The Man on the Park Bench Page 5

Helen O'Brien paused in front of her small frame house, looked west across Jessamine Avenue, and smiled. Margaret was right on time. Her friend checked for traffic and crossed the street.

  "Good morning," Margaret said. "Another lousy workday, huh?"

  "Oh, it's a lovely day." Helen patted her graying hair into place and glanced at Margaret's plastic grocery sack. "What's that?"

  "This? Oh, it's a yellow bow for Dunkel's door. Just like yours."

  Helen nodded. She knew Margaret had admired the bow she'd placed on the drugstore door to honor her son Ray and the other soldiers serving in Afghanistan. Margaret squeezed her arm in a "we're in this together" gesture, and they walked to Main Street and turned left.

  The neat Victorian houses on Helen's street abruptly gave way to one and two story commercial buildings facing each other across a wide brick street. Helen peered towards Olson's store, three blocks beyond, and sighed. Maybe it was a lousy day, but she did rather enjoy talking with the customers.

  "How many years have we made this walk together?" Margaret seemed to have read her mind. She was heavier and shorter than Helen and wore her hair in an old fashioned knot. "Seems like centuries."

  "Six years, I guess. I started right after Ray got to high school, and you started the next spring."

  "That's right. It seems like… Oh, my goodness!" Margaret stopped and stared into the street. "My goodness, will you look at that!"

  "What on earth's wrong?"

  "I didn't know there was a parade today."

  "What are you talking about? What parade?"

  Helen looked up and down the street and saw normal morning traffic. A young couple came down the courthouse steps, but Margaret didn't appear to be looking at them. She seemed focused on something in the street itself.

  "Look how handsome they are! All in their uniforms…" Margaret stepped toward the street and looked left. "Excuse me," she said, as if someone was there. "Excuse me, I want to get a better look, and… listen to the music!"

  "Margaret!" Helen touched her friend's shoulder.

  "Look at them, Helen. Don't you see—" Margaret stepped to the curb and looked both ways, twice. She frowned. "Where—where did they go?"

  "Margaret! Do you feel well? Do you want me to walk you back home?"

  "I don't understand. No, I'll be okay, Helen. For a minute, I was sure that…"

  Helen gently led her friend back to the sidewalk. They walked in silence, past the Shell service station and then the cleaners. "Maybe you've been watching CNN too much. Or maybe it's something you ate."

  "I don't know what it was, Helen. Lord, I’m too young for Alzheimer’s. My mother had that, you know."

  "I'm sure you're fine, Margaret. Just fine. We'd best keep moving now. I've got to open this morning."

  They reached the Olson Drugstore corner and parted company. As Helen got the cash box from the stock room, she thought back to what happened. They'd been best friends all their lives, had long ago found many unique ties. Yes, it had been a long time, and she treasured every minute of it. And in all that time, Margaret had never acted so… so peculiar.

  The next morning they met at the same corner. When Margaret talked fast about little things and avoided eye contact, Helen realized she was embarrassed. They turned the corner at Main Street and walked past the Cutey Pie Bakery and the insurance agency. When they reached where Margaret had seen the parade, Margaret stopped.

  "Oh, God." She touched her chin and looked into the street. Her eyes teared.

  "Margaret? Are you okay?" Helen put a comforting hand on her plump arm. Margaret pushed her glasses up, wiped her eyes, and looked back into the street.

  "They're here again! Look! Can't you see them?"

  "Margaret, please…"

  "My Lord, there's people in blue uniforms, and green, and—and up there, there's gray, and… wait, I recognize that soldier!"

  Margaret walked, dazed, toward the traffic, sidestepping unseen obstacles.

  "Margaret, stop!"

  "That's my father! Don't you see him? It's Daddy! And look at those others!"

  Helen grabbed her friend and pulled her back to the sidewalk. "Why don't we just stand right here?" she said. "We'll watch the parade from here until it's over."

  Margaret's expression changed from ecstasy to sadness. Her shoulders slumped as she turned to Helen. "Honest, I saw them. They're gone now, but they were there as plain as day, Helen. You saw them, didn't you? Didn't you?"

  "Well, maybe I did get a glimpse," Helen said. "But you'd better go home and rest now. I'll tell Mr. Dunkel you won't be in. Come on, now."

