Three hours later, she boarded a plane.
37
I was standing in the vineyard alongside Tim and Becca, cutting grapes and laying them carefully in large bins. Despite their success and the fact that the White House, some famous French restaurants, and multi-Michelin-star restaurants across the US were now serving their wine, they couldn’t resist the chance to get their hands dirty. It was late in the afternoon, the sun was going down, we were laughing. They were asking questions about my life, and I, as usual, was tight-lipped. They knew I’d traveled, had owned some businesses, but they knew almost nothing about my history. Including my real name.
A figure appeared atop the hill. The sun shone behind the visitor’s back, so all we could tell was that she was female. The wind blew her hair sideways. She shaded her eyes, studied us, and then began walking toward us.
Tim said, “Looks like another lost tourist.”
I watched her walk. The rhythm. The presence. “She’s not lost.”
Allie closed the distance until she stood less than an arm’s length away. She brushed my long hair out of my face. Gingerly. Tears streaming down. “Been looking for you everywhere. Bobby too.”
I nodded. Tim and Becca were listening with rapt attention.
“I’ve called your phone number ten thousand times.”
I said nothing because I didn’t know what to say.
Tim cleared his throat, and I turned toward them. “Becca and Tim, I’d like you to meet Allie.”
Tim hopped down off the back of the flatbed and toweled off his hands. “This is Allie? Like . . . the Allie?”
I nodded. To her surprise, Tim hugged Allie and said the two of them had long wanted to meet her.
I asked, “How’d you find me?”
Allie held up the brochure and pointed at my picture in the background, then she slipped her hand into mine. “I need to ask you something, and I need an honest answer. Okay?”
I nodded. “I’ve only lied to you once in my life.”
“When?”
“When I told you I was going to California to outrun the war.”
“Did you really go?”
“Yes.”
“What about Suzy’s evidence? The fact that you have no record?”
“For me to tell you the secret of my life means I have to destroy someone else’s. And while part of me might wish that . . . I can’t do it.”
Allie’s eyes narrowed. “Bobby.”
I didn’t respond.
She shook her head. “But Suzy said you have no military record, and they have all kinds of stuff showing you were in California.”
I shrugged. “That wasn’t me.”
“How can you say that? They have your signature.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
Allie pounded my chest. “It matters to me. You matter to me.”
“How’re Gabby and Diego?” I asked. “And Rosco?”
She shook her head. “Thick as thieves.” She paused. “For once and forever, I need you to tell me why you won’t tell the truth.”
“It won’t change the past.”
She clasped my face in her hands. “I’m not talking about changing our past, Joseph. I’m talking about changing our future.”
I searched for the words. “I told you I had an ulcer once.”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“It was anger. Anger eating a hole in me.”
Allie clung to me. “Can you prove any of what you’re telling us?”
“Yes.”
“Will you?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“For me to do what you’re asking is to go back to what I know, which is killing, and I won’t do that. Not anymore. Whatever life I would gain is not worth what it will cost.”
“But—”
“Allie—” I brushed her hair out of her face. “Anger, rage . . . they’re as real as you and me. They don’t have bodies like us, but they live . . . live in us. Take up residence in our soul. If I do what you’re asking, I let them out where they spill out across the world and spread to other people. But if I don’t . . . then they die with me. I take them to the grave. It’s the only way to win a war I’ve been almost fifty-four years fighting.”
“But what about me!” She clutched my shirt and pulled herself to me. “What about me?”
Becca wrapped an arm around me, and the four of us walked to the house, where we sat on the porch and Allie listened to me tell the story of the last year and then some. I guess I don’t need to tell you that she cried through much of it.
When I finished, she relayed the story of life on Cape San Blas. Manuel, Javier, Peter, and Victor had transferred most of the carnival and set it up across the street. Business was so good that they’d had to hire some friends from the trailer park. Bobby’s people had come through, and she’d been able to help them and their families navigate the path to citizenship. Catalina was almost single-handedly running the restaurant. The kids were in school. Rosco seemed happy enough, but often in the afternoons he’d stand on the porch and stare in the direction he last saw my truck. The Blue Tornado had prospered, the critical reviews were astounding, and my Corvette was lonely and waiting for my return.
“And you?” I asked.
She slipped her hand in mine. “I walk the beaches at night. Still holding my love.”
While we were watching the sun fall, Tim returned from the kitchen with the radio. “You two better listen to this.”
The distraught voice belonged to Suzy’s producer. “We’ll keep you posted throughout the night and tomorrow, but I’ve known Suzy a long time, through all the ups and downs. This started with a desire to find her father. That never happened. Then the Joseph Brooks debacle of last year.” A pause. “I don’t know if Suzy will ever return to the microphone. She’s alive, but . . . I just don’t know. I think we may have lost the one voice who made us believe.”
Tim turned off the radio and explained that Suzy had been found unresponsive at her Los Angeles home. An empty bottle of pills next to her. They’d gotten her to the hospital in time.
I sat quietly a long time. Eventually Allie asked me, “What’re you thinking?”
