“There was a war,” Martin eventually said. Very quietly.
“I know. I was there.”
“A different war.” Martin coughed a humorless laugh. “Or maybe they’re all the same. We lost… everything. Our home, our families.”
A year or two back, Walter’s brother John had told him to stop being so miserable. “I seen plenty of guys who were blown all to shit, but you came back in one piece, Wally. And me and Charlie, we came back okay too, so you didn’t lose anyone. Don’t be such a sad sack.” But what John hadn’t understood was that Walter had lost friends and lovers. He’d lost his youth, his innocence, his optimism. And when he returned to Chicago, although his parents and brothers were still alive and well, he’d lost them too.
“Your family?” Walter asked Martin.
The answer came on a sigh. “All gone.”
After discarding several dozen useless words and consolations, Walter squeezed Martin’s hand. Martin returned the gesture.
Eventually they collected their cast-off clothes and got dressed. They walked slowly back toward the road. Not hand in hand, but close together, shoulders sometimes brushing.
When the outskirts of the village came into view—a tidy yellow bungalow and its equally neat green neighbor—Martin stopped Walter with a gentle tug of his arm. “Do you like Kiteeshaa?”
“It seems too good to be true. Are you getting ready to tell me it’s all some kind of joke? Like that television program my mother watches. Candid Camera.”
“It’s no joke. When we first arrived… things were difficult. Nothing here was familiar. Your people are… very different from mine. But we found this place, and even as traumatized as we were, we could see its beauty.” Martin waved an arm to indicate the hills, the trees, the small growing things by the side of the road.
“It’s a nice place.”
“We worked hard to learn your ways. To blend in.” He shook his head ruefully. “We never will, not completely. But our children…. The older ones don’t remember our home, and the younger ones were born here. This is their home. We try to teach them some of our traditions, but they don’t want to learn. I suppose that’s for the best in the long run.”
Walter remembered his babcia saying something similar when Walter’s mother chided her for being old country. Babcia had been both bewildered by and proud of her American children and grandchildren. And now, if Walter wished he’d learned a little Polish from her or if he ached for some of the foods she used to make, well, it was too late for that. She was gone.
“You must miss everything so much,” Walter said.
“Sometimes. But I’ve come to cherish Kiteeshaa too. If I had to leave here, I’d miss it just as much.” He held a hand to his chest. “I think the people and things you used to love, they never leave your heart. But your heart can grow—it can let in the new.”
Walter’s heart had crumbled to sand and been washed away by bloodred waves.
They continued walking. A block from the motor court, they met an elderly man with wispy gray hair and a network of deep wrinkles on his face. “Hi, Burt,” Martin said.
The man nodded pleasantly at them both, but just before they passed one another, he stopped in his tracks, staring. Then his mouth stretched into a wide smile and he laughed.
Martin blushed a deep red and shot Walter a quick glance. “Burt, don’t….”
“I know. But good, Martin. I’m glad to see you.” Still grinning, Burt continued on his way.
Walter looked down at himself and then at Martin to see if there was visible evidence of their tryst. Nothing was obvious. Martin’s hair was a little wild, but it had been that way before. Besides, although Martin claimed that his people didn’t mind queers, surely they wouldn’t be so gleeful about it.
“What was that about?” Walter asked.
His face still red, Martin gave an unconvincing shrug. “I suppose he’s happy I’m showing you around.”
Although Walter didn’t believe that for a second, he didn’t argue.
When they reached the motor court parking lot, they paused near the office. “I have to take care of some things,” Martin said. “Do you mind?”
“Of course not.” Walter hadn’t expected to monopolize his time.
“Can I treat you to dinner next door?”
“I can pay.”
Martin set a hand on his shoulder. “You’re a guest, and that means I pay. It’s one of our customs. A good one to keep, I think.”
Walter was uneasy to have Martin touching him in public, where anyone might see. But he smiled. “All right, then. Dinner.”
“Six thirty.” And then Martin leaned in for a kiss.
Walter was so shocked that he froze. That didn’t deter Martin, who moved his lips from Walter’s mouth to his neck and then to his cheek. “Thank you,” Martin whispered. He walked to the office and went inside, but for several moments, Walter remained statue-like in the parking lot.
3
Walter wasn’t often faced with open blocks of time, and after recovering from his astonishment over Martin’s kiss, he wasn’t sure what to do with his afternoon. In Chicago, he’d filled empty time with booze, but he didn’t want that now. A shower, he finally decided. Maybe a nap. His adventure with Martin had proved more draining than he expected.
The first thing he saw when he walked into unit three was a bouquet of fresh flowers placed on the tiny dining table. Three yellow roses, a few fern fronds, and some sprigs of purple stuff he didn’t recognize, all in a milk-glass vase. They definitely hadn’t been there before, and he wondered whether Martin had left them. The flowers made him smile, but even better was the small stack next to the vase. Books. But not just any books: these were Armed Services Editions, the oddly shaped thin-paged paperbacks he and his comrades had so treasured during the war.
Walter walked closer for a better look. The top book was War of the Worlds. Beneath that, The Earth and High Heaven, and the final book was When Worlds Collide. Walter didn’t know if any of them were particularly to his taste, but that had hardly mattered before. When the crates of books had found his platoon, everyone had been thrilled for a way to pass the long, agonizing hours aboard transport or in gun pits. They’d all shared the little volumes, sometimes even ripping the books into two sections so more men could read at once.
When Walter touched the worn cover of the first book, a memory flooded him, the images as clear as if they were happening now. He was crouched among ruins with members of his platoon, all of them shivering in the late-winter cold. Overhead, planes buzzed, while antiaircraft shells whistled and burst nearby. Some of the men were smoking cigarettes, but Walter kept his hands in his coat pockets. Next to him sat LeMay, a fellow medic with a deep Southern drawl, reading a Steinbeck book aloud. Sometimes he had to nearly shout to be heard over the ack-acks’ fire, but nobody minded. As long as LeMay read, they weren’t miserable soldiers so far from home, but instead hard-drinking paisanos in Tortilla Flat.
LeMay was shot through the neck in a gutter somewhere in France as he crawled to a wounded comrade. Walter saw him die. The man he was trying to rescue died too.