Whisper to Me(19)

Dad says he didn’t think about what he did next. His legs and arms did it for him. But whatever he says, there’s still a medal upstairs in his nightstand that he doesn’t think I know about. A medal for conspicuous bravery that they don’t hand out very often.

Anyway, whether he thought about it or not, Dad managed to get up and he ran through a silent storm of bullets to where Mike was kneeling. He didn’t know where the other two guys in the unit were—they might have been dead, or just thrown out of sight by the blast. As he got close, he saw that Mike was out of ammo.

Mike saw him coming, and Dad drew his sidearm and threw it to him—Mike caught it out of the air, spun, and kept firing. Dad opened up with his assault rifle at the same time, suppressing the fire that was coming at them from the ramparts all around.

PLEASE NOTE: This story came to me in fits and starts over the years. I am stitching it together.

PLEASE ALSO NOTE: This next part I mostly heard from Mom, not Dad. Or at least, when Dad tells it, he leaves out key details. Key details like his own courage.

So Dad said, “I’m covering you. Go.”

Mike Osborne tried to say something, but Dad shrugged and pointed to his ear to show that he couldn’t hear, what with the fact that someone had carelessly dropped a bomb on them.

“Go,” he said again. And whether Mike could hear or not, GO is a pretty obvious word to lip-read.

So Mike Osborne nodded and ran for the exterior wall. Dad kept on firing every time he saw a head pop up or the flash of sunlight on a muzzle. Something smacked his head, and he saw only later that two bullets had hit his helmet.

AND TO CUT A LONG STORY SHORT: He managed to stop the enemy from killing Mike Osborne, and then another bomb landed in the right place this time, and that gave him the chance to run. He said it was the closest he ever came to dying, apart from when he was in a cave complex sweeping for ammunition and a teenager with an AK shot him through the shoulder and leg.

And the point is: They gave him a medal for saving Mike Osborne. For throwing himself into danger with no thought for his own safety. And I wanted to tell you this, because I wanted you to know one positive thing about my dad at least.

Also: his experience in the war, and then Mom dying … they kind of made him who he is today. He’s an *******, it’s true. But there’s a reason why he’s an *******.

And Mike Osborne?

Mike Osborne was out on patrol a couple of months later when his team found a wounded kid. They’d gone to check on him, but the kid was rigged with grenades, and Mike Osborne was leaning right over him, about to give him CPR, when they went off. Mike Osborne was scattered over half a poppy field.





It’s weird. I’m writing this to you, and you haven’t walked into my life yet. But I guess you already know when you first saw me.

It’s like a wood in ancient Greece, a leafy glade. I’m here, and the voice is here—the echo—and we’re just waiting for you, for the real action to start.

Which is soon.

Things are going to go fast from here.

Are you ready?





Me, I held it together, just, for the next week. I kept going to the library, hiding out in the apartment. I read up on serial killers.

Meanwhile the voice was bad, but in a way I could handle. Since I had decided to try to find the Houdini Killer, it had let up on me a bit. I figured this was because it was the voice of the woman with the severed foot. I also knew the rules now. Sometimes I would get something wrong—I would forget myself, and go to sit on the couch or whatever, do something comfortable.

Then the voice would say:

“Give me a hundred or your dad will lose his legs in a car accident.”

And I would get down on the ground and do push-ups, like Dad made me do when he was teaching me to swim as a kid. Or I’d have to run to the beach and back, or up and down the stairs. I didn’t think Dad was noticing any of this stuff, but I guess, looking back, he was more perceptive than I realized.

It was when I had to leave the apartment that things really fell apart. You summer-renter boys weren’t moving in for a couple of days, but Dad wanted to clean the place, get it ready. I didn’t tell him the apartment was already sparkling. The voice loved to make me clean, over and over again. I figured he’d see that when he came in.

Last day of school was that Friday. It wasn’t a big celebration day for me. I moved back to my bedroom Saturday morning. Literally as soon as I did, the voice got worse, just like I’d thought it would. I walked into my room and it said,

“Look at this ******** place. Get a brush and dustpan and then get down on your hands and knees.”

“What?”

“Get a brush and dustpan and clean up the floor.”

“I can get the vacuum—”

“No.”

So I swept the floor. The whole floor. I wasn’t even allowed to use a broom. Dad was over in the apartment, changing the sheets or whatever. He and I weren’t speaking much. There’s this idea that there are optimistic people and pessimistic people. But the factor everyone ignores is that when these tendencies encounter the real world, are tested against experience, they can be dispelled or calcified. Take my dad: I’d say he’s naturally a glass-half-empty kind of guy. He always expects bad stuff to happen; my mom says he’s always been like that.