The Time Keepers

Chapter 50

CHAPTER 50

J ACK ’ S APARTMENT HAD NO PAINTINGS OR DECORATION. T HE white walls were monastic. He maintained a telephone line, though almost no one except Tom ever called him. And he hardly ever went out, except for groceries, laundry, the occasional slice of pizza at Nino’s, and to the Sunday dinner invitation he accepted from Grace once a month.

He loved those dinners more than he cared to admit. The house smelled like warm biscuits and childhood. Aside from the scent of crackling meat and roasted potatoes in the kitchen, the family room smelled of pencils freshly sharpened for Monday morning, loose leaf paper and highlighter pens. It brought him back to his days at Foxton Elementary and also even further back to the Sunday meals his mother used to make on her day off. His mother wasn’t the cook Grace was. She’d never in her life made a standing roast seasoned with paprika and garlic powder, or maple-glazed carrots. But she had mastered the art of breaded chicken cutlets, and the two of them had been known to polish off a tray of Pillsbury crescent rolls, torn open and smeared with butter.

The first time he came for dinner at the Goldens’ he had spent most of that Sunday afternoon fraught with anxiety. How would the children be able to enjoy their supper with him sitting next to them at the table? He considered wearing a baseball cap to create a shadow across his face, but then thought it might be considered disrespectful to wear one at Grace’s dinner table.

“The girls would love to meet you,” Tom had told him with such kindness it was hard to refuse. Yes, even with the skin grafts finally behind him, he knew he’d be a scary sight for the children. His skin was red and bumpy. His left eyelid drooped over his bad eye. There was a patch of hair near his forehead that had never fully grown back. He remembered the first time he stroked Hendrix and saw the bare patches of white, scaly skin, it was as though his fingers were also touching a side of himself.

His face had healed considerably over the years. He had been wholly unprepared for that initial moment at the hospital in Texas, when they unwrapped the bandages. His reflection could have been Mars for all intents and purposes, as there was nothing he remembered of his former self. The skin was mottled and his face, once bronzed from the sun in Vietnam, the cheeks that Becky had caressed and kissed, had all been burned to an unrecognizable canvas. But now the skin, although damaged and half of his face was clearly deformed, was hardly as bad as it had been when he’d first arrived at the hospital.

He hated thinking of his former self. The photographs he had from his younger days had been put away, though he did still have that single photograph of Becky and him beside his bed. He would hold it between his hands sometimes when he was feeling especially bad about things. On those nights time stood still in a different way from his night terrors or memories of Vietnam. It was like peeking into a time capsule of another life, its jagged edges softened like sea glass in his palm. He could peer into it and remember what it was like to be touched. To be loved.

Oddly enough, his face had actually helped another veteran heal, or at least enabled an old man to finally put a painful memory to rest. Jack came to consider their brief interaction together sacred, for not only had it between two people who knew the horrors of war, but the man was also Tom’s father.

He met the senior Golden early on in his friendship with Tom. In the weeks that followed after he had lost his job at Foxton, he offered to visit Harry at the veterans home while Tom was busy at the store. He was happy to make himself useful with so much extra time on his hands.

“You’d really pay him a visit? Maybe read to him or something?”

“It’ll be my pleasure,” he told Tom. “I don’t have much else to keep me busy these days.”

That afternoon he went to visit Harry, Jack tried to make himself look halfway decent. He wore a pair of khaki pants and a button-down shirt he had bought for himself at the Salvation Army. He brought the most recent copy of National Geographic , thinking Harry might enjoy hearing about the Aboriginal people in Australia. He thought the photographs of the warriors with their hunting spears and native jewelry might spark some interesting conversation.

He knew the layout of the veterans hospital very well, having gone for countless appointments to appraise his scar tissue and healing.

Harry’s room was at the end of the corridor, number 707, as Tom had written down for him.

But when he entered Harry’s room, Jack found a man who had no interest in the magazine underneath his arm.

Harry, tucked underneath a yellow blanket with pillows propped behind his head, turned to greet him. An old Bulova military watch was strapped to his wrist as he waved hello.

