Send Down the Rain(58)
I sensed that I had missed a memo.
I gave the card to Gabby and whispered, “Tell your friends what?”
She shook her head. “Not telling.”
I turned to Allie, who grabbed my arm and said, “It’s a surprise.”
“I don’t do well with surprises.”
She nodded matter-of-factly. “I know.”
SUNDAY MORNING I WOKE with a headache, which coffee did not alleviate. Maybe I was just dehydrated. I drank some water but nothing improved. That should have been my first sign. I made it to the restaurant, pitched in with everyone else, and by noon we were slammed. Word had spread from the night before, and a three-hour wait did little to deter diners.
By three o’clock I was elbow deep in suds trying to keep up with the dishes when Allie found me. “You okay?”
I squirted her with the spray nozzle. “Yep.”
She was giddy. “Just checking.”
Sundown came, and my feet were killing me. How did Allie keep this up?
I was pretty well soaked from the speed and fury of the dishwasher when she came to get me. She handed me a towel and instructed Peter and Victor to pick up where I left off. I wiped my hands and face. She smoothed my hair with her fingers, which did absolutely nothing, and then tied a handkerchief around my eyes. She led me by the hand through the kitchen and into the dining room, which seated over two hundred people. I knew the room was full, but somehow everyone was hushed and whispering as she led me in and then told me to stand still. Feeling fully exposed, I checked my zipper, bringing a laugh from somewhere in front of me. Then I heard a shuffling and somebody took my hand and said, “Hello, Joseph.”
I knew that voice instantly. But this time, rather than hearing it over the radio, I was hearing it next to me. Her voice on my face. She wrapped her arm in mine and peeled the blindfold off my face. Speaking into a microphone, Suzy said, “Everybody give it up for Sergeant Joseph Brooks. A seven-time combat-wounded veteran and recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor.”
Over two hundred men, women, and children stood, whistled, and applauded. Their response was the welcome home I had wanted forty years ago. It was more than I could handle. Not just for me, but because I was seeing and hearing what so many others deserved.
FOR THE NEXT THREE evenings Suzy broadcast from the restaurant, drawing hundreds. At one point, Allie counted five hundred people outside. In between songs, Suzy would interview me. Snippets. Five-and ten-minute stories. Boot camp difficulties. Flying in-country. Conditions. Number of men in my unit. The number of men who came home. She asked about my trips flying home to deliver the bodies. Was it quiet on the plane? Life in the tunnels. The medals I’d been awarded and for what. What was it like to be sitting in Laos when the president declared that the United States had no active service personnel inside Laos? She skirted the edges on the number of kills and how many times I had seen a buddy blown up. She steered the conversation to the beach, my hooch, the singer girlfriend, a German shepherd I befriended, anywhere she felt something tender. The second night she asked me, “Ever steal anything?”
“All the time.”
“Do tell.”
“We would stay gone for weeks at a time. Sleeping on the ground. Often wet. Ten trillion mosquitoes. When we would get back to the rear, conditions were little better. I’d been there about a year when we returned to find our camp in pretty bad condition. We were just sleeping in holes in the ground. But next door was a barracks reserved for officers when in-country. It was quite large. Clean. Spacious. Would house our entire unit and then some. But it was empty. So one night I, along with most of my unit, disassembled the building, moved it to our side of the fence, and reassembled it. I installed hot showers, decent bathrooms, bunks, offices. We called it Camp California.
“There was also a vehicle. A truck. Another camp needed it. They were closer to our supply line, so we traded the vehicle for booze and beer and steaks, you name it. Pretty soon, guys were coming to Camp California for R&R. The fact that it sat within two hundred yards of the South China Sea didn’t hurt. We held concerts on the weekends, but I think what the guys liked most were the hot showers.”
“Ever get caught?”
“We’d been up and running about two weeks when I was ordered to receive a helo on the landing deck. It was raining buckets. A monsoon. The chopper landed, I saluted the colonel who stepped off, and then I escorted him to the only dry place around. I took him to his quarters in Camp California, a room we had reserved just for him, and as I’m standing there in muddy boots soaked to the bone, he asks me, ‘Sergeant, you got anything to drink around here?’
“We weren’t supposed to have hard liquor, but I responded, ‘Sir, we have whatever you’d like.’ He held his thumb and index finger about three inches apart and said, ‘Scotch.’ I retrieved it. Twenty years old. He sipped, studied me, and said, ‘I hear tell you stole a building.’ I responded, ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘You admit it?’ he asked, taking another sip. ‘Yes, sir.’ He sipped again. ‘You realize I am obligated to have you arrested at that admission?’ ‘Yes, sir.’ He spun his glass on the table. ‘You mind telling me where you took it, and the military vehicle that went with it?’ ‘Sir, as for the building, it’s currently keeping you dry. As for the vehicle, you are drinking it.’ He nodded. ‘Carry on, Sergeant. You need anything else, you let me know.’”