Author’s note: My novella Remember is a reflection on how we treat our young people going to war and especially the ones who will never come back. They are human beings like the rest of us with hopes, loves and fears. It deals with a retired college English teacher remembering her favorite student, how she loved him and eventually let him down. I particularly like the student Vernon Singleberry whose dreams come true only in the memories of others.

It was a spring morning in 1980. Lucinda Cambridge, a terribly thin and brittle woman in her early seventies, sat in a rocking chair in her sparsely appointed bedroom in a boarding house in a small Texas community, reading from two books at a small table. One was Homer’s Odyssey, and the other was Ernest Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea. She did not know that by nightfall she would be dead.

“For two nights and two days he was lost in the heavy seas. Time and again he saw his end at hand,” she whispered in the same monotone voice she used as she recited selections of literature to her bored junior college students.

A 10-year-old blonde with large eyes crawled through the window by Lucinda’s bed. The retired teacher jumped slightly at the noise and turned to see the little girl plop her feet on the old wooden floor.

“Shirley Meyers!” Lucinda did not know whether to startled or terribly pleased by the impromptu visit.

“Shh! The old women will hear you!” She wandered over to the bed and hopped up on it, dangling her legs in carefree abandon.

“Oh no! You haven’t skipped school again!” Lucinda decided upon the imperious, judgmental tone to defend the honorable institution of education to which she had dedicated her life.

“Today’s Good Friday. They let us out early. Before lunch. So they didn’t have to feed us.” Shirley’s eyes wandered around the room.

“Does your mother know you’re here?”

“No.” Shirley jumped from the bed and walked to the far wall which had stacks and stacks of books against it. “You sure do have a lot of books. If somebody read all of them they’d be the smartest person in the world.”

“Why didn’t you tell your mother?” Lucinda would not be diverted from her well-intentioned meddling.

Shirley went back to the window and leaned out, inhaling deeply. “You’re so lucky to have honeysuckle growing right outside your window. Doesn’t it smell sweet?”

“Shirley?” Lucinda risked sounding school-marmish, which, indeed, she was.

“Because I’d have to sit at the beauty parlor and listen to mama talk about Warren Beatty and hear the women giggle about how silly it all sounds,” she replied, her eyes moving from the honeysuckle to the sky. “The clouds look so fluffy.”

“So the boarding house has become your sanctuary?” Her tone melted into sympathy. Lucinda could not help herself.

“No. Only your room.” Shirley pulled in her head, turned and smiled.

“Why, thank you, Shirley.”

“Those old biddies at the beauty parlor– they look at me funny and murmur, “Love child, love child.”

“That’s why you visit me so often.” She felt like her heart was about to burst with happiness.

“You don’t make me feel different.”

Lucinda extended her arms, and Shirley came over to give her a hug.

“Ah, but you are different.” She closed her eyes to keep from crying. “You’re so fresh and open and sweet.”

“And that name, love child.” Shirley asked, “What does it mean?”

“Well, it means . . . .”

“I know what it means. My mama and daddy weren’t married.” She pulled away and sat on the bed again. “But what does it really means? If my daddy loved me why isn’t he here? Wouldn’t it make more sense to call me a sex child instead of a love child? I don’t feel loved.”

“I love you.”

“I know.” Shirley smiled. “That’s why I like talking to you.” She walked back over to the stacks of books. “And I like your books.”

Lucinda joined Shirley and picked up a college yearbook. “There’s one I want you to see.”

“What is it?”

“The Lion. The junior college yearbook from 1970. I want to show you someone in it.”

The bedroom door opened with an angry bang. Nancy, Shirley’s mother, stalked into the room. She was pretty, but in her short thirty years on earth had given her a hard-edge. Shirley nervously hid the yearbook behind her back.

“I thought I’d find you in here.” Nancy put her hands on her hips.

“Shirley’s not bothering anything, Mrs. Meyers.” Lucinda tried to use her best tutorial voice.

“You know very well it’s Miss Meyers.” She glared at her daughter. “What’s that?”

“A yearbook.” Shirley slowly brought it from behind her back.

Nancy grabbed it from her, looked at the yearbook and threw it on the floor next to the stacks of other books. “You don’t need to look at trash. Git out of here.”

“Yes, mama. Bye, Mrs. Cambridge.” Shirley went through the door, closed it but put her ear to it.

“I know what you’re up to, old woman.” Nancy pointed at Lucinda.

“Shirley deserves to know about Vernon Singleberry.”

“It’s none of your business.” She clinched her jaw tightly as though to end the conversation.

“But—“

“I don’t want to hear it,” Nancy cut her off.

“Please—“

Nancy opened the door, and Shirley jumped back as her mother stormed into the hall and gripped her daughter’s arm. “What are you doing?”

Lucinda cocked her head to hear the rest of the conversation, but Nancy dragged Shirley down the stairs, muttering the entire time. The old woman stared at the door a moment, sighed deeply and returned to her reading. “But in the morning of the third day, which Dawn opened in all her beauty, the wind dropped, a breathless calm set in and Odysseus keeping a sharp lookout ahead as he was lifted by a mighty wave, could see the land close by.” She tapped the book with conviction, then opened her volume of Hemingway. “Now where is that passage? Ah, here it is. She read moving her lips. Similarities, similarities. Man against the sea. Man as one with the sea. Did Hemingway know what he was doing? Was he inspired by Homer? Oh, we shall never know! Why oh why did such a gifted writer have to blow his brains out?”

She unconsciously rubbed her right arm, then momentarily she felt dizzy. Shaking her head Lucinda looked up to see that she was mysteriously in her old classroom at the junior college, and saw Vernon Singleberry—a tall, blond young man, about nineteen, with large, soulful eyes— lope in just as the bell rang. He was dressed in blue jeans and a crisp plaid short-sleeved shirt and carrying too many books.

“He couldn’t write no more — I mean, anymore. Isn’t that what you told us, Miz Cambridge?”

Lucinda’s mouth flew open in shock. It was as though the last ten years were as a moment in time. She took a moment to recover. “Vernon Singleberry! What — what are you doing here!?”