After the Flag Has Been Folded Read online

  DEFECTIVE SHELL KILLS ROGERSVILLE GUN CHIEF

  ROGERSVILLE • One of his own shells, apparently defective, killed a 35-year-old Army career artilleryman from Rogersville Sunday, his family learned Monday. S-Sgt. David P. Spears was operating a 185 millimeter [sic] howitzer against a hostile force when a round detonated prematurely, the War Department notified his wife. The soldier volunteered for service 15 years ago and served in Korea during that war and again in 1959. He was stationed in Germany in 1955–56 and for the past three years had been stationed in Hawaii. Mrs. Spears and their three children had returned to Rogersville from Hawaii about six weeks ago. Mrs. Spears is the former Shelby Jean Mayes of Rogersville.

  That newspaper story always troubled me. I couldn’t help but wonder if Daddy had been careless. He was a veteran soldier. I thought he should have been more aware, taken better precautions to keep himself out of harm’s way, for our sake. I was distraught by the idea that his own shell killed him.

  My own ill-formed concept of good and evil, coupled with the newspaper accounts of Daddy’s death, left me wondering if my father was in some way responsible for his own death. Had he done something wrong that caused the cannon to misfire? Was he goofing off, not paying attention? Had he cursed God? Used God’s name in vain? For what, in all of heaven and earth, could have caused Daddy to abandon his family this way?

  As a child, I considered God to be akin to a senior accountant, with a stash of sharpened number-two pencils and a thick ledger book. His watchful eye never missed a wrongdoing. In my effort to avoid the problem of pain, I searched for suffering’s common denominator. I knew being a good girl was mandatory for blessings. And just as surely, I knew that doing something wrong would always result in trouble. I was struggling to figure out what wrongdoing had caused this tragedy to befall our family.

  GRANNY LEONA, DADDY’S mama, was a crippled woman. She suffered from bad arthritis and poor circulation. Before we went to Hawaii, she shuffled around the wood floors in her home leaning on crutches or a walker. But during our absence she’d weakened more, so she relied on a makeshift chair attached to four training-type wheels to get around. Her chair would not maneuver through our dirt front yard. And even if she could’ve managed that, how was she supposed to get into our little trailer house? The steps to the door were too steep for Granny and her walking tools. So she did not come see us when we moved back from the island or on the day we learned that Daddy was dead.

  Granny lived in a tin-roofed, clapboard house near the corner of Virginia and Elm Springs Roads in the Lyons Park section of Church Hill, a nearby town. Lyons Park was a community of good-hearted people who feared their fiery preacher. Granny’s rental house had a wooden stoop, window screens, and a coal stove in the middle of the living room. Bloody Highway 11-W ran directly behind her house. From the kitchen window at the back of the house, Granny could watch the traffic buzz by or keep count of how many trips the black kids from up the road made to Hurd’s or Polson’s, the two neighborhood markets along the highway. Sometimes Pap would take Frankie and me to Hurd’s to get a Coca-Cola, or as Pap called it, “a dope.” Pap was Daddy’s father.

  His real name was Howard Spears, but nobody called him that. Everybody in the family just called him Pap. People in town called him Red because of his burnished freckles and red mop of hair. Pap was a quiet man, who liked to tease us kids with pinches to our inner thighs or by rubbing his unshaven face up against our tender cheeks. He rolled his own cigarettes with Prince Albert tobacco and filled a lighter with fuel from a blue-and-yellow tin can with a pointy tip. Pap could not write or read anything except his name, and he never drove a car. None of my grandparents did. No reason to learn, since they were all too poor to buy one anyway.

  Frankie was old enough to go the store alone. I wasn’t. But I was big enough to carry coal in from the heap that sat in the corner of the yard, and I was big enough to go next-door and sit on the porch swing and visit with Mr. and Mrs. Parker and their daughter, Priscilla. Going to Granny’s house was usually a lot of fun.

  But after the man in the jeep showed up, I felt nervous about going to see Granny Leona. I’d never seen her upset before. The newspaper accounts of my father’s death had elevated our family from being part of the town’s overlooked and unimportant to people of honor and sacrifice. The war hero’s family.

  Mama was quiet on the drive out to Granny’s. Frankie and I were in the backseat. Linda sat up front. Sister Linda had been at Mama’s side, or on her lap, ever since the man in the jeep showed up. She even slept with Mama. I’d heard more than one person remark: “Look at that baby. She won’t remember her daddy. I feel so bad for her.” Whenever I heard that, I would study Linda. I didn’t know exactly what I was looking for. How should grief look on a seven-year-old? I couldn’t tell how much she understood. Mostly she’d play quietly with her dollies, or she’d sit and stare at Mama. From time to time she’d reach over and grasp Mama’s hand.

