when studied in the context of a dim farmhouse bedroom, somewhere far removed from the bloated corpses floating among rice fields or piled beneath bridges. And yet, for Hollis, that was where Creed continued to reside in his memory, that was where his version of Creed belonged — roaming assuredly, furiously below Korean hillsides, a cigarette at his lips, his rifle aimed and ready. No, Hollis couldn't envision such a soldier as ever having lived a life at the remote farm — sleeping where he'd slept, going to school and playing sports, growing up with soft-spoken family members — unless, of course, that person was someone more like himself. He pressed a finger over a penny, sliding it out of the cross pattern and along the top of the bureau. Funny, he thought, that these little things outlasted Bill McCreedy — funny that just this stuff and almost nothing else would find its way home to Texas.
When Hollis turned away from the bureau, he saw Edgar was awake and sitting upright in bed, watching him without expression, thick hair pointing wildly in a dozen directions. “Morning,” Hollis said, navigating around a traffic jam of toy cars on the floor, and then he lowered himself to the edge of Creed's mattress, facing the boy whose bed was less than three feet away. “How'd you sleep? Hope I didn't keep you up by snoring.”
But Edgar didn't answer, nor did he now stare directly at Hollis. Instead, the boy's gaze was fixed on the snaking scar, studying the wound with fascination. “It hurt?” he finally said, pointing casually at Hollis's left thigh.
Spreading his legs apart, Hollis glanced at the scar, rubbing a palm along it. “Not so much anymore. Sometimes it does, if I think about it, but mostly it only itches on occasion.”
“Looks like it hurts.”
Edgar scooted forward in the bed, sliding his bare feet out from under the sheets, bringing himself to the edge of his mattress where, as if the boy were trying to see through darkness, he bent forward to peer at the scar.
“Go ahead,” Hollis said. “Feel it if you like, won't bite you.”
At first Edgar looked like he had no intention of getting any closer to the wound, but presently he moved a hand toward the damaged thigh, gingerly easing fingers against Hollis's skin as if he were testing the heat of a flame. “You knew my brother,” the boy said matter-of-factly, two cold fingertips slowly tracing the route of the crooked scar, producing a multitude of goose pimples on Hollis's left thigh.
“I sure did.”
After a second the boy asked, “Was he your best buddy?”
Unsure of how to answer, Hollis gave an indifferent shrug of his shoulders. He then heard himself say, “Sort of, I suppose,” as his body unexpectedly turned rigid from the boy's touch.
“He was my best buddy, too.” Edgar drew his hand back, quickly retracting it to a bouncing knee covered beneath his plaid pajama bottoms. “Think a fella can have him two best buddies?”
“Don't see why not,” Hollis said, giving another shrug.
“Me neither,” the boy said. “Don't see why not neither.” Then Edgar's mouth thinned a bit before he asked, “You miss him?”
“Yes,” Hollis lied without thinking twice, “I do.”
The boy grinned and then, as he had just done with his hand, quickly retracted the expression as if he wasn't permitted to smile. However, in that brief moment, Hollis spotted something familiar on Edgar's benign face, catching a glimpse of the exact same effortless grin he had seen to the point of contempt in Korea. Yet sitting before the boy, Hollis was surprised to suddenly feel a kind of indirect affection for Creed, an unexpected tenderness and warmth he had never thought possible.
“Anyways, you wasn't snoring,” Edgar said. “If you was I'd have told you to shush. Don't like hearing snoring, that's why I don't do it.”
“Fair enough,” Hollis said, smiling at one corner of his mouth. “I don't like hearing snoring either.”
But later that morning — while Hollis stood alone on the porch, waiting for Bill Sr. to come outside and give him a tour around the property — something else was now puzzling him, something he couldn't really sort out in his head; because during breakfast Bill Sr. and Florence had spoken of how glad they were to have him there, how important it was for them to get to know the young man who had been a friend to their elder son and, as Florence told it, was highly regarded in turn. “You meant the world to our Billy,” she had said, seated at the kitchen table across from him. “Most every letter he sent home had some kind of mention of you, said you were like a second brother to him, said you was someone he'd count on in the worst of it.”
