Buckeye

She'd been a nine-month-old wrapped in a cream blanket, deposited in a basket outside the Open Arms Orphanage in Doyle, Ohio, with a note pinned to her shirt. Lydia Verts,¹² the administrator, raised Margaret³ through four failed foster placements — one ending in neglect, another in abuse by a couple called the Selbys.

Lydia¹² nicknamed her Firefly, taught her to dance, read her Great Expectations aloud. At eighteen, Margaret³ moved to Columbus, took a cafeteria job, and was coerced into sex by her boss on her very first day.

She reinvented herself at the Lazarus department store with new clothes and careful makeup, dated freely, and began imagining a life of sophistication. Then she met Felix Salt⁴ — handsome, polished, successful — at a bowling alley. He proposed three months later on one knee at Lazarus. She didn't love him, but she trusted him. Trust seemed close enough.

At the University of Akron, Felix⁴ had fumbled through a secret physical relationship with his roommate. After graduation, his father caught him with a boy and leveraged a career opportunity against a demand for proof of heterosexuality.

Felix⁴ staged a fake engagement with a friend, got hired at Tuck & Sons Aluminum, and resolved to fit the mold of a successful man. Margaret³ seemed perfect — beautiful, unintimidating, easy to be around. He proposed believing marriage would redirect his desires. It didn't. Their sex life was sparse and fraught; Felix⁴ couldn't sustain arousal, and Margaret's³ patience wore thin.

When he was promoted and transferred to the Bonhomie plant, she gave up her art classes, dance lessons, and beloved Columbus. The house on Roswell Lane was beautiful, but Margaret³ felt like a housewife playing a role in someone else's production.

Felix⁴ enlisted in the Navy in 1942 and was assigned to the SS James Teague, a cargo ship running convoys through the Pacific. There he met Augie Varick¹⁰ — tawny-haired, lean, a farmer from Nebraska raised Pentecostal. Felix⁴ recognized in him a look he'd spent his adult life training himself to ignore. They circled each other for weeks aboard ship.

During R&R on the island of Espiritu Santo, they shared a Quonset hut at the end of a row. That first night, Augie¹⁰ pulled the lightbulb chain and tipped Felix's⁴ hat from his head. They fell into each other with years of hunger behind them. For seven nights they made love, swam, and bantered over a stray monkey named Jamoke who wandered into their hut. Felix⁴ had never felt so entirely himself.

On June 25, 1945, a torpedo struck the Teague's port side between the engine and the boiler. Felix⁴ was thrown into a passageway wall. He distributed kapok life vests as the ship listed past forty degrees, then climbed to the starboard bulwark and jumped.

In the churning water, a panicked crewmate without a vest dragged Felix⁴ under, grappling for his kapok. Felix⁴ kicked free; the man drowned. Of seventy-six aboard, forty-four died — Augie¹⁰ among them, his body never recovered.

Felix⁴ was hauled onto a rescue ship with a shattered shoulder, broken collarbone, and cracked ribs. In hospitals from Manila to San Francisco, doctors asked if he wished he'd gone down with the ship. Thinking only of Augie,¹⁰ he said yes. They nearly didn't let him go home.

Weeks after V-E Day, Cal¹ spotted Margaret³ outside the record store and crossed the street. They had lunch, walked along railroad tracks, and he helped hang a painting at her house. She invited him to her dance studio. Their attraction accelerated until, one afternoon on her living room sofa, they gave in.

Thursday afternoons became their routine — Cal¹ slipping through the back gate, hat pulled low, concealing his limp. Then a telegram arrived: Felix⁴ was missing, presumed dead. Margaret³ cut Cal¹ off entirely, sick with guilt.

Weeks later, Felix⁴ called from Manila — alive but broken. She told Cal¹ they were finished. Yet on the night before Felix's⁴ train arrived, they met one final time at the Step It Up studio, hidden behind a velvet curtain while an engaged couple slow-danced inches away.

