she shouldn’t hide from her mom,
(who isn’t her real mom
but the only mom Julia knows)
who loves her just as Julia adores her sons
(who aren’t really hers either).
Now, thinking about it,
I marvel at how truth is stranger than fiction;
how my mum
who isn’t my real mum
has been my mother since I was eighteen years old.
We don’t get to choose our parents
or our children
just our lovers, sometimes.
Equally, writers don’t get to choose their topics,
not really.
Don’t believe any authentic author
who tells you otherwise.
The Hounds of Love and War: Part 1
Howie Scotland was just a kid
(but not his father’s son).
Howie was drafted, or maybe he had joined the army.
Let’s say, for the sake of argument,
Howie was drafted.
Somehow that makes his death, opening the story,
all the more tragic.
Not that those who signed up to fight died lesser deaths;
all deaths in war are lousy
miserable
numbing.
To their families,
to their sweethearts,
and to the nurses who sat, holding their hands,
as they breathed their last.
Helen Nesmith gently clasped Howie’s fragile skin;
burns all over his body rendered him less than able,
less than desirable,
less than anything but a goner.
But to Helen, and other nurses,
Howie was a human being
who shouldn’t die alone.
And that he could still speak, albeit weakly,
amazed Helen.
Little shocked her now,
months into her voluntary year of hell.
Little took her breath, but Howie did.
Howie’s love for his parents
(although Ellis really wasn’t his dad)
and Howie’s love for the bassets.
Helen was a cat person,
when she lived in America,
in safety and security,
which hadn’t been for years and years,
not since Archie died.
When Archie was alive, Helen was at peace.
She felt that way,
returned by the whispery slip of Howie Scotland’s tales
of the basset hounds.
There was Clara, short for Clarabell the Clown,
then there was June, born in winter, but no one cared about that.
Finally there was Boss, who wasn’t the boss at all. Clara called the shots
within the basset realm and the Scotland household.
Clara was white and brown, low to the ground,
and a lover of belly rubs.
She adored Howie, missed him terribly.
His mother told him so,
his younger sister Rebecca did too.
Howie told Helen that when he got home, he’d take Clara
for long walks, explaining the war and the VC and
why he came back walking a little slow.
Helen nodded to all this, barely squeezing Howie’s burnt hand.
Howie wasn’t going home in anything but a coffin.
When Howie stopped speaking, Helen kept his hand in hers.
She never let go, until she was certain.
Once she was certain, bassets swirling in her head, she released Howie,
sighed,
and stood.
Nothing more to be done for Howard Will Scotland,
other than tell his family.
Howie was dead
Howie was gone.
Howie’s body was a mess, but Helen didn’t view him with pity.
More of relief.
She was sorry for his parents
(although he had no idea his dad wasn’t his father)
sorry for his siblings, especially Rebecca, the only one who
wrote him letters.
And to Helen’s surprise, she felt devastated for the bassets.
Clara would mourn Howie, Helen was sure,
even if Howie hadn’t been home in months.
Butch the cat had missed Archie for years,
prowling the pond’s perimeter
where Helen’s ten-year-old brother had drowned
when Helen was eight and older sister Muriel was twelve.
Helen could still see Archie’s quiet frame laid out on the grass,
Butch’s loud meows begging the damp, still boy to scratch his ears.
Helen would think about her brother that night,
while telling Muriel, who served at Helen’s side,
about Howie Scotland and Clara the basset.
But Helen wouldn’t breathe their dead brother’s name.
The Hounds of Love and War: Part 2
Howard Will 1944 – 1964
Rebecca Sally 1948 –
Martin Flannery 1951 – (1970)
Michelle Linda 1954 –
Naomi Phoebe 1957 – (2014)
Adam Philip 1960 – 1961
Lindsay Grace 1962 –
This was the list within the Scotland family Bible
(within parenthesis are what lies ahead for the clan)
when Howie’s body was returned.
Already Ellis and his wife Ruth had known
heartache,
already they had lost a son.
Already the elder children, Howie included,
had suffered death – little brother Adam lost when
Naomi was just four years old.
Ruth was already pregnant with her seventh child
when toddling Adam fell ill with what seemed like
the common cold.
It was a simple sniffle,
just a little cough.
Then Adam’s life was finalized within the Scotland roll call.
