Kan Long
Purple Heart

She married him when he came home from the war in seventy-three because she always thought she would, and after two years and six months of tromping through soggy marshland, of slapping at blood-hungry mosquitoes, he hardly had the energy to protest. He proposed under a cloudy night sky a couple days after he remembered how to be Cole Grady. He knew other men started drinking fistfuls of brown liquor, screamed at no one, spent years trying to get right, but his memories spared him those textured scars. Sometimes he thought about the oiled raven hair of the almond-eyed, too young girls who painted their faces with chalky white powder and waved, almost smiling at the straggling strings of Uncle Sam's soldiers. I'm Coco, one of them had breathed in his ear. Her neck smelled like lemongrass and mint, but her mouth tasted salty. He kissed her because he had to. The next morning he stamped down the weak wooden planks of the rotting house, paid the lady, lit a cigarette, and left, walking away along the village's tan dirt road, the obstinate stalks of hay brush waving beside him.

He returned to a town unchanged and to a woman who still loved him. When he saw her again, sitting on her family's white porch swing, head tilted as she read, her dark auburn hair sliding across a delicate forehead, he thought she looked unlike the girl he remembered. Younger perhaps, than the woman who had written those letters in a steady, fragile hand- a hand that let measured optimism slip into the curves of her O's. The same hand that signed her letters first with love, and then sincerely. Only her gray-green eyes felt the same. They'd been staring at Gibson, Illinois and its brown dust, yellow grass, beer bellies, and silver wind chimes swinging over screen doors for twenty-two years. Later, they held each other without speaking, matching contours entwined underneath sweaty sheets. He listened to her breath as it punctuated the blanket of silence. I love you, he said. She blinked, then laid her cheek on his chest.

The next morning, still just Cole Grady and Sarah Walker, they walked together into town. He thought he should hold her hand so he snaked his fingers in between hers. Gibson's attempt to beautify Main Street had resulted in the purchasing and ceremonious planting of some ten or fifteen ornamental pear trees, whose laden branches housed putridly fragrant white flowers. The fetid perfume rode on the back of the spring's eastern wind, gliding silently into noses, windows, and doors.

"My dad offered me a job," said Cole.

Sarah brushed her straying bangs back behind an ear. "At the shop?"

"Yeah."

"What did you tell him?"

"I told him what we talked about. That we were getting married and leaving."

She looked up. He had always been tall, six feet with broad shoulders. He used to swim in long, jetting strokes, holding his breath for minutes, so that she could only see his winged blades above the cool water. Those tan summers of adolescent curiosity and obsession had faded before he left, and she, immobile, had allowed a quiet desperation to take root beneath her skin. She watched as his brown eyes dropped to stare at his treading leather feet.

"And your mother?" she said.

"She's always liked you."

They stopped at Betty's Diner where she ordered blueberry pancakes, ate one, and then stuck her pronged fork into his sunny-side egg. Punctured, the yolk dribbled yellow before pooling at the edges of his rough rye toast. She lifted her elbow as she sipped her chilled water and pushed her plate a fraction away. He pulled her cooling pancakes towards him, one finger hooked on the heavy ceramic plate.

"Grady?"

Cole looked up into the eager face of an old teammate, who opened his hands wide, then pushed them out in excitement. A hum swelled amongst the steady patrons: necks craned, women covered their whispers, and then they burst, spilling from their sticky cherry booths, hands braced against speckled linoleum tables as they stood to welcome home one of their own. They waited to shake his hand. Pressing their gripping, sweaty palms into his, as if they could be part of it, part of his life that never included them, as if they were surprised he had returned to their sprouting flatland. Never knowing that he had not returned for them, or for himself, but for the woman who sat patiently across from him. Sarah smiled at Mrs. Collins, and at the Joneses, because they did not see that now she too, could leave.

"Good to see you, sir," Cole said to Pastor Mills. "I'll see if I can't come by the church tomorrow."

