“Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch….” Aretha Franklin’s voice was chilling--even through car speakers--but Mary only heard one word. Saved? she thought. How? John wasn’t saved! Or the baby. “...But now am found, was blind but now I see,” crooned the Lady of Soul.
Mary tapped her hand against the steering wheel and bit her lower lip. “…And grace my fears relieved….” Driving slowly along Skyline Road around the winding curves to the airport, she hardly noticed the abundant foliage in fiery autumn hues. Too much chaos. Overwhelming sorrow. And never-ending unanswerable questions. Did John suffer? Why did he need to be a hero? What if he’d been home? Would I still have miscarried? She touched her stomach. Why, God, why? Her swollen, tired eyes burned with impatience to see her parents. She longed for their comfort to ease the emptiness consuming her and stifle the resounding quiet in the walls of her womb.
Suddenly, a large, red, pear-shaped spot appeared, falling downward through the sky as though the heavens, sharing her grief, had shed a tear of blood. It dropped before her. “Through many dangers, toils, and snares….” Rounding the next bend, she braked at the sight of a red parachute sprawled across the road. An ordinary, regular-featured, average-sized man in his early twenties or so (any mother’s son) was hunched over, deftly gathering and folding the chute. She watched and waited, tapping her fingers intermittently on the top of the dash. “When we’ve been there ten thousand years….”
A few minutes later, with the parachute in a neat bundle under his arm, the man walked around to the passenger side window and knocked.
“Hey, I was ‘spose to land closer to the airport,” he called. “Can you give me a lift?”
She wanted to drive off. She didn’t know him or want any company. And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity. The Bible verse invaded her thoughts from years of Christian doctrine well-taught, well-learned.
Dutifully, she pushed buttons to lower the window and unlock the door. “Sure. It’s not very far.”
“Great!” He climbed in and threw his gear into the back seat.
“I’m Mary,” she said, turning off the radio and reasoning that conversation might be a healthy distraction after all.
“Original name.”
“True,” she responded faintly, “but I like being named after the blessed Virgin Mother.”
“Virgin Mother!” he chided. “A babe in my old neighborhood tried that line. Immaculate conception—yeah, right.”
She paused, wondering what to make of his remark. “It’s not every day a parachute lands in my path.”
“Everything happens every day, lady.”
“Thank God, I didn’t hit you.”
“That’d be a headline, wouldn’t it? ‘Paratrooper Returns from Nam and Gets Run Over by Virgin Mother.’” He laughed.
“You were in Vietnam?” Her lip trembled as she recalled the last time she saw her husband alive. It was just a few months earlier.
She had reserved their favorite corner table at Renaldo’s, a quaint romantic Italian restaurant, where she planned to surprise him over dessert and coffee with the news that she was pregnant, but even before the appetizer breadsticks arrived, she began babbling about birthing, the Bradley method, and being an older mother. He almost leaped over the table to grab her waist and kiss her cheeks, first one, then the other. Flushed and jubilant, he waved to the bartender. “Wine for everyone! I’m going to be a father!” A chorus of cheers arose from the crowd as the bartender, wait staff, and customers toasted to their happiness.
Although he was scheduled to fly out the next morning, he promised to try to get leave for the birth and suggested, after the war, he’d get a civilian job and quit the military.
They talked long into the night, planning her hospitalization, the nursery, and the baby’s baptism. He sang a lullaby to her stomach.
The hitchhiker’s laughter jolted her back to the present.
“Um-m-m…. My husband told me about the 173rd Airborne,” she said. “Was that your division?”
The man simply peered out the side window. He eyed a deer fleeing through the woods and licked his lips, listening and hoping for the explosive pop of a hunter’s gun. She continued, “It must be quite an honor to….”
“Honor? Did your old man tell ya about the kids they sent to our units wired with explosives, or the broads who seduced our soldiers so they could be shot while messin’ around? Some kind of killed in action, huh? There’s no honor over there.”
“Are we any different? When God created…,” she began.
“Oh, please. Don’t give me Bible crap. It’s all talk, the gretest con job on Earth.” He spoke with agitation while his dark eyes darted around the car. He slapped at the rosary hanging from the rearview mirror, its luminous beads jingling against the windshield.
