Your Forgotten Sons

Book summary

As World War II looms, Bud Richardville is assigned to the Graves Registration Service, a harrowing role that forces him to confront the brutal realities of war. Separated from his enigmatic wife, Lorraine, Bud's resilience is tested by the horrors of Normandy and personal loss, until he meets Eva, a beacon of hope amid the darkness.

Excerpt from Your Forgotten Sons

Vincennes, Indiana

1930

Another body.

Bud, unable to sleep, squatted by the railroad tracks and squinted at the tiny spark in the distance. He absently dragged one finger along the iron rail, where blood still lingered. The death the day before was a rather common occurrence. After all, people had to get from one place to another as they searched for work, and since many couldn’t afford a car or gasoline or even a horse-drawn wagon, travelers would grab hold of that moving mechanical beast and hoist themselves onto the roof. Others clutched whatever they could grasp, balancing their feet on slim bits of metal as the behemoth swayed on its way to somewhere else. Even women, grinning from the excitement of it all, wearing ankle-strap shoes and small, flowery hats, sometimes made the leap, skirts billowing in the train-induced wind.

Bud thought of pretty Becky Lynn, who sometimes served him a vanilla ice cream cone on the rare occasions he had a few pennies to purchase the chilled, sweet treat. Cornflower blue eyes, vibrant auburn hair. He blinked at the cold metal tracks. He’d never helped remove a woman from the rails. Trying to recover the bloody human parts that were sometimes spread far down the line was difficult enough when the victim was a man.

The train growled through a bleak, gray landscape, lit by a colorless three-quarter moon. Sharecroppers’ fields sported last year’s stubble since constant cold kept the ground frozen and delayed planting. Bud straightened, dug his hands into his pockets, and fingered the hole. Momma had sewn the rip repeatedly, but the fabric was too worn to hold stitches, and since thread was scarce, she’d stopped trying to mend the tear.

He could feel the rumble of the oncoming train, a not-unpleasant vibration, though a flash of the unfortunate young man—one leg ripped from his torso, a caved-in face, bloody stumps where his fingers should have been—made Bud shudder. And yet, the lumbering freight train lulled him, the light announcing its arrival bright like a shooting star.

Bud glanced at his home, a crude, clapboard house that stood near an assortment of other homes equally devoid of color, even the once-white trim now a dirty gray. The broken man’s body had lain on the front porch, beside the swing that hung crookedly, one rusted chain busted for as long as he could remember. Flies had darted about the man’s mangled face until the sheriff came and took the corpse away, the shattered remains wrapped in a stained brown blanket, the body bouncing as the truck skirted the ruts in the road.

The train horn—a mournful sound in the half-light—alerted Bud that the engineer saw him standing on the tracks. He counted five beats as the sparkling light approached, the tracks pulsating beneath him. Then Bud stepped aside and felt a whipping torrent of wind buffet him as the train passed by. He watched as the train receded into the distance and disappeared between two low hills.

That afternoon, Bud sat in the grass beside the little house in the shade of a massive, gnarled oak tree, an open pocket knife in one hand, a small piece of wood in the other. He ran the blade over the chunk, unsure of what he wanted to carve. A bird maybe. Or a rabbit for his little sister Mickey. The slamming of the screen door on the front porch alerted him. Loud voices emanating from the kitchen informed him that his father was home and that, as usual, the old man was angry.

Bud frowned. He was supposed to be in school, but he wasn’t much for letters and numbers. He hated being in that stuffy room where Mrs. Maccabee droned incessantly, and since he overly enjoyed entertaining his fellow classmates and sometimes caused distractions in class, he sensed he was not a favorite of hers.

“Where is he!” His father’s voice boomed from inside the house.

He dropped the piece of wood he was whittling, snapped the pocketknife closed, and stood. Then 16-year-old Bud Richardville bolted toward the woods. He didn’t know why his father was angry. Did it really matter? The outcome was always the same, and though he realized there was no way to avoid the inevitable, he ran because he could and because he enjoyed the feeling of being free. He loped toward the tree line. Though only five-foot eight, Bud’s legs were long, his stride and lithe build those of a cross-country runner. His unruly dark hair bounced as he leaped over a dry riverbed and scrambled up the incline on the other side.

“You get back here, boy!” His father bellowed from the yard.

But Bud kept going and disappeared into the woods.

Two days later and again despite the foregone conclusion of the outcome of his actions, Bud couldn’t help himself. Spring in Vincennes had remained cold. Bitterly so. Mickey, wrapped tight in a ragged gray sweater and a pair of cuffed jeans, shivered uncontrollably even when inside the house. Mickey was Bud’s favorite. Her sharp eyes and sometimes irreverence toward adults made the two of them alike, though they were separated by eight years.