“I’m thinking how a forty-year-old war can still kill people.” I turned to her. “You in a hurry to get back?”
She spread her fingers inside mine. “I’m not letting you out of my sight.” She kissed me. “Ever.”
38
We drove to the City of Angels and found the hospital. I was pretty sure they’d never let me see her, but I had to try. I made it to the sixth floor, where her production company had placed two broad-chested security guards to prevent the media from making her attempted suicide any more of a circus than it already was. They put their hand on my chest and shook their heads. “Not a chance.”
“I have something she’s going to want to hear.”
“Sorry, pal.”
The producer overheard the commotion and walked into the hall. When she saw me, she pointed a finger. “What’re you doing here?” Then she spotted Allie, and her composure changed. Less steel wall. More wooden fence.
“I have something to tell her.”
She did not look impressed. “Right.” She turned to go. “Haven’t you done enough damage?”
“It’s about her dad.”
“Really?” She raised an eyebrow. “You have information about her father?”
“I know what happened.”
“How would you know?”
“I was with him.”
“And you can prove this?”
“I can.”
She studied me. “Why now?”
“It’s painful.”
“To you or to her?”
“Both.”
She looked at Allie. “You believe him?”
“I do.”
She shrugged. “You might duck when you walk in. She’ll probably unload at your head.”
I walked in, Allie close behind. Suzy lay there, sta
ring out the window, a thousand miles away. I sat next to her bed, risking being slapped or punched, and slid my hand into hers. I whispered, “I need to tell you a story.”
She slowly turned her head toward me. “I’m not sure I can handle any more of your stories.” When she saw Allie, she looked confused. “You too?”
Allie nodded. “Just listen to him.”
A security guard stood over me. One hand on my shoulder. “You want us to remove him, Ms. Suzy?”
She studied my eyes, then shook her head. “Thanks, George.”
George went out, shutting the door behind him.
I sat back, took a deep breath, and started in. “When I first landed in-country—”
Suzy interrupted me. “Before you go any further, can you prove any of this?”
“Yes.”
“Beyond any shadow of doubt?”
I nodded.
She laid her head back and stared at the ceiling. “Because if not, George is going to break both your legs.”
“When I returned for my second tour, years three and four, they continued sending us into Laos. Well into Laos. I’d take teams of ten to twelve men in at a given time. We were trying to disrupt their supply lines. They’d fly in low, drop us twenty miles behind the lines, and we’d make our way out after we’d done what we came to do. A good chopper pilot was tough to come by. The good ones didn’t last long, because to be good meant they had to get into and out of places that nobody would want to get into or out of. They had to care more about someone else than themselves.
“We had this young guy, fresh out of West Point, green behind the ears, kept a picture of his girl on the instrument panel. To begin with, he was not a good pilot. He was afraid. Green. Trying not to get shot. We were all afraid of what his fear might cost us, because it wouldn’t let him get us where we needed. I tried to get him removed, but everybody was sick of the war and they were sick of hearing complaints, so mine landed on deaf ears. We were stuck with him.
“On our fourth mission he landed some five miles from where we were supposed to be. To make matters worse, we were surrounded by some very angry people. By then I could fly that bird well enough to get us home. My team was looking at me, and I knew that they knew that I knew I needed to do something so this dumb sucker didn’t get us all killed. So I reached up and put both my hands around his throat and started squeezing. I’d done it to the enemy. What was one more? He turned blue and his eyes began popping out of his head. He was seconds from checking out, and I was just a few more seconds from dumping his body in a rice paddy and flying home, when he pointed to the dash. To the picture. His daughter. Just a few months old. I looked at that picture and something in me remembered.”
I pulled Suzy’s baby picture out of the envelope in my pocket and set it in her hand.
“Something in me remembered that I had, at one time, loved somebody too. I let go, he choked, vomited, cussed, and flew us home, threatening some sort of court martial. When we landed, I dragged him out on the beach and had a conversation about who and what he wanted to be when he grew up. He told me, through tears, that he wanted to be your dad. That you and your mom were all that mattered. That he was just trying to get home. Somewhere on that beach, I saw a scared guy who still loved. Who reminded me of the kid I used to be. And in that moment, I’d have given everything to be just like him. So I made a decision I was going to get him home.
“Every morning we shared a cup of coffee. Told stories of home. If I wasn’t there, he’d buy me a cup and set it in my place in hopes I’d make it home to drink it with him. We talked about his girl, about Allie, about fast cars, and he said he wanted to make it home to drive my Corvette. If he was flying I’d buy two cups, drink one, and keep the other full and hot until he could enjoy it with me. We did this for a year. We thought we had it beat. We were starting to let ourselves think about home and the possibility that we might make it back. He had gotten really good. Best I ever knew.
“I had taken a team in. The team had done their job, but things had gone badly. The team had been split. In the confusion they’d rendezvoused at Bravo and left me at Alpha. I’d been cut, shot. Half blown up. Lost some blood. Things were not looking too good. I patched myself up, crawled into a hole, and kept quiet. The bad guys were monitoring the radio.
