The diner is located at the city’s entrance, on the main street, wedged between residential houses, a drive-through bank and a gas station.
Stucco deer decorations stand on clean cut lawns, looking at me through the restaurant windows. The name Assumption reads in hand-painted typography on the black and red water tower, a little further up the road. There is not any traffic and children are playing in a nearby pool. A Pepsi sign is faintly illuminated just outside the building.
“I’ve lived here almost all my life. My brother, he moved to Decatur when he turned twenty. My sister stayed with me in the farm until she married her husband, then they went to Springfield. I like it here. It’s quiet. It’s not complicated. Fewer people means fewer problems.”
The walls are decorated with painting reproductions. The tables all have napkins, ketchup and mustard bundled up together in little metal baskets. The beer is cold and the fries just crispy enough.
“Pretty much everyone knows everyone in the city. Many are working at the GSI plant, right over that street. I used to be a manager here before my retirement. We built silos and grain equipment, like dryers or belt conveyors.”
“Are you talking about the warehouses one can see from the highway?”
“That’s right. The owner started from a garage, you know? Now he’s supplying the whole country. Sometimes small people manage to do something out of nothing.”
“We’re a farmland state. Not many folks around with higher education or even the ambition to go further. It’s how it is here.”
“Well, you usually die at the same place you were born. You come to live all your life doing the same things with the same persons, shopping at the same stores, driving on the same roads, coming back to the same house every night. In this city you’re either a farmer, a steel worker or a construction worker. You don’t get to change things. You live your life and you die.”
“It’s the downside of being simple. Not meaning much.”
“Family is the most important. You have to mean something to them. But even there, they will still forget about you eventually because that’s how time works.”
“I used to think it was. Not so much now. Everything fades with the age anyway, and if you’re blessed you’ll turn senile before knowing what happened. That’s the best way out. Not even — you know.”
The night is falling down quickly on the city.
“Who cares if no one remembers you when you’re dead? Isn’t that the whole point of death?”
“People want to leave a trace.”
“People fight all their life for something that will happen after they’re gone. They come to do a lot of things to leave a trace. I can get why, sure. I can get why.”
“But you don’t see the point.”
“I say I’d rather live an honest life with no fuss and die happily than try to change the world and go through a lot of trouble for finally dying with all sorts of regrets.”
“I can’t change the world. The world doesn’t need me. At best I could try, and that would be a good thing, really, but in the end it wouldn’t be much more different than if I hadn’t. I would just have gone through a lot more pain, that’s all. That’s why I like it here.”
“It’s easy. It’s predictable.”
“You said you had been living here almost all your life. Did you go elsewhere at some point?”
“7th Division. I participated in the Inchon landing.”
“It was messy from the start. They were all running in circles not knowing what to do, what with the Soviets and the Chinese threatening to escalate. We just had to go and pray for things to work. The 7th Division was weakened even before being sent to war because of early reassignments to the 25th Division who was fighting since July. We attacked Inchon from the southwest with the Marines but there was so much miscommunication we ended up firing at our own Cavalry in Osan. That is to tell you how confused it was.”
“How long did you stay there?”
“I returned to the US a first time in ‘51 and enrolled again for Operation Showdown in Kumhwa until we got relieved by the 25th Division.”
“I did. The farm was doing well and Korea needed help. I had friends who were stationed in Seoul and I didn’t want to leave them alone. At this point it had nothing to do with war anymore.”
“It was because of your friends.”
“I guess so. You make a lot of stupid decisions when you’re young.”
“Would you do things differently today?”
“They shot women and children in the back.”
I put my bottle down on the table.
“Entire families executed. They didn’t even bury them,” he says.
“Did you get back home uninjured?”
“I got a couple of scars here and there. Shrapnel in my left leg. Hearing problems because of all the firing. I was very lucky.”
“My son played with GI Joe tin soldiers while I was away. We didn’t have all the technology they have today. We had to send pictures and letters and speak on the phone.”
“And now I’ve become a cynical schmuck.”
“We all become cynical with the years.”
“What do you do when you’re not working?”
“I play chess. I’ve been biking a lot lately. It’s good for my heart the doctor says. There is this creek near Henton where I try to go every other evening to see the sunset. It’s a little hilly and you can see the fields shining like gold just before dark. It’s beautiful.”
A car stops in the parking and a group of teenagers come out of it with liquor bottles and cigarettes.
“I also go to church. I help them with the street fair every year. I mostly do it for my wife but I go the same.”
“How does she take your cynicism?”
“She knows she won’t change the world either. She believes life is just part of a bigger plan. She has faith. If she lives rightfully, maybe she will get to see what’s on the other side.”
“I’m too old for faith. I go to church.”
I finish my beer and order a can of soda.
“What are good places to go in the area?” I ask.
“I often come here for lunch, their club sandwich is not bad. I shop at Casey’s when I don’t want to drive to Decatur. I avoid going to Decatur as much as I can because of the soybean smell. This constant smell, it makes me sick just to think about it. I don’t know how Paul does it. My brother. At least they have decent fireworks in July.”
“The town library seemed nice.”
“They even have a website now.”
The teenagers enter the diner and go sit in the back of the room, talking loudly or texting on their cell phones.
“That’s the new generation. Getting drunk in cornfields. Every kid must have been doing that since the town was built. It’s almost a rite of passage. Maybe they have to do it so they can become delusional grown-ups.”
We laugh and cheer to the young crowd gathering near the TV to watch the Chicago Bears game.
“Cornfields and cornfields and cornfields and more cornfields. Corn and grain. That’s all we are.”
“We plant and harvest and stock the grain, then we ship it by train in all directions. Millions of metric tons of grain. But people don’t see the work and the care behind all the industry. They don’t know how it is, providing food out of thin air. They just consume and forget about it all.”
The Bears mark a touchdown and everyone shouts and claps in the restaurant. We leave money on the table and leave our booth. Outside, locusts are singing in the grass and insects swarm around streetlights.
The city is preparing to sleep.
“I’ve talked about war so much, you know. Even war stories get boring with enough time. That’s why I prefer talking about today. Today is real. War is memories. And memories are not real.”
We walk a little in the night until the old man gets to his house where his wife is waiting for him, porch light up behind lace curtains.
He waves at me as he climbs the stairs and opens the door, making moths fly and hit helplessly against the windows.
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