Memory Wall by Doerr Anthony

Author:Doerr, Anthony [Doerr, Anthony]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 2010-07-12T16:00:00+00:00

They have IVs in my arms. The diarrhea is awful; I can feel everything flowing out. Giardia lamblia, Doc tells me. When it gets very bad it’s a feeling like watching those poplars of Grandpop’s rush past, and that light at the end repeating like that.

There won’t be a court martial, anything like that. Word is they’ll send me home. Ahn will be okay, too—his sergeant likes birds.

It is a day before the solstice, and just after dark, when the phone rings and my son is on the other end. Already I can feel the tears starting, somewhere in the backs of my eyes. “Day after tomorrow,” he says, and all I can think of is Christmas morning, and his mother, how she used to sit on the stairs, looking down at the tree, waiting for us to wake up so we could start in on the gifts.

“About Mom,” I say, but he has already hung up. Upstairs I get the shoebox of letters and tie it shut with ribbon. I put Pop in his coat and gloves, and together we leave the house and climb toward the saddle.

The snow falls softly, just enough to carry a little light in it. Pop climbs steadily, stepping in my footprints.

At the Big Wood Condos we walk to the end of the first floor. I listen a moment—it is quiet—and leave the shoebox at the door.

Then we turn, climb back to the saddle, and make the top of the hill, our breath standing out in front of us. From there we can see the lights of Ketchum below: the dark spread of the golf course, the Christmas lights along the fence into town, the headlights of snowcats roving the flanks of the ski mountain, packing the snow in—and the town itself, twinkling in the valley, the little roof of our house small among the snowy rooftops, and all the mountains of Idaho beyond it. Somewhere, above it all, our boy is crossing over the ocean, coming home.

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