Laying Low
Bill Oliver
She lay face down, whorls of red hair spilling over the fresh sod, pale arms outstretched. She might have fallen from the sky. The shoulder blades that jutted up from between the thin straps of her dress were like the stumps of wings. But from the way her head was pressed against the stone that said “Devoted Husband,” her being here was no accident.
She wasn’t the dead man’s wife. Campbell had met the wife, a sturdy woman in black who received his condolences and instructions about protocol with curt nods that implied a firm sense of the deference owed a soldier’s widow.
This prostrate girl conjured up images of women flinging themselves onto funeral pyres. Her flimsy summer dress, the color and pattern of the markings on a fawn’s back, made no concession to the morning chill. Nor did it do anything to conceal the sobs racking her narrow frame.
The dress was the same one she’d been wearing when he spotted her the day before bringing up the rear of the burial procession. She was teetering along in high heels the color of a robin’s egg, eyes fixed on the ground, as if each step required the utmost care.
When they reached the grave site, she stood apart from the other mourners, watching the proceedings from a nearby knoll. By then, the high heels dangled at her side, one in either hand. The late-afternoon sun at her back shone in her hair like a corona.
The wife never looked at her once. She might have been sunk in her grief, but Campbell got the feeling she was sending a message: you do not belong here and I refuse to acknowledge you.
The other mourners were less circumspect. Bowed heads kept bobbing up, necks twisting, eyes cutting toward the girl. Their stares seemed tinged with apprehension lest she make a scene.
Campbell had positioned himself near the foot of the knoll, intending to head off anything of the sort. Breaches of decorum were not unprecedented even in this most solemn setting, where regiments of white stone markers filed toward the horizon.
He had once witnessed a struggle between a widow and her mother-in-law over the flag presented to next-of-kin. By the time he intervened, the rival claimants had tugged apart the tidy star-spangled package that was the honor guard’s handiwork, and the flag ended up on the ground, trampled in the fray.
If not for the nepotism to which he owed his job, he might have been fired over that. The 3rd U.S. Infantry, or so-called Old Guard, ran things here, and they brooked no acts of desecration. These days people might splatter the flag with fake blood or burn it, but within these hallowed precincts, respect must be paid.
Campbell had been thankful, then, when the girl on the knoll had kept her vigil without drawing further attention to herself. In fact, when the ceremony ended she was conspicuous only by her absence. Though he had not observed her exit, she was nowhere among the dozen or so mourners wending their way among the granite slabs back to their cars.
Her reappearance now put him in a quandary. He’d been directed by Sergeant Major to make sure the flower arrangements from yesterday remained upright, that no litter or other disorder had crept in over night. Nothing in his training or previous experience as a cemetery administration specialist told him how to deal with a girl lying on a grave weeping uncontrollably.
While he hesitated over what to do, she lifted her head as if scenting the air. In the next instant, she clambered to her knees and was eyeing him over her shoulder. The mingled fear and resentment on her dirt-streaked face would have been enough to prevent him from coming nearer if the surprise of seeing her again, and in such a state, had not already persuaded him to keep his distance.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice cracking as if he were back in high school. He meant he was sorry for the interruption. And for her loss, whatever it might be. Trying to reclaim the nominal authority to which his position entitled him, he added, “Please, carry on.”
Back at the office, Sergeant Major was busy sorting forms into stacks. He did not bother to look up when his subordinate returned, and Campbell was grateful for this. It meant he could avoid mentioning the girl, at least for now.
Every soldier’s arrival here was accompanied by a staggering amount of documentation. Files took on a life of their own, deciduous in nature, amassing layers like rings on a tree trunk. By contrast, the information permitted to appear on a grave marker was strictly limited. The white granite headstones (13x24x4) accommodated at most 11 lines of text, with 13-to-15 characters (including spaces) allotted to each line.
The marker for Lawrence Lee Holden, PVT 1st Class, 1948-1970, was terse even by these standards. The reference to his husbandly devotion served as the sole embellishment upon the bare facts, although the anonymous girl occupying his gravesite hinted at a more complicated story. So for that matter had Campbell’s examination of PVT Holden’s file prior to arranging the details of his burial. The account of his death was ambiguous enough that he’d brought it to the attention of Sergeant Major.
“Kid probably fragged himself,” the sergeant said.
“On purpose?”
“What? No, Specialist. We wouldn’t be burying him with honors in that case. He fucked up, he wasn’t a coward. See, here, it says, ‘ordnance miscarriage.’” Sergeant Major shook his head, whether over PVT Holden’s miscarriage or Campbell’s ignorance was unclear.
He might have been expressing his disapproval of the war. A patriot and a decorated veteran, the sergeant major had no use for “unconventional” conflicts, which he believed sowed bewilderment and dissent among soldiers and civilians alike. At the same time, he loathed the peaceniks, reserving his loyalty for combatants, including those like PVT Holden—poor soldiers perhaps, but soldiers nonetheless, willing to play their part, however dubious the cause.
