Chapter Text
I couldn't’ believe Melchior didn’t show up. He was invited, I knew that. I even asked him to come with my own damn mouth. But he never showed.
I waited for him almost an hour after the funeral had ended, smoking cigarette after cigarette on the front steps. I had gotten through half a pack before Thea’s small hand touched my shoulder.
“Come on, Hansi. We should head out,” She whispered. Her eyes had spent the entire service looking at all the unfamiliar faces, as if on the defense. I felt a bit bad for making her come to a church full of strangers when she didn’t like crowds or church.
But I didn’t know anyone either.
I nod, flicking out my ashes and taking a final drag. “You want to go through the cemetery one last time?” She asked me. I avoid her eye and instead look at the neatly trimmed grass interrupted by grey stone.
The newest grave was in the back of the cemetery, near all the older, crumbling headstones. Fresh words, unchipped and smooth read ‘Ernst A. Robel’ in bold print, directly below ‘January 15 1948- December 2 1968. Medic for twenty-third infantry in Vietnam. Hero, Son, Friend’
I stared at it long enough the words had burnt into my brain. Part of me was glad that his mother had decided to bury him in New York, right next to the graves of his grandparents. I looked at their rough stone, the story of two Italian immigrants with dreams of a better life for their family. And the proof of that family being cut short right beside them.
Part of me wished he had been buried back at home. That was I wouldn’t feel the urge to come back here again and again.
“No. I’m fine.”
I have to stop staring at it.
Thea leads me to the car, helping me in with some struggle. But much less than she normally did. She was still panting when I asked her, “Hey, Thea? I really want to see a friend. Do you mind? He’s not too far.”
“How far?”
“He’s in Brooklyn.”
I know that she knows how to get there. But I don’t bring it up, I just give her the directions and keep pretending she’s oblivious. Now doesn’t feel like the time to talk about it.
It had been snowing for a few days before and the roads were slick with ice. Thea had never been the best drive, but she was sure to be extra cautious as we rode from Cypress Hills to the front stoop of a squat, brick apartment.
I asked her to park a block away, just in case he didn't want to see me. Maybe he ditched the funeral to avoid me. Or maybe he just forgot.
But I had forgotten that he had steps on his front stoop. As we double checked the address, I could hear Thea sigh.
“Thea, you don’t need to help me up. We can just head bak ho-”
“Shut up, let’s get you up.”
If I could have helped, I would. Thea breathed hard, just like she did when she helped me up the stairs to our apartment. But when she helped me to the apartment, she normally called up to my mother or father to help her up the steep staircase.
Now it was just her and a few stone steps. I leaned forward a big, attempting to help in what little way I could. Grunting, she struggled to push me up the first step. I was turning to her, telling her that is was no use and we should just go home when the door before us entered.
“Hanschen, Thea,” Wendla’s voice called from the doorway, light and content. “Do you want some help?
She looked tired, her hair up and bags under her eyes. I tried not to stare when I thanked her and sat as still as possible while she and Thea managed to force my chair up to the front door. “Come on in, guys,” She said, trying to hid the fact that she was panting. I didn’t blame her. She was a small girl, probably weighing no more than a hundred twenty pounds. I always thought she was so short when we were in school together, but now I was craning my neck to look up at her. But I had gotten used to the constant neck cramp. “You want something to drink? We haven’t packed up the lemonade yet.”
Wendla and Melchior had been ‘living in sin’, as my mother would call it, since Melchior got back. But Wendla’s winter break was soon coming to an end and his apartment was being packed up.
The living room and dining room had cardboard boxes lining the walls and covering the surfaces. As Thea rolled me through the small living space, my feet hit a few spare boxes left in the walkway, probably by Melchior. I only knew when I heard the dull thud and when Thea would squeak out “Oops, sorry,” To Wendla, following with two plastic cups of lemonade.
Melchior was in the back bedroom, remaining oblivious to my arrival until I knocked on the already open door. When he looked him, he wasn’t looking at me. He was looking past me, as if he were looking for something else.
“Oh, Hanschen,” He smiled after a hesitation. He stood up from where he had been sitting on the bare mattress, putting clothes into a cardboard box. “How have you been?”
I mutter out a ‘fine’ before he turned to look at Thea, smiling like the old him, “Hey there, Thea.”
“Hey, Melchior,” She looked between me and him, probably realizing we wanted to be alone. “Wendla, let me help you pack.”
The girls closed the door behind them, their voices catching up with one another and gossiping all the way back down the hall. I didn’t speak until they were out of earshot, “So you’re leaving?”
Melchior nodded, “Yeah. I’m heading down to Pennsylvania, Philadelphia to be specific. So Wendla can finish up her schooling and I can look for a job.”
“A job? You’re working?” I almost chuckled. He stared back at me with a plastered smile. “I wouldn’t expect you, of all people, to go job hunting.”
He just shrugged, sitting back on the edge of the mattress. “Well, I don’t want to either. But I’m doing what I have to.”
