j o h n  r o s

i think, ‘what is the most amazing thing two people in love can say to each other?’ then i sit and even wonder what love is; what life is. the inevitable time sequence of our lives either enables or deters, either way all we can do is live. then i live in my space and do what i can. help may be on the way, but all we really have is friends, family, life and time.

life and time comes around and around — life, love, war; the line draws thinner.

Agnes
by pamela gay

Agnes selected her favorite post card — the Susquehanna River at sunset with a rowboat moored at the edge. Empty. An empty boat. She paused, imagining a couple had left the boat for a picnic down by the riverside. “Cruising Down the River on A Sunday Afternoon,” she sang softly to herself, imagining that she and Charles were off on a picnic. But life wasn’t a picnic, was it? Today he went to Hancock to take inventory. He’d spend the night there. Tonight she’d sleep alone, maybe sleep through the night instead of waking up startled as if from a bad dream, which is what it felt like when Charles would wake up in the night, sit straight up in bed, sweating, looking terrified. She’d sit up to see. He’d yell, “Get down, get down.” She learned to go down, pull the sheet up. It was easier than saying “No one’s there, Charles. No one’s coming after you. You’re dreaming again.” He’d look at her. He didn’t want to talk about being in the trenches, waiting, waiting for the enemy. He’d get out of bed, get back in bed, lay still. Some nights she’d turn in her sleep and curl into him to find he had his boots on. The first time, she sat up, startled. She lifted the covers to see. Yes, boots. He must have gotten up in the night and put them on, careful not to disturb her. He never told her the story of the boots. She only knew because she overheard him telling another vet how they had occupied a town along the Rhine and stayed overnight. The German soldiers had already gone across. “We could see them and they could see us.” That night he got to sleep between white sheets: how good it felt to lay down in some white sheets, even with his old muddy boots on. “You had to be ready in case of attack. There’d be no time to put your boots on.”

He had slept in his boots for nearly three months. Never had his shoes off, he said. “Never had a shower, never had a bath.”

He never spoke of it to her. She never asked. She never told him she felt those boots in the night sometimes. When she woke up, the boots were never there. He was not there. He couldn’t sleep, he said. He got up early, 4:00,5:00 a.m., and showered. Showered morning and night. None of this she would say to her parents. She didn’t want to upset them, especially her mother. Her mother would want to know that she was all right. She turned the picture postcard over and wrote:

July 26, 1945
Dear Folks,
It’s still pretty warm even tho� we are getting a breeze now. Did you have a wonderful time & trip, Mother? It was nice you could go. Charles is taking inventory today at Thompson ’s & will stay overnight in Hancock, he is feeling O.K, Going to have beans out of our garden this week.
Love, Agnes

Agnes got up from her chair in the garden and walked to the mailbox and raised the red flag to signal she had mail to go out. Then she went inside and turned on the radio:

Two days ago President Truman told Stalin of a new weapon of unusual destructive force. Today the allies demanded that Japan surrender or face destruction….

Agnes felt scared. She wanted to go to her mother and say she was scared. But she was grown up now. She was all right. I’m all right. Everything’s going to be all right, she said to herself, turning the knob on the radio, listening now to Frank Sinatra croon “I’ll Be Seeing You” while she gazed out the window to the garden where she had been sitting.

fall 2004