He would not be pleased to learn of this girl laying claim to a soldier’s final resting place, drenching it with her tears. He would also not hesitate to hold Campbell responsible for allowing such a spectacle to intrude upon his cemetery.
Campbell liked to eat his lunch on the front portico of the Lee-Custis Mansion, sitting on a folding lawn chair he kept there for the purpose. The house looked out across the cemetery toward the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument beyond. Compared to these gleaming symbols of rectitude, the Confederate general’s former home had been sorely neglected. The six massive limestone columns that lined its portico, though impressive at a distance, up close revealed signs of crumbling. Not that Campbell minded. The shabby grandeur of the place appealed to him, and the lack of tourist traffic meant he could eat his lunch in relative peace.
On his way to the mansion today, his mind was occupied with thoughts of the vagrant girl. He shrank from the idea of confronting her. But even more daunting was the prospect of explaining to Sergeant Major why he’d failed to do so.
How unexpected, then, when he came in view of Private Holden’s grave and she was gone. The image of her grief from that morning had lodged in his imagination, as adamant as any gravestone. It was inconceivable that she would simply vanish for the second time in as many days.
Friends and relatives commonly left tokens and souvenirs on the graves: dog tags, love letters, crosses, Zippo lighters, velvet dice, lava lamps, peace signs, and the like. The Old Guard tolerated these unofficial memorials out of respect for the bereaved, but when the clutter became too much, they would winnow the excess, designating some of it for storage and the rest for disposal.
The flower arrangements on PVT Holden’s final resting place were already beginning to droop from last night’s cold. They represented the only tribute to his memory, aside from the granite stone attesting to his marital fidelity. With the girl’s departure, nothing remained to contradict that assertion. Campbell could not make out so much as a faint impression of her body in the sod where she had so recently lain.
His detour past the private’s grave meant he’d have to hurry lunch if he wanted to make it back to his desk on time. But no sooner had he assumed his usual seat on the portico than he glimpsed movement in the woods adjacent to the Lee mansion.
It was likely a deer. Though they contributed to the bucolic setting, foraging wildlife posed enough of a threat to the cemetery’s flowers and greenery that the Old Guard sometimes enlisted riflemen from Fort Belvoir to thin the herd.
Campbell’s first thought, however, was of the girl. The woods would make a good hiding place. They were off limits to tourists and dense enough to discourage any but the most curious or intrepid from entering. If she were holed up in there, it might explain her knack for appearing and disappearing, seemingly out of nowhere.
He decided to investigate. If nothing else, it would help atone for his earlier laxity.
Sunshine had by now turned fall back into Indian summer. But upon entering the woods, Campbell was engulfed in shadows and found himself wishing for the jacket he’d left back at the office. Pausing for his eyes to adjust to the dimness, he contemplated the folly of coming across anything in here except a case of poison ivy or snake bite. He’d almost convinced himself to turn back, when he heard music.
It was faint at first, then louder, then very loud, as if someone were determined to wake up the whole cemetery.
There’s a starman waiting in the sky
He’d like to come and meet us
But he thinks he’d blow our minds
Despite the cloak of the forest, Campbell felt exposed by the music, as if it were the cue for drawing back a curtain behind which he’d been scrupling to make an entrance.
He began to move in the direction of the sound. “Recon,” the Old Guard might call it, a term that captured none of his aggravation at slogging through underbrush, fending off low-hanging branches, and barking his shins on the trunks of fallen trees.
He came to a clearing, or what passed for one in these woods. It wasn’t much larger than a walk-in closet, and more than half of it was taken up by a tent consisting of a bed sheet draped over a clothesline that was suspended between two trees.
At this range, the music drowned out every other sound, which explained the failure of the clearing’s occupant to detect Campbell’s less-than-stealthy approach.
It was the girl all right, but she no longer appeared to be in mourning. She was dancing—twirling around and flinging herself from side to side, as heedless of her limbs as a rag doll. Her eyes were closed and she seemed insensible to anything except the music blasting from a radio propped in the crook of a tree.
There’s a starman waiting in the sky
He’s told us not to blow it
Cause he knows it’s all worthwhile
“You’re not supposed to be here,” Campbell said. She didn’t hear him. “YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE HERE!”
Her eyes opened wide. And what eyes they were, as large and liquid as any he’d seen outside of those ridiculous paintings of doe-eyed children. They expressed none of the alarm or anger that had stopped him short that morning. She regarded him with a kind of astonishment, as if he were the starman himself dropped down from the sky. No one, certainly no girl, had ever looked at him that way.
Her lips moved but he couldn’t make out the words. He cupped a hand to his ear and pointed to the radio in the tree. Careful not to brush up against her in the tight quarters—afraid she might bolt—he crossed to the radio and turned it off.
“I know you,” she said. “From—.” She motioned toward the cemetery proper.
“This is part of the cemetery,” he said.
“Is that what you came to tell me?” She sounded disappointed. Or was that sarcasm?
