1945 NOV 9 AM 11 51
MAJ JOHN DILLON
HOTEL TIMROD
CHARLESTON SC
SHEILA HAS JUST SHOWN ME YOUR TELEGRAM WHICH WAS FIRST I KNEW SHE HAD COMMUNICATED WITH YOU MY HEART IS ACTING BADLY SO WOULD BE GRATEFUL IF YOU WOULD ACCEPT MY INVITATION TO VISIT ME WHICH AM NOW IN POSITION TO EXTEND IF IT WOULD NOT BE TOO UTTERLY UTTERLY TIRESOME TO YOU
29
It was one of those yellow November days that they have in Maryland, when I got there, with red and brown and spotty green leaves still hanging to the trees, and the air clear but everything damp. I had spent the night in Richmond, then got going early, so I rolled up the terrace a little after noon. I had a look at the new statue to Martin Luther they’d put up in the park since I left, took a turn up the street, so as to park in front of the house, got out and went up there. I had my thumb on the bell, then figured a minute, my heart beating fast, and decided it would be friendlier to use my key, which I still had. Then Sheila opened the door. I caught her in my arms, and held her tight, while she cried. Then Nancy was there, and I hugged her too. I kissed and patted them both, and noticed how gray they’d got. Then they took me back to the den, and I was shaking hands with my father, who was in a wheel chair. His color was a little queer, pink in the cheeks but white around the eyes, but outside of that he looked all right. He asked about my trip and I told about the stopover in Richmond at the John Marshall Hotel, and my aunts said I was lucky to get in there at all, the way things were now. Then he and I were alone. We were alone, that is, except for the silence that came in, parked its hat, and sat down with us. After a long time he asked: “Well Jack, how have you been?”
“Oh, can’t complain. And you?”
“I could complain, but—”
“Then hell, complain!”
“At any rate it’s a disease that’s enjoyed sitting up, not lying down, which is something. And what have you been doing with yourself?”
“Oh, this and that.”
That wound it up for a while. Then he said: “And them and those?” I didn’t connect, and he looked away quick. “Just injecting a little lubricant into a conversation otherwise a little creaky. Perhaps the quip limped, but the intention was amiable.”
Sometimes, when he went into his Derry brogue and used grammar in the grand style that only an Irishman seems capable of, it brought a lump to my throat, and one came there now. I began to talk about Charleston, the Timrod, the poet it was named after, the Civil War, anything, so it made words. It was chatter, but seemed to please him. “Are those major’s leaves on your shoulder, Jack?”
“Yeah, dime a dozen.”
“However, Anderson was a major.”
“... Who?”
“The commander you were talking about.”
“Oh, at Sumter.”
“He presided at one of the epic moments of history, and every detail of his conduct shows he knew it for such, and yet he was a major — a dime a dozen, as you say. In those days they had different ideas about rank. Where did you serve?”
“France.”
“Yes, but how?”
“Target.”
“You were in action?”
“These rifles on my collar mean infantry.”
“I don’t see well any more.”
But he was looking at my chest, where there wasn’t any fruit salad, as I didn’t wear it. I opened my brief case and got out the little leather box and handed over my ribbons. They were just routine, as I’d never been cited. The Purple Heart he looked at quite a while. “What was the wound, Jack?”
“Slug in the leg.”
“Where was this acquired?”
“Normandy.”
“You were with Patton?”
“No, Wyche was our guy. That made it easy for the guardhouse poets. Cross of Lorraine Division, we called ourselves.” I showed him our shoulder patch, the gray Lorraine Cross on a blue field. He asked if it wasn’t the same as de Gaulle’s emblem, and I said it was. Then I got out a brochure somebody had lent me in Charleston, that had been printed in 1919, to explain to the boys about the insignia, so they’d understand what it meant. “Though, the way I heard it, the cross wasn’t picked on account of the ideals it represented, but because General Kuhn happened to see it on a beer-bottle top in Bar-le-Duc one night, and decided it was what the outfit needed. Until then they had been the Joan of Arc Division, and Miss Geraldine Farrar had agreed to break a bottle over their heads. But all that was while the General was away in France, observing how things were done before the division was sent over, and it so happened that Miss Farrar was to do her stuff the night he got home. He raised hell, and stopped it. Nobody had told the division yet that to the French Miss Arc was a saint, and he figured they might not like it to see her picture on every doughboy’s shoulder. So they went across without having any insignia, until he had this inspiration, which to my mind hit the spot in a very noble way.”
“I’d have given five dollars, cash of the realm, to have heard the remarks of Miss Geraldine Farrar on this highly interesting occasion. In fact, had I been the General, I’d have taken my chances with the French.”
“Little temperamental, hey?”
“Some girl.”
He glanced through the brochure, then wanted to know more about my wound. I told him it was above the knee, on the outside, and had required plenty of surgery, massage, and heat. “Are you all right now?”
“Yeah, sure.”
I wanted to say more, but nothing would come out of my mouth. He closed his eyes for a while, then said: “Jack, I’m going to die.”
“Hey, quit talking like that!”
“I have angina pectoris, which in Latin means agony of the chest, the most painful way in nature that a man can go. That I can face, or hope I can. But — I ruined my life.”
“I wouldn’t say so.”
“There were those who could have said it.”
“Did they?”
“If they didn’t, they forebore.”
“Are you talking about my mother?”
“I’m talking about a good many things, some of them hard to talk about, some of them hidden and obscure and shameful, almost impossible to talk about. I’m trying to say, what I’ve done to my life I don’t want you to do to yours.”
“Oh well, I probably have.”
“What are you talking about? It’s hardly begun.”
“It’s half lived. I’m thirty-five.”
“It’s a matter of youth, and it’s in your eye. Your face is battered and seamed and hurt, but the look of a boy is still on it.”
“I interrupted you.”
“There are things I want to tell you.”
“O.K., shoot.”
“... Jack, I can’t talk to the man who says: ‘O.K., shoot,’ and he doesn’t want to talk to me. Why deceive ourselves? Your tongue is as paralyzed as mine. We live under the curse of the inarticulate, some horrible murky screen that’s always been between us. Think of it, it’s thirteen years this fall, since you left this house, and yet, when I ask what you’ve been doing, you tell me ‘this and that.’”
“I’ve been doing a lot of things.”
“I know, lots and lots.”
“Some things I’m not proud of.”
“I know of them.”
“... What do you mean, you know of them?”
“Rumors reached me.”
“Rumors?”
“Let us say, inquiries.”
I don’t know how long I sat there, blinking at him, but after a while I said: “All right, I had some trouble with the police. Just once, on mistaken identification. You bat around like I did, you can have. What did they ask you about me?”