The Ten Thousand

EPILOGUE

Neither Nancy Kozak nor her family were ready to deal with each other when she came back to her childhood home west of Lawrence, Kansas, on leave. Though everyone was anxious to see her, they were put off by the cold aloofness with which she held herself. Even when her mother hugged Nancy, whom she still called her baby, she felt no emotion, no warmth in her daughter. Everything about her homecoming was uncomfortable for all involved.

It was only when they went to visit Nancy's grandfather that she finally found someone with whom she could talk, someone that understood. After a quiet dinner, which everyone but Nancy and her Grandfather George enjoyed, the bulk of the family returned to the living room, leaving Nancy and George Kozak to go to his den. For Nancy, this was home, a room filled with books representing knowledge, adventure, and wisdom.

She had always had a special affinity for her Grandfather George, a man who had dedicated his life to study and teaching after he returned home from Europe in 1945. Earning his master's, then his doctorate in history, Grandfather George had spent the rest of his life in an effort to understand what had driven a handful of ambitious men to wage a war that had denied him his youth and his friends their lives. That there wasn't an answer, a really good one, took years to accept. Yet whenever he had been ready to accept this as true, deep in his soul a voice told him he could not dismiss the savagery of war as mindless, random, and meaningless. So he studied and read more, keeping more and more to himself. Only Nancy, of all the many grandchildren that he could claim, had found a way into the heart of a man who had allowed his spirit to die a little each time a friend had fallen from the line of march that led from Normandy in France to the streets of Regensburg, Germany.

In the quietness of the den, neither spoke for the longest time. Grandfather George busied himself in the little open-hearth fireplace until the fire was going. Satisfied with his efforts, Grandfather George settled in a chair next to the one that Nancy sat in. With the stacked logs engulfed in flame, they both sat and watched in silence, each recalling names and faces that were burned into their minds forever. Finally Nancy looked over to Grandfather George. "They never go away, do they?"

He answered without looking at her. Instead he stared into the fire as he spoke. "The memories? No. They will always be there."

In the silence that followed, Nancy wanted to ask Grandfather George how he had dealt with the burden. Turning away from the warm fire, she looked about the room, as if that would provide the answer. As she slowly looked at the rows and rows of books standing silently waiting for the grandfather, Nancy Kozak began to realize that his many hours in quiet reading and meditation in this room had been his refuge, his place to go where he could find the strength and wisdom necessary to put his memories in their proper perspective and carry on a useful life. That he had allowed Nancy when she was a child to enter this private world was something she had never understood the full significance of. That he had seen in her the future, a future that could be free of the horrors of war that still tortured his mind, was never appreciated by anyone but him.

Now as Nancy began the long and arduous task of healing herself, her Grandfather George sat with her in silence, saddened by the fact that his hopes for her had come to naught. At least if I can't protect her from this terrible burden, I can be here to help her with it.

And so they sat there in silence. Perhaps her children would escape. Perhaps when she is my age, she will have children free from the sins of their parents. Perhaps.