Robert Butler - Perfume River

The door is opening, and he hangs back, fades into the darkness like the ghost of his father that he’s been chasing through these woods. No doubt also like his father’s ghost, he keeps a careful watch.

Robert and Jake step into the chill air, stop beneath the porte cochere roof, turn to each other, and Jake says at once, “I’ve been intending for a while to do this the next time I saw you.” He extends his hand.

Robert accepts Jake’s hand and they shake. His grandson’s grasp is firm, ardently so but not strained.

Jake says, “Thank you for your service.”

The puzzlement that Robert felt but did not show when Jake offered his hand must be flickering now in his face because Jake quickly adds, “For our country. In Vietnam.”

Their hands are still clasped and Jake renews the shake with this.

Robert nods, trying to block out the voice of the corpse just inside the doors, trying to quash the same impulse he’d felt with the old man’s donut buddies. He manages: “That’s good of you to say.”

The handshake ends.

Jake says, “We’ve never talked about any of that.”

“I tend not to.”

“I respect that,” Jake says. “But if it’s not an absolute thing. ‘Tend,’ right? I mean, I’ve never asked. But I’d like to. I’m older now. I’d like to sit down and talk about war with you. I mean, you’re my grandfather and you’ve been through that and it’s crazy I shouldn’t find out what you know.”

His grandson’s intention, especially now, should rattle Robert. But upon this rush of words, Jake the boy frisks into him, Jake from the few years he lived close by, the three-year-old out with his granddad for a walk but the boy never walking anywhere, always taking off and running ahead.

Not that Robert ever wants to discuss Vietnam, but for now he says, “Maybe not tonight.”

“No no,” Jake says. “I understand. We’ll make another time.”

“Of course.”

“Soon.”

“Sure.”

The two of them are standing here growing a little chilly now up the sleeves and down the collar and beneath the tie because of Jake and his interest in their talking together. So when his grandson pauses, Robert simply waits, glad he’s put off Vietnam. For some years the two households have had ongoing good intentions to get together more often and soon, but it never seems to happen. Robert regrets that but hopes the phenomenon will at least save him from ever having this particular grandfather-and-grandson conversation.

Robert assumes that asking for this was the purpose of tonight’s private talk. He expects Jake to take them back inside.

But he doesn’t. Jake is working up to something else. He looks away, toward the trees, where Bob is watching closely.

He’s spotted me. But Bob doesn’t react abruptly, as much as his hand wants to duck inside his coat. Just in case it’s okay. Just in case the darkness that Bob is standing in is sufficient, he simply moves backward, deeper into the shadows, but without seeming to move, in minute measures, steadily, his hand ready to leap if necessary. The boy’s head turns back to Cal’s buddy.

Jake says to Robert, “There’s one other thing. Maybe we can talk now just a bit? They’re okay inside without us for a couple more minutes, aren’t they?”

Robert hears a different sort of rush in Jake’s voice, an urgency, a pressing private need. “Whatever you need, Jake.”

“I just need to say it. I’m joining the Marines.”

Robert steels himself instantly to show no reaction. Though he’s staggered.

Jake rolls on. “Dad is freaked. But I’ve made up my mind. He sees me as a child. Always will, probably. At least till I’m forty or something. I’m smart, Granddad. I’ve been thinking about this for a long time, you know? The war you fought — we can talk about all that another time — but that one was fucked up. Sorry for the language. That’s a thing too with Pop. But Jesus. It’s just a fucking word. In the Vietnam War we got mixed up with another country that was trying to decide for itself who they were, and they had no intention to make anybody else think the same way. Much less kill you if you disagreed. You know? They weren’t about to send the Viet Cong over here to hijack an American Airlines jet and fly it into a New York skyscraper. Hell, how did the dreaded communist Vietnam end up? They’re filling clothes racks at Walmart and Target. But this war now is different. The jihadists of the world are cutting off the heads of anyone who disagrees with them. Not just Christians. Even other Muslims. Over what? Over a fourteen-century-old beef about who should carry on Muhammad’s work, a cousin or a caliph. And they’re coming for us. They say so. They mean it. If they had the technology and a modern country and the governing chops of Adolf Hitler, they’d out-Hitler Hitler. This is a real cause to fight for. If we don’t become the new Greatest Generation, then the jihadists will turn us into the Beheaded Generation.”

Bob has stopped retreating into the dark. The boy’s voice has risen and it’s angry and though it takes too much from Bob to make out the words at this distance, too much squeezing in his head, he knows the boy is telling off his father, standing up to him, and Bob is breathing hard, his right hand is itchy but he keeps it at his side for the moment. Still he owes it to the boy, so he strains to hear, and there’s Viet Cong and there’s jihad and there’s Hitler and there’s beheaded and Bob can’t draw his next breath because there’s just too much in his chest to get past.

Jake has stopped talking. He’s panting a little.

Robert wants badly to have words now. His life, his work, is about words. None come to mind. Jake is smart. Robert has listened to him carefully. He’s heard him. He understands how Jake can see the world in this way, how he can see this cause as just. But how to reason a young man out of going to war? As reasonable as Jake’s words sound, his decision itself isn’t about reason. But now that the babble in Robert’s head has quieted, the only words he commands can’t begin to address Jake’s rush, his passion.

It may be too late anyway.

Robert says, “Have you already joined?”

“I’ve taken the aptitude test. And I’ve passed the medical. I make it official next week.”

“What do you need from me?”

“If you can talk to Dad, help him through this. He’s really upset. He won’t get off it.”

Kevin is smart too. He’s surely said it all. Robert despairs of finding a way to dissuade Jake.

“Your dad isn’t making any sense to you?”

Jake shrugs. “It’s not really about sense. He loves me.”

“I love you too, Jake.”

“But you made the same choice when you were my age. For a worse cause.”

Another irony for this night. That was also about a father’s love. A worse cause indeed. And Robert suddenly has relevant words: “Are you sure you’re not doing this because he does love you? Because you need to be your own man, separate from him?”

Jake turns his face away to the trees. To think this over.

Bob straightens sharply. Something’s happened across the way. Since he resumed his breathing, Bob has held himself very still, in body and mind, trying to understand what was before him and what he should do about it. But either the words faded or his mind has. And now the boy has looked away again. As if he’s been slapped across the face. Things can change quickly. Bob puts his hand inside his coat. Holds the Glock but keeps it inside there for the moment.

Jake turns his face back to Robert. He says, “I’m sure. Living with what I believe, how I feel, I couldn’t bear to watch the future unfold if I don’t do what I can.”