Sometimes, Darnell came back from dreams and sat on the edge of his bed, eyes blurry, and wondered if dreams were visits to a land of the dead. Was he dead, too, during those strange visits? But dead only in dreams and able to emerge groggily back to life with an abrupt, electric start? It suggested philosophical dilemmas he had meager hope of conquering.

     He remembered few dreams for long. Bits and pieces. Shards and fragments. A harrowing scene might stay with him for a long moment while he sat hunched over on the edge of the bed until his body and mind meshed, connected, and accepted the shift from one plane of existence to another.

     But sometimes, a very few sometimes, Darnell retained much of the dream throughout a day, or even longer. Usually, it was the odd Civil War dreams, where invariably, he was a general – a brigadier – but which side? That was never clear. In the dream, when men slapped gloves against sleeves to brush away dust, Darnell could never really tell whether the uniform revealed was blue or gray. Who was he a general for? And why a general? And why was he always about to tuck himself into a cozy bed, his clean uniform of uncertain allegiance and color draped across a chair, while his men – perhaps a brigade of the land of the dead – slept grimy and unsheltered in knots and clots on the ground around his house?

     On Thursday afternoons, Darnell drove the nine miles over to Argus to mow his father’s yard. He’d done that every Thursday from May to October for the past three years since his father retied from selling insurance. Darnell taught social studies, driver’s ed, and coached the baseball team at Argus High. He was a grown man of thirty-five with a mortgage, an ex-wife, and two kids who shuttled between two homes – the American dream? – and he was somehow still mowing his father’s yard.

     His father, Delbert Thomas – the Million Dollar Roundtable of Insurance Delbert Thomas — who even had his own TV commercials, could mow the grass with ease if necessary. Or hire someone. His father was retired but not dead. Far from it. His father still did jumping jacks and toe touches before morning coffee, a byproduct of the Marines and World War II. Darnell sometimes glanced at his own flabby white arms and wasn’t sure if he could do ten pushups, and he hadn’t tried in years.

     During the drive on Route 36 over to his father’s house, he wondered if his old man ever visited the land of the dead. But he figured his father was too much of a go-getter success story to ever waste much time on dreams. If Delbert Thomas ever visited the dead, he’d have them doing jumping jacks and toe touches in a jiffy.

     Darnell’s father owned a condo in Sarasota, Florida, for the winters. He often water skied in a tiny Speedo suit as though he was a much younger man than seventy-three. He could slalom and even skied on his bare feet. He also had a girlfriend down in Sarasota – younger, of course – but Darnell was okay with that. His mother had been dead for five years. That seemed to Darnell an appropriate grieving period. But the thought of them in bed made him queasy.

     Darnell never met the girlfriend on the two trips he’d made to Sarasota, where the condo association took care of mowing what little lawn there was, although once out of habit, Darnell volunteered to mow it. It was that much of a part of him. The mowing was an unspoken contract – obligation perhaps seemed more accurate – between the two men. Darnell’s father expected him every Thursday afternoon and Darnell felt a strange pull to show up. Like it was gravity that had him in its grip

     Darnell always brought his old push mower. He had a power mower, but for some reason that he couldn’t articulate, he stubbornly clung to using the push mower. He had to get the blades sharpened every now and then at Fleener Hardware because he didn’t know how to do things like that. His father would know how to sharpen blades, and he used to snicker mightily about Darnell’s not being a gas mower, or better yet – a riding mower like the one he owned, but which Darnell refused to ever use. Every time Darnell showed up, his father would offer him use of the riding mower and then chuckle smugly when Darnell declined.

     Darnell steadfastly stuck to his antique push mower and pointed out it was certainly good exercise and environment-friendly, which always made his father sniff and shake his head, claiming the environment was doing better than those tax and spend liberals in Congress would have people believe.

     As Darnell reached the Argus outskirts, the American Legion post loomed on his left, next to Burger King.  Darnell’s father was a Legion member of impeccable standing – a past post commander, his picture on a wall behind the bar. Anybody who was anybody at all at the Legion got their insurance from Darnell’s father. Impulsively, Darnell turned off 36 into the Legion parking lot. White gravel crunched beneath his tires and a mist of powdery white dust floated lazily across his windshield. He sat in the car for a minute before turning off the engine and going in.

     At the bar, Darnell sipped a cold Schlitz. It was a warm day, but inside it was cool. The central air hummed reassuringly. A pair of geezers huddled at the far end of the bar, yammering about something – baseball, maybe. Darnell could not be sure. He heard words here and there. The Cubs. Yes, it was baseball. He’d been to Wrigley Field once, years ago. Other than that, he’d only been to Indiana once and Sarasota twice. That was the extent of Darnell’s life outside Illinois. Maybe a total of one month out of thirty-five years. He looked again at the geezers. They were drinking Old Style. Darnell remembered that when he was at Illinois in Champaign, his student buddies nicknamed it Dog Style. That produced his first and only smile of an already long day.

     Darnell located his father’s photo on the wall behind the bar. It was large, framed, perhaps eleven by seventeen, and his father wore fatigues and a helmet, the chin strap fastened. He clutched a Garand rifle in a menacing pose, teeth clenched, jaw stuck out. A warrior. He is young in the photo. Just a boy, really. Handsome and foolish about war and glory. Darnell has seen the photo a million times. Behind his father the sky is clear, and upon closer look, hills can be seen in the distant background. The picture was taken on Iwo Jima. Or perhaps Okinawa. He got that mixed up sometimes.