“It’s all right with me. But technically you’re trespassing. If they find you, they’ll make you leave. You could be arrested.”
“But you won’t arrest me?”
“It’s not up to me.”
“The uniform—”
“I’m not military.”
“Fooled me.”
“Just saying, it’d be better for everybody if you kept the music down.”
It didn’t look like she planned on staying long. Judging by the few candy-bar wrappers and soda cans lying around, she hadn’t much in the way of food with her. The improvised tent furnished the only visible protection from the elements, and her fawn-colored dress, aside from its value as camouflage, appeared ill-suited for a sojourn in the woods. The blue high heels he remembered from the funeral lay askew near the opening of the tent, like birds battered down by a storm.
He regretted again leaving his jacket behind. He might have offered it to her. Then he remembered his knapsack. He shrugged it off and placed it on the ground between them. Squatting down, he unfastened the compartment that held his lunch. There were three plastic containers, along with an apple and a plaid thermos with tea. He set them on the ground in front of her, embarrassed by the relative bounty they represented in the face of her indigence.
“I didn’t have time for lunch,” he said. “You’re welcome to it.”
Her eyes remained on him.
“I’m not going to report you.”
She balanced on one foot, scratching her shin with the toes of her other foot. Switching legs, she scratched the other shin.
“Okay?” he said.
She nodded.
“I’ll come by tomorrow to check on you. In the meantime, you need to lay low.”
What was he thinking? He needed this job. The draft lottery had cut short his academic deferment, forcing him to abandon his studies and move back home. With luck and the help of his civil servant father, he’d managed to secure this spot at Arlington, which the Army designated “mission essential.” It remained a mystery to him how the combination of clerical and custodial tasks he performed qualified as essential. Still he was grateful for the immunity the job conferred and afraid of the consequences should he lose it.
It was clear he couldn’t count on the girl to remain out of sight (or hearing). If she stuck around for long, somebody—one of the Old Guard, a groundskeeper, a visitor—was bound to notice and raise a stink. His part in shielding her might come out. In which case, he would be shown the gate.
Because of a girl. A pretty girl, yes. He didn’t pretend kindness was his only motive for helping her. But she wasn’t really his type. She reminded him of girls he’d known in high school or rather had known only at a distance, girls who flouted the rules and had no plans for college. They were supposed to be easy and sometimes rumored to be the cause of grudges, and even fights, among rivals for their attention, boys who shared their disregard for consequences, who performed the high-wire act of adolescence minus the safety nets their more provident peers relied on. He imagined PVT Holden as one of these, a bit reckless, prone to mishaps, eventually snared by the draft and shipped off to Vietnam. He felt sorry for the guy. And for the girl who couldn’t let go of him. At the same time, he did not want to end up like them.
He told himself she would probably be gone when he returned the next day but was relieved to find her sitting cross-legged at the opening of her makeshift tent, as if waiting for him.
“It’s so quiet, I thought maybe you’d left.”
She squinted one eye.
“No music, I mean.”
“Oh.” She adjusted her position, tugging at her dress until it stretched across her splayed knees and made a taut little tabletop of her lap. On the ground next to her were his thermos and the plastic containers. The containers were stacked and appeared to have been washed. She’d washed her face, too, from the look of it. Freckles spangled her nose and cheeks. They spilled onto her shoulders.
“I didn’t mean you couldn’t play the music. Just not so loud.”
“It was loud on purpose. To drown out the bugles.”
The plaintive notes of “Taps” could be heard even now, drifting over from some distant part of the cemetery. Campbell was inured to the sound.
“I’m sorry, do you mind me asking how you knew him? Private Holden?”
“Larry. His name is Larry.”
“Sorry, Larry.” Why should he always be apologizing to this girl? She may have made herself at home here, but she was still a trespasser.
“I almost forgot.” He removed his knapsack and took out a blanket he’d brought from home and a package of bologna and loaf of bread from the 7-11. “Provisions,” he said, with a smile that felt like another apology.
Like yesterday, she did not acknowledge the offerings, so he placed them in a pile on the ground in front of her. “I’ll just grab the thermos and this Tupperware.”
“Some of the labels came off when I washed them,” she said.
“That’s okay.” The labels, like his lunches, were his mother’s doing. He looked at his watch. “I better be heading back. The sergeant major will have my ass.” He hoped she understood the risk he was taking.
He was several steps into the woods when he thought he heard a thank you. It was an afterthought at best, the words barely distinguishable from the breeze ruffling the few leaves that still clung to the trees. When he turned around, she was standing, looking at him through the branches that separated them, and there was no mistaking what she said next.
“I’m his real wife, just so you know. Not her.”
“Have a nice lunch, Specialist?”
“Sir?”
“You’re late.”
“I, the woods—”
“What’s that all over your goddamn trousers?”
“Uh, cockleburs. I thought I saw something in the woods, figured I should check it out.”
“The woods?”
“Turned out to be nothing. Just a deer, probably.”
“And that seemed more important to you than getting back here on time?”
