“I know you haven’t completely let go of what happened between Steve and me, Carly.”
“Bullshit, Tommy. I have.”
“No,” he said, slicing the ball to my left-hand side, the side I had most problems with in a game. “Ever since that night you’ve been different.”
“I think you’ve been different is what it is. You keep thinking things have changed because you’ve obsessed about it. And you keep saying the same thing over and over again.”
“Then why can’t you answer your cell or respond to my texts?”
“I do, Tommy. Just not every fucking minute you send them. I do have a life, you know.”
“See!” he said. “You never used to be like you are now. You couldn’t wait to see me.”
I caught a ground ball that nearly got past me, crawling up my arm and hitting my chin and then going up in the air where I snagged it. I held the ball and looked at him. “Jesus Christ, Tommy! I don’t know how much more of this I can take.”
“More of what?”
“More of me being accused of not caring anymore. It’s like your fucking mantra.”
I threw the ball hard back at him and it hit the backstop with a smack. He jogged back to it and hit a ball high in the air. It went above the lights and as it did I realized the sky no longer had a moon or stars. I judged where the ball would reappear and waited for it. It took a few seconds to come down into my vision. I caught it Willie Mays style, underhand, and laughed, hoping Tommy would laugh, too.
“Come here and kiss me, Carly,” he demanded.
“I will if you let me hit for a while.”
He grinned brightly. “First a kiss.”
I trotted toward him, his face lit by the brightness of the lights, and as I got nearer he took on a shy expression. I felt a tug of regret. Maybe I had been too hard on him lately. It was just that he wouldn’t ever give me any space. I threw my glove at him and he dropped the bat and caught it. Then I threw the ball and he caught that. For a minute he juggled the bat, the glove and the ball. I am always dazzled by his athletic ability.
“You are such a fucking show-off.”
He let everything drop in front of him and stepped over it all and put his arms around me. He leaned in and kissed me and like always I felt my breath come up short.
“Let’s go where it’s dark.”
“No way, pal. I have my little friend.”
“I don’t care,” he said, pulling me closer. “I just want you.”
“No, Tommy.” I let out a sigh and pulled away from him. “We’ve been through this before. You made a deal and I let you. Out to the field, mister.”
He came toward me again, his eyes fierce with desire. It was hard for me to resist, but I wasn’t letting him touch me with my period. No way.
“We haven’t made love all week, Carly. Please.”
I picked up the bat and ball from the grass and then picked up the glove and threw it at him. “Your turn in the outfield.”
He let the glove go past him without even trying to catch it. It landed on a patch of grass coming up through the clay at home plate.
“Look, we haven’t made love for maybe even longer than a whole fucking week. Fuck me going out to the outfield. I need you and you know it.”
“I’m not, Tommy. I’m not doing anything tonight.”
I walked over to where the glove lay and put it down the barrel of the bat. I walked over to where his glove was near the backstop and put that over the bat also. When I was through, I looked at him and shrugged my shoulders.
“I love you, Tommy Beck, but the answer is no tonight. I want to go home and go to bed.”
I started walking toward the service road and I could feel Tommy watching me. I wasn’t going to turn around. He’d either follow me or not. At some point, I think after I got my sandals back on and then hit the service road, I heard and then felt the whiz of the ball go past my head. I couldn’t believe it. I turned and he was standing near the dugout glaring at me.
“You fucking asshole,” I shouted. “You ASSHOLE. You came this close to hitting me in the head!”
He shrugged and didn’t say anything. I turned and kept walking. I could feel the gravel under the thin souls of my sandals. Near the municipal building it was darker, only one lone light at the entrance to the door. As I walked I tried to listen for Tommy coming up behind me, but the wind blocked out any chance of that. I couldn’t hear anything but tree branches hitting each other. As I got closer to the square, I saw someone was sitting on the bench that faced the dead soldier’s memorial. At first I thought it was Tommy and he’d run around the front of the municipal building. I knew he’d want to apologize, that’s most of what he did anymore. But then I realized it was Truman. He was sitting on the back of the bench with his feet on the seat. He seemed to be studying the stone edifice, his chin in his hands and his elbows resting on his knees. I felt myself smile.
He was alone. Only Truman would be in the square in the middle of the night staring at a stone memorial. I was sure he didn’t hear me coming up on him. I hadn’t seen him in school the whole week and I was glad to see him now. I was hoping Tommy was mad enough that he’d walked off, leaving me to make my own way home. I wanted to sit quietly with Truman. Maybe he even had some weed he’d share with me.
For the first time I heard the rumble of some thunder at the edge of the darkness in the distance toward Chatham.
How many miles is that away?
I remember thinking. Truman must’ve heard it, too, despite his concentration, because he turned to look and then he saw me. I saw him smile his Truman smile, the smile that could make me happy no matter what.
“Playing with yourself, Carly Rodenbaugh?” he said.
I thought he was being a jackass but then I remembered I was carrying a bat with two gloves.
“What are you doing here, Truman?”
“Trying to figure out what these guys are doing here when they should’ve been somewhere other than dead on some foreign land.”
I got within the circle of light from the one overhead lamp and I could tell from his face he was happy to see me. He had on a pair of jeans, no socks, a black Moby T-shirt and a jeans jacket. His hair was shorter than the last time I’d seen him. He stood from the bench and came over and hugged me. It felt good being in his arms, smelling his smell, the smell of Old Spice and something indigenous to Truman.
He pulled back and looked at me the way an uncle you haven’t seen in a while looks at you.
My goodness, Carly, but you’ve grown up since last time I saw you.
“Well, have you?” he finally said.
“Have I what?”
