Chapter 7 #2
But once I was off the ferry, I didn’t want to wait anymore.
I slipped past other passengers and ran up the dock, the strutting gulls in my path taking flight.
Leonard saw me just as I reached him, and he moved toward me so quickly that we collided more than embraced, the impact knocking off his fedora.
He lifted me and spun me as if we were back in the gym, and I pressed both hands against his head, shorn and smooth.
He smelled different, like new soap, and I could feel the drumbeat of his heart.
Someone picked up the fedora for him, and he thanked them without letting me go.
When he did put me down, he put the fedora back on, then held both my hands in his.
“What’s with the hat?” I asked.
He laughed. “The haircut made my ears grow.”
I thought the haircut looked good on him, and I told him so. He’d only been away a few months, but he looked older, in a good way. The angles of his face were more pronounced.
“Are you hungry?”
I nodded, still taking him in, the gold of his skin, the hollow of his neck.
He reached for my bag, looping it over his shoulder.
He took my hand as we walked up to the road, to where the taxicabs waited.
Just getting into one felt thrilling. I’d never been in a taxi, or in a town where my family wasn’t.
The driver asked where we were from, and Leonard said Kentucky.
They went on to make easy conversation while I stayed silent, my gaze on the meter, alarmed by how quickly the numbers increased.
Leonard seemed relaxed, his arm around me, his hand warm on my shoulder.
I looked out the window as we passed little houses and fruit stands.
He’s with you now, I told myself. Don’t think about later.
Bradenton’s downtown was smaller than St. Pete’s, but we found a diner just opened for lunch. When we walked in, “ ‘A’ You’re Adorable” was playing on the jukebox. The lone waitress, smoking behind the counter, pointed to a cluster of balloons tied to a chair.
“If you order a banana split,” she said, “you get to pop a balloon to find out a price—anywhere from full price to only a nickel.”
“What do you think?” Leonard asked. “I’m feeling lucky.
” He had his hand at my waist, warm and addling my brain.
I told him I’d be fine starting with dessert if we could share it.
The waitress handed him a sewing needle, and Leonard said I should choose the balloon.
When he popped it, we all three jumped, then laughed.
The little ticket that fluttered to the floor read Full Price.
“I’ll give you extra whip cream,” the waitress said. She put out her cigarette and headed to the kitchen. “And you can set anywhere you like.”
We chose a high-backed booth by the jukebox, now playing a Glenn Miller song.
“How’s school?” he asked.
“The same,” I said. “Tell me about Fort Knox.”
“Family okay?”
“Everyone’s fine,” I said. “Tell me.”
Under the table, he put his ankles around mine. I closed my eyes, just wanting to feel it, the press of his skin against mine. When I opened my eyes, we were both silent, staring. The waitress yelled something to the cook, maybe wanting to remind us of her presence. I leaned forward.
“You don’t have to say if you regret it. I just want to hear how it was.”
He nodded. “In hindsight”—he looked at the table—“if I didn’t want to be told what to do anymore, the army probably wasn’t the best choice.”
I felt no satisfaction in this. I told him I wanted details.
He said the first week was the hardest, and through most of it, he was sure he’d made a mistake.
He’d heard about drill instructors, and thought he knew what to expect, but he’d had no idea.
Even in the second week, and the third, and the fourth, he was stunned by fatigue, and the constant screaming, the threats and the insults.
He said that was why he didn’t write to me.
He didn’t feel he could complain to me, because I’d tried to stop him.
“You could’ve complained,” I said.
“Well. Now that I’m on the other side of it…” He looked at me with trepidation. “I don’t want to make you mad again.”
“You won’t,” I said. What was done was done.
He went on to say he really had learned things, just as he’d intended.
Mostly to follow orders, and quickly. But he could also disassemble, clean, and reassemble an M1 rifle with his eyes closed.
And shoot one well enough. He said a lot of recruits came from the country, and they’d grown up shooting squirrels and deer.
He was fumbling at first, getting heat for how clumsy he was with a gun.
But he learned. He said he’d also learned to dig a foxhole, which was harder than he’d predicted, especially when the ground was cold.
At this, his face brightened. “It snowed up there. I hadn’t seen snow in years. I forgot how beautiful it can look, how it softens everything.” He squinted. “Why’re you looking at me like that?”
It was for every reason. I wanted to reach across the table, pull the bristly top of his head toward me, and kiss it. The bell on the door chimed, and a woman came in with several young children. They made their way to the balloons.
“I had no idea if you’d come today,” he said. “I thought, ‘well, if she’s still angry, I guess I’ll just go back to the hotel and want to die.’ But then there you were, on the ferry. You came.” He leaned across the table. “What’s in the bag?”
I glanced down at its zippered top. “Things,” I said. “Things are in it.”
“Like overnight things?”
I met his gaze. Someone popped a balloon, and I flinched again. He didn’t.
“I don’t want to presume,” I said.
“You should presume.” He kept his eyes on mine. The waitress came over with our water glasses. I felt dizzy, everything in me humming. I didn’t trust myself to speak until she left.
“Well,” I said. “There’s also a present for you in my bag. If you’re interested.”
He said he was. I unzipped the bag, took out the little velveteen box, and slid it across the table.
“It’s not a ring,” I said, and tried to laugh, but I was nervous.
I’d gone to the Buy-and-Sell downtown, not just to stretch a dollar, but because it was hard to imagine Mr. or Mrs. Lifton ever setting foot in such a place, with its musty smell and shelves full of chipped plates and glasses, and just one tiny window above a framed sign that read A Ship Really Is Like a Woman—You Can’t Let a Good Paint Job Fool You!
But when the old man behind the counter asked who I was shopping for, I still got scared and said I wanted something for my cousin in the navy.
The man said, “Oh, I have something perfect,” and he reached into one of the cases and took out a silver bell the size of his thumbnail.
He showed me where Lucky Little Bell of San Michel was engraved on the side, and he said this was a reference to the legend of a shepherd boy who got lost from his sheep, and who was full of despair of ever getting home until he heard bells ringing.
The shepherd boy followed the ringing to a ravine, and there he saw San Michel, who we would call Saint Michael and who gave the shepherd boy a bell from around his neck, saying it would always lead him home.
Which it did. The man at the Buy-and-Sell said that during the war, because of the legend, people on the island of Capri, off the coast of Italy, started selling little bells as good luck charms to American pilots who came to Capri on leave before flying back into danger.
The man said good luck eventually brought them home, and that’s how, every now and then, one of these little bells ended up at his shop in Florida.
I knew he could have been making all this up, just to sell me a trinket.
But I’d decided to believe him. And it was wonderful, watching Leonard open the box, and seeing how pleased he was to lift the bell from the box by its chain.
He squinted to read the engraved words, and I told him the story the man told me.
If Leonard thought the story might be made up, he didn’t show it.
He said he liked it more than any gift he’d ever gotten.
“And clearly it works,” he said. “I mean, somebody brought this one back.”
I nodded, though I was sure he understood, as I did, that there might be plenty of lucky bells burned up or buried all over Europe.
He shook it by his ear. “It really rings.” He turned it over. “It’s got a little clapper in it.”
I sipped my water. “Where are they sending you?”
He brought up his knee so he could loop the bell to the shoelace of one of his high-tops. “I’ll switch it to my boots later,” he said.
“Leonard.” I felt the first flutter of worry. “Tell me where.”