The Testament of Harold's Wife Read online

  “Does it make a difference?”

  “If Gary sued? Not one bit.”

  “Do you think you can sleep now?”

  I didn’t, but I could take care of her, too. “Yes, I’m getting pretty tired.”

  “What are you going to do tomorrow?” she asked, a final check.

  “Start finding out what Larry Ellis cares about. So I can make sure he loses it.”

  “Ah ha. The Plan takes shape. Details shall be forthcoming as She Who Will Not Be Thwarted sets upon her task.” CarolSue’s always been able to capitalize words when she speaks and she’s a tease. I used to be, too.

  “Yeah, well, the only thing you’ve contributed so far is the brilliant insistence that I not actually kill him. Big deal. Do you think you’ll be coming soon?”

  “Soon. A few more things to take care of here, then I’ll make reservations. Meanwhile, you know what to do.”

  11

  I wouldn’t marry my Harold when he first proposed. I was so mad that he’d enlisted that I lobbed my whole self at him like a live grenade. “No, I will not marry you now, Mr. Selfish. Exactly what am I supposed to do if something happens to you? Wait, maybe you’re deluded enough to think you’ll knock me up before you ship out, so I’ll have something to remember you by?” (We’d scarcely rounded second base at the time.)

  In a white heat, I went on like that for days. “This is just stupid,” I raged. “Two years! That’s how long an associate degree takes! And you refused do that. It’s not too late for something that makes sense, you know!”

  He was very smart, my Harold was. Maybe books weren’t his strong point, but to avoid his being sent to that war, I could help him with his classes. I’d write the papers for him if he wanted. Of course, it was pointless blather; he’d already enlisted, his parents could never have paid for even community college, and his high school grades hadn’t been scholarship material. There was a lot I didn’t want to admit. High drama was easier than reality.

  It was early 1964. He was staring ahead to his twenty-first birthday, and had already spent more than two years going nuts waiting for the Greetings letter from the Selective Service. “I’ll go ape,” he said. “They can get me until I’m twenty-six. Don’t be bummed, I’ll just go in, get it over with, and then I can start my life. Besides, when you enlist, you can get a better army job.” As it was, he was working in a machine shop. He was good with his hands, but he wanted more than that. Maybe his own shop someday. “You know, when I get out, there’s the GI Bill. You’ll have your education, then maybe I’ll have a better job, and I can take a few classes, too. And maybe I’ll be in the Reserves afterward. That’s good money and benefits.”

  Well, so much for that great plan. If he’d enlisted when he’d turned eighteen, if Johnson hadn’t ramped up the war, if the Gulf of Tonkin hadn’t happened, if, if, if . . . then, yes, Harold might have been on active duty for two years, and gotten out clean. The worst that would have happened is that maybe he’d have really learned how to make a bed well instead of having it look like three or four people were still sleeping in it.

  As it happened, his timing couldn’t have been worse. He was assigned to Fort Benning from where his unit, part of the 1st Cavalry Division Airmobile, was sent, in July of 1965, to Camp Radcliff, plunked in the central highlands of Vietnam and named—naturally—for a dead American pilot. He was supposed to repair small arms artillery like he had at Fort Benning, but then he was sent out to another unit, where he didn’t know anyone. He carried an M16 for some time, on search-and-destroy missions. I know that much.

  If I had it to do over again, my anger when he enlisted would be all about seeing that it was going to turn so wrong. Just so wrong. It would be about having read history. Or it could be about having a moral stance, about civilians or napalm, or something other than what it was: my being mad that he chose to go instead of waiting to see if he had to go. But I see this now: for Harold it was all about taking control. Nobody likes the feeling of having no say over his own life or what he cares about. Isn’t helplessness what we all fear most? Maybe that was the foretelling of his decision to enact his own justice when he set out after Cody’s killer, when it became evident that no one else was going to do anything. I don’t guess I ever really understood until now, when I’ve decided I can’t sit around any longer myself. It’s a shame I can’t tell him that I finally forgive him for enlisting. You’re probably thinking that he knew, since I married him after all, but believe me, he never made the mistake of thinking I fully forgave him for that. It was a far distance from point A, when he left for basic training, to point C, that being our wedding.

