“Done with what?”
“Thinking.”
“Well . . . I don’t know.”
She leaned into me and kissed me, pressing her face against mine. While the other kisses had been kind and gentle, this was more of a pass a passionate teenager might make. When she sat up and peeled away from me, I actually uttered the word, “Wow.”
She sat up, perplexed. Staring from my lips to me. “This whole exchange is better when two people do it. It’s called ‘kissing.’ It’s when your lips speak what your heart feels. Or have you forgotten how?”
I laughed. “I might have. It’s been a long time.”
She kissed me again. When she’d finished smothering me, which I didn’t mind at all, she wiped her smeared lipstick off with a finger, smiling. “Well, that’s a start.”
She sat back in her seat and threw her feet up on the dash. “You’re going to give me a complex if you don’t make a pass at me soon.” She pushed her hair back. “I mean, we’re not that old. First it was the pajamas, and you did nothing. Now I’m practically throwing myself at you, and . . .” She undid her top button. “I’m still a kid at heart.”
I put my arm around her. “What you’re getting, or not getting, from me has nothing to do with you.”
“Why then?” She half smiled. “If you tell me you’re married, I am going to shoot you in the face.”
I laughed. “I’m not married. I promise.”
“Good, ’cause I’d hate to have to turn your head into a canoe.” We laughed. She leaned against me. “That’s the first time I’ve been able to laugh about that whole thing. Ten years wasted from my life, and here I am laughing about it.”
“That’s good.”
“But that still doesn’t answer my question.”
“I thought we were finished talking about that.”
“Nope. And you haven’t said, or more importantly done, anything that makes me think we’re any closer to you wrapping your arms around me and making out with me.”
“Are you this forward with all your car dates?”
“Just you.”
I tried to explain. “There’s a thing that happens when you watch guys . . . get gone. And as their numbers add up, and the months pass and their faces flash with some regularity before you . . . you begin to feel guilty for . . . feeling. For desire. For hope. For laughter. For kissing a beautiful girl. Like somehow, to have any emotion that is good, or to be with anyone else, is like spitting on their memory. I know that sounds crazy, but the moment I start to let myself feel anything good, their faces pop up in my mind. And . . . any good emotion feels like a betrayal.”
“A betrayal of who?”
“The guys who never had the chance.” I rubbed my hands together. “Letting myself experience or desire pleasure is like a shot through the heart of their memory.”
To her credit, Allie didn’t listen and then try to fix me. She just listened. After a minute she slid her hand inside my shirt, placing her palm flat against my heart. “You need to know something.” Her hand felt warm across my chest. “I’ve been holding my love a long time. Twice disastrously married doesn’t change that. I’ve never given my heart to anyone the way I once gave it to you. Right now, it’s full. I don’t know that I can hold it in much longer.” She spoke softly. “I don’t want to make light of anything you just said, but if those red-blooded guys that you hold in your heart were here in this seat with us, I think they’d tell you it was okay. They’d cheer you on. They’d be fist-pumping and knuckle-bumping and whatever it is guys do.”
I wrapped my arm tight around her. Smiling. “They’d be saying a lot more than that.”
She smiled. “Then you should listen to them.”
33
The soft opening arrived. As did crowds of hungry people. We opened for lunch and had anticipated being open for dinner, but by three p.m. we’d sold out of everything but water. Two of the first customers were my cigar-smoking, Harley-driving local who’d never met a stranger and the building inspector. I sat them each in a booth overlooking the ocean and bought their lunch. For dessert my Harley friend ordered a plate of hush puppies and polished them off with a cigar on the porch.
The second day, Allie doubled her food order and we sold out by three thirty. This continued throughout the week, and by Friday night there was a two-and-a-half-hour wait at the door. She looked at me from the hostess stand, shaking her head. “Where did all these people come from?”
We survived the weekend. Allie had decided that we’d close Mondays to give the staff a break and allow the cleaning team time to scour the restaurant.
Monday afternoon found all of us relaxing. The family was playing on the beach while Allie and I sat on the porch. She was counting the receipts from the week, and I was rubbing her feet. I said, “Are you cooking the books, or balancing them?”
She shook her head. “No need to cook them. If my math is correct, we netted seventeen thousand dollars. That means I can start paying you back.”
As the sun was just dropping over the edge of the Gulf, giving way to my favorite time of day, a courier drove up the drive with a package addressed to Allie. She signed for it and then sat on the porch overlooking the dunes and ocean. Her mind was spinning with a dozen things, not least of all the foot massage, so she totally ignored the sender and simply tore open the package.