Bud crept out of the house an hour before dawn, his breath crystallizing in a huff of white. His coat—a short, cracked, brown-leather jacket that had come by way of the charity ladies at church—wasn’t enough to quell the dry cold that crept onto and under his skin despite the jeans and threadbare sweater. He grabbed the metal bucket that rested beside the uneven front porch and bolted toward the trees.

Ten minutes later, Bud looked down the track and waited. Finally, he felt the rumbling. He’d picked the perfect spot. The train would slow inside town limits, and the small hill would give him the perfect trajectory. The golden light, shining like a small sparkling sun, bounced along the track. Bud crouched in the bushes, not wanting the engineer to see him.

The engine moved past, the tick, tick, tick of the wheels a strangely soothing sound for a massive mechanical vehicle. Bud counted three cars. It was the fourth that was his destination. At the same moment the third car rattled by, Bud launched himself into space. The metal pail banged against the side of the car and, distracted in his effort to keep a grip on the bucket, threw him off balance. His foot slipped on the top edge of the car, and Bud tumbled, though he managed to maintain his hold on the pail, while the other hand clung precariously to the rail atop the car.

“Shit!” Bud mumbled as he grappled his way into the boxcar. When he’d finally lifted himself over the edge, he fell with a thud into the dirty cargo. He took several deep breaths that dissipated in white clouds in the frigid dawn air. Then he stood awkwardly, the uneven freight and the swaying railcar making his footing unstable.

The town was just around the bend. Bud quickly went to work making small piles of coal and lining them up against the side of the boxcar. A few lights glowed ahead, inside the houses on the edge of Vincennes.

He was finished just in time. The first home appeared out of the gloaming. Bud crouched, ready. He scooped the first pile and filled the pail with hard lumps of shiny bituminous coal. Just as the train car approached the dwelling, Bud dumped the coal over the side. Then, he dug into the next pile and flung the contents again. Over and over, he scattered the lumps of stone, knowing his neighbors were in dire need of the heat-producing rock, which many of them couldn’t afford to purchase.

Sweat formed between his broad shoulders and ran in rivulets down his chest. Bud—overly warm now from the exertion—wanted to remove the frayed leather jacket, but the next house approached so quickly, he couldn’t afford to take the time. He worked his way down the inside of the car, dumping coal by every house the train passed. Then his home came into view. Bud dug the edge of the bucket into the loose coal, hauled up the stone, and poured it over the side. He felt like Santa Claus and whooped as the train pulled away from town.

Bud knelt in the coal, the rocks sticking into his knees. He peered into the waning darkness and waited for the best spot to depart the train, which was now leaving Vincennes and picking up speed. After crossing a small trestle, the train rumbled toward the soft grassy area near the river where Bud often went when he skipped school and where he sometimes took girls who’d let him kiss them. He’d have to jump, but he’d done it before and wasn’t worried. Still, the realization of his actions and the knowledge that he would pay for his theft made him wince. He was covered with coal dust. There was no way to hide his crime. Bud tossed the bucket over the side and leapt. He tumbled away from the moving train and rolled in the grass, then stood, brushed off his clothes as best he could, and retrieved the now-empty bucket that had spun down the riverbank.

Later that day, Bud stood with his face pressed against the old oak, the branches of which were so large they’d dropped to the earth and then curved back toward the sky. It took three grown men hand to hand to encircle the massive tree that had stood for close to two hundred years. Bud, striped to the waist, had both arms around the rough trunk.

“What is the matter with you, boy?” His father brought the switch down on his son’s back, slicing through skin, raising an instant welt. “The Bible says thievin’ is wrong.” He whipped his son again. And again.

But Bud never made a sound. It was Mickey who cried on the porch, the bucket of coal by her side, while Momma dabbed her eyes with a hanky.

That evening, Bud’s back smarted. He was unable to sit or lie down comfortably, still he didn’t miss the irony of the fact that the purloined coal now blazed in the black, pot-bellied stove, next to which his father sat, a cigarette dangling from his thin, colorless lips.

Mickey idly played with several hunks of coal. Then, she emitted a gasp. “Look, Bud!” she scrambled from her place on the floor, holding two large pieces of rock.

Bud, sitting rigidly in a high-back wooden chair, smiled at his little sister. “What have you got there, Mick?”

“It’s a flower.” She turned up the two halves of the broken piece of coal, showing a perfect fossil imprinted on both sides.

“I think that’s a fern.” He rubbed her tawny head. “Like the ones that grow out in the woods. Remember those?”

Mickey nodded and hugged the stones to her chest. “They’re beautiful!”

Her father rose from his seat by the stove. “Give me those, girl!”

But Mickey held the fossils tightly in her grip.

Then, her father reached for the pieces of coal, wrenched them from the child’s hands, and hurled them into the fire.