Folded Flag

by N.C. Miller

When Amelia Birch limped up to her late husband’s burial service wearing a walking cast and dragging a sledgehammer, the crowd gasped and the minister stopped preaching. She’d been in the car accident that killed her husband a week before – that much was known – but she was released from the hospital the same night and hadn’t been seen since. There’d been a lot of talk as to what happened and why she’d skipped the funeral. So, when she showed up at the cemetery, dressed for church but looking angry, she had everyone’s full attention.

Amelia heard whispers and scattered words of surprise and opposition as she hobbled past the attendants. They were a deceived bunch, she thought. Wearing their black clothes, mourning the loss of a man they didn’t truly know. They’d be wearing something colorful and celebrating if they knew the truth, maybe something yellow to match her dress.

She staggered past the flag-covered casket, still plowing the ground with the head of the hammer and stopped at the gravestone. She rested the handle of the sledge against her hip and pushed away the brown hair that was stuck to her sweaty forehead. Then she looked at the minister, a man she’d never seen before.

“Mrs. Birch?” he said.

“Weren’t you expecting me?”

“I’d been told you weren’t coming.”

“Well, I’m here, ain’t I?” she said. “Carry on.”

The minister looked at the faces in the crowd as if he needed a supporting nod or gesture, someone else’s permission to continue. He got little more than blank stares and wide eyes. There was no precedent or formula for something like this. But there was plenty of silence. The whispers had died down, and everyone was waiting, anxious, no doubt, to see and hear what came next. He cleared his throat and glanced down at his Bible, probably hoping he’d find some divine intervention there.

“Alright,” he said. It seemed he wasn’t ready to proceed. “Why don’t you have a seat, Mrs. Birch?”

“I’m fine standin’,” she said.

He looked at the crowd again. “Won’t you all join me in saying the Lord’s prayer?”

“What’s that?” Amelia interrupted him.

“The Lord’s Prayer?” The minister appeared to be at a loss.

“No. That.” She glared at the gravestone. Her husband had purchased the piece of slate six months after their wedding and had paid to have their names and birth years carved into it. Those words had weathered over time. But now, without any consent from her, his date of death and an epitaph were already etched on the stone. The new inlaid numbers and letters contrasted the surface in a way that made the new words seem more significant than the old ones. She read the epitaph out loud.

“Paul T. Birch. 1949 to 1995. A faithful husband and friend.”

She abruptly shifted her weight so that it fell upon the wooden shaft of the hammer, and she bit her lip and read the inscription again, silently this time. She was struck by how kind it made her husband seem. How it effortlessly erased a life of anger and abuse. She wondered how many other tombstones in the place did the same thing.

“Who wrote this line?” Amelia asked.

No one answered.

“Who wrote this line?” she said louder. She pointed her index finger at the epitaph.

William Albright stepped forward, his hands sunk deep in the pockets of his suit pants. He frowned and reluctantly owned the words with a nod. “Paul told me he wanted to be remembered that way.”

She turned quickly and faced her husband’s best friend. “I guess you wrote the obituary, too?”

“I couldn’t reach you, so I took care of things. Paul named me his executor some time ago.”

“No surprised there,” she mumbled.

“I tried to write something you’d agree with.”

Paul gave her a look when he said it. The kind of look that implores a person to go along with what’s just been said. But Amelia hadn’t come to protect Paul’s reputation. She took the finger that was pointing at the stone and aimed it directly at the casket.

“This man was only faithful to the bottle.”

The people in the crowd exchanged puzzled glances and started whispering again: “What’s she doing?” and “Is she drunk?” and “Pathetic.”

The minister tried to quiet the people by saying “please” and raising his palms in the air. And he tried to pacify Amelia. He moved to an empty row of chairs next to the casket, put his hands on the back of one, and once again encouraged her to have a seat.

“You just stay quiet.” She held an open hand toward him. Her fingers were spread apart and slightly bent, like she was hushing a child so she could hear something important. “I don’t want these people thinking Paul was a good husband.”

