Airborne All The Way!

Jack "Jacky" Denton Bixby

10/27/1945-1/2/1966

Born Graceton, Lake of the Woods County, Minnesota

Died Hau Nghia Province, South Vietnam

Remembering my cousin Jacky today.  He impacted my childhood both through his life and death although I only met him a few times.  He is mentioned several times in Church School Blues.

Jacky was real cool. He took Nick and me riding on his motorcycle.. He was a paratrooper whose slogan was "Airborne All The Way!" -- Church School Blues

~~

Mother and I pay close attention to the news when it tells about POWs being returned home, because she still hopes that it wasn't Jacky's body that got shipped back. She has heard stories about the military sometimes shipping back an old boot instead of a body, and that old boot could be anybody's. So as long as there are POWs, Mother is hoping that one of those young men she sees on the news will be the handsome brown-eyed face with the cleft in the chin that we all admired so much. -- Church School Blues

~~

Mother is sobbing. The last time I heard her cry like that was when she got the news that Jacky was killed in Viet Nam. -- Church School Blues

~~

And finally, the famous scene where the history teacher, Mr. Rivera, shouts at the class for having no awareness of the war in Viet Nam, and a kid's response and inner thoughts about the war.

"You folks don't seem to care that there is a war going on!" says Mr. Rivera, and his thick dark eyebrows shoot straight up behind his glasses.

There is some shifting in seats, but suddenly everybody in the room has become a silent kid.

"It's not real to you, is it? And why should it be? It hasn't touched you personally. Let's see a show of hands," he says suddenly. "Has anyone in this room known someone who has been killed in Viet Nam?"

Mr. Rivera thinks this is a safe question since he has known most of these kids for years, taught their older brothers and sisters, knows their families personally. But it hasn't occurred to him that he no longer knows everyone in the room. As I raise my lonely hand, I see Rebecca raise hers also.

"Thank you," he says, his voice going softer. "There are two students in this room for whom the war is very real. For the rest of you, I urge you to pay attention to the news. This country is being torn apart over this war—some strongly believe that it is right to send Americans to fight wars on foreign soil, and others believe just as strongly that we should stand apart from the conflict. At the moment, you don't have an opinion, but as Americans, each one of you should."

I silently agree with him, although even I haven't given much thought to the question of whether the war is right. I know that Jacky wanted to be a paratrooper, and he wanted to do his patriotic duty. Although I don't think of myself as "from the coast" I was close enough to several naval bases in North Carolina that the sight of servicemen hitchhiking was a common one, and I loved the sight of battleships in the Cape Fear River—not because they were killing machines, but because ships are cool. I admire the clever design of military stuff, whether it is a ship or a uniform, a canteen, a compass or a multi-purpose sailor hat.

I could go on and on about all the cool stuff I've seen, having grown up close to naval and air force bases, but there is one image that has impressed itself onto my mind as if my eye were a camera. It's of the sky over some barracks—maybe at Camp LeJeune or even Fort Bragg. I was pretty small, so I'm no longer sure which base it was, but I think the sea was near, so that would make it LeJeune where we visited another cousin who was in the navy. The sky is that certain blue that it only achieves back home where there is so much water, and the flag of our country flies so crisp and clear in its nautical colors of reds, whites, and blues, that a person could just break down and cry for love of America.

So I guess maybe I do have an opinion on whether the war is right. I think that all war is wrong, wrong, wrong, insane and stupid. But I am an American and I believe that we should go where America sends us and defend our flag, even if America is wrong about where our flag is flying at a particular time. Of course that's easy for me to say, since I'm a girl and am in no danger of being drafted in a few years to serve in some war that doesn't have anything to do with freedom. But if I was a boy, I think I'd be a Jacky.

After class is over, Mr. Rivera takes Rebecca and me aside.

"I apologize for asking what I did about losing someone in Viet Nam. I didn't realize anyone in here had been personally affected by the war."

I look at him straight in the eyes. "It's okay."

"May I ask who you lost in the war?"

For some reason, I can talk now and I speak proudly. "My cousin. Jacky Denton Bixby. Airborne All The Way."

Rebecca has lost an uncle in the war. It is something else we have in common, so Rebecca and I start sitting together at lunch, standing near each other at recess. But being silent kids, we don't do a whole lot of talking. -- Church School Blues

  

The Hunter

"The Hunter" is a companion story to "The Jesus, Jesus Picture".  It tells the story of my grandfather's desperate quest for love after my grandmother died.   "The Hunter" was the second prize winner in INSIGHT'S 1991 writing contest.  Some of the incidents in this story also appear in the narrative of CHURCH SCHOOL BLUES.

