Veteran Phil's Arc

Chapter 6 of 8

Wednesday night Phil stood at the kitchen table with the trip one day off. His coat lay on a chair. On top of it sat the memoir pages and the dog tags, both stuffed in a worn paper envelope. The flap was torn at one corner. Phil pressed it shut with his thumb and it opened again. Three hours in a van. The envelope would ride on his lap the whole way. He pictured the paper splitting, the tags sliding under a seat, his dead friend's name lost on the highway. "This won't hold," he told Mary. "Not three hours." Mary set down her tea. She picked up the envelope and tilted it. One dog tag slid to the torn corner and stopped. "No," she agreed. "It won't." A knock came at the door. Claire Shepherd stood on the step with her shoulder bag, come to confirm the morning pickup. She was the counselor who had taught Phil how to tell the sister about her brother. She looked at the table, at the leaning envelope, at Phil's hand hovering over it. "You can't carry it like that," Claire said. Nothing more. Phil's jaw tightened. "I know." He had known for an hour and done nothing. Saying it out loud made his failure plain. Mary went to the bedroom. She came back with a stiff leather satchel, brown and well-kept, two brass buckles across the front. "My brother's," she said. "He carried papers in it for forty years. The buckles still catch." Phil opened the flap. The inside was dry and clean. But the dog tags were loose metal, and loose metal slides and scratches. He needed something to hold them still beside the pages. He went to the cedar chest at the foot of the bed. Under a wool blanket lay a folded flag, red and white, creased sharp from years of folding. His own, kept since the service. His hands shook on the latch. Mary steadied the lid. Phil carried the flag to the table. He unfolded one corner, laid the dog tags in the crease, and folded the cloth back over them. The metal vanished into soft fabric. No rattle. He slid the wrapped flag into the satchel, then the memoir pages flat against it. He buckled both straps. He lifted the bag by its handle and gave it a hard shake. Nothing moved. Nothing slid. The torn envelope lay empty on the chair. "That holds," Mary said. Claire nodded once. "Pickup is eight o'clock. I'll be here." She let herself out. Phil set the satchel on top of his coat. Tomorrow a stranger would drive them three hours to a farmhouse door. The tags were safe now, wrapped and buckled and still. He looked at the bag a long time. The envelope could tear no longer. But at the end of the drive he still had to knock, and open the bag, and put a dead man's name in his sister's hands.