saw yesterday.”
Dennis seemed to give this profound thought the weight it deserved, finally saying, “I g-got a p-pay-per-view movie last night. Real g-good—lots of action. But I have no idea w-what it was about.”
“You see? That’s what I’m saying. How can you trust anything you think you remember?”
“P-pancakes and sausage patties,” Dennis said. When all that earned him was a puzzled look from CJ, he explained. “Breakfast on July 7, 1972. P-pancakes and sausage patties.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Of c-course I’m kidding. I wasn’t even b-born yet.”
CJ chuckled. “Okay, you’re not allowed to mess with me when I’m trying to be philosophical.”
“Is that what you c-call it?” Dennis countered, his eyes returning to the flat-screen TV hanging over the bar. Then he asked, “Was it really a Friday?”
“Was what a Friday?”
“July 7, 1972. Was it a Friday?”
“How would I know?”
“Well, it just seems to be an odd d-detail to throw in there if it w-wasn’t true.”
“If you want to know about memory,” Rick chimed in, “you ought to talk to some of these veterans who come in here. These guys can recount practically their whole tours, down to what they ate, what the weather was like on any given day, and everything about the guys they served with. It’s weird.”
“And hardly any of it’s probably true,” CJ said. “A good story is better with details.”
“I don’t know,” Rick said. He took a break from pulling glasses out of the dishwasher, wiped his hands on his pants, and joined CJ and Dennis at the end of the bar. “You ask these old guys to tell a story, and they recount it the exact same way. Every time.”
“Tell a story enough times and even the made-up stuff sticks.” CJ paused and watched the hockey game for a few seconds and then looked back at Rick. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure these men have some great stories. I remember how Uncle Edward used to talk my ear off about Korea. So who’s going to quibble about a point or two?”
Rick seemed to consider that, and it seemed to CJ that Dennis had checked out of the conversation, even though he knew his friend didn’t miss much.
“So where does that leave us?” Rick asked. “Memories, I mean.”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” CJ said.
While it may have been an unfulfilling end to an interesting topic, Rick simply shrugged off the metaphysical ramifications and returned to the task of unloading the dishwasher.
But CJ couldn’t dismiss the question so easily. Because the opposite side of the coin from those who could recall the past in exhaustive detail were those who lived in the moment, because the past is like a ghost, or a novel with missing chapters.
Most commonly, though, memory found a comfortable middle ground, where the past was sufficiently muddled to make recalling details an inexact process, and the present was given context by past experience.
Yet even here in Adelia, there were exceptions. Some events had a certain substance that fused them permanently into one’s consciousness, where every detail could be called forth and replayed with exacting clarity. Usually these were brief moments—singular instances in which the emotional energy of the event—either for good or bad—preserved the scene like a fossil in amber, like the war stories Rick had heard.
Therein was the problem. Because while these small vignettes remained forever vivid, eternally poignant, the memories that served to bookend them were subject to the normal rules of deteriorating recall. The events that should have helped lend the clear moments their context became fickle, untrustworthy, rendering the precise memories, themselves, imprecise. This was the dilemma that had haunted CJ through all of his adult life.
Most of the day that Graham had killed Eddie was as vivid as the clearest digital television signal. CJ could remember nearly every step from the time he left the house with the older boys to the first few moments after the fatal shot. He could repeat most of the substance of the conversation that carried them to their spots in the woods—the verbal sparring, the accusations. The fierce anger in Graham’s eyes. And of course the whole time he sat beneath the maple, waiting for a deer to show, was there in his memory, all of it intact. Like the veterans and their war stories, CJ could recount this one day with great clarity. He could close his eyes and feel the cold on his face, and smell the decaying leaves that littered the ground. He could see in his mind’s eye