Colonel Elbridge Essex
“Where are you goin’, Kid?”
Ken looked up and saw his father standing in the doorway to the kitchen. The man’s dark hair stood up in a tangled wave, his eyes painted with exhaustion. His father held a mug of coffee in one hand and stroked his mustache with the other.
“Outside,” Ken answered.
“No cartoons?” Ken shook his head.
“You get your homework done?”
“Yes.”
“Packed it away? I don’t need you getting chewed out because you forgot to bring it to school again. Be a hell of a way to start the week.”
“No,” Ken assured his father. “It’s in my backpack.”
His father sipped at the coffee, absently brushed some out of his mustache and yawned. “Okay. Don’t be too long. Got to hit the store before the Pats game time today, right?”
“Right.”
His father smiled, turned, and the conversation was finished.
Ken opened the door to the apartment and descended the twisted, narrow stairs to the first landing. He glanced in the open door of the Cristo family’s apartment and saw Mama Cristo standing at the small kitchen counter. She sang in French, which Ken didn’t understand, and pulled open the jerryrigged chicken-wire doors on the cabinets. Her hands, despite being twisted with arthritis, slipped in beneath her chickens and deftly removed the eggs the protesting birds sat upon.
As she put the eggs into a basket on the counter, she saw Ken and smiled. She called out a greeting in her Haitian patois, and Ken returned the smile as he waved. The old woman gestured to the eggs, and Ken nodded. Her smile widened into a grin, revealing her broken and stained teeth, and then she returned to her humming.
Ken continued his journey to the bottom door. The hinges complained as he pushed the door open, and Mr. and Mrs. Cristo looked up at him, lit cigarettes in their hands.
“Ken, good morning,” Mr. Cristo greeted. “How are you on this fine day God has given us?”
“I’m good,” Ken answered. A single beam of sunlight pierced the porch roof and illuminated the old and weathered Bible that lay open on an upturned milk crate between the husband and wife.
“Would you care to join us in prayer?” Mrs. Cristo asked. She wore a black scarf around her head, and Ken knew she would never take it off. Henri, their tenyear-old son, had been killed by a drunk driver the year before.
He had been Ken’s friend.
“No, thank you,” Ken told her. “Do you need me to do anything for you today?” Both of the Cristos shook their heads.
“Thank you, though, Ken,” Mr. Cristo said. “We are fine today. Please, tell your father hello when you see him.”
“Okay.” Ken waved and went down the steps. He paused, adjusted the old army hat on his head. Battered and worn, it had been a rare gift from his grandfather, and one Ken refused to give up, despite its ragged appearance. Ken slipped his hands into the pockets of his jeans before he walked around the back of the apartment building. From the street beyond, he heard the occasional car, and in the yards behind the building, younger children yelled and called out to one another as they played.
Ken didn’t like them. They had always been mean to Henri and to Ken for being friends with him.
Crossing the cracked pavement of the parking lot, Ken went to the old carriage house. The doors on it were secured with new chains and padlocks courtesy of his father. Ken had been caught roaming around the rotten floors and collapsing walls.
His father hadn’t been pleased.
Still, Ken gave the building a cursory examination in the hopes of finding a way in.
New boards were secured over the windows on the back side, and Ken sighed.
He kicked a rock, made his way to the wall separating the apartment building from the house next door, and wandered along its edge. The wall came up to his chest, and it was as wide as he was tall. All the stones fit perfectly against one another. There was no mortar holding them together, which, his father had said, was a testament to how they used to build walls.
Ken reached the center of the wall’s length when he saw he wasn’t alone.
An old man, far older than Mama Cristo, sat in a wooden wheelchair, a quilt wrapped around his shoulders and his gray eyes fixed upon Ken.
Ken’s throat tightened, then relaxed. He’d never met the old man before. He had seen him from the safety of his father’s pickup, but never in person.
“Good morning, sir,” Ken greeted, remembering his manners.
One of the old man’s white eyebrows raised up. “Good morning indeed, young sir. Who might you be?”
“I’m Ken,” he answered. “Kendall Gunther, sir.”
“Well, are you in the Army, perchance, Mr. Gunther?”
Ken blushed. “No, sir. I just like the hat. And the Army.”
“Why is that?”