  Helen walked Margaret home and called her daughter, who promised to go over and stay with her for the day. Twice Helen slipped back into the little office behind the drugstore shelves and called to see how Margaret was. That night she prayed, something she hadn't done for a long time.

  The following morning Helen stood on Jessamine Avenue looking west toward her friend's house. Margaret approached carrying a digital camera. She crossed the street and stared defiantly at Helen.

  "There was too a parade. Here, I want to show you something."

  Margaret rummaged through her oversize purse and pulled out a small picture, the kind that used to sell three for a quarter in bus and train station booths. She thrust it into Helen's face.

  "That's my Daddy. He took this picture at Pensacola in 1942, the day he shipped out. Helen. He looked exactly like that in the parade!"

  She pulled an old Morganville High annual from the purse, found the page she wanted, and turned the book toward Helen.

  "That's Daddy in high school. See those two boys next to him? They died in the war, too. In Germany. And they were marching with Daddy yesterday as pretty as you please!"

  "Now Margaret, are—are you sure?"

  "Do you know what this means, Helen? It means I really saw a parade. A parade out of the past!"

  "Margaret, you'd better go back home." Helen put her arms around her friend as they turned left on Main Street. "Do you have a fever or anything?"

  "No way. I saw what I saw, and today I'm going to take a picture of that parade for proof." She stiffened and turned toward the street.

  "They're here again! I don't see Daddy yet… Oh, I’ll bet he's with those soldiers up there, the ones with the olive colored uniforms. See those in front of us? They have two toned brown uniforms like you see on CNN."

  "Margaret, come with me!" Helen pulled on her friend's arm. "Let's go home and rest."

  "Look. Look! Oh, I can't believe my eyes! Oh, Helen, take a picture. Hurry!”

  "Now, Margaret!" Helen released her and held the camera up. "Margaret, this…"

  "Hurry, take it!"

  Margaret ran into the street just as Helen snapped the picture. The driver had no warning at all. His truck hit her before his foot could even touch the brake. A circle of people gathered around her lifeless form, and soon a siren sounded from up the street.

  A police cruiser stopped in front of Helen's house an hour later, and one of the two policemen walked her up to the porch. She let herself in and laid her purse, the camera, and the high school annual on the hall table. She didn't know why, but she'd clutched them throughout the ambulance ride to the hospital and the ride just now to her home. They seemed even more important now that Margaret was dead.

  Helen's heart ached, and she rubbed her dry, red eyes. She was cried out but still felt the deep pain of her friend's death.

  She went into the bedroom to lie down, and remembered the picture she'd snapped. Oh, God! Did it show the accident? Or did she take it just before it happened? She couldn't remember. She tried to convince herself to throw the camera into the trash without looking at it, but instead she held it up. She pressed the “monitor” button and peered at the little screen.

  There was Margaret, looking back at her as she dashed into the street. Her right arm was up, waving.

  But there was more. There was a parade there! The camera had frozen row upon row of soldi
ers in colorful uniforms, all in lockstep, as they marched smartly up the street! She looked again, squinting. The three closest soldiers were smiling at her. She leaned against the wall, slid down it to sit upon the bare oak floor.

  When the doorbell rang an hour later, Helen knew who was there. She eased herself up from the hall floor and walked, robot like, to answer it. The embarrassed looking army lieutenant informed her, as she knew he would, that her son had been killed in action in Afghanistan. She thanked him and quietly closed the door.

  She would frame the picture with Ray in it. Anyone else seeing it would think it was only a picture of Margaret. They wouldn't be able to see anything else.

  But she could see her son in it, anytime she wanted. Marching proudly, happy to serve his country, happy in fact, to give his life for what he believed in.

  The parade wasn't simply one from the past as Margaret had thought. Helen knew now it was made up of local war heroes, killed in action. Margaret's father, his two friends, her own son Ray—there could be no other explanation. The soldiers in gray were Morganville men who had died in the Civil War.

  Helen looked at the picture closely now, and recognized the two smiling soldiers next to Ray. She sighed. That young lieutenant will visit Phyllis Bonner and Janet Stevens this morning, too.

  She took the picture into her bedroom and leaned it against her bedside lamp, then laid back on her bed and willed her mind to emptiness.

  Home in Time

  Carl Nichols might be in his nineties,

  but maybe he could still save his parents.