“No Soldier’s Own Heaven”

A short story by Kent Ha (10).

From the roadside forest’s greenery and verdant field, early summer’s sweet aroma drifted on a gentle breeze, ruffling the little boy’s hair and gracing him with the scent of blooming flowers. Young James clutched his father’s hand as the family made their way down the dusty path, overgrown further the more they approached the homely farmstead. All sleepiness from their long journey by train and ship had been forgotten; James bounced with excitement, never having been to the States before. Where they lived in Paris, it was not often he got to see such wonderful landscapes, full of life and the rustle of the valley’s inhabitants, leaves swirling, birds calling. Best of all, he would get to see his uncles.

They were not really his father’s brothers — he had no living siblings, as James had been told before — but they were as close as family could be. His cousins played and chased one another loudly, shouting and laughing in the field nearby. On the porch of the smaller house two other men could be seen conversing amiably, likely friends of their uncles, and from the cabin in front of them waved a lean figure in a drab-green jacket, his hair lit golden in the midday sun.

Out of breath from running so far, James shot up the front stairs and fiercely hugged the other with surprising force for a small nine-year-old boy. As he rocked back and forth with his skinny arms around the man’s waist, he could hear his parents laughing behind him.

“He’s sure happy to see you,” chuckled his father, pulling a practically bursting James slowly back to his side. “It’s been some time, Karl. How’ve you and the family been?”

“Just fine,” he answered, giving the boy who barely came up to his chest height another hug, patting his head affectionately. “Dear god, it really has been that long, hasn’t it? You haven’t even aged a day all this time.” Picking up a giggling James and whirling him about midair, Karl set him down and sighed happily, hands set on his hips. “This year’s harvest will be good. It’s a fair summer.”

James’s father, Sam, allowed his wife and younger daughter to pass and take a seat on the porch, then reclined at a nod from Karl and set down his briefcase. The shade offered by the overhang was cool and comforting. “Ahh, don’t get many days like this back home. It’s wonderful to see you. Abigail — James — why don’t you play with the girls? I’m sure they would love your company.” He leaned forward and squeezed his son’s shoulder, then winked. “Adult talk is boring, isn’t it?”

While his younger sister immediately ran out to play, he stood there, squirmed a bit, then gave a little shrug. “I wanna say hi to Uncle Jon.”

“Do you now?” Sam looked to Karl for help. “Would that be alright with you both?” All the while, James glanced back and forth between them with an eagerly pleading glance.

Grunting as he stood, Karl opened the door whose handle was a little too high for James to manage, and smiled as he let the boy in. “Of course. Whew — my legs aren’t what they used to be already. Jonathan might be asleep, he likes taking naps these days… I’m sure he could spare a moment for you, though. Go on,” he said, nodding kindly.

James slipped into the house and pushed the door closed behind them, quietly to be polite as he’d been taught at home, and studied his surroundings. Everything was quite large, accustomed to fit adults more than small boys such as himself, but comfortably quaint and warm. The fireplace sat cool at one end of the living room, covered halfway by the couch and standing lamp. He crept past the table in the kitchen and around the turn of the hall lest he wake his uncle Jonathan somehow, quickly taking a peek at the doors on either side of him that stretched to what seemed like the ceiling.

The smooth wooden floor was silent beneath his socks, covered down the hall by a long rug, leading him eventually to a bedroom. This was the only door open at all, faintly ajar and allowing him to see the paling daylight streaming through the window from inside. With as much care as he could muster, the boy reached the doorknob and entered, taking care to close it noiselessly behind him.

Jonathan dozed in front of him in a rocking-chair, situated just beside the window’s curtains, bobbing gently back and forth in a peaceful rhythm. For a moment James only stared, eyes large and his feet still, at the silhouette of the resting man. Warm rays of golden-tinged sunbeams streaked past the glass panes and highlighted his face, lined with the wear of time and honest labor, notes of dust sprinkled sparsely in the air around. The hands folded in his lap, rough and furrowed and traced by old scars and veins alike, told stories of their own in their fixed silence. His maroon vest and collared linen shirt appeared to glow softly within every crease.

