I crossed the park, past the high hurricane fencing of the basketball courts, to the metal tables and chairs set up on the north side of the fountain. Picking a table in clear view of the parking lot, I put my chess board and stadium cushion down on the table and moved the chair nearest the parking lot to the side. Each of the wire mesh chairs was chained to the base of a table and made that dungeon sound, steel on concrete, when you moved them. I put my stadium cushion on the seat of the chair facing the parking lot. As I sat down, the cushion exhaled and so did I. I began to set up the board, wiping each piece with my t-shirt and positioning them on the board: kings, queens, rooks, bishops, knights, and pawns. I paused over one black pawn with a long nick in his top knob, exposing a weathered sliver of bare wood. I placed him in front of my queen’s rook. With the board set, I sat back and scanned the parking lot for my son Gerry’s blue van.
A radio announcer could be heard, “Join Rick Rush tonight at 8:00 PM when he talks with Buzz Aldrin to commemorate the anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing – the day that America conquered the moon!” Someone changed the station. It paused on a Latin station – “Dura, dura, dura” – and then slid to sixties classics: the tail end of “Georgie Girl” and then the beginning of “Incense and Peppermints.”
The house was up, I was aware of an electricity of movement, a muted buzz. Sliding out from under my covers, I glanced across the room at Jake’s side of the room. On the wall above his bed hung his framed high-school diploma – Class of ’67 – and his senior prom photo with Cindy Skulnik. It had been like living with a ghost for the past year. His headboard with the built-in bookcase held almost a year’s worth of Life Magazines carefully curated by our mother who saved them all for Jake to read when he returned home. The covers told the story of the year: hippies, moon landing, Norman Mailer (?), astronaut, off to the moon, the faces of our dead, American flag on the moon, more astronauts, more moon photos, more soldiers, science, and something about sex. I thought, Jake’ll be really surprised when he reads about everything that’s happened since he’s been away. For the past year, our mother had come into the room repeatedly just to stand over the foot of Jake’s bed clutching the cross that hung around her neck. Our father had taken to walking slowly into the room, pursing his lips, usually looking down at the floor, in constant motion, occasionally scanning the walls of the room as if he’d forgotten something. This morning, I shuffled across the floor in my footsy pajamas drawn by the unsettled sounds of the house.
Peering out the door and down the hall, I could see the yellow glow of the kitchen. Already a creature of habit, I had to first shuffle across the living room and sit down cross-legged in front of the TV, pressing my nose and forehead up against the convex screen. Pulling the knob out, I watched patiently for the first dot to appear in the center of the screen. Ten, twenty, thirty seconds passed before the first grey-white dot appeared in the center of the screen, another ten before that seminal point of light began to spread outward. This morning no one chided me, “Sit back! You’ll ruin your eyes!” I slid back to arm’s length from the TV. I soon saw snow and static, realized that there was nothing to watch yet, confirming that this morning was starting strangely, not like other mornings.
I got up, left the snowy screen, and padded quietly down the hall toward the harsh yellow light. Squinting as I approached the kitchen doorway, I peered around the doorjamb. My father, in his bathrobe, pajamas, and slippers, sat on one of the kitchen chairs, his back to the doorway, tapping one slippered foot nervously like some jittery jazz drummer on Joey Bishop or Dick Cavett. The long, spiral cord of the black wall-phone was draped from the wall-mount over his shoulder. He had the chair pulled out from the table at an angle. He smoked, repeatedly flicking ashes toward the ashtray on the kitchen table, often missing. Agitated, he swept them off nervously with the side of his hand holding the lit cigarette, scattering more ashes with each wave of his hand, perpetuating the cycle. My mother observed and for once said nothing. With a serious look that I had only seen once before, she turned from the table. A shadow of a smile crossed her face as she glanced at me, and she turned to the stove and counter. She moved as if scripted, following an order of service, completing the motions she had executed thousands of times before, seeming to know that at this moment they held unique import: taking the coffee can from the shelf next to the stove, reaching into the can making that scoop sound and depositing the grounds into the basket inside the percolator that sat in its proper place on the left rear burner of the stove, and again into can, “Hooh,” and then to the percolator basket, “Haah,” followed by the metallic sound of the lid being replaced on the percolator, returning the coffee can to its shelf, turning on the gas burner, “Whooshh,” first for the coffee and then for the cast iron skillet on the right front burner. Moving down the counter, she retrieved two slices of Wonder Bread. Into the toaster and down with a firm push of the handle. Then back to the skillet where she would add one by one strips of bacon into the sizzle.
