The Shroud

THE SHROUD

Lancaster Lane was always cool in the summer, giant elms shielding it from the hot glaring light, an impenetrable shroud arching over the street like a cathedral ceiling of green, leaving it in semi-darkness.

We’d sometimes sit under one of the elms at our end, watching Kevin Plummer carress his Vette with an old chamois cloth, watching him rub its glossy red skin to a mirror finish so it reflected the lush dome of leaves overhead. And we would talk, the way men forgot that boys talk. That summer, like the summer before and summer after, we talked of the war and whether we would go in just a few more years, if it would still be there, if it would ever end.

“When does Kevin have to go?” I asked.

“Day after tomorrow,” Lance said. “Wonder what he’s gonna do with the Vette.”

“Probably take it with him,” I joked.

“Hope he doesn’t go to Vietnam,” Dave said. “My Dad said Nixon’s sending more guys this year.”

“He should go to Canada instead.”

“Not Kev!” Timmy frowned. He looked up to Kevin, who always picked him first for his side in baseball, who’d sometimes let him ride shotgun in his Vette with Beach Boys blaring on the AM radio, and most of all treated him like a kid brother after Tim’s older brother Bob was killed in a car crash last year.

“A lot of guys are going there,” I said.

“Kevin ain’t no coward,” Timmy said, punching my arm. “Not like your flower-power brother with his wussy peace signs.” Tim’s hit didn’t hurt half as much as his words.

That Lancaster Lane could possibly exist without our sentry of elms, that we’d witness helplessly while their limbs withered from within, that the shrinking cloak above would lay bare our fears? It was beyond belief. My father was first to notice from his nightly smokes on the porch. How the trees were changing, casting softer shadows as their layers thinned. How fallen leaves now freckled our lawns already, in June. How the air held a faint breath of rot. Sour as his mood.

“Maybe they’re just getting old,” I said, watching the orange dot on another Marlboro light up his tired face then arc over the porch rail to smolder in the grass.

“No, it’s more than that. I think it’s Dutch Elm Disease.”

He stared into the trees, watching moonlight come through the once-solid canopy of branches, listening to murmurs of other porches along the street, ignoring voices droning today’s events from the flickering light inside our house. As it did every night, the TV spewed news of anti-war protests and tragedies, like the ones at Kent State where my brother went. His face would grow angry, disgusted. “If you ever did what those hippie punks are doing, I’d kick your lazy ass out.”

“Maybe they’re doing what they believe in, Dad. So is Michael.”

You didn’t argue then, when he got that way. Clinging to how he was brought up. Blue collar. Crew cut. Gun on the back window of his pick-up. Mike tried once in awhile, just to see if anything had changed, knowing before he started that nothing had.

We sat quiet for a long time. “Things will be different now” Dad sighed, calloused hands covering his face. “Without the trees, nothing will be the same.”

“Can’t we make it stop?” I hoped.

“Not from what I heard. They just cut ‘em down to keep it from spreading.”

“Maybe they’ll plant new ones!”

“By the time they’re grown, I’ll be underneath ‘em,” he said, getting up.

That summer passed quickly, the trees becoming more sickly, Lancaster Lane still not accepting its fate. Right after fourth of July, the first bucket trucks came down our street, idling at the far end, plotting their assault. We retreated by our elm, chainsaws high-pitch whining like cicadas, blue-white smoke hanging heavy, acrid fumes choking the air.

Then all of Lancaster Lane came out together. As if to administer last rites. We gathered near the trucks, away from falling diseased branches, staring and steering clear of the amputated trunks. Old Lancaster Lane told how small the trees were once, us younger ones listening, nodding, everyone shaking their heads, how sad, how terrible. Very young Lancaster kids stood quiet, listening to the saws buzz, watching swaths of light stretch farther across the street, thinking new trees could be just as nice.

Mrs. Plummer got a telegram from Kevin saying he was headed to Vietnam, deploying in a week. She cried sitting at our kitchen table, her husband patting her on the back, my Dad saying “there, there, Mary” the way people do, and “he’s a good boy serving his country, God won’t let anything happen to him.” Then he squinted hard, glaring at my brother, home from college with even longer hair and a beard. Mike walked out shaking his head.

The light grew, wider and more harsh as the sun moved closer, our leafy guardian barely shielding half our street, the other half drenched in dank heat rising from the earth. Each day we’d parked our StingRay bikes under a surviving elm, watching the advancing charge, smelling sawdust and 4-stroke gasoline, sticky sap bleeding out, stubby trunks casting taunting shapes.

It made me think of “Lord” Lancaster, who older folks always talked about at street gatherings. Not at all royalty, but an ambitious young Brit who ended up owning a coal mining company, and most of the town itself. Here, surrounded by forests of American elms, Geoffrey Lancaster would build his home and raise his children. Here, he’d create a place for fellow immigrants and their families who came across oceans to help grow his business. Here, hard-working miners like himself would live in neighborhoods of hope, pride and patriotism.

