Veteran Phil's Arc

Chapter 5 of 5

The morning they meant to leave, Phil's car would not start. He turned the key twice. The engine coughed and died. Mary sat beside him with the prayer book in her lap and the dog tags in his pocket. The farmhouse was three hours away. Phil had not driven that far in years. His hands shook just backing out of the driveway. He looked at the dead dashboard and felt the whole plan slip. The tags would go back in the drawer. The sister would wait another eighty years. "I can't drive it," Phil admitted. "Even if it ran. My eyes. My hands. Three hours on the highway." He had not said it before. Saying it made it true. Mary did not argue. She picked up the phone and called Claire Shepherd, the counselor who had sat at their table and taught Phil the order of the words. Within the hour Claire stood in their kitchen, satchel on her shoulder, looking at the tags on the table the way she had before. "The center runs a van," Claire said. "For folks who can't drive. They take people to appointments. Long trips too, if you ask." Phil frowned. "I'm not going to a doctor." "They don't ask why," Claire said. "They ask where." She drove them to the senior center that afternoon. The building sat low and plain, flower boxes under the windows, a bench by the door. A woman at the front desk listened while Phil stood with his hat in his hands. He told her the address. He told her it was far. He did not tell her about the drowning or the river. His voice stayed steady until the last word. "That's a long way," the woman said. She checked a book. "We have a driver free Thursday. Door to door. You and your wife both." Phil set his hand on the counter to hold himself up. "Thursday," he repeated. Claire stood a step back, letting him do it alone. When the woman wrote their names in the book, Claire gave a small nod. "That's it, then," she said. Nothing more. Outside, Phil held the slip of paper with the pickup time. Thursday. A driver. A van that knew the roads. The three hours were handled. The tags would not stay in the drawer. "I keep thinking of reasons not to go," Phil told Mary in the car. "The engine was almost one." Mary touched the prayer book. "It isn't anymore." That night Phil laid out his coat and set the tags on top of it. For four chapters the trip had been a wall. Now it was a date on a slip of paper. On Thursday a stranger would drive them to a door, and Phil would carry a dead man home to his sister. The worry came back at once. He still had to knock. He still had to say the words out loud to a face.