“Jim? Jimmy Connelly? Hell, is that you?” Harry piped up, a flash of excitement washed over the old man’s face. “Why, I thought you didn’t make it.… All I saw was that pant leg and boot after your jeep exploded.…” He squinted at Jack, tears pooling in his eyes.

“Jesus Christ.” Harry shook his head. “You have no idea how happy it makes me to see you survived.”

Jack stood near his bed, frozen, not sure whether he should tell Harry that he wasn’t his old friend Jimmy or instead allow the man a chance to revisit someone he clearly cared about and kept trapped in memory all these years.

“Guess you got wounded pretty bad, though.” He touched his face and looked sympathetically at the man standing across from him.

“Yeah, I did,” Jack answered honestly.

“Sit down.” Harry patted his bed. “I don’t get many visitors who’ve been through what we’ve been through. The only people who stop by are my son and his family.”

Jack shook his head. “I know it’s tough to find someone who gets what we’ve been through.”

“Yes,” Harry nodded. “It really is. I’m always waking my wife, Rosie, with my bad dreams, but I’d never tell her what they’re about. Why upset her? Right?”

“Uh-huh.” Jack knew far too well what it was like to wake up screaming in the middle of the night. Even if he did have someone to share his bed with, he was sure he’d never burden another soul with what was inside of him.

“I brought you a magazine, I could read it to you if you want.…” he offered, trying to bring something more lighthearted into the conversation. He lifted the cover so Harry could see. “Thought the photographs looked pretty interesting.…”

Harry peered over and shrugged. “I’m just happy to see you’re still alive, Jimmy. Can’t tell you how much I’ve thought about you over the years.” His eyes narrowed as he looked at Jack more closely. “That burn seems pretty bad.” He lowered his voice. “I’m real sorry about that. No one gets the war out here.…” He tapped his head. “But you have it written all over your face.…”

Jack’s eyes fell. Harry’s mental deterioration had put him beyond polite small talk, but ironically it enabled him to speak the truth more freely.

“It’s not easy, that’s for sure,” Jack answered.

“Yeah. I get the worst nightmares sometimes. I wake up thinking I’m standing in front of corpses. Still got that smell in my nose.” Harry touched the edge of his nostrils. “You know that stench of death.”

“Yes,” Jack said. It wasn’t something one could ever forget.

“And, God, I saw you go up in flames.… I didn’t know how you’d ever survive that.…”

Jack felt his stomach flip.

“It wasn’t easy. A lot of surgeries. A lot of rehabilitation.”

“I can imagine,” Harry sympathized.

“But, hey, at least you’re not dead, right?” Harry grinned.

Jack laughed. There was a part of him that enjoyed black humor. “Yeah, that’s the one upside to being stuck with a face like this.…”

He adjusted himself in the chair, looked around at the small room with the pitcher of water on the bedside, next to the array of photographs of Tom with Grace and their children.

“I’m sure glad you came to visit me, Jimmy,” Harry said as he looked out toward the window. “I’m relieved I don’t have to imagine your parents burying you like I did so many times after I came home.”

“Thank you,” Jack said softly. “I’m glad I came too.”

Harry nodded. “You ever think about time, Jimmy?”

“Time?”

“Yeah, like how we spent our time over there counting the days until we could get home. And now, I don’t know about you, but I spend my days just trying to fill the hours. The days seem so damn slow.…”

“I know what you mean,” Jack said.

“My son, Tom, he’s just a teenager, but he doesn’t understand.… The young people today …”

“Hard for them to understand if they didn’t live it,” Jack said.

“Yes, and I wouldn’t wish that on anyone,” Harry said. “I feel bad, but I think I need to cut this visit short, Jimmy. I’m getting tired now.”

“No problem, I’ll come again.”

“That would be great.” Harry started to nod off.

Jack stood up and placed the magazine by Harry’s bedside, next to one of the many framed photographs of the Golden family. He noticed one of Tom, no older than ten, perched on the seat of a red bicycle. He smiled. It was the first time he noticed Katie had Tom’s eyes.