  I wanted to be next to Mama like that. But I knew that such affection would not be welcome from me or Frankie. We were too old. I’d heard Aunt Gertie make several remarks about Mary Ellen’s inappropriate affection for her son. Mary Ellen was Daddy’s cousin. She had red hair that I thought made her look just like a movie star. And soft eyes that crinkled like wax paper when she smiled. Mary Ellen was always smiling and always touching folks, especially kids. But I could see Aunt Gertie’s point. Mary Ellen’s boy was a lean, lanky thing. When he sat in his mama’s lap, his legs hung halfway down to her shins and his arms were near about as long as hers. He wasn’t as old as Frankie yet, but he looked too old to be hanging on to his mama all the time. I couldn’t remember Frankie ever even hugging our mama, much less sitting on her lap. He was far too mature for that.

  I tried to be. But in truth, I longed for such comfort. I wished Mary Ellen would pull me onto her lap and hold me, like she did her boy, or Mama did Linda. Most of the time, though, I just pretended my hurt wasn’t as big as Linda’s because, after all, I was the older sister.

  Granny Leona knew better, of course. She didn’t tolerate such nonsense. When I walked into her house that day, she stretched out her arms at me, and I ran right for them. I didn’t care who saw me. Burying myself in her fragile embrace, I cried and cried like a big ole bawl baby. With nary a word, she comforted me. In her arms, I was able to turn loose all the chaos of the past few days. I didn’t have to pretend my hurt wasn’t real. I didn’t have to hide a thing from Granny Leona. And unlike other folks throughout my life, Granny never ever told me I needed to get over my father’s death. I think it’s because she knew she never would.

  AFTER THE MAN in the jeep came, it seemed our little trailer became the town’s social center. Relatives I didn’t even know I had turned out. I always suspected some of them came for the fried chicken and pound cake. And I suppose some came to gawk at the widow and her children. I imagined that when they returned to their mountain hovels they said prayers for us and thanked the Lord God Almighty that they didn’t have to deal with all of our problems.

  I’ve heard it said that Buddhists believe it’s wrong to let a person die hungry. Well, Southern Baptists think it’s a sin to let the grieving starve. Aluminum-foil-covered platters and bowls filled our fridge, covered the counters and the dinette table. Even the four chairs held plates of cornbread, pound cake, and banana pudding, pepper-fried pork chops and golden fried chicken. There were glass casserole dishes filled with cheese grits, macaroni and cheese, jelled salads, and piles of baking soda biscuits, yeast rolls, and black walnut bread. There was so much food that when folks came to pay their respects, they didn’t have a place to sit. They just stood by the front door, fiddling with the slide in the screen. Mama didn’t like us kids playing with the screen door slide, but she never said anything when grown-ups messed with it. I figured it was because Mama would just as soon they not stay too long. The trailer was crowded enough with just us and Grandpa Harve.

  Folks usually didn’t linger, but t
hey all said the same thing. “I’m so sorry.”

  Sometimes tears would well up in their eyes and dribble down their chins. I don’t believe there is anything more troubling to a kid than to see a roomful of grown-ups cry. I don’t think Mama liked it either. She did less crying than some of the women who dropped by.

  But worse than the crying to me were those apologies everybody kept making. I didn’t know what to say to the kindly folks who’d give me a sideways hug and say how sorry they were about my daddy. It was confusing. When we were little kids, before Linda was born, Mama had forced me to say “sorry” to Frankie after I’d bloodied his nose with a swift kick intended to keep him from knuckle-punching me again. I said it even though I wasn’t the least bit sorry. I was proud I’d outdone him for once. Frankie would likely say I was way too smug about it.

  Mama had also made me say I was sorry for hoarding three kittens in my bedroom closet in Oahu. But I didn’t have to be prodded to say “sorry” when she and Daddy drove by Matsumoto’s store in Whitmore Village and saw me shimmy up out of a sewer hole.

  New sewer lines were being constructed in the neighborhood. My buddy Bernadette and I would pry open the iron lid and climb down into those dank holes. Then we would wander the shadowy underworld. The cement rounds were spacious, clean, dry, and cool, and in some places, where the sun shone through the sewer lids, full of eerie contours. But what I liked most was the secrecy of what we did. Until, of course, that day my parents drove by.

  “Get home now!” Mama shouted at me.

