OCR Text |
Show 27-9 I knew I couldn't tell him all I was feeling. I also knew that I didn't need to. The day together, all our days together through the hot summer and into the rain of fall were enough. He dropped me at my house and took the motorcycle back to the hospital alone. I changed into my dress for the concert and went back to the hospital with my mother. Father was already there. Mother said he thought the men might need him there all day. This time, Mother was to play inside. The tables in the dining room had been pushed aside and the men in chairs, on benches and a few on beds were grouped around the piano which stood at the end of the room. The men were all in place when we arrived. Father and Andrew stood just outside the door, waiting to take us in. Andrew stood in his uniform, straight, tall, as handsome as he would ever be again. I took his arm and he led me in behind Mother and Father. He sat beside me, Father next to me and we listened together as Mother played. As I listened, I thought about the day we had just spent. And I remembered when we had stopped on the road outside of town and had walked down to a stream for a drink. As we came back to the motorcycle he had suddenly turned to me. "Annie," he said, "you'll always be my friend." He looked down at me and then at the sky beyond. I nodded, but somehow I sensed that even though I would always be his dear friend I would grow older and would pass beyond him while he would be trapped forever in that moment of pain and terror when the mustard gas came creeping across the ground to tear away his face. And I knew that he would spend his days, however much I did not want it, all alone. As I looked up at his now beloved face I realized that his lonely life would be the best monument of all to the war. And I took his hand. |