Finally, my father spoke. “So, he’s stable.” He cleared his throat. “Stable.” He seemed to be eating his lower lip between words. “On his way to Okinawa.” He looked up at my mother, as if to see that she understood the significance of the words. Their eyes met. Their expressions gave no sign of relief, not following any familiar pattern of communication. As my eyes adjusted to the overhead light, I realized that this was a moment when somehow lives would turn. This was a family moon landing – maybe bigger. I became aware that information was flowing around the room without words, with glances and nods. I knew instinctively it was a moment I needed to remember. My mother was performing a sacrament that attested to continuation of life. My father was in the role of Egyptian father who realized too late that he’d failed to mark his lintel and door posts the way those peculiar Hebrews did, only in this case, the Dark Angel had not taken his full measure, a check swing with the old scythe. “Thank you. Thank you, sir.”
I could hear bits of the thin voice on the other end of the line: “You don’t have to call me ‘sir.’ You’re not in the army.” I would learn later that my father had never been in the army – or any other armed service. He hadn’t passed the physical. He’d served in the Office of Civil Defense – as a kind of home-front hall monitor, enforcing blackout orders and keeping an eye out for suspicious characters skulking around our seaports.
My father finally spoke, straightening up in his chair, “Okay, thank you.” Shaking, he rose from the chair, reached with the receiver to place it in its cradle on the wall, and sat back down with a jerky quickness not customary to him.
He looked over at my mother and then down at me. “Shermy, you know Jake’s over there fighting the war, right? You understand that, right?”
I nodded as I absently sucked on the knuckle of my index finger.
“Honey,” my mother said to my father.
He nodded to her and looked back at me. “Your brother was in a big battle last night. He was in an armored personnel carrier and they took incoming rounds.”
“Honey.”
“He was hurt pretty badly, but he’s ok now. He’s in a hospital. They’ll be fixing him up, OK? He’s going to be coming home when he’s, when he’s well enough.” He looked at me for recognition. I nodded. He looked back at my mother and continued, “He’s being moved from the field hospital to, to Okinawa. Then when he’s ready to travel, he’ll come back to the states. To San Diego and then probably home for good.”
“How long before he gets home?”
“It’ll be weeks. But he’ll be in good hands.”
“Where’s he hurt, can you say?” She nodded toward me.
Father looked down at me, and then said to my mother, “Left leg. Plus some shrapnel . . . in his thigh and . . . buttocks. They’re gonna to try to save his right hand.” They looked at each other seriously. The sound from the skillet had reached a high hiss and smoke started to rise. My mother turned to slide bacon out of the pan onto a plate. She then deftly wrapped a dishtowel around the skillet handle, lifted the sizzling skillet off the burner, and carried it over to the sink. There she appeared to pour the sizzle sound along with hot bacon grease into an empty jar, and then efficiently returning to the stovetop, she slid several more strips of bacon into the pan, the sizzle returning as the bacon fat began to liquify. My father’s cigarette had burned itself out. He stubbed it out in the ashtray and reached for his pack of cigarettes, patting his chest pocket and then seeing it on the table in front of him.
“What’s going on?” came Audrey’s voice from the doorway. My two sisters were now peering into the kitchen. They were both closer in age to Jake than they were to me, Audrey ninth grade, Patty sixth.
My mother gave me a strip of unusually crispy bacon and I walked out of the kitchen. Behind me, my sisters began talking briskly about what it meant, whose brothers were heroes, who received metals, who came home and whose families were met at the airport by color guards with caskets draped with flags.
Bacon told me life would go on. I pondered whether Jake was yet a full-fledged hero, what praise he would receive from generals and senators. Whether the President would call from the White House. Whether he would have plaques with his name on them. I imagined him home again in a few weeks, probably going back to his regular routine.
By the time I reached the living room, my bacon was gone. The Indian chief test pattern was on the screen counting down – 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. “Our broadcast day has begun.” The Indian head told me it was on channel 4. I turned the knob two clicks this way.
