The Watch by Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya

Author:Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya [Roy-Bhattacharya, Joydeep]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: War
ISBN: 9780307402233
Publisher: Knopf Canada
Published: 2012-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

FIRST SERGEANT

WHEN you’re young, you’re sleeping.

I swim to the end of the small pool, then turn around and swim back. It’s my twentieth lap, and the pink dawn stipples the water. I feel like laughing out loud with pleasure—and maybe I did earlier on—but am content to simply enjoy the sense of well-being that suffuses me. It’s good to feel the water stream down my face while its buoyancy cradles my body. The dawn clouds are out of a dream: they turn vermilion, then orange, before the red orb of the sun soars over the horizon. The night’s long shadow lifts from the pool. A cool, pale radiance filters through the overhanging branches. The magnolias emerge from the half-light into the mirroring water. Their reflections surround me as I climb out of the pool.

Aunt Thelma’s knitting on the back porch. She smiles at me and tells me that my grandfather is up. I can’t think of too many moments when I’ve seen her without those needles and a ball of wool on her lap. Thelma brought me up with the help of my grandparents when my father died. I was twelve. They told us there’d been an accident in an air show in Germany. Dad was one of the spectators. He’d driven there with his buddies from the nearby base at Landstuhl. I remember Mother’s strange response to the telephone call—she went ashen-faced, then smiled. She attempted to cover it up by biting her lip. But I’d already noticed, and lying in bed that night, I couldn’t figure out what was worse, Dad’s death or her reaction.

A week later, she was gone: she’d taken off with runty little Alvin Jones, one of the mechanics at the auto repairs place where Dad serviced his car whenever he was in town. It was left to my grandparents to receive the men from Dad’s unit when they came by with his personal effects. As for Mother, we heard that she and Al ended up in Abilene, where he opened an auto shop of his own. I never saw her after that. Rumor went she’d had a kid who didn’t survive.

Now my grandfather is sitting at the kitchen table like he does every morning, getting in Grandma’s way while she makes breakfast. As I pass them on the way to my room, he asks me to bring my uniform out with me when I return for breakfast.

Not again, James! Grandma protests. Leave the boy alone.

You leave us alone! You don’t understand.

Oh, I understand all right, Jimmy Whalen. I was an army wife for thirty-nine years, and if I don’t understand I don’t know who will.

Thirty-nine years? You must mean fifty-nine years! I can see you’re ready to go plant me in my grave afore my time comes.

You retired twenty years ago, may I remind you?

I can do that math! he barks. They retired me before I was ready to quit. I’d never have left on my own, you know that.

I know, I know, I hear Grandma say patiently as I reach my room.

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