It’s January, 1944, when Becca Barnes shows up on his doorstep.
“Steve,” she says, standing there with her dark glossy hair in victory rolls, her blue peacoat ironed, her collar starched — how different she is, than the girl he used to draw in his sketchbook, gap-toothed and grasping little lizards. “Mama says you should come over.” There isn’t a single tremble in her voice.
How brave she is, Steve thinks, and sees like a mirage the girl she once was transposed over her. How brave she’s always been.
He grabs his coat and his hat, and tucks her pale hand into the crook of his elbow. The least he can do is be a sliver as brave as her — a borrowed inch.
He’s been expecting this.
This is how it goes: in August, 1943, Steve receives a letter.
/Dear Steve,/ it says, in Bucky’s loping cursive. Without lines to follow, his words come at a slant. /Italy is beautiful, but you’d like it better. This is what the old masters saw, or something like that./
/Mostly, I am tired,/ says Bucky, composing his letter from his fox hole or his pup tent — Steve imagines it as a pup tent, because that would be better. /Mostly, I am tired, and the war is boring until it isn’t. And when it isn’t, it is terrible, but I am not allowed to say that to anyone except for you, Steve, in these letters, because I am a sergeant and I am responsible for the men’s morale, and also because mama would cry if she heard me say it, and so would Becca. So I have to tell you, Steve, because you, like you so often are, are the only one I can tell the truth of things to./
/I miss Brooklyn,/ says Bucky, /I miss how awful it smells in summer, and how cold it is in winter. I miss sitting at mama’s table and playing cards with my cousins and with you, even though you always count the cards and cheat. Italy would be beautiful but the war has made it ugly, like it has made all of us ugly. I wish you were here to paint it, if only so I could see it the way it’s meant to be seen./
/Except I don’t wish you were here at all, and each day, I grow gladder that you are home and safe, that you can still sit at mama’s table and cheat my cousins, that you can take Becca to the dance hall (or that she can take you, rather). I am glad you do not have to see this, only that I wish I did not have to see it either. I know you will hate to hear this, but I am glad you are not here./
There’s no formal end to Bucky’s thoughts.
Winifred Barnes has gray in her hair. It wasn’t there a year and half ago, when Bucky shipped out. It’s been growing steadily since then, in steely strands from her temples. Bucky wasn’t her oldest son — Bucky had told seven-year old Steve that once, but his older brother had gone unnamed into a family plot at a week old. Bucky was the one who had survived; little James, who never fussed as a baby but had regarded the world around him with calm and curious eyes.
She’s clutching a tea towel and a telegram in front of the sink when Steve is escorted into the kitchen and sat at the table by Becca. She turns to him, and he sees it on her face, and it shouldn’t be a shock, it shouldn’t. Steve has known since August, when Bucky’s last letter came in. He had felt it then, a cold pit in his heart, an unfathomable expanse of loss. But still.
Still, it’s different, to hear it in the Barnes household, surrounded by Bucky’s family.
Winifred touches her temple, where the gray hair is. She looks at him, and her eyes are Bucky’s eyes. “It doesn’t mean anything,” she says, waving the telegram. “It doesn’t say anything, it doesn’t say that he’s,” her breath catches in a hitch before she exhales sharply. “I deeply regret to inform you that your son, James Barnes 32557038, is missing in action.
“Please accept my sincerest apology. James was a splendid sergeant, highly respected by all who served with him. His loss is — his loss is —“
