Evanesce (verb, used without object)
1. To disappear gradually; vanish; fade away
Eugene Roe wanted to disappear so desperately.
He hated that word, really. It was a horrible word for him. He never could spell it just rite. Rite? Write, rite, right? Right. He could never spell it just right.
Roe knew how the lawyers and doctors of Bayou Chene, and then Baton Rogue, looked at him. They thought he was dirty as he slid out from under their Fords and Chevrolets, telling them what had gone wrong with their cars. Though they spoke in the same accent, they wrinkled their noses as he yelled to his father to grab “dis” or “dat” in French.
These were the men who thought Cajun French was “undignified”. It was “dirty”, much like they thought the people who spoke it to be. In the legislature, they led successful efforts to ban its teaching in schools.
They were the ones who started and entered wars.
He had gone to Bell City for a week when Pearl Harbor was attacked. With his parents, he had gone to visit his grandparents. Mass at St. John Vianney’s started when the attack started, apparently. But he hadn’t known that then. He had been staring out the window to the small neighboring house. Red brick. His grandfather’s and grandmother’s. As Father John preached about the advent, he thought about the initials scratched in the tree and the names in the concrete.
His grandfather had carved all of the grandchildren’s names in the concrete and scratched their initials into the tree before he died. He got to his first great-grandchild when his heart finally failed.
That all came back now. Normandy tended to do that, he thought.
He could only think of that tree now.
How had his brothers, his friends, had their existences carved into the world? Would they all be remembered?
Gene wanted to think they would be remembred -- remembered -- as he jumped into fox holes with dying men, their cries pleading for anyone they could. They pleaded for him, their mothers, for a Savior that seemed to be MIA, before Death wrapped his cruel fingers around their throats and silenced them.
They needed to have their lives put to the record, he thought. Would all of this matter if their names weren’t put to the record?
When he was younger, he remembered gazing at the books his grandfather kept in the house. They promised the mystic histories of Calcasieu and Opelousas Parishes.
They were all in French. His grandfather could only read and write French. Though he could speak English enough to run his barbershop, he couldn’t read or write it. His grandmother translated everything for him, though the extent of her English only extended as far as a small county school could teach her.
It had been cold that day. He could remember that. At mass, he had to keep himself from folding his shoulders in so he could stay warm. As soon as he started to slouch, his mother would spare him a quick glare. So, he tried to keep his back straight and watch as Father John droned.
But now, he couldn’t help but to fold in on himself. It was too cold now not to. His teeth banged against each other as he desperately sucked in every breath he could.
He thought he knew the cold before this. As he walked home along the road with his family, grandmother clinging to his arm, he had kept his head down. The wind had been ferocious that day, disorienting his dark hair.
His mother hated his hair long. It was silly and foppish, not becoming of a young man like him. Maybe if he could afford to wear long hair and style it, it would be becoming. But when they needed medicine and food and a replacement for the shirt that had been stolen off the line last week, it was silly.
It was short now, barely enough to run his fingers through. There was some at the front, of course. But it was usually pressed down by a helmet, leaving it awkward and flat when he dared to take it off.
The land in Louisiana was flat, occasionally disrupted by a bayou or a rice field. He remembered gazing across the vast and bitten land as they rode back from Lake Charles. Bell City didn’t have any electricity, Lake Charles did. They had gone to get something, something that evaded him now.
They heard the news in Lake Charles, a day late. Had they heard it or had it been on a newspaper? He didn’t know now. Small details didn’t matter in the face of war.
Becoming a paratrooper promised good money. A hundred dollars a month. That was good money. Enough to finish paying the mortgage. Maybe his father could buy a shiny new Ford — a good car to show he made it in this world.
Eugene thought about that now. How much did his waning supplies cost? He needed new… everything, really. New scissors, bandages, morphine… everything.
He hated that he didn’t have enough. As his friends, his brothers, his fellow soldiers screamed and prayed, there was nothing he could do to ease their pain. There was no morphine. He could stuff their wounds, sure. But to the suffering, that brought little comfort as the cold worsened every injury.
And there were no good hot meals. Wouldn’t toppling a fascist dictator provide better food? But he didn’t mind. He knew the cooks couldn’t match the fresh shrimp his father was able to scrounge up for Sunday dinners and the gumbo his mom put it in.
But the guys needed hot meals. They couldn’t fight well or heal even minor injuries on an empty stomach. Didn’t the army know that?
Eugene knew that Winters knew — never Richard or Dick, just Winters. Winters knew. He saw how Winters’s left cheek always seemed flatter now, mouth pursed as he chewed away at the flesh inside. All of the officers knew. But what could they do? They hardly had anything to give themselves. Maybe a scarf or a pair of gloves, if they wished to lose their fingers.
He felt shameful watching Winters and Lipton and Speirs, he really did. They never became paralyzed like he did. Lipton especially seemed to be able to dissipate any fear the men felt, watching over them with such care.
Winters looked like a movie star, he occasionally thought. The gallant hero, never afraid. One of the men his mom would approve of with long hair.
And Nixon, so easy compared to them all. He held himself so easily, not having to think of what people thought of his stance and hair. The confidence Gene couldn’t afford.
He wanted to tell his parents of the men. Assure his parents he’d be home before the next Christmas and that everything was alright.
He wrote the letter in his head. But it shattered like glass as someone began to call out for him.
But he couldn’t move. He could only close her eyes and begin to pray to disappear. Really, he wanted to do something. But he was paralyzed, frozen. Not from the cold anymore, but from his own cowardice.
He wanted to melt into the snow. Be like the other men and pretend that he didn’t hear the cries of suffering. Wouldn’t it be easier that way?
Gene knew it wasn’t Christ-like. Even with his tendency to fall into dreams during mass, he was devout Catholic. His frigid hands would cling to his rosary, trying to believe that something good would happen and that Christ would carry him through that. But Christ and the Saints had seemingly become deaf to the cries of the men in Normandy.
Really, he did try to move. He tried to move. But to any uninterested voyeur, it would look like a poor and cold soldier playing at a pantomime that would soon be shuttered from the screen. As quickly as it had come about, this moment would disappear as the viewer turned their head away to something they believed would be of more interest than a medic that was unable to get bandages and morphine.
