THE THINGS HE LEFT BEHIND Thesis Submitted to the College Of

THE THINGS HE LEFT BEHIND

Thesis

Submitted to

The College of Arts and Sciences of the

UNIVERSITY OF DAYTON

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for

The Degree of

Master of Arts in English

Jenna Marie-Claire Gomes, M.A.

UNIVERSITY OF DAYTON

Dayton, Ohio

May 2018

THE THINGS HE LEFT BEHIND

Name: Gomes, Jenna Marie-Claire

APPROVED BY:

Meredith L. Doench, Ph.D. Faculty Reader Lecturer of English

David J. Fine, Ph.D. Faculty Reader Assistant Professor of English

Christopher J. Burnside, MFA Faculty Reader Lecturer of English

ABSTRACT

THE THINGS HE LEFT BEHIND

Name: Gomes, Jenna Marie-Claire University of Dayton

Advisor: Dr. Meredith Doench

The Things He Left Behind is a short story cycle inspired by the consequences of war and the power of legacy. It follows a young soldier, Felix Rocha, through the eyes of the many friends, family, and strangers that he impacted throughout his short life. The character is based off of a real-life soldier, Felix Del Greco, who was the first

Connecticut National Guardsman to be killed in Operation Iraqi Freedom. The incorporation of artifacts into the story is meant to mix fiction and reality; to present to the reader both the real Felix and the fictional Felix. As Tim O’Brien famously said, “story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth.” This short story cycle is meant to make a lasting impact on the reader, leaving them with the question, “What are the things that I will leave behind?”

iii

Dedicated to Felix M. Del Greco Jr.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Many thanks are in order, beginning with Joe Pici. Though he was not able to see this project through to the end, I have him to thank for the inspiration, the inception, and the will behind writing many of these stories.

Thank you to Meredith Doench, for taking over as my main thesis advisor and giving me invaluable advice as a published author, as well as confidence in my own writing that I didn’t know I had.

To Chris Burnside, for jumping into this project when I needed you most, and for continuing to push me as a writer. You helped point me in the direction I needed when I was “stuck” on my last few stories.

And to David Fine, for being the very first person to read my rough draft, for understanding everything I was trying to accomplish without even telling you, for all the impromptu office stop-bys, and, of course, for making me frame my pictures.

Thank you to the whole team as a whole, you were all essential moving parts of this piece I’ve created, and the combination of all of your advice has helped me to create this piece that I am so very proud of.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT .……………………………..…………………...………………....…...... iii

DEDICATION ………………………………………...………...………………....…... iv

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .………………………....………..……………………...... v

PROLOGUE ………………………………...…………………...………………..…..... 1

THE MENTOR ………………………………………………………...……………..... 2

THE COMRADE ………………………………………………………...…………... 15

THE EX ………………………………………………………...…………………...... 20

THE COUSIN ………………………………………………………...……………..... 3 2

THE SISTER ………………………………………………………...……………….. 3 8

THE FRIEND ………………………………………………………...……………….. 4 6

THE STRANGER ………………………………………………………...…………... 5 1

THE SON ………………………………………………………...………………….... 6 1

EPILOGUE ………………………………………………………...…………………. 6 4

AFTERWORD ………………………………………………………...…………….... 6 5

A NOTE ON SOURCES ………………………………………………………...……. 6 7

PROLOGUE

"I'm at work. It's summer, everyone has gone, I'm alone and not expecting to, I am here thinking about you. It's 2007. Jesus. I'm reading all of these and trying not to cry. I'm reading a letter Gov. Rowland wrote, referring to you as a "hometown hero." I remember your now seemingly prophetic small town hero sweatshirt. I see you beaming at the state of Connecticut, YOUR state of Connecticut, flying the flags at half staff for you. But maybe you're not beaming, maybe you are too modest for that. Maybe you take it with a reserved sense of duty and that, it's done not for praise or adulation, but because it is the only right thing for your country. And of course it was never in vain. You were outspoken and stood proud with your views, never backing down, never flinching, but accepting reason, compromise. Stoic and dependable, you were the friend and man everyone should be. Your music, as unfinished as it was, stays with me, images of you scribbling and filling notepads....All of which I readily feel should be published. The world shouldn't just know you, they NEED to. To get a taste of you, they need you to fill their bones with your person, your thoughts, your love. Maybe I'm not making sense, I just wish you were here, bouncing ridiculous philosophies and theories off me. I want you here not just for your friends and family or for those whose lives you touched from the saddle of the Stone Ghost and more, but also for everyone that never met you. I imagine you listening to thousands of Springsteen bootlegs you've never heard. I see you belting out the most perfect songs , and everyone around you intently waiting for your next lyric, your next story. 2007 and it's getting harder every year. I've got some time to kill till I see you again, but I know you're keeping things interesting wherever you are.” Anonymous, 8/1/07

THE MENTOR

In 1981, a friend helped me find The Boss. I remember we were at a Boy Scout overnight in the middle of thick Connecticut woods and were stuffed four boys to each three-person tent. We were in complete isolation, which is a funny thing about

Connecticut. It’s a small state and it’s densely packed until you get to the middle of nowhere. That’s where the woods go on for miles and if you don’t mark your way you’ll live in the woods forever. And when you’re in there, you can feel the thick smothering you. Especially when you’re in a humid tent with a bunch of other preteen boys.

I was wide awake, breathing in the mosquito-air, when Andrew Jackson (I’m not shitting you about that name) pulled a glorious Sony Walkman out of his stuffed backpack and motioned for me to climb over the sleeping boys between us. I use the word “glorious” to describe this thing because it is truly the only word that captured my awe. Or maybe “divine”. “Holy”, even. The truth is, a Sony Walkman cost an ugly penny back in ’81 and the closest I had ever seen one was through the glass of a game store window.

“I stole it from my dad,” Andrew Jackson whispered, “And he listens to Bruce

Springsteen . Have you heard of him?”

He took my silence as a “no.”

“My dad’s gonna be so mad if he finds out I took it,” said Andrew Jackson.

At that point, the little bastard was egging me on. But it worked. He had already captured my attention with his brand-spanking-new Walkman, but it was

Andrew Jackson’s rebellion that incited my interest. Not only was I going to listen to a tape from a portable tape player , but I was going to be an accessory, too.

Andrew Jackson slapped the headphones over my ears and pressed a button on my Walkman. The harmony of “The River” drifted hauntingly into my ears. I remember thinking that “HARMONica” was a good word for the instrument because it hummed the “HARMONy” so well. The lyrics weren’t anything I could understand at the time, of course. Loss, heartbreak, stagnancy. But I loved stories. And I felt like I was listening to one, the ones my dad talked about that meant something. Even though I didn’t grasp the true depth of it, the words-on-top of words moved me. I didn’t feel like I was listening to a song anymore. I felt like I was listening to someone’s soul. It wasn’t because I was a particularly intelligent nine-year-old that I had that thought; it was because The Boss could make you feel things like that.

In 1986, The Boss helped me find my first girlfriend. She was just my friend at first, the kind of friend that sits in front of you in Social Studies and lets you peek at her quizzes. Her name was Marianne but I called her Mary. One day I asked her to hang out after school and used two weeks of allowance to get us ice cream. On the walk back to her house, I wanted to ask her to be my girlfriend, but instead I made her listen to Bruce Springsteen. I studied her as she listened, her eyes narrowed and her hands pressing the headphones tightly over her ears. She liked it. She liked him.

“Will you be my girlfriend?”

“Okay.”

She liked me.

Time wore on like it does when you’re fourteen. We would make the trek from school to my house almost every day, knowing that my dad wouldn’t be home from his landscape job until the sun went down. We would go upstairs to my room and sit on the bed and kiss without tongue. And the soundtrack, all the time, was The Boss.