Ken blinked. “My father was in the Army. In Vietnam, sir. My grandfather fought in World War Two.”
The old man nodded.
“Well then, Mr. Gunther, my name is Mr. Essex. I was in the Army, too, you see.”
Ken stepped closer to the wall. “You were?”
“Indeed, I was,” Mr. Essex confirmed. “I did not fight in World War Two, though.”
“When were you in the Army?”
Mr. Essex smiled. “I was in the Army until 1918.”
“That means you were in during World War One.” Ken couldn’t keep the surprise out of his voice. “I’ve never met anyone who was in that war before.”
“There aren’t many of us left, to be perfectly honest.” Mr. Essex unlocked the wheels on his chair, maneuvered it so he could face Ken, and then secured his wheels once more. “My brothers fought in the war, too. Except they didn’t fight in the American Army.”
Ken frowned. “How could they not fight in the US Army?”
“My youngest brother, Oliver, he managed to get across the ocean to England, and he joined the British Army. My older brother, Nathaniel, he went up to Canada and enlisted with the Canadians. I couldn’t go with them, you see.”
“No, we didn’t go until, um, 1917.”
“How old are you, Mr. Gunther?”
“I’m eleven, sir.”
“I am impressed,” Mr. Essex stated. “There are a great many adults who do not know when the US entered the war. Yes, I’m very impressed. How did you learn this? Was it your father?”
Ken shook his head. “No, sir. I read a lot. A real lot. Some of my teachers say I read too much.”
Mr. Essex made a sour face. “You can never read too much, Mr. Gunther. Never. Let me assure you of that. Had I not read as much as I did, I never would have passed law school, nor would I have been a successful lawyer.” The man motioned towards the large house behind him. “And I would most certainly not have been able to live so comfortably. Regardless, back to the point. I am most impressed with you.”
Ken’s blush returned. He cleared his throat and then asked, “Do your brothers live nearby?”
Mr. Essex shook his head. “Neither of my brothers survived the war, I’m afraid. They are buried in Europe. Oliver died of his wounds in England, and so he is buried outside of Surrey. As for Nathaniel, his remains were never found.”
“I’m sorry,” Ken said.
“I am, too, Mr. Gunther,” Mr. Essex sighed. “The war took a great deal from me. Both my brothers and my legs.”
Ken frowned and looked at Mr. Essex’s legs, which were clad in corduroy pants.
The old man grinned. “They look right as rain, don’t they?” Mr. Essex asked.
“Yes.”
“Even my shoes are polished.”
Ken had to agree they were. The black shoes glowed in the sunlight. Mr. Essex leaned forward, closed both hands into fists, and rapped on his shins. A dull sound rolled out. At Ken’s surprised expression, Mr. Essex laughed.
“They are made of wood, Mr. Gunther.” The old man returned to his upright position. “I’m certain I could afford something newer, something plastic. I’m wealthy enough, I could probably equip myself as old Ahab did, eh?”
“I don’t know who Ahab is,” Ken confessed.
“Ah, that is something we will have to rectify then,” Mr. Essex smiled. “You stay here, and I will fetch the book for you. It won’t take me but a minute or two. The copy is on my desk. I often look at it.”
The smile faded from the old man’s face. “It was my brother Nathaniel’s book. I adored him, you know. I looked up to him. He was everything I wanted to be. And Oliver, well, he was as sweet as a puppy.”
Mr. Essex cleared his throat, and he looked at Ken.
“I love America, Mr. Gunther,” the old man stated, his voice hoarse. “Fighting for her, for everything she stands for, that was certainly worth both my legs. The war claimed both my brothers, though. Both of them, and I can tell you this, Mr. Gunther, nothing was worth that. Not a single item or idea was worth one of their lives, let alone both.”
Mr. Essex took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He wiped his eyes, took a pocket square out of his shirt pocket, and dried his hands.
“Ah, Captain Ahab,” Mr. Essex murmured. Looking at Ken, he asked, “Will you wait a moment or two? I know Nathaniel would want you to have the book. It was his favorite.”
“Yes,” Ken agreed. “I’ll wait, Mr. Essex.”
The old man smiled, unlocked the wheels of his chair, and rolled himself toward the house.
Ken stood at the stonewall, his hands in his pockets, and he waited.
