The things they carried ch. Love
Many years after the war Jimmy Cross came to visit me at my home in
Massachusetts, and for a full day we drank coffee and smoked cigarettes
and talked about everything we had seen and done so long ago, all the
things we still carried through our lives. Spread out across the kitchen
table were maybe a hundred old photographs. There were pictures of Rat
Kiley and Kiowa and Mitchell Sanders, all of us, the faces incredibly soft
and young. At one point, I remember, we paused over a snapshot of Ted
Lavender, and after a while Jimmy rubbed his eyes and said he'd never
forgiven himself for Lavender's death. It was something that would never
go away, he said quietly, and I nodded and told him I felt the same about
certain things. Then for a long time neither of us could think of much to
say. The thing to do, we decided, was to forget the coffee and switch to
gin, which improved the mood, and not much later we were laughing
about some of the craziness that used to go on. The way Henry Dobbins
carried his girlfriend's pantyhose around his neck like a comforter.
Kiowa's moccasins and hunting hatchet. Rat Kiley's comic books. By
midnight we were both a little high, and I decided there was no harm in
asking about Martha. I'm not sure how I phrased it—just a general
question—but Jimmy Cross looked up in surprise. "You writer types," he
said, "you've got long memories." Then he smiled and excused himself
and went up to the guest room and came back with a small framed
photograph. It was the volleyball shot: Martha bent horizontal to the
floor, reaching, the palms of her hands in sharp focus.
"Remember this?" he said.
I nodded and told him I was surprised. I thought he'd burned it.
Jimmy kept smiling. For a while he stared down at the photograph, his
eyes very bright, then he shrugged and said, "Well, I did—I burned it.
After Lavender died, I couldn't . . . This is a new one. Martha gave it to
me herself."
They'd run into each other, he said, at a college reunion in 1979.
Nothing had changed. He still loved her. For eight or nine hours, he said,
they spent most of their time together. There was a banquet, and then a