One of these days, Mary and I were sitting on the bed. She was playing with her hair as I cued up “Hungry Heart.” She kept trying to put a braid in her hair but the different pieces kept slipping out. She started to cry a bit, but I didn’t want to embarrass her, so instead of asking if something was wrong, I just tried to braid her hair myself. I quickly realized braiding hair wasn’t the same as braiding rope, but I kept trying. “Hungry Heart” came to an end. Mary reached forward then and shut off the tape player. There was a moment of silence.

“I lied to you,” she said.

“About what?”

“About Bruce Springsteen. I hate him.”

And then Mary got up, shook out her hair, and walked out my door. She never talked to me again and stopped coming to school two weeks later. Word around the eighth grade was that her mom and dad got divorced and she had to move to a different school. She probably went by “Marianne” there.

In 1989, The Boss helped me find the National Guard. The Boy Scouts had become the Eagle Scouts and Andrew Jackson wasn’t there because his father heard the rumor that our scout master preferred bananas over apricots, if you know what I mean. But one guy that did come with me was Bruce. My dad was a little scared

because he was smart enough to realize The Boss was as liberal as they come. And now I was wearing ripped jeans and contemplating rebellion.

One day during an Eagle Scout meeting, a recruiter came in from the National

Guard. It was easy to tune him out because his spiels were basically the same as all the commercials I’d seen on TV and the pamphlets that were sent to my house. There was even a recruiter that stopped by the house once, but my dad said I wasn’t home.

“They’re full of crap,” my dad had said, “they think it’s easy to get kids here because it’s fuckin’ Parkville.”

In Hartford’s Parkville neighborhood, you don’t really have a chance at a future without someone offering you one. I found out after that the recruiter had gone right upstairs to the family above us in our three-family home and suckered Tiago

Silva into the Guard life. He was the son of first-gen Portuguese parents and they didn’t speak English. I didn’t see him much after that.

So like I said, I didn’t really listen to this recruiter. I was an ignorant prick at seventeen and strode out of the room whistling “Born to Run” and snickering at the guys around me who asked me if I was gonna join. As I was leaving the building, the recruiter held the door open for me and started following me to the parking lot.

“Lachenmeyer, right?” he asked.

I nodded, not interested in pursuing any topic of conversation.

“You were humming ‘Born to Run.’ You like The Boss?”

The bastard got me on that one. What was I supposed to say? A true Boss fan can’t sit in silence when asked if they’re a Boss fan.

“Of course. He’s my fuckin- my freaking idol, sir.”

Christ, I was a fucking idiot. The recruiter looked at me with a smile. I could tell he was reading me, and he was probably doing a really good job of it.

“You think I’m a dumbass, don’t you?” he asked.

“No, no, sir, I –”

“No, it’s alright. I get it. I mean, I’m telling all of you to join me in protecting this country. But this country has done some pretty fucked up things to its soldiers.

Vietnam? Fucked up. I get it.”

The recruiter had now said “fucked” twice and we had already reached my car.

It was awkward.

“Lachenmeyer,” he continued, “I’m not telling you to join the Guard, I’m not even asking you to like your country. But when I see a fellow Springsteen fan, I gotta say something.”

At this point, I was trying to subtly dig around in my pockets for my keys, with no success. I felt bad for giving this guy only bumbling words back, so I asked him if he was a fan.

“Hell yes, son. You know what I love about him? About The Boss? He’s got this, this passion for everybody. For his country. And you can listen to his songs and hear all the grief he’s got for Vietnam and for the way this country treats its vets – but he loves this country, Lachenmeyer. He loves America and he loves it because he’s making it mean something to him, on this individual level. It’s not ironic, his love for it. It’s American.”

I found my keys. And I looked at the recruiter. And I finally found my non-bumbling, non-idiotic voice.

“Sir, can I have your contact information?”

On the ride home, I thought maybe this guy was right. I was an Eagle Scout, and I wanted to love my country. I just didn’t know how. Maybe I’d been listening to

“The Boss” all wrong. I looked in the rearview mirror and thought maybe, maybe , I could picture a beret on my head.

In 1999, The Boss helped me find a brother. I was at my third Bruce

Springsteen concert at the infamous North Meadows, deemed “The Meadows” by high school students in the greater Hartford area. The outdoor venue’s spacious grass section served as its general admission area, but was better known to concert goers as the party zone for high schoolers from Hartford and surrounding suburbs.

Somehow, at twenty-seven years old, I found myself submerged in beer-stained jeans and fake I.D.’s. I blamed a couple of my bar friends, who were supposed to be getting married the day Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band hit the Hartford pavement. It was only one month before the concert when the very happy couple revealed that they had cancelled their wedding. I admit I felt nothing but joy in that moment, immediately dialing The Meadows’ number to inquire about any remaining seats. They said they were sorry, but had nothing but general admission left. Good enough for me.

So there I was, alone on the lawn of The Meadows, when I noticed Felix

Rocha. He wasn’t far from me, about ten feet, and there shouldn’t have been anything

special about him. He was just another drunk high school kid. But unlike the rest, he seemed to be there alone, like me. And unlike the rest, he was completely shirtless, his baby-like belly spilling out over his cargo shorts. In his hands he was gripping what would seem to the rest of the world like a regular, unlabeled water bottle. But I learned a few things back in my days as a teenager on the lawn of the Meadows. An unmarked water bottle was, and likely will always be, universal code for “this isn’t water, this is vodka.” This cross-generational tradition made me smile, but I also knew that the security guards were well aware of this tradition. This kid didn’t seem belligerent, just happy, as he screamed the lyrics of “Born to Run”.

He clearly shared something with me, if only my passion for The Boss, and seeing him get busted for being a stupid kid was something that would screw with my good memories of the night. I thought of the recruiter, ten years before, making me realize I was a stupid kid. If only for my own reasons, I decided to give him a few suggestions.

I stepped over a couple passed out girls to get to him. As if he could sense my approach, he turned his head just as I reached him. Instead of questioning my intents, Felix Rocha just pushed his falling glasses back up his nose, threw an arm around my shoulders and screamed along with Bruce that we were tramps born to run.

The comradery of his gesture and the bonding atmosphere created by a Bruce concert caused me to launch my arm over his shoulder. We held onto each other and sang the rest of the song like old, drunk sailors.

As “Born to Run” trailed off, I attempted to scream over the crowd what I thought was the wisest piece of advice this young man had ever heard.

“You wanna keep your shirt on, man. If security comes over here to tell you to put it back on, they’ll take a look at what’s in that water bottle, too.”

“Could if I would,” Felix Rocha said to me as if we were old friends, “but I gave my shirt to some girl who ripped the shit out of hers on the fence. She had a v-neck down to her belly button.”

I had only come over to this kid to make myself feel like I was doing something good when he was literally giving people the shirt off his back. I felt like an asshole.

“That was nice of you,” I said pathetically.

“Eh,” he said humbly, taking another sip of his water bottle vodka.

I looked at Felix Rocha without his shirt on and didn’t want to help him to keep myself from feeling guilty anymore. Now I wanted to help him because he seemed like a good kid.

So I peeled off my Bruce shirt from ’93, stripping down to my stained white undershirt. He watched me, eyes narrowed.

“What are ya doing, man?”

“Here,” I said, “Put it on. That way security doesn’t come over here. And let me hold that damn vodka for you. I’ll get in less trouble if they catch me with it.”

“Dude,” he said, handing me the bottle, “Who the fuck are you, Jesus?”

“Doug Lachenmeyer.” I corrected him.

“You’re still Jesus to me, Doug Lachenmeyer,” he said, peeling the shirt on over his head. It didn’t quite fit him, but I found it kind of endearing. I wasn’t even worried about him stretching it out. Felix Rocha held an imaginary cup up to toast me, “To you, man.”

“Naw,” I said, nodding towards the starting chords of “Glory Days”, “To The

Boss.”

“Hell yeah!” he shouted, either in response to me or the song. I’d like

to think both.

We each took a quick sip out of the vodka, not even caring about the

amount spilt.

“I’m Felix Rocha!” he said into the night sky.

For the rest of the concert, we held each other and sang along. With my arm around him, I knew I hadn’t found a stupid kid. I had something more.

