she tells him.

He shifts his weight from his left to his right foot and back and forth, lightly pumping his hands before him.

“Were you upset about the space shuttle?”

Jacob stares at the floor.

“Tell me how you found out about the space shuttle,” she says. “Did you see it on the television?”

“Yeah,” he says.

“How did it happen?”

Jacob keeps shifting right to left and pumping his fists but now moves he starts moving his upper body in rhythm with his hands. He is vibrating back and forth, his head bouncing up and down as he his body swings. Sharon waits for him to answer.

“I woke up,” he says, “and I looked at the screen and it said 'Breaking News' and I had a bad feeling so I got up real quick and I, you know, I did a couple quick turns at the side of the bed, real quick turns, like to catch up, like I could make up for it, but, well, I mean, you know it was too late and they, they, they kept showing the, the pictures, the video, in slow motion and all jerky, you know, because it was so, it was so far away and all there was, was blue, blue sky, blue sky and the white, the bright white comet and, it looked like a comet, and the, and the tail, the grey white smoke tail and, oh, I don't, I kept, you know, I danced, I moved, and I did all my, my my, my best moves, the spins and turns, the footwork and I smiled, I smiled, and I sang, I sang loud, and, but the t.v., the television, it, they just kept saying, they kept showing it, and it was still breaking, you know, breaking news, and they, the, the, they were, you know, the astronauts, the ones on board, they were, you know, they were, you know?”

Sharon watches Jacob shake his head hard. He wobbles it on his shoulders and tries to smile but can't pull it off. His eyes are shut tight and a smile isn't possible in the middle of what he's telling her. His dancing is erratic, his arms moving up and down, his feet barely coming off the carpet.

“You know?” he asks.

“I know,” she tells him.

The radio is on as Sharon sits with Liz in the living room of their townhouse. Sharon holds a pad in her lap with a pen lying across it. The pad is blank. Sharon is thinking about her glasses which may or may not be in her purse which may or may not be in the front hall. Bill Evans is on the radio playing snatches of a tune, teasing his way through a song.

“He was so tired,” Sharon says.

Liz is reading the paper on the couch. She doesn't look up but asks, “you mean Dancer?”

“Yeah,” Sharon says. “Dancer. He must have been doing since Saturday morning. Non-stop. Just dancing.”

Liz looks up at Sharon. It's been three nights in a row that Sharon has been talking about Dancer. Liz knows him now, more than most of Sharon's clients. She knows parts of the story though none of the names other than this nickname Sharon has given her so as to make the storytelling easier. Liz looks at Sharon who is looking across the room at a mirror in which she can see the kitchen. Liz folds the newspaper and sets it aside.

“Hell of a workout,” she says, wondering if Sharon is even listening.

“What?” Sharon asks.

“Dancing all the time. He could eat anything. God, think about it. Baskin Robbins and Krispy Cream every day, three times a day and not an ounce of flab.”

“Yeah,” Sharon says.

She's still staring at the mirror.

“Hello,” Liz says, waving to Sharon. “Anybody home?”

Sharon jerks herself back into the world. She smiles and folds her hands in front of her, holding them out toward Liz like a supplicant.

“I'm sorry,” Sharon says. “I don't know,” she says and leaves it at that.

“Why was he so tired?” Liz asks.

This talk of Dancer worries her, but it's what they have been able to talk about. She knows that Sharon needs to say.

“It's the burden,” Sharon says. “He's decided that it's up to him. That he has to keep dancing to keep us all alive. He is absolutely convinced that, if he stops, we will all die horrible deaths. Fire, blood, devastation. All if he stops dancing even to sleep.”

Liz watches Sharon.

“He stopped on Saturday, early in the morning. He fell asleep at three or four and didn't wake up until nine-thirty. It was the most rest he's had in months, a real sleep. He was even in bed instead of standing somewhere in the middle of a dance. He slept and when he woke up he knew that falling asleep had cost the lives of the astronauts on the Columbia.”

“He knew?” Liz asks.

“He knew.”

“You mean, he believed that falling asleep had cost them their lives.”

“Yeah.” Sharon says. “I mean that he believed that.”

“Are you okay, honey?”

“Yeah,” Sharon says. “Yeah, sure.”

“It's just that,” Liz begins. “I don't know.”

