It was more like two parties really, his friends were loud and boisterous and they clustered to slap and swear and laugh out loud. In the other party were the members of his family, bustling about to prepare the food, somewhat more subdued, and only his sister could walk at ease in both his worlds. Martin Sr. was quiet most of the time, keeping to himself the premonition, the virtual certainty actually, that he would never see his son again.
The food was eaten, the paper plates piled high and precipitously in the wastebasket. There were only a couple of spills. All in all, a good party, the only awkwardness had come when Martin faced his son, gripped his shoulder with one hand and said “You take care of yourself, son”. Everyone watched and listened as Marty told his dad that he would follow his training and not take any chances, and that they would have another party in a year or two. Finally the stiff moment was broken when Marty’s best friend stood to make a toast, long and rambling, full of references and inside jokes that his family didn’t always understand, but his friends laughed uproariously and the party resumed.
The next morning his parents and his sister and two of his best friends saw him off at the airport. Far down the aisle they watched the back of his head as he walked away, and then he made a turn and was gone. The jokes and laughter of the previous day seemed of a different life.
It turned out of course that Martin had been right. He never saw his son again. Twenty two months after the party Marty and his sister, during his leave, drove to the cemetery and she showed him with the sureness of familiarity where their father lay. Marty wasn’t so young anymore, something had changed, had given him a watchful look in his eye and a more measured stance. Through all the mayhem of the last two years, the steady loss of his friends, he had been a stalwart, allowing himself no display but clench of teeth and clench of hands, but now he broke, kneeling at graveside, and mourned the loss of all who were gone. His sister stood helplessly with her arms crossed, crying and sharing his anguish.
She watched him lay his hands on the smooth marble of their father’s stone, his shoulders convulsing. She stood behind him, her view of her brother was the back of his head, and her mind was thrust back to their childhood days. His hair had been buzz-cut then too, not due to the dictates of the military, but because crew cuts had been the fashion among young men. He had been a rascal then, always in a bit of trouble, always with a big grin plastered across his face. You couldn’t stay mad at him and she would sometimes catch her parents smiling at each other and shaking their heads after he had been sent to his room for some bit of foolishness.
Most important of all though, he had always been there for her. She thought of the time that two bullies had been tormenting her and her girlfriend and when he found out, he surprised them one day in the parking lot of the convenience store. All alone, he tore into them with such a fury that they forgot their advantage and retreated in two different directions, bloodied and bruised. That night, standing in front of his father with a big scrape on his chin and a torn shirt, he wouldn’t say why he had been fighting. But she knew. And she too wouldn’t tell.
Now he looked so small, kneeling at graveside, no longer a boy but still fighting, fighting the battles of other men. She thought of that day at the airport so long ago. The vision brought to her a premonition of her own. Soon I will watch him walk away again, she thought, he will grow smaller and smaller down the aisle. He will grow smaller and smaller, pause and make a turn and then, God help us, he too will be gone.