He has been alone a long time. Sitting in the house, the old house, built by his father, he waits in the gathering dusk for someone unannounced to save him. He drank a case of beer and watched television all afternoon. He looks at the ceiling and is amazed that he became fifty so suddenly and so quietly. The photographs on the mantelpiece show a much younger man, with dark hair and a ready smile for the world. Those were the pictures his mother loved and dusted carefully.
He is alone and can barely move from the faded, overstuffed chair, the chair his father sat in after dinner. Dishes are in the sink and the sound of water dripping from the tap reaches his ears. He should go down to the garage and see how business is doing. He inherited the garage from his father but has no patience for the details of running the operation and more and more left the daily responsibilities to Miguel, a trusted employee his father had hired many years ago.
Someone will put things right. His father was good at physical things. If a favorite model plane had smashed or the wheels of a skate were stuck, his father would take the toy to the workshop he had in the garage and, with his set of tools, soon restore its beauty and function. His mother was good at consoling him when other boys teased him at school because he was big for his age and clumsy, when he could not get a date for the prom, and later when his plans for marriage fell through. A mother's heart is consolation. He saw that in the face of the Virgin gazing at her child in the reproduction on a wall in his mother's room. But they had forsaken him, going to their graves and leaving him to face the world on his own. He has no brother or sister and the nearest relations, cousins of his mother, are miles away.
Things had to go right. He pictures an angel with golden curls descending from far heaven to enfold him in its feathery wings. He had to get out of this slump. "Get off the schneid," his coach would bark when he missed a tackle in football practice. "Twenty more pushups Hastings," his sergeant would shout when he slacked. He tells himself to get up out of the chair but his body is leaden. When he forces himself to stand, he walks through the house as if underwater and pushing against the current. He walks like that when he goes to the cemetery to visit his parents; with weighted legs he would move slowly, slowly, up the lane that leads to the family plot. He can barely bring himself to visit anymore. The sunlight on the graywhite headstones makes him dizzy.
He washes his face and puts on a fresh shirt. He hasn't been to the bar in weeks. It would be good to get out after all his time in the house. He might even meet someone. He knows from the Bible that it is not good for a man to be alone. A man is supposed to have a helpmeet, a wife. He should have been married years ago. He hoped it would have been Ellen, a girl who had lived in town and gone to school with him. He tried to impress her when he was on the football team. She seemed to like him. She would laugh when he made a joke and always said she was proud of him when he scored a touchdown. He would lie in bed at night and picture himself married to her. He imagined they would have children, a boy and a girl, and live in a comfortable house near the town. He would work at the garage and run it when his father retired. It was a happy dream.
He couldn't believe his good fortune when she said she would go out with him. "Act like a gentleman," his mother would say and he did. He courted Ellen and wouldn't lay a hand on her until one night she pulled close to him and kissed him on the mouth. An explosion went off in his head and he suddenly loved her more than anything that existed. Though he was only a high-school senior, he proposed marriage to her. She had a stunned look and suppressed a laugh. "I'm not ready to get married," she said. "I want to go to college and get my education." She told him that she was going to go to a school out of state and didn't think it right to make such plans. She said she just wanted to date and enjoy herself. Her words were strange to him because he had never dated until he met her and he believed that love meant marriage.
Thus, it was goodbye. She left for school and he entered the Army. He knew he wasn't a student and, encouraged by his father, who had been a war veteran, he enlisted to serve his country. He was sent overseas to a country as foreign to him as a place on the moon. He banded together with a few soldiers like himself, quiet young men who respected their parents and the Bible. On leave he would get a drink at a local place but make sure that he was in chapel on Sunday. Some jeering soldiers who had offered to take him to a brothel, and met with his refusal, had taken to calling him "Reverend" in mockery, but when one sustained a bloodied mouth for his efforts, the jesting ceased. He was always immaculate then and sharp, neatly dressed with shoes polished. He would meticulously clean his rifle and could quickly reassemble it even with his eyes blindfolded. Sometimes, when he was really homesick, he took the rifle into his bed at night and placed it next to him.
