The Long Way Home

Paul gathered himself at the train station in Canterbury. He checked his pocket watch, forgetting that it was shattered by a bullet that would have killed him. The war was over, but he didn't feel as though it were over. The outbound train huffed in idle frustration and steam from its belly enveloped his legs, stealing them for a moment. For a second or two he looked down and felt as though he did not exist at all. An ineffable feeling that he was misplaced overwhelmed him, but he excused it to the fact that peace and civility were things he grew strange to and things he would have to learn again. 

He borded the proper train and the whistle sounded like that of an incoming mortar which caused him to blanch and recoil against that which wasn't but for in the haunting of his head. He was in uniform. He blinked heavily and rubbed his weary eyes. A porter attended him, but Paul brushed him off politely and found a seat. There he sat and relaxed. His legs tingling and his eyes burning. 

There were things he would have to normalize and things he would have to disassociate himself from again, he knew. As they were, things reminded him, even pleasant things, of all the ghastly horrors he had endured. The clean smell of the coach and fresh food on silver serving carts stunk of the putrid flesh of the dead and the malodorous stench of his unbathed coevals. In the murmuring of casual conversation he could hear the frantic screams of men mutilated or crazed in that which they'd witnessed or were witnessing still. And the corybantic laughter of a corpulent lady was to him the frenetic braying of a gutshot horse, tearing the flesh from its bones in barbedwire that Paul could see clearly in the pattern of a baby's bonnet. 

Slowly it would fade from him. In time. It would have to for there was no room for it where he was bound. Not with his beloved, Mable, whose letters he read on the train just as he had by lamplight over and over in those dank and fetid trenches as they stood idle athwart the Huns with Hell between them. A rat scurried beneath his feet on the train and he kicked it clear of him, thinking to alert the porter of the rodent stowaway. But he put it out of his mind. One rat that he wouldn't let become twenty as they had overrun the trenches like greedy harbingers of death. The psychological wound was fresh and it was as though the war wasn't over at all and he was there still. How can a person be two places at once, he tried to reason with himself, as though he must make a regular case for his sanity. 

Undeniably, he was on his way home. The chug of the train blithely reminded him and it was not reminiscent of some contrary evil, simply, it assured him that he was further and further away from the dreadful war and closer to Mable no matter how it felt. He sat and coaxed himself with the luxury of this uncommon peace and a parade of thoughts that ensued in his delight. Somehwere there is a warm fire. Somewhere there is a field that is absent murderous men and machines and not scarred by war. Not thought about by generals or known by demons. Thought of by farmers and protected by angels. Where a mist of fog hangs over the land rather than a shroud of gas. 

He clenched his jaw looking out at the countryside, furthering the thought. Somewhere not shelled by mortars, nor strewn with barbedwire. Not soaked in blood, but thick with wildflowers and Scottish thistle. Not littered with the corpses of mauled horses. Rather, abundant with tranquil horses grazing. No. No horses at all. Somewhere plentiful with sheep and one farm dog, a border collie, dutifully herding them, their bells clanging gently not like that of a man in the wire. That frequent boorish intrusion in the night. That hellish concomitant scream. Not that, he plead with his eyes closed tightly and his head pressed against the glass window. The bell then became that of only one sheep. A single sheep trotting over the soft clover of the rolling hillside. He smiled contented. Unclenched his jaw and checked again the time, only to find it still broken. 

Mable gifted him that watch when he enlisted as a most men of his age did, obligated by honor to do so though they bore no particular grudge against the Huns, nor had they any slight affinity for the French. Naively, Paul once saw himself as a sheep dog of sorts and the world was that wandering flock just over the hill, threatened by wolves. There are, he would learn, so many worse things than wolves and they are all human. There were only two words engraved on the back of that silver pocket watch — two words that he whispered half-asleep and that she closed each letter to him with — come home. 

He promised her he would.

It was Christmas morning, he realized. Just as his watch was broken, he had somehow become incongruous with time. It was as though time was no longer chronological. No longer precise, orderly or dependable enough to be counted upon. It was as though he lost a week on that train, or squandered it somehow. Two hours traded for 168. He was sure it was the seventeenth, or eighteenth, when he boarded. But the grinning porter was going on ecstatically about roast duck in chestnut dressing and plum pudding to be served this afternoon for Christmas dinner in the dining car. 

Paul recalled feeding ducks at the park with Mable the previous summer. Vividly. So much so that his skin felt the burning warmth of the sun. The sweat tingled the hair of his arm pits beneath the wool suit he wore so to be proper in courting. He loosened his tie and she giggled as the ducks bickered over the bread crumbs and cracked corn they were offered. How that sunlight perfectly caught her face and held it was divine to him. How her black hair spiraled and her eyes glistened. How everything then seemed to conspire in his favor, only to betray him a few months later. Perhaps, those ducks were betrayed as well by Christmas traditions, baited by palmfuls of cracked corn. The thought disheartened him. Or perhaps they were different ducks. Maybe there are ducks meant for the plate and others meant for the park. Just as there seemed to be men meant for war and others meant for luxury. 