“I just thought—”
“That!” The sergeant major leveled an index finger at a spot approximately between Campbell’s eyes. “That, right there, is your problem. You think too damned much.
“Here’s a thought for you, Specialist. Canada. I’m serious, you should think about Canada. You like woods, I hear Canada’s got plenty of woods.”
Sergeant Major had made no secret of his displeasure at having a civilian of draft age foisted on him in time of war. Nor had he hesitated to suggest that Campbell abandon the pretense that Arlington, for him, was anything but a draft dodge. Why not follow the example of others who had hightailed it north of the border?
Campbell had, in fact, mulled this option but decided he wasn’t so desperate as to leave the country and his whole life behind. Besides, the stigma attached to an expat might, in the long run, prove nearly as perilous to his future as a tour in Vietnam.
The real problem, he believed, wasn’t that he thought too much but that every path before him seemed booby-trapped—including Arlington. He had seen this job as a way of biding time, avoiding the traps until better choices presented themselves. Now he wasn’t so sure.
“Get to the head, Specialist! Clean yourself up!”
Campbell took his time in the bathroom. It wasn’t easy picking off the cockleburs. Also, he hoped Sergeant Major would cool off a little in the interim. If not, he was prepared to throw himself on the man’s mercy, pledge to do a better job in the future. He might even have considered giving up the girl’s location, had he known how to do it without incriminating himself.
To his great relief, the sergeant was gone when he returned from the bathroom. He sat down at his desk and prepared to whittle down the stack of papers waiting for him there. Soon however his curiosity over the girl’s claim that she and the dead soldier were married overcame this intention, and he retrieved PVT Holden’s paperwork from the files.
Nothing in the documents pointed to Holden’s being a bigamist, which was not surprising. Campbell would have noticed such an obvious anomaly in his previous review. That didn’t mean the girl was lying. He knew from no less an authority than the sergeant major that it wouldn’t be the first time an extra wife had turned up at an Arlington funeral. It was the sort of situation the Old Guard detested but which their scrupulous attention to detail was not always adequate to prevent. It seemed the military’s paperwork, for all its girth, was often incomplete, especially with regard to marital records.
Campbell noted that PVT Holden had gone through basic training at Fort Bragg. He speculated that if the private had married a second time, North Carolina was the most likely spot. He proceeded to phone that state’s office of vital records, invoking the authority of Arlington to inquire whether the private had taken a wife there.
When North Carolina could find no such record, his mind teemed with alternative and not altogether mutually exclusive theories, chief among them: Holden had deceived her; she had deceived herself (and labored still under the delusion he loved her); or the illegal marriage, if it happened at all, had taken place under assumed names or somewhere other than North Carolina. Then, too, she did not strike him as the type who needed an official ceremony to feel married; in which case, she might not have meant it literally when she claimed to be his wife.
Was he over-thinking again? He didn’t believe so. Disregarding the fact he had ignored procedure and exceeded his authority in a possibly criminal manner, it seemed to him that even Sergeant Major might commend his diligence.
When it was time to leave for the day, he requested permission to stay late to finish up the paperwork on his desk.
“At the rate you’re going, it’ll be all night.” Sergeant Major eyed the pile of forms. “Oh, all right,” he relented, perhaps hesitant to discourage this sign of initiative on his subordinate’s part, however dilatory. “Turn out the lights when you’re finished. You’ll have to get a sentry to unlock the front gate for you.”
Avoiding open ground as much as possible, Campbell followed the tree line south, toward the Lee-Custis Mansion. He refrained from using his flashlight until he entered the woods. Despite the darkness, he felt little of the trepidation of his earlier visits. He didn’t know how exactly, but he was determined to rescue the girl from the predicament in which PVT Holden’s dishonesty and her own misplaced trust had landed her.
He pictured her huddled in the blanket he’d given her, sitting at the opening of the tent. Aware that his appearance at this hour might startle her, he warned of his near approach. “It’s only me,” he said, in a stage whisper.
But the campsite was deserted except for the makeshift tent. Its base had come unmoored, and the sheet flapping in the breeze sounded like a large bird taking flight.
He started to call her name but realized he didn’t know it.
Beams of light appeared through the trees, randomly crisscrossing and scattering, coming in his direction. Eventually, they converged, very close now.
“What the fuck are you up to here, Specialist?” Sergeant Major, flanked by two sentries, stood spraddle-legged, hands on hips, in the suddenly crowded clearing.
It was like the familiar dream in which Campbell found himself transfixed by footlights, having somehow neglected to learn his lines. In spite of that, the next words out of his mouth carried no less conviction for being unrehearsed.
“I’m quitting.”
“Maybe, but for now, you’re coming with us.”
Campbell let the flashlight drop to his side, where it slipped from his fingers and flickered off.
“Grab him, soldiers!”
He was running then, crashing through the woods, indifferent to every hazard except being caught. A single thought impelled him. Not really a thought at all, it came to him through the roar of blood in his chest and ears. Get away (it said), get far away from here.
