Remembering the Ghost of You

April 12th, 1944

“Hey is Mikey here?” I was having a smoke on the front porch when his little friend Frankie showed up.
“Our mother is going to kill him,” I said and exhaled before taking another sip of whiskey. They screamed for an hour and now all I could hear was sobs. I’d been drinking since Mikey decided to tell her.
“Oh …” now his friend looked uncomfortable so I patted the spot next to me. He dropped his bike and took a seat.
“What’d your parents say?” I asked and handed him the flask. He took a gulp and I watched his eyes burn as he swallowed. I stifled a laugh.
“My mom about got the pistol she keeps in her dresser out when I said I had signed up. My father wasn’t pleased either but I think he understood. He wasn’t eligible because he’d broken his back not too long ago and isn’t in shape to fight. I think my grandfather understood too. He fought in world war one you know,” he explained. His words kind of tumbled out of his mouth as if he were nervous. It was cute.
“How old are you?” I asked and lit another cigarette and offered him one. He took it.
“I’ll be seventeen in October,” he choked out after taking a drag on the cigarette. I sighed and patted his back. So young.
“Ever smoked before?” I asked and he shook his head.
“First one,” he coughed.
“When did you move here?” I asked. We had lived here all my life, but Frankie was obviously new to these parts.
“September. My mom got transferred to a plant out here. She works making bullet casings.”
“Oh, a lot of people around here do that.” My mother didn’t though. She didn’t like factory work after having her hair ripped out by a machine as a child working in a textile plant. She instead worked at the local pharmacy after all the technicians had been sent overseas. “Why not wait until eighteen?” I asked and he shrugged.
“I feel it’s what I need to do. Everyone I know is running off and here I am, an able bodied person, and I’m sitting in school learning how to find the area of a triangle while I could be saving lives and making a difference,” he said and I watched his eyes light up the same way Mikey’s did when there was talk of the war. I took a large gulp from the flask. It made me sick. I wanted to help people and do my duty and all that but at what cost? Whole families were destroyed left and right. There were going to be no men left in America let alone the rest of the world. “When do you leave?”
“On the eighteenth,” I said glumly. I was headed to London and that was all the information I got. I’d heard there wasn’t much left of London though so I didn’t know what exactly I’d be doing.
“I leave May 1st for London,” he said. I shivered remembering Mikey’s summons.
“Not the same day as Mikey?” I asked.
“No we were told they’d be shipping out a lot of people for a big plan all throughout May,” he explained and I felt nauseous. That just sounded like a death sentence. The screaming resumed in the house and my mother burst through the front door in anger.
“I’m sorry I’ve got to go Gerard,” she said and raced to the car. She was gone without telling me where she was going. I glared at my brother as he slunk out onto the porch.
“She’s going to grandma’s,” he told me and I sat back down and finished off the whiskey.
“Nice going,” I muttered and started walking away from the house.
“Where are you going?” Mikey called and I shrugged.
“To get more cigarettes,” I lied. I still had half a carton left but I couldn’t sit around there with my idiot brother and his cute but still idiotic friend.

I ended up in the park by the school. I sat on the bench and watched little children enjoy the surprisingly warm spring afternoon. I lit another cigarette and tried to clear my mind.
“Odd place to find you,” Rebecca said and sat next to me.
“Needed to get away,” I slurred and she tsked.
“Not a good place to be drunk either.”
“Not the time for a lecture. Are you done working?” I asked to change the subject. She was a telephone operator.
“Yeah I just finished and soon I’m taking the bus to the base to meet Victor. Why aren’t you there today?”
“Family time. My training is complete and now I’m just waiting to leave,” I explained to her.
“It’ll be weird without you here. I’ve seen you almost every day of my life,” she said sadly and I nodded. “I heard Mikey was telling your mother today,” she added and I nodded again.
“It went horribly as I expected,” I said and lit another cigarette. “Take good care of her. Especially if …” I trailed off and turned my eyes to the sky. If we weren’t to come back I don’t know what she’d do. I’d heard of mothers committing suicide when they lose their entire family. I don’t want my mother to be driven to that.
“I’ll take excellent care of her no matter what,” Rebecca said but her words didn’t soothe me as much as I wanted them to.
“You better get the bus,” I said and she looked worried. “I’ll head home,” I added and stood.
“Sure you don’t need help?” she asked and I shook my head.
“I’ve been drunk before and I remember where I live,” I said to her and headed off. She watched me go and I waved. I wasn’t headed home though. Instead I was heading towards one of the bars in town.

It was filled with guys from the base. Ray and Bob eagerly greeted me and we began drinking and talking of the social. I had signed up to sing after much coaxing. Bob knew his way around a drum set after being in marching band in high school and Ray was classically trained in guitar.
“This is my wife Susan,” Bob said proudly as the night wore on. The picture he showed us was him and a woman with strawberry blonde hair and brown eyes smiling in wedding attire. “We were married last spring. I’ve known her my whole life and she’s coming down from Chicago to say goodbye.” Even though I was twenty one now I didn’t know many married people my age. Everyone was running off to war instead of concentrating on creating a partnership with a woman.
“Either of you leaving someone behind?” Bob asked and I shook my head. I knew he wasn’t talking about family and I didn’t know many girls besides Rebecca and Samantha and they were like my sisters.
“We aren’t together, but there’s a girl back in Virginia. If I come home alive I’m going to ask her to marry me,” Ray said and pulled a picture from his breast pocket. “It’s a few years old but my favorite picture of us.” The photo was a younger, fresh faced teenager Ray pushing a girl with brown hair and a red dress on a tire swing.
“To coming back alive!” Bob shouted and raised his glass. We toasted to that and I spent the rest of the evening listening to their stories of their home lives.