Pastor Mills nodded. "And you, Ms. Walker?"

"Of course, Pastor," she said, holding his gaze, so that he went home satisfied, and told his wife that John Grady's son had come home a man, and that he had chosen himself a fine young lady. Cole walked home with his hands stuffed in his pockets, so Sarah laid her fingers on his elbow.

* * *

They promised to have and to hold two weeks later at Gibson's first and only Church of Latter Day Saints. A small parish, founded sometime in the eighteen-forties by a grizzly and wayward mountain man who had lost his mind to the freezing winds and resolved to die buried in rich pelts on holy ground. Now past its heyday-a time where flannel-handed, farmhand superstition could still push people towards God-few families passed through the church's small ivory frame, leaving the lukewarm sermons to hang and disappear in Sunday's air.

"Ready?"

Her eyelids flickered. The dress's embroidered lace crawled against her chest. She held her thumb at the base of her neck, pressing her mother's gold locket into her clavicle. She faced the mirror again, "Okay."

"You'll visit," said her father. He knew his daughter well enough to phrase his question like a statement.

They walked together down the planked cedar, listening to Mrs. Mill's halting organ.

She had wanted a small wedding, but Cole couldn't say no, so the whole town donned their best and showed. They spilled in, and the air staled. Ladies' wide brimmed hats tilted askew at their husbands' suited shoulders. Their warm bodies filled the pews, one by one, row after row.

* * *

They left. Took Podunk dreams from Illinois and planted them, but with the weather and the choking earth, whatever grew always shriveled then burned in the California sun. It was only Castro Valley. No oranges, no fluttering rainbow flags, no jingling cable cars-just boxy houses and rocky gravel far enough from the city and the bay that it got hair-scorching hot. Cole hadn't aged well either. Eight years and one son gone from his crew cut, Gibson Gator, golden era hung over his belt and uglied his face. He didn't seem to miss being lean, grew an older man's chuckle, started speaking louder than he had to. He couldn't be the person he thought he was, and it numbed him. Sarah cooked his hash browns and poured his coffee, all the while watching as he never got promoted-because sorry, son, you just aren't qualified-got angry and drunk, and then quit, only to hold his next job until somebody crossed him or made him feel small. He spent so much time frustrated he didn't realize his own wife started changing her mind.

That morning came and went in the same rhythm it had carried for days and months. They were customers who bought a brand of comforting, timeworn apathy that stood in intimacy's place.

"When will you be home?" she asked, fastening a gold shell earring to her right lobe.

Cole paused to lather his face. "Five or six probably. Boss has me doing inventory today." He shaved in broad strokes, eyeing his wife in the clear patches of unfogged mirror. "You heading out?"

"Volunteering again in Berkeley."

"Where?"

"St. Vincent's."

"That shelter?"

She wrapped a sweater around her shoulders.

"Seems like you work a little hard," he said, thinking she looked too good.

"Don't forget to pick up Aaron." She smoothed her dress and turned to leave. "He said you've been late the past few days. You know I hate to make Coach Teague wait for him."

"I wasn't late."

"And make sure he eats breakfast, it's on the table."

* * *

Cole felt one burning swig shy of real honest-to-God drunk when the Major rapped his military knuckles three times sharp on the door. A couple of the neighbors lingered after pulling their trash barrels to the concrete curb because the Gradys didn't seem like the type of folks to have that kind of visitor.

The guest brushed his razor-blade lapels and leaned toward the ridged door. "Private Grady. My name is Major Williams, you think you could open up?"

"Sir?" Cole opened the door and fumbled a disjointed salute.

The Major gave himself a moment, noting the tumbler in the living room, the amber liquid breath, the absent woman, the loosened necktie, a child's red handprints. "You've done your country a great service."

Cole remembered his feet dragging black mud before it dried, turned to tropical dust, caked on his heavy boots. Nothing but the sound of war-tired cicadas and somebody's parched whistling, the metal in his hands feeling too heavy. "I don't know, sir."

