The Janitor Who Came to My Graduation

Most of what he remembered was gone. The old wooden barracks from the war years had been torn down a long time ago. He pointed at an empty stretch of ground near a newer brick building and said, “Right about there. I think. It smelled like floor wax and fear.”

“It still does,” I said.

He laughed, a real laugh, which I had heard maybe five times in four years.

We ate lunch at a restaurant on post. I ate a cheeseburger, onion rings, a chocolate shake and half of Ardith’s chicken strips. Mr. Varga watched me with the same look he used to have when he set a burrito on the cafeteria table.

“Ardith makes too many,” I said, pointing at her plate.

Ardith put her napkin to her eyes. “Don’t you start,” she said. “I’m wearing mascara for the first time since 2009.”

Late in the afternoon, Mr. Varga asked me what I was going to be.

“A medic,” I said. “I ship to Fort Sam Houston in Texas on Friday for my advanced training.”

He nodded slowly. He knew about my dad. Everybody in Hiawatha knew about my dad.

“Good,” he said. “That’s good, Maci. You’ll be the one who knows what to do.”

I had never told him that. I had never told anybody that. I had to look out the car window for a while.

The Third Thursday in March

Graduation day was cold and bright. The sun was out and the trees around the parade field were still bare, the kind of March morning in the Ozarks where you can see your breath but you have to squint.

We formed up early. My uniform was the Army green service uniform, pressed until it could have stood up by itself. My hair was in a bun so tight it gave me a headache. My beret was shaped and set exactly right, because Drill Sergeant Ellis had checked it twice.

I could not see the stands from formation. I did not need to. I knew where they were. Ardith had told me the night before: “Front row, left side, near the flag. Otis wants to see your company come by.”

The band played. The colors came out. When the national anthem started, I heard later that Mr. Varga stood and put his hand up in a salute, the way veterans are allowed to do now, even out of uniform. Ardith said he held it so long and so steady that the young father next to him stood a little straighter too.

Then we passed in review.

You march past the reviewing stand and the crowd, eyes right, and every family is screaming one name. I heard “Go Tyson!” and “That’s my baby!” and somebody blowing an air horn.

And I heard nothing from the left side near the flag, because the man there was not yelling.

I was not supposed to look. I looked anyway, for a quarter of a second, out of the corner of my eye.

Mr. Otis Varga, sixty-eight years old, with bad knees and a white crew cut and a little veteran’s pin on his navy jacket, was standing at attention. Heels together, chin up, arms straight at his sides, while my company went by.

He was not clapping. He was not waving. He was standing the way you stand for something that matters.

I kept my eyes where they belonged after that. It was the hardest thing I did in ten weeks.