Veterans

At the wooden stockade, my father’s palms are fanned out in frilly innocence, a gesture I’ve never seen him make. It’s the only surprise of the trip so far, which has otherwise gone exactly as expected: the hour drive up from Virginia Beach to Williamsburg, where he pointed out each warship he saw slouched in the harbor, his talk of torpedoes and Mark 7s turning to muskets and cannon the closer we got. At the entrance to the colonial village, he made a fuss about me parking in a handicap space. He’d forgotten to bring his sticker, and he was convinced that without it we’d get towed. I tried to explain, legally, why that was extremely unlikely to happen. 

“Not everyone’s like you,” I said. “Always looking for a fight.”

He went quiet after that. But when he saw the stocks he came back to life, joining the line of visitors at the base of the platform.

My father smiles as I get ready to take his picture. The lack of teeth still surprises me, though his stubborn refusal to wear dentures doesn’t. He’s never cared much about his appearance. Growing up, I was so used to his rumpled flannels and five o’clock shadow that the first time Mom showed me his old picture from the Navy, I didn’t even recognize him. The pressed collar, the pert white hat, the blue ribbon flung around his neck—I couldn’t connect them with the man who only wore a tie on Easter. Specifically Easter, not Christmas, because if Jesus had to suffer on the cross, then he could stand to suffer an itchy neck. At least for a couple of hours.

Now it’s me who’s suffering, standing in the town square as the July sun launches its midday barrage. I’m bleeding sweat everywhere—the front of my shirt, the back of my thighs, underneath my arms. The stocks are in the only shaded part of the square, right underneath a gnarled oak, an unexpected kindness to the countless souls who must have been punished in this very spot. 

I didn’t want to come here with him. He begged me a thousand times, ever since he saw that special on the History Channel. But until today I’ve always refused, told him I got enough history at the office. Family history, anyway. He never understood why I went into family law, as if his marriage to mom weren’t reason enough to want to help people get divorced.

“I don’t know why you put up with all that,” he said. “Women trying to grab their husbands’ money. Their pensions too, I bet. You would’ve had a nice one if you enlisted.”

Monday through Friday—sometimes Saturdays too—I take the Yellow Line from Pentagon. He used to call me every week to ask if I’d seen any generals. Or, better yet, how about an admiral? As if any of them would be caught dead taking the train. As if any of them would give a damn about him, some washed-up vet from the Korean War, one of the wars they don’t really teach about in school, because the jury’s still out on whether we won.

The only history I didn’t know was his. When his doctor asked if anyone in the family had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, he named an uncle and a cousin I’d never even heard of. He’s always been tight-lipped about his health. The doctor said, based on my father’s symptoms, he might be at risk too, but they would need to run some additional tests. He took the news with soldierly calm, or maybe apathy, I don’t know. I nodded along in the office while the doctor explained the next steps, but the whole time I was staring at my father’s face. He looked almost happy, or somehow at peace, which is how I remember him looking in that Navy photo. The first time Mom showed it to me as a kid, I ran straight to him, in disbelief that this was my dad. I pointed at his collar, his hat, his silly blue ribbon, and laughed.

“You look like a little boy,” I said, thinking of the pictures I’d seen of Prince William on People at the Food Lion checkout, all dressed up like a sailor. “You look like a fancy prince.”

“What did you just say?” 

He was sitting at the kitchen table, about to slide the rubber band off the morning paper. Each word, each second of silence that followed, I felt myself sinking into the floor. I kept sinking as he stood, walking over to me with the paper clenched in his fist. I kept sinking as he pulled down my shorts, as he swatted me with it, the paper and ink leaving their angry red cuts, their stormy black smudges. I kept sinking long after he released me, marching off to the living room to turn on the TV. To watch the news there instead.

“Did you get it?”

He smiles down at me from the stocks, his palms still raised in surrender. I’m still holding my phone, my own palms sweating down the sides of it. When I don’t answer right away, his skinny wrists wilt in the handholes. His toothless grin closes up like a wound. 

I snap the picture.

“Come on,” I say, helping him out of the stockade, my firm hand on the back of his neck replacing the wooden collar. “Let’s go see how they churned butter.”