Spencerville

He found his maternal and paternal grandparents, and their parents, and their sons and daughters, and so on, buried in an interesting chronological order that you had to know about, the oldest graves on the highest part of the rise, then the next oldest graves descending in concentric circles until you reached the edges of the cornfield; the oldest Landry grave went back to 1849, and the oldest Hoffmann grave, his German ancestors, went back to 1841. There were no large groupings of dates as a result of any of the earlier wars, because the bodies weren't shipped home in those days. But Korea and Vietnam were well represented, and Keith found his uncle's grave and stood beside it a moment, then moved on to the graves of the men killed in Vietnam. There were ten of them, a large number for a single small cemetery in a small county. Keith knew all of them, some casually, some well, and he could picture a face with each name. He thought he might experience some sort of survivor's guilt, standing here among his old classmates, but he hadn't experienced that at the Wall in Washington, and he didn't experience it now. What he felt, he supposed, was an unresolved anger at the waste. On a personal level, he had this thought, which had recurred with more frequency in the last few weeks: that despite all his success and accomplishments, his life would have been better if the war hadn't happened.

He sat beneath a willow tree, among the graves between the base of the hill and the cornfield, and chewed on a piece of grass. The sun was high overhead, the ground was still damp and cool from the storm. Chicken hawks circled close by, and barn swallows flew in and out of the church steeple. A feeling of peace came over him such as he hadn't known in many years; the quiet and solitude of home had already worked its way into his bones. He lay back and stared at the pale sky through the elm leaves. "Right. If I hadn't gone to war, Annie and I would have gotten married... who knows?" This cemetery, he thought, was as good a place as any to begin the journey back.

* * *

He drove to the north side of town and found where Williams Street began off the county road. He pulled over, hesitated, then turned onto the suburban street.

Some of the stately old Victorians looked restored, some were rundown. As a child, he'd always marveled at this section of town, the big houses on small plots that he now realized were not small at all, the huge trees that formed a dark green tunnel in the summer, the fact that people could live so close together and see into one another's homes, and the luxury of two cars in every driveway. What had impressed, amused, and mystified him then was no longer impressive, amusing, or mystifying, of course. Childhood wonder and innocence were almost embarrassing in retrospect; but what kind of adult would you be without once having seen things through wide eyes?

The street was as quiet as he'd expected on a summer afternoon. A few kids rode by on bicycles, a woman pushed a baby carriage, a delivery van was stopped up the road and the driver was chatting with a woman at her door. It was a street of big front porches, a uniquely American phenomenon, as he'd discovered in his travels, though houses in America were not built that way any longer. Small children played on some of the porches, old people rocked. He was glad Annie lived on this street.

As he approached her house, something odd happened: His heart began thumping and his mouth went dry. The house was to his right, and before he realized it, he was passing it, and he pulled over. He noticed a beat-up station wagon parked in the driveway, and an older man was carrying a stepladder to the rear of the house. And there she was, just a glimpse of her as she turned away and disappeared around the back of the house with the old man. It was only a second or two, from fifty yards away, but he had no doubt it was her, and this instant recognition of her features, her stride, her bearing, astonished him.

He backed up and opened the car door, then stopped. How could he just show up at her door? But why not? What was wrong with the direct approach? Phoning her or dropping her a note was not what he'd pictured in his mind. He thought it was important that he should just ring her doorbell and say, "Hello, Annie," and let whatever happened happen, spontaneously and without rehearsal.

But what if she had company? What if her kids were home, or her husband? Why hadn't he thought of that likely possibility even once when he replayed this scene over and over again through the years? Obviously, the imagined moment had become so real that he'd excluded anything that would have ruined it.

He closed the door and drove off. He headed toward the farm, his mind racing faster than the car. What is wrong with you, Landry? Get a grip, pal.