[ Memory box collecting imprints (of) Rockwell citizens (and) army soldiers, 1957 … ]

I – On a roadside in Rockwell, 1972...

A girl of fourteen with pink flowers braided along one side of her dark hair made her way down a curving bend towards the sea shore with the aid of her crutches. She was wearing a cotton candy-colored dress and her best white shoes; they still fit her from when she was seven-years-old. The rubber ends of the crutches squeaked loud and sounded harsh to her ear in comparison to the robins and sparrows singing merrily as they built their love nests.

This sweet, happy sound made her gasp in sadness.

"Daddy…" She whispered as tears rolled down her cheeks, "Mama."

How many times would she have to attend another wedding?

An engine roared.

The girl snapped her head up in surprise and turned as a young man riding a motorcycle cut close to the curb. He weaved and bobbed dangerously before he spotted her under his visor and came to a skidding halt with his back tire. When he cut the engine off she froze.

He was older. At least seventeen. The biker pulled his helmet off and shook his straggly blonde hair out. "You goin' my way?" She said nothing and he laughed. "That a 'no' ?"

"No."

His good humor waned.

"I'm sure I'm not going your way."

"You Mr. McCoppin's daughter? Juliet?"

"Julianne." She corrected, twisting on her crutches uncomfortably.

"No Romeo to sweep you off your feet, huh?" He grinned.

"No," Julianne smiled a little. "I guess not."

"Well… Julie. How 'bout I give you a ride?" The boy held out his helmet.

She blinked once and shook her head. "No, sorry." Julie fully prepared for him to be a jerk and try to press her for a date or sex like they all did. "I'm going to the sea shore, um…?"

"Don." He wheeled his bike alongside her, unhurried. "Donald Lee Richardson."

"Okay, Donald Lee Richardson." Julianne turned to look him in the eye and stopped. Not since her mother had she seen eyes this green. There was no brown in them, only emerald.

Once Don saw he had hit a chord he smiled at her. He had a sun kissed tan and the white of his teeth gleamed along with the brightness of his eyes even as the sun only appeared in tosses of light through out now wind blown trees. A storm was coming up from the coast.

"How about that ride?" He waited just a second and then placed the helmet in her hands.

"I… guess I could go for a ride. Why don't we just skip the beach altogether?"

Donald laughed a second time as he pulled her gently over his bike.

"What? What did I say?" She was smiling but confused.

"Your 'I' just turned into a 'we'."

…

"So you've only been in town several days?"

"Long enough to get to know the townspeople, they're real friendly to outsiders."

Julianne turned to Don from the clearing they both lay in.

"Come on, Juil." When he said this new nickname for her, the girl frowned.

"Julie? Julianne? Julia? I know you've been around bikes before. How old was he?"

"You're the oldest boy I've hung out with," She looked away as clouds gathered. "I don't think I should go into that. We've only known each other for thirty minutes Donald Lee."

Don sprawled his arms behind his head and tilted his chin back. "Long enough."

She laughed. Julianne laughed so loud and hard that it felt foreign for her to do so.

"So what?" They both turned to look at each other. "Did he go to Nam?"

Sadness returned to the girl's eyes and she found herself nodding slowly. "Yes, Nam."

"He alive?"

"He's my brother." She really didn't want to tell Don that she had first thought it was Hoggie. That would have been embarrassing. But somehow, she felt he already knew.

"So your brother's in the service." Masculine fingers that should have been reaching for a woman's face found Julianne's cheek and turned her head. "Let me show my patriotism."

He kissed her. It was her first and it was deep… deeper… too deep.

What they did then mirrored Julie's mother, Annie. It mirrored Hogarth. Both had been young. Both had birthed children young. In the back of her mind Julianne knew she was going to become like them, a mother so young. She was going to be a mother at fifteen.

'Nine months,' The thought came and Julianne embraced it.

Rain fell from the dark gray clouds above, sheeting the forest in a downpour. As the two teenagers moved as one across the drenched grass, an uprooted pine tree on the left and a huge boulder on the right seemed to shield them off. It was as if these objects were vigils.

II. – The Loring Air Force Base, 1951...

"Come on Mommy!"

The black shoes of a four-year-old boy ran across a small sandbank in Limestone Maine. His mother chased after him, laughing and panting as she called out his name. He jumped onto a swing set and spread out his arms like he was Peter Pan. He asked Wendy to push.

"Ha ha!" She instead scooped him up and planted his little feet on top of the black rubber.

"Mommy," the boy bent down and moved back as she climbed onto the swing. "Let go."

"No." She was smiling devilishly as she rocked with her son. "I want to swing too."

"You're old!"

"Well, you're young." The woman threw her head back as she swung back and forth with her son. They moved as one together, matching the tide as it rolled in and out. "Did I ever tell you how I came up with your name? It was after you were born, I wanted to name you after my father, Garth, and your father brought me a Ho Ho when I wanted a Ding Dong."

"Twinkie!" He argued happily as he pushed himself up and down inside the swing.

"Ha-ha! Twinkie Hogarth Hughes!"

"Ding-Dong Mom!"

Mother and son continued to swing back and forth even as the day came to an end.

III. – May 15th 1964...

It was mid-May, or at least that's what people told him when he asked. Julianne kept quiet now. She never talked. Occasionally she would look at her daddy but the look in her eyes, on the rare times Dean did move to look in them, was silent and accepting. For the briefest of moments the man would know how Hogarth had felt. He could never quite connect on his stepson's wave of feeling for the Giant. Sure, he loved the big lug. But that silence in the eyes, that acceptance, that maturity even in innocence somehow made tears come to his eyes. Dean realized then that he and Julie were looking at each other. He was crying.

"It's okay, Daddy." Her voice cracked as she reached for him.

It was Julie, not Dean, who did the hugging and consoling.

They both looked up to see a porcelain cheek that even Snow White would envy. Blush of the reddest apples and the most unnatural appearance circled the cheek. The one eye Dean and Julie could see was a mist of blue eye shadow that sparkled under the poor lighting. A bountiful selection of red and pink roses were resting in the woman's beautiful, thin hands.

"Mama's an angel," Julianne whispered.

"Yes," Dean also whispered, "She most certainly is."

To be continued…

~ Lavenderpaw ~