How Will They Remember You?
His gut began to burn, and he thought he would be sick. “You can’t imagine what we did to stay alive in that camp. I thought that if I remembered all the good things in my life, I’d be okay. But now, I wonder if there’s any memory good enough to keep you tied to this earth.”
Rachel stared into her coffee. The last bit of steam rose from the cup then disappeared. Finally she said, “There’s no place for you here, Alcide.”
Alcide let the words wash over him for a moment. “We both loved Joaquin.”
“Don’t say his name,” she said.
Alcide gathered his coat and stood up from the table. He thought he would see a brokenness or sorrow in Rachel’s face. But there was something like relief washing over her instead. He wondered if the relief was from knowing how her son died or from knowing that Alcide would leave her life forever. So he said to her, “Try to remember us like we were before.” Then he opened the back door and walked through it for the last time.
*
On the night of Joaquin’s death, the rain had stopped falling sometime during the night. At first, Alcide had thought the silence was what had woken him. The prison camp was high up in the mountains, where it seemed to rain every night. The longer Alcide stayed there, the more he and the other prisoners found they could only sleep when it was raining. The soft pattering on their tents lulled them to sleep, but in the dry seasons they found themselves shocked awake by the nighttime silence.
But it wasn’t the silence that woke him. Just outside his tent, he heard men shouting and boots clomping through the mud. He opened his eyes to find that he was alone in the tent. Alcide struggled to his feet, slipping in the new mud loosed by the unrelenting rains.
Outside his tent, Alcide saw the young men charging and killing, taking down every guard in their path. At the front of the pack, he saw his son, Joaquin, running a stolen bayonet through the belly of one of the guards. He cut another guard across the chest and began swinging his blade in every direction. The boy was unrecognizable now, an engine of hate covered in blood, and Alcide was afraid for him, not just for his safety but for his soul.
He called out for his son, but his cry was cut short. A volley of gunfire erupted from behind him, and the prisoners began dropping one by one as the bullets pierced their ragged bodies. When the shooting stopped, Alcide was still screaming. He rushed to the scene, sifting amongst the Union and Confederate dead, each one huddled and indistinguishable from one another. And there he found Joaquin.
He cradled his son’s head close to his chest. Joaquin’s body was pocked with holes, each one filling up with blood. He coughed, spewing blood onto Alcide’s coat. He felt Joaquin’s hand grasp his own, and his son tried to speak. Before he could, a group of guards rushed over and pulled Alcide from the mass of bodies. One of them pressed a rifle against Joaquin’s head and pulled the trigger. The shot rang longer and louder than any before it. Alcide screamed for his son to get up, but Joaquin lay contented and still among the others, his eyes wide open and just as clear and green as the day they first opened.
*
The daylight was almost gone. As he walked towards the dead fields behind his home, Alcide rummaged through the barn behind the house. He emerged with two oak boards, nails, and a long and sturdy length of rope. He walked past the perished rows of beans and okra, his old crops gone to waste. Each step onto his old property felt like trespassing. The land that his family had cleared, nurtured, and cultivated was lost to him. He had become an exile, banished from paradise because of his sins. As he made his way through his family’s land, Rachel’s words began to burrow themselves into his mind and spirit. There’s no place for you here, Alcide.
At the edge of the fields, the ancient oak tree rose from the horizon line. Even at this distance, and in the fading light of the day, he could see the grave markers under the shade of the tree. The first few sat straight and proud, carved from stone. In the tallest stone was etched the name of their first-born child, Emmaline. But down the line, the stones gave way to roughhewn crosses, sagging from time and humidity, with no names to bear.
Alcide found a large stone and hammered the boards into a cross. Using the sharp end of the stone, he etched his son’s name, deep and bold, into the surface of the oak, so that it could be seen from the back of the house. He drove the cross into the dirt and stepped back to judge his work.
There’s no place for you here, Alcide.
Alcide took off his coat and tore the Confederate insignia from the shoulder and tossed it into the fields beyond the grave markers. He laid the coat on the ground in front of his son’s new grave marker, the blood stain facing up toward the evening sky. He threw one end of the sturdy rope over a low branch in the old oak tree and tied it in place. Alcide closed his eyes, and in his memory he saw his family. There was Rachel, screaming in labor as Joaquin broke free from her body. Now the boy was learning to push a plow and guide the mule in a straight line, making way for future crop yields. Alcide saw all their children, no longer buried but healthy and strong, gathered in front of their home. At the head was Joaquin. With a wave of his arm, he led them off into the sunset, his vibrant green eyes piercing through the darkness forever.
As he looped the rope around his neck, Alcide swore he could hear children playing in the distance, their laughter carried on the summer breeze.