Souvenir by James R. Benn

squish of the grease falling into the bucket released a cloying, dense odor that seeped into your skin, eyes, mouth and nostrils. Chris drew up his tee shirt, holding the thin cotton fabric to the ridge of his nose.
    The Graves Registration unit had used shovels, and it had made that same sound as they dumped it into a big steel drum. Clay turned, walked out of the room, out the back entrance, and fell to his knees, as he had that day in the village, and vomited. The odor of the grease ran through his body, forcing everything out, doubling him up on the gravel next to the garbage cans. He felt the acidic bile at the back of his throat, the smell of the grease twisting through him, leaving him gasping for air as he sat up and cleaned his lips with his handkerchief.
    There wasn’t a day that went by that Clay didn’t think about the war. There was always some fragment of memory, a thought that brought him back, once in a while it was even something funny. But this hadn’t happened in years. Right after the war, it was every night, in his dreams. He’d scared Addy half to death, digging a foxhole in the bed with his hands, screaming as the nightmare shells burst all around him. Some nights, when he could feel it coming, feel the memories pressing against the inside of his skull, ready to burst out, he’d sleep in the big chair in the living room, feet up on the hassock, and he’d feel safe. Alone. Unable to frighten anyone, unable to do sleeping harm.
    When Chris came along, the nightmares seemed to fade away. He had a family. A tavern to run. Money to earn. Ashtrays to clean. Cigarette machines to fill. Numbers slips to pack in a bag. There was an order to everything, and it calmed him. If the ashtrays got dirty, it meant he’d be cleaning them tomorrow. When people bought cigarettes, he’d be there tomorrow with a new supply. Sometimes he felt giddy with the joy of an endless string of known tomorrows.
    The pack of Winstons was still in his hand. He got up, spat, and lifted the lid of the garbage can to throw away the soiled handkerchief and the cigarettes. As he was about to drop them, he noticed the tax stamp. Virginia. One of his own.
    Addy was there at five, like always. Pulled over alongside the bright yellow paint on the curb, the no parking zone by the corner perfect for her. A spot always waiting when she came to pick up Chris, and one that required her to stay in the car, motor running. A tentative, apologetic honk on the horn to announce herself, and she’d sit patiently, waiting for her son.
    “Mom’s here,” Chris announced as he came out of the back room, throwing on his jacket. Clay was coming up from the basement with a case of Narragansett Ale. Chris didn’t meet his eyes. He could’ve been talking to Brick, one of the customers, or the walls. Clay set the case down on the floor and followed Chris outside. They hadn’t spoken a word since Clay had fled the kitchen. Chris had finished cleaning up, left the grill sparkling, emptied the trash, smiled at the customers he knew. This left Clay without resentment, but wide open to the shame and embarrassment he felt as he ran away from his own kid, felled by a random twenty year old memory. He couldn’t leave it like that, but he had no idea what to do, no concept of what he could possibly say to explain himself. He followed his son out the door, suffering with the small contentment of sharing the same space, breathing the same air, even if the connection went no farther than that.
    Chris opened the car door and got in. Clay leaned on the open door, keeping the connection open, three of them now together, the front seat of the Nash Rambler and the open door encompassing them, clarifying their relationship, defining Chris. Their boy, who they fed, clothed, employed, transported. Addy and Clay smiled across the gulf of their son, fidgeting in the front seat, his hand on the door handle.
    “My God,” said Addy, “what is that smell?” Her nose wrinkled