Part 7 – “Echoes of the March”
Spring came in soft this year.
The orchard bloomed with the same tired grace it had for decades—petals falling like snow over the gravel path Robert still walked each morning.
Twenty steps to the gate. Then twenty more to the barn.
Max was slower now, too. His hips stiffened with the cold, his eyes a bit cloudy, but he never left Robert’s side.
They matched each other—step for step, silence for silence.
One morning, Lena noticed him resting longer on the bench near the orchard.
“You okay, Dad?”
He gave her a thin smile. “Just listening.”
“To what?”
“To the ones that never made it.”
She sat beside him, brushing a petal from his shoulder.
“They still speak?”
“They never stopped.”
June 1942 – Liberation Wasn’t a Day
He’d been in Camp O’Donnell for nearly two months when they moved him.
A medical convoy—barely a step above a cattle car—hauled him and others to another prison site. Cabanatuan.
He remembered nothing of the ride except the dark. A soldier beside him died upright.
They didn’t stop.
By the time the Americans returned in 1945, Robert was skin and bone and memory.
He’d survived malaria. Survived the beatings. Survived the silence that came after Silvano.
But the war didn’t end with a flag.
It ended with a bowl of soup and the first time someone called him “sir” again.
It ended with the sound of a nurse’s shoes on linoleum, and Miriam’s hand on his cheek.
“You came home,” she whispered.
He hadn’t cried since the March.
But he did then.
Now, decades later, the dog tags still hung above his bed.
One set for him.
One for Silvano.
One night, unable to sleep, Robert rose and stood by the window.
Max rose, too, wincing at the effort.
Together they watched the wind roll through the trees like a quiet procession.
Robert’s back was hunched now, his knees barely held him. The third flare-up this month. The pain was persistent, but he didn’t call out.
He just breathed through it, slow and steady.
“I used to think I left them behind,” he murmured. “But I didn’t. I just carried them further.”
The next morning, Lena found an envelope on the table.
A second letter.
“To Elena Reyes,” it read.
Inside: a short note, and one of Silvano’s dog tags.
“He wouldn’t want both to sit in the dark,” Robert explained.
She nodded. “I’ll mail it.”
Then she asked, carefully, “Would you ever want to visit her?”
He looked up, surprised.
“She invited you,” Lena added. “Said she’d take you to the veterans memorial in the city. Said she’ll bring her daughter.”
He said nothing for a long while.
Then: “Maybe.”
That evening, he and Max walked to the barn again.
It took longer than usual. His hip barked at him with every step, a reminder that his body was no longer in the business of forgiving.
Inside the barn, he dusted off an old footlocker.
Lena had never seen it before.
It held his uniform—creased, faded, heavy with silence.
And beneath it, a diary. One Miriam had started after the war.
He flipped to the first page.
“He walks like the ground still remembers. Like every step is on a ghost’s shoulders.”
He traced the words, then closed the book gently.
On the way back to the house, Max stumbled.
Just a little. A missed step. But Robert caught him.
They both stopped.
Robert’s voice was hoarse. “We’re just old soldiers now, aren’t we?”
Max licked his hand.
And side by side, they finished the march back to the porch.