In 2003, The Boss helped me convince Felix Rocha to go to Iraq. It had been four years since the concert, after which I had taken Felix Rocha out to the 24-hour

Goldroc Diner off of I-84. It was easy, getting him to join. He was born in Parkville, like me, and he was already in the Scouts. I didn’t feel like a recruiter at the time, since he ended up agreeing to join just out of natural conversation.

Our friendship happened naturally, too. There was nine years separating us, but instinctual brotherhood transcends age gaps. We went to two more Bruce

Springsteen concerts in the years that passed, and finally went to bars together when he hit that age. I was the one who got him through training and helping turn his baby

fat into muscle. I even learned some Portuguese. That made his grandmother happy.

I’m not sure what it was that drew us together. His infectious smile, his never-ending giving spirit: I think that he always inspired me. He was always helping somebody with something without ever asking for recognition. Felix Rocha was something, at nine years younger, that I had always wanted to be.

We were on a drive up to a Bruce concert in Boston when I brought up the volunteer troop.

“Have you ever wondered if Bruce will write about Iraq?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said, “I feel like he probably doesn’t know what’s it’s about just yet, like the rest of us.”

“What do you think it’s about?”

He looked out the window, as if searching for an answer.

“I don’t know,” he said, “But I’d like to think that it’s about helping people.

That’s what war should be. Not killing, helping.”

I studied him. I had been given the insanely hard assignment of recruiting volunteers for the 102 nd Infantry, one of the first volunteer troops from Connecticut to go Iraq. I was going, and I truly believed that I didn’t want Felix there for selfish reasons. I wanted him there because he cared.

“What do you think about joining the volunteer mission? Infantry 102. It’s eight months in Baghdad but they’re telling us it’s a peace-keeping mission.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

We sat there in silence for a bit while he seemed to be digesting the proposition.

“Are you going?” He asked.

I nodded. I kept my eyes on the road, trying to give him the most privacy I could. I didn’t expect an answer, I just wanted to see what his thoughts were. A couple minutes of silence passed before I said,

“What do you think? Really?”

Felix Rocha turned to me, sunlight beaming off his glasses, his smile big.

“I think that we’d be the ones The Boss would write about.”

In 2004, The Boss isn’t in Iraq with us. Felix Rocha is on the desert ground, blood soaking through his uniform. My palms are pressed against his wounds, a worthless gesture.

“I’m sorry, man,” I sob, “I’m sorry I ever told you to join, I’m sorry you had to ever meet me.”

He strains his eyes open to slits and opens his mouth just small enough to speak.

“I’m not. You gave me your shirt.”

I try to hum “Born to Run” but my brain can’t find the tune. I grab Felix up in my lap and by the time I remember, I’m just holding a body.

We weren’t born to run.

“It has been far too long, I still carry a picture of you in my wallet. I can safely say that you are a big part of me becoming an army officer. Since I was in scouts you were always a role model, though always a very unconventional one. I am at Fort Knox teaching new cadets what it means to be in the army, and we have stories of soldiers to tell them, and now I will tell them your story. I can only hope that it will inspire them to become as much of a soldier as you were. Of all of the awards I have ever received, the one that still touches me the most was the first scholarship in your honor. We all miss you Felix, I don't doubt that you had something to do with Aaron's safe completion of his first deployment." 2LT Nathan Miller of Ft Knox, KY

THE COMRADE

When Rocha died, we all grew up. The war wasn’t a joke anymore. It wasn’t an old photograph or a worn postcard. It was our reality.

Rocha and a handful of others came to join the Company C deployment from

Bravo Company. All of them were volunteers, like we were, but they were also about ten years younger than us. We had trouble swallowing that fact. There is something about getting a gun shoved in your hands and being thrown into a warzone that makes you scared for the kids only a quarter-way through their life.

Most of the Bravos kept to themselves. Rocha, though. If you hadn’t known the kid just started training with Company C, you would’ve thought he shared the womb with us. He was already tight with Lachenmeyer, who got him to join, but that wasn’t he reason he fit in so well. There was just something about the way Rocha pretended he was your best friend that made you believe it. Soon enough none of us had to believe it because it was just a fact. Like when I caught Schmidt in the tail end of a conversation with Rocha, and after he walked away Schmidt just kinda stood there, smiling and shaking his head. And I looked at that poor bastard and said, “Schmidt, my friend, you’ve been Rocha’d.”

Training was rough, but knowing it came nowhere close to what we’d see in

Iraq was even rougher. I was sitting down one day with Rocha and Cruz after a brutal session of combat training and said, “We’re all gonna die there, aren’t we?” I just kind of let it slip out like a big exhale. There was a couple seconds of silence before

Cruz said, “Not all of us.” Rocha pulled his little green notebook and a pencil out of

God-knows-where and started scribbling. We all knew by now that Rocha had that notebook filled with quotes. Anything he found funny or anything he wanted to remember. I wondered if he was writing down what Cruz said, or what I said.

When we were flying somewhere over the Atlantic, word got around that our purpose in Baghdad would solely be a peace-keeping mission. It had been up in the air for quite some time, but this confirmation gave us that extra kick of hope we needed before we landed.

Once the plane touched down in Kuwait, they let us make phone calls before our long haul to Baghdad. I overheard Rocha on the phone with his mother, telling her that we were going to be safe and not to worry. Rocha had told me that joining

Company C broke his promise to his mother that he wouldn’t volunteer. Seeing that dumb smile on his face while he told her the good news made my damn eyes water.

An hour after that phone call and a dozen hushed whispers later, we figured out they were lying to us. The whole country was going up in bombs. It was an unspoken worry that this was the second Vietnam. And we just told our families we were gonna be bottle feeding starving infants.

Three days in at the buttcrack of dawn on April 9 th, Silva woke us all up and asked us to get on our knees and pray. He was welcomed by a bunch of angry “Fuck you, Silva”s and some “Go back to sleep”s. But Silva wouldn’t shut up about it being Good Friday and Jesus’s sacrifices so finally Rocha sat up in his cot and said,

“Come on, guys. Jesus fuckin’ died for us, the least we could do is get on knees and say a damn prayer.” So we all rolled out of our cots and bowed our heads and said a word or two, because Rocha had that kind of power over us.

It was later that day when the roadside bombs hit our four-vehicle unit. It felt like a sixteen-wheeler truck ran right over me, and soon I was lying in the dirt staring at the blown-out window I went through. I looked to my right and saw Rocha take the gunner position in the Humvee still standing upright. That’s when the fire hit.

Within four minutes, they were gone. We never saw the enemy, just their ammo. I sat

up and saw Lachenmeyer holding Rocha in his arms. The kid had been shot down from the truck. I couldn’t hear anything past the ringing in my ears but I could see

Lachenmeyer moving his lips. Then he was crying. I knew Rocha was dead. Nobody said anything. One by one, we all took off our helmets and put them over our hearts.

Then we got on our knees and bowed our heads. From where I was I could see

Rocha’s green notebook where it must have fallen on the ground. I thought about how later I’d add his quote to it. About Jesus dying for us and the least we could do was get on our knees and say a damn prayer.

"5 years down the road and you still have the ability to influence young soldiers and prepare them to go off to war once again. the impact you've had on the 102d is really quite remarkable. you are missed my friend; your stories will continue to be told and your legacy lives on." 1SG Sypher of New Britain, CT

THE EX

There are people that are burned into me. Like a deep scar that runs along the patchwork of my mind into my heart and back again. One of them is my high school boyfriend. I always liked my nickname for him: Cat. He wasn’t anything like a Cat, though. He was vivacious and loud. He cared about you (too much and all the time) and never let you forget it.

He loved making people laugh and he loved to laugh himself. That was what got me, every time. The laugh. I can remember its characteristics. Full, loud, genuine.

But I can’t hear it anymore. It’s weird because it was my favorite part about him but that’s the part that didn’t get burned into me. After about a decade of not hearing it, I could no longer seem to pull his laugh from the arsenal of Cat memories tucked away into my brain.

