I thought I’d be dead and buried myself by now, before I had to serve at the funeral of the third-to-last American war veteran.
Paul Hoover had been well-loved in this community. Three-quarters of the town must have been there, wearing somber dress clothes, huddling in their coats, fending off the February chill. The family sat in plush-covered folding chairs, staring at us over the casket with round, stunned eyes. All eyes were dry. There was a sense of relief; Paul had been ill for some time.
To most of the congregation, Ken and I were a surprise, and I could sense the unasked questions: Who are these guys, what are they doing here? We looked out of place with our blue caps and vests dotted with pins, commemorations, awards, the red ribbon with the blue and black stripes for service in Pan-Asia. No one knew what any of it meant anymore.
Allison Hoover was, as her husband Paul had been, pushing a hundred. Small, wasted to bones and wrinkled skin, she looked like she’d blow away in the stiff winter breeze without her sons and grandchildren bracing her on both sides. I couldn’t read her expression when I handed her the flag. Her squinted, dark eyes looked past me, her mouth was an immobile line. She took the flag from me with a strong grip, though, cradling it, stroking the fabric with a finger.
Out of all of them, the spouses seemed grateful when I gave them the flag.
I wondered sometimes if the families and friends resented our presence, the reminder we represented of an episode long since faded to history for most of them. But the oldest ones, the wives and siblings who remembered the looks on their loved ones’ faces when they’d come home, they always seemed grateful that someone else remembered. The worst were the funerals where only the children and younger generations survived.
Theorists said there would always be war. No war to end all war ever had. They also said that there would come a time when countries wouldn’t need soldiers anymore. Computers and robots would fight the wars. From a room a thousand miles away from the battle, anyone could push the buttons that launched the missiles or guided the rovers.
They were right.
* * *
I was too old for this. I was too old to be alive. I was too old to survive the days ahead.
“You don’t look so good, John,” said Ken. We sat together at the shuttleport in Denver, at the gate to his flight. His suborbital left first, to take him back to Boca Raton, mine to Seattle. This was the last for us. There would never be another meeting. We had only each other to bury now.
“Well, thanks,” I said with a drawl. We’d both lasted so long, now it was a race.
“Just tired,” he said. “You just look tired.”
“Of course I’m tired.”
He grunted and turned away, a gruff response to my snapping at him.
I stared at him to gauge how he looked. How tired was he? How much life was left in his wiry frame? He had a narrow face, uncommonly long limbs and body. His skin, soft and wrinkled, hung on his bones like crepe. In his young days, he must have been a burly man, overwhelming. Now, he sagged, like the air had gone out of him. I hadn’t noticed any change in the years we’d been attending funerals together, since Frank died and Ken stood with me while “Taps” played at his funeral. No cancers were eating him, no organs had failed or been replaced. But I knew how these things worked. His heart could just give out, and that would be that. On the battlefield or in old age, I had never been able to guess who’d die next.
“How are you feeling, Ken?”
“Tired.”
“Too tired to do another one of these?”
“If I have to do another one, I will.” He looked me up and down, squinting, lips pursed during a thoughtful pause. “You know something I don’t?”
“I don’t know a damn thing.”
“Glad I’m not the only one,” he said, chuckling.
“I’ve been thinking about the war.”
“Jesus, why?”
“Back then, dying didn’t seem so bad because I wasn’t alone. I knew there’d be someone there to bury me.”
“I don’t think about dying.”
“I don’t believe you. Not even back then?”
He stretched out in the padded seat, pulling his arms over his head. Joints groaned, but he seemed pretty limber for a ninety-seven-year-old man. He had sharp eyes; he was always looking farther away than anyone else around him, to another country, another set of skies. A smile always wrinkled the corners of his lips.
“This one time I remember. Outside Bangkok. A guy next to me stepped on a mine. Tore him apart. I still see it, how close I came. But I don’t think about it.”
I still thought he was lying. We’d lain on death’s door back then and managed to survive. Now, here I was again. My chances had seemed so grim, then. I didn’t know anything when I was a kid.