“This is Father Sasoon. He’s not formally a ‘father’ any longer, but he’s still called one out of respect,” I said.
“Bonsoir, mademoiselle,” Father Sasoon said.
“He’s a defrocked priest?” she said.
“I think that’s the term normally used.”
“Defrocked for what?” she said.
“I’ve always been afraid to ask,” I said. “Father, let me have a word or two with Rosita, then we’ll take the next step.”
“As you wish, my friend,” he said.
I reached into my coat pocket and took out a small felt-covered box. “This belonged to my grandmother. My mother gave it to me just before I shipped out. She said, ‘If you meet the right girl, give her this.’”
“You’re asking me to marry you?”
“That’s one way of looking at it. I actually think it’s already a done deal.”
“A what?”
“You’re the most magnificent woman I’ve ever known. I’ve never seen eyes like yours. I’ve never known anyone as brave. Since last March, I’ve had you in my mind every minute of every day. You think I’m just going to walk away? That’s a ridiculous idea.”
“You know almost nothing about me.”
“I know everything about you. You radiate light. You’re unafraid. You probably have an IQ of over 160.” I took the ring out of the box. It was set with two diamonds and two sapphires. “How about it, Rosita? You could get stuck with worse than me. You’ll love Texas. I was thinking about getting us a place down on the Gulf. It’s like the Riviera without the riffraff.”
And that’s where and how we got married, between the Louvre and the Place de la Concorde, not far from the tomb of Napoleon and the bells Quasimodo swung on, in the last week of October 1945, in a European city where the ashes from chimney pots rose into the sky, perhaps as a reminder of the past or as a harbinger of the future.
Chapter
7
BY CHRISTMAS EVE of the same year I had been processed out of the army and we had taken up residence at Grandfather’s ranch. At sunrise the fields and the barn and trees had been limed with frost, the stock tank by the windmill glazed with ice. As the sun rose higher into a flawless blue sky, the day warmed and the trees began ticking with water; steam rose from the tank and squirrels began racing about in the pecan orchard. It was another fine winter day in a land where all four seasons could visit us within a week’s duration. From the front porch I watched a Western Union messenger come up the dirt road on a service cycle. He dismounted and pulled his goggles up on his face with his thumb, the skin white around his eyes. “Beautiful day, huh, Mr. Holland?” he said.
“None better,” I said.
I tipped him and sat down on the steps and opened the telegram and read it. There are moments when you make decisions that seem inconsequential. Later you discover that your life has been changed in an inalterable way by a choice as arbitrary as not dropping a message in a drawer and forgetting about it. I reread the telegram, then folded it and stuck it in my shirt pocket. Let go of the past, I told myself.
Unfortunately, upon my return to civilian life, I had entered a troubling period marked by indecision and depression. At my age, the idea of sitting in a classroom and listening to a professor lecture on books I had probably already read did not seem very appealing. Also, I had begun to dream every third or fourth night about the war. I didn’t tell Rosita about my dreams, nor did I mention them to my mother or to Grandfather. One night I sleepwalked into the kitchen and woke up only when Rosita turned on the light. I was at the breakfast table, my ears roaring with the sound of tank treads, Grandfather’s ancient pistol in my hand.
Now Rosita was sitting behind me in a rocker. She was wearing jeans and half-top suede boots I had bought her, a magazine on her lap.
“Want to take a ride to Kerrville?” I said.
“What for?” she asked.
“Hershel Pine is coming in on the bus and wants to get together,” I replied.
“Is he all right?”
It wasn’t an unreasonable question, considering the times. The revisionists had not had adequate time to rewrite our recent history, and for many of us who had been participants, who knew war for the dirty business it was, resuming old relationships was sometimes another way of keeping the wounds green.
I took the telegram from my pocket and unfolded it and looked again at the words pasted in strips across the pale yellow paper. “He says, ‘Told you I would pay you back.’”
IT TOOK AN hour and a half on the old road, most of it unpaved, to reach the café in Kerrville that served as the bus stop for our intrastate line. When Hershel stepped down from the bus, he was wearing an ill-fitting suit, the kind you could buy off a Robert Hall rack for twelve dollars, and a clip-on bow tie and brown shoes that didn’t go with the suit. The backs of his hands were tanned and freckled, the top of his forehead pale from wearing a hat in the sun.
He carried a cardboard tube and a suitcase held together with a belt. “Y’all are a sight for sore eyes,” he said. “The docs took off three of my toes. I could go the rest of my life without seeing snow again. How you like Texas, Miss Rosita?”