Grandma wasn’t dead and buried six weeks when Grandpa started looking for a new wife.

“It’s too soon,” said Tory’s mother. ‘‘I don’t know what’s wrong with my dad.”

Grandma’s death had been unexpected. She had been in good health, still teaching school at the age of 69, when without warning she died in the middle of the night with a mild case of the flu.  Mama and Tory’s aunts agreed that it looked like Grandpa hadn’t loved Grandma very much, starting up so soon with ideas of marrying again.  Tory didn’t know what to think. She was 12 when Grandma died. She was still 12 when Grandpa started his campaigns to find a new wife.

Grandpa, always logical, was methodical in his search. He called to mind a number of women he had known in years past, or whom he had met and knew to be without a husband. Then he wrote to two or three women at a time.  The whole thing just didn’t seem respectful to Grandma’s memory, nor to the women he canvassed like a salesman.  The aunts said he was getting senile, and it was true that, of late, there was a tremor in his handshake and a shuffling to his once-confident stride.

But Tory’s mother remembered, “He always approached romance in a strange way. When he proposed to Mother, he had proposed to another woman, also. We were lucky Mother could make a decision very quickly — she said yes first.”  Tory listened to the conversation between her mother and her mother’s sisters and thought, If Grandma hadn’t been so quick to make up her mind, none of us would have been born. It made her queasy to think by how narrow a chance the whole lot of them had managed to exist.

Grandma had been a 32-year-old schoolteacher when she married Grandpa. It had all happened in the northern woods of Minnesota, where the trees were still thick in Tory’s time (she had seen them once, on a trip when she was 10). Houses and people, and perhaps eligible women, were few and far apart.  Later Grandpa and Grandma moved their fledgling family south to a land that was just as thick with trees, and almost as lonely. There they built a school and taught the gospel.

Tory remembered Grandpa when he wasn’t as old as he was now, still strong and independent. She remembered when he ruled his classes of seventh and eighth graders. He was stern and exacting, yet able to tell a good story. Even now, with his steps turning to shuffles and holding a cane he didn’t know quite what to do with, he had a way of catching a person off guard with that keen look Tory remembered from better years.  He just doesn't think like we do, she thought.  He’s the last pioneer, thrust into a world of television and freeways and keeping up appearances.

In her fifteenth year Tory saw the last passenger trains come to Chattanooga. The newspeople said that tractor-trailer rigs were running trains out of the business of hauling freight, and that the family car and the airplane had replaced the passenger train.  But when Grandpa traveled across the United States to visit a lady on the West Coast, he went by train. He returned by way of Chattanooga, where Tory and her parents now lived.  Tory and her mother went to the depot to meet him. The old train station’s grand lines were obscured by dust and litter. Derelicts slept in the shade of the platform. Like the broken men that took refuge under the roof, the depot was a derelict, a thing of the past.  When the train came in, Grandpa was the only passenger to disembark. He paused on the step, one hand on the rail, sun on his white hair.

“Daddy!” called Tory’s mother. ‘‘We’re over here.” She started forward to take his suitcase, but Tory hesitated, struck by a sense of history. That proud old man with the handsome, haggard face, standing so erect on the stoop of that train, and the train itself, were of an age . The passenger train had just about had its time. And Grandpa, with that gleam in his eye from having just blazed a trail across the country, had about had his time. Already his ways of thinking, his ways of finding a wife, were obsolete.  Don’t go, thought Tory to the train and to her grandfather. Don’t go.

‘‘Tory!” called her mother. ‘‘Don’t just stand there. Come take his other suitcase.”  Tory obeyed, while Mama took Grandpa’s arm and helped him off the train. Tory followed them, feeling bewildered. She recognized that he must feel the same bewilderment. How can things change before you know it? How can this be the last train?

The West Coast courtship had not been successful. The lady had been kind, but the outcome was clear. Grandpa had returned alone, and there were no plans for future visits.  But Grandpa was undaunted. ‘‘While I was there, I succeeded in obtaining the address of Nora Brady. You remember Nora, don’t you, Lisa’?”

Tory’s mother nodded . ‘‘ I remember Mrs. Brady. She taught school with you and Mother for several years.”

‘‘Well, you’d never guess where she is now. She’s gone back to the northern woods, and is still teaching school !”

‘‘ She must be almost 70.”

‘‘Seventy-one,’‘ said Grandpa. ‘‘She never remarried after Mr. Brady died. She was a good Christian woman. A good woman.”  Grandpa had already sent a letter to her, mailed from the West Coast.