Clearly, it wouldn’t do any good to quote scripture. Besides, she was tired. Sometimes, she knew, you must embrace yourself before trying to touch another soul. “At least it’s all behind you now,” she stated kindly. “You’re home.”
“Home? No, lady, I can’t go home. None of us can. We’re stuck in those rice paddies—not goin’ nowhere. You think there’s a God? Then they’re God’s vomit.” He chuckled, softly at first, but soon his whole body, even his eyelids, began to quiver until his snickering erupted shrilly, unnaturally, in a frisson of excitement. “Yeah, those paddies are nothin’ but one big pile of stinkin’ puke!”
She became silent, beaten down by his intensity. Her thoughts returned to her parents. Their flight would be landing soon.
“You can pull over on that old access road,” he snarled. “I have a friend waitin’ to pick me up.”
She stopped, relieved to let him out and continue to the airport alone. He opened the door. A rush of crisp air made her shudder. Unexpectedly, he turned and faced her with
expressionless snake eyes. Then he fingered his shirt pocket and pulled out a lock-blade knife. She felt its cold steel against her breastbone.
“Lady,” he advised, “you shouldn’t pick up hitchhikers.”
She heard trumpets, or was it the breath of angels? The sound doubled and redoubled in euphonious crescendo. Seven angels descended wearing white. The first six drove chariots, their speckled horses kicking up small clouds of frankincense. They separated, three per side, while the seventh, a baby boy seated on a white pony in a saddle of stars, rode in the middle. A small rainbow formed a halo above his head. Holding a red rosebud in each hand, he extended one toward her, and she reached for him with perfect joy, her face shining like a dew-covered flower in the evening sun.
I have to get rid of this knife, he thought. Maybe I can ditch it in the woods somewhere. He kicked the car door open completely; then, startled by a long, low sigh, he turned around. It seemed strange the way her arms were propped against the steering wheel outstretched. Yet it was her face—her face—which moved him to stillness. Her head tipped back against the headrest, her face looking upward. He took a deep audible breath and stared. Despite the twilight shadows, her face radiated blissful peace. The gentle smile on her lips and her steadfast gaze expressed a glorious testimonial of maternal love.
He recognized that look. He saw it on his mother’s face long before Vietnam, before his parents’ divorce, and before the stepfather whose oversized belt buckle, shaped like a cross, loomed large in his mind. He recalled the daily beatings he endured. The man’s gnarled hands. The antagonistic smells of whiskey and cologne. The snap and sting of the leather belt against his back and legs.
A warm memory coiled around him like a python squeezing its prey before devouring it. He was five then, and it was his mother’s birthday. He ran outside and picked all the dandelions he could hold. With great anticipation, he sniffed the flowers several times, but he quickly became disappointed; they didn’t seem to have enough fragrance, so he slipped through the front door, detoured to the bathroom, and sprayed them with a blast of Balsam Fir air freshener. Then, clutching the bouquet tightly in both sticky, yellow, pine scented hands, he swaggered into the kitchen and proudly presented the golden gift while his mother washed dishes. “Happy birthday, Mommy!” Smiling and giggling, she took the flowers, and very carefully, ensuring none would break, placed each one in a special heirloom goblet-shaped white stone vase. Intently, he watched her dainty fingers smooth the delicate petals and leaves. “These are the most beautiful dandelions God ever made, Raphael,” she told him as she patted down his windblown hair and kissed him lovingly on the forehead.
Faces fired in his mind and bombarded his memories. His mother. His father. The Chinks. Scared and brave soldiers. Anguished grimaces. Innocent smiles of babies with bombs. Angry eyes. Twitching mouths. Desperate eyes. Bloodied mouths. Faces of death. Empty faces. Nowhere eyes. Not Chinks. Not Americans. Just people. All people.
He lowered his head, hugged his knees, and rocked his body back and forth--slowly at first, then faster and faster. Faster. Falling out of the car and crashing into the dirt, he screamed frantically, “Oh, God!”
He wept, bathing his soul with tears of remorse.