No Atheists in Foxholes
By Matthew Snyderman
Thomas never expected to live long enough to see the time capsule recovered. Making it this far was a miracle, he thought, staring up at nothing in the pitch-black bedroom while listening to his wife snore. But he’d beaten the genetic odds and a lifelong weakness for corned beef (or any red meat) thanks to a pair of stents and an array of medications in his pill caddy that could top off one of those plastic Halloween pumpkins.
A temperamental bladder, the usual suspect for his frequent restless nights, wasn’t to blame this time as the 3rd of July melted into the 4th. It was the knowledge that tomorrow’s very public excavation would sound the death knell of his marriage a week shy of its 60th anniversary.
This unhappiest of prospects is what forced him to his feet. He tiptoed toward the bedroom door, taking care to avoid the floorboards whose creaking would have Maureen instantly upright, sleep mask still in place, demanding, “What’s wrong?”
Along the hall and down the stairs he went in almost complete darkness, hardly daring to breathe until he reached the kitchen. Once in the safety of the garage, he finally switched on a light. Band saws, circular saws, a wood lathe, and racks of tools spread out before him, flanked by several tall metal cabinets. He shuffled over to the one marked “Landscaping,” selecting what he needed before pulling some well-worn coveralls over his PJs. Having forgotten to bring socks, he sighed and donned some work boots, blisters be damned. Then he carefully loaded his pickup and coasted down the driveway into the night.
-----
Hands on hips, a young Thomas O’Shea surveyed the contents of the sturdy trunk he’d built from scratch the previous week, sweat dripping from his nose onto the face of Ringo Starr, who stared back at him from a Beatles fan magazine nestled among snow globes, high school yearbooks, and other assorted knickknacks assembled by wives of the Steadfast, Illinois Rotarians. He would have returned the drummer’s goofy grin, but it was too damn hot. Hot and sticky as only a Midwestern July could be. One of these days, Thomas figured, he would have to install an overhead fan or two in the Rotary Club social hall. Dust motes floated in the sunbeams, waltzing to the muffled sounds of merrymakers sipping lemonades and bottles of ice-cold beer on the other side of the wood-paneled wall while he toiled alone and Budless. Marty Fitzgerald, the organizer of that year’s Independence Day festivities and sadist who’d condemned him to die of dehydration while sealing the time capsule in that inferno and then hauling it across the street to the fairgrounds, was probably on his third lemonade, spiked generously, no doubt, with vodka. And he was, no doubt, flirting unsuccessfully with Maureen, awaiting an opportunity to brush up against her cute bottom while his own wife’s back was turned.
Thomas’s only solace was the grease-spotted paper bag perched atop his tool kit from which the enticing aroma of an overstuffed Reuben courtesy of Saul’s Deli crooked an invisible finger at him.
“Screw it,” he said in response to a growling stomach, setting down his tools and starting lunch a little early. That first bite, so salty and juicy and tangy with deli mustard, exploded in his mouth like a succulent hand grenade. The blissful sigh it elicited filled the silence as he sank onto a metal folding chair, closed eyes to the ceiling.
A forceful tug brought Thomas round and came within a whisker of unseating him. The Reuben had vanished, replaced by a shooting pain that had him inspecting his hand for missing fingers. All were present and accounted for, if bloodied, but confusion morphed into outrage when he looked down.
At his feet was Archie, Maureen’s beloved beagle and stand in for the children she had desperately wanted but couldn’t have, crouched over the remains of Thomas’ lunch. The two sized each other up until the dog, sensing danger, slurped up the last ribbon of glistening corned beef and bolted, the green shamrock license and heart-shaped bell on his collar jingling much as they had while yanking a gorgeous Thanksgiving turkey onto the floor in front of 16 guests or getting into Maureen’s blood pressure medicine an hour before their niece’s christening (which they proceeded to miss) and countless other high crimes and misdemeanors. But the incorrigible bandit had lost a step over the years.