“He got a big cut on his leg,” Edgar piped up, raising his right arm and holding it at the elbow. “ ‘Bout this long as this much of my arm here.”
Like a jag of lightning, Bill Sr. struck his fork against Edgar's plate, admonishing the boy with a chewing mouthful of eggs: “Why don't you shut it and eat your breakfast.” Then as Edgar and his arm slumped, Bill Sr. swallowed hard, thrusting his fork at the center of the table to retrieve another pork chop.
“Please forgive Edgar,” Florence said, shooting the boy a quick sidelong glance which was both stern and motherly. “His mouth ails him of late.” Her glare melted when she shifted again to Hollis, and then she sighed: “Just for the life of me, I can't begin imagining what all you boys endure over in a place like that. Except you was blessed to have each other — you and our Billy — and I take great heart knowing that. We all do, Hollis.”
“That's nearer than right,” Bill Sr. agreed with a sullen voice, hunched over where he sat and poking at the food on his plate.
What was said about the letters was mystifying, although Hollis could tell Florence wasn't lying. He saw the truth expressed upon her pale white face, heard it in her gentle, mellifluous voice. She had no reason to lie to him, whereas Creed apparently had reason to lie to her and Bill Sr. and Edgar. The best Hollis could figure was that, when writing home, Creed had simply substituted him for Schubert Tang — perhaps because Schubert had been Chinese instead of white, a person who, by last name only, might have sounded more like the enemy than a friend. But even that didn't make much sense. Then after Florence's unlikely revelation came another consideration — a horrible possibility lacking any logic to it, a horrible realization squirming and growing inside his brain — calling into question his memory of Creed, as well as what he believed he had understood for certain about his days serving overseas: Maybe Creed hadn't lied. Maybe, instead, he was the one remembering everything wrong. Maybe everything had happened in slightly different ways and the reality was too awful for him to have sustained, lest he fall apart at the painful recollection of it. Maybe the facts had escaped him on the morning he and Creed were both shot, rattled from him on the banks of the Naktong, ebbing further, then, in the weeks of recuperation, medication, and alcohol. Maybe — maybe — he had been nurturing lies without realizing it, fitting them into the places where he was no longer able or willing to access the truth.
And soon enough Hollis would be asked to dig among those grievous places in his mind, surprising himself with what was lurking there and, as the words slipped easily and dispassionately past his lips, with what he then heard himself say. For Bill Sr. would take him away from the farmhouse, just the two of them jostled inside a red pickup truck, bouncing along a rutted dirt road which wound down and through a valley of craggy, barren mesquite trees. When the truck growled along a steep hill, climbing higher, the ghostly mesquites began decreasing in number until they were gone. With the trees behind them, the truck topped the hill and an expanse of open fields flooded into view. That over there, Bill Sr. went on to mutter while he drove, was for cotton; that one, too; that one up yonder, that's where oats will sprout come spring. Hollis looked to his left, to his right, up ahead, nodding all the while. Keeping his eyes toward the horizon, Bill Sr. stopped the truck in the middle of the road, turning off the engine. Hollis glanced woodenly at him, saying nothing.
For a minute, Bill Sr. continued looking beyond the mud-spattered windshield with his face set. Then wetting his lips, he lowered his head, staring only at the center of the steering wheel. “Son,” he said in the gravest of tones, “I don't like askin’ you this, ‘cuz it's been hard on you, I know, and I ain't sayin’ it ain't been — but you got to tell me something, ‘cuz there's something I need knowing and it couldn't rightly get asked in front of Flo and the boy. So I promise you I won't be badgering you again on this while you're here — or ever again, I promise — but I'm needing to know how it happened that Billy got himself killed exactly. We already know when and where he got hit, we already know that. We know about that damn sumbitch sniper. We know you was there, too, and how you got hit bad in the leg and, son, that's a mighty rotten thing you had done to you — glad you got that sumbitch back, better believe it. But that's about all we got reported to us, and I can't stomach not knowing the whole story, ‘cuz it was my boy who got killed and I've got me a right to know more than just two-bit information on pieces of paper. So I'm hoping you can shed a little more light for me — and I won't ask again, I promise you that — I just need knowing for my own sake, ‘cuz it'd make a world of difference to me, and I'd sure sleep a ton better by knowing.”
