Prologue

?: “You’ve carried them long enough. Let them go…”

Ernest: “Strange, what sticks with a fellow. Not the medals, nor the mud. Just… little things. My wife—fine lady, sharp as they come—and she swore onion soup was the finest meal on God’s earth. Onion soup, I tell ya! Used to get a kick outta her fussin’. Then she’d scowl somethin’ fierce, claiming sugar was poison for the soul—that woman!”

?: “Yet, you continue to cling… what about the rest?”

Ernest: “My sister… gone to that pneumonia. Figured some chicken soup might’ve fixed it, if the money’d been there. Just weren’t.”

?: “I don’t envy your sorrow. I envy only the order it creates here…”

Ernest: “The boy’s laugh. Hair all a mess, running down the lane. The day right after Mama left us, I took the bicycle out past the ridge—sun high, sheep dotting the hill. It was a Sunday. Can still hear the bells, clear as morning. Mikey—he ain’t square with me on that candy bar he swiped a while back. I’ll get it one day, I swear.”

?: “Hold on to them if you must, but they’ll mean nothing beyond these walls… I offer a blessing.”

Ernest: “I remember her face when I left for the station. My boy, he had my cap in his hands, wouldn’t let it go. Every bit of me says hold tight to that. But every bit of me knows—holding tight never saved nobody, never will.”

?: “And you’d give them away?”

Ernest: “You give what you must. Saw boys throw themselves on wire so the rest could keep movin’. That’s what right looks like, I reckon. So I’ll give it. All of it. A man oughta do good, even if it hollows him clean, that’s the best a fellow like me can manage in this world… or any other.”

?: “And so you’ll watch.”

Ernest: “I’ll watch. I’ll guide em. I might not be there anymore… but I’ll stick to it. As long as you promise…”

?: “What you give will not wither inside me. I will cradle them… but not with love.”

Ernest: “... Took two years, oh Lord. That’s a stretch, ain’t it.”

?: “Not to me…”