So when I hear his laugh at the Six Pence Pub on a Thursday night, my patchwork scars ignite. I lift my head up from my Irish Coffee and see her right away.

She’s laughing with the bartender and the tone rings in my ears like another heartbeat. It’s his laugh. In female form, sure. But it is Cat’s laugh. I smile to myself as a warm memory washes over me.

It was July of 1998 and Cat and I were sitting on the edge of his family’s pool.

Our feet swung in the warm, summer night water. The grasshoppers were loud but the pounding of my heart was louder. I hated what I was about to do, but I knew that I needed to do it.

“You’re quiet tonight,” he said, “What’s going on in that brain?”

“Nothing. Well, a lot.”

“How much is ‘a lot’ these days?” Cat asked.

I didn’t answer. I looked away, swinging my feet in the water. He took his out, causing gentle waves to slosh over my calves. Cat strode over to the pool house, his latest project. He, his sister, and his little cousin had splashed the pale blue wood with a massive collage. There were horses, poems, sunsets; everything. Only one small square remained unpainted, lying in wait for Cat’s inspiration. Cat stood in front of it now, his hands on his hips.

“I think I’m going to paint the Italian flag here.”

“What? Why?”

“It goes red, white, green, right?”

“Green, white, red,” I corrected him. “Why do you want to paint the Italian flag?”

He turned to me. The tiki torch gleamed in his glasses.

“Because you’re Italian,” he said frankly.

There was silence. There was silence for a while. I took my feet out of the water and hugged my knees to my chest. I exhaled. Loudly.

“Cat,” I said, my voice trembling, “I’m gay.”

He looked at me, the flame still flickering strong in his glasses.

“Okay,” he said, “We can paint the rainbow flag.”

I feel a different flame now. The one that burns deep inside me, just below my stomach, when I am drawn to somebody beautiful. Inherently beautiful, not on the surface. I think maybe I’m being nostalgic and I only feel the flame because of her

laugh. So I study her. I sip my Irish Coffee and I look at her. She has dark red lips and dark black hair. She has powerful green eyes. She has a deep soul emanating from the tiny crow’s feet around her eyes. She has marvelous breasts. It’s not just the laugh.

She catches me looking at her and smiles. A small smile. She looks down at her drink and moves her eyes to look at me. She moves her eyes and she moves the flame burning inside me.

Often people say that the older they get, the more confident they are. But it’s not that at all. The older I get, the less of a shit I give what anybody else thinks. I look at her drink.

“Bourbon?” I ask.

She smiles coyly and slides her glass towards me. She motions with her finger for me try it. I put my fingers around the glass and it is wet with time. I wonder how long she’s been nursing it. I lift the glass to my lips and take a cautious sip. The taste hits my mouth like a gentle bee sting. I take a breath.

“Scotch,” I say, correcting myself.

She cups her hand over her mouth and says something inaudible, pointing her thumb over her shoulder. I smile and motion to my ears.

“Sorry?”

She comes around the corner of the bar separating us and leans on the stool next to me. She gets close to my ear.

“The guy down there ordered his scotch ‘on the rocks.’”

She smells like fire and strawberries. I can’t tell if I’m drunk from the sip of scotch or from her presence.

“Seriously? Has he ever ordered scotch before?”

“Probably, just the wrong way,” she says, smiling.

She hops up onto the stool next to me and peers at my drink.

“Coffee or Irish Coffee?”

“Oh, Irish,” I say affirmatively.

“That’s the right answer,” she says, holding up her glass.

We toast. She puts her drink down and leans her head on her hand, peering at me.

“I’m Lucia,” she says.

It sounds like sex dripping off her tongue. My breath is caught in my throat and my heart is pounding. I’m sure that she can see right through me so I’m trying hard to get my name out.

“Nicky.”

“ Nicky ,” she repeats.

Her eyes scan me. It feels as if she’s reading everything about me. Small beads of sweat are forming on the back of my neck.

“You look nervous,” she laughs and it’s that laugh again.

It was March of 2004 and I was sitting at our favorite bar. This was before I knew that Irish Coffee could soothe my soul and I was tapping a Sam Adams on the bar. His favorite. I had another one, gathering condensation, waiting for him.

He came in five minutes later, a little red-faced; a lot of smiles. He made his way around the bar, saying hi to somebody he knew at just about every table before he settled down next to me.

“My Nicky girl,” he said, grabbing the side of my head and kissing my unruly curls.

“Cat,” I sighed and handed him the Sam Adams.

“The most American beer for my last week in America.”

“Um, I think that’s Budweiser.”

“No, no,” he corrected me, “True Americans drink Sam Adams.”

“Well,” I said, “You are a true American.”

“That’s what they keep telling me,” he laughed.

The next thing I know, I’m laughing with her as we stumble into Pulaski

Square. I don’t remember leaving, and I don’t remember tabbing out. But I remember grabbing her thigh and asking her to walk with me. We settle on a bench and I tilt my head back the sky is spinning around me. She’s at my neck, laughing.

“How old are you?” I suddenly ask. Her crow’s feet started to look younger; fresher under the streetlamp.

“That’s complicated,” she says.

There’s silence for a bit and now she looks at her watch.

“Now,” she says, showing me the time, “I’m 23.”

“You’re young,” I say.

She nods.

“It’s your birthday?”

She nods.

“Well, happy fuckin’ birthday!” I shout sloppily.

I fling my leg over hers to get closer to her. I don’t care that I’m 34 and she’s freshly 23. She seems older to me; her thighs feel strong with age and her voice has depth behind it.

“So,” I continue, “why are you out on your birthday alone?”

“I’m not alone.”

She smiles and she leans into me. She wraps her arm around my back and pulls me in for a deep, Scotch-scented kiss. Our hair is mixed into each other, curly and straight, rough and soft. She kisses me more and grips my thigh, then settles her head onto my chest. We sit there for a bit. She feels young again, her age. Like I need to take care of her. I know it’s silly, but I want to be around her for longer.

“Local or tourist?” I ask.

She laughs.

“Local. But I didn’t used to be.”

“Me too.”

“Really?” She lifts up her head. “Where from?”

“Connecticut.”

“No way,” she says, genuinely, “Me too.”

“Are you bullshitting me?” I look at her, trying to read her. “You’re bullshitting me.”

“I’m not! I’m not, I swear. This is crazy.”

“Only a little. I mean, how many people actually want to stay in Watertown,

Connecticut?”

“Ah, there it is,” she smiles, “I’m from Bloomfield.”

“Interesting.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

She smiles again. She is so fucking beautiful.

“So, Lucia from Bloomfield, Connecticut, how are you in the beautiful city of

Savannah alone, on your birthday?”

“Honestly?”

“Honestly.”

She lays her head back on my chest.

“I’m not alone. Somebody I loved died when I was very little. He was 22. I asked him for the strength to be older than him. Because I never was before. So he’s out with me tonight.”

It’s poetic and vulnerable and maybe that’s why I’m already in love with her.

“That happened to me,” I say, “My first boyfriend, actually. Well, my only one.”

She laughs and it vibrates my chest.

“He was also 22 when he died, and I was 21. The year after that, I was older, and then older again. And I realized I’ll keep going forever and he’ll just stay 22.

And that’s okay. I mean, I liked him at 22. I wished he had gotten older, but. He didn’t.”

A group of men walks by us just then, raucously laughing. One stares us down with hungry eyes. I just wrap my arms tighter around Lucia.

“How’d he die?” She asks.

That honesty again. Maybe it’s because she’s physically close, maybe it’s because I’m drunk, but I’m feeling her every heartbeat and I want to share everything.

“Overseas. Iraq.”

I feel her shift. She sits back up and looks at me. I can’t read her again.

“Sorry, keep going,” she says, slowly.

“He died in Iraq, and he joked with me, ‘Don’t worry, you know what they say: The Cat came back the very next day,’ but he didn’t. Cat, I mean. He was only there for a week. And he didn’t come back.”

“His name was Cat?”

