The Road to Home

Voyage

Sweat ran in rivulets down her head mixing with salty tears that pooled above her lips. She wiped her face repeatedly with the palms of her hands but nothing could hold back the torrent of grief and gut-wrenching loss. Two of them on the same day. How could this be happening? she thought, her head pounding now from the heat and the shock.

Pete, please turn off the radio. I can’t stand listening to The Rolling Stones right now. It doesn’t seem right. She wiped her brow again with her forearm and choked back a sob.

I’m sorry, Nelle, Pete responded somberly, reaching for the radio knob. I guess I wanted a distraction.

She noticed that his face was wet, too, and not from sweat. They both had buried their grandfathers on this day in the same cemetery, two rows apart, two hours between services, the church and graveyard overflowing with friends, family, and acquaintances exchanging astonishment and theorizing about how such a thing could happen to old buddies. Several men mentioned their memories of the toll the 1918 Spanish influenza took, how entire families had succumbed in quick ferocious suffering and how survivors were left with enduring weakness. This recent so-called Hong Kong flu did not compare in numbers, but it swept the country nonetheless, brought by returning soldiers from Asia and hitting the very young and very old particularly hard. Tens of thousands were affected by the pandemic and Louisiana was not spared. But none of this information made the passing of their grandfathers any easier to bear.

It was an exhausting day for them as they sat through services in a dreamlike state and listened to expressions of condolences. Reverend Dunn repeated the same words in both of the eulogies he delivered and his phrases kept circling through Nelle’s mind: "God delivered these souls together and wrote this in his Book of Life long ago. They are mightily blessed to share the journey into the Kingdom of Heaven together!" The reverend shouted his message exuberantly as he slammed the pulpit hard with his fist. She wanted to believe this was actually true, but more than anything, Nelle wanted the day to end and craved the solitude of home. Pete and Nelle were both relieved to see the long day end.

Pete’s slumped shoulders revealed his weariness as they drove back from the services mostly in silence. Need gas. Sorry, Pete said as he turned off the road into the Esso station. He popped open the gas lid on his yellow Volkswagen Beetle and gazed out to nowhere with his hand absently squeezing the trigger on the nozzel.

It’s done, son. Filled. The stoop shouldered attendant shuffled over to him. His leathery deep lined face and white streaks shooting through his sparse hair told his age. He smelled of oil and gasoline. Large black blotches of grease stained his gray shirt and pants. He wiped his hands with a dirty limp chamois cloth and put his hand on Pete’s shoulder. I’m real sorry about your Papaw Elmer. He was a good man. He then turned toward the window to face Nelle and grimaced at her tear stained face. Your granddad beat me every time at dominoes. I never had a chance with Ralph. I’m sorry for his passing, Nelle. That ol’ bugger was a champ in a lot of ways ‘round here.

It was the first time Nelle had smiled in days. Thank you, Lester. He liked you, too. It was all she could manage for now.

Pete handed him the $2.50 that registered on the pump, filling the tank. He remembered how one of the last conversations he had with his grandfather was Elmer’s big complaint about the inflated price of gasoline.

It was one week ago on a stifling Wednesday afternoon that the familiar group of old timers met at the Ouachita Valley Nature Preserve and Community Center to get out of the heat and watch television in cool air, parking themselves comfortably on the worn sofas and in oversized chairs in the main gathering room. A dominoes tournament was always in play with Nelle’s grandfather the reigning master to beat. The large room had crisp white walls and a checkered linoleum floor. Black and white framed photographs of the old paper mill, the one road of downtown Main Street, wagons loaded with bales of cotton pulled by horses, and the Word of God Holy Ministry original church with its tall steeple piercing the clouds, hung around the room as reminders of where the humble people of West River, Louisiana had come from. The air-conditioned community room equipped with a television was the grandest testimonial to how far they had come.