Felix⁴ arrived in Bonhomie gaunt and bandaged. That first night, despite his injuries and her guilt, Margaret³ maneuvered them into bed — she couldn't reach her diaphragm without disrupting the fragile moment. She hadn't used one with Cal¹ at the studio either.

When the war ended weeks later with atomic fire over Japan, Cal¹ and Becky² reconciled and returned to sharing a bed. Margaret's³ pregnancy advanced through fall and winter. Tom⁵ was born in April 1946 with bright red hair and green eyes — Margaret's³ coloring entirely. Felix⁴ was elated.

His visiting parents declared the baby's nose was Felix's.⁴ But Margaret³ studied Tom's⁵ features obsessively, searching for an answer the infant wasn't ready to give. For years, the question of paternity lay submerged — a fuse she carried everywhere but couldn't bear to light.

Skip Jenkins⁶ was nine when he shoved a bully to the ground to rescue a small redheaded second-grader. Tom Salt⁵ was seven, wiry and easy to target. They became inseparable — riding bicycles through every neighborhood, collecting buckeyes from the tree in Skip's⁶ yard, firing them at birds from an abandoned smokestack.

Skip⁶ nicknamed Tom⁵ Buckeye. They explored Cal's¹ father Everett's⁷ junk-filled property, ate snacks at Roman's⁸ house, argued over the miniature trains. Cal¹ tried not to search Tom's⁵ face for his own features at the dinner table.

Margaret,³ one evening after a fight about a dead goldfish, stroked Tom's⁵ hair and noticed something that froze her hand: two swirling patterns at his crown, growing outward like a Van Gogh sky. Identical to Cal's.¹ She kept stroking. She said nothing.

Felix⁴ had been sinking for years — demoted at Tuck & Sons, sleepless, seeing Augie's¹⁰ face on strangers. He noticed Becky's² scalloped ad in the Gazette and made an appointment. At her hexagonal table he refused to provide a name.

She sensed dozens of spirits still trapped in water, men who didn't know they were dead. She asked what a kapok was, and his neck bristled. Over several sessions, she encountered something unprecedented — a playful animal spirit, a monkey. Behind it hovered a presence that insisted Felix⁴ say his name first.

Felix⁴ finally whispered: Augustus D. Varick. Augie¹⁰ came through. Becky,² her own eyes welling, relayed his message: he loved Felix,⁴ everything was okay, and Felix⁴ had to keep swimming — he was the one still in the water.

A dry cleaner found a folded square of paper in Felix's⁴ jacket — four handwritten lines of longing addressed to no one Margaret³ recognized. She confronted him on the back porch after Tom⁵ was in bed. In whispers, Felix⁴ confessed everything: his attraction to men, the fake engagement, the mold he'd tried to fill, the sailor named Augie.¹⁰

Margaret³ confessed the affair with Cal.¹ Then she said what neither could unhear: that Cal¹ was almost certainly Tom's⁵ biological father — she'd known since discovering the identical hair-growth pattern on their son's head.

Felix⁴ raised an open palm between them, not to strike but to stop the avalanche. The crickets trilled. The next afternoon, while Tom⁵ was at school, Margaret³ packed two suitcases, wrote letters to Felix⁴ and Becky,² and backed the car down the driveway past her eight-year-old son.

Margaret³ left behind two letters. One on Felix's⁴ nightstand named Cal¹ as Tom's⁵ father and begged Felix⁴ not to love Tom⁵ any less. The other, mailed to Becky,² laid out the affair in blunt sentences and asked her to keep showing Tom⁵ kindness. When Becky² confronted Cal,¹ he broke down.

She told him to leave. He moved into a small apartment above a bakery on Jones Street. Felix⁴ called Becky,² and the three surviving adults agreed: the boys would not be told. Tom,⁵ meanwhile, started telling classmates his mother had died — in a plane crash, a tunnel collapse, a bank robbery.

Felix⁴ sat him down and said the truth was simpler and worse: she'd chosen to live somewhere else. Birthday cards arrived annually from Columbus with no return address. Tom⁵ stood each one on his dresser for a few weeks, then put it away.