Sharon says, “He napped two weeks ago and the Israelis and Palestinians killed a few of themselves. Last week there was that barn fire that killed all the cows. He fell asleep on the bus. And then Saturday, he killed the crew on the shuttle for Christ's sake.”

“He believed that he killed them,” Liz says.

“Yeah, he believed it.”

“Sharon?”

“And all this over Henry,” Sharon says. She looks at Liz, holding her hands out in front of her. “All this over a dead brother. I know that it's tragic, and I know that he feels the usual guilt of having lived while Henry died, but,” she stops.

“Sharon?” Liz asks.

Sharon looks out the window. The snow on the lamp post is three inches high and it's still snowing. The song ends. It's eight o'clock.

“From NPR News in Washington, I'm Craig Windham.”

The news recaps the latest in the shuttle investigation, the looming war in Iraq, and the threat of war in North Korea.

Sharon doesn't hear any of it. Liz watches as Sharon fades from the room. Liz hears the news but can't hear the song playing inside Sharon's head over and over. “Good morning, good morning.”

Liz gets Sharon to take Friday off. Jacob, the last patient Sharon saw before this imposed vacation, stays in her mind. Jacob, Dancer. He isn't Sharon's most troubling case but he is the one who stays with her now. She hasn't had a moment without him since their last meeting. She lies awake now seeing him dance in the darkness of the bedroom humming “Make 'em Laugh” and running up the walls into flips and pratfalls, never for a moment stopping the dance. The song plays on an infinite track and repeats that same line over and over for her. “Make 'em laugh, make 'em laugh, make 'em laugh.” Jacob is smiling throughout and throwing himself around the room.

She gets up at three thirty and goes downstairs. Liz stirs but doesn't wake up enough to notice that Sharon is gone. Sharon goes out into the hall and downstairs to the kitchen.

She puts water on to boil for tea. She turns the radio on low. BBC World Service. This is Newshour. It's time for the sport. Sharon listens to the cricket scores and highlights. Sharon sits at the kitchen table thinking about the war in Iraq. The Israelis and their gas masks. The soldiers in desert camouflage. The oil wells ablaze and the white flags of surrender. The President has been saying that he's ready, that the military is ready, that the American people are ready. He keeps talking about what is right and what must be done.

Sharon can't get that song out of her head.

She sees Liz's newspaper folded in quarters on the table and reads a cover story about smallpox vaccinations. She reads until the words roll around the edge of the folded page and under it. Sharon doesn't see a point in unfolding it to finish the article.

Jacob, she thinks, must be asleep. He has to sleep. He can't keep dancing forever. No one could. The water, boiling in the kettle on the stove over a blue flame, makes tremendous noise in the night kitchen. The radio too, now that the BBC is playing its fanfare, seems too loud. She stands, takes a step toward the radio, then turns toward the stove, leaning, and steps toward it. She moves back toward the radio and then to the stove and back and forth. She pumps her hands up and down in time with the song stuck inside her head.

Jacob is walking dancing out of doors as Sharon moves between the tea kettle and the radio with Donald O'Connor. He shuffles down Salina street, block after block, touching lamp posts and newspaper boxes. He kicks softly at the snow and is careful not to slip on the ice as he turns and spins.

Jacob thinks of Henry and Sharon. He knows that Sharon believes that the dancing is a defense mechanism, something Jacob uses to protect himself from the guilt of Henry's death. But he knows too that she is wrong.

“Maybe wrong is too strong of a word,” he says.

It's more that she doesn't understand the bigger picture. Yes, Jacob is crippled by the guilt of living while Henry has been dead for so long. But Sharon doesn't understand what it is that Jacob has to do and the power of it. She doesn't believe. Jacob has tried to explain to Sharon, to a number of people, but no one can understand the depths of it. Dance can bring rain, quiet the spirits, appease the gods, heal the sick, spark true love, and maybe raise the dead. Jacob's heard stories. And he believes most of them. But he has yet to find another who understands that his dance keeps people alive.

“It does,” he says.

The dancing matters. It's the most important thing that there is. The war is coming if he lets it. The terrorists are out there waiting for him to stop. Hurricanes and earthquakes are ready for the moment when he stops. He has to dance until someone else is chosen to dance in his place.
For now, for this moment, there is only Jacob. The dance is his. It has chosen him.

