Send Down the Rain(59)

Suzy’s producer said that night, during my stories, they had the most callers ever in the history of the show. Suzy scooted closer to me and leaned her head on my shoulder. I searched the crowd and spotted Allie leaning against the back wall. Hands in her pockets. She looked warm. Happy. Truth was, she was glowing.

Suzy looked up at me. “One more question before we break. A lot of guys I talk with wrote home every day. Did you?”

I shook my head. “No.”

“Really? Can you tell us why?”

I rubbed my palms together. My eyes found Allie’s. “When I left here, my heart was breaking down the middle. I had to leave the only girl I’d ever loved. Once I got there, I looked around and knew I might never go home. And if I didn’t, I didn’t want her standing over my grave holding tear-soaked pages of my heart. I’d seen a lot of guys go home in flag-draped boxes, and those letters never brought them out of the grave.”

Allie crossed her arms.

“I wanted her to go on with her life. Not stay stuck to my memory.”

Suzy’s voice was soft when she spoke. “Did she . . . go on with her life?”

Allie smiled and thumbed away a tear. I didn’t know how to answer. “I think maybe we all died a little over there. War has a way of killing you whether you die or not.”

Suzy put her arm around me and spoke to her audience. “We’ll be right back.”

We sat in silence a long time. Suzy had tears in her eyes. Nobody approached me. Suzy didn’t try to talk and make me feel better or pull me out of the moment.

After a commercial she asked, “Anything else?”

I was back there. Walking through those trees. Hearing that poisoned water slosh about in my canteen but knowing it was all I had and I didn’t really care if it killed me. I wasn’t sure I wanted to say what I was about to say. I glanced at Suzy, who saw my hesitation. “It’s okay.”

“End of my fourth tour. I was ready to come home. When you’ve been there awhile, you get selective about your friends. As in, you try not to make any, because friends die. But me and this other guy had become pals. He was . . . a good man. Anyway, I was someplace my government denied me being and things went real bad and nobody would come get me except this one guy who disobeyed a direct order, stole a helo, got shot down, and crash-landed not far from me. Couldn’t walk. Only way to get him out was to drag him, so I did. For two days. Somewhere on the third day, he died. I couldn’t leave him there because they were so brutal to the guys we left. So I made a sled and pulled him behind me while I walked out. I didn’t know it at the time, but people who have died get heavier the longer they stay aboveground. I wanted to get him home to his family, but . . . after dragging him for eight days, I put him in the ground. It wasn’t fair to him.”

“Do you remember that man’s name?”

“Yes.”

“If you could say anything to him right now, what would you say?”

Without a pause I said, “I’d ask him to forgive me.”

“For?”

“Not bringing him home.”

A tear dripped off Suzy’s cheek. The silence in the restaurant was deafening. Suzy leaned across the space between us and kissed me on the cheek.

Turning to the microphone, she said, “This is our last night here on Cape San Blas. To all of you listening, we’d like to dedicate this show to Sergeant Jo-Jo Brooks and to all of you brave men who served like him.” Then in her signature fashion she signed off. “You are not forgotten.”

When I walked out the front door, several hundred people were standing around a dozen or so bonfires holding a beer or coffee or child, listening to the interview on vehicle speakers. I stepped out on the porch and they applauded. It lasted several minutes. Several hundred people hugged me or shook my hand. Asked me for a picture. It made me feel uncomfortable.

Unworthy.

At midnight, Allie found me on the beach. I was crying. No, I was weeping. And had been. Snot and tears smeared across my face. My soul was spilling out my mouth. Allie put her arm around me and just held me. Finally she turned me toward her and squeezed me tightly. I cried an angry, bitter, broken cry forty-five years in the making.

She asked me, “What can I do? Tell me. Anything.”

I stared out across the ocean. Then down at my feet. “I need someone to forgive me.”

She cupped my face in her hands. “For?”

“For living.”





35

Suzy came by at lunch the following day to report that last night’s listening audience was the largest in their history. She said her television production company wanted to film today’s show at the restaurant, live, and she asked Allie and me if we were okay with that.

I shrugged. “Sure.”

Allie, knowing the pain of last night, paused. “You sure?”

“I’m sure.”

The two-hour show aired live at four o’clock. The corner of the restaurant had been turned into a TV set, complete with down-lighting and microphones and twenty people moving around like ants pulling cables. When the show started, Suzy, ever the force to be reckoned with, took me back through many of the questions of the previous nights, replaying the audio for the television audience. Then she asked expounding questions. We talked for almost thirty minutes before she broke for commercial. When we returned, she continued with her line of questioning. I answered as best I could.