Remember Chapter Twenty-One

Previously: Retired teacher Lucinda remembers her favorite student Vernon. Reality interrupts when another boarder Nancy scolds her for talking to her daughter Shirley. Lucinda remembers Vernon decided to marry Nancy but instead was drafted. Her last advice to him was less than kind. She has another confrontation with Nancy.
Lucinda covered her face with her hands after Nancy left. She could not stand another confrontation. When she opened her eyes, she saw Vernon, dressed in military fatigues and a helmet. He stood in front of her with a blank expression on his face.
“Vernon! I’m so glad you came back. I wanted to—“
Vernon fell forward, revealing the back of his helmet blown apart and a red mess that was once his brain. Lucinda screamed loud and long. Bertha rushed in the door, grabbed Lucinda and hugged her as she dissolved in tears.
“You poor baby!” Bertha cooed. “What’s wrong?”
“There! There! On the floor! Can’t you see him!?” Lucinda pointed to the form only she could see on the floor. “All that blood? The back of his head! Just blown away!”
“You poor thing!” Bertha patted Lucinda’s head. “I didn’t know you suffered from the hysterics too!”
The very thought that she was not always in complete control of her emotions jolted Lucinda back to reality. Taking several deep breaths, she averted her eyes from the vision of Vernon on the floor. The tears finally stopped. “I’m all right now. Thank you, Mrs. Godwin.”
“Thank goodness. I don’t think I’d have the nerve to slap you into calmin’ down.”
“No.” Lucinda forced a smile. “You won’t have to slap me.”
“Jest what on earth happened to make you have a fit like that?”
Lucinda stood, closed her eyes momentarily then walked to her rocker where she sat. “I was remembering a student of mine.”
“Oh, I know what you mean. Young people today.” Bertha’s eyes widened. “I jest don’t know where we went wrong. They’re so disrespectful and—“
“Oh no,” Lucinda interrupted. “This young man wasn’t bad at all.”
“That’s unusual.” Bertha’s eyebrows went up.
“He was sweet and kind. Not the brightest in his class but the hardest working.” Lucinda dared not to look down. “He was the kind of student that made teaching all worthwhile.”
“Well, what about him upset you?”
“I remembered a spring day, near the end of the semester, many years ago.” She decided confession might be good for her soul. “This very special, very wonderful young man came into my office and announced he had been drafted and was going to serve in Vietnam. He was obviously scared.”
“At least he wasn’t of them draft dodgers.”
“He needed me to say something, to make him feel better, not to be scared anymore.” She smiled in remorse. “And all I said was to worry more about driving home that day than dying in war.”
“But that’s true.”
“There is truth, and then there is reality.” Lucinda leaned back in defeat. “He was dead of a mortar blast to the back of the head less than a year later.”
“At least he died for his country.” Bertha persisted in her perky optimism.
“That’s what he said, that he was going to die for his country.” Lucinda had never allowed herself to be so harsh in self-judgment “And all I could say was something trivial, something so heartless.”
Bertha scooted across the bed to be closer to the teacher. “Now don’t you fret about that and make yourself have fits.”
“But it’s hard not to be.”
“I know a woman who had the same thing happen to her, or jest about. Her husband had a heart condition, and they lived right behind their daughter and her family.”
“Bertha! Come here!” Emma’s voice echoed up through the stairwell.
“One day while the wife was mowin’ the lawn — the man couldn’t, you see, because—“
“Shouldn’t you answer your sister?” The last thing Lucinda wanted was to have Emma bursting through her door in an outrage.
“Oh, if she wants me bad enough she can come git me. Anyway, he couldn’t mow, you see, because of his heart, but that day he followed her every step while she mowed. She said that made her nervous.”
“Bertha! Help me move this sofa so I can clean behind it!”
She continued to ignore her sister. “After supper that night he wanted to go through the back gate and visit—“
“Won’t she hurt herself lifting the sofa?”
“Oh no. Emma’s strong as an ox,” She replied with a sneer. “Anyway, he wanted to go through the back gate and visit the kids. Well, she said she was too tired from mowin’ and that they’d go another night. Sure enough, he died of a heart attack that night, and she felt jest terrible ‘cause she didn’t fulfill his last wish.”
“Bertha!” Emma sounded angrier.
“There was the kids—“
“There were the kids.” Lucinda could not help but correct Bertha’s grammar.
“That’s right. There was them kids close and he couldn’t see them one last time because of her. Why, she jest about drove herself nuts thinkin’ about it. One day while I was over havin’ coffee—“
“Bertha! Where are you!?” Emma was on the verge of erupting like Mount Vesuvius and scorching everyone within her grasp.
Bertha went to the door and shouted, “I’m in the teacher’s room calmin’ her down after a fit!”
“I didn’t have a fit.” Lucinda tried not to sound too offended.
“Hold your horses!” She returned to the bed and sat. “Where was I? Oh yes. We was havin’ coffee, and she jest bust out cryin’ and told me how she felt and — I don’t know why I thought of this but I did and I’m so proud — I asked her if she knew her husband was goin’ to die that night.”
“If I git a hernia it’s your fault!” Emma continued her rant from downstairs.
“Oh git a hernia! I don’t care!” There was a rough angry edge to Bertha’s voice. A sweet smile covered her face when she resumed talking to Lucinda. “Anyways, she looked at me funny and said no. Then I said then you didn’t deprive him of that visit on purpose, did you? And she said no. If you had known it was his last night you’d gone to Timbuktu for him, wouldn’t you? She said yes. Well, I told her no one knows when you’re goin’ so you can’t cry over what you might have done if you had known. You know, she agreed and started feelin’ better right off.”
“But, my dear, don’t you think we should always be mindful that what we do today will be with us all our tomorrows?”

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