Earning a spot on the wall was more than a trophy, it was acknowledgement of the people who never gave up on West River, especially those without advantage. The sepia photograph of Ralph Dewey Lyons, Nelle’s grandfather, standing proudly beside his tugboat, cigar protruding from his mouth, when as a riverboat captain he plied the Ouachita River hung next to Elmer Everheart, Pete’s Choctaw grandfather Papaw, who stood tall and serious holding the reins of a fine black stallion. There were others, too, of course, but these were the ones that Nelle treasured most.

Among the other precious treasures displayed with veneration was the ancient vessel, now encased in glass, which contained original seeds from the time in history hundreds of years ago when the indigenous people called Mound Builders occupied the Ouachita Valley region. Nelle’s chance discovery of the rare archeological find while she was freely roaming the riverbanks eventually led to corporate development restrictions and ecological protections that ultimately united the community in historical pride. The important artifact resulted in funding for establishing the nature preserve and community center, which after a long difficult battle, had become the center of life for many of the townspeople. Granddad Ralph and Papaw Elmer, who were best friends and the grandfathers of Nelle and Pete, were primary movers in the once controversial endeavor.

HUSH! It’s time. Hurry up! Elmer’s commanding voice stopped all conversation and the group of a dozen or so men leaned forward to concentrate on the black and white television screen. Dominoes and checkers at the several game tables stopped and heads turned to face the television set. Voices went to whispers as they hushed each other. Activity ceased. All eyes were riveted on the small screen that was airing the news broadcast worldwide.

Turn it up! I can’t hear a thing! Ralph complained leaning forward from his comfortable seat, squinting his eyes at the black and white monitor trying to make out the unearthly images appearing on the screen.

Someone from the back yelled, This ain’t real you idiots! Walter Cronkite is a godless liar! I’ll get us some green cheese to go with it, he cajoled rudely, laughing at his own weak joke.

Shut up, Haywood or we’ll send you there next! Ralph quipped back. That’s a good way to get rid of you. One way ticket to the moon! Good place for you.

Everyone laughed at that remark. Except Haywood.

When it was over, the group of men sat silently for several minutes, attempting to digest what had just occurred. They knew deep down that their world had forever changed. They knew that The Man on the Moon was no longer the purview of fairy tales and myths, and they didn’t quite know what to make of it.

One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind, Neil Armstrong declared from inside his space suit as his boot imprinted on lunar soil.

The leap was giant indeed. It was challenging enough to find a settling with new modes of transportation, different devices for communication, music that made young people gyrate with abandon. And then there was the attempt at coping with the divisions of a war that no one seemed to understand and the real time footage of uniformed American boys and barefoot Vietnam villagers did little to explain. But a man on the moon?

Two old friends with strong spirits and weakened hearts, worn to fragile by time and events that even the most wizened soothsayer could never have foreseen, sat transfixed, their final grains of sand slipping through the hour glass, not sadly, nor with regret, but surely and with the peace of ready.

Ralph turned to Elmer, who was still staring at the television screen. What do you think, Bud? Think we’ll ever get there?

Oh, yes, my friend, we will. But we are going on eagle feathers.

Nelle’s father wrote to her every few months. His script had become tiny, often difficult to read, and seemed to reflect the shrinking of the rhythm of his life since he was sent away three years ago to the Feliciana State Hospital in Jacksonville after an Army veteran’s hospital in Shreveport deemed him dangerous to himself and others and chronically ill with schizophrenia.

Discharged from the Army with a medical disability, Captain Terry Alexander Lyons never adjusted to civilian life after his service in World War II that took him from raging battles in the Philippines to post-war American occupied Japan. He had served honorably as a fine commander and stellar soldier without grasping the toll a warrior’s duty exacts. When he tried to re-enlist for the Korean War, desperate to reconnect with his soldier’s life, the rejection crippled him. Voices visited him with unspeakable orders. Gruesome images haunted his dreams. He interpreted the most mundane actions as signals meant only for him. Every reaction he experienced was hugely out of proportion to an actual occurrence. His worn Bible, the only possession he had from his deceased mother, was dog-eared at underlined passages that verified, in his mind, that God spoke to him directly. His mother’s brief childlike notations in the margins reinforced this impression.