Ellis wept quietly, forty-three years old.
Ruth was forty, just feeling her last child alive within her.
But five children remained,
healthy and strong.
Five children would be joined by a sixth,
but Ellis kept his distance.
Ruth did not, she couldn’t.
And when the news about Howie came,
again she lavished all her affections on
little Lindsay Grace.
Every Scotland would remember big brother Howie
except for the youngest.
Lindsay didn’t understand for ages to come.
But Rebecca knew,
so did Marty.
And so did Michelle and Naomi and Clara.
Boss and June flopped on their backs,
begging for attention.
They got it, from Lindsay,
from Ellis.
Ruth fed the dogs,
wiping tears,
trying to comprehend how two sons could slip from her grasp.
Why had her boy gone to war, had he actually been drafted?
Maybe not, she permitted, falling asleep on her left side
far away from where her husband slumbered, even if they shared
a double bed.
Ruth and Ellis hadn’t made love in weeks,
months, or maybe only nights,
yet it felt as if Ellis was like Howie,
never to return.
Ruth knew he ached; Ellis missed Howie
like that boy had emerged from Ellis’ own loins.
The secret was still safe, but Ruth worried;
what if the surviving children learned,
would it matter?
Perhaps not. Howie was dead –
how much more could they suffer?
Clara whined outside the parents’ bedroom door.
Ellis ignored it; Ruth wou
ld lead that hound
to the kitchen back door,
as if fetching a bottle for the baby.
Lindsay was two,
but to Ellis she was the baby.
She always would be
her father’s favorite,
when Ellis could see the stumps for the clear-cutting.
Ruth stood, slowly.
Everything had been done doused in wet cement
since the news was delivered.
Except for the beating of Ellis’ heart;
his forty-six-year-old heart pounded like the twenty-year-old
that Howie had been.
It didn’t throb for Ellis’ wife.
It didn’t ache for their lost baby son.
It didn’t even beat for their recently deceased eldest
child. Howie was Ellis’ boy, everyone said so.
Everyone assumed they were related.
Even if they weren’t.
So why did Ellis’ heart pump furiously
if not for Howie or Adam or even Ruth?
It was for the lie,
the falsehood,
which was perhaps why Howie had even gone to Vietnam.
Was he drafted
or did he enlist?
Ellis couldn’t even recall,
as Ruth returned, Clara having done her business.
That’s all Ruth said: Clara had done her business.
Then Ruth slipped back into bed
so far from Ellis
like a punishment.
But the real sentence
had been served since the day they met
since the day one-year-old Howard Will landed in Ellis’ unpracticed arms.
Ellis wasn’t any more than Ruth’s suitor,
he never wanted children
(or so he thought).
And now, after all those years
(nineteen of them),
what did it matter?
Howie was dead, third degree burns erasing his skin.
He was a Scotland, the death certificate would say so.
Two of Ellis’ sons were gone, both had been his.
Both had rested in his arms,
by which time Adam had no idea of his father’s previous sentiment.
Howie never knew either,
or maybe he had.
Maybe he had sensed it.
He must have enlisted,
there had been a horrible mistake.
Ellis shook from lack of sleep,
or too much of it.
Ruth stirred, said nothing.
Ellis reached for her, his
fingertips outstretched.
If she turned less than an inch toward him…
But she rolled away,
leaving Ellis alone.
Quietly, but with her full knowledge,
he went to his feet,
plodding past living children’s doors
finding Clara crying in her bed.
Soft howls, inaudible to the rest,
pierced Ellis’ heart,
which still pounded.
“C’mere girl,”
the words mumbled.
But dogs possess excellent ears and
Clara’s reached the ground.
Then she lumbered to Ellis’ slippers
weeping like the woman at Jesus’ feet.
The Hounds of Love and War: Part 3
Meanwhile, back in the jungle…
It’s 1965, the year of “Mr. Tambourine Man”, “(I Can’t Get No)
Satisfaction”, “Help!”, “Yesterday”, and
“Ticket to Ride”.
Helen loved The Beatles,
but older sister Muriel preferred country music,
still lamenting the death of Patsy Cline.
Patsy, Muriel like to say,
was the best damned singer in the whole goddamned world.
Muriel swore a lot
since the Nesmith sisters had arrived in Vietnam.
