How Will They Remember You?
There was more silence. Alcide eyed the back door that led out into the rotting fields.
“What’s happened to the farm?” he asked.
“We had to replant.”
“We?” Alcide asked.
Rachel scoffed. “Don’t be like that,” she said.
“What’s his name?”
“Don’t do that.”
Alcide shook the images of his wife with another man. He wondered if this other man brought out something different in her, if she loved him in a different way than she had loved Alcide.
“Now we can start over,” Alcide said.
“I’ve already started over,” she said. She pulled one cup down from the hutch in the corner and filled it with the pale brown coffee from the metal pot. She brought it to the table and nursed it between her palms. “Did you want some?” she asked.
“We can start over together,” he said, finding some cheer in the words.
Rachel sighed, sending the steam from her cup into his face. “I’m pregnant,” she said.
What was left of his heart disappeared like the steam rising out of her coffee.
She continued. “He’s a good man. Was too young for the war. But he’s grown now. A good man.”
“Not much of a farmer,” he said, remembering the rotting fields behind the house.
She ignored his jab.
“I want to come back home,” he said.
“It’s not your home anymore,” she said and paused. Finally, she asked, “What happened to Joaquin?”
“He never made it to the camp.”
“You always were bad for a lie,” Rachel said. Then she took a sharp breath. “Is that his blood?” she asked, pointing to the stains smeared across Alcide’s coat.
In his memory, he saw every child she had birthed and every bloody cloth buried under the oak tree behind their home.
“How did my son die?” Rachel asked. She repeated the question, still staring at the blood-stained coat.
“He was shot,” Alcide said. “I was too late to save him.” The sun was just beginning to set, moving behind the tall trees. “He tried to escape the camp with some of the younger men,” he continued. “Then the guards shot him.” He had practiced the story over and over. After the prison camp was disbanded, he practiced those words along every step of his journey home. But sitting in front of the boy’s mother, telling her the story, he felt as if he were watching Joaquin die all over again.
A whimper escaped from her throat. “I told you he was yours to protect,” Rachel said.