Spencerville

by
a succession of rigid snapshots.
    There had never been the hint of anything but an old
and maturing friendship—well, perhaps once in a while,
a letter written late at night with a line or two that could
be taken as more than “Hello, how are you?” He wrote
once from Italy, “I saw the Colosseum at night for the
first time and wished you could have seen it, too.”
    She wrote back,
“
I did see it, Keith, when I was in
Europe, and funny, I had the same thought about you.”
    But these types of letters were rare, and neither of them
went too far out of bounds.
    Whenever his address changed to some new, exotic lo
cale, she wrote, “How I envy you all your traveling and
excitement. I always thought I’d be the one leading the
adventurous life, and you’d wind up in Spencerville.”
    He usually replied with words like, “How I envy
you
your stability, children, community.
”
    He’d never married, Annie never divorced, and Cliff
Baxter did not conveniently die. Life went on, the world
moved forward.
    He was in Saigon on his third tour when the North
Vietnamese arrived in 1975, and he took one of the last
helicopters out. He wrote to Annie from Tokyo, “I knew
this war was lost five years ago. What fools we’ve all
been. Some of my staff have resigned. I’m considering the
same.”
    She replied, “When we played Highland, we were
down 36–0 at the half. You went out there for the second
half and played the best game I ever saw you play. We
lost, but what do you remember best, the score or the
game?”
    Keith listened to a nightingale in the far-off tree line, then looked out at the Mullers’ farmhouse. The kitchen was lit, and dinner was probably being served. He supposed that he’d played a more interesting game than the Mullers, but at the end of the day, they gathered together for dinner. He honestly missed having children, but in some odd way, he was happy that Annie did. He closed his eyes and listened to the night.
    He’d almost married, twice in fact, during the next five
or six years; once to a colleague he served with in
Moscow, once to a neighbor in Georgetown. Each time,
he broke it off, knowing he wasn’t ready. In fact, he was
never going to be ready, and he knew it.
    He decided that the letters had to stop, but he couldn’t
make the break completely. Instead, he let months go by
before answering her, and his letters were always short
and remote.
    She never commented on the change in tone, or the in
frequency of his letters, but went on writing her two or
three pages of news, and once in a while, reminisced.
Eventually, though, she followed his lead, and they wrote
less frequently, and by the mid-eighties, it seemed as
though the letter relationship had ended, except for
Christmas cards and birthday cards.
    He had returned to Spencerville now and then, of
course, but he never told her in advance, intending each
time to see her when he was there, but he never did.
    Sometime around 1985, she’d written to him after one
of his visits, “I heard you were in town for your aunt’s fu
neral, but by then you’d left. I would have liked to have a
cup of coffee with you, but maybe not. Before I found out
for sure you’d left, I was a nervous wreck thinking you
were in town. After I was sure you’d gone, I felt relieved.
What a coward I am.”
    He had replied, “I am afraid I’m the coward. I’d
rather go into combat again than run into you on the
street. I did drive past your house. I remember when old
Mrs. Wallace lived there. You’ve done a nice job restor
ing it. The flowers are very nice. I felt very happy for
you.” He’d added, “Our lives took different paths in
1968, and those paths cannot cross again. For us to meet
again would mean leaving our paths and traveling into
dangerous territory. When I’m in Spencerville, I’m jus
t
passing through, and I intend to do no harm while I’m
there. If, on the other hand, you ever find yourself in
Washington, I’d be happy to have that cup of coffee with
you. I’m leaving in two months for London.”
    She did not reply immediately, but wrote him in Lon
don, and never mentioned the last exchange of letters, but
he remembered her reply. She’d written, “My son, Tom,
played his first football game on Saturday, and I thought
of the first time I sat in the stadium and saw you come
onto the field in uniform. You don’t have all these famil
iar places and things around you, but I do, and some
times something like a football game