"Merry Chistmas!" the porter repeated to everyone alighting the train. "Good tidings, governor!"

Paul stopped at a newsstand and an early edition confirmed the porter's account. It was December 25th. The town was swathed in a cold and familiar fog. Two men were selling mistletoe in the street and looked like giant bushes with faces. Nearby was a lot full of Christmas trees. Paul stopped and straightened his uniform. There were no medals upon his chest. Nothing to boast of. He recalled Mable writing him that she would not celebrate Christmas without him, so he must come home. So he grabbed a tree and briefly waited to pay the attendant who was nowhere to be found, shirking his labor. Then he figured, being Christmas day, the trees were probably throwaways so he slung it over his shoulder and carried on. 

Mable lived only a few blocks from the station so he walked. It was cold, but bearable. Horses and carriages and a few automobiles sloshed pass him, clopping on the cobblestone and puttering, their wheels squeaking and squealing. Their engines whirring and wheezing in that mechanical heartless way things do. Like distant airplane engines buzzing like angry hornets. Puttering. Spitting. Occasionally, a horn blew and someone waved at someone else and wished them "Merry Christmas." 

The town was very much as he left it. Only colder, dusted with snow, and soaked in slush. Her home was immaculate. But no one was home. A sad wreath hung upon the door. He let himself in. There wasn't a butler. He would be there waiting when Mable and her parents got home, he resolved.

True to her word, the house was absent any decorations. It was a hollowed corpse of summer. There was no sign of Christmastime other than that pitiful wreath on the door. No tree or tinsel. No bulbs or garland or wreaths or boughs of holly. No mistletoe or pies in the oven. No hard candy or stockings or stockpiles of gifts. Not a single one. It was lifeless. Terribly glum. It was cold and remarkably barren. The pallor cast even upon the walls and furniture. Chairs and sofas seemed to sulk. 

Paul fashioned a stand for the tree out of a stove pot and twine. He straightened the tree with a sense of satisfsction and then scoured the house for decorations from years past. He decorated the tree and beamed with satisfaction with the result. Topped it with an angel and then, again, instinctively checked his cracked watch that was no longer reliable. That stood still as though exhausted by the weight of time. That shot would have pierced his heart for it was in the left breast pocket where it was kept so that he wouldn't lose it. He couldn't wait to tell Mable that she had saved his life. They would save the watch. He hung it on the tree. 

Paul sat there in the parlor chair and thought how best to surprise her. Then a rat stole him from his reverie and he tried to kill it, but it scurried away. He couldn't believe it was in the house, but there it was. Unless, it was a hallucination, he considered. Not real at all. A black plague of the war upon his burdened mind. He pardoned the thought and dug into his pocket and found the ring he had bought Mable prior to his enlisting. He had planned to propose to her until the war and 40 million Huns put that on hold. He had no other gift for her than his presence and that planned proposal. It would have to do. 

As he sat there nervously, his feet felt wet and the pleasant scent of the house was suddenly overcome by the rank and acrid smell of death and gas. His boots felt soaked and his socks drunk on water. Both his feet were asleep and on fire. He shut his eyes tightly again and a bell rung and someone screamed and cracks of gunfire he once could not hear at all robbed him of this perfect stillness and threatened his reunion. No! No, he countered mad and defiantly. He rubbed his head and then they thankfully disappeared. The sounds, the dispiriting feeling, and everything besides that ambrosial scent of the pine needles of that Christmas tree. 

Then he heard an automobile puttering outside and went to the window to check. And there she was in a lavender dress with her parents imploring her to come inside. Paul smiled in anticipation. He took a deep breath and squeezed that ring in the palm of his hand tightly. He had waited all the war for this moment and it was here at last. At Christmas. It was a storybook ending. Then he hurried away from the window and stood over by the tree regretting only that he hadn't found candles to adorn it. It was an otherwise perfect choreographed intrusion. 

Mable stopped at the door and dropped a package she held. Whatever was inside shattered. Her parents gasped and tried to hold her as she covered her mouth and fell down to her knees, knowing what this meant.

"He came home," she cried. "He's home!" Tears and hysyeria overcame her as she looked upon the tree that stood alone in the parlor. She frantically searched the house expecting to find him hiding in the next room, but as she ran out of rooms, she realized he was nowhere to be found. Upon the tree was one ornament. The broken pocket watch dangling from a limb promising them time they never got. No longer counting the hours. No longer stuffed in his shirt pocket. It had saved him once, but it hadn't saved him again. Mable collapsed there on the floor, melancholy overwhelming her excitement that woefully ebbed. 

"He found a way to come home," she sobbed at her mother's knee. "To celebrate Christmas." 

She died there with him, long before she ever would. Yet, she celebrated, in her heart, each and every year, the promise kept of his improbable return. There on Christmas morning.