The screen flashed to a picture of a heart wrapped in what appeared to be barbed wire. A note or two of instrumental music and a thin choir chimed, “O, sacred heart, our home lies deep in thee.” And then as if that was introduction enough, a deep solemn voice began, “Hail, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.” The voice repeated it over and over again, but there was nothing better on at this hour. Even so, this was the right channel to be on for the next quarter hour. Davy and Goliath would come on. And then Gumby. Commercials would play between shows: Choo-Choo Charlie who used Good ‘n’ Plenty candy to make his train run. Quisp, the pink space man, and Quake, the miner. When Gumby was half-over, they showed the Marvel the Mustang commercial – “No winding, no batteries. Marvel the Mustang, do we love you?” As the Marvel jingle played, I looked around to see if my mother or father might be within earshot. Usually before Gumby was over, my sisters went off to school. After Gumby, the commercial played for Palisades Park – “Come on over!” And then the Chock Full o’ Nuts song:
Chock Full o’ Nuts is the heav-enly coffee, heav-enly coffee.
Better coffee a Rockefeller’s mon-ey can’t buy.
And then the CBS Morning News would come on and it was time to go five clicks that way past WABD-5, the Dumont Television Network, to WABC TV-7. TV-7 was always changing what it showed, but it was better than CBS Morning News. Plus, TV-7 would go right to Captain Kangaroo. Captain of what? Certainly no kangaroo. And no one – no one – believed he could fall for that ping-pong-ball bit even one more time. He strained credulity. I wondered how many medals Jake would have when he got home. People were dying every day. They reported it every night – the body count – always more of them than us, so that’s good. That’s good. And every night, napalm. They don’t have napalm; we have lots of napalm. Also good, right? Jake was sure to come home a hero with a bunch of medals. In a couple weeks.
Still no sign of Gerry. Sometimes he runs a little late. He was never one to be punctual, even as a child. I have nowhere to be. The light breeze breathed through the tree branches overhead and dappled sun played on the table and chairs. The wind picked up again and someone was playing Beach Boys: “God only knows what I’d be without you. God only knows what –.” From nearby on the basketball courts, Run DMC cut in for four beats, only to be immediately drowned out by the blare of an ambulance siren speeding by the far side of the park. The sounds of the life of the city continued to pick up as the sun climbed overhead.
Jake finally came home eight weeks later. He was missing half of his left leg, and his right hand was blue where they had taken skin from the back of his thigh and attached it over severe burns on his right forearm and hand. After about a week, he let me touch the blue part of his hand. He had to learn to walk on crutches and then months later, he had to learn to walk with a prosthetic foot. He also had to go through several more operations and physical therapy to try to get the full use of his hand back. He did come home with three medals. He showed me once where he kept them next to his socks.
That was the year of night terrors. Flashbacks. But Jake said very little about them. About a year later, he moved into a halfway house for disabled veterans. I heard clinical talk about his isolating and using marijuana. Some said it would help him with his flashbacks, but it still wasn’t legal, and it wasn’t clear that it really helped enough.
Time passed. I went away to Fordham. I was in a dorm on a hall phone when I took the last call about Jake.
I stared at the chessboard. The four central pawns, black and white, kings’ and queens’ pawns, were usually the first thrown into the fray and the most likely to be the first off the board. The scarred pawn sat to the far right fronting a rook. If only Jake had been lucky enough to be that rook’s pawn and not one of the central pawns. Then he might have been on the board until the end of the game.
And I remembered when our own midnight call came. It was after we had returned home from a Superbowl party – Superbowl XLVII, the “Harbowl,” brothers Jim and John Harbaugh coaching the opposing teams. It was 2:00 AM before we got to bed. And then the phone rang at 3:21, just when we’d dozed off. When we recognized it was the phone ringing, that sick feeling set in. Darlene was a wreck, almost incomprehensible. “Why did you let him go? How could you let them take my baby? What does this accomplish? Who benefits from this? No one! No one!” She disappeared into the bathroom and I could hear running water. And occasionally, over the running water, I could hear through her sobbing, “I can’t. I can’t lose him. I can’t.” She later apologized, but, of course, no apology was necessary. I just felt powerless. And guilty. Like my own father, I had never actually served. There had been no draft as I came of age, no hard decisions, no answering the call of duty. It felt as though our Gerry had been taken in my place, for my failure to offer myself up.
