The Seat I Saved Every Saturday

In the middle of February, a story came on the news that I will not describe. It was about the part of the world where he was, and it was bad, and it did not mention his unit, but it did not mention anybody’s unit, and that was the trouble. All we knew was that it was near him.

Then the phone stopped.

When something like that happens, the Guard shuts down the phones and internet for the soldiers, so that the families will hear from the Army first and not from some boy’s text message. It is a kindness, and everyone told us so. I had also been told it could last two weeks.

It lasted nine days.

On the seventh day, a Saturday, I got up at ten as usual and sat at the kitchen table with my coffee. I did not turn on the television. I just sat. At a quarter to twelve, Arlene came in and stood in front of me with her arms crossed.

“Go,” she said.

“Go where?”

“You know where.”

“There’s no game, Arlene. It’s February.”

“I know that,” she said. “Go sit in the seat.”

I drove out to the field. Nobody was there. It was twenty degrees, with a thin wind off the creek, and there was snow on the benches.

I climbed to row seven. I did not have the coat, because I had left it home after the last game, in the hall closet where it hung with the others, and I did not go back for it. I took off my glove and swept the snow off the aisle seat with my bare hand, and I sat down in the cold.

I sat there for about forty minutes, and I will tell you what I did. I told him the score. There was no game, but I told him anyway, out loud, to the empty field. I told him who had played tight end that season and who was going to be a senior next year. I told him the Brills’ baby had taken his first steps in the diner. I told him his mother was making a pie.

When I ran out of things to say, I sat for a while longer.

On the ninth day, his voice came on the phone at five in the morning. “Sorry, Dad. Sorry. I’m fine. We’re fine. They just locked down the lines.” He said it three times, fast. I was sitting on the kitchen floor by then, for no reason I can explain. I had slid down the cabinet door somewhere in the middle of hello.

I told him I was fine too.