The Memsaab Helena ordered some frippery from a shop in town, and a nice lady came unannounced to deliver it. To be nice. To be neighborly. To be nice an’ nosey an’ snoopy too. To see how Helena dresses at home, to see how these strange people “decorate” and more, then report delicious details to The Nosey-Lady Network. We’d already been briefed on her by Big Bob and Irma at road’s-end.

“She’ll come,” they assured us, “Bidness or not, she’ll find a reason. She dunnit ta us, but one a’ the geese goosed her and she ain’t been back.” From the shop, I saw her arrive, and snickered at her struggling on her skinny-heeled shoes in the busted caliche of our “driveway.” I let Helena handle the welcome.

A decent interval later I went to her rescue, to pretend I needed her help with something in the shop. Coming in the back way to the kitchen, I left the solid door open and pulled the screen to, to get some fresh air into the house. Helena had her at the kitchen table, not in the parlor. She ain’t a parlor-sitter, especially when hosting hostiles. The breeze blew past the coatrack. Snoopy-Lady’s head came up and her nose twitched.

“Oh my goodness,” she blurted, “Is something burning? Oh my, that’s…” She poised over “stinky,” but shut her yap. Helena and I sniffed, then traded stealthy smirks. We leaped on the chance to say we better check, and could she see herself out? She fluttered and was gone.

It was my old M-51 fishtail parka, soaked in the woodsmoke of a thousand fires. I sniffed it close, and asked Helena if I should wash it. She leaned in, stuck her pretty nose into the folds and smiled.

“‘Course not, honey,” she said. “Smells like—good times.” Come twilight we lit a fire out back and gazed at the sky. Couldn’t live anywhere we can’t have a fire. I’ve spent more nights around open fires than a career hobo; some of the best times of my life.

A storm rolled overhead, marbling the night, dithering over whether or not it should stoop on us. Sancho Panza growled at it and Mister Storm moved on, grumbling. And I remembered another night when the sky looked like that, over another fire.

Bootnecks, Beer and Fire

Visiting some Royal Marines, musta been early ’80’s. The unit sergeant-major was an old friend of my buddy Nigel of the British Army. I was delighted to learn of their monthly tradition of reciting scraps of poetry while sippin’ dark, chewy beer and munching thick ploughman’s sandwiches around an open fire. Would I be their guest that night? Could you keep me away with gunfire? Ha!

A secluded pub sat apart from the town on a rise above the port. A rickety collection of discarded church pews, old camp chairs, stools and stumps surrounded a fire ring in a rough-turfed patch adjacent the tavern. They shunned being indoors. For one thing, this was the only way the underage commandos among ’em could enjoy a pint or two, fetched out by older comrades. More importantly, this assured their cherished, clannish privacy.

“Loike you Yank Marines,” Sarn’t-Major said, “We’re not a service, we’re a cult.

As night fell and the fire was lit, other active-duty and retired Marines vectored on the pub from all directions, up the road and over the fields, drawn like gypsy moths to the flame. When grub and gossip was done and all were well into follow-on pints, a retired officer inquired, “Now who’ll give us a verse? You, Wilkins? Step up, man!” And it began. Each said a few lines, a stanza; ribald, romantic, comic and tragic, some oft-told and greeted with “Oy, we know this rubbish, don’t we now?” and laughter; some samplings very purposely new to their ears—and applauded. The duty went around the ring like passing a baton.

Finally a name was called and a figure stood, hesitant, pushed forward by others, telling him “You’ve nivver spoken, lad, stand and deliver!” Lithe and smooth-cheeked, painfully young, only the ropey muscles snaking up from the low collar of his sweater to anchor an oak-like neck hinted he was not a tall, lost schoolboy in the presence of men.

“Beggin’ yer pardon, sars,” he said, “I knows only this one. Me Gramp went down on Electra wi’ one hundred seven of ‘is mates, sars. Summers we took holiday and would go t’ beach, where me Da an’ me tossed bits o’ ships-bread on the falling tide, and we’d pray for Gramp and say this, like a song, sars. Shakespeare it is.” In a surprisingly sweet, wavering tenor he half-recited and half-sang:

“Full fathom five thy father lies
“Of his bones are coral made
“Those are pearls that were his eyes
“Nothing of him that doth fade,
“But doth suffer a sea-change,
“Into something rich and strange.
“Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:
“Ding-dong, ding-dong.”

Blood and Stones

Some things, I thought, are more deeply articulated and surely transmitted by blood and deeds than by mere speech. But sometimes the words help crystallize the message.

I drifted away, remembering my own Dad’s yearly mourning of all those sailors he knew, many he’d trained, lost on the cruisers Astoria, Quincy and Vincennes when they went down that terrible night in Iron Bottom Sound, while he was ashore getting shot in the hip. Sometimes you look straight up, just so’s you won’t look down, ‘cause that could cause your eyes to leak. Sometimes it doesn’t work, and some kinda liquid runs outta your eyes an’ right down to your ears anyway.

My God, I thought, So many, from this small group? And along with those lost at sea, how many of their loved ones fell in dirt and sand and mud in Borneo and Burma, at Dieppe and Tunis and Arnhem? And still they come, they serve. The strongest rocks in Britain are not standing at Stonehenge. They are men like these.

Not a star to be seen. The full moon was up there somewhere, shining brightly behind curds and billows of dirty-charcoal and purple-black clouds, but only dimly illuminating random dapples of translucence. A silence fell over us all like a great wool boat-cloak, soft and thick and muffling. Cloaks like that had kept men like these warm on frigid, windy decks and snowy mountains, and then were pulled gently over their faces by loving comrades when they’d breathed their last, given their full measure to their mates.

A big sap-filled knot popped in the flames and sparks rose wildly swirling, scratching crazy brilliant orange cat’s-claws into the muddied marble of the night. In the warm tavern the publican pulled a cord attached to two brass bells, one inside, one outside, signaling last call. It was the saddest, loneliest bell I’d ever heard.

Ding-dong, ding-dong.