  In basic, Harold learned how to run at a stuffed dummy with a bayonet while shouting kill and practiced his shooting. I worked at staying mad. For a while I didn’t even answer his letters (holding a grudge is a special talent of mine). That was during the time I dated some other boys. I wanted to be able to say I told you so when he got killed, and feel especially smart. But of course, I finally thawed. What melted my resolve was his telling me that he wished he’d listened to me, and that no matter what the other guys did, he wanted me to know he was being faithful because he had to believe in something, and a future with me was the only good he could see from there.

  I realize it doesn’t make me look exactly wonderful that I got over being mad because he said he should have listened to me, but you’ll probably figure out I can be like that, and if I tell you myself, at least you’ll know I’m honest. I started writing to him every day, and Harold wrote to me every day he could—often not about what he was doing, but about what he wanted to be doing. He was shielding me from the worst of it.

  It took years for me to hear what he did tell, in dribs and drabs, about the pigs—he refused to have a pig on our farm—the sticky, stifling heat, the leeches, the blood, the mud, the bodies, the hunger, the foot rot, the constant fear firing intermittently into rage as they stalked and were stalked in the jungle. The terrible length of nights. We were married a long time. Most of it he never told. But he couldn’t hide the night terrors, which came back every now and then for a long time. He never did use the GI Bill.

  Like so many, he came home changed. I hardly knew him. But I’d promised, and there were all those plans we’d made in writing. There was no way to back out, not then. And I was lucky. Over time, he found his way back to himself. Maybe he took what had happened and locked it away, just like he’d first had to lock away the kind boy who’d put on the uniform, learned to shoot, and used that skill. So much he kept from me. Maybe it helped that he had me to come back to.

  I finished college just before he got out. He didn’t make it back for my graduation, but we waited and had the party three weeks late so he could be there. Now I wonder if it felt like another world to him, like I was some naïve, even spoiled, rich girl celebrating herself. Which I wasn’t—rich, I mean. Naïve, yes, compared to what he’d seen. I know that now. And as spoiled as most Americans by having running water and flush toilets, enough food and clothing, and not being in fear for our lives.

  It was just as well my mother and I needed some time to put together a spring wedding because his first year back as a civilian was also my first year teaching. Fifth-grade boys are brutal to control on the playground for first-year teachers (I was pretty, and wanted them to like me, a deadly and dumb combination that I didn’t put together in my head). Harold was impatient with himself and everyone else, trying to understand life at home.

  You already know we were married a long time. There are things a wife knows about her husband that no one else knows. My Harold was never a hunter, never a killer. He had the same heart as Cody once. After the war, some nights he’d jump up in a dead sleep, cold yet sweat soaked. Suddenly he’d be across the room, crouching. Wide awake, yet not. Terrified. I would be afraid of what he’d do. “Harold! Harold! It’s me!” I’d call. Once he threw a lamp. It hit the wall behind me and then the floor. Glass as broken as he was around my bare feet. I’d learned
that if I screamed, it made things worse, the screams of women everywhere sounding alike. Slowly, he’d come to. And sob. Sometimes he would not let me touch him.

  He’d healed slowly, but there was still that part of him locked away. And then, when Cody shot a deer and felt what he’d done, Harold saw everything through Cody’s eyes and felt it with Cody’s heart and it unlocked that last part of his own. It changed him as much as going to war had changed him. I saw it happen. That’s what such love did.

  12

  Every fall, deer hunting starts up around here. There are firearm, archery, and muzzleloader seasons, all with their different dates and licenses. The hunters’ bright hats dot the woods like apples still hanging after the frost. Some even climb trees to hide in, men waiting for the creatures to leg their way into their sights, noiseless except for the small rustle of leaves. I can see that part in my mind without much bother. But then I see the deer, its enormous eyes knowing and uncertain at once, picking its way along, just trying to live another day, and I wonder when is it that you can’t stand what’s about to happen? I blink and flinch, hearing the simultaneous explosion and kick, like a hoof deep in a shoulder, and the stutter of a second shot. Maybe someone else’s shot, from another side. It happens, that close. Harold used to say the first shot is life, the way things are, the second shot is the mercy.