His hammer was airborne before Thomas realized what he’d done. He tracked the missile’s trajectory as he would a promising roll at the Middletown Lanes, all the way to its target, where it landed with surgical precision, dropping Archie in a lifeless heap. The rush of visceral satisfaction that followed was accompanied by the image of Thomas’ long-time antagonist’s head mounted above the fireplace beside the six-point buck, proud trophy from a recent hunting trip. These were promptly shouldered aside by the thought of Maureen glaring at him from across the conference table in some divorce attorney’s book-lined office.
Ongoing holiday chatter outside was joined by a band playing “Stars and Stripes Forever” and then a burst of microphone feedback. All too familiar with the day’s program, Thomas knew he had maybe 15 minutes to hide his crime and salvage his marriage. “Tommy, honey?” called a voice from the other side of the social hall’s oaken door, a voice that usually made him smile like smitten teenager. Three knocks and it opened a crack. “Are you ready? It’s almost time.” Fifteen minutes had just become 15 seconds. At most.
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“Christ, Tom!” wheezed Gil Murphy, as the two Korean War buddies lowered the time capsule into place before a sweltering 4th of July crowd. “Who the hell’s in here? Ho Chi Minh?”
“Archie,” Thomas whispered back. “Don’t ask…And not a word,” he continued, handing his pal a shovel, “To anybody.”
Gil winked – “Semper Fi” – before dumping the first spadeful of dirt into the hole. “I always hated that piece of shit dog, anyway.”
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So bereft had Maureen been at Archie’s mysterious disappearance that she vowed to never get another dog and instead threw herself headlong into various civic activities, spending so much time volunteering at Steadfast Elementary that generations of students, many of them now parents, had come to regard her as their unofficial grandmother.
Thomas, for his part, lovingly helped her navigate the difficult road from denial through depression to acceptance by plastering the town with “Missing Dog” flyers and accompanying her to church with some regularity even though she knew he would rather be burned at the stake than give up the NFL for Sunday Mass. Gil, a sporadically devout Catholic, could only shake his head from an adjacent pew at his friend’s newfound faith.
Eventually, the couple took up a life Thomas feared they might never have if joined at the hip to a pet who could never be left in somebody else’s care beyond a night or two. There were cruises. Gambling junkets. A second honeymoon and family reunions from Atlantic City to Seattle. They even made it to Ireland (twice).
And for decades afterwards he and Gil toasted cheating fate at the VFW bar over shots of Jameson’s, first while sharing foxholes on the Korean Peninsula waiting for the shriek of mortar fire to subside and then on the 4th of July, 1972 in Steadfast, Illinois.
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A bank of clouds drifted across the face of a full moon. Had anyone been happening by at that ungodly hour, they likely would have missed Thomas marking off 20 paces from the town’s historic gazebo. “Semper Fi,” he said to his absent friend who, as promised, had taken their secret with him to the grave, before bending to his task.
Thirty-five minutes of hard digging failed to produce the expected sound of shovel scraping pine and had the old man cursing his faulty memory.
Hope was still holding out against desperation when Thomas hauled himself out of a second empty hole and then a third. He still had time, but picturing Maureen, who had been tapped by the mayor to open the time capsule, sinking her hands into those vaguely familiar remains and coming up with a shamrock dog license and heart-shaped bell in front of everybody had him picking up the pace in defiance of a triphammer pulse. With his tools growing ever heavier, Thomas trudged over to a new spot and began again…
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Waist deep in what was undoubtedly his last excavation, Thomas swayed with exhaustion, knuckling away a tear. “Sweet Jesus…” The morning sun was peeking over the horizon and for the first time since facing wave after bellowing wave of Korean People’s Army regulars, he prayed. For real. And suddenly beside him in Steadfast’s newly cratered town square was a 19-year-old Gil sporting mud-spattered fatigues and a wry smile, nodding at his comrade’s handiwork much as he had in their Leatherneck days. “What’d I tell ya’, buddy,” he said while poking at the earth with his entrenching tool, “There ain’t no atheists in foxholes.”
