Send Down the Rain(26)
While Suzy’s voice was sexy, seductive, and suggestive in a dozen different ways, Suzy herself was no taller than five-foot-four and weighed close to 280 pounds, proving that some people wear their pain on the outside.
She had searched for years for the answer to the mystery of what happened to her father. Various vets had called in with leads or well-meaning lies. None proved true. A network had picked up on the search, sent a team to Vietnam, produced an hour-long documentary. But in over two months of searching, they could not find what only the buzzards and maggots knew.
Her father’s dog tag, watch, and the Bible her mother gave him were never found.
Over the last decade Suzy solidified her status as the voice of the forgotten generation. Between prime-time TV and drive-time radio, she became a household name, face, and voice. Everybody knew Suzy. A presence to be seen, a force to be reckoned with, a voice to be heard, and a message not to be denied. Further, she was a hugger. She hugged everybody. People stood in line to get a picture and a hug with a woman so large they could barely get their arms around her.
Comfortable in her calling and career, she put her show on the road. Once a month “On the Road with Suzy” broadcast from all over the country, from a park bench on Coney Island to a saddle in Wyoming to a fishing boat in Alaska to an RV in the Keys. Family members of veterans wanting to highlight their lives and stories would write or call her, tell of their loved ones’ exploits or selfless actions, and Suzy’s team would evaluate where to go next. At each location she’d spend a day or two or three and slowly draw out the story of one man’s life that the rest of the country needed to hear. These men, stained with spit and rotten tomato puree, silent for decades, slowly unwrapped their stories.
Healing comes in both the telling and the hearing. Maybe that is Suzy’s greatest contribution.
AS I LISTENED FROM my perch on the motel balcony, Suzy joked with some callers, talked intimately with others, and finally closed out her show at midnight. I clicked off the radio and sat staring at the moon’s reflection on the water. It was a calm night. Barely any waves. Gentle breeze. A tender welcome.
Southward a figure appeared, walking the beach. A serpentine path. Left, right, left again. As the figure closed the distance, it acted more like a squirrel. Darting left, picking something off the beach, throwing it down, darting right or scurrying forward only to dart left again.
I hadn’t seen Allie in years, but even in the darkness it wasn’t difficult to identify her. Some images never go away—no matter how you try to delete or drown them. She was scouring the beach, but she was stumbling. Frantic. And exhausted. Dead on her feet. At one point she fell and lay there several minutes only to rally and crawl to her knees, lacking the strength to rise to her feet. Several minutes later, having scarred the beach like a sea turtle, she collapsed again, this time closer to the water. Here the waves washed up and over her feet and thighs. When the waves gently rolled over her shoulders, she lifted her head, peeled herself off the beach, folded her arms around her like she was cold, and made it about three steps before she collapsed.
Rosco and I walked out onto the beach. I lifted her off the sand and began carrying her toward the motel. She was soaked head to foot, and her palms were raw from crawling. I got her to my room, stripped off her wet clothes, and laid her in my bed, tucking the covers around her. During all of this, she never woke. I wondered if she had walked all the way north from the crash site. As I sat staring at her, several thoughts raced through my mind. The first was that the woman before me was not the girl I’d known.
15
When daylight came, I pulled Allie’s clothes out of the coin-operated dryer, folded them, and set them on the bed next to her along with a note. Went in search of coffee and a doughnut—Joseph. I also left Rosco, who had curled up on the corner of her bed.
I drove south a few miles to fill up with gas and grab a bite to eat at a combination gas station and doughnut shop. While I lifted the lever to start the flow of gas and inserted the nozzle into the side of my truck, a guy walked out holding a cup of coffee in one hand and two doughnuts in the other. He was wearing flip-flops, his shirt was unbuttoned, his skin was deeply tanned, and his shorts were frayed at the edges. Total local.
I said, “Morning.”
He glanced at my Carolina tag and spoke with glazing smeared across his top lip. “You’re a long way gone.” It was a statement posed as an invitation.
I palmed the sweat off my face. “Don’t you folks have any sort of winter down here?”
He finished shoving a doughnut in his mouth and then spoke around it. “Not really. ’Round here it goes from just plain hot, to Africa hot, back to Mexico hot, then mildly Nicaraguan warm and back to Sahara hot again.”
“Where’s the best place to eat?”
Another bite. “Ain’t one.”
I waved my hand in a circle about my head. “What about all these signs?”
He pointed half a doughnut north. “Up thataway. Called the Blue Tornado. Used to be the best restaurant in Florida. Now that was some good food. Legendary.”
“You eat there?”
He smiled. “Had my own booth.”
“What happened?”
He pointed a quarter doughnut south. “You passed part of the reason when you drove in.”
“How’s that?”