  Maybe for him. Maybe stepping out in front of that truck to die was a mercy for him. I have tried to think of it that way, although I really think he was punishing himself for the unbearable weight of failure.

  I would never listen to Harold’s revenge schemes for Larry Ellis, but for sure Gus never caught him with a weapon; he never touched his gun again after he promised Cody he wouldn’t. I know this much, though: he knew exactly who Larry was, where he lived, where he worked. He made it his business to find out everything about him as completely as I refused to know anything. But Harold was careless. I don’t think he gave a damn what busybody might realize he was out to get Larry. Of course it got around to Gus—it probably took all of ten minutes, everyone here knowing everyone’s business the way we do—and naturally Gus made it his business to catch him at it. Not that anyone, probably including Gus, much cared what happened to Larry Ellis; everyone knew what he’d done. No, it was all Gus’s misguided attempt to protect my Harold from himself. Gus didn’t get it: how much better it would have been to let Harold have at Larry. Harold could have lived with whatever happened. Even six months in jail. But when Gus kept stopping him, it took away his hope, time after time, and finally he had nothing left to live for. People have to have hope. I realize it’s the same for Gary. Sometimes people make up the craziest things to put their hope in. I ought to be all right with that, having lost Harold when he lost hope.

  Even CarolSue says she doesn’t know the details of Harold’s intentions, although the two of them always did get along, and Harold started to go after Larry while she stayed with us after Cody’s service. She knew I needed her. I could have saved myself a lot of trouble now if I’d just helped my Harold, or at least let him tell us what he was doing. I wouldn’t have to ferret out every piece of information about Larry Ellis now. I’d know the enemy the way he did.

  CarolSue says that at first Harold set out to torment Larry. He wanted to make his life miserable, have him never know what was coming. I think it must have started as vandalism. Men out here love their trucks, and Harold would have known how to mess with one. Not only that, he knew how engines work. That would explain the misdemeanor arrests for whatever Gus either caught him at or pulled him in for but somehow made sure there were no charges, or none that stuck. Instead of being relieved or grateful, Harold was furious and depressed. He must have ramped it up, because then there were Class D felony charges, one for criminal confinement and one for theft. In this state, those are “wobblers” that can be charged as either a felony or a misdemeanor. CarolSue was the one who found that handy information. When Harold upped the ante, Gus took a new tack trying to stop him; he didn’t intervene, figuring on the judge’s discretion to choose the short jail stint to cool Harold off. But the prosecutor couldn’t get an indictment, not around here, didn’t much matter what evidence he had. I don’t think he even really wanted one. Like Gus, he just wanted Harold to quit.

  Harold wasn’t about to quit. He was about to double down. So Gus pretty much took to tailing him, to cut him off at the pass, to make sure he didn’t succeed. Doesn’t say much for how busy we keep the sheriff out here, does it? Makes you think we could get along just fine without one, doesn’t it? Well, as you know, Harold finally did quit for good. I hope Gus is happy now.

  I ponder winners and losers sometimes in the evening when darkness comes so slowly that I forget to reach up and turn on the floor lamp by the blue chair. Maybe I nod off and on and off. Marvelle doesn’t remind me. A voice in my mind that is not my own says, Oh, Louisa, how your life rode, glorious, toward a mysterious horizon on the edge of an upright rolling dime. And out of nowhere, your dime wobbled with the first news you couldn’t absorb, then careened and plunked down flat. You didn’t really think it would roll on forever. And yet you did.

  I come to. I take stock: am I in my right mind?

