This story is in two parts.
Thanks very much, as always, to Techsan for his quick and accurate editing! And thanks to Lady Cibelle for her special assistance!
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SAD GOODBYES
"Death, that dark spirit."
Shakespeare Coriolanus II,I,166
The rain was misty; a cold dampness that seeped into the bones – a cold enervating of both body and spirit. The gray light that seeped through the early morning overcast lay as a pall on my heart, dark already with a black despair.
A movement captured in a quick glance caught the pallbearers sliding the coffin out of the hearse. The image triggered a traitorous idle thought: what a strange word pallbearer was. A pall is a heavy cloth of black, purple or white velvet spread over a coffin, a hearse, or a tomb. Hence a pallbearer is a person carrying that pall-clad hearse. And the carriers are called pallbearers even in the absence of a pall.
Telling myself to get a grip I tried to focus on the seemingly mechanized rite taking place around me. What was in that box was not my Missy, my wife for over thirty years. Missy was free and light and beautiful... her hair was long and the color of faded straw. Her eyes were a dark, deep blue but when a strong emotion ruled her they turned a mysterious shade of purple, the color of her beloved Columbine flowers of the mountain meadows. And she was dead! Breast cancer in the end had dominated that wild spirit I had always felt was indomitable. It was a sad end to a life lived well.
I married Missy early. She was barely seventeen and I was just back from the war in the Pacific and feeling old at twenty-one. At that time in the valley along the Rogue River in Oregon marrying at that age was usual and expected for a girl. We were from neighboring ranches northeast of Medford, around Butte Falls. Everyone, especially Missy and I, knew we would marry. I'd sent a telegram from the out processing center at Camp Stoneman, about forty miles east of San Francisco in Pittsburg.
The day after I got back Missy and I were married at the small, one room school at the crossroads. I had mustering out pay so we went to Portland for our honeymoon. It was the first time my bride had been out of Jackson County. We were both only children so we wound up combining the ranches and running them as one.
It was a good life but there were too many sad times. We had two kids, Crystal and Bobbie, both active and healthy and both smart as a whip.
Crystal married when she was twenty and a year later had twin girls. Six months after they were born, the brakes on her truck failed going down a steep grade and she and the twins went over a cliff. We were devastated; she was such a bright sunny girl and the twins had grabbed our hearts with an iron grip!
Bobbie had gone to West Point – I guess I should have said I got the medal on Guadalcanal. That beautiful medal, the star with the wreath hanging from the blue ribbon; that Medal of Honor made Bobbie a member of that long gray line. But earning that piece of metal and ribbon left a dark smudge in my soul that never totally went away.
Bobbie was lost to a mortar during the siege of Khe Sanh. We buried him on the little cemetery on the hill behind the house but I knew what a mortar could do and wasn't really sure if there was anything of Bobbie in that box we were putting in the ground.
Our hearts weren't in the ranch anymore so we left it to the folks and moved to Hood River. It was a small town on the Columbia River, about fifty miles east of Portland. Our life was focused on each other then and it was a beautiful life. Losing the kids had bought us closer and our love grew deeper over the years.
A few years ago my old company commander had asked me to consult on a script for a movie on the island campaigns in the Pacific. He was hired as a technical consultant. It turned into a popular movie and then a publishing company asked me to write a non-fiction book of my experiences. That was successful enough I started writing war novels. I enjoyed doing the research and the writing proved to be a catharsis for some of the crap I had been holding on to without even realizing it. I wasn't making a lot of money but it was steady and it was enough.
I used my real name for my stories, Dave Chance. I wanted any of my buddies that might read one of my books to know who it was that wrote it. I even put a note on my short bio for readers to send a letter to the publisher if they remembered me. It was pretty neat, I'd re-established connections with a lot of the guys and they sent me their stories, some of which I used (with attribution).
And then came the cancer; death slowly creeping under the door. It was strange; I was hit a lot harder than Missy was. I think she had this sense of being with our kids again. She seemed more worried about me than about herself. We'd talked about radical surgery but Missy wouldn't agree to it. I understood how she felt so I didn't push her. I guess I knew she had never really recovered from burying both of the kids, though she hid it well. Truth be told I think she wanted to be with the kids again and wait for me to join them.
As she became able to do less and less it was clear that we needed some help; someone to help take care of her and to keep up with the house. Missy had come to be very good friends with our neighbor, Pearl. She was a kindly older woman who had outlived her husband and was lonely. Missy was so kind that she visited with her a lot over the years.
When Missy told her that she wanted to find someone, Pearl had the answer. Her granddaughter in Bend was pregnant. She was four months along now and needed a place to stay until the child was born. Missy asked the circumstances but all Pearl would say was the father was dead and they weren't married.
I was skeptical but Missy was adamant to give the girl, Ada Chandler, a chance. So we did. I have to admit it worked out really well. She was like a pixie, barely five foot tall. She was slender with very short hair. I'd guess she would be around 95 pounds... if I threw her in the Columbia and let her soak for a while.
She was just showing the baby and was due about the same time Missy's doctor expected her to die. I gave Ada credit; she was a fireball! She kept the house spotless, took care of Missy and was a great cook. She was easy to get along with. She was very friendly to everyone but she had this aura of childlike innocence that was both endearing and worrisome. I suspected that was how she became pregnant but that was one thing she wouldn't talk about. Sometimes she did seem a little nervous when we were alone together.
Once, she had fixed spaghetti for dinner and without thinking I poured us both a glass of a nice Chianti I had. She came in from the kitchen and saw the glass of wine and just froze. After a minute she ran to her room and was very standoffish for a couple of days. At first I felt stupid for offering wine to a pregnant woman but finally decided it was something more complex than that.
As Missy got worse she finally had to agree to some painkillers – she fought taking them for the longest time. She didn't like the idea of taking drugs. So as time went on she would sleep more and more and I got to know Ada a lot better. Remember, as a writer I was working at home!
She was fun to talk to and was intensely interested in my writing. I was amazed – she read all my books in a couple months. By then she was around seven months but she had the most amazing body. I swear she didn't gain an ounce except for the baby and its complex support system. She was like a short pixie that had swallowed a bowling ball! She laughed at herself so we laughed with her.
A couple of weeks later, Missy had me sit on the bed for the
talk
.
"Honey, I'm worried about Ada. I've grown to love her and I want to make sure she is okay. Will you promise me to let her stay here for a while, at least until the baby is a year old or so and Ada gets on her feet. I know this is an imposition but could you do this for me?"
