Send Down the Rain(70)

It’d been a long time since I’d seen that sheet of paper. He turned it in his hands.

“When my mother opened the mail, her heart sank. I was . . .” He weighed his head side to side. “Different then. Certainly not the man the voting public thinks me today. I liked books. Liked baseball. And pretty soon, I would like drugs.”

The judge leaned back and showed surprise for the first time. The people in the audience who didn’t know where this was going laughed. I did not.

Bobby continued. “Thanks to an experience in my past that scarred me, I was afraid. Of a lot. But mostly of other people. When it came to defending those who needed defending, I was paralyzed. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to, I just wasn’t very good at it.”

I spoke loudly enough for him to hear me. “You don’t need to do this.”

The judge turned to me. “Mr. Brooks, you have something to add?”

I stood. “Sir, I was just telling my brother that he doesn’t need to tell this story.”

Judge Werther pointed his gavel at Bobby. “He’s requested, of his own volition, to do so. So please sit.”

I did as instructed.

Bobby held up the draft notice. “My mother took this to Jo-Jo. My younger brother, Joseph. It was one week past his seventeenth birthday. Although I’m two years older, he was always the stronger one. He and my mother went for a ride in the car he had built. And on that car ride she asked him to take my place.”

The sound of air sucking in rose up from the audience.

“And he did.” Pin-drop silence roared. “My brother said goodbye to the love of his life. He told her he was taking me to California, maybe Canada, where we could outrun the war. Then he walked into the recruiting office and went in my place . . . with my name.”

Behind me Allie began whispering, “No, no, no, no . . .”

Bobby spoke louder. “Ashamed of myself for letting him go, and trying to outrun the voices in my head, I told everyone I wasn’t going to California. That I was enlisting. They gave me a send-off party, and I boarded a bus that took me straight to California, where I took Joseph’s driver’s license and rented an apartment and got a job and ingested every drug I could beg, borrow, or steal. But no matter how many I took, I couldn’t drown the voices or medicate the pain.”

Someone cussed Bobby from the audience. Judge Werther pounded his gavel and spoke to everyone. “I have instructed the bailiff to remove anyone causing a disturbance. And if that is all of you, then I will sit in my courtroom alone.” He turned to Bobby. “Continue, please, Senator.”

Bobby spoke to the man who cussed him. “You’re right. I’m that and more. It gets worse.”

My heart sank as Bobby committed political suicide in front of the whole world.

Allie’s whimpering had become incessant. She was shaking her head and whispering no again and again.

“So after my two-year ‘tour’ of every drug hostel along the coast of California, I returned home. I convinced his girl that I had in fact gone to war, by telling her it was horrible and I couldn’t talk about it, which was convenient because I wouldn’t have known what to say anyway. Six weeks earlier, rather conveniently for me, my brother had come home after having honorably served two tours. He landed to mobs of people spitting on him. Given that he was covered up in medals, he was shining like the sun. He walked into an airport hangar and threw away everything having to do with the military—including his medals.

“After a week with the military brass trying to get inside his head and figure out what he knew that they needed to know, he spent a couple months at a war treatment program trying to get his head right. To figure out what to say when he got home. To explain who he’d become. During his program, his commanding officer—who was understandably proud of all that he’d accomplished—dug those medals out of the trash and sent them home where, upon my arrival, I opened the envelope addressed to me. I could not have timed that any better. And since I was already neck deep in the lie, I opened the envelope, admired my reflection in the silver and gold, and pinned them on my chest—”

The cussing had stopped. People sat in silent disbelief. Behind me, Allie made a dash for the trash can in the corner, hit her knees, and vomited. The sound of pain exiting a human body. It was raw, primal, and unadulterated. Cameras began to flash, people to talk.

Judge Werther pounded his gavel. “I will have order in this courtroom.” He stood. “We’re going to take a fifteen-minute recess.”

The judge then asked the bailiff to get Allie a wet towel, which he did. But she was inconsolable. I pointed at her and asked the judge, “Sir, may I?”

He nodded and disappeared into his private quarters, taking my brother with him.

I knelt next to Allie, who threw her arms around me and sobbed, “I’m sorry . . . I’m sorry . . .”

I just held her. Wasn’t much else I could do. Forty-five years ago, her soul had ruptured. Split down the middle. Somehow she’d stitched it back together. But here in this courtroom, listening to my brother, the stitching had been ripped open and the pain she’d long held inside was being released in front of me. In front of all of us.

The bailiff announced the return of the judge, and we all stood. He took his seat and told Bobby to continue.

Bobby looked at Allie. Then at me. “What I have told you is not the worst. Joseph exited the war treatment program, hopeful of what he’d find at home. He drove through the night, parked at the Blue Tornado, followed the crowd to the beach, and found me wearing a chestful of his medals and saying ‘I do’ to Allie.