The Old Man In Line

The gray canvas bag sat between the old man's shoes on the bench, and he kept one foot pressed against it.

It was the size of a lunch pail, with a zipper and a worn handle. In his lap he held a cream folder tied with a green ribbon. I knew that folder before I read a word. I had seen forty years of them.

"They said it's expired," he told me, before I could ask. He wore a gray cardigan and a faded navy cap with a strip of green ribbon pinned inside the brim, and he looked seventy-something and stubborn about it. "A young man at the little desk said the list was full and my voucher was no longer honored. It's a lifetime voucher. It says so right there."

"May I?" I asked.

He handed it over the way people hand over a baby. The paper was the same heavy cream card as mine. The ribbon was the same green. At the bottom, in fountain pen, in ink gone soft brown with age, was a signature.

"Amos Beale," he said, and held out his hand. "Quartermaster, twenty-two years, on the old ships. Alden gave me that himself, the year we retired the Kittiwake. He said, Amos, you get a bed on my ships as long as they float."

"He kept his word to a lot of people," I said.

"Not this morning." Amos nodded at the bag. "My wife, Nan. Three years I've carried her around the house. She wanted the rail off the back of the Dawn, and I promised her. I don't have many promises left that I can still keep."

I looked at the signature again. I made my face stay still. It took some doing.

A. Osgood.

I knew the loop of that A. I had watched it sign birthday cards and report cards and the back of a check for my first car. It belonged to my father, and a man in a charcoal blazer had just told a room of strangers that anything with that name on it was a forgery.