For a moment James did not even dare to move; then finally crept forward with a dubious step and tugged ever so slightly at Jonathan’s sleeve. Within a minute one eye opened, a brilliant green and filled still with striking youth; then he was smiling in full. “Why, hello, James. What’s brought you here? Uncle’s just taking a nap, if’n you don’t mind any.”

James swallowed, then spoke in a hushed whisper-shout. “Do you want me to leave?”

“No, not at all, of course not! Come here, my boy,” Jonathan laughed, lifting James and seating him on the edge of the mattress nearby. “It’s a pleasure to see you again. Did you come in on your own? Your parents are on the porch with Karl, I assume?”

“They’re doing grown-up talk. I wanted to see you,” he said, bouncing lightly on the bed. “And say hello because it’s been a really long time since you came to our house. I like it here, the flowers are pretty and the weather is warm.” James broke into a smile when Jonathan gave him a little tap on the nose. “And our whole family is here!”

With a content sigh, the older man leaned back and resumed rocking. “Yes, they are. Your father Sam and everybody else here…they’re all family to me.” A look of reverence and longing emotion lingered in his stare, distant and withdrawn, foreign to the much younger child seated before him on the mattress, sprightly and enthusiastic.

Pausing to scratch his head, James stopped bouncing and met Jonathan’s eyes with a curious gaze of his own, inquisitive and wondering. “How did you and my papa become friends?”

“That’s a long old story,” he mused, tapping his fingers on one arm of the chair.

“Do you have time to tell it to me?” James glanced up at him expectantly.

Closing his eyes for a moment, Jonathan let out the breath he’d been holding and kept his focus on the picturesque scene of the valley fields past the window. The lights had been off for some time now, and only the sunlight lit their surroundings. He turned his aged palms upward and curled forth his fingers, the same that had pulled triggers and grasped knives, flashing silver and red in the depths of some snow-dredged forest so far away in life, but ever close in memory. It survived as a part of him as it had for the past twelve years, since the moment he’d stepped foot on home soil again. “Yes, I do, if you would like to hear it. Though it’s been a long time.”

By now James was standing fully on the bed, jumping excitedly at the words. Just the life and energy of his youth was enough to make anyone smile, so reminiscent of Jonathan’s own past and a culmination of the new generation’s coming. “Please!”

“Well, it was during the war. Your pa Sam and I, we served together in the Army. For more than three years, we worked and fought side by side. He’s like a brother to me,” he started, eyes open yet seeing only what was in the distant past with his recounted story, blind to the present walls before him. But the little boy’s presence shone still through this veil, steady and strong.

“What did you do in the war, Uncle?” asked James, having settled for bouncing on his knees.

Jonathan rubbed his forehead, gathering himself forward with his forearms in his lap. “I was quite ordinary, but your pa was a medic. A darn good one, too.”

The boy put a finger in his mouth, eyes focused intently on the other. “He saved people?”

“Oh, he saved people. More people than I could count. In the forest and the field and all the places we went,” answered Jonathan, reveling in the surviving good parts of his memories from then. “Doc Auger was our godsend. He’s the reason why I’m still here.” His following smile was very faint, hardly traced in the light throughout his features, but even James could see the content truth that lay beneath, running hidden but radiating throughout the room.

He continued slowly. “We met when we were in training, and we never parted from there. That’s all it is, really. Honest and as good as a man can be, and nothin’s changed after all this time.”

“Really?” James gazed innocently at him, legs crossed and hands folded. “I think you’re good too, Uncle Jon. You’re very nice to everybody. Do you have any more stories I can hear?”

The look in Jonathan’s eyes seemed to calm and slow, turning quietly with the seconds, giving the impression that he had aged further in the space of a minute. “I think I do. Would you like to know about my buddy Mark Allen?”

“Yes,” said James, not hesitating for even a second.

“We didn’t get along so well at first, but we got used to each other and helped each other out. Some people said he was rash an’ arrogant. Really, he was just tough-headed on the outside. He had a good heart, and ended up my best friend,” chuckled Jonathan, clasping his hands together as he spoke. “He trained with me from the very first day. Funny thing, he’d run as fast as he could from the start, then our commander — a man by the name of Thronson, quite a personality he was — would yell at him. “Speedin’ too fast, Private! Put on some brakes!” Mark would be all winded after that.”

