how Perry’s grandfather had built the house out of the forest’s own timber and how a town was like tempered steel and how a transplanted tree never grows as tall or as fine as one rooted in native soil. The lesson of the sermon, if not the logic, always stuck with Perry. The old man died and Perry stayed on. And Harvey got drafted. Old Harvey. Harvey was different. Ever since the old man died, Harvey talked about leaving the town, and one day with the help of the draft board he did leave. A confused time. Harvey the Bull. He was a bull but he was no soldier. As kids they hadn’t even played war games. Indians were better, better targets for games with their leather jackets, sour faces, bad teeth and greasy hair, Chippewa mostly. They’d stalked the Indians, crawled on bellies in the weeds behind the house, yelped and bellowed. But never war games. Nothing serious. Trapping games and capture-the-flag and forts in the forest, not far from Pliney’s Pond, snow forts in winter and tree forts in summer, great camouflage in the fall, but never war games. And no one in Sawmill Landing knew a damn about the war anyway. It wasn’t talked about in the drugstore. Then gangbusters, bang, old Harvey gets drafted, good old Bishop Markham and Herb Wolff on the draft board – sorry, Harvey’s number was up, something like that, proper optimism and good humour, a little sympathy, proper pride. Perry stayed out of it. Nothing he could do, and the war wasn’t real anyway, and, besides, it seemed somehow natural that a rascal and bull like Harvey was the one to go off to the war. In that sleepwalking, slothful departure there had been no time to counter the nagging thought that the speed of it all, the blinding foggy invisible force behind it, was a sure sign that Harvey would come home maimed. Because no one knew a damn about it. Vietnam was outside the town orbit. ‘A mess,’ was what people would say if forced to comment, but a mess was still not a war, and it did not become a war until Harvey went to fight in it. Two Indian boys went with him. Their picture was on the front page of the town paper, Harvey in the centre, grinning and posing, his arms wrapped around the two dull-eyed Indian boys. In September, one of the Indians got killed and the paper carried a short obituary with an American flag stencilled in. But even then it wasn’t really a war. It wasn’t a war until Harvey got himself wounded and the paper carried another front-page story, pictures of Harvey in his football uniform, pictures of the old house, pictures of Perry and Grace, a picture of the dead old man in his preacher’s robes, a long history of the family, and for a time the war was really a war, though even then it was all jumbled and formless. No sides, no maps to chart progress on, no tides to imagine surging back and forth, no real battles or victories or defeats. In the tangled density of it all, Perry sometimes wondered if the whole show were a masquerade for Harvey to dress in khaki and display his bigballed outdoorsmanship, proving all over again how well he’d followed the old man into the woods, how much he’d learned, to show forever that he was the Bull.
The dog trotted back to the church steps.
Perry sat on the kerb again, cleaned his glasses, leaned back. Tips of high pine poked over the store fronts.
Grace came out with cigarettes and coffee. ‘Eleven thirty,’ she said. ‘Herb says it’s always a little late.’
‘I just wish that bus would get in.’
Then he saw it. It was as though it had been there all along, poised in turn around the corner, waiting to be seen. He saw it and heard it simultaneously. It was the giant Greyhound. It might have been the same silver monster that took Harvey to war in the first place.
It swung off the tar road, changing gears and growling.
Herb Wolff hurried out. ‘There she is, there she is!’ he wailed. He brushed his coat and stood erect. ‘There she is, all right.’
The bus cleared the turn.
‘Sure wish everybody was here for this,’ said Wolff. ‘This is something. Harvey! I can’t believe it.’
Perry took a step and stood alone. The Greyhound’s brakes hissed and forms moved behind the tinted windows and Perry searched for familiar movements. The door opened with another strange hiss, and the great grey cave was transfixing dust and trembling. Perry peered into the tinted glass.
Harvey stepped off alone. He carried a black bag with white stitching.
‘Well, hey!’ he said.
Without seeing, Perry gave him a great hug.
‘Hey!’
‘Yeah, you look fine. You do!’
‘And my God, here’s Grace! Grace. You’re beautiful.’ They hugged and Grace was smiling and wet-eyed and Perry was grinning.
‘Yeah, yeah. You’ve got some tan there.’
‘Sure!’
‘You look great. You do, I can’t believe it.’
‘Skinny! Look at that.’
‘Hey, it’s old Wolff! How the devil is old Wolffie?’
‘This is something. It is. You look great, Harv. You do. This is really something.’
‘I’m fine. I am. Where’s my parade? Shouldn’t they have trumpets and flags and things? How’s my honey-Grace?’
Grace kissed him again, still clutching his arm. ‘Happy, happy,’ she said. ‘You’re so skinny, aren’t you?’
‘Skinny? Lean and mean. How’s my brother? How’s brother Paul?’
‘I’m fine. Here, let me have that bag. I can’t get over it, you look great. Really.’
‘I am great,’ Harvey said. ‘Now where the devil is everybody?’
‘Sunday.’
‘Sunday? Is it Sunday? Sunday! Incredible.’
‘Give me that blasted bag.’
‘Come on,’ Grace said. ‘Let’s get you home. Some skinny hero.’
Everybody started hugging again, then Harvey released the bag and Perry took it and they stood in a circle on the street. Harvey’s bad eye was barely noticeable. He was tall and too skinny. His voice had the old nasal tinkle. ‘Sunday!’ he said. ‘Some bloody day to come home on. Where’s old Jud Harmor? Thought sure old Jud would be here with bands and ticker tape and stuff.’
‘He’s around. Here, let’s get into the car and we’ll get you home. You did get skinny, didn’t you?’
‘Sure, and you got chubby. You look great anyway. And Grace. Grace is still a honey. And even old Wolffie looks good, so what we need is a good drink to celebrate. Hey, Wolffie! You got a nice drink we can all celebrate with?’
Wolff blinked and shook his head.
‘No bloody drink?’
‘No. Geez, I’m sorry. Really. Nobody said anything about … I would’ve had the whole town here if somebody just …’
‘No bloody drink? No parade, no drink. Where the devil is everybody? Some awful hero worship.’
‘Everybody’s in church, Harv.’
‘Some hero worship.’ Harvey grinned and pointed at his bad eye. ‘So, how you like my pretty souvenir? Better than a lousy limp, don’t you think?’
‘Doesn’t