A blue van pulled into the parking lot. Gerry parked and then waved from the driver’s seat. He disappeared into the back of the van. The rear passenger-side door slid open. An electric lift folded down. Gerry rolled onto the lift platform and worked the controls lowering it to the pavement. He deftly exited the lift, secured the van, and made his way from the parking lot to the concrete pavement of the park and over to our table.
We hugged. He apologized for being late. He’d had a last-minute discipline problem with one of the at-risk teens that he worked with as a reform-school guidance counselor.
We turned our attention to the chessboard. We played quickly, knowing each other’s tendencies, having met almost every Saturday for the better part of the past year. “Are you still enjoying your work . . . at the juvy place?”
“I am.” Gerry looked up from the board to smile at me. I caught a glimpse of the ten-year-old boy I’d first taught to play chess. “But I’d rather be back with my unit.” Back to grown-up Gerry.
“You’d still rather be fighting a war,” I gave a little laugh, “than working with high school kids?”
“That doesn’t sound right, does it. But I’ve been in that job for . . . fifteen months? I’ve had my own adjustments. I still don’t really know how to do my job all that well. But the thing is that when I was in the service, I was with a group of guys who all knew what our mission was, and we were all there for the mission we had been trained for. And we had each other’s backs. We were tight.” Gerry looked at me. “Now I’m working with a bunch of kids who, when they first arrive, they just see me as The Man, part of the system that’s coming down on them. They don’t understand that I’m really there to help them. They’re suspicious of me. My supervisor, he says that once I see a few kids through from arrival to departure, I’ll start to understand how to build rapport, build relationships, see the results of my work. I’ll earn a reputation, and if kids learn that I actually help them in real ways, then it will be good. That’s when the satisfaction will come. So he says.” While speaking, Gerry has taken my king’s pawn with his king’s knight.
“I guess I see.” I slid my queen’s bishop out to the king’s file.
“It’ll take a little time.” Gerry captured the pawn in front of my king’s bishop. Suddenly, he’s threatening both my rook and my queen. Apparently, I haven’t been focusing on the game.
I moved my queen out of harm’s way. “I was thinking about your uncle. He was like your king’s pawn there. He had barely been in-country before he became a casualty. And he never really had a chance after that. I kinda wish he could have been like one of your rooks’ pawns and had a good long run, maybe even be there for the duration of the game. You know? I just wish he had a chance. . . He never chose to be a hero.”
Gerry captured my rook. I took the opportunity to execute a queenside castle and move my king further from the action.
“Presidents and senators send young men and women to fight and die. Whether they’re wisemen or fools, I think you could always argue. But that’s out of our hands.” Gerry brought out his queen diagonally. “And life’s not fair. You can count on that. Check.”
I moved my king to the left out of danger.
Gerry continued. “But given that life’s unfair, every man, every person, has to decide how to respond to their unfair situation as best they can. Maybe you never got to talk to any of the men Jake served with. Your folks probably got a letter from his commanding officer telling you a little bit about what happened.” Gerry leaned forward. “But every time we go out on patrol, every single man in that unit is resolved that if at all possible, they’re going to make sure every man comes back alive. And if that’s not possible, they’re resolved that if necessary, they’ll do what it takes to bring home every other man in their unit, even if it means they don’t come back. Because they know that every other man there would do the same for them.” Gerry took my king’s knight with his bishop. “And maybe things were different fifty years ago – with the draft and all. But, how does it go? The highest love is to give up yourself for your brother? Did you ever think that maybe Jake was thinking that every time he went out on patrol, yes he was not only trying to stay alive, but even more he was trying to make sure that no one else in his unit failed to come back, and that beyond that, maybe he was thinking that he was doing what he was doing so that you wouldn’t have to do it when you were eighteen?” For the moment, there seemed to be a pause in Gerry’s relentless attack. He seemed to be pondering. Without looking up from the board, he said, “How do I get Nana to stop calling me Jake?”
“Like you said, life’s not fair.”
He seemed at odds about how to continue the attack. “But you know what I’m really wondering?”
“What?”
“You seem to have this sense of tragedy about Jake not having choices, not choosing to do anything heroic. But we all have choices. So this lack of heroism that seems to be bothering you – was it lacking in Jake? Or in you?”