Punctuality

 

Loris led his squad to the rendezvous coordinates.  He was on-time, even a little early.  Second Lieutenant Loris had learned in the Boy Scouts to be punctual.  The men groaned about the fast march to the meeting point, but, now, they could rest for a few minutes.  Loris told his Sergeant, Baby, to protect the troops from the midday sun and keep them hydrated.  

It was an awful place, too dry and hot even for lizards, a dusty basin under a mountain fringed with a skirt of ragged badlands overlooking the flat.  Baby positioned the men in a ravine where there was still a little shadow.  The sun was high and the shadows were prim, stiff, and short.

At 1300, when the rendezvous with the second patrol was supposed to occur, Loris thought he saw the platoon commander, a lanky soldier with a reddish beard, appear on a hilltop eight-hundred meters away.  But it must have been a mirage because, when Loris looked again, no one was there.  The second patrol was late and, a half hour later, the badlands lit up with muzzle-flashes.  Some rockets stormed down on them and a couple men were hit.  

The fighting lasted for several hours.  At times, the enemies were so close that Loris and Baby could hear them calling to one another.  Rocket-propelled grenades snaked down out of the bad lands and a machine gun raked the basin, kicking up geysers of alkali dust.  Loris told Baby that if they escaped from this ambush, he would attend his sergeant’s birthday thirty years in the future.  Baby vowed that he would do likewise on Loris’ birthday.  The two men huddled together in a shallow hole next to boulder.  Loris memorized Baby’s birth date and Baby memorized the Second Lieutenant’s date of birth as well.  “If we get out of here, then, thirty years,” Loris said.  “Thirty years,” Baby replied.

Ten minutes later, the gunfire ceased and the other squad appeared on a ridge, limping down to the meeting point.  “You’re goddamned late,” Loris said.  The Patrol Sergeant said that the Lieutenant had stepped on a land mine and been killed a couple hours earlier.  And there had been other casualties that had to be air-vaced back to the fire-base.

“Better late than never,” the Patrol Sergeant said. 

“That’s not how I see things,” Second Lieutenant Loris replied.

After the war, Loris studied Law Enforcement at a Community College and, then, was licensed as a peace officer.  He worked as a cop in his home town for fifteen years.  The town was serene and dull and, after his first marriage ended in divorce, he wanted to try something different.  So Loris joined the Drug Task Force and worked undercover for five years, until he had made so many arrests that he was too well-known to continue in the operation.  He returned to his home town on the plains near the border with South Dakota and worked for the County Sheriff.  When his boss died suddenly of a heart attack, Loris took over the job and, then, won two elections for the office.

Loris re-married but was again divorced.  He lived alone in a farmhouse a few miles from the County Seat.  His children were grown but he had never been close to them and so they didn’t visit often.  

On Loris’ birthday thirty years after the fire-fight in the desert, Baby and his wife came to see him.  Loris was a little embarrassed at his austere and empty house and, so, after drinking a few beers on his porch, they drove into town for steaks at the Country Club.  Baby was grey but fit.  He had an insurance agency in a small city on the far side of the State.  

After remembering the battle, Baby talked about his children who were both in graduate school in Colorado.  He told Loris that he had started smoking weed again because his kids lived in Colorado and the stuff was cheap and legal there.  “Good for you,” Loris said.  Loris said that pheasants were plentiful on his acreage and that Baby should come out during the Fall to hunt with him.  “I have a very good dog,” Loris said.  “I noticed,” Baby’s wife replied.  She asked him the name of the dog.  Baby said that he would certainly drive out to hunt with Loris sometime before the end of the year.

The next day, Loris and Baby played golf.  It was a fine afternoon.  Baby’s wife took a nap at the motel on the freeway.  Then, they left and drove back across the state, two-hundred miles to the city where they lived.  

Loris hunted alone.  Baby wasn’t able to make time to come and chase down pheasants with him.

At Christmas, Loris saw his son.  The young man was laid-off from construction work, laying tunnels for fiber-optic computer cables.  Loris’ son said that he would come to his father’s house in time to watch the football game.  But he was an hour late.

Loris chided him: “Do you know what I used to tell my soldiers?” Loris asked.

“No, I do not,” his son said.  

His son’s girlfriend giggled: “He’s always late.  He’s never on time.”

Loris continued: “I tell them that to be early is to be on-time.  And that to be on-time is to be late.  And to be late...well, I don’t want to even think about it.”

“Wow,” Loris’ son said.

Baby’s birthday was in mid-January when the weather can be snowy and unpredictable.  Loris listened to weather forecasts on his patrol car radio.  A blizzard was coming.  This bothered Loris because of his vow to see Baby on his birthday thirty years after the firefight.  

