The Stranger Who Signed Only Private
“And you couldn’t.”
“I had my routes memorized by the third day. But the fella at the window would say, ‘Read it back, Private,’ just to test, and I’d stand there. I said I’d left my glasses. I said I had a bad eye. Two months on lies. And then I got the clerk.”
“Chester.”
“A skinny kid from Nebraska with a typewriter and a pencil behind his ear.” Ward smiled. “The first day he saw me stall at the window, he took the sheet out of my hand and read it out loud. Not to me. Just out loud, like he was thinking. ‘Route to Junction City, load eight pallets, sign on the line at the bottom.’ He put it down in front of me with his finger on the line and said, ‘Easy one, Private.'”
Ward looked at his hands.
“The next day, again. And the day after. Never said a word about it. Three weeks. Then one evening I walked past the orderly room, and he was in there alone with the lamp on, and my mother’s letters were on his desk.”
“Your mother’s letters?”
“She wrote every week. I never opened them. I had thirty in my footlocker, and I’d take them out and look at her handwriting and put them back. Somebody in the barracks told Chester. He told the first sergeant he’d see to the unclaimed mail. There wasn’t any unclaimed mail. He just wanted to give me a way to say it without asking.”
He stopped. I waited.
“He said, ‘You want me to read these to you, Private? You don’t have to say yes.’ And I stood in that door with the light coming off the lamp, and I said, ‘I can’t read, Specialist.’ First time I ever said it to a living soul. I was nineteen years old.”
“And your husband said, ‘I know. I’ve known since the first week.’ Then he said, ‘I’m in here till nine every night anyhow. I’ve got no place to be.’ And he pulled out a chair.”
It took them thirteen months.
Six nights a week, under the green lamp, Chester sat with him. He used no primer. He used the letters, Ward’s mother’s letters, starting with the oldest in the stack. Chester would read a line out loud with his finger under the words, and Ward would say it back, and then Chester would cover the words and make him find them again.
“That’s how I learned. By my mother’s own hand. I’d sound out a word, and get to the end of it, and realize she was saying, I hope you are eating. And I’d have to stop. And Chester would look out the window so I could have it to myself.”
Ward took a drink of coffee and set the cup down very carefully.
“The first full page I read alone, it was November, sleeting outside. Took me forty minutes. It was about a hen gone broody and a neighbor’s barn roof. Nothing in it. I read the whole thing out loud to the room, and I looked up, and Chester was in the doorway with his coat on. He’d been there I don’t know how long. He said, ‘That’s it, Ward. You’ve got it.’ First time he ever called me by my name.”
“What did he call you before?”