Send Down the Rain(77)

He huffed and tried to say something senatorial, but I cut him off.

“None of us are the men we’d hope to be. Not you. Not my brother. And certainly not me. We’re all guilty. Despite what you may think about him, my brother has spent his life trying to get back to good. Paying penance. Here in this place. With all of you. How many of you can say the same?

“We’ve lost a lot of lives to something that’s been over a long time. Something that up until now nobody’s really wanted to talk about. You want to give it one more life? What good would it do?” I scanned all those angry faces. “As a kid I said ‘yes, sir,’ you sent me away, and I fought for you. Then I came home a broken man and fought a different war. Been fighting it a long time. Now I’m sitting here fighting again. Getting spit on by you. All of you value the knight who storms the castle, kills the bad man, and saves the girl. But you need to ask yourself, how does the knight live on the other side of the rescue? When he’s sitting in his castle with armor that’s rusty, a sword that’s grown unwieldy, and a horse that’s gray and old? There are a lot of us. I’m just the one talking at the moment.” I sat back. “So no, Senator, I will not hand you my brother’s head on a platter.”

To their credit, they did alter my military records to permanently reflect my name, rather than Bobby’s.





48

At the invitation of the Vietnamese government, Suzy, Allie, and a host of other people traveled to Vietnam. Much had changed, and when the memories flooded back, they hurt. I couldn’t have made it without Allie. She held me up. She shielded me from the cameras, asked a lot of questions, and then cried through most of my answers. It was good for both of us.

The hike in took several hours, but I led Suzy to her father’s remains. One reporter asked me, “How can you remember the way?”

I turned to him. “How can I forget?”

A beautiful tree had grown above him. When they unearthed him, she sat for a long time next to the hole, talking to him. When I had buried him, I’d taken one dog tag and left the other. She sat there, turning the second dog tag in her hand.

Suzy wanted to bring her father home. She asked me to help pick up the pieces and place him in a box. I reached into that black dirt and for the second time carried my friend. And in those moments, I wept like a child and told him I was sorry and asked him to forgive me. When we had all of him that we could find, we closed the box.

Suzy had brought a marker. Stamped in aluminum. It looked like a giant dog tag. The two of us nailed it to the tree above the hole.

Upon her return she buried her father in Arlington. Full military honors. And nobody spit on him.


ALLIE AND I RETURNED to the beach where we had long ago fallen in love. We married. Honeymooned along the beach. Allie was right. She’d been holding her love a long time, and when she gave it to me, well . . .

I bought a ’72 Corvette. Fitting, I thought. I took it apart, put it back together better, and we drove it most nights. We rode the merry-go-round at the carnival. The flying chairs. We laughed. We visited Rosco’s grave, where I ate a doughnut and then gave myself some insulin and told him that I missed him. We filled another Mason jar with sharks’ teeth. We danced along the beach with Gabby and Diego. We did all the things that for years I’d felt guilty doing.

Sometimes I stand on the beach and cry for no reason. No reason at all. Allie found me one afternoon and asked me why. I said, “The place where the tears come from is full again.” After not being able to cry for most of my life, I cry now at the drop of a hat.

And, to be honest, I like it.





49

Voter opinion turned against Bobby. Smelling blood, the networks continued their feeding frenzy. The backlash was constant and severe. He was labeled a traitor. Public death threats multiplied. The airwaves were filled with large personalities, all of whom were standing on an angry soapbox. Many wanted to talk to me.

To turn me against my brother.

Given the growing storm, Bobby resigned. A live press conference. We watched it with sadness.

Later that afternoon I told Allie I needed to go for a ride. As we walked to the Corvette, Catalina hollered at me across the parking lot. “Joe? You’d better take a look at this.”

Around the back of the restaurant, she handed me a flashlight and pointed to the crawl space. We knelt and crawled along the base of the dune until I came upon a smiling Gabby and Diego. Next to them was a dog. It looked like a Rhodesian ridgeback and had evidently given birth to about eight puppies.

Catalina whispered, “That Rosco, he got around.”

Gabby lifted a reddish-brown furball with big paws and floppy ears. Its eyes had barely opened.

“Do we know whose dog it is?” I asked.

“No idea,” Catalina said.

Allie patted my back. “Congratulations, Papa.”

I pointed at the squirming mess of fur. Each pup the spitting image of Rosco. “What am I going to do with all of those?”

Gabby now had a puppy in each hand. She said, “Can we keep them, Mama?”

Catalina raised an eyebrow at me. “See what you have done?”

I smiled. “Good old Rosco.”


I CRANKED THE CORVETTE, and Allie and I drove the coastline southeast. I drove with tears in my eyes. Every few seconds, Allie would reach up and thumb one away. But not all the tears were sad.