January 2026
Bill Oliver
She lay face down, whorls of red hair spilling over the fresh sod, pale arms outstretched. She might have fallen from the sky. The shoulder blades that jutted up from between the thin straps of her dress were like the stumps of wings. But from the way her head was pressed against the stone that said “Devoted Husband,” her being here was no accident.
She wasn’t the dead man’s wife. Campbell had met the wife, a sturdy woman in black who received his condolences and instructions about protocol with curt nods that implied a firm sense of the deference owed a soldier’s widow.
This prostrate girl conjured up images of women flinging themselves onto funeral pyres. Her flimsy summer dress, the color and pattern of the markings on a fawn’s back, made no concession to the morning chill. Nor did it do anything to conceal the sobs racking her narrow frame.
The dress was the same one she’d been wearing when he spotted her the day before bringing up the rear of the burial procession. She was teetering along in high heels the color of a robin’s egg, eyes fixed on the ground, as if each step required the utmost care.
When they reached the grave site, she stood apart from the other mourners, watching the proceedings from a nearby knoll. By then, the high heels dangled at her side, one in either hand. The late-afternoon sun at her back shone in her hair like a corona.
The wife never looked at her once. She might have been sunk in her grief, but Campbell got the feeling she was sending a message: you do not belong here and I refuse to acknowledge you.
The other mourners were less circumspect. Bowed heads kept bobbing up, necks twisting, eyes cutting toward the girl. Their stares seemed tinged with apprehension lest she make a scene.
Campbell had positioned himself near the foot of the knoll, intending to head off anything of the sort. Breaches of decorum were not unprecedented even in this most solemn setting, where regiments of white stone markers filed toward the horizon.
He had once witnessed a struggle between a widow and her mother-in-law over the flag presented to next-of-kin. By the time he intervened, the rival claimants had tugged apart the tidy star-spangled package that was the honor guard’s handiwork, and the flag ended up on the ground, trampled in the fray.
If not for the nepotism to which he owed his job, he might have been fired over that. The 3rd U.S. Infantry, or so-called Old Guard, ran things here, and they brooked no acts of desecration. These days people might splatter the flag with fake blood or burn it, but within these hallowed precincts, respect must be paid.
Campbell had been thankful, then, when the girl on the knoll had kept her vigil without drawing further attention to herself. In fact, when the ceremony ended she was conspicuous only by her absence. Though he had not observed her exit, she was nowhere among the dozen or so mourners wending their way among the granite slabs back to their cars.
Her reappearance now put him in a quandary. He’d been directed by Sergeant Major to make sure the flower arrangements from yesterday remained upright, that no litter or other disorder had crept in over night. Nothing in his training or previous experience as a cemetery administration specialist told him how to deal with a girl lying on a grave weeping uncontrollably.
While he hesitated over what to do, she lifted her head as if scenting the air. In the next instant, she clambered to her knees and was eyeing him over her shoulder. The mingled fear and resentment on her dirt-streaked face would have been enough to prevent him from coming nearer if the surprise of seeing her again, and in such a state, had not already persuaded him to keep his distance.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice cracking as if he were back in high school. He meant he was sorry for the interruption. And for her loss, whatever it might be. Trying to reclaim the nominal authority to which his position entitled him, he added, “Please, carry on.”
Back at the office, Sergeant Major was busy sorting forms into stacks. He did not bother to look up when his subordinate returned, and Campbell was grateful for this. It meant he could avoid mentioning the girl, at least for now.
Every soldier’s arrival here was accompanied by a staggering amount of documentation. Files took on a life of their own, deciduous in nature, amassing layers like rings on a tree trunk. By contrast, the information permitted to appear on a grave marker was strictly limited. The white granite headstones (13x24x4) accommodated at most 11 lines of text, with 13-to-15 characters (including spaces) allotted to each line.
The marker for Lawrence Lee Holden, PVT 1st Class, 1948-1970, was terse even by these standards. The reference to his husbandly devotion served as the sole embellishment upon the bare facts, although the anonymous girl occupying his gravesite hinted at a more complicated story. So for that matter had Campbell’s examination of PVT Holden’s file prior to arranging the details of his burial. The account of his death was ambiguous enough that he’d brought it to the attention of Sergeant Major.
“Kid probably fragged himself,” the sergeant said.
“On purpose?”
“What? No, Specialist. We wouldn’t be burying him with honors in that case. He fucked up, he wasn’t a coward. See, here, it says, ‘ordnance miscarriage.’” Sergeant Major shook his head, whether over PVT Holden’s miscarriage or Campbell’s ignorance was unclear.
He might have been expressing his disapproval of the war. A patriot and a decorated veteran, the sergeant major had no use for “unconventional” conflicts, which he believed sowed bewilderment and dissent among soldiers and civilians alike. At the same time, he loathed the peaceniks, reserving his loyalty for combatants, including those like PVT Holden—poor soldiers perhaps, but soldiers nonetheless, willing to play their part, however dubious the cause.
