The young faces stared out at him. They were so thin, so unmarked, in many cases so unformed, with eager eyes and knobby cheekbones, tan in the tropic sun. Each man clutched a vicious KA-BAR knife, or a Garand or a carbine or a BAR. They were revving themselves up for war, this young marine platoon somewhere in the Pacific, somewhere in World War II. Finally one face in the back row materialized and Bob knew it to be his father’s. It was thin too, but if you looked hard, you saw the pure animal confidence. His father wore the NCO’s weird combination of foreman’s savvy, father’s sternness, mother’s forgiveness, teacher’s wisdom, and coach’s toughness beautifully, and the picture somehow captured a professional at the apex of his game, with a crushed boonie cap pushed back on his head, his teeth white and strong as he smiled, his utility sleeves rolled up, showing strong forearms that seemed to be curled on what Bob thought was maybe (most of it was hidden behind a man in the row in front of him) a tommy gun.
He had no idea when the picture was taken. Maybe before Guadalcanal-no, not with M-1s and carbines-maybe before Tarawa, maybe before Saipan, maybe before Iwo. There was one other too, Bob couldn’t remember, but he knew his dad was one of the few marines who had hit five separate islands and lived to tell about it, though the wound on Tarawa from the Jap sniper would have killed a lesser man.
The photo, old and curled, was one of a few that remained testifying to the war adventures of Earl L. Swagger of Blue Eye, Arkansas, who entered the war a corporal and got out a first sergeant even if wounded seven times. It was a real hell-and-back story. Audie Ryan didn’t have anything on Earl. He fought hard, he almost died; somehow, like little Audie, he came back. He never became a movie star, but instead became a police officer and he got ten more years of life out of the deal.
But that was all. Bob was alone in the attic and it hadn’t been easy digging through this stuff, which had been hastily moved from a house in Ajo, Arizona, never categorized, never examined, just lumped together as junk from the past and shoved up here. The cardboard box-“Buster Brown. Size C7, Dark Brown Oxfords,” inscribed in his mother’s script “Daddy’s Things”-contained little else. The medals, even the big one, were nested together, the ribbons faded, the metal tarnished. Bob thought maybe he should have them polished and mounted, a display to the man’s courage. But his father would have been embarrassed at such show. There were police marksmanship medals, and yellowing newspaper clippings from the month of his death in 1955.
Well, I tried, Bob thought.
He thought of Mr. Yano’s card in his wallet.
Dear Mr. Yano, he imagined the note he’d write, I went through what remained of my father’s effects and found nothing that would help you in your quest. Maybe if-
And then yet another possibility occurred to him.
This here was the stuff his mother had gathered, after the funeral, before she launched into the land of drunkenness. But there was another three years when her sister, Agnes Bowman, a schoolteacher and spinster who had not yet found a man good enough, had come and stayed with them, and Aunt Agnes had raised him, sternly, not with love or tenderness, but out of a grim sense of family duty while Erla June drank herself to death and died before reaching the age of forty. Aunt Agnes was not a giving woman, which was all right. Aunt Agnes did the things that had to be done and didn’t have a lot of time for nursing boys like Bob, who in any case retreated into someplace dark for a few years after his father’s death, and so never made contact with her. Perhaps she was in her own dark place. That was okay; Aunt Agnes provided and guided and paid the bills and fed him; compared to that a squeeze or a hug wasn’t much of anything.
But then Bob gravitated toward Sam Vincent and his big, rambling, loud, smart, funny, competitive, welcoming family and eventually, through high school, lived with Sam, almost as a Vincent. Aunt Agnes saw no purpose therefore and moved away, sending a Christmas card every year.
Bob had visited her after his first tour in Vietnam in 1966 and as an adult discovered a decent, quiet woman, finally married to a widowed schoolteacher, living in Oranda, Virginia, in the Shenandoah Valley. It had been a nice visit, though not much had been said and damned if he could remember-
Goodwin!
Agnes Goodwin, her married name.
He didn’t know why, he hadn’t thought of it in years, but somehow it flew at him out of some lost file in his brain.
On Anywho.com he couldn’t even find an Oranda, nor on any map; he found an old map with the town located next to Strasburg, and identifying the town as Strasburg finally turned up a Goodwin. He made the blind call and located a cousin who knew other branches of the Goodwin family and guided him toward a Betty Frawley, of Roanoke, whose maiden name had been Goodwin and was that person’s uncle Mike Goodwin’s daughter.
“Ms. Frawley?”
“We don’t want none, if that’s what this is all about.”
“No, ma’am, it’s not. I am Bob Lee Swagger, a retired marine, calling from Crazy Horse, Idaho, on some family business. I am trying to locate my aunt, whose name was Agnes Bowman and who late in life married a Virginia man named Goodwin-”
“Aunt Agnes!”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Well, she was a good soul, bless her heart. She married Daddy after Mother died and although I would never be one to criticize Mother, I will tell you those may have been the best years of his life. And she nursed him through to the end.”
