L Is for Lawless

"Oh. I must have forgot to mark that. Dad says it would've been August seventeenth of 1944 because he remembers Pappy coming home in time for his birthday party the day he turned four. He was gone two years, so he must have left sometime in 1942."
    "Could he have been dishonorably discharged?
    From what this says, he'd be disqualified if that were the case."
    "No ma'am," Bucky said emphatically.
    "Just asking." I flipped the form over, scanning the small print on the back. The request for military records showed various address lists for custodians for each branch of the service, definitions, abbreviations, codes, and dates. I tried another tack. "What about medical? If he was a wartime veteran, he was probably eligible for free medical care. Maybe the local VA clinic has a file number for him somewhere."
    Bucky shook his head again. "I tried that. They checked and didn't find one. Dad doesn't think he ever applied for medical benefits."
    "What'd he do when he got sick?"
    "He mostly doctored himself."
    "Well. I'm about out of ideas," I said. I returned the papers to him. "What about his personal effects? Did he keep any letters from his Air Force days? Even an old photograph might help you figure out what fighter group he was with."
    "We didn't find anything like that so far. I never even thought about pitchers. You want to take a look?"
    I hesitated, trying to disguise my lack of interest. "Sure, I could do that, but frankly, if it's just a matter of three hundred dollars, you might be better off letting the whole thing drop."
    "Actually, it's four hundred and fifty dollars with interment," he said.
    "Even so. Do a cost/benefit analysis and you'd probably find you're already in the hole."
    Bucky was non-responsive, apparently unpersuaded by my fainthearted counsel. The suggestion may have been intended more for me than for him. As it turned out, I should have taken my own advice. Instead I found myself dutifully trotting after Bucky as he moved through the house. What a dunce. I'm talking about me, not him.

2
    I followed Bucky out the back door and down the porch steps. "Any chance your grandfather might have had a safe-deposit box?"
    "Nah, it's not his style. Pappy didn't like banks and he didn't trust bankers. He had a checking account for his bills, but he didn't have stock certificates or jewelry or anything like that. He kept his savings – maybe a hundred bucks all told – in this old coffee can at the back of the refrigerator."
    "Just a thought."
    We crossed the patched cement parking pad to the detached garage and climbed the steep, unpainted wooden stairs to a small second-story landing just large enough to accommodate the door to Johnny Lee's apartment and a narrow sash window that looked out onto the stairs. While Bucky picked through his keys, I cupped a hand to the glass and peered into the furnished space. Didn't look like much: two rooms with a ceiling slanting down from a ridge beam. Between the two rooms there was a door frame with the door removed. There was a closet on one wall with a curtain strung across the opening.
    Bucky unlocked the door and left it standing open behind him while he went in. A wall of heat seemed to block the doorway like an unseen barrier. Even in November, the sun beating down on the poorly insulated roof had heated the interior to a stuffy eighty-five degrees. I paused on the threshold, taking in the scent like an animal. The air felt close, smelling of dry wood and old wallpaper paste. Even after five months I could detect cigarette smoke and fried food. Given another minute, I probably could have determined what the old man cooked for his last meal. Bucky crossed to one of the windows and threw the sash up. The air didn't seem to move. The floor was creaking and uneven, covered with an ancient layer of cracked linoleum. The walls were papered with a pattern of tiny blue cornflowers on a cream background, the paper itself so old it looked scorched along the edges. The windows, two on the front wall and two on the rear, had yellowing shades half pulled against the flat November sunlight.
    The main room had a single bed with an iron bedstead painted white. A wooden bureau was pushed against the back wall while a suite of old wicker porch furniture served as a seating area. A small wooden desk and a matching chair were tucked into one corner. There were ten to twelve cardboard boxes in a variety of sizes strewn across the floor. Some of the boxes had been packed and set