James smiled brightly and put his hands to his mouth. “One time I was chasing Abby and I tripped in the grass and scraped my cheek. Papa was worried and he cleaned me up.”

“Just as he did for us,” he sighed. “His height could barely fit all the bravery he had in him. Another time, we were sent to fight on a beach. At a place called Normandy, not far from your home in France. We were running up the bluffs when Mark got hit in the stomach, but he just refused to go down. See, he was stubborn as anything,” Jonathan said, shaking his head. “It was only when things calmed down that he let your pa fix him up.”

The child stared at him, mouth ajar and eyes wide. “That sounds scary.”

“It was, yes. Yet he and your father were so brave, and they fought through it just fine. Men are the workhorses of war, after all. They were some of the best.” Each time he stopped to close his eyes it was as if the ingrained vision of Omaha burned bright as ever in his mind, and he was standing there on the wet sand thirteen years in the past as a fiery cloud of smoke and shrapnel imploded meters away in the storming sea, flinging wet grit and chunks of metal. What he remembered most vividly was only the bloodshed and raw noise that echoed behind, the dead piling up on the shores settling deep in the mud, shredded bits of limbs and gear laying about the crimsoned sand, and massive sheets of craft steel spinning, end over end, narrowly missing his head.

“Did you win that battle?” James’s voice broke him free from the constraints of his thoughts.

He cleared his throat and spoke hoarsely. “Yes, we did. But it was at a price.”

Casting his gaze downward to the floor, James blinked a couple times and picked at the sheets. The clear signs of guilt and regret had settled in his eyes, genuine and teary. “I’m sorry I made you sad, Uncle Jon. I didn’t mean to do it.”

“Oh, it’s none of your fault. You didn’t at all,” Jonathan assured him, reaching forth to pat the boy’s shoulder. Recalling those moments still left him dazed, ringing in as much clarity as they had on that same day, leaving his hands trembling and his pulse echoing dully in the enclosure of his chest, sounding in his skull. “I’m happier than anything to see you, James. Sometimes it’s hard to think about everything, that’s all. I promise.”

He shrugged ever so slightly, still hanging his head. “Even if it’s on accident, I don’t want to see you sad. I like to hear your stories, but only if you want to tell me them.”

“Of course I want to.” Jonathan tousled his hair, swept in soft, dark-goldenen strands about James’s head. “Let’s see, what else can I remember? Ah, the forest. We were crouching in the snow when I heard a bullet hit metal, and Mark was there on the ground, a hole in his helmet. I shook him and I shouted, thinking he was hit! But a moment later he’d gotten back up unharmed, only a little dizzy, and we saw the exit hole on the other side of the helm. The shot had bounced around against the liner and flown right out without hurting him,” he smiled, gesturing widely with his hands to try and illustrate the tale. “He was a lucky man. Isn’t that a funny thing?”

James giggled; he was once again jumping happily on the bed. “He must have been really glad. Why did you and mister Mark join the Army? I know my papa got drafted when he was studying to be a doctor, but. . .” He paused, unsure of what to say further.

“Well, me — I joined up ’cause my own father did, a long time ago. 1918, almost thirty years ago. I wanted to help the effort, I suppose.” Jonathan trailed off for a moment, then rubbed his chin thoughtfully, searching hard for the right words. “Mark. . .his father wasn’t a good man. He kicked him out of the house when he was twelve, and he roamed the streets for a while ’til the Army picked him up. He never had a place to go back to and live, I think it’s part of why he seemed so irritable often. Just didn’t have a family. We were the closest he had, his brothers-in-arms.”

A few moments of silence ensued as Jonathan began rocking again, the thump of wood being the only sound present, until James sat quietly and spoke. “Did mister Mark ever find home?”

Back and forth went the chair again, dappled sunlight flickering up against his weary face as the man remained in his quiet reverie, looking as though he were dreaming, a relic of stone that had been there beneath that window since time had a name, the age of his wisdom far beyond his years. Maybe it was the war that had done so, where boys grew to men too soon and faced hell’s gates, thousands of miles from home with only their rifles to hold tightly.