Cal¹ lived above the bakery for two years, calling the house nightly, showing up to mow the lawn and clean the gutters. Becky² didn't hate him — she couldn't trust his judgment. Roman,⁸ in one of his last conversations with Cal,¹ told him to keep showing up, that neither of them wanted out.

When Roman⁸ died of a stroke on the hardware store floor, Cal¹ found the body, covered it with a tarp, and mopped before calling anyone. He stood beside Becky² through the viewing and burial.

Ida,⁹ before moving to Florida, told Becky² she'd once nearly left Roman⁸ over a similar betrayal — and that forgiveness wasn't a single decision but a daily one you kept remaking. One evening, years into the separation, Becky² patted the empty cushion beside her. Cal¹ sat down. They kissed like teenagers. He stayed the night.

Skip⁶ had drifted through seven jobs in five years when a Marine recruiter bought him whiskey at a tiki bar and walked him to the enlistment office. Cal¹ and Becky² were horrified, but Skip⁶ returned from basic training grinning and muscled, carrying a conviction neither of them recognized.

In January 1968, during the Tet Offensive, his transport vehicle tripped a landmine outside Huế. He was twenty-three. There was nothing to bury. Cal¹ bought a brass marker for the cemetery beside Everett's⁷ plot, and he and Becky² stood before an empty grave trying to say goodbye.

The ritual did not help. Becky² shut her parlor doors and canceled her ad. They stopped leaving the house. Felix,⁴ who had quietly rebuilt his life alongside a fellow veteran named Bishop,¹¹ began arriving at Taft Street with groceries and pizza, pulling them back toward the living.

Felix⁴ had been putting it off for fifteen years. In April 1970, with Tom⁵ safely past the draft lottery, he drove him to Lake Meyer and sat on a rock at the water's edge. He told Tom⁵ about Augie,¹⁰ about Margaret's³ affair, about Cal.¹ Then they drove in unbearable silence to Taft Street, where Cal¹ and Becky² filled in the rest.

Tom⁵ heard their apologies and saw conspiracy — decades of adults lying to themselves while he and Skip⁶ grew up as half-brothers who never knew it. He told them it was bullshit and left. He drove to the cemetery, sat at Skip's⁶ empty grave, and said aloud that Skip⁶ wouldn't believe this. Then he drove to Toledo and barely spoke to any of them for years, tending his anger like a limb he couldn't afford to lose.

Felix's⁴ lungs betrayed him in 1975 — thirty-three years of cigarettes had seeded cancer alongside emphysema. Cal¹ tracked Tom⁵ down in Toledo and drove him home. Father and son reconciled in the den between morphine doses and conversations they should have had years ago.

Felix⁴ told Tom⁵ about the Quonset hut, about how Augie¹⁰ had given him the Thomas Aquinas quote that became Tom's⁵ middle name. He died in August 1976. Margaret,³ receiving Tom's⁵ letter days late, drove from Columbus and found the wake already underway at the Jenkinses' house.

She stood on the sidewalk, unable to enter. Tom⁵ spotted her from the window and walked across the lawn. She told him she was sorry — for everything. He threw his arms around her for one fierce moment, said something inaudible into her collar, then disappeared back inside.

For Becky's² sixtieth birthday in 1981, Cal¹ drove her back to Huron — the deferred honeymoon destination they'd first visited in 1943. At Cedar Point, she rode the Gemini roller coaster while he watched from a bench, holding the artifact he'd carried for thirty-nine years: the sealed envelope she'd handed him on their second date, containing a letter she'd written to her future self at age eight.

She opened it over lunch by the water. It predicted nothing. It contained only a child's hopes — a wonderful husband, a thousand books, super shiny hair.

On the double Ferris wheel, paused at the highest point, she kissed powdered sugar from a funnel cake onto his cheek. He began to rock the car. She rocked it with him. Below them, the world kept turning — carrying forward everything they had built and lost and refused to let go of.