He wrote to Nelle always reminding her that all of his letters were scrutinized and from the rips on the envelope she believed it, but his use of code and constant references to being watched were heartbreaking. The last one arrived just two days before her grandfather died.

27 July, 1969

Dear Daughter Nelle,

I have to be careful because of you know who but I think they are finally paying attention. The new guy is a plant and keeps pestering me. I have tried to help him but he has stolen my cigarettes. He thinks I don’t see him but I got him red handed in the middle of the night. Almost broke his wrist when I grabbed him. He’s crazy to try that again.

Dad sent me a carton of Camels a couple of weeks ago. He keeps forgetting I like Lucky Strikes much better. It aggravates me. He knows better than to do this to me. How many times do I have to repeat myself?

I’m doing just fine so don’t you worry about anything when it comes to me. My men look up to Captain Terry and know who to come to for help. And I want you to know that those Russians are behind that lunar landing crap. We know the score there and are working on it here. It’s one thing to fight a land invasion but, guess what, we are smart enough to get them no matter where in hell they are coming from. The mathematics is not all that hard to figure out. Any good commander knows how. Captain Terry has it.

Be good. And say hello to your sisters Mary Ellen and Christine. If you could, please send some Lucky Strikes.

Daddy

Seated in her rocking chair in her small bedroom, Nelle let out a deep sigh and her shoulders sagged with the exhaustion of her sorrow. Her sisters had no interest in reading any of his letters and she had long since stopped bothering to share them. Their mother’s leaving following their father’s breakdown was a final blow to any pretense of ever knowing any kind of normal family life. But in spite of hardship and emotional turmoil, they all persevered. Mary Ellen, her older sister, had a busy nursing career in Baton Rouge that gave her a happy, fulfilling life. Christine, the youngest, would soon begin her senior year in high school. Her crowded life thrived with boys and studies. Nelle was in her final year of veterinary school and worked part time for the same law firm she had been with since high school. The Lyons girls were survivors, focused on their bright futures without dwelling on their darker past.

Her sisters’ distancing from their mother and father was understandable, but Nelle had never been able to sever the ties completely. Emotional bonds had nothing to do with time or distance and defied logic or explanation. Even after three years, which seemed a lifetime ago, she could not understand why her father wrote letters only to her or why her mother continued to send her post cards twice a year with no return address, disallowing any opportunity for mutual communication, yet, seemingly, leaving open a door. The letters and cards were tangible threads to their history and past, and she kept them all under her bed in her treasured cigar box, an old one she retrieved long ago that her grandfather had intended to discard. It still smelled like him.

She read her father’s letter again as she had half a dozen times since the funeral and knew she had to go see him. Her grandfather had visited only once, in the very beginning, and never spoke of it except to say that it was a madhouse filled with wretched and miserable souls and that she was never to go there. He brought back a paper bag that contained his son’s meager belongings and kept it stored in the bottom drawer of his old roll top desk. There it remained.

The loud slam of the screen door downstairs startled her back to the present. The garage apartment, behind her grandfather’s house, had been her home and refuge amid all of the chaos of the last few years; close enough to Granddad for safety and comfort, far enough away for privacy and independence. On this day, however, while she sat re-reading her father’s recent letter, the silence and stillness felt heavy and empty.

Pete? That you? Thank God for him. Up here. In my room. She felt better just hearing his footsteps bounding up the stairs.

When he found her seated in her rocking chair, the letter in her lap, he thought she looked like a lost child, struggling to endure another loss, searching for some reservoir of strength.

I’ll go with you, Nelle. It’s a long ride. You don’t have to do this alone, Pete told her. He stroked her cheek with his thumb, wiping away the single tear. Come here, he whispered, taking her in his arms.

Nelle sank into his comforting embrace and let him hold her. But it didn’t change her mind. No, no, Pete. I have to do this by myself. I’ll be okay. How am I going to tell my father that his father is dead? What do I say? She held onto him tighter.