“Been playing with yourself.”
I laughed. Truman Engroff always made me happy, and especially that night. I was so glad to see him. I was tired of all the complications of Tommy. Not that Truman wasn’t complicated. God, how did I get involved with these sorts of boys? But with Truman it was different. I know that if he’d said at that moment,
Let’s run away together, Carly
, I would have done it.
“No, really, Truman, what are you doing here? Where were you tonight?”
He walked over and sat down on the bench. He patted the empty space next to him. I leaned the bat at the edge of the bench and sat beside him. Where the fuck was Tommy?
“Ethan and Amy wanted to get it on tonight, so I thought I’d give them a little time alone.”
“What makes you think that?” I looked at his profile. He was the kind of person who’d get better looking the older he got. He had both of his parents in his face, his expressions, the way he moved.
He turned and looked at me, suddenly intense. “I just know. I know all.”
“Are you high, Truman?”
He smiled at me. “If I am, you want to know because…because you want some, too.”
“Fuck you. I just wonder because I never know.”
“Never know what? If I’m high or not? That’s not a very kind thing to say.”
“I don’t mean it that way. I just mean that when you say things like, ‘I know all,’ if most people said that I’d just think, they’re high, but with you…”
“With me what?”
“Don’t keep asking me questions.”
“What questions?”
I pushed his shoulder hard.
“You don’t know your own strength, Carly. It’s from all that jock stuff you do with that jock guy.”
I looked out into the dark beyond the circle. Was Tommy listening in on what we were saying? What Truman was saying.
I wanted to change the subject quickly. “So where were you tonight?”
“Where were you?” He leaned around me and looked at the bat and gloves leaning against the bench.
“I was hitting the ball with Tommy up on the ball field. For some reason the lights are on tonight.”
“See, I told you. The two jocks hitting the ball.”
“Shhh, Truman! Don’t say that.”
“Don’t say what?”
“Oh, my God, you’re frustrating. Please stop! Tell me where you were tonight.”
“I will in a minute. But first tell me if you’ve been hitting the baseball all night long with your jock friend.”
“No, Truman, I haven’t. I went to the movies with Caroline. You’d approve of that. You like Caroline.”
“What’d you see?”
“
Shutter Island.”
“How was it?”
I shrugged my shoulders and looked at the names on the memorial for the hundredth time. Private Paul Price, Union Soldier, 1839–1862:
Flowers have been spread on the path to Heaven.
Linstrom Holbrooke, World War I, fallen soldier on the battleground of Chateau-Thierry, 1897–1918. Forty-three men from this small town in New Jersey, dying in six wars. This was my and Truman’s place. I always felt so close to him whenever he let me inside for just a while.
“Were you really thinking of those men?” I said.
“Yes, I was.” I knew he’d know what the question meant. “I mean, Jesus Christ, what would you think if you were so far from home and you knew you might be seconds away from dying? Our age, Carly. Or maybe a little older.” He nodded over to the names. “Pick a name.”
“Lindstrom,” I said.
“Okay. French soil. An hour away from Paris. In all, in that May-to-July battle for the Marne, 67,000 Americans died. Lindstrom Holbrooke was one of them. Twenty-three. What did he want, Carly?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. Did he have a wife and kids?”
“Who knows? Must’ve been a farmer or small business guy, right? Maybe he liked New York, went to restaurants, the theatre, museums. Took the train in and his parents were suspicious about him going into the city so often.”
“Maybe he was married and his wife was pregnant and he had a mistress in the city. She put a lot of demands on him. His wife did, too. So he joined the army. Get away from it all for a while.”
“So who did he think of just before he died?”
“None of them,” I said. Truman looked at me with admiration.
“Really?” he asked.
“Yep,” I said. “He thought about the farm, about the fields he’d never walk on again, the barn he’d never go into again, the cows he’d never smell again. He thought about the glass of red wine he’d never have in a Paris café.”
“There’s a lot of nevers for these guys. A whole wall of incomplete lives for something nobody has ever been able to figure out. Most of it because of some male thing or something that makes so many people end up etched on stones like this one. And what really gets me is that their fathers send them off proudly.”
“Not all fathers. Ethan wouldn’t send you off. He’d rather go himself.”
He laughed loudly. “Why don’t you just say you’d like to sleep with him, Carly! It never stops with you and my dad.” He nudged me in the ribs with his elbow. “Amy will never forgive you.”
“Fuck you, Truman. Let’s be serious for a minute. Your dad would never send you to war. He’d get you out somehow, even if he had to send you to Canada.”
Truman looked at the wall of stone for a long time. “Both of them, I guess. Amy wouldn’t let me go, either. But I wouldn’t need them. I wouldn’t go no matter what. The reason why is right in front of us. Those wars are forgotten, or will be forgotten, and so are they.”
He nodded toward the names on the walls. “I’ve thought about that a lot, Carly. I’m sure the immediate families were devastated by the loss of these boys, but then what? After that they just become names.” He nudged me again. “Only you and I keep them slightly alive.”
“And maybe one of these guys would have written a great book or invented something.”
“Yes! That’s what I meant before. Incomplete. Who knows? No one knows!”
“And they never will,” I said sadly. “You should write some poems about them. You know, like
Spoon River Anthology.”
“Nope,” he said, and I knew he meant it. “Too much hard work. I’d rather just come out here every so often and think about them, or think for them.” He pointed toward the names. “Lindstrom. Thinking for him. Something like that.”
I laughed. “I never thought of it that way. That’s what we do when we come out here. We’re thinking for them.”
“Yeah, like Lindstrom over there thinking about his cows more than his mistress or his wife.”