“Gotta dance, gotta dance, gotta dance!” he sings.

He's got to dance and he loves the dance though it is wearing him down. It's not the dancing itself so much as his understanding that he has to stop some time, to rest, to sleep. It's the understanding that at those moments something terrible will happen. They have to happen because the dance isn't there. Like water behind a dam. If the dance isn't there, what's to hold back the terrible things? It makes sense and history proves him out on this. Henry knows that he has to keep dancing and that's okay. It's that he also knows that he has to stop that hurts.

Gotta dance.

He turns twice, takes two steps back, then runs into a take off from the edge of the curb to cross the street. He closes his eyes on take off and the snow becomes down feathers falling on him. The streets are his stage, the lamplight his spotlight. He lands in the street, turns toward his audience with his legs spread wide below him, his arms spread wide above him. He wears a giant Gene Kelly smile, his eyes closed and his face turned up into the snow. He hears the movie songs instead of the van driving without its headlights.

The impact spins him twice, whipping his arms about him, but his legs stay together and his fall is a pirouette gone wrong. He lands on the side of his face and his dead body crumples around him, rolling until it rests against the side of a building.


Liz wakes up just after six with the idea that someone is sobbing. She throws off the covers and stands up. From downstairs she hears the radio and someone moving around. No sobbing. It was a dream, she decides. Still.

She slides her feet into slippers and pulls on a sweatshirt. The wind pushes hard against the windows and the house is cold. Liz walks down the stairs, through the hall toward the kitchen. She hears the radio, still playing BBC news.

Sharon is dancing. She moves across the linoleum in circles and spirals, holding an invisible partner. Her eyes are shut tight and she keeps dancing round and round the kitchen, looking for all the world like she will never stop.

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A Valentine's Legend

We've been together, dear wife, for going on sixteen years and still there are things you don't know about me, things you ought to know about who I am. Here's one: my great grandfather was a soldier in the Civil War. He ran away from home to join the Union because his North Carolina family was loyal to the Confederacy. This is why my family tree extends only so far as the birth of Great Grandpa John. I too am a loyal Union man. But I digress.

My great grandfather John left home in 1864 to join General Grant in his struggle against Robert E. Lee. He served through to Appomattox Court House as an aide and messenger boy. In a letter written on the day of the surrender, he claims to have stood outside the McLean house as the Confederate General went inside to surrender. That's the letter my brother has framed over the end-table in his living room. You've seen it a hundred times. Next time we're over there, read the third paragraph. You'll see.
But there's much of this story that can't be confirmed by document or photograph. Some of it was told to my father by his father, while other parts I've heard from aunts and uncles at family reunions and funerals. But, my dear, I have to admit that some of it is conjecture at best. All of this happened a very long time ago and so I have had to stitch the cloth together in places to make it whole. This is a story, a legend really, but it's good. And none of my lies are too far off the mark.

We know for sure that Grant's army was still in Virginia when John joined them. He was sixteen and was on his way back from delivering a message to Washington when a man in a carriage called to him. John noticed that two fine horses were tied to and following the carriage. He saw that the driver who had called him was a well-dressed gentleman. And seated next to the driver, John saw a young woman. We don't have to imagine how he felt. Ask any schoolboy who has felt himself fall deeply in love with the girl across the room.

"Boy," the driver said, "point me the way to General Grant's tent." John replied that he would lead. He had orders to report there on his return.

The man was Matthew McConnell. He was delivering two of his finest horses to the general who was one of the great horsemen of his time, of any time. Matthew wanted to help the cause and he was too old to be a soldier. He was however, quite wealthy and his horses would be a welcome addition to Grant's stable.

Beside Matthew, Mary sat silently as they rode slowly behind John to Grant's encampment. While the horses were attended to, John brought an officer, the identity of whom we do not know, to meet with Matthew. Mr. Grant was in the field and could not see him. The officer thanked Matthew for the horses and offered to meet with him about other matters Matthew wished to discuss. Seeing Mary still sitting in the carriage, the officer suggested that his aide see to it that a meal was provided for her and that she be entertained while the two men spoke. The aide in question, was John who stood nearby. John was filthy from the ride to and from Washington, but as Matthew looked him over, he stood erect and composed. After a moment of consideration, Matthew nodded his assent.

