The Year the Lights Came On Read Free

United States government returned the bodies of the soldiers, but there was a need to be in cemeteries, a need to become acquainted with the mood of that postdated anguish; a need to trace, in the mind’s tracing, the exact spot for that exacting rectangle. And there were the thoughts, always the thoughts.
    Oh, Heavenly Father, What to Do?
    How Can I… We…?
    This, You See, Was the Last Known Photograph of Him—See, by His Gun.
    He Never Saw the Baby—Never…
    Remember, Sweet Jesus—Sweet, Sweet Jesus—Is Thy Comforter and Thy Strength. Forever and Ever.
    Amen. Amen. Amen.
    In that lingering, in that sliver of time, the American Rehabilitation began. Reforms and pledges and G. I. Bills and no more collecting scrap iron, boys. No more rationing, Mother. Keep your eye peeled, Bargain Hunter, because—Lordamercy—there’s lots of bargains going up for the War Surplus Auction Block. And it was Over, Over, Over. Too bad FDR had not seen it through. Never mind, they’d not forget him. There’s that four-column newspaper photo of FDR at his best, a stylish tilt to his cigarette holder, a sharp, affable gleam in his eye, and if you are Democrat and American you’d better, by shot, have it thumbtacked to the wall.
    In that beginning, that sliver of time, all of this happened in the American Rehabilitation, and the people of Royston did not realize it had happened. Everything was spinning too fast. It was the tag end of 1945 and the world was on an endless drunk, whirling to a carnival barker’s call—sassy and tempting. The people of Royston, like people in thousands of other places, were still anemic and pale from the Great Depression, and now this, World War II, and all these men, these men gone to God or Forever or Worms or Wherever.
    That was the puzzle. The bewilderment. The lamentations of ministers saying God and Sweet Jesus and Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust, and Blessed Are They Who Suffer, but there was no one to answer—really answer—why these men were gone.
    There was only one mercy: it was over. The Great Depression. World War Number Two. It was over.
    A moment to rest, please. A moment to linger. Let the American Rehabilitation go forth with all good speed. One moment longer, please.
    A sliver of time to take it all in.
    *
    After their moment, the people of Royston began again. It was a silent, numb beginning. Farmers from the tiny communities that surrounded Royston and were, by Rural Route, U.S. Postal Service, part of Royston, met on Saturdays in a ritual that was ancient and honorable. They came from Emery, from Vanna, from Harrison, Eagle Grove, Goldmine, Redwine, Sandy Cross, Airline, Canon, and other dirt-road directions, and they stood in twos and threes, like stark landscape paintings. They stood in front of Bowman’s Drug Store, or Silverman’s Clothing, or Foster’s Hardware, and they talked in whispers about their sick, used-up land. They were all solace-seekers, a convention of solace-seekers, and they lingered, lingered, lingered, waiting for something—perhaps miracles. It was as though they believed someone (a Moses) would arrive to lead them away to some place better, some hauntingly beautiful place where the land was rich and they could plant crops in spring without being always a year behind in payment to the Boss, or the bank.
    But Moses never appeared.
    Just before sundown, each Saturday, on some cue instinctive to them, the farmers would drift off and climb upon their mule-drawn wagons that had been parked in a lot below the depot, and they would say their low, resigned goodbyes to one another. Their children would take their faces away from the windows of Harden’s 5 & 10 and join their fathers. Always at sundown, you could see rings on Harden’s 5 & 10 windows, where shallow-faced children had pressed their noses and breathed moist circles as they stood motionlessly and made up games with the dolls and balls and bats and gloves and toy cars teasing them from brightly painted