Tory’s mother suddenly looked exhausted. She had expected him to arrive discouraged, perhaps a little wiser, ready to calm down and accept the fact that he was old. His health was failing, and on top of that, he was a pauper. What other woman would be willing to live like Grandma had lived? Grandma, sharing his zeal to spread the gospel, to teach, to serve, had spent as little time keeping the home as he had. All they had was a tiny, dilapidated travel trailer and an unfinished two-room cabin in the woods.

“Mrs. Brady probably won’t answer the letter,” said Mother quietly to Tory. “He’s watching the mail, and he’s going to be disappointed again.”

But the 71-year-old schoolteacher in the northern woods did answer Grandpa’s letter. The letters of Nora Brady followed Grandpa from house to house as he became more dependent upon his children and they shared the task of caring for him. He became confined to a wheelchair, and still Nora Brady wrote.

“She can’t have any idea how feeble he is,” said Mother. “She thinks he’s still the way he was 25 years ago.”

Grandpa’s handwriting grew shaky, and then he could hardly write at all. His mind sometimes wandered to places in the past, and to other places no one could recognize. But the part of him that was Grandpa watched for the mail, and Nora Brady kept writing.  Soon his replies were returned to Mrs. Brady in Tory’s best script. She knelt by his wheelchair, scrupulously taking down every word, each unique turn of phrase, so that the letters she wrote were entirely his own.  Grandpa’s letters were scholarly. The historian came out in him as he described the founding of schools and the progress of townships. He chronicled his own life. At the end of his letters, as at the end of Mrs. Brady’s, was always the same text: Romans 8:28.

As Tory sat on the floor by Grandpa’s chair, she looked into the past with him. Grandpa was a time machine, his words transporting her backward. Her eyes became dazzled by the northern lights, she thrilled to wolf calls as sharp and clear as the winter snow that buried the northern woods. She trekked with him on snowshoes across the frozen land, where not a light could be seen beneath the stars.  Every day she was with him she urged him to tell her more. He might soon disappear with the passenger trains, but she, Tory, would save everything.  She felt herself aging—aging backward. Sixteen now, she felt her memories stretch further back than she was old. She breathed in the chill air of lost Minnesota nights, and shivered in the Southern heat of her own time. 

“Grandpa,” said Tory as they finished a chronicle to Nora Brady, “your letter is missing something. A woman you are courting wants to hear, well, something about how you feel for her.” So “with love” was added to Grandpa’s letters.

As soon as school was out, Nora Brady wrote that she was coming south to see him. Grandpa was delighted. For a few days he seemed to regain some of his vigor. But time was running out, and Grandpa’s will and Tory’s will put together couldn’t stop its progression.  As school drew to a close in the north, Grandpa declined. He was staying with Aunt Cecily now, more at ease in her Smoky Mountain home than in Chattanooga’s smog and traffic. Too weak to get out of bed, he held tight to his notion that Nora Brady would come. Mrs. Brady would come, they would get married, and live in his cabin in the woods.

Nora Brady did come. The family told her how badly Grandpa’s condition had turned, and she still came.

The first time Tory saw Nora Brady, she was applying medication to Grandpa’s bedsores. Though his emaciated body was beyond repair, the woman from the north sat calmly on the bed beside him, ministering to him with tender, gnarled hands.  This was something no one had expected. Even Tory, who understood Grandpa’s need to keep loving, had not dreamed it would be returned in this measure.

And Grandpa, always the hunter, the logical seeker, now had to stay in one place while something illogical like love came to him.  Nora Brady became his nurse, his companion, his comforter, his sweetheart. Behind her serene gaze, Tory sensed a story, one that had never been told, that perhaps never would be told. Had Nora Brady, all those years ago, loved him in the privacy of her heart? She did not say. She did not speak of her feelings. Her ministering hands, her constancy, spoke them for her.  Tory remembered Romans 8:28:  “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God.”

A few months later, Grandpa died—peacefully, gently, in the arms of Nora Brady.

The Jesus, Jesus Picture

Since it has been quite a few years since some of my favorite stories have been in print, this blog seems like a good place to re-print them for those who missed them the first time around.  This story was first printed in 1990 InsightOut magazine after it won first prize in their writing contest.  Six years later, it was chosen as an "unforgettable story" and reprinted in Review & Herald Publishing Company's anthology, Insight Presents More Unforgettable Stories.  The same story was recently retold in the final chapter of  Precious Jewels, A Seventh-Day Adventist Family Saga.

