setbacks, having forgotten what it was like to expect a breakthrough. “Oh well,” she had said at the clinic, shrugging indifferently. “It is what it is. That's life — at least what's left of mine anyway.”
“Stop that,” Hollis reproached her. “You're still here.”
“True enough,” she said.
Even so, the moment of Debra's defeat was now unquestionable, expressed symbolically that afternoon in front of their house when Hollis helped her step gradually down from the Suburban to the driveway. But rather than slip her arm through his arm, allowing herself to be guided forward like an invalid, she shook free of him, a look of simmering anger upon her face — eyebrows bunched, lips contracted — and mustering a brief rebound of vigor, she ambled quickly behind the Suburban, as Hollis followed, saying, “What is it? What's wrong?”
And there beneath such a blue, cloudless sky — the sun blazing across rock gardens, tile rooftop shingles, glinting off parked vehicles — Debra peeled a ribbon-shaped, teal-colored Ovarian Cancer Awareness sticker from the Suburban's tailgate. Muttering furiously under her breath, inhaling and exhaling in punctuated gasps, she pushed around Hollis, shuffling up the driveway, as he watched bewildered: lifting her hand, she slapped the sticker hard against the garage door, affixing it crookedly, before taking herself on into the house. Still, Hollis remained by the Suburban, his eyes flitting from the garage door to the ground to the house, and, unable yet to move, he felt himself grow cold in the sunshine. Afterward, he found her seated at the kitchen table, holding a paperback mystery, reading with the same furious look on her face. Nothing, then, would be spoken, nothing said for over an hour — nothing mentioned at all until, raising her head a while later at the table, she spoke to him almost in a whisper, so that he paused and looked at her, his fork stopping midair between his open mouth and a large serving of barbecue-grilled portobello mushrooms.
“Well, now, let's see, what can I tell you about us.” Without fully standing upright, Hollis changed chairs at the table, seating himself beside Debra — near enough to stroke her shoulder, to gaze at her gaunt, hawklike profile while she slid her plate away, then folded her hands upon the table-top, then glanced at him intently and nodded once, letting him know she was ready for him to proceed. “Where should I start?” he asked, searching his memory, sifting through their life together, glimpsing random scenes which sprang out of nowhere — lighting fireworks on his sister-in-law's lawn, skinny-dipping among cattle at a West Texas watering hole, buying snow cones somewhere in Nebraska or Kansas when hauling their few possessions to California — as if he were flipping the pages of an old photo album. “It's odd thinking about it, but I'd sort of seen you before we actually met,” he told her with a calm, steady voice. “I'd caught sight of you from another side of the globe, during Korea, over in a country you hadn't even been to — and I didn't know we were destined for each other, didn't have a notion we'd meet one day like we did.” He wiped sweat from his forehead while speaking. Two flies buzzed against the kitchen window; the ceiling fan whirred high above a platter of veggie kabobs which had been brought to the table from the outside grill; the yellow Hawaiian shirt and tan Bermuda shorts he wore were stained and damp in places with perspiration. In four days there would be snow on the ground. “But I guess you were like a ghost to me until we became acquainted.” He hesitated, frowning at his choice of words. Debra, however, was grinning, appearing duly interested, somewhat pleased. “I mean, I'd first seen you, except I hadn't really seen you, if that makes any sense.” Everything was suddenly dim around him, the kitchen engulfed by shadows which covered the floor like black, stagnant water, and, just then, he realized it was getting dark a little too early. “So, what can I tell you about us?” he said, rubbing and patting her shoulder as dusk set in, aware more than ever of how good it had always been to simply touch her.
