Poppies

They've found the snowboarder. Or parts of her, anyway. I heard about it at school today. I should just let it be, but I can't. I remember the day I was sick, and Edward's peace offering, and my dad coming home late, and his K9 officer up in the mountains.

I remember the dream of the mountain lion that had started that whole long day. I've been dreaming a lot since I came to Forks.

I probably shouldn't bring up dead girls at the dinner table, but that's where these things seem to happen.

"The kids at school were talking about the snowboarder girl."

My dad puts down his fork. "Yeah," he grunts; then picks up his fork and starts eating again.

"I guess it's good that at least they found her …"

He stops eating for real now, and looks at me. "She was from out of state. Came to visit with a bunch of friends. Her parents have been here since she disappeared."

I can't even imagine what that they're feeling, with the search ending like this.

"The kids are saying – " I don't know how to put it, don't know if I even want to, but somehow I have to. "They're saying it was … bad."

"Animals are hungry in winter, Bells. A body in the snow isn't going to stay in one piece for very long."

The meat on my plate isn't in one piece either.

"Do they think it's the same … "

My dad's brow gets all pinched. He had seen that body. The security guard. The day I almost died. The kids were saying that was really gross, too.

"Too soon to go jumping to conclusions. But a bear can cover a lot of territory."

"I thought they hibernated during the winter."

"S'posed to. But if an animal is sick, or has a broken tooth … and people leaving food and garbage out like damn fools. If a bear doesn't get fat enough in the fall, and if there's food around to lure him in … the rules change, Bells. They change."

"Was there like … blood?" The smashed deer wavers up from the dark in my mind. The first thing I had seen on my way into Forks.

"Not a whole lot. Coroner thinks she died of exposure. The rest came … after."

I read an article in one of my dad's magazines once, about what it's like to freeze to death. They say you feel warm in the end.

"You okay, Bells?"

I must have gotten up from the table, because my dad is up, too, and standing next to me.

"I'm – "

"C'mere." And he's hugging me. With both arms. Hard. "You kids just stay out of the woods, you hear?"

"Okay."

He gestures toward the dinner table. "I got this, Bells. You go do your homework."

It used to be that I would lose myself in my homework. Tangents and secants. Midsummer night's dreams.

Now it's Edward's journal. I can hear ESPN still drifting up faintly from the den. I wonder if my dad has fallen asleep. He does that sometimes.

…

May 1st, 1918

Mr. McGillicudy is dead. It's taken more than six months for them to get word to his family. His mortal remains, such as they were by the time they'd been sorted out from the mud and all the others, lie buried somewhere near Passchendaele. All that his family got back was the identification tag from around his neck. Even his boots went to another soldier, since they'd been barely used.

Headmaster told us all about it at morning assembly today. We held a moment of silence and then Mr. Clayton read us a poem.

It's so hard to believe. It's not even a year ago that old Gills resigned to join up. I wonder now that we called him that. He was only 27. He went into the Canadian Corps, because that's where he's from, originally. That's why he was at the salient at Passchendaele, instead of behind the lines with our own men.

He gave us the hardest Geometry exam of our lives before he left.

…

I learn that Passchendaele was in Flanders, which, according to Google, is somewhere in Belgium. A map shows me where. Europe is small. Everything is close to everything else. This battlefield is barely across the Channel from England.

There's a link to a poem about Flanders Fields.

"In Flanders Fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields."

I don't think I want to read any more, tonight. I don't want to copy the poem into the scrapbook. It might not be the one that was read at the assembly. But I can find a picture of poppies instead. So red. Suddenly it flashes to me the meaning of the little red flower thing that the old soldiers hand out on Veteran's Day, to put in your buttonhole or on your bag. Nobody ever told me what it meant before. Only this Edward from long ago.

I find a good picture and cut out the red flowers with my exacto-knife and paste them onto the white page.

ESPN is still droning softly downstairs, and the Google page in front of me is full of links. I should leave it be, but I don't.

Battles took a long time in those days. The battle at Passchendaele began on July 31, 1917 and didn't end until the tenth of November. Nobody even knows for sure how many men died there. No wonder it took so long to get word back to that teacher's family.

The pictures are small and incomplete, black and white snapshots of the cramped muddy trenches, or small groups going 'over the top,' bayonets gripped in their hands. To meet artillery. I think of what a wider lens would show … miles of land littered with bodies, men hung upon the barbed wire … and it takes me back to the beginning of the night, and a girl in bloodless pieces, strewn across the snow like a broken wax doll.

Thank you for reading.