I wanted to comment on that’s what he did before and look how he ended up. But I don’t. I just nod. “You missed the funeral, you know.”
I took the elephant in the room and killed it dead. How could I when that was the only thing on my mind. He was surprised, but replied after a deep breath. “That was today?”
I nod again and wheel myself to the window. There were the bars that blocked every Brooklyn window, but I was able to crack it open. “Yeah, it was. You mind if I smoke?”
“Knock yourself out, Hans,” He took another breath. “Well, I was busy packing.”
“Huh, when do you two leave?” I lit the cigarette with the little silver zippo I kept in my pocket.
“Tomorrow. Mind if I pack?”
I shrug and take a drag, realizing that between the funeral and now I had smoked most of the other half of the pack. He went back to pulling clothes from the dresser drawer and putting them into the cardboard. There was something serene in the way he pulled and packed and pulled and packed. Very repetitive.
“Did you really forget?”
“About what?” He looks at me in a strange way for a moment or two then realized. “Oh, yeah, the funeral.”
I flicked my ashes onto the windowsill. I doubted he would notice before he left. “I mean. How do you forget something like that?”
He was silent for soem time. I had stopped watching him, but I could tell he wasn’t moving anymore. “I just didn’t want to go, Hans. I’m trying to forget about it all.”
“You know the war is still going on, Melchior. You can’t just forget about something that’s still happening.”
“Well I have,” He spat back faster than I could think. “I threw out my uniform, I sent back my medals-”
“You sent back your medals?”
Melchior looked at me with disdain. “What? I’m sorry Mister Purple Heart but-”
“I don’t look at it, but I didn’t send it back.”
He nods, as if I proved him right. I don’t want to say anything, but I probably did. “Listen. Ernst was a great guy. But I don’t want to be reminded that he died.”
“Why?”
I might have sounded too hostile, because Melchior met my tone in an angry voice, “Because I have to remember how he died.”
If I could stand, I would have. I would have stood and grabbed him by the throat, shouting at him that he didn’t have the right to not want to remember. He wasn’t there. He wasn’t the dumbass who he died trying to save. Maybe if he was the one Ernst bled out on top of, he would have the right to not want to remember.
I would give anything to remember. I wish I was awake to tell him I was alright and to go on, help someone else. Don’t waste your time on me, I can’t be fixed. Go somewhere else, avoid the bullet that would find its home in your abdomen.
But I can’t. So I nod, taking another drag. I let the smoke fill my lungs, like I’m trying to cook myself from the inside out. “So, have you told Moritz you’re leaving?”
“Yeah, we went out for a drink last night. Says he thinks he’s gonna head out to Chicago. Trying to get a factory job, but the shoulder still giving him hell,” He looked at me, all anger dissipating. “Looks like you’re the only one staying put.”
I shake my head and put of the cigarette on the window frame. He sees but doesn’t care. “I’m not staying put. I’m heading out to California after New Year.”
“Isn’t that gonna be hard?” He didn’t say it, but his eyes lingered on my wheels.
“Thea is gonna help me get out there. Then she’s going back up to school and I’m staying in Santa Barbara.”
“Where’s that?” He asked. I don’t think the kid had been anywhere else other than New York, Vietnam, and a few streets in San Francisco.
I cough as I roll myself back towards the door and towards him, “By the ocean. It’s a nice place, ground floor with a good view.”
He stands and walks towards the door. When he opens it, the voices of Thea and Wendla echo from down the hall, their giggles ringing through the empty home. “Why the ocean?”
“I always wanted to go,” I lie, approaching him slowly. “And if I can’t go to college, I might as well go there.”
I don’t mention Ernst. Or how I managed to send enough letters and make enough calls to find the apartments behind him in the picture, right across from his favorite cafe that I already decided would be my favorite as well.
Just thinking about it makes my wallet feel heavier in my pocket. Even though the picture was light, barely weighing anymore than the folded piece of binder paper Max drew cherubs on after a visit to the Met.
I had a hitlist in my pocket and a hole in my heart meant for artists.
“I’ll see you, Hanschen,” Melchior smiled at me after helping the girls get me down the steps. “Promise I’ll write.”
I nod at his lie, welcoming it warmly. “Alright, Melchior. Take care.”
Thea and Wendla waved goodbye, calling out that they’ll have to talk before we began the long walk back to the car. Thea was quiet for most of it, humming softly a song I didn’t recognize at first.
“Hey, is that Buffalo Springfield?”
The thought of her smile warmed me up the way that my layers of jackets couldn’t. “Yeah. It is. You got a good ear for this, you could be a musician, Hansi.”
“I think I’d rather be a writer,” I reply before sighing out along with Thea’s tune. “It's time we stop, hey, what's that sound, everybody look - what's going down…”
She was quick to pick up where I was, her walk along the sidewalk getting faster as she sang alone. “What a field day for the heat, a thousand people in the street…”
Our singing was quiet along the Brooklyn street, but anyone walking past could see our smiles and know.