Chapter 12
“Ready! Aim! Fire!”
It was a perfect day. Marshmallow clouds climbed into astartling azure sky, and a breeze skimmed the rolling hills.Summer had come to Virginia, and the trees were heavy andsomnolent.
Claire stood between her children with a view to endless rows of white headstones that marked the green earth withsuch crushing finality. Another funeral was being conducted here at Arlington National Cemetery, another circle of uniforms and black dresses and the sharp report of riflesover a flag-draped coffin.
“Ready! Aim! Fire!”
The honor guard stood at perfect attention, their uniforms gleaming whiter than the headstones behind them, their rifles pointed skyward, their eyes blank and staring.The seven rifles cracked a second time. Claire flinched as if they’d been aimed at her.
“Ready! Aim! Fire!”
Crows cackled in alarm and wheeled into the sky as thelast volley echoed through the grass like frail thunder.
“Shoulder arms!”
The rifles were shouldered, and the guard turned in onesharp movement. Silence hung over the assembled crowd forthe space of a heartbeat as the bugler lifted his gleaming instrument to his lips.
Claire froze. She couldn’t bear this. She couldn’t listen.She couldn’t stay here and watch this happen all over again.
She couldn’t listen to “Taps” again as long as she lived.
It was a tune that defined her life. The anthem of hergeneration. She remembered it first at John F. Kennedy’s funeral, at this very cemetery, the pure notes cracking onthat frigid November morning. She’d heard it again andagain as the boys came home in their metal caskets to be laidout under those anonymous white stones to be forgotten.
It was a sound she never again wanted to hear. Plaintive.Lonely. Echoing through the verdant hills like the cry of amother who saw her son being lowered into the ground.
She couldn’t stand here.
She did.
All around her, heads lifted. Eyes misted. The notessoared into the sky, pure pain on the breeze, and Claire lostthe battle to hold in her tears. They spilled down her cheeks and onto her best, brightest dress. They welled up so thicklyin her she thought she’d choke on them.
She remembered the body bags they’d filled at gravesregistration with such cold dispatch, the metal boxes stackedat Tan Son Nhut waiting for the planes home, the sealedbronze caskets that hid away what she’d seen on her gurneys thousands of miles away.
Pete’s mother stood like a statue. His grandparents wrungtheir hands. The military men saluted in solemn tribute, asprecisely positioned as those headstones that would eventually name them. Claire held her children’s hands as ifholding them back, holding them to her where they could besafe and she could survive. She stood as rigidly as the captains and lieutenants and chief petty officers. She wanted tocry out, just like that bugle.
Tony never said a word. He simply stepped up behind her.He laid a hand on her shoulder to let her know he heard it, too. Old echoes in this bright sun. Names long since lost on the lists who had had “Taps” played for them. Tony knew.He shared that with her in silence and forced the pain intoa different, sharper shape.
Claire watched the honor guard fold the flag in theirwhite-gloved hands and hand it to Pete’s mother. Claire hada flag just like it, bestowed in less auspicious circumstances. Sam had earned his flag. He simply hadn’t died of his wounds for fifteen years.
With a final murmur of sympathy, the mourners began tomigrate. Television crews, come to report the first batch ofNorth African funerals, swiveled for final shots and began to pack up equipment. The funeral was officially over.
A handsome younger man stood by Pauline Winston’sshoulder as she accepted condolences, which meant she hadsomeone new to entertain. She never noticed that Pete lefther side. Claire did. She watched him skirt the edge of the casket in his too-big black suit, stumbling a little over theuneven ground. She knew where he was headed, and when he reached there, she had her arms open to hold him. Andwhen he finally wept for his father, he did it in Claire’s arms.
And Claire, who folded him into her mother’s embraceand let him cry, could only think how awful she was, because all she could think of was that maybe now Johnnywould change his mind.
“Why couldn’t we go see The Wall?” Jess asked later asthey gathered in the kitchen, the sky outside a wash of peacock and crimson as the sun set over the hills. “We wereright there, and you keep saying you’re going to take us.”
“Today was for Pete,” Claire said, just as she had the firsttwo times the girl had asked. “Not for sight-seeing.”
“But that’s not sight-seeing, Mom,” Jess protested, herface still blotchy from her own tears, her movements jerkywith agitation. “It’s important. It’s the peopleyouknew.”
“I didn’t know anybody on The Wall,” Claire answered quickly enough.
“But there’s the new women’s statue there,” Jess protested. “The one with the nurses on it. Don’t you want to seeit?”
“Another day,” Claire said. “We’ll all go together, allright?”