“Well, my nickname for him. Because his name was Felix. So I called him

‘Cat’. Very cheesy, but it was my first relationship. Actually, it’s weird but, I don’t know, your laugh – it sounds like his. Kind of why I noticed you, actually.”

Lucia stares at me. She just stares. I can’t see any emotion, any thoughts. She just stares.

“I’m sorry,” I say, “Shit, I’m really sorry. We were having a good time and I brought it down.”

“Nicky,” she says.

“Yes?”

“Nicky.”

I stare at her. I’m not sure what she’s looking for but she just grabs my hair and she holds it and she looks directly into my eyes.

“Fucking Christ! Nicky. It’s – um, Lucy,” she points to herself, “Lucy Rocha.”

I look into her eyes and it all comes back at once.

It was April 2004 and I was at Cat’s wake. The line was all the way down to the next block and it felt like hours before I got to him. It wasn’t him, really. Just a closed casket with a flag draped over it. I wasn’t sure what I should do, so I just put my hand on it and closed my eyes. I played his laugh over and over in my mind. And when I opened my eyes, Cat’s little cousin was standing in front of me. Her eyes were big and green and her mouth was set in stubborn line.

“Hi, Lucy,” I said, “Do you remember me?”

She shrugged and grabbed my wrist, turning it over. She looked at my small rabbit tattoo and back at me.

“Nicky,” she said in a small voice, “I remember.”

We sit there in the Savannah heat for a bit, just studying each other. She grabs my wrist and brushes her thumb over the tattoo.

“Is this okay?” she asks.

“Yes,” I say, “I think maybe Cat made it happen.”

“I’m 23,” she says.

“You’re 23,” I say.

And I don’t know what will happen next, but I do know that she falls onto me and starts laughing and all I can hear is Cat, and all I know is that he’s here, and he will be here, and so will she. And she lays her head on my chest and all I’ll ever need to remember is tonight.

"You would be 27 years old today. I miss your smile, laugh, twinkling eyes, the way you spoke Portuguese, your easy way, your comfort, and your love." Anonymous, 07/18/08

THE COUSIN

When I took my first breath in the city of Savannah, I felt renewed. Like it had been waiting for me, like I wouldn’t be able to breathe anywhere else again.

And of course, he was there. He told me about Savannah, when I was very young.

Late one Friday night, I had stolen The Shining off of his bedroom shelf. I was small for my age, so I was still wearing my matching Rugrats pajamas, curled up in the guest bed that I often made my own. I had made a tent with the comforter, using my cousin’s ancient, giant teddy bear to hold up the comforter on one side and a stack of pillows to hold it up on the other. I held a flashlight between my knees, speeding as fast as a ten-year-old could through the words to get to the true horror.

I was lost in anticipation in one of the sentences when I heard a low creak. I froze. I held my breath. I don’t think I blinked, either.

“Lucy…” a low voice moaned.

Suddenly, something collapsed my tent. Arms were pulling me from the safety of my enclosure. I shrieked but then immediately started laughing. I recognized the rough hands. It was just Felix.

“You scared me!” I shouted.

“Yup. Probably because you’re reading something you shouldn’t be,” he said.

He snatched up The Shining and examined it.

“You know, your advanced reading level is going to get you into trouble.”

“I just wanted to be scared.”

True. I had majorly outgrown Goosebumps .

“If you want to be scared,” he said, settling on the bed next to me, “Then I should tell you about my ghost.”

“ Your ghost?”

“Yeah, it followed me back from Savannah. That’s in Georgia. I went there last year with Nicky. Remember?”

I shrugged.

“Well, when I went there, I didn’t come back alone.”

“Duh,” I said, “You came back with Nicky.”

“Well, sure, but somebody else came back with us, too.”

I sensed this was going to get spooky. I pulled the Felix the Cat comforter up tight around my shoulders and stared up at him with intrigue.

“Keep going,” I said after a moment of silence.

He smiled mischievously and turned off the flashlight. Rich darkness bathed the room. The only light came from the front patio, and it gleamed off of his glasses.

“Well, when Nicky and I were there, we went on this ghost tour, okay? And the guy was telling us all about this monstrous man that used to live in Savannah in the 1700’s. His name was Rene-”

“That’s a girl’s name.”

“He was French-Canadian, you doof. Like my mom.”

“Okay.”

“So, Rene was this giant guy. I mean, so totally giant. He was over seven feet tall and he looked like a caveman.”

“Did he have a pituitary gland tumor like Uncle Joe?”

“Okay, um, yes. Sure. You’re so weird.”

I giggled.

“So, he had acromegaly, okay, since you’re all into medical terms. Only he was a bad guy. I mean he started going around killing people’s pets-”

I gasped. I wanted to be a veterinarian at the time.

“But then he moved on from pets… to kids. Kids right around your age. You know how sometimes you like to sneak out to the cemetery with Chelsea?”

“How do you know that?!” (It was my one secret).

“I know everything, kid. Anyway, that’s when he would get them. Kids like you, who snuck out to Colonial Park Cemetery way past their bedtime. And he’d-”

“Wait,” I said.

He did.

“Is this the ghost that followed you back?”

He smiled. A big Felix smile. He pushed his glasses up on his nose a bit. He leaned in, close. Something creaked out in the hallway. I jumped.

“Nope,” he finally said, “It was just tiny little ghost girl that followed me back from this place called the Six Pence Pub. She’s nice. That was her you just heard out in the hallway.”

I shivered. And laughed. And I hugged him. He was the best at scaring me without ever really scaring me. He was the only one who could do that.

And that’s why I’m here, twelve years later, in this city that’s alive and dead at the same time. He’s here, with me, at the Six Pence Pub when when I see her. Across the bar. She’s not a ghost, I don’t think. But she feels like one.

She looks at me and I smile.

“You would have loved that red convertible. We sure enjoyed riding down to the golf course with our hair blowing in the wind, the sun shining, laughing, giggling, giving guys the thumbs up when they admired our wheels. It was a hoot. Look out Hartford - we're coming through! Same game next year. Same time. Same place. Hope to feel your spirit in our midst." Anonymous

THE SISTER

I am forty years old and smoking pot in my Dad’s backyard on a Tuesday night. If someone had told me twenty years ago that this is where I would be at forty,

I’d tell them to fuck off. Somehow, though, I am now my father’s live-in caretaker, whose only problem is an inability to understand how to turn on his television. But I guess when a father doesn’t have a son anymore, he suddenly needs his daughter.

So here I am, sitting with my legs in the cool pool water and lighting up a bowl. I inhale deeply but my lungs act their age and violently expel the smoke as I pass the bowl and faded American flag lighter on to Allison. She takes it like she majored in The Art of Marijuana, which would be one major more than she managed to complete. She thinks she can relate to me because we both live with our parents again. She giggles, handing it back to me.

“This is so fun, Rissa. Just what I needed. I had to get out of the house.”

You mean the house you live in free of rent? I want to ask her. But instead I say, “Why would you need to get out of that house? I love your mom. Sometimes more than mine,” which is still the truth since my mother ran away from her grief to the Barbados with her new husband. But Allison’s mom is a different story. She might be 66 and legally blind without her glasses, but she manages to text me “I love you” every morning, even if she forgets which button the spacebar is.

“She can just be, like, so much sometimes. She and my dad together, bitching at me all the time? Ugh. They’re driving me crazy. Ever since my brother got married to that Broadway-bitch it’s like they’ve focused all of their negative energy on me. I have to move out.”

I take another hit to get through the conversation. “Where to?” I ask, pretending that I’ll take her answer seriously.

Her eyes light up and so does my bowl.

“You know, I have been feeling such a connection with the desert lately,” she says, “Like, I feel like New Mexico kind of embodies my personality. And I was thinking maybe I could take hospitality classes, go into hotel management or something. I would love that; you know I’m such a people-person.”

