Of Time and Memory Read Online Free PDF

with.”
    I see a different bureau before me. The one in the basement where he kept his things from the army when I was his little boy. The collapsible wood-handled spade for digging a foxhole. The long green coat so heavy I cannot drag it away, the canvas poncho, the canteen, and the leatherbound Bible every GI was issued. You could fit the Bible in the pocket over your heart, and my father knew stories of these Bibles deflecting bullets. For five or six years I played war with his things until they were lost all over the neighborhood.
    We put everything on the bed and fold it carefully. “You need someone who will bless you with a bigger bureau,” I tell him.
    Like a teenager he sleeps late in the morning. I’ve been drinking coffee for hours when at last I hear him say, “It’s our big day, Donnie.”
    â€œYes, our big day, Dad. Are you sure?”
    â€œSure?”
    â€œIt could be a long day.”
    â€œOh, I’m ready,” he says. “This is our day.”
    After nearly fifty years he is going to take me to the old places. We made a list last night before we went to bed. The dance hall where he and Peggy went on dates, the church where they were married, the apartment where they lived after the honeymoon, the print shop where he worked, the parking lot where her uncle taught her to drive, the telephone company where she worked, the hospital where I was born, the cemetery. These points of their compass are all within an eight-mile radius.
    Two miles out on the main road his head is bowed and his eyes are closed. It’s the Dilantin he is taking to preventseizures; it puts him to sleep at the drop of a hat. Oranges, I’ve been told, will help keep him awake. I follow the signs to Hatfield, peeling an orange in my lap.
    The road winds through farmland, past old barns and walls made of stone. I round a corner and suddenly the sky ahead is a riot of color. Two rainbows, perfect spectrums, are rising from the horizon in front of us and sweeping high across the sky. There is no rain or sun, just a pale gray sky, yet the rainbows are brilliant. When I call to my father and wake him to look, his eyes open wide as if he has awakened in heaven.
    We pull off the road into a gas station where the mechanics have come out from the garage bays and are looking up into the sky while they wipe grease from their hands.
    â€œI don’t see rain anywhere,” one of them says.
    Everyone is trying to figure out what has happened in the sky above our heads when my father says to me, “I don’t remember where I was when I first saw Peggy.”
    It was my last question to him the night before. He remembers seeing a picture of her at Lauchman’s print shop. Her father, who ran a Linotype press beside his, took the picture from his wallet and showed it to him during a morning coffee break.
    â€œYou don’t have to remember right now,” I tell him.
    He’s angry with himself. “I want to remember,” he says. “I want to tell you everything.”
    â€œAre you sure?”
    â€œOh yes. Turn left right here.”
    Twenty minutes later we are lost, heading in the wrong direction. The rainbows are off to our left now, melting into the pale winter sky.
    My father bows his head and mutters, “Dumb. Dumb.”
    I feel sorry for him and try to cheer him up. “Do you remember the things you used to say to me when I was a little boy? Has your get-up-and-go got-up-and-went?”
    He smiles to himself. “Remember this one? ‘If you don’t behave yourself I’m going to send you to the Colorado School of Mines.’ ”
    He laughs at this. I am driving along and peeling another orange for him and thinking, I’m spending precious time with my father … I made him laugh.
    Coming into Hatfield now, he sits up straight and looks around thoughtfully, as if someone has called his name suddenly.
    He points out where the train