He would not be pleased to learn of this girl laying claim to a soldier’s final resting place, drenching it with her tears. He would also not hesitate to hold Campbell responsible for allowing such a spectacle to intrude upon his cemetery.
Campbell liked to eat his lunch on the front portico of the Lee-Custis Mansion, sitting on a folding lawn chair he kept there for the purpose. The house looked out across the cemetery toward the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument beyond. Compared to these gleaming symbols of rectitude, the Confederate general’s former home had been sorely neglected. The six massive limestone columns that lined its portico, though impressive at a distance, up close revealed signs of crumbling. Not that Campbell minded. The shabby grandeur of the place appealed to him, and the lack of tourist traffic meant he could eat his lunch in relative peace.
On his way to the mansion today, his mind was occupied with thoughts of the vagrant girl. He shrank from the idea of confronting her. But even more daunting was the prospect of explaining to Sergeant Major why he’d failed to do so.
How unexpected, then, when he came in view of Private Holden’s grave and she was gone. The image of her grief from that morning had lodged in his imagination, as adamant as any gravestone. It was inconceivable that she would simply vanish for the second time in as many days.
Friends and relatives commonly left tokens and souvenirs on the graves: dog tags, love letters, crosses, Zippo lighters, velvet dice, lava lamps, peace signs, and the like. The Old Guard tolerated these unofficial memorials out of respect for the bereaved, but when the clutter became too much, they would winnow the excess, designating some of it for storage and the rest for disposal.
The flower arrangements on PVT Holden’s final resting place were already beginning to droop from last night’s cold. They represented the only tribute to his memory, aside from the granite stone attesting to his marital fidelity. With the girl’s departure, nothing remained to contradict that assertion. Campbell could not make out so much as a faint impression of her body in the sod where she had so recently lain.
His detour past the private’s grave meant he’d have to hurry lunch if he wanted to make it back to his desk on time. But no sooner had he assumed his usual seat on the portico than he glimpsed movement in the woods adjacent to the Lee mansion.
It was likely a deer. Though they contributed to the bucolic setting, foraging wildlife posed enough of a threat to the cemetery’s flowers and greenery that the Old Guard sometimes enlisted riflemen from Fort Belvoir to thin the herd.
Campbell’s first thought, however, was of the girl. The woods would make a good hiding place. They were off limits to tourists and dense enough to discourage any but the most curious or intrepid from entering. If she were holed up in there, it might explain her knack for appearing and disappearing, seemingly out of nowhere.
He decided to investigate. If nothing else, it would help atone for his earlier laxity.
Sunshine had by now turned fall back into Indian summer. But upon entering the woods, Campbell was engulfed in shadows and found himself wishing for the jacket he’d left back at the office. Pausing for his eyes to adjust to the dimness, he contemplated the folly of coming across anything in here except a case of poison ivy or snake bite. He’d almost convinced himself to turn back, when he heard music.
It was faint at first, then louder, then very loud, as if someone were determined to wake up the whole cemetery.
There’s a starman waiting in the sky
He’d like to come and meet us
But he thinks he’d blow our minds
Despite the cloak of the forest, Campbell felt exposed by the music, as if it were the cue for drawing back a curtain behind which he’d been scrupling to make an entrance.
He began to move in the direction of the sound. “Recon,” the Old Guard might call it, a term that captured none of his aggravation at slogging through underbrush, fending off low-hanging branches, and barking his shins on the trunks of fallen trees.
He came to a clearing, or what passed for one in these woods. It wasn’t much larger than a walk-in closet, and more than half of it was taken up by a tent consisting of a bed sheet draped over a clothesline that was suspended between two trees.
At this range, the music drowned out every other sound, which explained the failure of the clearing’s occupant to detect Campbell’s less-than-stealthy approach.
It was the girl all right, but she no longer appeared to be in mourning. She was dancing—twirling around and flinging herself from side to side, as heedless of her limbs as a rag doll. Her eyes were closed and she seemed insensible to anything except the music blasting from a radio propped in the crook of a tree.
There’s a starman waiting in the sky
He’s told us not to blow it
Cause he knows it’s all worthwhile
“You’re not supposed to be here,” Campbell said. She didn’t hear him. “YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE HERE!”
Her eyes opened wide. And what eyes they were, as large and liquid as any he’d seen outside of those ridiculous paintings of doe-eyed children. They expressed none of the alarm or anger that had stopped him short that morning. She regarded him with a kind of astonishment, as if he were the starman himself dropped down from the sky. No one, certainly no girl, had ever looked at him that way.
Her lips moved but he couldn’t make out the words. He cupped a hand to his ear and pointed to the radio in the tree. Careful not to brush up against her in the tight quarters—afraid she might bolt—he crossed to the radio and turned it off.
“I know you,” she said. “From—.” She motioned toward the cemetery proper.
“This is part of the cemetery,” he said.
“Is that what you came to tell me?” She sounded disappointed. Or was that sarcasm?
