Her house had been knocked down a few years ago, of course. He knew that. Every time he came home it seemed something else had gone. He stood now looking at the brown, muddy fields with patches of green grass still dotted here and there, the huge expanse of space that had once been where she lived. What once had been her bedroom, the most sacred, alluring, magical place he had ever imagined, the room that held her hopes, her desires, her dreams, where she slept and rose and got dressed and cried, where she confessed everything to her diary and wrote about boys, was now turned loose to the skies, nothing but air where once her life had been. Standing there now, with the cold November winds whipping about his face and the sound of a bird in the grey skies overhead, it was as though it had never existed at all.
But it had. And now he was back here. He was back here because the huge, misshapen stone sculpture that sat on a small, raised grassy area across from her street, was due to be pulled up and moved across town. It had been here for as long as he could remember. How many hours, days, had he spent there? All summer that year, the year of his 17th birthday, he had hung around waiting. He would leave the nearby library with books on Dante and Coppola, Miller and Mishima, and sit with his back to the stone, reading in his combat fatigues under a heavy sun, hoping for a glimpse of her. Maybe she would see him and come out to say 'hi'. It wasn't as if they didn't know each other, after all. They had mutual friends and had spoken many times. But he was shy back then, different to the others, while she was feisty and outgoing. He had fallen in love with her almost immediately, detecting a tenderness under a tough exterior, a fragility that only he could see. She was, he had written rather flowerily back then, like one of Tennessee Williams' moths. He had never told her that, though. He had never told anybody anything.
On that last tour one of the younger guys had asked a question to the group while they were drinking and horsing around. They did these kinds of things. They did anything they could think of to take their minds off of the day, try and kill some time.
'If you could telephone your 15 year old self and speak for only 15 seconds, what would you say?' The guys all started cracking jokes.
'I'd say 'Your mom is coming, hide the magazine!' or 'don't join the Marines. Walk right by that recruiter. Get a real job.'
Everybody had laughed. Of course, he knew what he would have said. 'Be bolder, do more, live courageously.' It had taken him a long time to learn to do that. Too long, he felt now. Many were the nights back then when he would lay awake in the dark, looking at the huge cream moon from his window, and imagine climbing up to her bedroom with a rose in his mouth, making a grand gesture, living courageously. Maybe he'd get the wrong room, knock on her mother’s window by mistake, and cause a disturbance. He'd have to scamper back down the ladder or play it off coolly with some insouciant joke or witty remark and she would laugh and fall in love with his bravado and wild, reckless spirit as he fled grinning into the night.
He never did that, though, had never done anything, and now he was back. He was back because of that rock and he was almost twice as old as back then and there was no longer any house to climb. He looked to the heavens for an answer, even though he had never gotten one yet.
Despite the fact he had rested against it more times than he could remember, he had been ignorant in his youth, never really knowing what the rock was actually for. He was sure he must have read the plaque on it many times but had either forgotten it or else never properly taken it in. It was only much later, after he had left home and missed the place, then missed it terribly, that he had researched the town's history and found the rock in the pages of a textbook. It had been dedicated to one of the areas early philanthropists and sometime soldier.
Soldier. It was funny how things worked out.
The story of its being moved had been on the local news two nights ago. They needed the space to build a new supermarket, and people had protested the plans. Today, though, there was nobody here. He was standing all alone. It reminded him of a time when he was just a kid, a time way back even before her, before the rock. There had been a wall that ran the length of the street he had grown up on. It was for the school on the other side of the road, across from his house. He, his brother, cousin and their friends had used it for almost everything. They used it for children’s games when they were very small. A little later, when they were older, they used it as goal posts for football games or a backstop for stray baseballs. They threw water bombs at it and wrote the name of girls they liked in coloured chalk or stone, painstakingly carving them onto the brick in faint, jagged lines that would be washed off in the rain. In those long, hot, never-ending summers of their youth they would climb it, hide behind it, sit on it and talk until the sun went down. They would laugh at Mike Appel as, unable to run and spring onto it as they all did, he instead arduously tried to scale it, throwing first one leg over, then the other, lying flat for safety and holding on for dear life. It was probably only a six foot drop, and they would double over in hysterical laughter at his frightened expression each and every time.
One day it was announced that the school would be knocking down the wall, to be replaced with a green metal fence. It would have spikes on the top of it, clearly meant as a deterrent against their sitting on it and clambering onto the field. Outraged they had gathered the gang together and swore to defend the wall at all costs.
That day, when the diggers finally came, they sat in a line along the wall, even Appel managing to sit upright for the protest, as the men went to work at the other end, the far end, swinging hammers and drilling away. It was summer and hot and it seemed to take the workers forever to move down to where they were sat. Eventually some of the kids grew bored and went to find something else to do. Some, bowing to the inevitability of it all as children often must, went off to seek ice creams and mischief somewhere else. Others, intrigued by the noise and destruction up the street, went to join the workers in the smashing of the bricks, some even helping by kicking at the wall, chipping it, and breaking off any rubble that they could. That struck him as some sort of heinous, deep betrayal, and he had never forgotten it. He and hi younger brother had stayed there until the end, the only ones still left, silently sitting and waiting. Eventually the men reached them, most of the wall already gone. They too now had to bow to the inevitable.
The man with the hammer and protective goggles looked at them almost apologetically. 'I'm sorry, guys' he said kindly, 'it's time to get down.'
They did, reluctantly, and he felt a grave injustice strike his heart. He was proud they had stayed, though, and put an arm around his brother, who had only stayed because he had, too young to know the reasons why, as they finally headed inside for dinner while the men swung their hammers at what remained.
The wind picked up now and once again he was alone. The loud truck pulled up more or less where her house would have been, ready to move the commemorative stone to its new home. He was proud it had stood, unharmed and unmoved, for so long. The girl, she would be 30 now. He had heard from friends that she had 5 kids and no job. It is hard to have ambition and drive in this world. It seemed far easier to give up and look for reasons instead as to why you never achieved anything. Many people he had met used having a family as a crutch for not pursuing their dreams. In some cases people were trapped before they knew it, never to get out. She had always seemed capable of so much more, and he always regretted not telling her that. Sometimes people don't know a thing like that unless someone tells them. It was a mistake he hoped he never made again.
He began to move back a little. A man emerged from the truck, an older man with silver hair and thick grey stubble. He was wearing a bright orange safety jacket and helmet and gave a solemn nod as he moved. There was something familiar about him, something dignified and respectful. He returned the nod and gave the huge stone one last look before chains were secured to it and he turned around, started slowly walking away.
The traffic was beginning to build up on the nearby road. He had three days of leave left and family to visit. After that he would not see any more of the old haunts. On Sunday he would pack up his things.
Then he would return to the war.