  I went straight to the house and pulled out the biggest Bible in the house. The gold-leaf one with the colored picture of a pale, frail Jesus on the front. It took both hands to carry that Bible. Placing it on my bed, I shut my door. Then, kneeling bedside and crying all over that picture, I asked Jesus to protect me from Daddy’s belt.

  As far back as I could recall, Daddy had never whipped me, but the belt’s thickly woven threads and brass buckle left an impression on me nonetheless. I was hoping to never give him cause to use it. “Oh, Jesus,” I cried. “I’m sorry. Please forgive me. I promise to never go in the sewer hole again. Don’t let Daddy whip me.”

  When they got home that afternoon, my parents never even said a word to me about my underworld adventures. I figured God had answered my prayers. There was simply no other explanation for it: Salvation belonged to the truly repentant.

  Mama didn’t know it yet, but there were other things I was truly sorry for. Terrible secrets far darker than those creepy sewers I’d crawled through.

  So right after Daddy’s death, whenever some kindly adult would lean over and say to me, “I am so sorry about your daddy,” I just wanted to run screaming from the room, yelling, “It’s not your fault! It’s not your fault!”

  Because I sensed all along that it was mine.

  I knew it from the moment Frankie slammed his best knuckle punch up against the trailer wall and hollered: “Those Charlies killed my daddy!” I didn’t say anything to anybody, but I knew better. Whoever Charlie was, he hadn’t killed Daddy—I had.

  It seemed reasonable to me that if salvation resulted from repentance, then certainly the reverse was true. The unrepentant would not go unpunished. As Mama went wailing through the house, asking “Why? Why me?” I wanted to cry out, “Because of me, Mama! God took Daddy because I was bad!”

  But I couldn’t risk losing her. So I didn’t.

  And although I have told others about my wrongdoing, I have never told Mama that it was all my fault Daddy died. I’ve only told that secret to people whose love I can afford to live without.

  The night before Daddy shipped out to Vietnam, I had been to a Christmas party at church. Our Sunday-school teachers gave Frankie and me each a sack filled with peppermints, peanuts, an apple, an orange, malted milk balls, and, at the very bottom of the brown bag, two chocolate footballs wrapped in gold foil.

  Running into the house, I found my father lying on the couch with his head in Mama’s lap. “Looky what I got!” I squealed, shoving the bag under his nose.

  Taking the sack from me, Daddy began to pluck through the treasures. He took out the apple and placed it on his chest. Then, digging deeper, he found one of the foil-wrapped footballs. “Mmmm, this is the one I want,” he said, pinching the tiny football between his thumb and forefinger.

  I studied the candy’s shiny foil and then looked into Daddy’s sky blue eyes. “Oh, no, sir!” I cried. “You can’t have that. That’s my favorite!”

  Then, pulling the bag from him, I fished for a malted milk ball and offered that to him. “But you can have this one, sir.”

  Shaking his head sideways, Daddy again clutched the bag and held up the shiny football. “Nope. This is my favorite. This is the one I want.”

  Frankie cozied up beside me. “You can have mine, sir,” he said, elbowing me aside.

  Then, looking into my face, Daddy reached up and stroked the side of my head and said, “No, it’s okay. I was only teasing. I didn’t really want any candy. I would like the apple, though.”

  Reaching into his pants pocket and whisking out his pocketknife, Daddy began whittling away the apple’s skin. He always peeled his apples before eating them. He was pretty good at taking off all the skin in one long, red curl.

  Placing the chocolate football in my open palm, Daddy grinned. I tore off the candy’s foil and popped it into my mouth. Mama smiled at the two of us.

  If my father had come home from Vietnam alive, I probably never would have remembered any of this. But as a child I believed the reason he died was because God was teaching me a lesson. A lesson so painful I couldn’t tell anyone, not even Granny Leona.

  The funny thing was that Granny believed it was her fault Daddy died. She told me this one morning, in the weeks after his death, while she stirred a pan of oatmeal over the stove’s gas flame. “I know why God took Dave,” she said.

  I held my breath. I didn’t think there was any way she could have known about the football. I hoped Daddy hadn’t told her how selfish I’d been.

  “It’s all my fault,” she continued. I put two bowls on the table and fetched the can of Pet milk out of the fridge. “I was worried about how we was going to put Doug through high school. We didn’t have money for school clothes or books. I prayed and asked God for the money. Your mama has signed over part of Dave’s Social Security check to me.”

  Doug was the youngest of Granny’s eight kids. He was only a couple years older than Frankie, so he seemed more like a cousin than an uncle to us.