“It’s all right with me. But technically you’re trespassing. If they find you, they’ll make you leave. You could be arrested.”
“But you won’t arrest me?”
“It’s not up to me.”
“The uniform—”
“I’m not military.”
“Fooled me.”
“Just saying, it’d be better for everybody if you kept the music down.”
It didn’t look like she planned on staying long. Judging by the few candy-bar wrappers and soda cans lying around, she hadn’t much in the way of food with her. The improvised tent furnished the only visible protection from the elements, and her fawn-colored dress, aside from its value as camouflage, appeared ill-suited for a sojourn in the woods. The blue high heels he remembered from the funeral lay askew near the opening of the tent, like birds battered down by a storm.
He regretted again leaving his jacket behind. He might have offered it to her. Then he remembered his knapsack. He shrugged it off and placed it on the ground between them. Squatting down, he unfastened the compartment that held his lunch. There were three plastic containers, along with an apple and a plaid thermos with tea. He set them on the ground in front of her, embarrassed by the relative bounty they represented in the face of her indigence.
“I didn’t have time for lunch,” he said. “You’re welcome to it.”
Her eyes remained on him.
“I’m not going to report you.”
She balanced on one foot, scratching her shin with the toes of her other foot. Switching legs, she scratched the other shin.
“Okay?” he said.
She nodded.
“I’ll come by tomorrow to check on you. In the meantime, you need to lay low.”
What was he thinking? He needed this job. The draft lottery had cut short his academic deferment, forcing him to abandon his studies and move back home. With luck and the help of his civil servant father, he’d managed to secure this spot at Arlington, which the Army designated “mission essential.” It remained a mystery to him how the combination of clerical and custodial tasks he performed qualified as essential. Still he was grateful for the immunity the job conferred and afraid of the consequences should he lose it.
It was clear he couldn’t count on the girl to remain out of sight (or hearing). If she stuck around for long, somebody—one of the Old Guard, a groundskeeper, a visitor—was bound to notice and raise a stink. His part in shielding her might come out. In which case, he would be shown the gate.
Because of a girl. A pretty girl, yes. He didn’t pretend kindness was his only motive for helping her. But she wasn’t really his type. She reminded him of girls he’d known in high school or rather had known only at a distance, girls who flouted the rules and had no plans for college. They were supposed to be easy and sometimes rumored to be the cause of grudges, and even fights, among rivals for their attention, boys who shared their disregard for consequences, who performed the high-wire act of adolescence minus the safety nets their more provident peers relied on. He imagined PVT Holden as one of these, a bit reckless, prone to mishaps, eventually snared by the draft and shipped off to Vietnam. He felt sorry for the guy. And for the girl who couldn’t let go of him. At the same time, he did not want to end up like them.
He told himself she would probably be gone when he returned the next day but was relieved to find her sitting cross-legged at the opening of her makeshift tent, as if waiting for him.
“It’s so quiet, I thought maybe you’d left.”
She squinted one eye.
“No music, I mean.”
“Oh.” She adjusted her position, tugging at her dress until it stretched across her splayed knees and made a taut little tabletop of her lap. On the ground next to her were his thermos and the plastic containers. The containers were stacked and appeared to have been washed. She’d washed her face, too, from the look of it. Freckles spangled her nose and cheeks. They spilled onto her shoulders.
“I didn’t mean you couldn’t play the music. Just not so loud.”
“It was loud on purpose. To drown out the bugles.”
The plaintive notes of “Taps” could be heard even now, drifting over from some distant part of the cemetery. Campbell was inured to the sound.
“I’m sorry, do you mind me asking how you knew him? Private Holden?”
“Larry. His name is Larry.”
“Sorry, Larry.” Why should he always be apologizing to this girl? She may have made herself at home here, but she was still a trespasser.
“I almost forgot.” He removed his knapsack and took out a blanket he’d brought from home and a package of bologna and loaf of bread from the 7-11. “Provisions,” he said, with a smile that felt like another apology.
Like yesterday, she did not acknowledge the offerings, so he placed them in a pile on the ground in front of her. “I’ll just grab the thermos and this Tupperware.”
“Some of the labels came off when I washed them,” she said.
“That’s okay.” The labels, like his lunches, were his mother’s doing. He looked at his watch. “I better be heading back. The sergeant major will have my ass.” He hoped she understood the risk he was taking.
He was several steps into the woods when he thought he heard a thank you. It was an afterthought at best, the words barely distinguishable from the breeze ruffling the few leaves that still clung to the trees. When he turned around, she was standing, looking at him through the branches that separated them, and there was no mistaking what she said next.
“I’m his real wife, just so you know. Not her.”
“Have a nice lunch, Specialist?”
“Sir?”
“You’re late.”
“I, the woods—”
“What’s that all over your goddamn trousers?”
“Uh, cockleburs. I thought I saw something in the woods, figured I should check it out.”
“The woods?”
“Turned out to be nothing. Just a deer, probably.”
“And that seemed more important to you than getting back here on time?”
