Buckeye

by Patrick Ryan

What they found out—separately, and years later, after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor and threw the country into a panic, after young men stopped waiting for their numbers to be drawn and began to volunteer—was that having one leg two inches shorter than the other was enough to make a person unfit for military service, while having unusually tight hamstrings wasn’t. That

where he was shot through the neck in the Hürtgen Forest while reloading his rifle and reciting the Lord’s Prayer.

Sometimes he wondered if he would ever discover what his “special thing” was—his purpose, he’d decided—especially in the face of a world war that wouldn’t have him.

Being deprived of those inches, he’d gained what seemed to be a full and healthy life. But feeling happy about it didn’t seem right—not when a million young men were inducted during the first year America got into World War II, and ten million by early May of 1945.

Everett had just barely managed to scrape his family’s way through the Depression and couldn’t abide by waste.

all for the sake of being able to claim he’d been in the war and had gotten wounded and had been sent back home with a limp.

Would Cal promise to keep the letter and present it back to her on her sixtieth birthday?

“That’s the whole point,” Becky said. “Is the future knowable? Will our older selves be anything like our younger selves thought we would be? We can only find out by writing it down and then putting it out of our minds and letting life take its course. The unraveling of time should be mysterious, don’t you think?”

Time was like a rock bed with a lot of layers, she said, then took a moment to find the word she wanted: strata. Even the most unbearable things became fossils, after a while.

didn’t tell them you could do anything. I told them what you did.

I said I walked out of that room feeling like I’d been breathing the same air as my son. Which is the truth,”

“You have to love him, and you have to let him love you back. But you don’t have to care about every dumb thing he says, because I can guarantee you, tomorrow he’s going to say something dumber.”

They think they’ve got all the brains, but if they did, they wouldn’t walk around sounding like idiots half the time. When you give Cal a hug, squeeze extra tight. That’s what I do with your father. He says I only know how to give bear hugs, and I want to say, ‘That’s because I’m trying to squeeze the stupid out of you, honey!’ ”

“It doesn’t work, but you’ll feel better.”

HAha

As far as the Hanovers were concerned, Cal and Becky were a fairy tale of chance—one that could have a happy ending if everyone kept a level head.

“Noooo…by doing whatever you have to do so that it can still happen and not be something that causes fights.” Cal watched Roman finish the second beer. “And how would you go about that?” “Since you asked, I think you should tell her you’re sorry for whatever you said, and tell her you’ve had a change of heart. You believe in the séance stuff now, hook, line, and sinker.

Your only request is that she meets with these people downstairs, in the parlor, which is five feet from your front door.

“You want me to lie to her.” Roman’s eyes dollied forward under his brow. “If it means living in peace? Absolutely. That’s one of the reasons we have lies.”

Roman had bragged about it all, canceling out any chance of Becky’s seeing even a shred of their good intention.

“I said I was going to take care of it. I was going talk to him. You threatened him with a hammer!”

They functioned as parents and maintained the household together, but they lived as begrudging colleagues when it came to their interaction. The matter remained pinned. Apparently for the foreseeable future.

He couldn’t imagine getting the attention Becky got for something no one could see or touch. He wouldn’t want that kind of attention for anything, wouldn’t take it if they handed it to him. But on a deep and very private level, he envied her.

Would that really be enough, if he were to keel over at seventy? Or fifty?

The world was hard enough on women with average looks, like her; she could only imagine how it must come down on the beauties.

When you didn’t want to say too much or explain anything, postcards were just the ticket.

If their intentions were in the right place, they would land in the right place. She wasn’t even nineteen yet, after all.

No matter how well she presented herself, if he knew she’d been born unwanted and had slunk away from an orphanage, wouldn’t he see her differently? As lesser, maybe even desperate?

Almost as if this were her childhood, the one she didn’t get to have growing up.

Not all of her neighbors had children, but they were all ready to ask her when she was going to start having her own. Put just that way, as if she were holding in a litter as she went about her day. “Someday,” she’d say, thinking, Why do you care?

Felix Salt will take the form he’s meant to take.

Hold down the fort, he said—as if the fort might leave, when he was the one sailing away.

He also didn’t want to be drafted into the Army and end up a foot soldier. He wanted to go in with a little status, if he could get it. For all he knew, this was the experience he needed. The refitting that would finally move his interior gears in the right direction. The discipline that would reset him.

all reason and circumstance fell away, and she could think only that he’d chosen to go.

who won didn’t matter as much as it was over. That’s what mattered, it was over.”

They still interacted almost constantly—they had to; they had a toddler. They still ate dinner together, did the dishes, listened to the radio, and enjoyed their son—but if it didn’t involve Skip, they kept their interaction to a minimum. Fine with me, Cal thought many times a day, even though it wasn’t.

What she was actually doing was trying to find things to think about that weren’t the man she’d kissed in the hardware store.

She saw in his eyes something she’d never seen in Felix’s. Desire.

her favorite aspect of the painting? “The colors, it sounds like. Or maybe the size?” She shook her head, said, “Is it dusk, or is it dawn? It’s up to the viewer.”

“There’s so much hardship in the world. If we don’t allow ourselves a little enjoyment every once in a while, there’s nothing but hardship, right?”

“Sure,” he said. “But I wouldn’t know who I was if I started moving around on an even keel.”

Plus, he never knew what shape his dad was going to be in—drunk, or ranting, or both.

He was always capturing perfect moments and then putting them under a microscope to find the cute parts. Too many people turned in exact profile before some perfectly balanced backdrop, their cheeks ruddy, their skin egg-washed. Cal was right, nothing was like those paintings.

She knew what it was like to live with that hard divide between the rest of the world and home.

He’d become a guest in his own life.

What was happening was something that was clearly outside of their marriages, and physical, and needed—for different reasons, maybe. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that they found a way not to be so eaten up with guilt that it would cause disharmony in their marriages. Thus, they managed to cast themselves as at least somewhat thoughtful and even responsible people.

The more time he spent listening to his crewmates, the more it became clear that they were all—including him—fighting to protect a way of life that didn’t include everyone back home, or even right here on the ship.

he didn’t smoke, just wanted to belong, socially, to this group of men he was floating around with. Which was how Felix had started smoking, too, and now wished he hadn’t.

Was he truly that gung-ho, or was he more like Felix—and Helen and Mabel—assuming marriage and traditional family life was unavoidable and so bracing himself for a life within the status quo, and crossing his fingers that he was up for the task? Felix had been serious—heart serious—in his vows to Margaret, and he still was. He loved her, cared about her, and at the same time he felt that this part of himself—with Augie—was more than just excess to be trimmed from the edges of the mold, more than just sprue to be diverted.

avoiding the very person he wanted, confused by that,

How was she supposed to function with so little information?