The Friday I Drove Dad to Rolla

Ten Minutes

What happened next is the part I think about most.

Dad and Virgil sat side by side at that long table with the white paper on it, and neither one of them said a word.

Not hello, not how have you been, not how was the drive. Nothing.

Virgil had his hands folded on the table. Dad had his hands on his knees.

They were both looking straight ahead at nothing, at the wall, at the pictures, and every so often one of them would nod a little, like the other had said something.

Virgil’s grandson leaned over to me. “Is that normal?” he whispered.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve never seen it.”

I looked at the clock over the kitchen window. They sat like that for ten minutes.

I timed it without meaning to. Ten minutes is a long time to sit with somebody and say nothing. Try it sometime.

About halfway through, Virgil reached over and put his big spotted hand on Dad’s knee, just for a second, and patted it twice.

Dad put his hand on top of Virgil’s. Then they both took their hands back.

I had to go stand by the coffee pot and look at the bulletin board for a while. Virgil’s grandson came with me and read the same flyer about a fish fry three times.

When the ten minutes were up, Virgil said, “You look old, Gus.”

And Dad said, “You look older.”

And they both laughed until Virgil started coughing and his grandson had to bring him water. After that they did not stop talking for three hours.

Lyman

There was a third man from Dad’s squad, a man named Lyman, who was eighty-five and came in a wheelchair with his daughter pushing it. They got there about noon, right before the blessing.

Lyman could not stand. His daughter wheeled him over to the table and Dad and Virgil both stood up for him, which took them a while, and Lyman laughed at them and told them to sit down before they hurt themselves.

The three of them had been in the same squad for a year. They were the last three.

There had been twelve in that squad when they shipped over, and two of the twelve did not come home.

The post chaplain said the blessing before lunch. He was a retired man in a sweater vest, and he thanked God for the food and for the men in the room and for the ones who were not, and he read the names of the battalion members who had died since last October.

There were four names. Dad bowed his head for every one. Lyman’s daughter cried a little. When the chaplain said amen, every man in the room said it back.

Lunch was ham and scalloped potatoes and green beans and three kinds of pie, all of it made by the Legion auxiliary ladies, who would not let any of the men get up to get their own plates.

A woman about my age brought Dad a plate and called him honey.

I sat at the end of their table and ate and mostly listened. They talked about the bridge in 1968 and they each remembered it differently.

Virgil said it took five days. Dad said four. Lyman said they were both wrong and it was a week.

They talked about the cook from Georgia, and his pancakes, and Lyman said he had died in 2015 down in Georgia, and they all got quiet for a minute, and then Virgil told a story about that cook and a chicken that I will not repeat.

They talked about their wives. Virgil’s wife had a bad hip and could not ride four hours anymore, so she had sent a pecan pie with the grandson. Lyman’s wife had passed. Virgil asked Dad about Bonita.

“She’s fine,” Dad said. “She doesn’t care for long car rides.”

Virgil looked at me, just once, and then he looked back at Dad and said, “Well, I’m glad your boy does.”