Communications

Sent in after new ground was taken, my father ducked from ditch to shell-hole, unwinding the telephone cable behind him, a pfc. cast as Mercury, connecting the gods with the lesser gods. Funny to think of him trailing the complex filament of speech, that man, neither shy nor sullen, who answered only “Yes,” “No,” “Maybe,” and never volunteered a private thought. Standing off with his hands in his pockets or cupping a cigarette, he seemed to be waiting with the great rural patience of fields for whatever might rise pure and nameless or fall from the sky beyond explanation. If anyone asked what he was thinking, he said, “Nothing,” and when he died he rushed out leaving everything unsaid, uncoiling a dark line into darkness down which a familiar silence roars.