“She was good at that.”
“Her end followed shortly after, I’m sorry to say. You were a marine?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“In nineteen sixty-six, did you come and visit Agnes? I was eleven at the time and I have a very distinct memory of a tall, handsome young man who set all the hearts aflutter. He was just back from Vietnam, where he’d won some medals. He was Agnes’s nephew, I believe. Would that be you?”
“Yes, ma’am, though I’m far from handsome these days, if I ever was. I remember that day in Oranda well. It was the last time I saw her. She helped raise me after my father died and my mother-her sister-had some problems.”
“Families in those days pitched in. That’s the way it was. It’s not much like that anymore, but in those days, families helped out.”
“Ma’am, I’m just playing out a long shot here. My father died in nineteen fifty-five, and that’s when Aunt Agnes came and stayed with us, through ’fifty-eight or ’fifty-nine. As I say, it was then my mother’s decline began. Agnes ran the house for a time. I’m trying to gather up any mementos that might remain of my father. He was a marine too, and a law officer who died young. I thought that she might have had some effects, that you might have them, that something there might somehow relate to my father, something I missed or never knew about.”
“Sounds like a man trying to recover his father’s memory.”
“It may be that, ma’am.”
“Well, I think there’s a box somewhere. I’m not sure it made the move with me. It was all such old stuff, but I hated to just throw it out. It was somebody’s life, you just can’t throw it out.”
“Do you have it?”
“If I do, it’s in the basement and I’d have to look for it.”
“Ma’am, I’d be happy to come on out there and help you.”
“Well, I don’t have much to do these days, so I may as well go look for you. You leave me your address and we’ll see what we can find.”
And so, three weeks later, three weeks he’d spent alone on his property swinging that scythe every day, cutting down the brambles and thorns, a big envelope arrived from Roanoke, Virginia.
He opened it that night.
Oh, Christ.
First thing out was a picture of himself, his mother on a rare sober day, and stern Aunt Agnes, at a picnic table somewhere, ’57, ’58. He wore a Cardinals baseball cap, a T-shirt and jeans, and had scrawny arms and legs. “Bob Lee, Erla June, and Agnes, Little Rock, June 5, 1958,” the inscription read, in fading purple ink.
It brought back nothing, nothing at all.
Then came his mother’s death certificate, some yellowed insurance forms, her driver’s license, a bank book with NULL AND VOID stamped across it, a few Christmas cards from neighbors whose names meant nothing, Erla June’s obituary from the paper up in Fort Smith, a small gold crucifix with a pin that his mother had evidently worn, a few more photographs, mostly of strangers, a few more official forms and a few letters, most of them unopened.
There were eight in all. Evidently they’d arrived over the three years Agnes had lived with Bob and Erla June, some addressed to Mrs. Swagger, some to the Widow of Sgt. Swagger, some to Erla June by name.
He opened them, one by one. A former platoon member wanted to express his sadness and talk about the time Earl had saved his life on Guadalcanal. Then there was a schoolmate of Erla June’s, inquiring as to her health and welfare and expressing gratitude. There was a tax bill from Garland County and Bob realized he had finally paid it in 1984. The daughter of Col. William O. Darby, another Arkansas war hero, famous for having led “Darby’s Rangers” in Italy before he died in France, wrote to express her sorrow and offer moral and even financial support in case of family emergencies. Boy, Bob thought, talk about class.
Then, finally, an unopened letter, postmarked Kenilworth, Illinois, October 4, 1959, on creamy stationery with expensive lettering proclaiming the sender’s name and return address, John H. Culpepper, of 156 Sheridan Road.
Gently, he opened the heavy envelope, pulled out an equally heavy, creamy piece of stationery with Culpepper’s name and address tastefully emblazoned across the top.
Dear Mrs. Swagger:
I’m very sorry this letter is so late. I only learned by chance yesterday about your husband’s tragic death four years ago. I haven’t kept up with marines from the war. But I felt I had to express my sorrow at learning of the event. Earl Swagger was a very great man and helped me on my greatest day of need.
I was a young marine captain, and by default became commanding officer of Able Company, 2nd Battalion, 28th Marines during the battle of Iwo Jima. To say I was overmatched is to understate the situation considerably.
Things came to a head on D plus 2, as we called it, when it was my company’s turn to lead an assault on a particularly well-designed and well-defended Japanese emplacement. Left to my own devices, I would have gotten myself and more importantly my men slaughtered, because, quite frankly, I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. (I had used family connections to get myself a combat command, because I just had to fight.)
