“He said Papaw would sit out on the porch with him and tell him stuff about her. About what they did when they were young and all. Back when they were goin’ together they courted in buggies. Can you imagine that? Hitching up a horse and going on a date?”

“Yeah,” I said, and that was all I said.

“Daddy was in the marines,” he said. He was goin’ across the ocean on a ship in 1945, a whole ship full of men. He said you had a little place about four feet wide and six feet long that was yours. All your clothes, all your gear. He said you had to sleep so close to another man you’d touch him. Couldn’t even turn over in your bunk. He said it was bad.”

I’d heard Daddy talk about it, of course. But he was shipped over early, I guess around ’42 or ’43. He was in the army and went to Europe anyway.

“It was early one mornin’,” he said. “Just off the coast of Iwo Jima. They was waitin’ orders to land, I guess it was so many ships they had to wait their turn. They’d done been told to saddle up, that they were goin’ in. The navy had been shelling Mount Surabachi for something like two weeks, trying to soften it up. They knew they was goin’ in over open beach, no cover. And every Japanese had sworn not to be taken alive. But they’d been waiting something like three hours with full packs on and all. He said it just come down the hall in front of everybody. Like a silhouette, he said. All black, like lace, but not exactly like that either. More like a shadow was what he said. And he said it got just as quiet as anything when the first ones seen it. Said he guessed most of ’em thought they’s fixin’ to meet death anyway and it had come on the ship to meet ’em. There was some black guys in this platoon, you know how they are over something like that. But they didn’t say nothin’. Said their eyes got big and white, but they just leaned back and let it pass. And it came on down the aisle, every man there watchin’ it. Said two or three tried to touch it but it wasn’t nothin’ there to touch.”

We had stopped by then, and I don’t know how long we’d been stopped. It might have been a long time. I know we were in woods. Black woods. So black your cigarette was a red rocket coming up to your mouth. There’s something to be said for Crown Royal in the proper doses.

“Did he know what it was?” I said.