The Friday I Drove Dad to Rolla

The Picture

A little after one, a man from the Rolla post came around with a camera.

He was about seventy, in a Legion cap, and he said he did the newsletter for the reunion group and mailed it out to every man on the roster.

“I want to get the three of you,” he said, pointing at Dad and Virgil and Lyman. “Last ones from your squad, isn’t that right?”

“That’s right,” Virgil said.

So the post man had them line up in front of the flag in the corner, with Lyman in his wheelchair in the middle and Dad and Virgil standing on either side with a hand on his shoulders. Dad had his cap on, and Virgil had his.

The post man took three pictures. On the last one, Lyman said something under his breath and all three of them laughed, and that was the one, I found out later, that he used.

Then he took one more of Dad and Virgil alone, in the same spot, and asked them to shake hands for it.

They did. I stood behind the camera man and watched my dad smile like a much younger man.

At two o’clock the men started to break up. Some of them had a long way to go home. There was a lot of handshaking at the door and a lot of men saying, “Next year,” and a few saying, “If the Lord is willing.”

Virgil walked us out to the lot on his cane, with his grandson beside him.

The sun was lower now but still bright, and the flag was still going on the pole. Dad stopped by the truck and turned around.

“You’ll be here next year,” Virgil said. It was not a question.

“I’ll be here,” Dad said.

Virgil looked at me. “You’ll bring him?”

“I’ll bring him,” I said.

They shook hands one more time, and then Virgil did a thing I did not expect.

He put his arms around my dad and held him, two old men in windbreakers in a gravel lot, and patted his back three times, hard.

Then he let go and walked off toward his grandson’s truck without looking back, and Dad stood there watching him go until the truck turned out of the lot.