Cullin Mitch - The Post-War Dream

“That Halloween,” Hollis said, staring at the table, “pretty much set me on a course for a five-week bender, as you well know. The odd thing is, I'd barely touched a drop prior to then, but when I got started I didn't want to stop. Can't say why for sure, I just can't. I guess I was having a difficult readjustment, or likely it was an ill-conceived attempt to stabilize my frazzled nervous system. Don't know why, I don't. I mean, it's sort of like I fell asleep on that bus home and didn't wake up for a month or more. So you can imagine very little is clear in my head about those weeks — very little really, almost nothing at all — until the moment I met you. That's when I woke up, that's how I think of it.”

Hollis paused for a moment, thoughtfully biting at his bottom lip, tugging the skin with his front teeth. The moon shined through the kitchen windows, illuminating the countertops and the no-wax vinyl flooring. Debra shut her eyes, breathing deeply. Then he, too, inhaled deeply, exhaling like a prolonged sigh before continuing. Everything was like a dream, he went on to explain. The minute he carefully maneuvered down the steps of the Greyhound bus — having arrived in Critchfield three days later, bringing himself to the asphalt of his hometown on a cold, overcast November morning — everything felt unreal to him. “I suppose I didn't realize I was big news in ol’ Critchfield, probably only because nothing much of note happened there anyway.” But the trombone-heavy C.S.D. high-school marching band and a crowd of about fifty locals had come to greet him with applause and cheers, at first encircling him with a cacophony of music and hard slaps to his shoulders, then fanning out to give him enough space in which to limp self-consciously toward the weeping, hand-wringing figure of his mother — while a discordant, halting version of “When the Saints Go Marching In” accompanied his lurching, Frankenstein-like gait.

“She had on a pale print dress,” Hollis said, when thinking of his mother, “and her hair had been done up nice, and she was crying. I'd never seen that woman cry for anyone — Eden wasn't a crier — but there she was, crying at the sight of me. She wore face powder and dry rouge, except the tears were making a mess of it. Next thing I know she ‘s hugging me in those big arms of hers, and she's holding me so close I could feel her corset pressing against my uniform. And after that — well, you know — they paraded me straight home, I guess. I got properly paraded after that. That's what they decided to do, for some idiotic reason.”

Led by the town's single fire engine, the mayor of Critchfield drove a chariot-red Olds 98 convertible along the downtown stretch of Ripley Avenue, chauffeuring Hollis and Eden at a top speed of ten miles per hour. “Local hero Hollis,” the mayor shouted, repeatedly honking the horn. From the convertible's backseat, a bewildered Hollis smiled uncomfortably next to his beaming mother, responding in kind to the enthusiastic waves of the people who had braved the chilly weather to stand outside to welcome him — an array of pale, flushed faces he had seen throughout his life but who hadn't much acknowledged him until that morning. Even so, his contentious, tactless stepfather, Rich, was nowhere to be seen — nowhere among the townsfolk who had greeted his bus, nor glimpsed with those who were waving at the passing convertible. But soon enough the well-wishers thinned into empty sidewalks, and then, as if transporting him back in time, the convertible accelerated, parting ways with the fire engine when turning onto a residential street — speeding past Hollis's elementary school, and the First Methodist Church he had attended since childhood, and the familiar yards and brick homes which had always been there — rolling to a complete stop in front of the two-story Craftsman-style house he had previously vowed never to revisit, the property looking no different than the day he had left it, or, indeed, than the day he was born: front window boxes filled with withered flowers, mature trees providing a canopy over the shed-roof dormer.

There was no question, he now told Debra, that his memory had become unreliable over the years, and as a result certain events likely didn't occur in the same manner in which he was relating them to her. Although he recalled with some clarity the oppressive atmosphere which consumed him when he entered the house right behind his mother, seeping into him from all sides within the foyer; and like the swift drumming of a hammer against a nail, whatever fleeting happiness and relief he had felt was immediately leveled, supplanted by an interminable weight in his gut which made him want to twist around and quickly hobble to somewhere else, anywhere else.

“Who knows for sure what I was expecting. I mean, as long as I wasn't fighting North Koreans, I should've been fine and dandy. As long as I was alive and standing on my own two feet and wasn't in the hospital anymore, nothing on earth should've gotten under my skin, especially anything inside that old house, and especially a petty, mean-spirited little guy like Rich. I suppose in my head I'd thought I was going to be someone else when I got back there, a full-grown man and not just a kid anymore, and so I'd react to things maybe differently — except it wasn't quite like that, unfortunately.”

His stepfather — jowly and overweight, a short man with a smattering of gray hair combed neatly on his balding scalp — emerged from the living room folding a newspaper, dressed in his normal attire of black suspenders, black slacks, and a pale blue button-up shirt. Staring at Hollis while avoiding eye contact, Rich spoke in his customary curt way, saying, “Isn't that something, you actually made it in one whole piece. Wouldn't have bet my money on it. But let's not worry your mother sick like that anymore, all right?” There was to be no welcome back, no glad you survived, nor the simple courtesy of a handshake — just the subtle resumption of what had always been a one-sided pissing match.

His mother stiffened. “Now, now,” Eden said, forcing a smile. “Now, now — ”

Then Hollis knew, without a doubt, that he was home again — although an opportunity to say anything wasn't given, for already Rich had shifted his attention to Eden, asking her before she had had a chance to set her purse aside, “What are you cooking me for lunch?”

“Oh, I hadn't thought about it yet,” she answered, glancing nervously at Hollis, then at her husband, fidgeting all the while with her purse strap.

“Well, start thinking about it,” replied Rich, chuckling and grinning smugly.

At that moment Hollis had the urge to slap his stepfather, to strike him hard on the cheek, shutting his mouth. He considered grabbing Rich by the suspenders, peering at him coolly, making it clear that better men than him have had their bodies blown apart and scattered like hay across hillsides. While you were waiting for her to serve you sandwiches — he wanted to tell him — good men were dying near me, and I'm sure I killed much kinder men than you, and I was almost killed, too, and why don't you cook your own damn lunch today. But, instead, he expressed only fatigue, politely excusing himself in order that he might catch a nap, requesting to be awakened later so he could join them for the midday meal Eden was bound to prepare.

As he moved unsteadily along the creaking floorboards of the shadowy main hallway — going past the open doorways of the downstairs bathroom and the unlit domain of Eden and Rich's bedroom — the interior of the house seemed imposing to Hollis. Various framed photographs were displayed on the walls — his deceased father in healthier days, his mother and her four sisters as farm children, a younger but still chubby Rich on a fishing trip, a number of departed or distant relatives whose names had been mostly forgotten by him. The odor of mothballs was as potent as ever. While heading up the worn-down staircase, he became aware of a sudden chill in spots, air pushing from hairline cracks on the wooden stairs, a momentary coldness sensed like the unseen presence of a spirit as he crossed through it; yet that, like everything else there, was nothing new.