  Granny switched off the knob, and the flame died down. “God answered my prayer,” she said. “The money from Dave will get Doug through high school. But I’m sure sorry I prayed that prayer.”

  I wanted to run over and hug Granny. To tell her it wasn’t her fault. To tell her how I’d been the one responsible for Daddy’s death. Instead, I sat down and topped my oatmeal with a splash of Pet milk, a dab of butter, and two spoonfuls of sugar.

  Thereafter, whenever folks stopped by the house to pay their respects and told me how sorry they were about Daddy dying, I wanted to shout out at ’em. I wanted them to know nobody was sorrier Daddy had died than me. And maybe Granny Leona.

  His blood stained our souls.

  CHAPTER 3

  western union

  THE MAN IN THE JEEP HAD TOLD MAMA HE DIDN’T KNOW WHEN DADDY’S BODY MIGHT BE ARRIVING. HE SAID she’d hear something soon. Over the next few days she received all sorts of Western Union telegrams. By then I had come to realize that telegrams were a way of rushing bad news to folks.

  This was the telegram the trembling soldier delivered. It was dated July 25, 1966, at 7:45 P.M.

  MRS SHELBY SPEARS.

  THE SECRETARY OF THE ARMY HAS ASKED ME TO EXPRESS HIS DEEP REGRET THAT YOUR HUSBAND STAFF SERGEANT DAVID P. SPEARS DIED IN VIETNAM ON 24 JULY 1966. HE WAS OPERATING A 105 MILLIMETER HOWITZER AGAINST A HOSTILE FORCE WHEN A ROUND DETONATED PREMATURELY. PLEASE ACCEPT MY DEEPEST SYMPATHY. THIS CONFIRMS OFFICIAL NOTIF
ICATION MADE BY A REPRESENTATIVE OF THE SECRETARY OF THE ARMY.

  JC LAMBERT MAJOR GENERAL USA THE ADJUTANT GENERAL.

  Another one arrived the next day. It was dated July 26, 1966, 12:09 P.M.

  MRS SHELBY SPEARS

  THIS CONCERNS YOUR HUSBAND, STAFF SERGEANT DAVID P. SPEARS. THE ARMY WILL RETURN YOUR LOVED ONE TO A PORT IN THE UNITED STATES BY FIRST AVAILABLE MILITARY AIRLIFT. AT THE PORT REMAINS WILL BE PLACED IN A METAL CASKET AND DELIVERED (ACCOMPANIED BY A MILITARY ESCORT) BY MOST EXPEDITIOUS MEANS TO ANY FUNERAL DIRECTOR DESIGNATED BY THE NEXT OF KIN OR TO ANY NATIONAL CEMETERY IN WHICH THERE IS AVAILABLE GRAVE SPACE. YOU WILL BE ADVISED BY THE UNITED STATES PORT CONCERNING THE MOVEMENT AND ARRIVAL TIME AT DESTINATION. FORM ON WHICH TO CLAIM AUTHORIZED INTERMENT ALLOWANCE WILL ACCOMPANY REMAINS. THIS ALLOWANCE MAY NOT EXCEED $75 IF CONSIGNMENT IS MADE DIRECTLY TO THE SUPERINTENDENT OF A NATIONAL CEMETERY. IF CONSIGNMENT IS MADE TO A FUNERAL DIRECTOR FOR INTERMENT IN A NATIONAL CEMETERY, THE MAXIMUM ALLOWANCE IS $150. IF BURIAL TAKES PLACE IN A CIVILIAN CEMETERY, THE MAXIMUM ALLOWANCE IS $300. REQUEST NEXT OF KIN ADVISE BY COLLECT TELEGRAM ADDRESSED: DISPOSITION BRANCH, MEMORIAL DIVISION, DEPART OF THE ARMY WUX MB WASHINGTON, D.C. NAME AND ADDRESS OF FUNERAL DIRECTOR OR NAME OF NATIONAL CEMETERY SELECTED. IF ADDITIONAL INFORMATION CONCERNING RETURN OF REMAINS IS NEEDED YOU MAY CALL COLLECT AREA CODE 202 OXFORD 7–7756 OR 5–6553. DISPOSITION BRANCH MEMORIAL DIVI DEPT OF ARMY.

  Mama did not discuss these telegrams with us kids. She didn’t even read them to us, but we knew by the phone calls she made to Daddy’s brothers James and Hugh Lee and her own brothers Carl and Woody that she was upset. She didn’t know when Daddy’s remains would get to town or what condition they might be in. And she didn’t know where to bury him. She could bury him at the town cemetery in McCloud where Daddy grew up, or at Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, D.C.