I saw the return address, so I had a pretty good idea things were about to get interesting. I stood and walked down the steps to the edge of the dunes and the path that led to the beach. I could hear the kids laughing along the water’s edge. She opened the envelope as I watched.
She pulled out the paid-in-full notarized receipt for her back taxes and other liens, along with a paid-in-full notarized receipt for the satisfaction of her mortgage, along with the stamped and recorded deed to the Blue Tornado.
She stared at the papers. Reading. Rereading. Turning them sideways. Once it sank in, she crumpled and turned into a puddle on the porch. A pretty good reaction.
After she composed herself, she looked my direction and held up the papers. “I thought we had agreed you were just going to pay the back taxes. Make interest payments.” She made quotation marks with her fingers. “‘Get me on my feet.’”
“Correct. I paid back taxes. And made”—I held up a finger—“one interest payment.”
She shook the papers at me. “Along with all the principal.”
“It was easier to write one check.”
Calmly she placed the papers back in the envelope and laid them on the porch table. Then she started racing toward me. “Joseph Brooks!”
Allie chased me through the dunes and out onto the beach where the kids found her hysterical screaming and my laughing rather comical. Rosco ran in circles around us. We weaved down the beach, then back up. I was laughing so hard I was having a tough time putting one foot in front of another. Finally she caught me along the edge of the water. When she did, I picked her up and carried her into the waves, where we fell into waist-deep water. She stood, soaking wet, hair matted to her face. I pushed it back behind her ears. She cupped my face in her hands and kissed me square on the lips. Then again. “I can never pay this back . . . you know that, right?”
“It’s a gift. You don’t pay those back.”
Her face took on a serious look. “Are you broke?”
“Why? You trying to decide if you still like me?”
“No, I didn’t mean it like—”
“No. I’m not broke.”
“I can’t believe you did that.” She studied me. Head tilted. “Why?”
“Sometimes . . . our debt is more than we can pay.”
“But . . . ?”
“Long time ago, a friend gave me a gift I can never repay. The longer I live out the reality of that gift, the more I come to understand the enormity of what I owe and what is required to wipe the slate.”
34
Opening day was an explosion of people, color, lights, sound, and a good bit of chaos
thrown in for good measure. When the restaurant opened at eleven a.m., a two-hour wait was lined up at the door. We’d set up a bar on the porch along with a walk-up window with a reduced menu for people who wanted just appetizers or something to eat with their drink on the porch.
Allie reminded me that the tension with any great restaurant is how to produce a product so good that folks are willing to stand in line to get it while not making the people feel rushed who, sitting in their seats, are enjoying the product. New technology allowed us to text people when their table was ready. That meant they weren’t tied to the front steps and could make their way to the beach where the sea breeze, sunshine, and waves gently rolling across the shoreline added to the ambience.
Allie was in her element. And if anyone knew how to run a restaurant—which included anticipating problems and fixing unanticipated problems—she was a pro. She never looked frazzled, made people feel welcome, and yet had a keen eye for presentation, food quality, timeliness, service, customer satisfaction. She could multitask on a level I couldn’t comprehend. And somehow, in the midst of this exercise in controlled chaos, she found the wherewithal to actually sit down at tables with patrons and check in on so-and-so’s momma or daddy or distant relative in Siam or Topeka.
I figured I was of the most help behind the scenes. Washing dishes. Mopping floors. Stocking the bar. Cleaning bathrooms. The less people interaction the better. I knew if I just kept my head down and focused on the systems or machines that helped us operate, I’d be fine. When the lights and the noise and the number of people grew too much, I’d stop and count forks or plates or sketch a face in a booth or some stranger sitting on a barstool. My stack of index cards was never far away.
WHILE THE CARNIVAL WAS still a work in progress, Manuel, Javier, Peter, and Victor had succeeded in reassembling the merry-go-round on the edge of the parking lot. Along with a few toss-and-throw games and the Paul Bunyan hammer swing. We’d strung lights and laid down hay for people to walk on. Gabby and Diego offered free lemonade and popcorn. The added distraction helped occupy those waiting.
We finished Saturday’s shift about two o’clock Sunday morning. We’d been up close to twenty-four hours, and yet Allie was still smiling and darting around like the Energizer bunny. The entire staff had yet to go home, and yet we were scheduled to be back in the restaurant in seven hours to start prepping.
Even the kids were still awake. Gabby lay on the floor using Rosco as a pillow. It was a good picture. I propped my feet up and transposed it to paper. As I was finishing my sketch, Allie thanked the staff and then said with a sly smirk, “Make sure you tell your friends to come tomorrow. Should be an interesting evening.”
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.’”
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.”
Send Down the Rain Page 18