     He sipped a second Schlitz and snacked on popcorn from a bowl the bored-looking bartender slid over to him. A perk of being the son of a past post commander, he supposed. The bartender issued a practiced smile when they made eye contact and then he went back to wiping down the Formica bar surface. Behind Darnell, from a corner, he heard the slaps of flippers and thuds of pinballs. A man cussed and fished more quarters out of his pants pockets and then finally cheered so loud when he won a free game that the geezers turned and stared for a moment.

     Halfway through a third Schlitz, Darnell again looked over all the pictures behind the bar and realized that a great many of the men in them must surely be dead by now. Some of the photos dated back to World War I. Were there any from the Civil War? He wasn’t sure. But a lot of the pictures looked quite old, except the ones from Vietnam, and it dawned on him that collectively, he was confronted by yet another land of the dead.

     Darnell had a good buzz going and didn’t notice right away when one of the geezers slid onto the barstool next to him. The geezer was quite drunk and had bad breath. He leaned too close to Darnell.

     “I’m thinking you must be Delbert Thomas’s boy,” the geezer said. “Am I right?”

     “Well, I’m his son, if that’s what you’re asking.”

     “That’s a what I’m asking,” Geezer said. “Delbert – your pop – sold me insurance.”

     “And how’s that policy doing?” Darnell said. “Meeting all your financial needs?”

     Geezer sipped from his beer and looked at himself in the mirror behind the bar.

     “He cancelled my policy when I hit some hard times,” Geezer said. “But he carried me for a good long time. As long as I reckon he could get away with. You know how it is.”

     “Sure I do,” Darnell said. “For sure.”

     “But that’s okay,” Geezer said. “Things happen. Me and your pop go way back. We served together, in the Pacific.”

     “That a fact?” Darnell nodded. “Imagine that. Okinawa, was it?”

     “Iwo Jima. That was quite a show, as the Brits liked to say.”

     “So I hear,” Darnell said. “Were the British there, too?”

     “Naw. That’s just something they’d have said if they’d been there.”

     The bartender sat another Old Style on a coaster in front of Geezer.

     “Where’s your picture?” Darnell said.

     “I’m not up there.”

     “You aren’t? Why not?”

     “That’s a long story.”

     “I see. But is it a good story?”

     “Not really. I’m just not up there, is all.”

     “Oh, I see,” Darnell said.

     Geezer sipped his beer and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

     “I don’t mean to be rude,” he said. “But that photo of your pop up there is a little misleading.”

     How so?” Darnell said, studying the photo but not seeing any revelation. It was just his father at an age he never could quite imagine his father had ever been.

     Geezer has a good gulp of Old Style.

     “I’m not trying to stir anything up, mind you. Just setting things straight, is all. Between the two of us — capiche?”

     “Capiche,” Darnell said, trying not to smirk. “Just between us men.”

     Geezer stared at the photo of Delbert Thomas for a moment.

     “Well, here’s the thing. Your pop always said that photo was took right after he was in combat up in those far away hills.”

     “And your point is?” Darnell said, impatiently.

     “Well, it just ain’t so.”

     “Excuse me?”

     “Your pop is a fine man, but we was both just replacements. We never got into that fight.”

     Geezer smacked his beer can down on the bar and called for another. Darnell ordered a Schlitz and studied his young, grimacing father in the photo. A good-looking boy. A boy with a rifle playing soldier. With a real war just over his shoulder, in those hills that required a second glance to even see. A magnifying glass would help.

     “Maybe it’s a misunderstanding of some kind,” Darnell finally said.

     “No, there’s no misunderstanding. I was there.”

     Darnell sipped Schlitz and decided that his father’s expression in the photo was one he’d never seen anywhere else. It was quite a foreign look. And despite what some people liked to say, Darnell concluded that he and his father really didn’t resemble each other when they were both nineteen.

     Geezer tugged lightly on Darnell’s shirtsleeve.

     “You ain’t offended or anything, are you, son?”

     Darnell regarded Geezer out of the corner of his eye, mildly surprised the man was still there. Offended? He wasn’t sure if Geezer was sincere about that.

     “Not at all,” Darnell said. “No offense taken.”

     “But now it kind of puts a new light on things, now don’t it?” Geezer said. “Meaning no disrespect, of course. Just facts between men.”

     “No disrespect,” Darnell said. “Of course not. Would you like another beer – another Old Style?”

     “Don’t mind if I do,” Geezer said. “You’re a gentleman, just like your pop. This business with the picture don’t change that none.”

     “I suppose not.”

      “Your pop had to cancel me,” Geezer said, slurring his words badly. “I know that.”

     “How long did he carry you?”

     “Years. But he couldn’t forever. I understand that.”

     Darnell nodded and looked again up at his father’s photo. He studied it, scoured every inch of it, every corner of it, for a clue about the man. When the bartender went into the storeroom, Darnell slipped around the bar and walked right up to his father’s photo, his eyes just inches from it. For the first time, something seemed different. What was it? He looked very hard, but a revelation didn’t come.

     He sipped his Schlitz and looked again, and it finally came into focus: his father’s fatigues. He’d never paid attention to them until now. Now he saw how remarkably clean they were for someone claiming to have just been in combat. Not a wrinkle in sight.

     Darnell finished his Schlitz and put enough money on the bar to cover his tab and finance some more Old Style for Geezer. He stepped outside, into brilliant sunshine, and sat on the little bench next to the old Amy howitzer that pointed south down Route 36, as though expecting a threat to turn back. Darnell sat a spell and let the warm rays bathe his face. Later, he would drive home and lift the push mower out of his trunk and store it in the shed behind his house. There would be the inevitable phone call, and Darnell would ask his father, how did things come to this?