She knew William understood why she was doing this, though he would never betray the memory of his friend. He and Paul fought in Vietnam. They’d killed men there. Had shared many drinks together. Had been trying to forget the war ever since.

“Let’s talk in private.” William stepped toward her, but she lifted the sledgehammer and held it toward him like a weapon.

“People ought to know the truth about the men they honor,” she said.

A warm gust of wind passed while Amelia scanned the crowd more thoroughly. Their expressions had softened since she had arrived. She was surprised by how many of the faces were unfamiliar. There were some of Paul’s colleagues, a few of his old friends, a distant cousin or two, but the rest were strangers. Who Paul had been outside their home was mostly a secret to her. But she wouldn’t let him take her part of that secret to his grave.

“Paul was drunk that night. That’s why he ran the red light. That’s why he’s dead.”

William stepped backward like he might try to slip away quietly, but someone moved behind him and purposefully blocked his path.

“The paper didn’t say anything about alcohol,” a man in the crowd said.

Amelia turned and faced William. “Of course, it didn’t. William here owns the paper.”

“Is that true?” a woman in the back asked.

William shook his head. “She’s still confused from the accident.”

Amelia reached for the bandage taped to her forehead and felt the stitches bulge beneath the gauze. Then she glanced just beneath the break of her dress at the plastic cast strapped around her ankle. “I ain’t confused and this broken leg ain’t from no car accident. Paul left me something to remember him by. We were on our way to the hospital and still fightin’ when he ran the red light.”

William tried to interrupt, but Amelia spoke louder.

“Don’t you speak. And don’t act innocent neither. I been wearing these bruises for fifteen years and you never said nothin’ about it. You even seen it happen a time or two.”

Her words stirred up sighs from the crowd. William’s face flushed with blood. His eyelids came together and his forehead tightened. His jaw clenched.

“I got some other secrets I can tell, too,” Amelia said.

“You shut the hell up.” William moved toward Amelia, and she thought for a moment he intended to strike her. But she didn’t flinch. She’d learned to take a hand to the face and knew taking one from this man would fully turn the crowd. But it never got that far. The minister stepped between them before William got there.

“You get on out of here,” he said to William. He was breathing nervously. “This woman has more right to be here than you.”

William peered into the larger man’s eyes before standing down. Then he turned and shouldered his way through the crowd and quickly walked to his pick-up. The minister watched the truck vanish on the winding road, letting the echo of the exhaust pipe fade before breaking the quiet of the cemetery again.

“What’d you come here to do?” he asked Amelia.

She looked down at the broken ground and the small remnants of red clay scattered in the dry grass. She breathed in the smell of the fresh-cut flowers. It was the same scent that filled the air fifteen years before when Paul gave her a bouquet and proposed to her beneath the canopy of a live oak. The same scent that still reminded her of their life before he started drinking.

“I came here to grieve,” she said.

“A person needs that.” The minister took a step back, giving her some space.

Amelia faced the gravestone again. She closed her eyes, and fifteen years of marriage coursed through her synapses like film reeling through a projector. She paused at the frames that meant the most. His return from Vietnam and the vows they made in the courthouse. The post-traumatic stress and the first bottle of whiskey. The miscarriage that left her barren and the violent grip he put around her neck seconds before he died. She understood how each of these events led to the next, but understanding never made the living of it any easier.

She opened her eyes again and let herself cry a little. The minister pulled a handkerchief from his back pocket and offered it to her, but she refused it and let the tears stay where they were. She tightened her grip on the wooden handle and breathed deeply and again the memories of her husband occupied her thoughts. She searched for a reason to let him rest in peace. Tried to find some scene of love hidden deep in the archives of her mind that would reconcile the past. But the flashes of violence flickered too brightly.

“This is for all them years,” she whispered.

