Part 5 – “The Road to Capas”
The envelope was postmarked and sealed the next morning.
Lena stood at the mailbox, arm resting on the rusted lid, watching her father shuffle back toward the porch with Max following close behind.
She didn’t need to ask if he was ready.
He had already waited too long.
Inside, the morning was quiet. Robert sat near the hearth with the fire low and soft. On the mantel stood a small frame—Miriam’s wedding photo beside a folded flag.
He stared at them both for a while.
Then he spoke, almost in a whisper.
“She always told me grief had no clock.”
Max lay by the fireplace, his breathing slow and even.
Outside, the wind stirred the sycamore leaves.
April 1942 – The Final Miles to Capas
By the time Robert reached Camp O’Donnell, he had stopped counting the dead.
They had passed a field of corpses two days before. Dozens of men—Filipino, American—twisted in the mud, arms reaching for water they never found.
Some had names. Some were just numbers now.
One man, delirious, had tried to sing. A hymn, Robert thought. Then the butt of a rifle ended it.
Robert’s own mouth was cracked and bleeding. His shoulders bled where the straps of his field pack had rubbed skin raw. His legs moved without permission. He was no longer marching. He was floating—adrift in a nightmare that refused to end.
Silvano’s tags dug into his chest.
He didn’t let go of them.
Not even when he collapsed in the camp’s dirt and woke three days later, wrapped in fever and the moaning of men who would not live to see nightfall.
Back in Missouri, the pain woke him before dawn.
It started low in his spine—deep and tight—and moved like a hand curling along his hip. He sat up with a hiss.
Max stirred at the foot of the bed.
Robert tried to stand but his legs locked. His knees felt as if they’d been bound with iron bands.
He gritted his teeth, reached for the walker beside the bed, and pulled himself upright.
Lena heard the thump of his feet and came to the door.
“You okay?”
“Just bones talking.”
“You need a doctor?”
“I’ve had enough doctors for three wars.”
She frowned, but didn’t press. She handed him a heating pad and waited while he settled into the chair by the window.
“You don’t have to keep reliving this,” she said gently. “You’ve done enough.”
He looked at her, and his voice was steadier than she expected. “That’s where you’re wrong. I didn’t do enough. That’s why I remember.”
Later that day, a letter came.
Not from Chicago.
From the VA.
He opened it slowly, with the kind of dread only men who’ve lived through war and bureaucracy truly know.
It was a denial.
The additional treatment he’d requested for his joints—denied.
“No current service-connected evidence of degeneration traced to military trauma,” it read.
He laughed once, bitter and soft.
“I suppose the march never happened.”
Lena took the paper, read it, and set it aside.
“You want me to call them?”
“No,” he said. “They’ve already forgotten us. Let them.”
That night, Lena pulled an old crate from the attic.
Inside were Miriam’s journals—dozens of them, written in looping cursive, smelling of lavender and paper.
One was dated 1946. The year Robert came home.
Lena flipped it open and read:
“He doesn’t talk about the march. But he screams sometimes in his sleep. I hold his hand and whisper that it’s over. He never believes me.”
She closed the journal and wiped her eyes.
Then she brought it down to her father.
He read the entry in silence.
Max laid his chin on Robert’s foot.
Before bed, Robert returned to the map on the wall.
He traced his finger from Mariveles to San Fernando.
Then to Capas.
Then to Camp O’Donnell.
A line he had walked, but never escaped.
His hand trembled slightly.
“Max,” he said softly, “some marches don’t end, do they?”
The dog didn’t move. Just watched.
Robert smiled, though it didn’t reach his eyes.
“Maybe we just carry the ones who didn’t make it.”
He turned off the light.