Inside the oilcloth was an American flag, folded into a tight triangle the way they fold them at a funeral. Forty eight stars. Wool, not nylon. Under it was a letter in an envelope gone brown, and a small black and white photo of a young sailor in his dress whites.
The letter was from a mother. It was dated 1946. It said the flag had covered the casket of her son, Seaman First Class Walter Dunn, who was killed when his ship was hit off Okinawa. It said the Navy sent him home to Portsmouth, and this was the house he grew up in. She had put the flag in the wall below his bedroom window so it would always be in his home, no matter who lived there after.
I carried it inside to the man who hired me. His name was Carl. He was a retired railroad man who had bought the house in the spring. He read the letter at his kitchen table and did not say anything for a long time.
A mother had bricked her boy into the walls of his own house so he would never have to leave it again.
Carl called the county historical society that afternoon. A woman named Eileen came out the next morning. She knew the name. Walter Dunn was on the memorial at the courthouse, one of the boys from Scioto County who did not come home. She said his mother died in 1971. She said there was a niece, maybe, somewhere in Kentucky.
It took Eileen a week. The niece was named Ruth Ann, she was eighty four, and she lived across the river in Greenup. She had been six when her uncle died. She remembered him carrying her on his shoulders at the county fair the summer before he shipped out.
Carl and I drove the flag to her together. Ruth Ann met us on her porch with her grandson holding her arm. When she saw the photo, she put her hand over her mouth. She said her grandmother never talked about Walter. Not once. Now she knew why. She had kept him in the wall, where she could talk to him herself.
Ruth Ann asked a favor. She asked if the flag could stay in the house.
Carl said it would be an honor.
So I built a small shadow box into that same spot in the wall. I cut the brick clean, set a glass front, and trimmed it in oak that Carl stained himself. The flag sits in it now, with the letter and the photo beside it, right where his mother put him. A brass plate underneath says Walter Dunn, 1925 to 1945, home.
On Memorial Day, Carl had a little gathering in the yard. Ruth Ann came. So did Eileen, and a man from the American Legion post who read the name of Walter out loud and played taps on a bugle. The neighbors came out onto their porches and stood.
Twenty eight years laying brick. I have built a lot of walls. That is the only one I ever built to keep someone in.