Their expressions were all the same. The same thoughts must have been moving behind each face.
Charlie leaned forward. The others leaned forward. Charlie took the smallest step. The three others took the smallest step. Charlie glanced over at each face. They did the same, trading glances. And then -
Charlie stepped back. After a long moment the other men stepped back. Charlie waited. The three old men waited. The flag blew, softly flapping, on the high pole.
A bell rang somewhere inside the school. Lunchtime over. Time to go in. The students dispersed across the campus.
With the students moving away, with the crowd leaving so there was no camouflage, no more cover, the four men stood in a great circle around the flagpole, some fifty or sixty feet separating them, the four points of a bright autumn day compass.
Perhaps one of them wet his lips, perhaps one of them blinked, perhaps one of them shuffled one shoe forward, took it back. The white hair on their heads blew in the wind. A wind took up the flag on the pole and blew it straight out. Inside the school, another bell rang, with finality.
He felt his mouth shape words but say nothing. He repeated the names, the wondrous names, the loving names, in whispers only he could hear.
He did not make a decision. His lower body did it in a half turn, his legs followed, as did his feet. He stepped back and stood sideways.
Across a great distance, one by one in the blowing room wind, first one stranger and then the next followed by the next half-turned, stepped a half step away, and waited.
He felt his body hesitate and want to move forward and not off toward his car. Again, he made no decision. His shoes, disembodied, took him quietly away.
As did the bodies, the feet, and the shoes of the strangers.
Now he was on the move, now they were on the move, all walking in different directions, slowly, half-glancing back at the deserted flagpole and the flag, abandoned, high, flapping quietly, and the lawn in front of the school empty and inside the moment of loud talk and laughter and the shove of chairs being put in place.
They were all in motion now, half-glancing back at the empty flagpole.
He halted for a moment, unable to move his feet. He gazed back a final time with a tingling in his right hand, as if it wanted to rise. He half-lifted and looked at it.
And then, across sixty or seventy yards of space, beyond the flagpole, one of the strangers, only half-looking, raised his hand and waved it quietly, once, on the silent air. Over to one side, another old man, seeing this, did the same, as did the third.
He watched as his hand and arm slowly lifted and the tips of his fingers, up in the air, gestured the least small gesture. He looked up at his hand and over at the old men.
My God, he thought, I was wrong. Not the first day of school. The last.
Alice had something frying in the kitchen that smelled good.
He stood in the doorway for a long moment.
«Hey,» she said, «come in, take a load off your feet.»
«Sure,» he said, and went to the dining-room table and saw that it was laid out with the best silver and the best dinnerware and candles lit that were usually lit for a twilight meal, and the best napkins in place, while Alice waited in the kitchen door.
«How did you know I'd be here so soon?» he said.
«I didn't,» she said. «I saw you pull up out front. Bacon and eggs are quick, be ready in a sec. Sit down?»
«That's an idea.» He held to the back of one chair and studied the cutlery. «Sit down.»
He sat and she came and kissed him on the brow and went back to the kitchen.
«Well?» she called.
«Well, what?»
«How did it go?» she called.
«How did what go?»
«You know,» she said. «The big day. All those promises. Did anyone show?»
«Sure,» he said. «Everyone showed,» he added.
«Well, spill the beans.»
She was in the kitchen doorway now, bringing the bacon and eggs. She studied him.
«You were saying?»
«Was I?» He leaned forward over the table. «Oh, yeah.»
«Well, was there lots to talk about?»
«We ―»
«Yes?»
He saw the waiting and empty plate.
And tears falling on the plate.
«God, yes!» he said, very loud. «We talked our heads off!»