From Hollis's perspective, their story had begun prior to its true beginning, the wheels already set into motion elsewhere upon his return stateside: those remaining few months of 1950 — late September through late October — at the U.S. Naval Hospital in Oakland, California, where he recuperated on an orthopedic bed which was equipped with traction gear, weights, and trapeze bars. The bed frame had been welded down, and his mornings were spent, much to his own initial amusement, with his ass literally in a sling, his body gyrating about while he grasped the overhead bars, methodically exercising his chest, arms, legs. The ward he recovered in was long, sanitary, like a high-end barracks. Windows were propped open for fresh air on nicer days, and at night there was central heating. His wound was redressed at sunrise, medication prepared and distributed between 7 a.m. and 8 a.m., followed by sick call (the checking of temperature, pulse, respiration, blood pressure — the vital-sign log updated for the doctor's rounds). The linen was changed regularly, the floors mopped with a heavy disinfectant which saturated everything with an unrelenting medicinal smell. Morning meals were served twice (7:15 a.m., 11:30 a.m.). At exactly 1 p.m. the ward was darkened for a rest hour — no talking, no exercising, just rest. He was washed daily, lightly scrubbed from head to toe, and never in his life had he felt so clean and yet, at the same time, so defective.
But Hollis didn't become dispirited, for in that spit-and-polished ward were forty other injured soldiers like him — only a couple of which he had seen or met beforehand in Japan — each with an orthopedic bed like his and a hanging chart displaying a name, a status, a condition. He saw these men, and, in their faces, he saw himself — straining as they reached for their own trapeze bars, necks tightening to show veins, struggling while lifting their bodies upright, like a patch of similarly designed but unsynchronized oil-well pumps, rising and falling at different intervals. They laughed at their ineptness, their weakness, or groaned profanities, darting aloof, self-conscious glances around even when no one was paying attention. Sometimes, after lights-out at night, the nurses let them listen to the radio on low volume. Or if a radio wasn't allowed, they whispered in the darkness, talking to one another for hours. And all the while nurses came and went, bringing cups of water whenever corpsmen weren't available, frequently dispensing pain pills upon gaining permission to do so from a doctor.
Sooner than was expected, though, Hollis's rehabilitation took him from the bed during afternoons, assisted at first by a corpsman or a nurse, so that he could limp along hallways, transported by crutches, his wounded leg responding a little at a time to the process of building up strength and mobility again. Holding clipboards and meal trays, often carting medical equipment and gurneys, hospital staff hurried about in deliberate fashion — alone, or in pairs, or in groups — moving assuredly through the hallways as if the world was theirs; they exited and entered private rooms, leaving the doors ajar and transistor radios playing inside. Within the hallways it was still possible to glimpse the most damaged of the men beyond those half-open doors, covered in their beds, appendages missing, heads bandaged yet showing black holes where mouths and nostrils existed, plastic cups of milk or orange juice at their bedsides. And urging himself forward — keeping close to the walls, taking step by agonizing step and sometimes navigating around stalled wheelchairs — was Hollis. He proceeded slowly but purpose-fully,as well he might: for every step brought him closer to home, every small, aching effort hastened his release — the bad leg successfully raised and placed ahead of the better leg meant his days as a soldier were almost over. In the near future, the moment would arrive when he could limp briskly off the hospital grounds, putting the military and the war behind without as much as a wave goodbye; that, more than anything, kept him on his feet whenever the pain felt too great for standing.
Then how unanticipated it was, Hollis realized, that the hometown he had previously decided wasn't worth revisiting should now feel so missed. Already letters were delivered to him from Critchfield, sent mostly by people whom he couldn't immediately recall — the woman who ran the local florist shop, a bar owner, a high-school student whose older brother had once bullied him for a nickel — all wishing a speedy recovery, explaining how incredibly proud they were of him. Never before in his life had an outpouring of random kindness come his way, nor had he ever received letters from much of anyone, let alone letters of praise. In less than a year, it seemed, he had shaken loose the skin of an awkward town loner to become Critchfield's current war hero, achieving the distinction without fully understanding that he was, indeed, perceived as such.
Only later would Hollis learn of the photograph which had appeared in
“Hold it a sec,” the nurse supervisor said, hoisting the camera. “Oh, yes, right there, that's it — ”
The captain became suddenly inanimate, gazing down at Hollis with an unflinching, benevolent expression,