AS soon as Grandma died, various relatives, relatives by marriage, and relatives by association showed up and combed her house for keepsakes. By the time Tory arrived from Tennessee, the Jesus, Jesus picture was nowhere to be found. And no one seemed to know what had become of it. The immediate family had their own upset over the disappearance of Grandma’s piano. Tory could understand why the piano had been taken. Even though it was old, it had sounded good. And other things in Grandma’s house had value. But the Jesus, Jesus picture wasn’t one of them. It consisted of a plain print decoupaged on a pine slab. It had hung on Grandma’s wall so long that years of dust had embedded in the bark, and the shellac had cracked into spiderweb tracings across Jesus’ face.

After the funeral Tory went outside and sat in the shadow of the willow tree in front of Grandma's house. Winter had stripped it in the same way Grandma’s house had been stripped. The same way death had stripped her life. If only Tory could find the Jesus, Jesus picture. It would be Tory’s link with Grandma, something tangible they had shared. Grandma used to play the piano and sing hymns to her. When Grandma sang the words “Jesus, Jesus, sweetest name I know,” she would finish by pointing to the picture that hung on the wall beside her. “That’s Jesus,” Grandma would tell Tory. “That’s who the song is about.” So in Tory’s mind the picture became known as the Jesus, Jesus picture. As a child Tory had found it remarkable that Grandma owned the very picture that had inspired a famous hymn!

But Tory’s own concept of Jesus had come, not through the hymn or the picture, but through Grandma herself. As Tory sat beneath the winter willow, she realized that Jesus had always merged with the identity of her Grandmother. Was it sacrilegious to think this way? When Tory saw a picture of Jesus, sometimes His face merged in her mind with her grandmother’ s. Well, she assured herself, this simply meant that Jesus had shown clearly through Grandma. It didn’t mean she thought Grandma was Jesus. Satisfied with her resolution, Tory stopped wondering about the merging. But she didn’t stop wondering what had happened to the Jesus, Jesus picture.

Three years later Tory visited her cousin Pia in the Smoky Mountains. Tory shared Pia’s bedroom, a room made dark by the hulking shapes of antiques. The antiques were legacies from great-aunts, elderly cousins, and assorted shirttail relatives from her mother’s previous marriages. It was quite by accident that Tory dropped her brush one morning and had to look under Pia’s bed to retrieve it. Kneeling on the hand-woven rug, she lifted the edge of the quilt. There was the Jesus, Jesus picture! Tory touched it, leaving a finger trail in the dust that coated the image of Jesus. She could hear Pia’s voice in the kitchen and Aunt Cecily’s laughter. Tory was alone with her discovery. This is my Jesus, Jesus picture, she thought. It’s mine because I love it more than anyone else could. She wiped away the dust with the edge of her sleeve. Then quickly she stowed the picture between the extra blouses in her suitcase.

As she ate breakfast with Pia and Aunt Cecily, Tory wondered how the picture had gotten under Pia’s bed. Was it just a convenient storage place—or had Pia stashed it there to treasure? But I’m Grandma ‘s granddaughter by blood, Tory thought. Aunt Cecily was Grandma’s stepdaughter. So I should have it. Then Tory remembered that January when the two girls were 12. Tory had sat controlled and silent at Grandma’s funeral. Pia had cried through the whole service. Had Pia’s tears been easy tears of the moment—or were they wrenched from the heart, like Tory’s silence’? Who could say? Tory couldn't get Pia’s tears out of her mind, though. So she waited till her cousin was brushing her teeth. Then Tory crept hack and returned the Jesus. Jesus picture under Pia’s bed.

After Aunt Cecily went to work that day, the girls hit on an idea. “Hey. let’s make out our wills! With appropriate solemnity they crowded together under a Tiffany lamp. They began their wills with identical sentences: ‘‘I, _______, being of sound mind and body, do so bequeath….”

Tory’s estate consisted mainly of her clothes, purses and shoes, old toys, and a modest record collection. Pia’s estate was more substantial. She owned an antique rolltop desk and a few other pieces of furniture of her very own. But Pia was a little short in the way of clothes. “Would you like me to will you my big sweater with the glitter on it?” asked Tory.

“That would be awesome,” Pia answered brightly. “I’ve always wanted it.”

“OK,” said Tory. “It’s yours. To Pia Roby I bequeath my big sweater with the glitter.’’

“Now, what should I will you?” asked Pia.

Suddenly things became serious. “Will me that picture of Jesus that used to be Grandma’s.” said Tory.

“You mean that one under my bed?”

“Yes! I’ve looked for that picture ever since Grandma died, and, um, I sure would like you to will that to me.”

