[ WP ] One day , you notice there 's a new key on your keychain .

For 71 years, my keyring did n't move. It just hung there, a dull brass circle dangling loosely off the end of a rusty nail. Fitting, perhaps, because that perfectly described the men who put it there. 
 
 Though it was only a stone's throw into the forest away from the training barracks at Fort Innestoga, I doubt any cadet has seen it since. They shut down the Fort in 1949 once the war ended, and by the time Korea came along, it was cheaper to build a new one in Westonville to the south than to restore Innestoga. 
 
 Nature had been kind to the Fort, though. On my yearly visit to the ring, I would marvel at the speed with which Mother Earth healed the wounds inflicted by humanity; even under a blanket of snow, the ivy maintained majestic control over the abandoned barracks. 
 
 Every December 3rd I made the same joke to Roscoe as we shook hands and embraced in front of the key ring: `` Good to see you, old friend... but next year, let's do Florida.'' 
 
 The keyring had held up through the elements, too. The nail had frozen and thawed 71 times, but every year we found our ring just as we'd left it the year before - a brass circle adorned with the most valuable silver, crimson, and black jewels we had. 
 
 In 71 years, the ring had only been taken down three times. I remember when we put it up there on December 3, 1944. Dalton and Hammer each gave a knee so Jonesy could hammer the nail high up on the tree. Blackie and Sam jostled playfully for the keyless ring, each convinced he could make it stay on his first throw. They were both wrong. Three times. And made foolish when little Roscoe aced it on his first try. 
 
 Roscoe was n't loud, and he sure was n't a gloater, but big Hammer made sure Blackie and Sam knew they'd been bested by a scrawny boy of a man who would n't be tall enough to smell the perfume on Rita Hayworth's neck. 
 
 `` OH HO HO'' he boomed with laughter as he wrapped his wide arms around Blackie and Sam, his chuckles echoing around our deciduous and evergreen walls. `` Let's hope you boys are better shooters than ring-tossers or they'll be hanging your keys up here next week!'' 
 
 My memory is n't what it used to be, but I can still remember that deep, joyful laugh - Hammer's good spirits had us giggling like schoolgirls all evening as we doused our fears with cheap cigars and bad spirits. 
 
 Hammer was wrong, though. It was he and Jonesy whose keys went up first - their B-48 convoy to the South Pacific hit a rough patch of air over Kansas two days later. They never even made it to the Pacific. 
 
 Some say they were the lucky ones, though. Sam and Blackie had been deployed a day earlier, which meant they were already freezing on decades-old rowboats as their platoon inched towards the machine-gun shores of Yokohama. By the time Hammer and Jonesy's tags reached their mothers, Sam and Blackie's were heading home as well. Their crimson-soaked keys joined Hammer and Jonesy's blackened ones on the ring a week and a half later. 
 
 Dalton was the one who hung them there. Roscoe and I were deployed to Burma the same day as Jonesy and Hammer; Lord knows why we were the fortunate ones whose planes took the more northern route over Nebraska, but I doubt we would have boarded if we had known our seven-man ring would have four keys within a fortnight. 
 
 Dalton was never deployed. He put his still-shiny key on the ring himself before he pulled the trigger on his military-issue AR-11 the day Sam and Blackie's keys went up. His head was gone when they found him, but a picture of the seven of us lay unsullied in his limp left hand. The picture had been taken 9 years-to-the-day before, seven goofy grins proudly holding up the keys to our members-only treehouse in Blackie and Dalton's backyard. Dalton Black placed his key beside his brother's, and then went to join him. 
 
 As always, I had the picture in my left pocket today as I hobbled slowly towards the forest behind the barracks. The snow was n't too bad this year - just an inch or two, and warmer than years past. Roscoe and I had cut short our visit last year because of the biting winds; perhaps today we could stay longer. 
 
 It was n't a far walk to the forest, but far is relative when you're 88 years old and carrying seven cups and a half bottle of whiskey. Even cheap whiskey weighs a lot when you're 88. It took me longer than usual to get into the forest, but I knew I'd be right on time to meet Roscoe at 12:03pm, same as always. 
 
 A sharp gust of wind blew through, and I felt the cool metal of my necklace-borne key pressing against my chest. As I made my usual turns through the woods and entered the small clearing where our tree stood, it turned to ice. 
 
 Roscoe was n't there, but a small envelope lay at the foot of the tree. With dread, I slowly knelt down to open it. 
 
 `` Good to see you, old friend; soon, we'll look down upon Florida together.'' 
 
 I looked up at the ring, its two crimson, two black, and single rusted silver key dangling down like ornaments on a weathered but beautiful Christmas tree. 
 
 For the first time in 71 years, though, the five weather-beaten keys were joined by a shine. For the first time in 71 years, there was a new key on my keyring today.
