Distant Flame

November 1918

November 1918 SHOULD HAVE CALLED the old woman to stoke thefire when I woke two hours ago, but there is sanctity in these sheets that should hold me alone, as in my dreams. Through the tall windows I can see the softness of a sky lowering for flurries. Church bells rang deep into the night, and I know another war has ended, though blood will run from it for years to come. My gown is bunched around my knees, but I shall not move to straighten it, not yet. Soon, I will rise and walk to the window and look out and watch the train come cutting through the city and place my memories in order once again. The blood from all wars stays damp, will not evaporate or soak into the shattered soil. Ifeel so very old, and quietness is entering me, a grace even, and yet I cannot make peace with this life of yearning. I cannot. I have long since expected to awaken without old love on the front porches of memory. I want to takeforgetfulness with my coffee, but I dare not forget beauty. Of all the things we may lose toward God, the last should be beauty, those moments given to us when the world opens toward symmetry. I can see the birds in my leafless oak tree, trembling with cold, knowing it is past timefor flight south—to the enduring warmth and wonder of latitude. They bring color to the last seasons of my world. Lives, too, have seasons, I have learned, and in spring one should love intensely, feel the world whole, as if it breathed and moved at a touch. So many have I 302 PHILIP LEE WILLIAMS their unloved lives to mourn at the end, their childless days, their happiness . I cannot hear the sorrow of those lost lives in Europe, dead not of shellfire and mud hut of human stupidity and malice. If there is a heaven for most generals, it is shallow and distant, and all who live there defy orders and move awayfrom grief. Such philosophy from the old is tolerated. I may lie here in these twisted damp hedsheets waiting for the train to slice through Boston and be called the Old Woman of Beacon Street. They believe they know me, understand my heart, but they are wrong. I rise now and walk to the window, and it shudders with the cold, and below me, there in the breathing city, are the bundled young already working, selling automobiles, cutting fabric, marking patterns for dresses and shirts, waving their endless banners and wondering when the boys will come home. This room is very cold, and the air billows out my gown. But even the soldiers who come home, who step down gangplanks in the harbor to the brass bands and tears, will never again be whole. Once we are broken, the healing comes only in dreams. I speak across the years to you, Charlie. You know I am speaking to you. I will speak to you until the light of escape gathers me inside with its deathless charity. I will make a person of these bones and speak the words, as though sentences may grow sacred through their ordering. I did see your advertisement in the Boston Globe, but I was ill and thought to come later. Then I read that you had passed away the very night you spoke, and I wept for days. No one knew why, and I could not say, but by ways known only to God, I sent a message that I pray has found its way to your heart. Our child, a son I named Charles,was born in England. My father was not in London when I arrived, and so I was able to invent a husband who died of disease. I thought that when I sailed backfor Boston, I would come with an infant in arms, but our child was small and did not thrive. Now he lies at eternal rest in another land, and I pray that he hasfound you in heaven. I did not know a girl could bear so many tears as I shed for him. He would have grown into an honorable man, Charlie, and he looked so much like you that I achedfor years at such losses. And oh my Charlie, how beautiful his eyes were! But time moves us onward, and I married a man named Simmons, and he was a good husband to...