Captain Terry Alexander Lyons had been a patient for over three years at the state hospital for the criminally insane. His burst of violent episodes had hurt strangers, friends, family, and most consequentially, police. He believed that the messages he received, transmitted through the large oval brass eagle ring he wore, contained orders from a high commanding authority and that he was one of the chosen few to be the keeper of secret and sacred information.

The attendant charged with aiding in his admission process at Feliciana State Hospital bore a deep indented scar on his forehead that outlined the eagle’s head of the weighty brass ring. For Terry, the ring was not only a highly sensitive receiver, but also a formidable weapon in hand-to-hand combat. The hospital attendant was among many others on the outside who carried the eagle’s scar.

Confiscation of his personal totem upon his confinement continued to upset and plague him, and he insisted on inspecting the hands of everyone he encountered. Someday, he believed, that ring was finding its way back to him and the culprit would pay. He had come to see himself as a prisoner of war, and had decided that in spite of the challenges and occasional unpleasant confrontations, he was not so bad off in this prisoner camp. He had earned the appellation Captain Terry in deference to his military background, and his explosive temper, which had earned him the esteem of other inmates, resulted in hospital staff giving him wide berth. It was impossible to predict what might set him off. He took their behavior toward him as a sign of respect. Like his father, he was almost unbeatable at dominoes and enjoyed playing for hours on end. He was also a mathematical genius, and when not playing dominoes in the large common game room, he spent hours solving algebraic problems that he gleaned from the old donated college books in the hospital’s limited library.

Captain Terry had come to see the world and all of its post-World War II turmoil as a predictable and solvable equation of interconnecting numbers and letters and he was determined to decipher and explain the answers. He had little patience for any poor soul who disputed his point of view and mistook their silence and distance for belief in his authority and superior thinking. In truth, after patients and staff witnessing his unmatched busting out of a straightjacket – twice – he was feared.

Just a little over a year ago while people gathered in the common room to watch the unfolding horror of the Martin Luther King assassination, he exploded in rage and kicked out the television screen. He ripped the straightjacket open while he was still on the floor like Houdini breaking out of chains. It took two high dose shots of thorazine to tranquilize him.

Two months later, when Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated live on television at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles as all the world watched, he did the same thing, savagely punching the orderlies trying to take him down. Glass flew everywhere, blood stained the floor, and the straightjacket was useless.

I’m in mourning! he kept yelling, I’m in mourning, you stupid bastards! I told you. I told you. I knew this was going to happen, he wailed in anguish.

Sobs wracked his body and stole his breath, as his body heaved in inconsolable pain that triggered dormant emotions let loose from Terry the boy, the son, the soldier, the husband, the father, the hurting man. The crying spells lasted for months eased by time spent outside in the courtyard where sun and fresh air slowly restored him. It is where he befriended the two crows.

The younger patients played basketball on the cracked concrete courtyard. The naked rim sagged from years of strong bodies hanging proudly for a few seconds as they plunged the ball through the opening. For most of these men, some who were still boys, it was the only sense of victory or control they could know in their regulated and demoralizing environment. Older men, many confined in the hospital for scores of years, walked the edges of the court or strolled to the end of the fence, blowing smoke through the chain links, gazing at the other world beyond. That world was green and gentle dotted with rolling hills and a sweet-smelling pine forest. The long road leading to the institution was defined by ancient oak trees, gloriously draped with tangles of Spanish moss hanging like a woman’s freshly washed curly hair. The entrance way was grand and serene, belying the misery behind the tall chain link fence, razor wire, and armed guard tower that offered the best view of the whole countryside.

Terry had claimed his spot on a stone bench next to patch of ground that had once been a garden. A long abandoned project, now overgrown snarls of weeds and vines offered shelter to tiny sparrows and good soil for insects and spiders. It was alive in the dead place around him. Winged creatures and burrowing bugs were not foiled by chain link and the guard’s gun. What amused him in the