Career path number eight in five years. Yes, I started counting. Allison has been sixteen for about twenty-four years now. But she is my best friend, and has been since we were in diapers, which means she’s family. So I love her and all, but I sure as hell don’t like her. There is a long silence because I don’t care to give her a reality check and I don’t care to put on an act of encouragement. The pot is gone and I officially have no buffer.

“We should do something crazy,” Allison says.

I turn to her to see if she means it, but she certainly does. I can see her wheels

turning. “Like what?”

“Like, something you and Fee-Fee used to do.”

My dead brother. She thoughtfully sighs, looking up at Fee in the stars as if she’ll garner sympathy from the grasshoppers. I don’t like her.

“Well we’re certainly too old to be stealing street signs,” I say.

Allison’s eyes light up again like a fuckin’ Christmas tree.

“ Oh. My. God. Let’s steal the Climax Road sign!”

“Allison! You don’t think we didn’t try? We were never able to. They secured it too well.”

“Well clearly you guys didn’t try hard enough.”

“Believe me, if anyone could have done it, it would have been Fee.”

Allison jumps up and extends her hand to me. “Then hopefully he’ll help us out tonight.”

I let her yank me up. I’m not sure if it’s the drugs or the perfect weather, but suddenly, I’m ready to steal Climax Road.

My road is right off of Climax, so it only takes me and Allison two minutes to get to the sign. We have with us two flashlights, a wrench, and my brother’s old Jeep to help get the job done. I know it’s impossible but something tells me tonight it’s just improbable.

We park right under the sign and turn the lights off. The Jeep is black, which helps blend it into the night. We aren’t dressed in black, but in Simsbury,

Connecticut, the intersection of Bushy Hill and Climax doesn’t get a lot of action, so

I’m not too worried. Teenagers don’t usually steal street signs on Tuesday nights so the police are in the back of my mind right now.

What I am most worried about is letting my brother down.

“I’ll be getaway driver. You’re taller.” Allison volunteers, which is surprising to me because she loves hogging victories. It means that if I get the sign down, it’ll be all me.

I climb up on the top of the old ’95 Grand Cherokee, which kills my forty-year-old back. The sign is a little above me now. I reach up, testing the height.

It’s a slight strain on my arms, but it’ll work. I put my flashlight in my mouth and analyze the situation under the beam of light. What I see in front of me is nothing short of a miracle.

“Holy shit.” I say.

“Oh no, what’s wrong?” Allison calls up.

“The bolts are gone.”

“What?”

“The bolts. There are no bolts in the sign.”

“How can it be on the pole if there are no bolts in it?” Allison asks.

I look everywhere on the sign, but I see nothing holding it to the pole.

“That’s impossible.”

“Rissa? Are there screws or something?”

I don’t answer her. I am almost scared to touch it, but I reach up my arms as cautiously as I can. Before my hand can make contact with it, the sign just falls.

Startled, I jump, nearly falling off the roof as Climax Road clatters loudly at my feet.

“Marissa? Are you okay?” Allison shouts up.

“Fuck, yes, I am!” I laugh, snatching up the sign and sliding down the side of the car.

I climb in the passenger seat and hold up the sign to her. She stares at me in disbelief.

“Well, let’s go,” I say, “That crash will get someone calling the cops.”

Allison floors it.

When we get back to the house, it’s 1:56 a.m. and my dad is snoring loudly from his bedroom. Allison and I tiptoe in, giggling like we’re high schoolers sneaking in drunk. Or middle-aged women sneaking in a stolen road sign.

Allison and I don’t discuss what to do with the sign, but it’s as if she already knows where it belongs as she leads the way to Fee-Fee’s old room. She turns on a dull lamp as the room glows, untouched for eight years. I grip the sign as I sit down on the edge of the bed, right where my mother used to sit. Before it became too much for her. Allison sits next to me, tentatively. I am still, listening to the hum of the light bulb. It is most certainly not LED. My throat is tight. I can’t remember the last time I sat in here. But I remember why I don’t. I notice Allison staring at a spot in front of the closet. I’m sure she is looking at a memory.

“It smells like him,” she says quietly.

“You hated the way he smelled.”

“Yeah,” she laughs and then stops breathing, I think. After a few seconds, she lets out a long, quiet breath. “I feel like maybe I shouldn’t be here.”

For once I don’t feel like she’s wearing some kind of ridiculous mask of grief. I feel like maybe she’s just being Allison, and Allison now not Allison at sixteen. The

Allison who has been hiding.

“Hey,” I say, “He’s on a pedestal up there. You’re his one reminder that he wasn’t perfect. You’re keeping him from turning into some fallen angel.”

She smiles but doesn’t say anything. I look down at the sign. My knuckles are red from clutching it. I wonder where it should go. I look up at Farmington Avenue and Bushy Hill Road and Maple Ridge Drive, sitting in the corner, dusty. I stand up and fish an old tissue out my pocket. I brush the age off the signs, so they can feel like they were just stolen again. I can feel Allison standing behind me now. She lets out a small noise. I can’t tell if it’s a chuckle or a whimper.

“Remember how it felt?” she asks.

“Of course,” I said, “I feel it now.”

I looked down at Climax. I didn’t want it in the corner, like the rest. I look around. Fee’s guitar leans against a giant poster of Bruce Springsteen, his military beret perched atop the headstock. I decide this is probably where he would have wanted Climax, and I lean it up against the bottom of the guitar. I take a step back to stand next to Allison, who is smiling.

“It looks good.” She says.

I turn off the lamp and Allison closes his door behind us as we walk out. I turn to her.

“Thanks for reminding me I can still be young.”

“Thanks for not calling me out on my bullshit.”

We smile at each other and in this room, in this moment, I actually like her.

"Just feeling really sad today. Same days are worse than others. CT Fallen Heroes Foundation has a special event today at the CT Culinary Institute. They published a cookbook. There should be something in there about you with a photo. I'll have to order and get my books by mail. I got all dressed up to go but then just couldn't do it. I was already in a mood and I couldn't put on a happy face. Sometimes the mind just can't control the heart. I love you…” Anonymous, 3/28/09

THE FRIEND

I hated him. I hated him because he could run over a cat and everybody would slap him on the back and say “good job, buddy.”

I told him I hated him. All the time. I remember the first time. I was fourteen and it was the first time the adults let us me and Marissa out alone. The stipulation, of course, was that we bring our brothers. So we were at Friendly’s and Marissa and I were gossiping and Felix and Eric were making fart jokes when I saw Felix’s chubby hand reach for the spoon I hadn’t used and tuck it into his sweatshirt pocket. I glared at him and I kept looking around and waiting for some adult to catch him but nobody did. Because he was twelve but his baby fat made him look nine and because he was Felix. After, when we were walking down the sidewalk to the movies, he was clanging the spoon on every one of the lamp posts. Finally I grabbed the spoon and threw it into the parking lot and I seethed at him, “I hate you!” and he just winked and ran off to fetch his stolen spoon.

Another time, when we were in high school, we both happened to be reading

To Kill a Mockingbird for class. He was in some advanced reading class apparently and I hated him for it. We were on the bus, both getting some reading done so that we could get away with swimming in our pools when we got home.

“Do you like it?” He asked me.

I shushed him but nodded.

“What’s your favorite line? So far, I mean?”

“I’m trying to read, Felix.”

He ignored me and flipped a few pages back in his book.

“"With him, life was routine; without him, life was unbearable.’ That’s my favorite,” Felix said.

My heart jumped a bit. I flipped quickly back in my own pages and there it was. Chapter Twelve. I had underlined it. Put a star next to it.

“That’s m y favorite,” I said possessively.

“Really?” He said genuinely.

“I hate you,” I said. And when I said it that time, it was the first time it started meaning something different.

That was the first time and I remember the last time.

I was twenty-four and we were in his bedroom. Marissa told me I had to go over and say goodbye before he left for his tour or she would cut me out of her future wedding. I was standing in front of the closet, looking at all the street signs he got away with stealing. I was standing there, thinking about how much I hated him for getting away with taking them and for getting to keep them even though we all took them together. He was playing “The River” on his guitar. He couldn’t sing.