In any event, Earl, who was the battalion first sergeant, was sent down from headquarters to assist me. He certainly assisted me!
I’m sure you’ve read the citation. I’m proud to say I wrote it and worked hard to get it approved. I think it was my finest accomplishment in an otherwise-between you and me-completely mediocre military career. What he did that day was beyond question one of the great feats of arms in military history. From my vantage point on the slope beneath, he was literally Superman. How many Japanese shot at him we’ll never know, but he never showed a single moment’s hesitation and managed to single-handedly destroy the emplacement. He saved the lives of a hundred men that day!
Anyway, a few days later I was hit, thus ending my adventure in combat. Because I had not been a dynamic leader, I was not the focus of a lot of attention and I was feeling pretty blue on my cot in the hospital tent awaiting evacuation. Who should walk in but the legendary first sergeant himself. I’ll never forget that day! He was a god in that battalion, and here he was coming to visit me.
He said, “Well, Captain, I see you managed to get yourself banged up a bit.”
“Yes, First Sergeant,” I said, “I jumped this way and the Jap knew exactly which way that would be. I was lucky he was in a hurry.” (It was a leg wound.)
“Sir, I wanted you to have this. You were in command that day, you headed up the assault, I was just the fellow who was left standing. So it’s yours. Maybe it’ll cheer you up.”
He handed me something wrapped in cloth, about two feet long. I quickly opened it to discover a Japanese sword, what’s called a “banzai sword,” of the sort the Jap officers carried and all too often used in combat.
He said, “Your boys gave me that when I was heading back to Battalion after the fight. It came out of the blockhouse. Someone took it off the dead Jap officer just before they burned the place out with flamethrowers. That fellow tried to comb my hair with it. I thought you might want to have it.”
I should tell you that Japanese swords were prized war trophies, especially when taken in combat. I could have sold it, and indeed, over the next few weeks many officers tried to buy it off me, one offering $500. But it was one of my treasures.
The truth, however, is that it’s not mine. I didn’t earn it. Earl did, and it was given to me only out of his compassion for young men who’d done their best, even if the best wasn’t all that great, as in my case.
Now I think, What right do I have to have this sword? Please let me send it back to you. I understand Earl had a son. He should have it-though I should tell you, it’s very sharp and one of my own children has already cut himself with it. But it demonstrates what Earl did that day. Please let me know if you’d like me to send it on.
John H. Culpepper
Kenilworth, Ill.
Julie dropped him at the Boise airport, named for a hero of World War II, an aviator. He had a flight to Denver, then a longer one to Chicago, where he would arrive at another airport named for a World War II hero, also an aviator. He had reserved a car.
“I’ll be back tomorrow night,” he said. “Ten fifteen. Do you want me to take a cab home? I know you’ve got a rough day.”
“No, no, I’ll pick you up.” She was still the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen, still straw-blond with some gray in her hair and possibly in her eyes. She was a nurse and now administered a clinic in East Boise, a job she loved and gave herself to. The mother of his only child, she’d taken him in years ago and given him a chance at life when the whole world had seemed set on destroying him. But it was an old marriage by now, somewhat burnished, edging more to friendship and partnership than passion.
“Okay, I’ll-”
“Bob, this isn’t turning into one of your things?” She knew him so well it was a little frightening.
“Well, I don’t think so.”
“I know you. You’re really happiest out in the bush with Donnie Fenn, hunting other men and being hunted by other men.”
She knew Donnie Fenn well; she’d been married to him when he was KIA Vietnam while going to rescue his sniper team leader, who lay with a shattered hip. That team leader was Bob.
“I’m just trying to find a sword for this Japanese gentleman. He seemed like a very decent guy, I’d like to help him. That is all.”
“Yes, but I know your obsessions. You get something in your mind and it gets bigger and bigger and pretty soon you’ve talked yourself into Vietnam again.” It had happened a few times. “Sometimes you can’t help it. Someone comes for you and you must respond. No man on earth responds better or truer.”
“Sometimes I do okay.”
“But nobody is coming for you now. This is what I don’t understand. What you’re doing for this man, it’s very decent. But it’s so much. What’s going on? Why do you feel this obligation so intensely? Why is it so big to you? This isn’t some dry drunk thing, some excuse to go off on a crusade and get crazy?”
“No. It’s something I feel I owe my father. And the Japanese father.”
“Your father’s been dead since nineteen fifty-five. And his since nineteen forty-five. It’s all so long ago. How can an obligation remain to men dead half a century ago?”
“It don’t even make sense to me, honey. I have to do this one. I just do.”
“Just don’t find a way to go to war, all right? The good life is here. You’ve earned it. Enjoy it.”
“I’m too old for war,” he said. “I just want to drink and sleep and you won’t let me drink, so I guess I just want to sleep.”
“That’ll be the day,” she said.