Cullin Mitch - The Post-War Dream

“See, you aren't alone,” Hollis finally said. “I'm like you. I lost him, too. We both did.”

“Ain't nearly the same thing,” she said, reversing herself, stepping back. “Anyway, all of us are alone.”

Hollis then felt as if he had not said anything right, not expressed himself well enough to comfort her. After she turned without another word and headed across the yard, he sprang off the steps, unwilling to let her recede from view. “Scrunchy,” he blurted. “You'll always be his Scrunchy.” When she pivoted around to him, suddenly, her pale face — peering forward, hair tousled by the breeze — was like one which had encountered a phantom; and yet she stared at him, there in the night, with acceptance, with vague recognition, and while he extended a hand to her, she smiled discreetly and cautiously, as if benignly accepting an unexpected but desired gift. Then, too, he sensed there was a kind of strange magic in himself, an unrealized ability to heal without speech or considerable effort; he had but to touch her, to press his palm against her palm, and her troubles would subside; in this he would find his meaning, his real salvation.

“I'm Hollis Adams.”

“I know who you are.”

“I know. I know that.”

Again and again, Hollis was destined to reach for her — in the yard, during the nights and days, on long walks among the mesquites — and with every movement of his arms, his hands, his fingers, time began accelerating, whirling effortlessly about them. Soon enough their clothing was cast aside at least once within each of the forgotten, empty bedrooms of the old What Rocks house, their entwined bodies exposed by the dusty rays of light which angled downward through the murky windowpanes and illumed the barren floorboards. But prior to any of those furtive couplings — as their self-imposed states of isolation gave way to a greater want for togetherness — the pieces of the picture had begun taking shape, falling smoothly into place: the Saturdays in Claude, the two of them strolling leisurely on downtown sidewalks or sitting side by side at a Dairy Mart booth — paying little mind to the glancing, disapproving onlookers likely whispering, “The very gall of them two,” and “Poor McCreedy boy ain't even cold in the earth and see how she's going on that a way.”

For a while, the covert animosity was hard for Debra to tolerate, although she didn't harbor regrets about being seen with Hollis — nor did she believe Creed would have resented them. Better, she figured, that Billy's best girl and best army friend were joined at the hip than either one relying on a complete stranger for comfort; in some regard, she told herself, they were adhering to Creed's memory by consoling each other's grief, by also resuming and furthering the kind of relationship he had enjoyed with her but could no longer take part in. Then the passing of judgment she felt around town — the whispers, the snide remarks insinuated within earshot — seemed petty, unwarranted, as if the people of Claude just craved something, anything, to stir their indignant and self-righteous natures. When she went to buy some fabric patterns at Christian Dry Goods, the fat girl behind the counter, a former classmate of Creed's, told her in a hushed, well-intending voice, “You and that fella ought shouldn't be flaunting yourselfs like you do, it don't favor you, dear.” Debra smiled politely, thinking all the while: Trudy, I ain't the one who's six feet under — and I'm nobody's widow yet.

By then the rumors concerning them had spread beyond quiet gossip, and already Hollis had been asked to leave the McCreedy farm. At the supper table one evening, Florence fumed in silence, behaving like he wasn't even there — serving everyone except him, never letting her gaze travel to where he sat — frowning with dismay while Bill Sr. forthrightly said it was probably time for Hollis to head home to Minnesota. Edgar, like his mother, was also frowning, but only because the boy had grown fond of Hollis and would miss having him at the house. “I understand,” Hollis told the McCreedys, rising from his chair, “and I want to thank you all for your kindness. It feels like I've gained a family here.”

“You got yourself a family of your own,” Florence scoffed, talking at her plate. “You belong with them, not us.”

“Mother,” Bill Sr. responded to his wife in a reproving tone.

“That's okay,” Hollis said. “Maybe it's best if I get my things gathered.”

But Hollis wouldn't ready for a trip back to Critchfield, and — after packing his suitcase, stealing the photograph of Debra off the bureau and concealing it in a jacket pocket — he wouldn't return to where the McCreedys ate supper. Instead, he immediately left their house without as much as a goodbye, relying on that stealthy departure he had, of late, repeatedly used while fleeing elsewhere; he then walked a mile or so — slipping between the gaps of barbed-wire fences, wandering through grazing pastures — until arriving at the imposing residence standing out on the plains: the crumbling, half-deserted hilltop house known as What Rocks, a place which — as Debra had previously made known — afforded more than enough space for him should he find himself wanting a bedroom of his own. Still, in order to earn his keep, he would be required to work on the property, taking over the chores her alcoholic father was incapable of getting done, loading a pile of cedar posts in the bed of a pickup, mowing the lawn and tending the backyard gardens, yanking weeds and burrs, any sort of odd job; a small price to pay, he had no doubt, for sleeping under the same roof as that girl , a tiny penance, indeed, for what was given in return at What Rocks during the nights, or afternoons, when the door of an abandoned room would lock behind him and Debra, ushering forth a private world which, in the heat and collision of their bodies, was about as far removed from the McCreedys’ sorrowful existence as anything he could hope to conceive.

So regardless of what Florence might have finally thought of him, Hollis wasn't bothered in the slightest. He didn't care if she was angry and disapproved, or felt betrayed by him and Debra. He didn't care if she would eventually shun their wedding, or, for the rest of her days, speak ill of them to anyone who would listen. He didn't care, and whatever she thought truly didn't matter in the big picture; for he had redeemed himself through love, doing so without any help from her or the Lord. As such, he and Debra, by simply finding each other, had freed themselves to create a new reality together, divining their own singular path which just they were meant to embark upon; that alone, with hindsight, provided an answer as to why it was necessary for Creed to have died before him — why Hollis, too, had found himself thrown amidst the early chaos of a divided Korea, getting wounded beside the Naktong — and, later on, it became his sole reason for ever having made the tedious journey to Claude to begin with.

“And that,” Hollis said at the kitchen table, stroking Debra's liver-spotted hand, “is probably all you need to know about us.”

Except now his magic was failing him, his ability to heal her and, ultimately, himself. Then it wasn't him reaching out for her in the night, but, rather, it was she who moved toward him, pressing fingers to his arm, gripping at his shoulder. She gently spoke his name, saying it as a question, and, seconds later, he was helping her to stand, assisting her; yet it was she who led, guiding him from the kitchen table — from the darkness which had facilitated the past — bringing them squarely into the light of the present. Soon they sat together again, their knees touching, their fingers interlaced, facing each other on the living-room couch.

Debra took a deep breath, appearing quite forlorn as she then said, “There isn't much time left, at least for me. So it's important I have some say on when and how my life ends.”