"It's yours, Grady." The Major looked curtly at his feet, giving the younger man a chance to come to terms. He could've retired a few years back now, but decided he couldn't face standard time, so when they offered him a job handing out five ounce consolations, he took it. He hoped his bum tire would hold out on the way back. "Grady."

Cole reached.

* * *

She changed her mind every so often, put on a cocktail dress, and let some pool hall roughneck scratch her itch. Occasionally, she shuffled the deck, and a glide-talking, city sleezer on the rise would get lucky. One of them took her to the city after they rolled around on rented sheets, so this one she kept. He wined and dined her country palate at restaurants with foreign names and small, seasonal portions. She started to like reductions and foie gras, realized money made Union Square a beating heart, even claimed to prefer Napa's little red wines over most others. She had developed a poisonous nostalgia for the things she had never known. Her companion sometimes talked about his own family, which made her think about hers. She remembered Aaron's blonde hair against the park grass, the quilt beneath her legs, Cole's smile as he panted, chasing their son.

She heard first from Liz Harmon, who'd heard from her little boy, who heard from Aaron, that her husband was really something. The pinnacle of masculine red, white, and blue-somebody worth being married to. She tried to see what Liz saw, but couldn't. Didn't see Cole storming jungle, gut-bound, saving. Didn't know that man. She reeled a little listening to Liz, folded her grocery list along six edges, and pushed on the indented creases. She excused herself, leaned against the butcher's smeared window, counted marbled ruby steaks, saw too much blood, found canned peaches, pushed her clicking cart, thought she should buy apples for Aaron, then dropped several. She knelt to gather them, her hands unwilling against firm green skin. She bought them anyway.

Cole opened the door, and she pushed the brown-bag groceries into his chest. "You got champagne?" he asked.

"We have something to celebrate don't we?" she said, and walked by him.

"Do we?"

"Cole."

He nudged the door shut. "What?"

"I ran into Liz Harmon at the store." She folded her arms and leaned a pointed shoulder against the foyer wall.

He walked away toward the tiled kitchen, his plaid shoulder almost rubbing hers. "How's Herb doing?"

"I'm sure he's fine." She watched him. Still tall, straight backed, broad shoulders when they weren't sloping. A good father, drunk, but better than his. Either too good a husband to embarrass them, or just too small a man. She looked for something. For whatever she had missed before. "She told me, Cole."

"Told you what?" He pawed a hand at his condensing beer.

"You never mentioned it," she said.

"I was waiting to tell you."

"But you never even talk about it."

"I didn't think you'd want to know," he said.

"You always said there was nothing to tell."

Cole looked down at the latticed place mat.

"Why wouldn't I want to know?" she said.

"Because that's not what you wanted from me." She didn't know what she wanted, so he let her leave then come home to lie cold and untouched next to him, smelling like another man's hardworking sweat. He had something today though, because she kissed him before she went to bed. Outside, hard green buds began to push through the crumbling bark of the knobby desert trees.

* * *

Cole understood a few days later. Made an excuse, got the day, the boss didn't seem to mind. He drove a few towns over, found a murky, piss stinking VA bar, sat himself on a rusty maroon stool, and jerking a finger, ordered what that guy's having. He swilled, bent an elbow, rubbed the rim of his glass, waited for somebody drunker and sadder to start talking. When they did, he asked enough questions, so that an answer came rambling, half-shouted and slurred out of a lieutenant's mouth.

Private Grady, real patriot, only man to come out alive. Guy survived on helmetfuls of milky rice water, limped on advanced gangrene and trench foot fungus through four villages. Dripped blood and pus down almost paved roads, waded into flooded paddies. The villagers hadn't cared about the Viet Kong and the black smoke columns blowing their way, but without Grady they wouldn't have known about it. Wouldn't have known to hide their daughters and their grains, or to trade plumed prize-fighting cocks for shotguns and shells. Saved lives, hero, the Major had said.