Pia’s eyes turned black like they did on the rare occasions when she got serious. “You know, Tory, I suppose I will die first. Me being older.’’ (Pia was four and a half months older than Tory.) Things going their natural course, Tory thought. I should possess the Jesus, Jesus picture exactly four and a half months before 1 follow old Pia into the grave.

 “Do you think maybe I could sometime . . . borrow it’? Before you die’?” Tory ventured. Pia’s face went soft and sad. ‘‘I’ll give it to you now if you want it.”

“You will?” Tory felt like grabbing it and running. But she didn’t want Pia to sacrifice something close to her heart. “How do you happen to have it?” she asked.

“It always made me think of Grandma,” Pia said.

“To me it’s the closest thing to Grandma,” agreed Tory.

“With me too. I think I loved Grandma more than anyone else in my whole life. Pia’s voice was as sober as her face. The trouble with Pia’s seriousness, though, was she’d just have you convinced she was taking something seriously — then suddenly those deep, dark eyes would crinkle up and she’d burst out laughing. Tory had been fooled too many times to trust Pia. Still, Tory knew Pia had a deep and tender place in her heart. “I can’t take the picture,” Tory decided out loud. “Not if it means a lot to you.”

Pia went into her room and returned with the Jesus, Jesus picture. “Take it. You can will it to me.”

“Yeah. I might die first.” Tory cradled the picture in her lap as they finished their wills. She kept thinking of Grandma at the piano, singing and teaching her about Jesus. That memory should be her right to the picture. But what if Grandma had given Pia the same memory? Feeling like a softhearted fool, Tory slipped the picture back under Pia’s bed that evening. After all, it would probably belong to her someday anyway.

The next day the girls and Aunt Cecily headed to Tennessee to take Tory home. After Tory and Pia got tired of riding in the cab, they crawled into the back of the camper. Tory stretched out, watching patches of sky play across the window. Pia spoke in the dreamy silence. “Remember those stories Grandma told?”

“You mean her miracle stories?”

“Yeah. Do you think anything like that happens anymore?”

“It happened to Grandma. And we knew her. So it could happen, I think.”

“I don’t mean to be sacrilegious,” said Pia. “But Grandma seemed a lot like Jesus. She just prayed that time, and she got healed from that water moccasin bite. Most people would’ve died before anyone came.”

“We’re supposed to be like Jesus. So if Grandma seemed like Jesus, I guess she was doing things right.” said Tory.

“I’m glad I knew her,” said Pia.

Tory sighed. She wished she had the Jesus, Jesus picture. She guessed Pia, thinking Tory had it, was wishing the same thing. But Tory felt Christlike in that she’d given it up. Not like a fool at all. Grandma would’ve done the same thing.

Pia leaned close to the screen on the little camper window. “Hey!” she yelled to a guy standing by a small-town street. “Hey, fly-boy!” Tory giggled. Pia’s moods changed so fast! One minute she was worried about being sacrilegious. The next she was yelling at a cute guy.

Aunt Cecily parked for lunch at a picnic area outside of town. And that’s where Tory found that she did have the Jesus, Jesus picture. She discovered it slipped between the notebooks in her book bag. She snaked her hand into the bag to touch it, watching Pia outside spreading peanut butter sandwiches. She’d never understand Pia. Tory had always been the smart one—but Pia was the wise one. Pia had always been two steps ahead of Tory in anything outside the classroom. Pia outsmarted her many times. But just when Tory would decide never to trust her again, Pia would reveal a heart good and true. If Pia hadn’t cared about the Jesus, Jesus picture, she wouldn’t have troubled herself to put it in Tory’s things. You have to care, Tory thought, to know how important something is to someone else.

Tory slipped the picture out of the bag and turned the face toward the light. It didn’t matter who loved Grandma more. After all, Grandma’s legacy wasn’t the Jesus, Jesus picture. Her legacy was love. Tory glanced outside in time to see Pia stick the peanut butter knife into the jelly jar. Smiling, Tory slipped the Jesus, Jesus picture under the front seat. And this time she didn’t feel the same emptiness when she gave it up.

Six months later Aunt Cecily returned to Tennessee for a visit. “Pia has schoolwork,” explained Aunt Cecily, “so she couldn’t come. But she said this belongs to you.” Aunt Cecily handed Tory a towel-wrapped object. Tory turned away to hide the tremor in her hands as she unfolded the towel. The gentle eyes of Jesus looked at Tory through a spiderweb maze of shellac. “Tell Pia thanks,” she said, hiding in a simple sentence everything the picture meant to both Pia and her.   And Tory realized that the picture wasn’t just a connection to Grandma and her teachings - it was now a reminder of the love between two cousins.

~~~