Veteran Phil's Arc

Chapter 3 of 4

The dog tags sat in a kitchen drawer for two weeks. Phil knew the soldier's name and his town. He did not know if anyone there still waited. He tried the phone book. He tried the operator. Both came up empty. Mary watched him close the drawer again one morning. "You can't do this alone," she said. "I asked the church. A man there does this work." The man came that afternoon. He was tall and thin, with a gray beard and glasses. He shook Phil's hand and set a worn satchel on the table. "Harold Pemberton," he said. "I was an army clerk. Thirty years of files." He did not sit until Phil did. "I track down soldiers. When they're gone, I find their people." Phil placed the dog tags on the table. Harold turned them to the light. He read the name, then the small letters below it. "There," he said, pointing. He tapped a stamped mark near the bottom edge. "That's a faith mark. Means a church kept his record. A church remembers a family long after a phone book forgets." Phil pulled out one more thing. A ticket stub, soft and yellowed. "He had this in his pocket," Phil said. "A movie ticket. I kept it all these years." Harold studied the faded print. He read the balcony row, the seat number, the theater mark along the edge. "This is a small-town theater," Harold said. "Not a city one. It gives us the town, same as his record." He set both keepsakes side by side. "Two roads to one door." Harold opened his satchel and spread papers across the table. He worked for an hour. He cross-checked the town against discharge lists. He found a church by the faith mark. He called a number and spoke in his quiet, steady voice. Phil sat still, hands folded, listening to half a conversation. Harold hung up. He looked at Phil. "The church still stands," he said. "The pastor knows the name. The soldier had a younger sister. She married and stayed in the same town." He wrote an address on a card. "She's ninety-one. She's alive." Phil's hands shook. Mary put her hand over his. "She's alive," Phil repeated. For eighty years the boy had been a name he forgot. Now he had a sister, a house, a door. Harold slid the card across the table. On the back he had drawn a small map to an old farmhouse. "That's the place," he said. "Weathered. Been in the family a long time." Phil closed his hand around the card and the tags together. The promise could be kept now. But the tags still had to be carried there. He had to stand on that porch, knock, and tell a ninety-one-year-old woman how her brother died. "We'll go to her," he said to Mary. "I have to tell her myself."