The Name I Read From the Bleachers

Lonnie started reading the names at 10:42 that morning, and I know the minute because I had just looked at the big clock over the scoreboard and thought Dad’s back would hold out fine.

Dad sat in the front row of folding chairs on the gym floor, the first chair on the left, the way he had every November for as long as the school had held the assembly. He wore his dark Army cap, a small pin on the side, and his tan windbreaker.

I sat up in the bleachers behind him, six rows up, in my navy wool coat, with the printed program folded in my hand.

I had not bothered to take the coat off. I never planned to stay past the names.

The program was a single sheet, folded in half, run off on the office copier that week.

The inside page listed every veteran the school had invited, oldest service first. Dad’s name was at the very top, all by itself under the word Korea.

Wendelin Eckart. United States Army. Below him came Vietnam, a long column, and then the Gulf, and then the younger boys from Iraq and Afghanistan, some of them barely older than the seniors in the color guard.

There were forty two names printed on that sheet. I know because I counted them on the way in, the way I count everything.

I coordinate bus routes for the school district. Counting is most of my job.

Lonnie Pruett stood at the podium on the little portable stage at the far end of the court.

He was sixty three, on the school board, and married to my older sister, Dolores. The principal had asked him to emcee because he had a good, steady voice.

He tapped the microphone twice. “Every year we stop and say these names out loud,” he said, “because a name is how we remember a person. When you hear yours, gentlemen and ladies, please raise your hand so these kids can see you.”

Down on the floor, Dad shifted in his chair. He knew what came first.

He had been first for nine years, ever since the last of his old friends from the Legion passed and left him the only man in town who served in Korea.

His right hand came up off his knee. Not all the way.

Just halfway, the elbow bent, the fingers open, the way an old man raises his hand when he wants to be ready but does not want to look too eager about it.

Lonnie looked down at his sheet and read the second name on the list.

A Vietnam man, a retired mail carrier who lived on Fourth Street. That man raised his hand, and the kids clapped politely.

I thought Lonnie had lost his place. I honestly did. Paper slips. Glasses fog.

I watched him for the little hitch, the moment where he would say, oh, excuse me, and go back to the top. He did not go back.