Lon Roberts

I usually work in the field, but on the day when the alert came in over the teletype I was in the newsroom. In typical terse language it read: Tuesday, August 7, 1967, 11:23 am: John Nance Garner, former Speaker of the House of Representatives and Vice-President to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, died today at age 98. After a couple of calls I was able to learn that the funeral services would be held in Uvalde on Thursday.

            It wasn’t my beat, but my request to cover the story was granted. Funerals are seldom newsworthy, but Cactus Jack had been a big name in Texas, though he had outlived his fame by a generation or two. Besides, I had an ulterior motive.
 
            Though members of the media were allowed in they had to remain standing at the back of the crowded church. I chuckled under my breath, wondering if that arrangement had something to do with Cactus Jack’s low regard for reporters. Maybe not, but it likely pleased him if he was peering from above. Scanning the room I recognized Bly from behind. She was seated a couple of rows from the front, in the section reserved for family. A year had passed since I had dropped her off in Austin on that day of horror. It just seemed right that I should be there … as a friend to Bly and out of respect for the man who had given my career a boost. I wasn’t sure if we’d be able to have a conversation, but Bly took care of that. After the service the family lined up along the sidewalk to thank the guests and receive their condolences. When I came to Bly she thanked me for coming and slipped a note into my palm as we shook hands. I quickly moved away from the crowd and spotted a tree I could stand under and behind to read the note. There were no wasted words: Pie and coffee at Mattie’s at 3:00pm?

* * *

I timed my drive to Sabinal to arrive as close to 3:00pm as possible. Bly was waiting in her car with the window down and the radio blaring out Jefferson Airplane’s Somebody to Love. She was swaying her head with her eyes closed as she sang along.
 
            She flinched when I tapped her shoulder. “Sorry to bother you ma’am, have you seen an archeologist disguised as a rock star?”
 
            “Okay, so now you’ve met my alter ego. Let’s get inside out of the heat before I embarrass myself any more than I already have.”
 
            Other than the pastry display, which was longer than I remembered, the café looked the same. We made our pie selections—pecan for her, cherry for me—and then seated ourselves at the same table where we sat four years ago. Bly thanked me again for coming. She also apologized, saying she would need to leave in an hour to make it back in time to teach an evening class.
 
            “Beau, I wanted to have some time to visit, but there’s also something I wanted to ask you. Last year in Washington-on-the-Brazos, just before Katy interrupted our conversation with news about the campus shooting, you were about to tell me why you would choose serenity over courage if you had to make a choice. Do you remember that?”
 
            “Oh yes, I remember. I chose serenity over courage … galena rather than flint.”
 
            “Do you mind telling me why?”
 
            “Well, I suppose it’s the way I’m wired. I prefer the safety of peaceful serenity over the dangerous places that courage might take me.”
 
            “But it’s more than that, isn’t it Beau?”
 
            “Yes … yes it is. But, it’s not something I’m proud of. It goes back to the war when I was in the Army, working in London as a correspondent for the military newspaper, The Stars and Stripes. The job wasn’t nearly as risky as being on the front lines, but it wasn’t risk-free—we occasionally went on aerial raids with bomber crews to take photos and report on what we saw.”

            “So, are you saying that because of the horrors of what you saw and reported on that you wanted a life of peace and serenity when you returned home?”
 
            “Not exactly, or not entirely. It was something more personal than that. It … it shoulda been me.”
 
            “What do you mean, it shoulda been you?”
 
            “Sorry, I’m not making sense. Let me back up. There was a young lady, Audrey—I haven’t spoken her name in years—she was in the British Army, serving as a liaison to our unit. She was also an excellent correspondent, one of the few among us with a formal education in journalism. And, between her ration coupons and what I could pilfer from the Army mess, we managed to come up with some pretty tasty dishes, considering what we had to work with.”
 
            “So, Audrey was a wartime lover?”
 
            “Yes, until I went crazy. As it turns out, we each had an empty place in our heart that the other filled. In my case, I was feeling low after getting a Dear John letter from a girl back home—back in Louisiana. Maybe she got a better deal. I don’t know, because I ripped the letter into a thousand pieces after reading the first few lines. But, in Audrey’s case … well, in her case it was more complicated. She was missing her daughter.”
 
            “Her daughter? So she was married!”
 
            “No, she had never been married. But, I didn’t know that, nor did I know she had a daughter until later. It was a Sunday morning after we had been together about three months. It was one of those bare-your-soul moments after breakfast. That’s when she told me about her daughter—told me she had gotten pregnant in her last year at university, that the father denied any responsibility. She said her parents were caring for her daughter in Manchester while she answered the call to duty and joined the ATS.”
 
            “Wow Beau, that’s a lot to comprehend! So, what did you do?”
 
            “Well, like I said, I went crazy—I erupted. I said some things I would forever regret … something along the lines of ‘Why are you just now telling me this? What other secrets are you hiding?’ After that I threw my stuff in a bag and stormed out of her flat. Stupid, stupid, stupid! Like I was some kind of saint myself!”
 
            “Yeah Beau, that was pretty stupid. But, you’ve more than paid the price for your stupidity by now. I can see how it pains you to revive that experience.”
 
            “Yes, it’s painful. But if it ended there I might have been able to let it go. You see, the next day we both had to go on with our jobs as though nothing had happened. That was Monday, June 5, 1944 … the day our captain asked for a volunteer to fly on a top secret mission, to observe the battle from the air and come back with a first-hand story. He said that all he could tell us was that it was a decisive mission and the risks were very high. In other words, the odds of making it back alive were not good.”
 
