The Oldest Son

The driver of the old bus carrying Lee pumped the squealing brakes as he slowed for the descent on Route 31. West Main Street, dark and deserted at three o’clock in the morning, loomed ahead. Familiarity, and a now distant past of names and places, brought back a different time to the still ailing Marine: a time before basic training schooled him in ways to kill; a time before he knew what it was to snuff the life out of a human being; a time before Iwo plunged him into an abyss of despair; a time before only the touch of a redheaded nurse offered him bits and pieces—momentary snippets—of solace. Eagle Street, where Brian and Suze now attended Ramsay High School; Church Street, site of the Mount Pleasant Public Library; Frick Park, where he would meet up with friends to go to the movies. He yawned and sneezed as the driver eased into the stop at the roundabout by North and South Diamond Streets.
Lee glanced out the window and knew he was home. The Doughboy, with his Brodie helmet, cartridge belt, leggings, and right hand clutching the strap of the rifle slung over his right shoulder, stood atop his round granite column, silhouetted against a sky that glittered with tiny celestial pearls. Erected the year Anna Bickford gave birth to her oldest son, it was Mount Pleasant’s War Memorial, as well as its most famous landmark, the needle for directions to all points of the surrounding Westmoreland compass. The irony was not lost on Lee that mid July morning. He had departed a World War II theater to arrive at a statue of a World War I soldier, a tin-hatted infantryman of the American Expeditionary Force who symbolized America’s entry into an earlier bloodbath. Bloodbath? Bloodbath? Wasn’t it a more graphic word for war? A synonym for war? Lee thought of Viola, how she always preached the power of words, “the greatest power of all,” she used to say, a holy grail that she drummed into all her English composition students.
The other six passengers continued to sleep. Lee, who had stood to massage his left hip, was already hoisting his seabag when the driver made his way along the aisle to alert him to his stop.
On the sidewalk Lee angled his wrist to the moonlight: 3:13 on the dot. He had taken the train from San Francisco with a contingent of servicemen, changing cars in Denver, St. Louis, and Chicago, where he was able to shower, shave, and put on a fresh uniform before boarding another train to Pittsburgh. The wait in the Steel City had turned out to be the longest—four hours for the bus to Mount Pleasant and he hadn’t eaten, having lost his appetite at the sight of the meager cold fare at the station.
The rumble of the bus’s exhaust receded, leaving him enveloped in a peaceful, almost personal, silence, as if that silence were his and his alone, granted him by the operator of the firmament that decreed at that moment tranquillity and harmony. A harmony now disturbed by a growl heard only by Lee, a growl of hunger. If he had thought it might be open, he would have shouldered his seabag and walked to the R & R Station Restaurant and Hotel for the Fireman’s breakfast special. It would have been a trek, but well worth the effort. Now, though, he took himself to task for not notifying his family of his medical discharge, for not informing them of his imminent return. What had he been thinking? Where, at that hour, would he find a telephone to call his father to ask him or Brian to come for him? Lee cupped a match and lit a cigarette. The flame had to have been like a lantern in an unlit tunnel, for it attracted the attention of the operator of a noisy Chevy pickup that had just exited South Diamond Street.
A balding, hefty man with a bushy salt-and-pepper beard leaned across the bench seat and rolled down the passenger window.
“Come in on the 3:10, did ya, young fella? Marine, right?”
“Yes and yes.”
“You waitin’ for a ride?”
“Well . . . not exactly. I failed to take into account that everything would be closed up tight and that I might not find a phone to call my folks.”
“Where do you live, son?”
“Quarry Street Extension.”
“Hop in. I’ll take you home, ’cause you ain’t gonna find no transportation at this hour. Glad to be a help to any a you boys in the service.”
Lee loosened his field scarf, tossed his bag in the open bed, and walked around the front of the truck to get in.
“Name’s Elmer Shimko.” He extended a calloused, manual-labor hand.
“Lee Bickford,” he said, shaking it. “Thanks for the lift, Mr. Shimko.”
“Call me Elmer, Lee. Hell, ain’t nobody called me Mister in a blue moon,” he said, chuckling as he pulled away from the Doughboy, “not since I was fifty or thereabouts, and that was a long time ago. I see ya limp a little. Got banged up, did ya?”
“It’s a whole lot better than it was for a while. I’ll be okay in a few weeks.”
“Krauts or Japs?”
“A Japanese machine-gunner.”
“I’ve said it I don’t know how many times, and by damn I’ll say it again: I hope we bomb that goddamn Japan and Tojo’s Japs to kingdom come and back, just like we done to Germany and Hitler’s Krauts. Too bad Roosevelt kicked the bucket. We’ll see how this Truman fella deals with the Pacific war. Well, anyways. We owe you boys, and owe you big. I’ll bet you’re glad you ain’t gotta contend with nothin’ worse than this here gimp. Don’t mind me. Sometimes I tend to carry on.
“I’m up, like always, afore the crack a dawn to head over to a farm this side a South Connellsville to pick me up a load a fresh produce for a coupla my grocery stores here in Mount Pleasant and in Scottdale. ’Course, I’ll make another stop too. It ain’t far from Ben’s Berry Orchard where Ben and his wife and youngsters been workin’ around the clock this time a the year to pick their blueberries, raspberries, gooseberries, and red and black currants. And the blackberries should be available pretty soon. What with all the rain we had a coupla months back they otta be plump as all get-out. What do your folks do, son?”
“They run my grandfather’s bakery. Wallek’s Bakery.”
“Is that right? Say, I know that place. Right up there on West Main at College Avenue, ain’t it? Catty-corner to the movie theater?”
“That’s it.”
“Say, iffen you-uns wants some berries for your pastries and all, go direct to Ben’s. And iffen you do, tell your grandpappy to say that ole Elmer put in the good word. Ben’ll give me a cut. And believe me, Lee, in these here war times every little bit helps. Throw some business his way, it’ll help both him and I.”
“I’ll pass it on to my grandfather and my parents.”

Elmer Shimko shook hands with Lee, backed his truck onto Quarry, and pulled away, leaving a hush behind him.
Lee set his seabag on the hard, packed earth at the foot of the drive and stood stock still, letting his eyes adjust to the shadowy darkness. Like a carpet of stationary steam, a haze blanketed the grassland south of the Bickford home, then rose to settle over a neighboring hayfield and the low-lying hills beyond it. Lee glanced skyward. The full moon had borrowed one of Saturn’s rings to form a halo as a backdrop to the phosphorescent glow that it bestowed on the Pennsylvania countryside.