Epilogue Harbor City, Los Angeles
Epilogue
Harbor City, Los Angeles
The harbor is usually dotted with freighters full of cargo, but lately transports have glided in and out, bringing home servicemen in olive-green uniforms from overseas.
If you’re there often, you get used to eager families waiting at the terminal, jumping up and down and calling their serviceman’s name.
On the weekends, the USO comes with brass bands and it’s an extraordinary affair.
Many servicemen disembark today. Most come off looking excited. Some are injured. A few have a perpetually startled look that you’ve learned from the newspapers is shell shock.
You might notice a boy with dark hair, but you won’t know that he has a deer relic in his suitcase and two small boxes in his pocket.
One box holds a medal. He never shows it off, but he knows his mother will.
She’s already been going around telling everyone that her son is a hero.
Hero is something he doesn’t know how he feels about, but it’s better than other things he’s been called in his past. The other box holds a ring.
Unlike the medal and the word hero, he knows exactly how he feels about the ring.
You’ll notice there’s a gravity to his face. He’s seen many horrific things while away, but his shoulders are straight, and his chin is lifted. He moves like a man who knows where he is going—which ends up being a bus stop.
It’s a few blocks up from the disembarkation port.
You’ll see a girl there, waiting on the bench.
She’s wearing a waitress’s uniform, and at her feet is a valise with a sketchbook and history books.
She looks tired in the way people get after a long shift, but her eyes brim with life and her hair is tied with a green ribbon.
You’ll be impressed, thinking about her working and going to school at the same time.
There’s a vitality to her, like a flower that’s been transplanted outside from a greenhouse, one that’s blossomed and grown despite the rain and wind.
The boy glimpses her. He breaks into a run and calls, “Violet!” She turns, shock filling her face.
She jumps up and runs to him and they meet halfway along the block.
Their affection is on display for the entire street, but if you’re there, you can tell they aren’t trying to be showy; they’re simply deeply, madly in love and finally together after a long time apart.
You can’t know this part, but they’ll go home.
The boy will see his mother and his niece.
Then he’ll take the girl somewhere special and give her the ring.
For now, though, they stand on the sidewalk, and you’ll watch fondly.
A strange, brisk wind whips around them.
It’s full of leaves, twigs, balled-up newspaper sheets, rubber bands, and a few cigarette butts.
Such is the debris of Los Angeles. You’ll think, Huh, that’s a lot of wind, and the preposterous thought of magic crosses your mind, but then you’ll think, No.
Still, you’ll smile as the boy and girl hold each other, watching as the wind tightens around them and then soars away, angling out to the sea just a few blocks away.
You might be tempted to think, “Ah, young love,” but you’ll also know that while the boy and girl are young, there is something not so guileless about their love.
You’ll sense that their love has risen out of a great darkness and that it is the only thing lighting their way forward.
And as you turn to leave, you’ll feel glad for having seen them.
Somehow, the way they look at each other makes you think that their world will never go dark again, because they are together, and you’ll think you hear a song humming through the air.
Even if you aren’t one for melodramatics, you can’t help but think the song is from the farthest reaches of the cosmos, yet also from the palm trees swaying like dancers in the breeze and the bands of sunlight forming shapes on the sidewalk, and you’ll know, deep down inside, that the song is about them.