"Mary," he called up to the wagon, "you will go with this boy." With that, he and the officer departed.

I know that by now you're wondering how everyone looked. I wish that I had a picture to show you, but I don't. Instead you'll have to imagine. Grandpa said that John had had black hair as a young man, that his shoulders were wide and square, and that his hands were large. He was never heavy. He was tall, almost six feet, and especially later in life his size was intimidating. His eyes, according to Grandpa, were hazel green like mine. In a picture taken long after the war his hair is parted to the right and he holds his head up so that he is looking down at the camera. In a picture my father has, John stands behind a chair in which Mary sits. His hand rests on her shoulder, enveloping it in a gesture that is protective, loving, and possessive.

Mary, according to a diary entry John wrote after Mary had passed, was rail thin with hair that fell down over her shoulders in dark red curls. Her skin, was smooth and perfect aside from one mole on her left cheek. He wrote that her eyes were brown and very wide, especially when she looked into his eyes. She was a full foot shorter than John. And her smile came from one side of her mouth more than the other so that it looked almost sly and, to John, irresistible.

These descriptions though are from later in their lives. At the time of this first meeting John was a boy of sixteen and Mary fourteen-year-old girl. They only children in a very large world.

John reached up to the carriage to help her down, but she assured him that she could manage and so he was denied the chance to hold her hand. As they walked together through the camp Mary asked questions about the war and life in the army. She was well informed about the war, well mannered, and she put John at ease though he had never spoken to a girl for this long. But when she asked about his home and family John explained that so far as he was concerned his life had begun when he joined the Union army.

"The rest of my life be damned," he said. "If you'll excuse my course tongue."

John retrieved a meal for them and they sat on a hillside above the encampment to eat it. They talked more as they ate and Matthew learned that Mary's family lived in northern Virginia, that they raised horses, that she loved to ride and could outrace any boy she knew. She was the youngest of eleven children and the only daughter. Four of her brothers served in the army, three worked in Washington, and three had died in the war. John didn't know what to say to this and the talk of death stalled their conversation. They looked out together over the field of tents, the cooking fires, and the men moving about. They stared silently over the fields through which John would soon march and imagined all that would happen far away as the army moved south.

Without looking, they both reached for a piece of chicken from the plate between them. Mary grabbed the chicken leg and John wrapped his hand around hers. But once he knew what he had done, he was so glad to be touching her that he didn't let go. She too was satisfied with the situation and didn't pull away. So, for the better part of an hour, they sat still, not speaking, watching the sun move down the sky. John held Mary's hand and Mary held a chicken leg and everything in their world was right.

As evening came on, John worried that Matthew would be waiting and that Mary's hand might be soaked through in chicken fat. He said that he supposed they ought to get back. Mary agreed and they let go. Together they packed up the picnic and returned to the camp. Matthew and the officer were enjoying cigars by the fire, both of them laughing and clapping one another on the back, as John and Mary returned. They stood, shook hands and the officer departed.

Matthew nodded to John. "Thank you, boy, for attending to my daughter. I trust that she was no trouble."

"No, sir. It was my honor," John replied. He then bowed slightly to the older man, stood to attention and saluted.

The carriage was brought around. Matthew and Mary stepped up into it and, with a flick of the reigns, Matthew started them on their way home. John watched the carriage until it passed around the bend. Mary never once looked back. She rode silently all the way home. Three days later, General Grant gave the order and John marched south with the rest of the Army of the Potomac to win the Civil War.

But just after the carriage had passed out of his sight, John sought out the officer who had spoken with Matthew. He requested permission to write a letter on behalf of the officer and of General Grant thanking Matthew for the horses. The officer was happy to oblige and provided John with the address Matthew had left behind. John stood at the officer's table and copied the address onto a scrap of paper which he folded in half and put safely in his pocket. He thanked the officer, saluted him, and went on his way to write the note which he sent off with the next messenger. He kept the square of paper with the address and carried it with him into battle.

I wish I had that piece of paper, my dear, to give to you this Valentine's Day as a sign of my love. I imagine it as a small scrap of brown paper that is creased and nearly torn in half. The black ink has faded to a shadow. On the front is the name of a farm and a town in northern Virginia that no longer exist. I've looked. On the back, above the crease is Mary's name. Below that is a small heart underlined two times. And the note, though it is just short of a century and a half old, is still whole, still in one piece, still complete. It's as though it might just last forever.