“After two days I ran out of water, so I drank out of a stream. Upstream was a dead buffalo that I wouldn’t find until the next day. By then the dysentery had already set in. I became dehydrated. I’d try to walk and my whole body cramped up. I’d been alone a week when I called it in.
“They said they were glad to hear from me; they needed me fifteen miles south. I told them I needed some antibiotics and what they could do with their fifteen miles. They reiterated their order to hump it south. I reiterated my previous statements and told them if I made it out, I’d hunt every one of them down. I’d kill them, their wives, their children, their dog. Even their dreams.
“A minute later, the pilot’s voice echoed on the line. He said two words: ‘I’m coming.’ Two hours later he landed, dragged me into the chopper, started an IV of antibiotics, and we lifted off. We thought we were in the clear, but an hour and a half from Camp California a rocket cut our rudder. Sent us spinning in a circle. Somehow he landed. I climbed out of the wreckage, pulled him out, and the two of us disappeared into nowhere with a whole bunch of bad somebodies chasing us. By the end of the third day, I was carrying him on my back.
“The first bullet caught me in the stomach. The second passed through him and was headed into me when this stopped it.” I set a book in her hand. “When I told you the story of the man’s body I’d carried for eight days . . . that was your dad.”
Tears were pouring off her chin. I set his watch and dog tag in her hands, and turned the brass Zippo in my hand.
“Against a direct order, and in a stolen helicopter, your father came to get me when no one else would. He was the best of them. The best of them all. He gave me what I didn’t deserve and took what I did.”
We sat in the quiet several minutes. Her eyes were closed as she let her fingers trace the leather cover and letters of his dog tag.
“It’s a gift I can never . . .” I trailed off. Moments passed. “For a long time, I couldn’t understand what would make a man do that. To drop into hell and give himself for another.” I was crying now. “Lying there in that mud, his warm red life trickling out beneath my fingers and the light in his eyes fading, he started laughing. He said, ‘Joseph?’
“I was trying to keep pressure on the hole. Keep him talking. ‘Yeah?’
“He smiled. ‘I want to let you in on a secret. It’s time you knew.’
“I was too busy to look at him. I said, ‘Yeah, what’s that?’
“He tapped my chest. ‘Evil won’t kill evil.’ He tried to take a deep breath and couldn’t. ‘Not ever.’
“I couldn’t stop it. His life was seeping out between my fingers.
“He pulled my forehead to his and whispered, ‘Only one thing does that.’
“I was crying. Crying hard.
“He smiled and placed his hand flat across my heart. He closed his eyes and spoke through a whisper. ‘And it’s the only thing we really need.’ Then he was gone.”
When I could muster the words, I said, “Suzy, I’ve wanted to tell you that I’m sorry for your whole life.”
We sat for an hour. Neither of us talking.
THE MOON ROSE OUTSIDE the window. She blew her nose. “So . . . everything you said in your interviews with me was true?”
“Yes.”
She choked back a sob. “Joseph, I am so—”
I placed a finger across her lips. “You don’t owe me anything.”
“Forgive me?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“Please.”
“I’ll tell you the same thing your father told me when I asked him that same ridiculous question.”
“Which was?”
“There’s nothing to forgi
ve.”
Suzy sat up and hugged me for a long, long time. Tears fell. Tears that had been stuffed inside me an even longer time. I don’t know where they all came from, but I cried a lot. I didn’t know my heart could hold that much.
She studied me. “There’s more to your story, isn’t there?”
“Yes.”
“But you can’t tell me, can you?”
I turned the index card in my hand. A picture of her tearstained face—of a soul coming clean. “No.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
“Won’t.”
She looked at Allie. “Does she know?”
“No.”
“Will you ever tell us?”
I gently laid the index card in her hand and shook my head.
WE SPENT THE AFTERNOON laughing. I told her a hundred stories about her dad, his sense of humor. I described his laughter, his affinity for cigars and good Scotch, and his love of all things related to her mom. How he talked about her. How he wanted to move to the mountains of Carolina and build a cabin and sit by the fire and hold her hand. Teach her to ski. Walk her down the aisle.
By evening Suzy’s producer had ordered pizza, pulled up a chair, and sent the security guards home. Suzy was sitting up, eating. She’d turned the corner. The voice that made us all believe, believed again.
At midnight I turned to leave. She tugged on my arm. “I need a favor.”
“Anything.”
She told me and I said, “You sure?”
“Positive.”
I kissed her forehead. “I’ll be there.”
39
They go from strength to strength; each one appears before God in Zion.
—PSALM 84:7
Suzy had spent the last month getting healthy and spreading the word. She’d returned to the air, told the story of her dad and me. The national networks caught on, tracked me down, and covered the story. At first they were cynical. Doubters and haters. Then they did their own homework, and while they could not put their hands on my military record, two of the folks in Suzy’s office confirmed through an unnamed back-channel source (which smelled a lot like a leak from Bobby or his people) that I had one and that I had served four tours and been decorated at least eight times—including the Congressional Medal.