Early on Baby’s birthday, Loris left town in his pickup truck.  He thought that if he began his trip in advance of the blizzard, he would be more likely to get to Baby’s house on time.  

The dawn sky was clear and pale blue when Loris began his drive.  But, after only a few miles on the freeway, clouds rolled over the horizon and, then, rammed the earth with an almost palpable thud.  Then, fine, pale snow began to sift down over the exposed country.  The wind picked up and flung the snow across the highway.  Driving became very difficult.  

Loris almost rear-ended a semi-truck parked on the freeway shoulder.  He didn’t see the truck’s trailer until the last instant.  Then, he veered to the left and spun out, although his truck remained on the freeway.  At the next exit, Loris took the ramp toward town.  He stopped at a fast food place and ate an early lunch with coffee.  He was a little shaken by the ferocity of the storm.  

When he began driving again, the freeway was closed.  A gate had been drawn shut to block the entrance ramp.  On the radio, Loris heard that the county had pulled its snow-plows off the highways.  

Loris drove on two-lane back roads for another sixty miles.  He used the right-hand fog-line to navigate.  The little towns through which he passed were drowned in snow.  He came upon several bad accidents and felt guilty when he hurried past them on his mission.  Then, he lost control of his pickup on an overpass, skidded against the abutment, and, then, dropped into the ditch.  He was breathing heavily when the car came to a stop, slowly sinking into a big, fluffy snow drift.  He took out his cell-phone and tried to call Baby but there was no service.

Three hours later, a deputy sheriff stopped in the middle of the snowy windswept road above the ditch where Loris was stranded.  Loris saw the flashing lights.   He forced open his door against the encroaching snow and limped up to the highway.  It was slick as a skating rink.

The deputy saw his sidearm.  “Gun?” he asked.  

“I’m a cop,” Loris said.  “Sheriff two counties over.”

“I see,” the deputy said.

They crept through the blowing snow for a few miles and reached a small town beside a frozen lake.  The snow spun in vortices over the ice.  The motel in the town had burned down a few years earlier.  Stranded travelers were quartered in an old bowling alley on the edge of the village.  The place smelled of stale beer and sweaty feet.  There wasn’t anything to eat but French fries and frozen pizza.

Loris again tried to call Baby to tell him that he would be late for his birthday.  Again, there was no service.  He sent a text message: “I’m doing everything I can to get there, brother.”  Then, he sent a text to his ex-wife:  “Trapped by the blizzard.  When roads clear, please get chow and water for dog.”

Loris waited at the bar for an hour or so.  Then, he said that he was going to smoke a cigarette, pulling his stocking cap down over his ears, went outside into the storm.

A hundred miles away, Baby’s two sons with their wives and babies were at the house.  Baby’s wife had made a big birthday cake and studded it with candles.  She had several expensive steaks defrosting in the fridge and a couple dozen jumbo shrimp as large as little lobsters.  Baby poured vodka into orange juice for his wife and boys.

“He’s never gonna get through this storm,” Baby’s wife said.

“That dude is crazy,” Baby said.  “I bet he’ll make it somehow.”

They ate some hor d’ouevres and, then, had Chinese take-out for supper.  Baby’s sons went to bed.  His wife went upstairs to listen to a pod-cast.  Baby went into the basement to work on his lathe.

Just before midnight, Baby heard someone upstairs.  He shut-off his lathe and climbed the steps to his kitchen.  Loris was standing, a little dazed, it seemed, next to the kitchen table.  He gazed down at Baby’s birthday cake.

“I made it,” Loris said.

Loris had kicked off his shoes so as not to track snow onto the kitchen floor and his feet were bare.  Snow whitened his shoulders.  He was wearing a Minnesota Vikings stocking cap.

Baby went to Loris and hugged him.  He noticed that Loris’ upper lip seemed to have been slightly burned and was cracked and there was a faint smell at his mouth that, at first, Baby couldn’t identify.

“Let me get you some booze, old buddy,” Baby said.  

“No, I can’t drink,” Loris said.

“Then, I’ll get you something to eat.”

“No I can’t eat either,” Loris told him.

Baby realized that the smell at Loris’ mouth was the stink of the battlefield: smoke and cordite.

“I’m amazed you got here,” Baby said.

“A man’s soul can travel faster than his body,” Loris said.  “But I got here on time.”

He sat down at the table next to the birthday cake pierced with unlit candles.  Baby saw that the back of his stocking cap was all soggy.

“Let me get my wife,” Baby said.  He went upstairs and told his wife that Loris had arrived.  “How is that possible?” she asked.

When Baby and his wife came downstairs, Loris was gone without a trace.    

After Lafcadio Hearn