            “So, you volunteered?”
 
            “No, she volunteered. Audrey stepped up while the rest of us just stood there, frozen. That afternoon she reported to the airfield and I never saw her again. The next day—which was D-Day—the plane she was on was shot down over Normandy.”
 
            As I wiped tears from my eyes with my coffee-stained napkin Bly reached across the table and gently grasped my forearm. “I’m so sorry Beau, I had no business forcing you to relive that horrible day. Please forgive me.”
 
            It took me a moment to regain my composure. “Bly, there’s nothing to forgive. In fact, I’ve kept all of this pent up far too long. You are the one person I feel safe sharing it with … the one person I know who would not condemn me for my bad behavior.”
 
            “No, I would never do that. Sure, you made some mistakes, but you know that.” Bly glanced at her watch. “Beau, I hate to leave now but I need to be on my way.”
 
            We hugged and said our good-byes. As I watched her drive away it occurred to me that we had never gotten around to discussing what courage versus serenity might have to do with my career, as she had alluded to at Washington-on-the-Brazos.
 
            I stepped back inside to finish my lukewarm coffee and collect my wits. If only there weren’t so many years between us. Maybe I was wrong. If I had more courage perhaps I’d be willing to take a chance on love. Had I not lacked courage, perhaps this would not have been the last time I saw her until the awards ceremony eight years later.

* * *

“God, it’s good to see you again! I hate these ceremonies, they’re mostly an excuse for people to party and get dog drunk. Why couldn’t they just mail me the plaque? By the way, thanks for rescuing me. So, tell me about yourself. Why are you here? What have you been doing over the past eight years? Are you married? Do you have kids?”
 
            “Slow down Beau. I don’t know why they couldn’t mail you the plaque. Maybe they wanted to honor you in person, after all it’s a pretty big deal to receive the Anne Porter Award for Public Service in Journalism. Besides, if they mailed it to you, we wouldn’t be here. And, I’m glad for that.”
 
            “Okay, I’ll give it a rest … I’ll quit with the grumpy old curmudgeon act. See, I’m smiling now.”
 
            “Beau, you haven’t changed at all, you’re just as contrary as ever. So, what were your other questions? Do I have any kids? No. Am I married? Yes, I’m here with my husband. He’s one of the ones who’s getting dog drunk at this moment, so he has no idea I’m missing in action. Why am I here? Well, I’m here because of Robert—the aspiring drunk I just referred to. Robert was invited to the ceremony because he’s an author … an author doing a job I hoped someone else would be doing. But, the truth is, I saw your name as an award nominee in the event bulletin; that’s the real reason I’m here. Otherwise, Robert is quite capable of getting drunk on his own. He loves bashes like this as much as you—and I too—hate them.”
 
            “Okay Bly, now it’s time for you to slow down, or at least back up. What do you mean, ‘Robert’s doing a job you hoped someone else would be doing?’ Why do I get the impression that has something to do with me?”
 
            “Well, it does have something to do with you—everything, in fact. Let me explain. When I saw you at Washington-on-the-Brazos nine years ago I was in the process of applying for a grant that would allow me to work on a major project in the Nubia region of Egypt. In the grant proposal I had included funding for a documentarian—an individual who would prepare news briefs of our discoveries and essentially raise public awareness of our work. But, that’s an oversimplification. I wasn’t simply interested in having our work documented, I wanted a writer and storyteller who could give our discoveries a historical and anthropological context, someone who could tie the pieces together and make the past come alive. I had a particular person in mind for the job if the funding came through. But, I also knew that that individual had a secure job, a steady income, and a career path with a future.”
 
            “And, that person was me. Now it all makes sense … the flint versus galena choice. When I chose serenity over courage that told you, without asking directly, that I wasn’t interested in the job. It signaled that I wasn’t willing to sacrifice serenity and security for what would probably be a high-risk adventure in the Egyptian desert.”
 
            “Yes, all of that. The grant was approved a few days before Papa John’s funeral a year later. I was counting on you being at the funeral, to test the water without putting you on the spot—to leave me out of the equation. But, when you shared the tragic story about Audrey, I knew I needed to move on, I needed to leave you alone and let you enjoy the peace and serenity you deserve. When I accepted that I also knew I needed to look for another candidate for the job. That’s when Robert entered the scene.”
 
            “Bly, if only you would have asked outright, I would have said yes on the spot. I would have jumped at the chance to … to be with … to work with you.”
 
            “Beau, I know what you’re trying to say, and I feel the same way … about you.”
 
            “But my age, Bly—there’s eighteen years between us—I just assumed that would matter.”
 
            At that point she reached across the table and we joined hands. She looked squarely into my eyes, smiled, and gently shook her head. “No my silly friend, it may have mattered to you, but not to me. It seems we were both playing a guessing game, and we both lost. If only you had said this, if only I had said that … but you didn’t and I didn’t.”
 
            “So Bly, where do we go from here?”
 
            She squeezed my hands for a moment before releasing them. “I should be getting back now, my dog drunk husband will be needing a designated driver. Which reminds me, before we part ways give me one of your cards, I may have a job opening soon.”

— THE END —

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© Copyright | Lon Roberts

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Pneuma Center
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