part II
RETURN
(In Memory of Robert Holder)
It had been raining that morning in Charlotte. Only when the bus groaned and sputtered into the high mountains above Lenoir did the first snowflakes flutter against the windshield, stick a moment before being swept away by the wipers. But here it has snowed for hours, with no sign of letting up. He swings the duffel bag across his back, wincing when the helmet’s hard curve bangs his shoulder blade. The bus shudders into first gear and heads on to Boone. Then the only sound is water. He steps onto the bridge and lingers a few moments above the middle fork of the New River. The snow on the banks makes the water look dark and still, like water in a well. A few yards farther downstream Holder Branch, the creek that begins on his family’s land, enters the larger stream. His right hand clasps the jacket lapels tight against his neck as he steps off the bridge and begins the two-mile walk up Goshen Mountain.
He wonders how many times he has made this walk in his head the last two years. Six hundred, maybe more? All those nights he’d lain awake in his tent, bare chest covered with sweat as sporadic sniper fire and mortar rounds broke through the whir and drone of insects. Because he knew oceans had currents the same way creeks and rivers did, he’d imagine one drop of water making its way from his home in North Carolina to the green waters of the South Pacific. He would follow that drop of water back to its source—first across the Pacific and on through the Panama Canal, then across the Gulf of Mexico and up the Mississippi to the Ohio River, then the New River, then the New River’s middle fork, and finally up Holder Branch. Sometimes he never made it all the way back. Somewhere between what his grandfather called the Boone toll road and his family’s farmhouse he would fall asleep.
Snowflakes cling to his lashes. He shakes them free and clasps the jacket collar tighter. It’s getting dark and he looks down at his wrist, forgetting his watch is gone, lost or stolen somewhere between the Philippines and North Carolina. He passes the meadow where he and his uncle Abe used to rabbit hunt, then passes his uncle’s farmhouse, the tractor that hasn’t been driven since June rusting in the barn. No light comes from the windows, his aunt down in Boone with her daughter until warmer weather. The creek is beside the road now, but an icy caul muffles its sound, just as the snow muffles his footsteps. The world is as quiet as the moments after the Japanese sniper fired at him from a palm tree.
He hadn’t heard the shot but felt it—a sensation like a metal fist hitting the side of his helmet. Knocked to the ground, he looked up and saw the Japanese soldier eject the spent shell. Though dazed, he managed to raise his own rifle, the BAR wavering in his hand as he emptied his clip. The sniper fell through the fronds, landing on his back, blood pooling on the front of his shirt. The Japanese soldier didn’t try to rise, but his right hand slowly reached up and freed a thin silver necklace from under his shirt. He touched something affixed to the chain, touched it as though only to make sure it was still there, then let his hand fall back on the ground. Peterson, the medic, had claimed the Japanese only worshipped their emperor. He’d believed Peterson, because Peterson had a college education and was going to be a doctor once the war was over. But now he saw Peterson was wrong, because around the wounded man’s neck was a silver cross.
The dying man spoke. The words didn’t sound angry or defiant. By this time the rest of the squad was beside them. Peterson kneeled and jerked open the soldier’s shirt and peered in.
“What did he say?” he asked Peterson.
“Hell if I know,” Peterson replied. “Probably wants water.”
He was offering his canteen to Peterson when the Japanese soldier gave a last exhalation. Peterson jerked the cross and necklace from the dead man’s neck.
“Your kill, hillbilly,” Peterson said, and offered the cross and necklace. “It’s silver. You’ll get a couple of dollars for it.”
When he hesitated, Peterson smiled.
“If you don’t want it, I’ll take it.”
He took it then.
“I didn’t check his pockets,” Peterson said as he got up. “You can do that yourself.”
Peterson and the rest of the squad walked to where a canopy of palm trees offered more shade. Once alone, he knelt beside the Japanese soldier, his back to the other men.
“Find anything else?” Peterson asked when he’d rejoined the others.
“No,” he’d said.
The snow falls harder, drifts forming where the road curves. The snow makes it hard to see and he follows the road as much by memory as sight. The road curves left and the incline steepens. He’s breathing hard now, unused to the thin mountain air that grows thinner each step farther up Goshen Mountain. In the Philippines the air had been so humid that it was like breathing water. The day’s fading light tinges the snow blue.
The road levels and he can just make out the black spire through the snow and trees, then the wooden building itself. He steps into the churchyard and walks around to the back. He leans on the barbed-wire fence post and looks into the graveyard. He squints and sees the new stone and for a moment cannot shake the uneasy feeling that it is his own, that he’s really still in the Philippines, dreaming this, maybe even dying or dead. But it’s his uncle’s name on the stone, not his.
He steps back onto the road and passes Lawson Triplett’s place and then crosses a plank bridge, the creek passing beneath to flow on the road’s left side. A ghost can’t cross fast-moving water, his father had once told him.
He knows there are mountains in Japan, some so high snow never melts on their peaks. The man he killed could have been from those mountains, a farmer like himself, just as unused to the loud humid island nights as he’d been—a man used to nights when all you heard was the wind. He remembers kneeling beside the Japanese soldier, the cross and necklace clutched in his hand as he’d said a quick prayer. Then he’d wedged his fingers between the dead man’s teeth, pried them open enough to slip the cross and necklace onto the rigid tongue.
He trudges past Tom Watson’s pasture, a little farther the big beech tree he climbed as a kid. The snow is easing some, and he can see better. The creek runs close to the road, little more than a trickle as it nears its source.
The road curves a last time. On the right side is the barbed wire fence that marks his family’s property. He passes above the bottomland where he and his father will plant corn and cabbage in a few months. He imagines the rich black dirt buried deep and silent under the snow, how it’s there waiting to nurture the seeds they’ll plant.
As he approaches the farmhouse, he sees a candle in the front window, and he knows it has been lit every night for a month, placed there for him, to guide him these last few steps. But he does not go inside, not yet. He walks up to the springhouse and takes his helmet from the duffel bag. He fills the helmet with water and drinks.