And so, armed with his fortune earned through cunning, sweat and little blood, reinforced with a loyal crew of ex-pats, he began the arduous process of clearing away trees. Building a long line of homes under the carefully-planned column of elms. He paved the street and brought in electricity. Helped the first families move in, provided loans and advice. And, began construction of Lancaster Manor House, which looms tall and empty today at the top of our street.

Now, at almost every block party, they retell how during World War 1, when his native land felt the threat of invasion, Lancaster left the near-completed mansion, gave instructions to his workers, and boarded a ship “back to Mother England.” Neighbors tsk tsk telling how he was killed a year later in the forests of France, how his mustard-gassed remains were returned home, then laid to rest in the manicured backyard of his gated house.

As I stared into the new shadows, I wonder what he’d think if he could see what’s happened to his beloved veil disappearing, to his stately home revealing such neglect in sun-scorched light, to his adopted country he adored so, seemingly decaying from inside too.

I sat on the porch alone now, windows shut tight behind me, our black & white TV silent. Familiar voices inside sounded far away, me not wanting to hear but hearing. From the cigarette ashes glowing across our street — bobbing up and down, back and forth in disgust or pity — I knew they could hear too. I just wanted the voices to stop, stop, please God make them stop.

“How can you shame our family like that?” my father yelled. “Draft dodgers are commies! You’re un-American!”

“You said ‘Love It Or Leave It,’ remember?” Mike shouted back.

“The Plummer boy is going. I thought you and him were good buddies,” Dad said. “What’s he going to think?”

“Kevin knows we see things differently. We all gotta do our own thing.”

“Your own thing, your own thing.” Dad mocked. “More college-boy bullshit. Get a haircut, get a job, or get out!”

“Just because I don’t want to go to war?” Mike asked my mother’s wet eyes. “Mom, really?”

“Cowards don’t live in my house!” Dad blurted, not letting her answer. “You’re not welcome here!”

Doors slammed, voices became quiet. I went in to comfort mom.

Lancaster Lane took on a new appearance in the light. Our older houses now looking ancient in the semi-darkness, pleading for repair and paint. It became clear Lancaster Manor needed work, its beautiful gardens which thrived when Geoffrey’s family was alive, were now thickets. Overgrown bushes surrounded the house, ivy threatened to smother dirty glass windows, weeds grew between the red brick sidewalk, the lawn looked feral.

As summer came to an end, only five of the great elms stood untouched. Our ceiling of dense greenery was all but gone, the now-visible sky cloudy with whiffs of autumn approaching. As our enemy crept closer, we’d begun calling the big trucks “Tanks,” their chainsaws louder, shouts from workmen becoming clearer. Across the street, Kevin’s Vette looked neglected, and we knew he would just cry when he came home to see it like that, but he never did.

Kevin Plummer was the first from Lancaster Lane to die in a war since World War II. Korea returned alive all those it had taken, my dad included, some physically scarred, some mentally. We were allowed to go to the funeral, it was my first and the casket was closed. My father hugged Kevin’s father for the first time I could remember, and so did Tim’s father, and Dave’s father and many other fathers. Dad said my brother wanted to come so badly but he was visiting relatives out of state, which he wasn’t.

They buried Kevin where our local veterans of all wars are honored, it drizzled throughout his service at the canvas-covered hole, the flag on top of his casket folded into a heart shape getting soaked in the rain. When I saw Timmy clenching back tears and Kevin’s mom heaving heart-broken sobs, a pain no mother should ever have to bear, I cried too. After we came back to Lancaster Lane in the long parade of cars, everyone’s headlights on, our heads overfull, everyone went over to the Plummer’s for coffee, but I didn’t go.

We walked home from school quietly that first part of fall, Kevin vividly alive yet, in our minds. It was that feeling you get when someone who was there isn’t anymore, and never will be again. The emptiness and melancholy stay until some new thing needs the space. You forget how much you miss that person, or fake how you feel until you think of it again, then it’s not nearly as sad because it will be a memory, and we only keep good memories. Right?

Once in awhile I’d get a letter from my brother in Ontario with no return address, and I’d compare it to my mother’s when my father was at work, our little secret. When Mike’s draft notice finally came, Dad tucked it away in a drawer without a word.

On the day they cut up our tree, we gathered together on Lance’s porch and were silent. Just watching the large bucket lift the man with the glittering saw into the tree, watching each bough fall to the sunlit ground below, not saying anything, just watching, looking down Lancaster Lane at the row of limbless beasts, at the diseased branches heaped in the truck, at the Vette, still pale and dusty, colorless in the cool September light.