Paul was clearly thinking ahead to the search. “Maxie and I can search inside walls and in places you can’t look. If we all begin looking after dinner, it shouldn’t take very long at all.”
“If the ghost looked himself and couldn’t find it, why does he think we can?” Melissa asked.
Alison answered for Paul. “We don’t have another plan, so we might as well go with this one. But I want to point out that nobody still breathing is going outside tonight, is that clear? From all reports, this is a really dangerous storm, and I don’t want anything bad to happen to anyone.” She looked at Melissa. “Especially you.”
“You worry too much,” Maxine told her. “If anyone has to go outside, I’ll do it. Nothing’s going to happen to me out there.”
“I thought that was what I just said,” Alison muttered.
Paul knows when to nip their arguments in the bud. He also focuses on his “cases” very acutely; he’s very responsible. “While we’re looking for the bracelet, Maxie, I think you should run some computer searches.” Maxine does the research on the investigations, and even though she likes to grumble about it, she’s very talented at what she does. It makes me proud that it was originally my suggestion she take up that part of the job.
“I’m good,” she told Paul, “but there’s no computer database on Earth that’s going to tell us where a lost bracelet might be in this house.”
“Maybe not,” Paul agreed. “But it might provide an image of the bracelet, so we all know what we’re looking for.”
Sometimes I forget how young they all are. Paul and Maxine were both barely born in the 1970s, Alison is in her late thirties now and Melissa . . . well, she’s young enough to be my granddaughter. Of course none of them would know what a POW bracelet looks like.
There’s nothing I like better than being helpful, so I pulled back the sleeve on my blouse and reached for my left wrist. “They look like this,” I said. I’ve been wearing a POW bracelet, along with a few other pieces of jewelry, almost every day for a very long time. I pulled it off and placed it on the island between plates of chicken and rice. (It was a theatrical gesture, I know, that I hadn’t shown them my bracelet already, but I do sometimes relish the spotlight.)
The group of them stared at me, then at the simple metal—I think it’s nickel—bracelet, whose inscription read, “Col. William Mason, 5-22-68.” Alison blinked a few times and shook her head a little. “How did you know to bring that, Mom?”
I waved a hand at her. “Don’t be silly. I wear it sometimes, out of respect for Colonel Mason. But not all the time. It gets hot in the summer, so I take it off, and it doesn’t go with everything I put on. You don’t see them that much anymore; at one time, everybody I knew wore one. You’re supposed to wear it until the person whose name is on your bracelet, or his remains, come home.”
“Wow, Grandma,” Melissa said. “You’re way cool.”
I laughed in spite of myself. “You have no idea, sweetie,” I told her.
• • •
In 1970, I was a junior at Monmouth College, which is now Monmouth University in West Long Branch, New Jersey. I had just declared a history major, but only because I had been required to declare something. Otherwise, I would have happily studied whatever happened to capture my interest until someone—probably my parents, who were paying most of my bills—told me to stop.
“But I don’t believe in the war,” I was telling my friend Marilyn Beechman as she wrapped a strip of metal around my left wrist. Marilyn was not the kind of person who allowed anything like waiting for permission to stand in her way. “I’m against it.”
“So am I,” she assured me. “Vietnam is a huge mistake. But that’s the point of this bracelet.” She finished bending it around my wrist and took her hands away to admire it. “See? You show your opposition by reminding people that soldiers like”—Marilyn stopped to read the inscription on the bracelet—“Colonel Mason are being held against their will, maybe dying, because we’re participating in an illegal war. You know Congress has never declared war on Vietnam at all?”
I looked at the metal strip, which resembled something they’d put on your arm when you were admitted to a hospital. “It’s ugly.”
“Exactly.”
“No, the bracelet. It looks bad on my arm.” I held it out again, so she could see what I meant.
Marilyn frowned and shook her head. “It was only three dollars. And I think it looks good on you. Besides, you only have to wear it until Colonel Mason comes home or the North Vietnamese tell us what happened to him. Then you can take it off.”
“I can’t ever take it off before then?” I asked. That seemed impractical.
“Well, when you’re in the shower and stuff, of course you can take it off,” she answered. “You don’t want it to rust on your arm or anything. I mean, you can’t take it off forever until we find out what happened to the guy. How long could that take?”
I hadn’t been terribly active in the antiwar movement, or at least, not as active as I thought I should have been, deep down. I participated in moratoriums, but didn’t go to sit-ins or anything like that. I didn’t like the idea of young men dying, especially when I didn’t really understand what the war was about. And if this strip of metal on my arm could show I believed in peace, like John and Yoko were saying, then I didn’t see the harm in it.
“As long as it’s only temporary,” I told Marilyn.
She waved a hand. “A few months, tops,” she said.
• • •
Over forty years after first putting it on, I considered the bracelet. I hadn’t really thought about it in years; it had just become something I put on some days and not others without paying much attention. “It’s pretty worn out,” I said, probably more to myself than anyone else.
“It’s old,” Maxine said, then seemed to catch herself; she put her hand to her mouth. “Sorry, Mrs. Kerby.”
“I’m not offended. I’m just showing it to you because that’s the kind of thing we’d be searching for.” I looked up at Paul. He seemed deep in thought.
Alison started clearing the table, and Melissa stood to help. They are a very well-oiled machine, those two. Alison seemed nervous; out of habit she kept glancing toward the windows, which were boarded up, as if she were able to see something outside. “I wonder if I should have put the car somewhere else,” she said. “Is yours okay, Mom?”
“I parked behind you,” I told her. “Was that okay, or do you think I should move it?”
My daughter gave me a look that spoke volumes. “Were you paying attention when I said nobody goes outside tonight?” she asked. “Listen to that wind.” It was indeed making eerie noises outside the house, like the kind in ghost movies on television (of course, wind has nothing to do with actual spirits).
“The cars will be fine,” I assured her.
Paul looked impatient; the weather didn’t affect him, and he gets fidgety when the subject strays off a problem he’s considering. “While you’re at the computer, Maxie, it wouldn’t hurt to do some searches on Robert Elliot. Maybe we can find out something that Robert hasn’t told us, or maybe we can find another of his POW bracelets on eBay or something in case Barbara’s proves hard to locate.”
Alison furrowed her brow. “Yeah? And whose money are you using for that?” she asked.
“Don’t be a cheapskate,” Maxine told her. “We’re talking about a war veteran’s peace of mind here.”
“Sure. You don’t have to put anyone through college.”