Amelia lifted the sledgehammer with both hands, raised it up and over her right shoulder until it crossed the broadside of her back, and then swung hard. The collision of rock and steel popped and echoed until the warm humid air silenced the noise. The impact created a thin crack that ran the width of the stone. She swung again and the second blow sent the top falling to the ground. But she wasn’t through. She swung a third time and split the epitaph in half, the same way his hand split her so many times before.

Pieces of slate fell to the ground, and she let the hammer fall there, too. She lowered herself to the grass and breathed hard and quit trying to be strong. She buried her face in her hands and let the past fifteen years bend her bones and pour out of her body.

The minister lowered his head to give her a sense of privacy and when her grieving slowed a bit, he kneeled beside her. He draped his arm around her shoulders and offered the handkerchief again. This time she took the cloth.

“How’d that feel?” he asked.

“Like a long time coming.”

“Why didn’t you ever leave him?” he asked.

Amelia thought about the question and unfolded the handkerchief and wiped her face with it. “Mostly fear and love, I guess. I suppose that’s why anyone stays with another person.”

There were no more condescending remarks or whispers floating through the crowd now. Just sympathy and surprise and compassion.

A man dressed in a military uniform approached Amelia and knelt in front of her. He told her he was from the veteran’s society. He held a trumpet, and he greeted her and said, “With your consent, we’d like to honor your husband’s service to our country.” Then he said, “Though we don’t condone how you were treated after the war.”

Amelia told him it was okay to proceed, and he walked away and led a seven-member rifle party to the top of a small hill, some fifty feet away from the casket. The veterans lined up there and cocked their rifles and pointed them to the sky and fired blank cartridges into the air. Then they cocked and fired again. And a third time. Each shot startled Amelia and caused her to flinch.

After a few seconds of silence, the man with the trumpet concluded the three-volley salute by playing Taps. Amelia listened to the melody and tried to resist its sentimentality, but she soon succumbed and was able to remember a few of the good memories she and Paul had shared. There was a trip to Wyoming. And picking out their first home together. Growing strawberries and tomatoes in their garden. Sitting on their porch, talking of dreams that would never come true. Those things were pleasant, if only in their moment.

When the final note of Taps escaped the bell of the trumpet, the rifle party laid their guns on the grass and marched to Paul’s casket and ceremoniously removed the American flag that covered it. They folded the heavy cloth with their gloved hands until it formed the shape of an isosceles triangle, tightly tucking the end of the red and white stripes into a pocket of navy blue so that only eight stitched stars remained visible. Then they presented Amelia with the flag and reformed their line and took their place behind the attendants.

The minister thanked the veterans and opened his Bible and read a passage from it aloud. Then he prayed something that seemed generic given the circumstances, something one might hear at an ordinary funeral. Amelia understood though; it was difficult to know how to pray for all this. She nodded at him to indicate she was grateful. He smiled back, and then he concluded the service with a benediction.

Nobody moved right away, just stared emptily at Amelia and let silence do its work. As they slowly left, one by one, each leaned and put a hand on her shoulder and gently squeezed. Then they walked to their vehicles and watched a while longer to see what else might happen. But Amelia outlasted them all, apart from the minister, who waited at the top of a hill with the groundskeeper and watched her sit there.

Eventually the sun found its angle of repose and the shadow of a distant tree line met her. It was then that she crawled to the broken gravestone on her hands and knees and grabbed a piece of slate that lay on the ground. She lifted the piece and carefully fit it back into the jagged place it had fallen from and then replaced another piece. She did this until the stone was whole again and the epitaph was readable. Then she carefully put some weight against the fragile monument and pulled her knees to her chest and clutched the folded flag.

 

N.C. Miller is a secondary education teacher in Madrid, Spain and a graduate of the MFA in Creative Writing program at Converse College in South Carolina. Miller’s short stories have appeared in Ember: A Journal of Luminous Things, The Chaffey Review, Bull Magazine, and River and South Review.