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Back The Fall of Valor Save as PDF
Chapters (51)
  1. Introduction by Michael Bronski
  2. BEGINNING
  3. II
  4. III
  5. IV
  6. V
  7. VI
  8. VII
  9. VIII
  10. IX
  11. X
  12. XI
  13. XII
  14. XIII
  15. MIDDLE
  16. II
  17. III
  18. IV
  19. V
  20. VI
  21. VII
  22. VIII
  23. IX
  24. X
  25. XI
  26. XII
  27. XIII
  28. XIV
  29. XV
  30. XVI
  31. XVII
  32. XVIII
  33. XIX
  34. XX
  35. END
  36. II
  37. III
  38. IV
  39. V
  40. VI
  41. VII
  42. VIII
  43. IX
  44. X
  45. XI
  46. XII
  47. XIII
  48. XIV
  49. XV
  50. XVI
  51. About the Author

Are you having a good time with Grandma & Grandpa? I know without asking that you are being good boys. I’m sure you get better swimming than we do here, for the surf is always very strong & there is a strong undertow which makes it risky to swim out very far. But Sconset is wonderful. The beach is glorious & we have had perfect weather every day. At night there is usually a heavy fog but the days are lovely.

Your father & I are having a wonderful time. Last night we went to a big dance for soldiers & sailors at the Yacht Club in Nantucket. Which was great fun. Good friends of ours here are a Marine captain & his wife who has seen active service at Guadalcanal. He is wonderfully interesting to listen to & I often think how excited you would be to know him.

Your father is still asleep upstairs because of our late night last night so I send love for him, & I know he will be writing you himself tomorrow or next day. Do give our best love to Grandma & Grandpa. We send all our love to you both. We miss you.

Lovingly,

Mother

Curiously dissatisfied with the letter, Ethel Grandin glanced up from the writing desk and gazed about the room. No one else had come in. The walls were hung with a few prettified scenes of whaling in the old days, and two conventional seascapes in oil by artists unknown. Through the window she caught sight of the Howards strolling arm in arm up the road toward Tom Nevershead. She addressed the stamped envelope and immediately forgot it. Her mind was not on the letter at all; least of all was it upstairs in the bedroom, where John still lay asleep. Her mind had wandered off into the murky fog last night in search of her husband; and the worst of it was, she had the awful feeling that it might never come back to her again.

II

II

It isn’t what happens to us that matters. Anything can happen to anybody. What matters is what we let it do to us.

John Grandin had often heard his father say this. He himself, at appropriate moments, had passed it on to three or four students, and he had often thought it would come in handy when his sons began to grow up. It was one of those sayings which are stock in every family; parents trot them out when other words fail, or when a good homely aphorism can take the place of an awkward or tedious explanation and stop the inquisitive young, to boot, by giving them something to think of. There was no denying the truth of the saying; and its value lay in direct proportion to the seriousness of the event. But he had led an uneventful life and had never given it much thought.