I waited. But he seemed less and less inclined to go on.
“Go ahead,” I said.
“No. Never mind. It was nothing.”
“Really. Go ahead and tell me. I won’t tell anyone.”
“No,” he said. “I know you won’t. I was just going to say that I think maybe I helped her, too. Because she said something like that to me once. Something like . . . like she didn’t believe in herself, but she believed in me. She even told me some stuff that was hard about her life.”
That made me feel bad. A little, anyway. But all I said was, “Like what? If it’s not too private.”
“Like about her girls. And why she decided to stay in Ashby. And how now she thinks that was a bad decision, and that it was really hard for them, trying to make that adjustment. Now she thinks it was selfish of her to stay and that’s why they don’t really speak to her much. She says they felt like everybody thought it should have been them who died, not two kids who had nothing to do with Zoe. Not somebody else’s kids. I don’t know if that’s true or not. If people really felt that way. But I guess the girls felt it like a pressure, you know?
“But I’m getting off track. I just meant to say that it went both ways. She believes in me but not herself. I didn’t believe in myself, but I believe in Zoe. You know, it really helps to have one person who believes in you, even if it’s not you. Even if you can’t quite do it yourself yet.”
I opened my mouth to say something. Probably that I could imagine what a game changer that would be. Or maybe “lifesaver” would’ve been a better way to phrase it.
But just then the kitten came out and leapt onto Connor’s back and grabbed on with her claws into his shirt. And obviously also into his skin, because he screamed. But he sort of laughed and screamed at the same time.
He reached around carefully and took hold of her and pulled her close to his chest, where she couldn’t do much harm.
“We have got to cut your nails,” he told her.
We didn’t talk about serious topics anymore that day.
In fact, we didn’t talk about those early times of his going to see Zoe Dinsmore ever again. Not that I can recall.
Then again, what more needed to be said?
If something works, I figure . . . just leave it alone. Let it be a thing that worked. Not everything needs to be picked apart for better understanding. Sometimes it’s okay to just say thank you in the quiet of your head and move along.
PART TWO: PRESENT DAY
AFTER FIFTY YEARS OF MOVING ALONG
Chapter Nineteen
All You
I could have said right from the start that I’m retelling this story standing beside the freshly dug, open grave of Connor Barnes. While I’m waiting for my friend’s casket to be lowered into the ground. I was tempted to. But I might’ve given a false impression if I’d done it that way.
It might have sounded like I was saying Connor didn’t make it.
Connor made it.
He made it another fifty years, after which he died of stomach cancer at age sixty-four.
We would’ve loved to have had Connor around another ten or twenty years, but still, he had a good run. And he left the world a lot of value from his time here, not only in the form of the decent life he managed to live, but also in the form of three beautiful daughters and seven grandchildren—five boys and two girls.
I’m standing here talking to one of the grandchildren, and I have been for what seems like a very long time.
His name is Harris, and he’s fourteen. He looks a little like Connor did at his age. Lanky and awkward and hopeless to sort out the world he’s been given. It doesn’t escape my notice that he’s the same age Connor and I were in the story. I hope that makes my ramblings even more meaningful to him.
“So why do we call you Uncle Luke?” he asks me, shielding his eyes against the sun. “If you hate to have anybody call you Luke?”
He doesn’t ask why everybody calls me Uncle Luke even though I’m not blood family, and even though I would be a great-uncle to him even if I was. But I guess some mysteries are more important than others.
I say, “Yeah, I figured you’d ask me that. But as you get older, a name that makes you sound young loses its sting.”
I can tell by the look in his eyes that something I’ve said has gone over his head for the first time all day. Maybe because it doesn’t involve being fourteen. I expect him to ask more about it, but he veers off in an entirely different direction.
“So by the time you were old enough for the draft, the war was over?”
I breathe a huge sigh. Because it’s a huge subject. But I’ll tell him the truth. I always tell him the truth.
“When I turned eighteen,” I say, “the war was still not over.”
“So what did you do?”
“I didn’t go.”
He doesn’t say anything. I wonder what he’s thinking. I’m watching family wander back to their cars. Slowly, and a few at a time. But we don’t wander. Because we’re not done.
“Go ahead and call me a draft dodger if you want,” I tell Harris. But I know he won’t. “There are still a couple of people in town who do, though mostly behind my back. Thing is, there was no dodge about it. I didn’t dodge anything. I didn’t go to Canada. I didn’t bribe or lie to anybody who could get me a better classification in the draft. I didn’t even try to
