in the works for months. That surprised me, because Eli and the army didn’t sound like a very good mix. That boy already had enough holes in his spirit from the drill sergeant who sat across from him at the dinner table; last thing he needed was to have a stranger shoot him full of more of those, especially when the world had finally turned a little more fair and cut him the break he needed. But he was an adult and could do what he liked, and he wanted to go.
Sometimes I think I should have insisted he stay home. I should have said, son, I know you, and I don’t think you’re cut out for this. Had I pushed at that, maybe we wouldn’t have fallen into all this trouble. But I was afraid to be like Eddy or Dodge, always telling Eli that he wasn’t good enough to do a thing, that he was too weak. And so I let him go. Some days I have such a sore regret about that, I can barely face the day. I feel like I ought to be ashamed to show my face to the sunrise, knowing if I’d done differently Eli might be here to see it, too.
Exactly one week after that awful day, I got a letter in the mail with an unfamiliar handwriting on the envelope. It was from Harold, the first man I married, telling me he had seen the obituary and extending his condolences. He wrote, “I am certain Specialist Olmstead was fortunate to have a mother such as you.” That was a bittersweet thing to read. It caused me to think of how young I was when I walked out on him, how I didn’t understand at all about how hard life would get, and how maybe he acted hard-hearted about Eve because he was too sorry to know what to say or do. My father was a gentle man and that wasn’t his way. I suppose I expected every man to be just like him. Well, I would learn. I’d learn the hard way. And seeing Harold refer to me as “Mrs. Olmstead” filled my eyes up with tears, because it’s the sorriest thing to know that what you’ve left behind, you can never go back to get it.
But with Eddy, I never did stir up any regret about how I handled all of that. I never felt one bit of guilt. That right side of him still doesn’t work too well, and feeling the weakness of his body has taken all the fight out of him. And I’ll tell you, if ever there was a weakness that manifests the glory of God, it’s that one. He finally sent the rest of us a measure of peace and harmony in our home. Perhaps it’s cold for me to believe that, but if it is, so be it. If I have to glean in the fields for a little of the fairness of life, don’t begrudge me what I find.
Chapter 23
Candy
He was always her victim. Not Cade, because he was too small. Always Elias. He would chase her screaming through the backyard, around the henhouse and shed, through the mud-rutted horse corral where her house with Dodge would someday stand, between the rows of cabbages in the garden and finally under the porch. Cornered between the lattice and the moldering wood, she would scream with the exhilaration of being trapped and helpless, shivering with it as he combat-crawled toward her on his belly. Even then he had a set of jungle BDUs from the thrift store, black work boots and a T-shirt that said “Marines.” His belt was loaded like a cop’s: his Boy Scout knife, his BB gun, make-believe clips of ammo made from Mike and Ike candy boxes wrapped in electrical tape, and his trick handcuffs. He had the BB gun out as he crawled, pointed at her once she ran out of space to run. Probably it wasn’t loaded. But you never knew.
“Gotcha, you goddamn VC,” he always said, drawling, imitating the men from the gun club. He was nine years old. She felt the thrill of the words he wasn’t supposed to say, profanity and blasphemy at once. His hair was short as the bristles of a currycomb. He grabbed for her ankle, but that was all he could do. At twelve she was almost too old for this game, and she fought too hard for him to subdue her