I don't have that piece of paper. I don't know if anyone does. But I know that John carried it through the war, back to Virginia, to the front step of the Matthew's home, and to the altar where he and Mary became husband and wife. I count as fact that they had seven children, that their second son was named Wilson John Fay and that he married Mildred. You know as well as I do that Wilson's and Mildred's third son was Lawrence A. Fay and that he is my father.

I am Larry's son, Wilson's grandson, John's and Mary's great grandson. Those are the facts of the matter. The piece of paper might be legend, but I believe in stories of true love and I carry the idea of that paper with me as surely as if the thing itself were in my pocket.

John rode north into Virginia asked Mary to be his bride and she agreed. I stood with you in Virginia, asked you to marry me, and we became one. A hundred years from now I suspect that our great grandson will find himself in Virginia with the woman who will agree to become his wife. One day he will tell her that there are things about him that she doesn't know, things that she ought to know about who he is. "Here's one," he will say, and then tell her the story of his great grandfather falling in love with a woman named Stephanie. Some of it will be true and drawn from letters and photos left behind. Other parts he will make up just so that she will feel how much I loved you and how much he loves her. He will tell it so that she knows that his love isn't something new. It has been going on for hundreds of years. And at the end he will say, so now you know, my dear. So now you know.

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Quiet Desperation

Most men lead lives of quiet desperation, so I keep my mouth shut. I sit at my desk inside this cubicle and drink coffee from a company mug. I type at the computer, answer the phone, and attend meetings. I can't see the sun from where I sit, but I know that it's rising and that it will be coming down by the time I log off the network, rinse out the coffee mug, and catch the bus home.

On the bus, I will keep quiet about my desperation hoping that no one can read it on me. At home I will say hello to the cat, feed her, and sift through the mail. I'll keep myself in check so that the cat won't notice how much I need her greeting or imagine what I would do if she wasn't there. I don't want her to notice all that she takes the place of in my life.

I'll play the phone messages after I've sorted the mail. There will be three. First, Mom telling me about Dad's day in the hospital and how she just knows he's getting better. Second, either my sister Lucy or my brother Bill telling me that Mom's wrong. But the third message will leave me staring at the machine after it is over and the light has stopped blinking.

"Hey, Jim," a quiet, soft voice will say. "It's me, Jeannie. I was, I don't know, I was just calling to say hey and to," the voice will pause. "I was calling to say hey."

Jeannie?

She will say that she too is single now and wonders if we could get together for coffee. She's stopped drinking, she'll say and then she will suggest a coffee shop at the corner of Sixth and Congress. It's a place I go to all the time and as she pauses trying to think of what to say next, I'll imagine myself at the table by the window watching her walk up the street toward me. I'll have to shake myself out of that dream as she leaves her number and asks me to call back . "If you want to get together," she'll say and then stop for four seconds before saying, "I sure hope you do." And then, after another pause in which I'll hear her take a breath, she'll say, "bye."

It will be an hour of thinking about it before I call back. I won't be able to sit or stay in one place. I'll do laundry and scrub the kitchen sink. I'll turn lights on and off. I'll look at the phone. I will play the message again three times. I'll write her number on a note and carry that around the apartment for a while. I'll feed the cat. Twice. Then I'll stare at the phone until I finally pick it up to dial.

"Hello," she will say.

"Hey, Jeannie, it's Jim."

We'll get together. She will wear a skirt, a sweater, and a pair of brown boots with tall heels. Snow will fall softly against the window by our table and the flakes will melt on the glass in slow trails. We will have coffee and, once we have shaken off the chill and gotten used to each other again, we will talk easily. She will get and walk to the restroom. I'll watch until the door closes behind her.

Then, I'll look out the window at the snow and the night sky. There won't be a cubicle wall or all these desks between me and the world outside. The coffee will be hot and fresh, and it will taste good. Not like the stuff in my mug now, here in this cubicle where the clock crawls. The door to the bathroom in that coffee shop will soon open and Jeannie, single and enchanting, will come back to join me. Good things will follow and I won't feel desperate about the color of these cubicle walls, the fluorescent lights, and the growing feeling that I can't remain quiet much longer as I wait for someone to come through a door, look my way, and smile just at the sight of me.

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