Helen swore a little,
when another young man died,
or when she thought about Howie Scotland.
But lately Helen hadn’t had time to consider Howie
or the bassets, Clara mainly.
Lately Helen had been observing Muriel
and new nurse Terry Leahy.
Terri Anne, she sometimes called herself
in a faint southern accent that she said
she picked up from colored neighbors in Tallahassee.
Terri Anne seemed more comfortable around blacks,
as Helen thought of them.
Terri Anne joked with black soldiers more readily than she did with whites,
and she made Muriel blush.
It took a lot to make Muriel blush, Helen knew,
but somehow Terri Anne did it.
“Terri Anne,” Muriel called as if she and Helen were from Mississippi,
“c’mere Terri Anne.”
Helen smiled as Muriel and Terri Anne began their dance,
which didn’t occur to any music other than what Muriel sang,
usually “Crazy” by Miss Patsy Cline.
Sometimes “She’s Got You”, also by Patsy.
Or “Foolin’ ‘Round”. If Helen was humming “Ticket to Ride”
Muriel would shoot her a look, and bring the late Miss Cline
into their hooch, or sometimes to where Helen sat,
holding the hand of another goner.
None had spoken to her since Howie; Howie and Clarabell.
Lately Helen had started thinking of that basset
with its namesake’s moniker instead.
Silent was Clarabell the Clown, like the boys whose
hands Helen held.
They weren’t much older than Terri Anne’s younger brother
Clyde, who was nineteen, but flat footed
with bad posture
and the same love of black music that bound Terri Anne
to some of the soldiers now starting to replace
those dead
or whose tours were over.
Terri Anne preferred The Temptations, The Supremes,
Otis Redding, and John Coltrane.
Terri Anne didn’t like Miles Davis; Coltrane was smoother.
Terri Anne also liked to get stoned,
which Muriel did not appreciate.
Muriel said Terri in a cross tone
when Terri Anne was smoking with the guys –
black guys, white guys, it didn’t matter.
Then Helen intervened,
even if she wasn’t sure why,
other than she liked it better when Muriel said
Terri Anne
in a sing-song way
like it was one word.
Terri Anne seemed to like it better that way too.
Two weeks before Helen was due to head back to The World
she found her sister
and Terri Anne
in bed together
not exactly sleeping.
Helen had suspected this,
even if Terri Anne still got stoned sometimes.
Sometimes Muriel drank a little too much
and sometimes Helen did too.
And sometimes a little affection needed to be shared
with defenses lowered
or not.
Helen slipped out of the hooch without a word,
only the sweet sounds of Terri Anne in her ears.
And the next day,
Helen said nothing to Muriel,
whose steps were a little lighter.
Not completely joyous;
no one was ever completely happy,
but Muriel was less unhappy
perhaps even, maybe, possibly…
content.
And really, what more could you ask for
in 1965
in the jungle?
Helen only asked Muriel if she should look for a
two-bedr
oom place.
“For the two of us, you know,” Helen added quietly,
wondering if it actually would be three of them
sharing a two-bedroom place.
But Muriel shook her head and Helen sighed in
resignation.
Then she gasped in surprise:
“I’m not going back Helen. Better for me to stay here.”
“What the hell Muriel?”
“You heard me Helen. I’m gonna get promoted and…”
Was it Terri Anne, Helen considered,
or was it Archie?
Muriel never said and Helen didn’t ask and
two weeks later Helen Nesmith was shipped back to
The World.
Alone.
Without Muriel.
The sisters were rarely separated.
But now they were.
And it felt like a beginning to Helen,
or maybe…
She didn’t ponder it.
She had other fish to fry
like trying to reconcile a year of nursing spent
in a foreign country
during a war
in Southeast Asia
with basset hounds and Howie Scotland’s burnt hand still
grasping her living flesh
while Muriel grasped
Terri Anne
as Patsy Cline sang on.
Helen had all that to sort,
and one more thing –
she needed to find the Scotlands,
or one Scotland –
actually it wasn’t even for Helen,
but for Howie
and Clarabell the basset hound.
And meanwhile,
back in the jungle,
Muriel and Terri Anne made beautiful music together.
Thanks to Susan O’Neill for Don’t Mean Nothing
About the author
Anna Scott Graham was born in 1966 in Northern California. A mother to several, she lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and numerous hummingbirds.