Chapter Eight
"Harding."
They were sitting together in the back seat of the funeral home's limousine, headed back to their hotel in Washington. Harding was lost in his thoughts, his eyes staring unseeing at the monuments to military heroes that graced the length of Memorial Drive.
"Hardy?" Wilson touched his brother's arm.
"Mmmmph."
"Before he died, Pop asked me to take care of something for him here in Washington. And. . . and he wanted us do it together."
Harding continued to stare out the window.
"Harding?"
"Yeah."
Wilson wondered for a moment whether that answer actually constituted consent. As the limo exited the traffic circle and headed out onto Memorial Bridge, Wilson leaned forward and spoke to the driver. "Could you drop us off at the other end of the bridge?"
"Not right at the end of the bridge. Farther along--near the Lincoln Memorial?"
"Yeah. That would be good."
"How will you get back to your hotel? I can't wait there for you. . . ."
"That's okay. We'll find our own way back--catch a cab, or walk."
"Okay, you're the boss."
"Thank you." Wilson sat back in the seat and watched out the window.
The limo passed between the two massive golden statues ("Valor" and "Sacrifice") that guarded the end of the bridge and welcomed them to Washington, DC. The driver turned to the left and circled around the gleaming white marble Greek temple that housed the Daniel Chester French statue of a brooding Abraham Lincoln. He pulled over to the curb on 23rd Street, and stopped the limo under the spreading branches of a towering oak tree. "This is the closest I can get you to the Lincoln."
Wilson opened his door, and nudged Harding to get his attention. Harding obediently followed Wilson out of the car, stood and glanced around, trying to get his bearings in the unfamiliar city.
"Come on." Wilson tapped him on the shoulder and led the way along an asphalt path. The wide marble steps leading up to the Lincoln Memorial were across the drive to their right--they were going to a different place. They had to weave and maneuver through the crowds of tourists who were taking in the sights, even on a chilly November afternoon. The path curved around a small visitors' center, and a bronze statue came into view.
Three young soldiers in worn jungle fatigues stood frozen in time as they seemed to emerge from a cluster of bare trees. They were at ease, yet alert--one held his rifle balanced on his shoulder. Their gaze was fixed peacefully on the black granite wall that was engraved with the names of the dead, the Vietnam Veterans' Memorial. At their feet, a dozen schoolchildren stood restlessly, listening to their teacher tell the story of a war that would never be more than a history lesson to them.
oooooo0oooooo
Warm late August sunshine washed across the rolling fields of southern Wisconsin. Harding gingerly lifted his injured foot, clumsily encased in plaster, and set it down outside the car. A few hundred yards away, in a fallow field of ripening grasses and wildflowers, Diefenbaker was loping along, stopping to sniff at the occasional stone or bush. Constable Fraser stood close by in an attitude of Parade Rest, his hands precisely clasped behind his back, patiently waiting for the wolf to finish his business and return to the car.
They had been discussing the case that had brought them so far from Chicago. Stupid stuff, penny-ante vandalism mostly, but it constituted a crime wave in Willison.
Harding reached down and picked absent-mindedly at his pants leg, trying to adjust the slit fabric to better cover the plaster cast on his broken ankle. He swallowed, and discreetly moistened his lips as he prepared to change the subject.
"Constable--can I ask your advice?"
"My advice, sir?" Fraser's voice was patient and even, showing only the barest hint of human curiosity.
Harding fought to match the constable's calm detachment. "If you had somebody you were trying to forgive, no matter how hard you tried to forgive him, you just couldn't forgive him. What would you do?"
"Keep trying, sir."
oooooo0oooooo
The wall began as thin wedge of polished black granite, like a long knife slicing a wound in the faded grass. As Harding followed his brother along the cobbled path that sloped steadily downward, he noticed that the wall's height increased even though its top edge remained fairly level. Ten yards down the path, the wall stood almost a foot and a half in height, and there the names began--a single row of five names at first:
JOHN H. ANDERSON JR + EARL E. BARNHART JR + JAMES E. BATES + GERRIT L. BLANKSMA + TED O. BRAZZEAL
The second panel had three rows of names; the third, six; the fourth, eight. Harding stopped at the fifth panel, which was as high as his knees and carved with twelve rows of names. At the foot of the wall someone had left a single red carnation and a page of lined paper that had been torn from a spiral-bound notebook. He knelt on the cobbles and turned his head to read what was written on the page; a child's careful handwriting spelled out the title of a poem: "Believing." He suddenly felt that he had intruded on something intensely private and read no further, but stood and continued his journey down the path.
