I MARCHED BACK UP TO THE GRAVE AFTER THE CROWD
faded. Washington in July. Uniform clawing at my skin.
Arlington is efficient. A mini-excavator had already arrived to fill in the hole. A workman with graying hair and weight-lifter biceps stooped near the folding chairs, picking up the casings from the salute. He sensed me and straightened his back.
"Done come back for another look, Colonel?"
I nodded. A poor-man's colonel, with silver oak leaves.
"Who this gentleman be, don't mind my axing?" His face gleamed.
"General Farnsworth. Mickey Farnsworth."
"Good man?"
"The best."
The laborer showed a broken line of teeth. "We going to take good care of him for you. Don't you worry, now. "
"You can keep on working. I don't mind." But I would have minded. The metal box lay still at the bottom of the hole, kissed with dirt.
"No, sir. We don't do like that. We don't never start till everybody gone. It the rule."
A black bird settled on a green branch, sun oiling its feathers.
"You just takes your time," the workman went on. "I always be glad when somebody come back. People don't come back no more. See what I'm saying? I mean, your wives, maybe. Maybe they does. For a while. But everybody get forgot about equal."
Mary Farnsworth at the graveside, struggling to maintain a dignity worthy of her husband. She stood up straight, and the ceremony was long, and I was afraid she might faint in the heat. I started in her direction when it was all over, butthe generals who had lost a rival for promotion flocked around her, cooing sympathy. I could not get past their aides.
"He was a great man," I told the workman. "A hero. Nobody expected him to go like this."
"Heart trouble?"
I almost laughed. "His heart would've been the last thing to go." Farnsworth had been in better shape than a lieutenant fresh out of Ranger School. And it had been a big heart, too. I disciplined my voice. "Hit-and-run. He was jogging." I looked up and the sun narrowed my eyes. We had all thought Farnsworth would be the next Colin Powell, and now he was senselessly dead.
The workman smeared the sweat over his forehead and sighed. Looking down through the trees, across the river. Into the marble city. "We all dust in the eyes of the Lord." He gestured with a big arm, sweeping over the white lines of markers, the dead in their thousands. "This place here just like Heaven, Colonel. Everybody equal. No man's stone bigger than his brother's. Every man get fair treatment. See what I'm saying?" He looked at me again. "But people don't come back. Everybody just be forgot. That's the way of the world."
"I'll come back."
The workman smiled. "I be happy to see it."
I smiled, too, for a moment. "You don't believe me."
He shrugged. "No offense, now. I mean, maybe you come back here for a while. Then you forgets. That how it supposed to be. It all right. He still be your friend up in Heaven. Hear every word you say. Hear you right now."
"We shall not see his like again."
The workman nodded slowly. With immeasurable gentleness. "Now, that's pretty." He turned and the sun gripped him. One of his eyes looked as though milk had been poured over it. It was the sort of thing you notice right away. If you're awake.
Suddenly, I felt disgusted. With myself and with the world. I felt I was missing big things all around me. But I had no idea what those things might be. I felt stupid and angry.
"Listen here now, Colonel, sir. You ever needs anything round here, you just axe for old Rickie York. Anything at all. Hear?"
"Thanks."
"You just takes your time now." He shuffled toward the shade. "And God bless you."
There was no more time. I had to go back to work. Then pick up Tish's present before the shop closed. And waste time meeting an old friend who was not a friend anymore, because I did not have what it took to say, "Fuck off, Em. You never even return my phone calls. I'm going home to wish my girl a happy birthday. "
I felt I should do something else for General Farnsworth. But the human repertoire is limited.
The heat was terrible and my eyes had begun to ache. I looked down into the grave and said, "I'll come back."
The Ivy Club is two blocks from the White House and the suits that go in and out fit perfectly at the shoulders but not at the waist. Instead of a doorman, the club has a human catcher's mitt. He looked at my uniform as though I had wandered over from the delivery entrance.
"I'm here to meet Emerson Carroll."
"Of course, sir. Mr. Carroll expects you in our bar. Do you know your way around the club, sir? The bar is on the second level."
Worn-down Persians on the floor. Museum woodwork. Smell of steamed vegetables and wax.
It was Tuesday evening and the club was nearly empty. Em sat alone in the bar, smoking a cigar over whiskey. He had been a terrible sight at the burial ceremony, and even in this softer light, his face looked ruined. I don't know whether I had been more surprised by the speed of his physical decline or by the fact that he had bothered to turn up at Farnsworth's graveside. Emerson Carroll was a second-tier player edging toward first-tier status. He was big stuff in this town. Dead generals were of no use to anybody.
"You look like Cornelius Vanderbilt," I said.
Em did not get up. He smiled without showing his teeth, and I could smell the whiskey. One of the fundamental rules of social biology is that hard liquor is especially tough on golden boys. He swept his fingers back over his ashen hair, briefly tightening the skin on his forehead. He did not offer me his hand.
Copyright ? 1999 by Ralph Peters
