***2X WINNER OF @YAROMANCE'S 'BITE-SIZED LOVE BUFFET 2024'***
❝ Walking through life with you, ma'am, has been a very gracious thing. ❞
- Errol Flynn, 1941
A POST-WWII SHORT STORY COLLECTION.
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THE EDGE OF THE NOTE FLAPS ON Douglas Patchin's bed stand despite the weight of his wristwatch as the breeze, once soft like a baby's breath aiding him to sleep, slaps him with an icy violence from the half-open window. Pulling back his bed sheets, Douglas pads across his bedroom in his nylon socks and slams the window shut before reaching for the note with his left hand and the wristwatch his right.
Phone Bennie.
Even without his specs, he catches Janet's hand immediately on the note, which is as pale a yellow as dawn's first strokes (at least when covered by fall's overcast). Eyeing the calendar hung on the mauve wallpaper next, Douglas realizes that he must've taken the first six days of December for granted, as the seventh has arrived on this brisk day whole like Janet's pecan pie after she'd swat away his advances at a taste and place the pan next to the kitchen window as if to tease the squirrels too. Another glance down at the note and Douglas' eyes are closed, his mind already anticipating his conversation with Bennie Edwards over the Ameche.
Though both are former servicemen, Bennie's recollections of what transpired oceans away never cease to outlast the peanuts Douglas remembers himself—especially those on December 7th, 1941. From the sound of the propellers on the Japanese fleet carriers to the smoky death of the USS Arizona, Bennie's descriptions can make their conversation last hours. Douglas always lets the man talk, natch, but finds reason to latch silently onto the memories where a M1 Garand was not all his hands cradled.
Christine never liked the idea of him in the service anyways. Her V-mails had said so, and at one point, Douglas had even agreed with her, for he missed her frail hand in his, her colorless neck flushing pink when he would visit her bedroom and the rest of her body would lay weighted under a blanket.
He can still smell the burning eucalyptus that danced around her room.
Even now. Opening his eyes, it dawns on Douglas that he had, unconsciously, sifted through his and Janet's closet, his hands reaching for his olive field jacket whose pockets hold Christine's V-mails printed on photographic paper. The ink on each letter is still dark and legible, and he quietly reads them over until he reaches her final one dated December 7th, 1942. He is usually drawn to its last line, and today proves no different.
My dearest Douglas, love me until I leave you. Once I'm gone, do not continue to love me; instead, honor me and give your love to another. You'll make her the luckiest cookie in America!
Despite the five years of seeing the same line, Christine's reminder is what Douglas needs, and the man picks up his wristwatch, an anniversary gift from Janet. Fastening it around his wrist, he spares a look at the blue and red argyle pattern on his socks and smiles.