Other simple mementos marked his progress. More flowers, small flags, letters, photographs; a bottle of beer; a small white teddy bear dressed in miniature fatigues; souvenirs of the war, unit flags, regimental badges. Oddly enough, there was a 16 ounce can of fruit cocktail--Harding had three just like it in his pantry, bought on sale at the AP for 89 cents each. The wall loomed taller with every step forward, until it towered over his head with more than a hundred rows of names.
At the bottom of the path, the wall angled to the right. In the panel in front of him, Harding was startled to see his own reflection in the granite. The thousands upon thousands of names had long since blurred into a numbing sea of half-recognized letters; now the letters themselves vanished into an illusion as the wall became a shadowed mirror of the here and now. It reflected the faces of the people who walked the path: children, parents, elders, the colors of their clothing muted but not eliminated by the dark surface. The grass was dark green, the sky royal blue, the approaching sunset blended from burnt orange to brick red to deepest purple.
He stood there for a while, studying the reflection as a more tolerable reality to the one that waited for him a few yards up the path. Wilson waited for him there, crouched down at the base of panel 14-E; he had already counted down 97 rows from the top of the panel to the place where his hand now rested. Harding inhaled the sharp, cold air, and went to join his brother. This could not be postponed any longer.
The name was in the middle of the row, near the bottom of the panel.
JAVIER M. VALDEZ + DONALD P. WEISS + GRANT T. WELSH + ROBERT B. WU + DAVID V. YOUNG + VICTOR L. ALBEE
"Buddy of yours?" A middle-aged man in faded fatigues approached Harding.
No reply.
"You've been staring at one spot on the wall for the last five minutes. People don't usually focus in that tight unless they're remembering somebody."
Silence.
"Hey, if you don't want to talk about it. . . ."
Wilson reluctantly pulled his hand away from the polished granite. "Brother," he said quietly.
The amicable stranger turned his attention away from Harding and looked over at Wilson. "Your brother?"
Harding finally found his voice, hesitant and hoarse. "Our brother," he corrected.
"Mmm. . . . Tet Offensive?"
Harding eyed the stranger warily. "How'd you know?"
"Almost all the names on this panel are men who died during Tet." The stranger stepped up to the wall, and brushed his fingertips across a name at waist level: MICHAEL T. ONTAKIN. "I lost some good friends in '68." He then crouched down beside Wilson and touched the star-shaped shield that Wilson had placed at the base of the wall. "This was his?"
Harding answered. "Officer Grant Welsh, Chicago P.D."
"I didn't know him." The stranger sized up Wilson, who was now staring at distant portion of the memorial wall, where the names of the dead of a different year were inscribed. "Were you there?"
Wilson closed his eyes briefly while he remembered. He answered thoughtfully, "Yeah, I was there. I was an M.P. in Saigon. '69 and '70."
"Military Police?" he laughed. "Hey man, I'll try not to hold that against you."
Wilson grinned. "I appreciate that."
The stranger offered Wilson his hand. "Jim Ryder. 26th Marines, Khe Sahn '67, '68."
Wilson shook it firmly, and smiled at his newfound friend. "Wilson Welsh, 18th Military Police."
Ryder turned to Harding, and asked, "How 'bout you? Did you serve?"
Harding heard, but did not answer; his eyes were still fixed on his older brother's name on the wall.
GRANT T. WELSH +
He felt a twinge, as he had felt so many times before--a moment of phantom pain that spread across his jaw and neck from the site of the old injury at the base of his skull.
The draft board had called his number in October of '68, while he was still on disability leave for the injuries he had suffered in the riot. The skull fracture and the crushed bones in his right hand had been enough to win him the coveted "4F" designation--medically unfit for military service--removing him from the danger of being drafted and releasing him from the pressure to volunteer.
Sgt. Arthur C. Welsh, USA (ret.) never let him live it down.
Harding was about to mumble an explanation for his failure to bear arms for his country in Vietnam, when Wilson laid a cautionary hand on his shoulder and gently squeezed. "He served," said Wilson, placing emphasis on the second word. He repeated, "My brother Harding served and was wounded in the line of duty: Chicago, 1968."