So Long Ago and Far Away
About a million letters in the gold foil Schrafft Chocolates box. That’s what Sandra thought anyway, until she counted them. Only one hundred and forty-seven, all of them on thin V-mails except for seven regular letters on the stationery she’d given him after he left for Camp Payne. She re-tied them with a frayed pink hair ribbon, the one he said made her hair look like cotton candy, and laid them back in the box.
About a million men. That’s how many they said stormed the beaches at Normandy that day. Pete was just one of them. He wrote to her later about how the Channel was so rough that the nets they used to climb down into the landing craft were almost parallel with the water. “I thought I wasn’t going to make it into the boat, much less to the beach.”
He’d made it in and even off the beach and onto the road leading inland among the hedgerows. That’s when the real trouble started, he said. That’s when he said he knew he wasn’t going to make it home in one piece, and he was right. “It’s rough, Sandy,” he wrote. “I’m glad you’ll never know just how bad it really is. If I get home, don’t ask me to talk about it, because I won’t.”
Sandra opened the box again and put her hand on the letters. It had taken her three days to read them all again, but she wanted him to be fresh in her mind before she made this trip. He was as real to her now as he was the day he squeezed her one last time before making a dash for the train which was already beginning to move along the platform. As long as she lived, he’d never be older than he was that day---just twenty-two. She was seventeen.
“You’re in love with love and a uniform,” her mother said. “You’ll get over him.” She was wrong. Yvonne, her older sister said she’d wasted her life, but she was wrong, too. Two degrees and thirty years at the local junior college didn’t count as a waste. A lot of Petes sat in her classes. She watched them go off to other wars and wondered how many came back, though she never knew. She tried not to think about it. It was enough to know the lessons of history: Men fought wars. Men died. Nothing changed.
Leaning her head against the crisp white cloth on the headrest of the train seat, she closed her eyes and thought about the first time she ever saw Pete. He was living at the CCC camp just outside of town. A lanky cotton-headed boy, his fair skin sunburned from working outdoors. He winked and called her a cute kid when she sat down beside him at the soda fountain where Yvonne worked.
She could tell he was interested in Yvonne, and it was equally plain that Yvonne wasn’t interested in him. She had bigger fish to fry, like Milt, the captain of the high school football team that had just won the state championship. When Yvonne snubbed him, Pete turned his attention to Sandra, but in a brotherly sort of way. She was only twelve then.
He came into town every Saturday afternoon, always alone and with a willing ear to listen to her adolescent problems. He said he had a little sister of his own back home in west Texas. Yvonne tattled on her, and Mamma said it wasn’t a good idea for Sandra to sit in the back booth at Bramble’s Drug Store every Saturday afternoon with an older boy from that place out there, but she did it anyway. When the camp closed, she felt like she’d lost part of herself.
It was funny how things worked out, running into him again four years later on the same stool at the soda fountain when he came back for basic training at Camp Payne. “You’ve changed,” they both said at the same time and then laughed. He didn’t even ask about Yvonne who was married to Milt by then and had two kids.
She cajoled Mamma into asking him for Sunday dinner. He even showed up early and went to church with them, helped with the dishes, and then asked her mother if he could take her downtown to the movies. They went to see “Holiday Inn” with Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire and danced all the way to her front door afterwards. Mamma heard them laughing and came out to see what was going on. When they told her, she said they were being silly.
The next time they met at the drug store, he asked about her father. “He left when I was a baby. That’s why Mamma’s the way she is.”
He didn’t say he was sorry, just, “I wondered.” Then he told her about his parents and kid sister and scribbled their names and address on a napkin. “I’d like for you to meet them someday.” She still had the napkin, and she’d met his family eventually, but he wasn’t there.
The day he took the jewelry box out of his pocket, she knew what was coming. Not a proposal. They’d talked about that and agreed it wasn’t the right time. What he’d bought her at Clemmie’s was a locket, a heart that opened with places for their pictures. Then they went to Woolworth and spent a quarter in the little photography booth so she could cut out their faces for the locket.
Without opening her eyes, she touched the heart beneath her blouse and smiled. She’d worn it every day for the last forty-five years and left instructions with the funeral director that nobody should take it off. Yvonne or one of her know-it-all girls would try if someone didn’t watch them.
She felt he train stop and opened her eyes on the green French countryside. It wasn’t so beautiful when Pete saw it, but she’d enjoy it for both of them now. The porter, who’d been surprised at the fluent French of le americaine, appeared to help her with her luggage and explained that a car would be waiting to take her to the pension the travel agency assured her was within walking distance of what she wanted to see.
She found the information correct and the pension comfortable. After a night’s sleep, the best she’d had since she began the trip, and a substantial breakfast of hardboiled eggs, cheese, croissants, and strong coffee, she changed into her walking shoes and slipped into the all-weather coat the travel agent assured her she would need, even in June.
About a million graves, she thought as she paused to take in the white crosses and Stars of David spilling across the green, meticulously-kept grass. Well, maybe not a million, but too many. One too many anyway. From her purse she extracted the slip of paper with the exact location of the one she’d come to see.
All the graves faced west, toward the United States. It was as close to home as these soldiers would ever come. If they were to be reunited with their loved ones, it would have to be here. So now she was here. Not to say goodbye. Not to find the closure that seemed to be the buzz word today. None of that. She was here to keep a promise to herself.
By the time she stood by the grave marker, she could feel the strain of the long walk. Holding to the top of the cross, she lowered herself to the damp grass. “Well, Pete,” she said, glancing around to see if there was anyone close enough to overhear, “I came. I always said I would before I died.”
With the tip of one finger, she traced the letters of his name. “I’ve had a good life. I guess you know that. We’d have had a good life together, too, but things just didn’t work out that way. We talked about that, how things might not work out. But it’s still all right.”
Sandra shifted her thin legs into a more comfortable position. “I’ve always felt you were a presence in my life. Yvonne said I lived with a ghost, but you’re not a ghost.” She traced his name again. “I’m not staying for the anniversary ceremonies next week. I wouldn’t want to get all weepy over the music and the speeches. Besides, this is just between us.”
She looked around. A million men and the grief of the women left behind, a million shattered dreams. But not hers and Pete’s. She hadn’t let that happen. She put her lips against the cold stone. “Years ago I shed a million tears, Pete. I’ve told you a million times that I love you.”
It was harder getting up than getting down, but she managed, though her breathing came raggedly with the effort. “And I lived a million days just for this one.”