  The world is as utterly changed as Dorothy’s when she wakes in Oz. Except for three chickens and a cat, I am alone. A blond Elvis in drag festooned in glitter is in my house. Five miles down the road, two of our neighbors’ farms are being laid out for a subdivision, asphalt and concrete eating the land. When did they sell? How did I not notice?

  I remember before Cody died, the first diminishments. I had no idea what had been set in motion when Gary gave Nicole reason to leave him. I still didn’t feel the dime tipping when Rosie had to be euthanized. Was the first tilt when Mom died before Emerson and Thoreau, those sweet yellow Labs who were littermates? I miss their eager kisses and tails. Before it was time to find a new puppy, our Cody, gone. Gone. Harold couldn’t bear to keep Cody’s horse, but we found him a good home with a 4-H family. Oh, the sheep has been gone for years; that was a failed experiment. My Harold, gone. When the land returns to life like this, the May trees covering their arms in blossoms like open laughter, and enough rain for now, I see them all as they were: moving, believing, eating, squabbling. Laughing as if it would always be the springtime of our lives, as if a dime could stand on end and roll and roll and roll.

  CarolSue called right after supper, said she hadn’t wanted to let it get too late. There was a soft rain falling through late light that made me think almost planting time, and how Harold would be antsy that the fields be dry enough to plant and then get enough rain for the corn to grow. How the fifth graders would be hitting growth spurts in the spring, and getting crazy for school to end.

  CarolSue was right about one thing. Her mammogram was fine. She was sorry she hadn’t told me that Charles had had a biopsy. They’d been called in to meet with his doctor, the last appointment of the day today. When she said that, she didn’t have to say any more. Prostate cancer.

  I don’t know how long I sat holding the phone in my hand after we hung up. Marvelle jumped in my lap and jumped back off after a while. Sometime after dark I remembered to feed her.

  13

  When we were kids, CarolSue was the one with the charmed life. She was Dad’s favorite, and the pretty one, that was obvious. Not only had she gotten the hydrangea-blue eyes and the best eyelashes, she had a way of making bad decisions work out for her. She went to a secretarial school instead of college, though she was smarter than I—at least at math. Oh, she could have gone, she said she just didn’t have the patience for years more school and anyway, she didn’t want to be a nurse or a teacher, which was what she saw a college woman would end up doing. She said she could be a secretary by going to school for six months, for heaven’s sake; she had aced business typing in high school and she figured she could pick up shorthand pretty fast. So she did that, and she did get a decent job, and then she married early. To a guy with a heart murmur, which had made
him the winner of a golden 4F ticket.

  He was her first husband, Phillip, who’d been her high school boyfriend, the one Dad thought was a loser, “with or without a lousy heart murmer,” as he muttered out of CarolSue’s earshot. Even Mom had never taken a great shine to him, I could tell. But somehow, she was all set up for a great life, while I was doggedly making my way through college to become a teacher (she was right about what women were steered to be then: secretaries, nurses, teachers), and just as doggedly staying mad at Harold.

  At first Phillip didn’t even turn out to be such a loser, which was a surprise because Dad was often right about people. Then, of course, he turned out to be right, but that came later.

  In the early years, they both worked, they both saved, they bought a nice house. If they weren’t happy, they put on a damn good show of it. Back then, CarolSue and I weren’t like we are now with each other. I wouldn’t have instantly known her sterling “I’m fine” from the silver-plate one. But I think she really was. Even Mom and Dad warmed up.

  And then she was pregnant. I was crazy jealous, unmarried still, while she had everything we both wanted. So of course, I immediately organized an enormous baby shower. Mom said wait. I mailed invitations. “It’s not like she waited to tell people, Mom,” I said. “Honey, it’s early. You never know. The time for a shower is at the end,” she said. I rolled my eyes. She didn’t roll hers back, but she did shake her head while she made tea sandwiches, which just annoyed me.

  The shower had an extremely original color theme: pink and blue. We played every silly game women have ever invented, and CarolSue loved it. Three days later CarolSue was spotting, then cramping. Bed rest didn’t help. She lost the baby at thirteen weeks.