Sometimes, We Sing Honor Songs

very short fiction

Photo by Sahand Babali on Unsplash

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Our father was a war hero. Critically wounded, he carried a fellow soldier, also critically wounded, back to safety. Our father died only minutes later. The other soldier was saved because the battlefield surgeons amputated his legs. We know this story because he found us forty years after the war. He knocked. We opened the door to see a white man in a wheelchair. In those days, white strangers never came to our reservation. He wept for a long time before he could speak. Then he said that his ex-wife and ex-children hated him. "They think I'm the enemy," he said. We told him that part of us died when our father died. He said, "Sometimes, I can still feel my legs. Sometimes, I can still feel the sand in my combat boots." We invited him to eat with us. He asked if it was okay to pray over our meal. We said, "We're Indians. We pray all day." So he said Grace. He talked with his mouth full. Spittle flew. His food splattered our food. That was okay. We ate anyway. It was something like Eucharist. Our father was Catholic so we're Catholic. When Catholics squint, everything looks like Eucharist. After our meal, the soldier wheeled away from the table into the living room and said, "Your father talked about your mother all the time. He said she was the most beautiful woman in the world." We told him that our mother died of cancer only a few years after our father died. We told him that our mother was never beautiful. "She was plain," we said. "Plain-featured and perfect." The soldier didn't like to hear that. His sighs sounded like curses. We suspected that he wanted our mother to still be alive. That he wanted her to fall in love with him. That he wanted to replace our father. We were more than forty years old but he wanted us to be his newborns. We didn't like him. It didn't feel good to hate a soldier. It didn't feel good to hate a man in a wheelchair. He overstayed. He told the same war stories again and again. Forty years after peace was declared, he still thought that he was fighting the Japanese. He still referred to them as "the Japs." He said, “Children are supposed to be afraid of their fathers.” Finally, after many hours, he said that he had to go. He said, "I don't like to drive in the dark." His car had hand controls that operated the gas pedal and brake. “People adapt,” he said so we said, “That’s apparently true.” Using his hands, that soldier left our lives. Our mother came home from Spokane a few minutes later. She wore a purple bandanna that she'd purchased at a garage sale. We told her about the man in the wheelchair. "We told him you were dead," we said. We told her that our father was a good man who'd saved the life of a lesser man. Our mother said, "That kind of math will kill your kindness.” She was right. We were so often cruel. We only sometimes sang honor songs. We were war orphans. We were always angry. We always felt the sand in our boots.