Cole said he didn't know the president gave medals for a losing war. A dead-looking man across the bar lifted a greasy head and raised his glass. Cheers, he said then choked. Cole heard that Private Arthur Grady lived two towns away in Oakland, that he peed himself around the clock, that he couldn't feel his legs, that the city would never really fund the vet hospital. The tortured pink building by the highway. Nothing Cole had known before. He only knew about the black velvet box. He clapped the dead man's shoulder, laying a twenty by his veiny hand. Sarah had dinner waiting.

* * *

There was a ceremony. Fitted between the yawning idleness of folding lawn chairs dragged street side and drinking. The mayor knew to play town hall politics, wanted to keep his seat, so he thought he'd stir up the town spirit, appeal to their venerations. He nudged his wife, sent her into the kitchen for pies and cakes, got his daughter stirring cloudy lemonade. He printed flyers on loose half-sheaves of colored paper, inviting you and yours to a celebratory get together. Got a bold type, and made people feel like friendly neighbors.

Cole had taken to wearing beefy American t-shirts and his old dog tags-504-98-0987, B positive-clinking against his chest. Found he had more to talk about, shot the shit with whoever wanted to-yeah, you heard about this El Nino or Jefferson High's looking tough this year-barely thinking that maybe the difference rested in the people listening. Combed his long hair back with water and wax, and got his whole family together for the revelry in his honor. His son sat waiting on the couch, pinned tight by a little boy's button up, his legs barely long enough to dangle. Cole hitched his pants and saw his wife step out of their bedroom wearing a dress he'd never seen or heard of.

Cole got thank you's and buddy's, a few salacious eyes, hearty slaps on the back, the full bargain for stealing another man's hero. He waited for some kind of unflinching guilt to muddy his waters, some residual concept of impropriety coming to flush his cheeks, but it never came.

Sarah knew nothing with certainty. Lately, she had become the wife of somebody she wanted to be married to, which seemed to her an unsteady truth. She waited to hear some kind of story, the reason of it, but Cole made himself busy doing other things.

* * *

She left early, claiming fatigue, really did have an errand to run. Returned home later, pushing through their unlocked front door-Cole said he didn't care if they weren't in Gibson only criminals and sexual deviants used locks-to find the television humming, and her husband sprawled and sleeping. He opened his liquor heavy lids three times before focusing on his wife.

"Hey," he said, shifting his elbow under his head. The news gleamed in the whites of his eyes.

She sat, perched against his stomach, her arm falling behind his back. "Hey." The local salt and pepper newscaster gestured behind him, explaining the details of another East Oakland shooting. The camera panned the emptied street. Brownish streetlight and a red haze, the caution tape flicked in the wind.

"Get that errand done?" he asked.

She nodded and rubbed her bare arms. "I went to see Dr. Foster last week." She moved her hand to his shoulder and held it there.

"You all right?"

She turned her head towards the news. A car company found leaking radioactive waste, poisoned somebody's well. She leaned her cold cheek against her clasped hands. "I'm pregnant."

He blinked. Whatever she thought, she didn't know. Would never know that Private Arthur Grady lived stump footed, got by on crutched stabs into the pavement, ate alone except for the paid company on Saturdays. That Cole did it because even if that kind of fakeness made him a stone-cold liar come judgment day, it would always seem worth the price. Cole thought a man like that would have gladly given up what was his, especially if he knew the fellow who got it was a rundown drunk with an almost family. "Okay," he said.

Sarah looked up. "What?"

"I said, okay."

Her hands moved to his face. A pink flower and its small green leaves sat quivering in the night air outside their flat blue house. It sat on the ugliest tree either of them had ever seen. Mottled and twisted against itself. A child's rope swing dangled from an errant branch, moving in the Santa Ana wind.

_ _

Kan Long expects to graduate from Boston University's College of Arts and Sciences in May 2010 with a BA in Psychology. She is from Oakland,
California. She is the recipient of the 2009 Florence Engel Randall Fiction Award.

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