The alarm went off at five, and Arthur Jensen was out of the bed before its second ring, the way he had been trained a lifetime ago to come out of sleep like a man coming out of an airplane β all at once, no negotiating.
The house was dark. The house was wrong.
He knew the shape of where he was the way you know a drop zone in fog: by the feel of the floor through his socks and a conviction in his bones that he was late. He was twenty-two years old, and reveille had passed him by, and somewhere out on a field in the iron-cold dark a truck was loading without him. His hands found clothes in the dark without asking his eyes for help. Khaki trousers. A shirt buttoned wrong and rebuttoned. The good sweater. His fingers moved the way they moved on a static line, quick and certain, while his mind ran the only arithmetic it had: *report, report, report.*
The duffel was in the closet where he'd left it. Where he'd left it last night. Where he'd left it sixty years ago β the bag didn't care, and neither did he. He packed the way the Army had taught him. Socks rolled tight as fists. A folded shirt. Shaving kit. The boots, cleaned, set heel to toe. Every item laid in with a soldier's economy, and the bag rising under his hands like it was filling with a life.
Dad.
Karen stood in the kitchen doorway in her robe, her hair flat from sleep, and her voice went high and thin the way it had when she was nine and sure she'd heard something on the stairs.
Dad, what are you doing? It's five o'clock.
Transport leaves at six, Arthur said, and heard the reasonableness of it himself. "I need a ride to the airfield, Karen. Don't fuss. Just drive me to the airfield."
His daughter's hands came up in front of her like she was holding something breakable at arm's length. Behind her eyes he could see her doing the other arithmetic, the daughter's kind, and he felt a flash of irritation that was really fear wearing a uniform. He shouldered the duffel. It was lighter than it should be, and that troubled him, but a man does not stop a jump for a loose strap.
Then came the sound of the front door β not a knock. A key. Felix's key, in Felix's unhurried hand, and Felix Ortega came into his kitchen in the dark like a man who had been expected, carrying two mugs, and set one of them on the table.
Arthur's mug. The heavy one, chipped at the rim, that Helen had bought him at a fair in another century.
Morning, Arthur, Felix said, in the tone of a mailman reporting weather. "Coffee first. Coffee always goes first. You taught me that on this porch in 1983."
Coffee, Arthur said slowly. His hand closed around the mug's warmth, and the warmth said things the dark hadn't: *kitchen. Saturday. A day circled.* He drank. The fog didn't lift, but it thinned at the edges, and through it he could see the calendar on the refrigerator, and the red circle Karen had drawn, and not yet understand it.
Doc came in next, without knocking either β the house had a protocol now: people came in β carrying the scrapbook under one arm like a hymnal. Arthur's scrapbook. Doc opened it on the kitchen table to the page that mattered and turned it toward him with both hands, the way you'd hand a man his own orders.
The letter. The VFW post commander's letterhead, the formal words, and under it, in the photograph Felix had taken, four men and an old soldier at a diner table, laughing, a plan standing up around the laughing.
*Walk the Veterans Day parade. Honored guest. At the head of the contingent.*
Arthur's finger traced the commander's signature. Somewhere a long way down inside him, something older than twenty-two stirred and began, hand over hand, to climb.
There's my grandson, he said, as Michael came in the back door with his medic bag slung easy and his voice pitched the way it always was β a lake, that boy's voice, nothing ruffling it. He heard himself say it β *grandson*, which meant years, which meant the duffel was wrong.
Big morning, Grandpa, Michael said. "Let's get some coffee in you and check the machinery." He took Arthur's wrist between two fingers, unhurried, found the pulse, nodded at its report. "Machinery's good."
You're late for the airfield too, Arthur told him, and Michael smiled.
Then we'll be late together.
Bear arrived last, and the kitchen got smaller the way kitchens do, and darker in the doorway, and then it was just Bear, who took in the scene entire β the duffel, the mug, the scrapbook, Karen's frightened hands β without a single thing in his face changing.
Morning, Arthur, he said.
The old man set the duffel down. He did it slowly, like a man setting down something he has carried a long way and has only just remembered he doesn't need anymore. His hands, freed, hung empty a moment β and then went, of their own accord, to the hallway, to the hanger by the door, where the tweed jacket hung pressed and ready, the way Felix had left it last night, standing at attention in the dark.
His fingers found the lapel. Found where the pin would go.
The parade, Arthur said. The fog went out of him like a tide going out of a harbor β not gone, but low, and the harbor his again. "It's today."
It is, Bear said.