“Hey, I’m gonna go,” I said.

He stopped playing and he looked at me. He got up from the bed and he put his guitar down and he stood squarely in front of me. He looked at me, right into me.

“Okay. I’ll see ya, then.”

“When you get back,” I nodded.

He didn’t say anything. He smiled and I felt it in every bone. Suddenly I felt like we were the only people existing. And it made me feel alive, but close to death.

My heart and my lungs forgot how to work and they smashed into each other and my breath was gone. Just for a second. I hated that feeling. When two people electrify each other, feel each other, when you know that no other two people in the history of the world have looked at each other in quite the same way. I hated it so much because it wasn’t the first time I had felt it. But it was the last.

“I hate you,” I said, and I turned away and walked out of the room.

But I didn’t, not really. And he knew that. He had to. He just let me. He let me hate him for living and he let me hate him for dying.

But in that moment, in every moment, I loved him.

"7 years and 10 days after you were stolen away from us my son was born, and we named him Felix after you. He will never know you, but he will know all about you and how much you meant to me. For posterity's sake I will leave out all the hell we used to raise until he's old enough to know better. I miss you as much now as I did 7 years ago." Joshua of Willington, CT

THE STRANGER

I’ve only cried two times for death. One was for my father. The other was for a stranger.

When I was five or six or the age when memories began to stick with you, I was sitting on the Bushnell Park Carousel on my favorite horse. It was a rich black color, with a white mane. Its mouth was almost all the way open, tearing at the bit, ready for action.

I remember I would wait for this horse. I would give my ticket to conductor and I would wait and wait for the horse to come around. When I got brave enough, I started just walking around the carousel looking for the horse. It was dizzying and exciting.

So it was one of these times, sitting on this horse, that I saw a boy who was much too old to be riding the carousel, riding the carousel. He was in front of me and it wasn’t until I saw him lift a little girl onto a horse that I realized he wasn’t alone.

My brain hadn’t reached the “girls have cooties” stage yet and I remember thinking she was a pretty cute little girl.

The carousel starting turning and the girl spun around and looked at me. She kept doing this and I couldn’t understand how she wasn’t getting dizzy, turning around and staring at me like that. I decided it was because I must look like a stud on my stallion and smiled at her.

My next move was a mistake. I decided to try standing up on the horse and holding onto the pole with one hand because – what would impress a girl more? I went to make the move and it all went wrong at once. The horse’s surface was too

slippery and my feet ending sliding out from under me. I grabbed tight to the pole and was just hanging, dangling from my favorite horse as it moved up and down. I tried getting my feet up onto the horse’s fake stirrups but they were too high. I was too scared to look down to the ground to see how far up I was.

Suddenly, I felt rough hands grab me. They scratched me through my shirt but

I didn’t care because they lifted me up and back onto the horse. My head spun for a minute before I could focus on my rescuer. He had small glasses and a big smile.

“You okay, buddy?” He asked.

My harrowing experience had left me speechless, and I just stared at him as my horse rose and fell. He stood there, as if waiting for assurance, so I said:

“Does she like me?”

He looked back at the little girl and at me and let out the most memorable laugh I’ve ever heard. It was half-wheezing, half-shout, all belly. He looked at me, man-to-man, and patted the horse on its ass.

“She just wanted the horse you’re on. It’s her favorite.”

For my eighth birthday, my dad took me camping. He wanted to show me how to “be a man” by giving me a brutal lesson on survival skills. We were in the middle of the Tolland woods about half an hour from us and had pitched a tent. I had pitched the tent while my dad yelled gruff instructions at me.

Around dinner time, my dad gave me a bucket and told me to go down to the brook and fill it with water. I didn’t want to sound stupid and ask where the brook

was, so I just follow his outstretched arm into the trees around us and figured I would stumble upon it sooner or later.

After about half an hour, I hadn’t found the brook and I had no idea where camp was. Even though it had only been thirty minutes since I left the campsite, it felt a lot longer at the time. I threw the bucket at a tree in rage and sat down and began to cry. Soaked in tears and mud, I sat in ball, waiting to die.

Over my sobs, I suddenly heard the crunch of leaves near me. I bolted my eyes open, expecting to see the jaws of a bear open wide in front me. Instead, I saw a man standing over me. He had small glasses and a big smile. He looked familiar.

“Are you God?” I asked. A stereotypical thing for an eight-year-old to say when they think they’re at the brink of death.

The man laughed.

“No,” he said, “Why are you crying?”

In a blubbering of tears and snot, I spat something out about my dad sending me out for water and not being able to find the brook and not being able to find the camp again.

“Were you at a camping spot with a blue triangle or a green triangle?”

“Green,” I sobbed, my lungs gasping for air.

“Well, lucky for you, I know where that is. And I’ll help you get some water.”

“But I can’t find it!” I screamed hysterically.

“Shh,” he said.

He knelt down next to me and cupped his hand around his ear. He motioned for me to do the same. Shaking, choking my sobs back, I cupped my small hand around my small ear.

“Do you hear that?” He asked.

I shook my head.

“Listen hard,” he said, “It sounds like a small stream of piss.”

I laughed so hard I snorted. He put his finger to his lips and I shut up quick.

Suddenly, I heard it: the small stream of piss.

“Where do you hear it?”

I didn’t say anything, just pointed in the direction of the sound with a big smile. I had found it.

After he helped me fill my bucket, he showed me a shortcut back to the “green triangle” campsite so that my father wouldn’t ask why it had taken me so long. He still did.

But the best part about it was that the man didn’t walk into my camp with me and tell my dad that he helped me. He just stood right on the outskirts of the site, behind a tree, giving me a thumbs up.

My dad decided to die when I was eleven. And I say “decided to” because he drank himself until he couldn’t walk and then somehow tried to operate a car. My mom just called it an “accident” and decided to keep the coffin closed because his face was mostly gone from the crash. If they kept it open he probably would have smelled like whiskey instead of embalming fluid.

My mom wanted to have a giant “celebration of life” at our house. I got really mad because I said that we should only celebrate his life if he were still alive but she just told me I didn’t get it. A couple days before the funeral, we went down to this random Portuguese guy’s house to get some rabbit meat. My mom wanted rabbit meat since my dad had so many Portuguese friends who were coming and all they ever ate was rabbit.

When we got to the house, the guy took us out in back where there was this line of cages all filled with rabbits. There was an orange-colored rabbit all the way in the last cage, by himself. I had never seen an orange rabbit before. He was fat, and fluffy, and looked me right in the eye while he washed his little face.

Then the guy said my mom should pick the ones she wanted (because some were fatter and some were smaller) and he’d kill them and skin them in time for the

“celebration of life.” My mom picked five of them. One of her picks was the orange one because it was the fattest. Now I was an eleven-year-old MAN, so I didn’t want to start crying over this stupid bunny who was going to be my dinner, but I was really upset. I tried suggesting other rabbits, but my mother didn’t budge. For some reason, she wanted that stupid orange bunny. So did I. But I wanted it alive.

The guy hollered towards the house for a pen and paper. He was going to write down the ones she wanted. I turned away so that my mom and the guy wouldn’t see the tears in my eyes. When I turned back, I saw the man standing there. The man with the small glasses and the big smile.

He smiled at me, I think, with recognition, and I looked away, embarrassed. I looked at the orange bunny and tried not to cry. The rabbit guy was calling out numbers for the man to write down and when he got to “14”, the man said:

“Really?”

The rabbit guy, who I figured had to be his father, said, “Yeah, why?”

“That one’s no good. I heard that the orange fur means it has different meat.

Tougher.”

“Ay, carai! Who taught you that?” the rabbit guy asked gruffly.

“Tony.”

“Tony?”

“Yeah, it’s real, dad. I read about it,” nodded the man.

The rabbit guy seemed to think for a second and then looked at my mom.

“You still want it?” he asked, “It’ll probably taste like shit.”

That made me laugh and my mom smacked the back of my head.

“No,” she said, “I’ll take a different one.”

