The Honor Guard That Refused to Fold

It took Desmond four Saturday mornings out at my place, standing in the yard with a folded flag between us, before I would let him carry the head position at a real funeral. There is a right way and a wrong way to bring a flag off a casket, thirteen folds, tight enough that not a stripe shows crooked, corners squared until only the blue field of stars shows on the outside. Merle used to tell the young men we trained that each fold carried something of its own, the first for life, another for the hope of eternal life, another for the veteran departing our ranks and leaving behind a legacy of honor, and on through all thirteen until the last fold left only the stars showing, a reminder of this nation’s motto, in God we trust. Whether or not the Army itself ever printed that exact meaning in a manual, I believe every word of it, because I watched Merle mean it for thirty years with his own two hands, and because I watched Desmond’s hands shake through the first fold and steady by the thirteenth.

By the second Saturday I had stopped correcting his grip. By the fourth, I stood back and let him run the whole sequence alone while I called the count the way Merle used to call it for me, and when he finished, tight and square and right, he did not smile the way I expected. He just stood there holding it against his chest for a long moment, the way a man holds something he has decided he is responsible for now.