“I just thought—”
“That!” The sergeant major leveled an index finger at a spot approximately between Campbell’s eyes. “That, right there, is your problem. You think too damned much.
“Here’s a thought for you, Specialist. Canada. I’m serious, you should think about Canada. You like woods, I hear Canada’s got plenty of woods.”
Sergeant Major had made no secret of his displeasure at having a civilian of draft age foisted on him in time of war. Nor had he hesitated to suggest that Campbell abandon the pretense that Arlington, for him, was anything but a draft dodge. Why not follow the example of others who had hightailed it north of the border?
Campbell had, in fact, mulled this option but decided he wasn’t so desperate as to leave the country and his whole life behind. Besides, the stigma attached to an expat might, in the long run, prove nearly as perilous to his future as a tour in Vietnam.
The real problem, he believed, wasn’t that he thought too much but that every path before him seemed booby-trapped—including Arlington. He had seen this job as a way of biding time, avoiding the traps until better choices presented themselves. Now he wasn’t so sure.
“Get to the head, Specialist! Clean yourself up!”
Campbell took his time in the bathroom. It wasn’t easy picking off the cockleburs. Also, he hoped Sergeant Major would cool off a little in the interim. If not, he was prepared to throw himself on the man’s mercy, pledge to do a better job in the future. He might even have considered giving up the girl’s location, had he known how to do it without incriminating himself.
To his great relief, the sergeant was gone when he returned from the bathroom. He sat down at his desk and prepared to whittle down the stack of papers waiting for him there. Soon however his curiosity over the girl’s claim that she and the dead soldier were married overcame this intention, and he retrieved PVT Holden’s paperwork from the files.
Nothing in the documents pointed to Holden’s being a bigamist, which was not surprising. Campbell would have noticed such an obvious anomaly in his previous review. That didn’t mean the girl was lying. He knew from no less an authority than the sergeant major that it wouldn’t be the first time an extra wife had turned up at an Arlington funeral. It was the sort of situation the Old Guard detested but which their scrupulous attention to detail was not always adequate to prevent. It seemed the military’s paperwork, for all its girth, was often incomplete, especially with regard to marital records.
Campbell noted that PVT Holden had gone through basic training at Fort Bragg. He speculated that if the private had married a second time, North Carolina was the most likely spot. He proceeded to phone that state’s office of vital records, invoking the authority of Arlington to inquire whether the private had taken a wife there.
When North Carolina could find no such record, his mind teemed with alternative and not altogether mutually exclusive theories, chief among them: Holden had deceived her; she had deceived herself (and labored still under the delusion he loved her); or the illegal marriage, if it happened at all, had taken place under assumed names or somewhere other than North Carolina. Then, too, she did not strike him as the type who needed an official ceremony to feel married; in which case, she might not have meant it literally when she claimed to be his wife.
Was he over-thinking again? He didn’t believe so. Disregarding the fact he had ignored procedure and exceeded his authority in a possibly criminal manner, it seemed to him that even Sergeant Major might commend his diligence.
When it was time to leave for the day, he requested permission to stay late to finish up the paperwork on his desk.
“At the rate you’re going, it’ll be all night.” Sergeant Major eyed the pile of forms. “Oh, all right,” he relented, perhaps hesitant to discourage this sign of initiative on his subordinate’s part, however dilatory. “Turn out the lights when you’re finished. You’ll have to get a sentry to unlock the front gate for you.”
Avoiding open ground as much as possible, Campbell followed the tree line south, toward the Lee-Custis Mansion. He refrained from using his flashlight until he entered the woods. Despite the darkness, he felt little of the trepidation of his earlier visits. He didn’t know how exactly, but he was determined to rescue the girl from the predicament in which PVT Holden’s dishonesty and her own misplaced trust had landed her.
He pictured her huddled in the blanket he’d given her, sitting at the opening of the tent. Aware that his appearance at this hour might startle her, he warned of his near approach. “It’s only me,” he said, in a stage whisper.
But the campsite was deserted except for the makeshift tent. Its base had come unmoored, and the sheet flapping in the breeze sounded like a large bird taking flight.
He started to call her name but realized he didn’t know it.
Beams of light appeared through the trees, randomly crisscrossing and scattering, coming in his direction. Eventually, they converged, very close now.
“What the fuck are you up to here, Specialist?” Sergeant Major, flanked by two sentries, stood spraddle-legged, hands on hips, in the suddenly crowded clearing.
It was like the familiar dream in which Campbell found himself transfixed by footlights, having somehow neglected to learn his lines. In spite of that, the next words out of his mouth carried no less conviction for being unrehearsed.
“I’m quitting.”
“Maybe, but for now, you’re coming with us.”
Campbell let the flashlight drop to his side, where it slipped from his fingers and flickered off.
“Grab him, soldiers!”
He was running then, crashing through the woods, indifferent to every hazard except being caught. A single thought impelled him. Not really a thought at all, it came to him through the roar of blood in his chest and ears. Get away (it said), get far away from here.
January 2026