The rabbit guy and my mom moved towards the cages to pick another one out. The man stayed back, watching them. Then he turned towards me slowly and winked.

On the day of my dad’s funeral, the rabbit guy dropped off the meat. With it, though, he had another box. My mom laughed and shook her head when he gave it to her. Once he had left, she came over to me with the box and said that the rabbit guy’s son wanted me to have what was inside and that it was okay with her if I kept it.

I opened it up and the orange bunny was looking up at me.

Most Saturdays when I was thirteen were spent at Boy Scout meetings. I was eager to become an Eagle Scout because the Boy Scouts were getting pretty boring for me. One Saturday morning, we were told that instead of doing an activity that day, we were going to some guy’s wake. Apparently, the very first National

Guardsman from Connecticut had been killed in Iraq. This was a pretty big deal because not a lot of National Guard guys went there in the first place.

I was honestly kind of annoyed because all we were going to do was go stand in line and walk past the coffin and watch his family cry. It seemed like a waste of a good Saturday to me and I no longer cared about wakes or funerals after my dad’s.

But we had to go, anyway, and all of our parents had already signed off on it.

When we got there, the line for the wake was so long that it went way down to this bar and we had to stand outside of it while people looked at us remorsefully from the inside.

It felt like it took forever to get to the inside of the funeral home, but once we got there, I was ready to make a quick exit. Our troop leader had said we should stand in front of the coffin and close our eyes and say a prayer or something. I watched a short girl with big, curly hair do the exact same thing in front of us. She kinda held the line up because she was talking to some little girl. The little girl looked really familiar to me, but I couldn’t figure out why. A few guys were in front of me but they went fast.

When I got to the coffin, I was surprised because it was closed. I guess I had pictured seeing this guy, and then I figured that he was probably pretty messed-up looking like my dad. There was a big flag over it and I touched it for a second, to make it look good. Before I closed my eyes, I looked up and saw the picture of the guy inside.

He had small glasses and a big smile. And I began to cry. I cried harder than the day I got lost in the woods. Harder than when my dad died. And suddenly, I felt a warm, strong hand on my shoulder. I looked up but I knew I wouldn’t see anybody behind me because I knew it wasn’t really a person.

It was him. I could picture him, telling me it would be okay.

With his small glasses and his big smile.

“Nice party last Friday in Canton to benefit your scholarship fund. Jim Vicevich put on his Sounds of Summer Music Festival. Very nice crowd of people came out to listen to some excellent music. It's so nice to have people remember you and support your memorial. Jim talks about you on the radio a lot. He lets everyone know what kind of person you were and what you died for. People are touched by your story. We are touched because we miss the incredible person we use to have in our life. Every day, Fee, we miss you.” Anonymous, 07/29/09

THE SON

Dear Big Felix,

Hello! It’s me, Felix! I’m you and you’re me. Obviously. I don’t know if you remember because you will be all old and stuff. I’m thirteen now (actually it was just our birthday yesterday) when I’m writing this so that means that you will be 33 in twenty years (when we’re gonna dig up the time capsule) so maybe you won’t remember.

So, I’m just curious, are you married yet? Because the other day Allison Miller looked at me for a long time and I don’t why but I’m thinking that maybe you/I will have a chance at marrying her. And since you’re old now I think you probably would have asked her by now.

I’m not really sure if I should say “you” or “I” or “we” so I’m sorry if it’s confusing at all but since you/I/we are smart, you will probably figure it out.

I have another question: have you done anything brave yet??? When we were sitting around the campfire last night, Mr. Drezek (remember, he was our old scout leader), told me that he thinks I’m gonna do brave things when I grow up. I told him that I want to save somebody’s life one day and he said he could definitely see me doing that. And then he told us all that when we write to our future selves, we should tell ourselves all the things that we want to do and if we dig them up and haven’t done them yet, then it would be “motivation” (that’s the word he used).

So hello, here I am, Felix Motivation Rocha! Mr. Drezek said to create a whole list of the things I wanted you to do. So here they are:

● Flew in a helicopter - or even fly the helicopter

● Marry Allison Miller

● Have kids with Allison Miller and name them all Felix Jr.

● Scare off all of Lucy’s boyfriends

● Get haunted by a ghost (but a nice one)

● Take care of your parents when they get all old and gross

● Go to college and get all A’s

● Have your own dog

● Go to every Bruce Springsteen concert that comes to Hartford!

● Live in Boston

● Be president!!!

● And of course, save somebody’s life (I already said it but I wanted to put it on

the list to remind you)

And mostly, I just want you to always stay close to your family and stuff and not go too far away. Because remember, you’re everybody’s favorite (even though

Lucy is pretty cute). So they would go all crazy if you decided to move to another country or something.

Oh, and if I’m off somewhere skydiving when this box is dug up, that means that you’re reading this, Mom. We had to give someone else permission to come open it in case of that. So, I love you, Mom! I hope this letter makes you laugh and you better send it to me, wherever I am.

Goodbye future Felix! Go change the world and stuff! (If you haven’t already).

Sincerely, Little Felix

EPILOGUE

Associated Press HARTFORD, Conn. “A soldier at age 17. A leader Sgt. Felix DelGreco, the first at age 22. He was the Connecticut National Guardsman all-American kid from next to die in Iraq, was remembered door,” Gov. John G. Rowland Saturday as someone full of said. love, life, and dreams to one day run for president. DelGreco enlisted in the Guard while still a student at “He was just very good at Simsbury High School. A former everything he did,” Eric Allen, Eagle Scout, he truly lived the a friend of DelGreco’s since Boy Scout oath, said Richard first grade, told the hundreds Gugliemetti, DelGreco’s former who filled St. Joseph’s scoutmaster. Cathedral for his funeral. He recalled how he quickly In their late-night talk became a favorite cook on camp sessions, DelGreco used to tell outs, despite some of his him about his 2024 presidential strange, original recipes. His campaign over french toast or a military comrades also appointed game of pool, Allen said. He him unofficial cook during a inspired his friend to join the nine-month stint providing Coast Guard, and promised him a security at West Point last spot in his administration or on year, Gugliemetti said. the U.S. Supreme Court. “Simply put: Felix DelGreco made Military officials said us all better people,” he said. DelGreco, 22, of Simsbury, was killed April 9 when his vehicle The soldier was awarded a was struck by a roadside bomb posthumous Purple Heart, Bronze and gunfire. Star, and a Combat Infantryman’s Badge. He had served a six-month His unit, the Bristol-based C tour in Bosnia in 2001, and Company, 102nd Infantry, had volunteered to go to Iraq in arrived in Kuwait in March, and December, said Maj. Gen. William began operations in Cugno, commander of the Connecticut National Guard. Baghdad two days before his death. “In my mind, he was a hero,” Cugno said.

AFTERWORD

As Tim O’Brien famously said in his short story cycle, The Things They Carried, “...sometimes story-truth is truer than happening-truth.” My childhood was defined by a singular tragic event - the death of my biggest hero. On an unusually-sunny Good Friday afternoon, I kneeled until my knees hurt on a church pew, crunching numbers in my head. Nearly all the soldiers came back, didn’t they? Wouldn’t Felix? When we got home from church, we got the call. The numbers didn’t work and neither did my prayers.

For my entire life, I worried that I was putting Felix on a pedestal. The man I remember, the laugh that ruled the formative years of my life, couldn’t be everyone’s hero. But he was. I count the things I have lost because of his death, but it pales in comparison to the things I have gained, especially my voice as an author.

"We never really leave each other. Even in this life, as long as memory and love last, we are never apart or alone.” Felix Del Greco, 2004

A NOTE ON SOURCES

Aside from the short notes and articles in Courier New font, various details, characters, and events throughout The Things He Left Behind are fictional.

But Felix, everything he is, and everything he was, is real.

COMMENTS, NOTES, & NEWS ARTICLES FROM: https://thefallen.militarytimes.com/connecticut-army-national-guard-sgt-felix-m-del greco/257169

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