Jonathan’s eyes were closed again. “Yes. Yes, I think he did.”

The boy waited a couple of minutes, not wanting to disturb the other, then slowly stood and left the room, making his way back towards the front door to allow Jonathan some rest alone. Once he’d reached the porch he scampered out and into the arms of his mother, who laughed in surprise and scooped him up into her lap. “Oh dear, James, where have you been? I thought you were going to play with the others and Abigail.”

“Uncle Jon was telling me a story,” he answered softly, hugging her even closer at the thought of Mark, who hadn’t had a family. “I was listening to him for a while.”

She kissed his forehead and set him down gently, brushing some wrinkles out of his shirt. “Okay, honey. Go run with the girls now if you’d like. We’ll call you back when dinner is ready, okay? Papa and I will watch from here.”

He nodded and ran so fast down the steps that his mother called from behind telling him to be careful not to trip, her tone filled with concern, but within another second his feet had hit the grass and he was streaking past, racing in the field with his arms outstretched and a few scattered bits of clover in his hair already. From the front of the house watched his parents and Karl, ever protective and smiling in fulfilling pride and heart, as he and his sister yelled, laughed, sprinted after one another ankle-deep in the lawn. James himself knew little of how loved and precious he was to them, to the family around him, trailing youth and spirit with every stride he took.

It felt that his mother was ringing the dinner bell not even an hour later, but the sun was already setting, glowing, waning as it sank beneath the horizon’s edge, providential to the day’s closing as it welcomed the cool evening breeze. After his playmates he was skipping to the porch, nearly about there when something caught his eye — what he soon realized was Jonathan’s figure nearby, roaming, wandering towards the great oak tree in the field.

James watched in quiet awe as the man gathered a handful of wildflowers, blooming white and yellow in his gentle hands, flourishing in the berth of his grasp even from the moment they were pulled from the ground. He knelt before what the boy could make out to be a headstone, eyes closed, hands folded atop his chest with the blossoms enveloped, unmoving and still before the grave. Reminiscent and mourning from the reserves of his heart. Dutiful, solemn.

His lips trembled, shifted in the slightest, seeing nothing but everything before him at that spot in the grass, moving inaudibly in patterns as if he were reciting a litany, a promise and prayer to the presence beneath the dirt. Jonathan’s head remained bent and his composure drawn, there like a lone sentry of a bygone time grieving for what he could no longer reach for or touch. Adorned was the gravestone within a moment, decked with flowers, beautiful as they were in what they stood for of life even atop the marker of one who had passed.

The fingers and palms which he buried shallow in the ground for a moment seemed hardened and pipeclayed to one another, an ancient embrace that took to the earth in reverence. Both were lifted shaking, almost ceremoniously; each granule of the dirt that trickled back through felt to glow warm in the dusk as they spilled forth in waves. He got to one foot, then the other, shoulders slumped with a weight unseen by any other, yet there to remain with him for as long as he lived. Like he had buried his companion once again, for the first time, for the last time, over and over in a never-ending trance.

“Oh, Mark,” he whispered. “The sun is setting. “I hear it’s a beautiful summer in Illinois.”

Then he departed again. Towards the fields and road he went, gaze fixed on the setting sun, wordless and swaying with every step as he sang quietly a tune even James felt he had heard before. The lean structures of the man’s limbs moved with the wind as he walked, circling, drifting in small paths near the hill with the tree. Slowly the boy managed to peel his hand from the beam he grasped tight, watching the older man, waiting, eyes glistening.

Before the war the town had held its own life, bustling, chattering, never running gray for a moment with the warmth of its residents and the valley in which it rested, among rolling hills and bubbling streams. It had healed with the passing of such turmoil, eternal and beautiful and lively as the forest by the road, a few miles down from the city limit. Deer scampered and birds flitted between trees above the clear pond, a home for those who sang songs of nature, held all close within. Fish swam smoothly beneath the surface as skater-bugs skimmed past, glistening and intricate and vermicular in the cool water where their scales shone and hummed of secrecy. It would live and last to the final dawn.