I handed him a card. A simple picture. A window, covered in bars. “Me too.”
41
The courtroom was packed. Standing room only. Judge Werther allowed my attorney to begin calling character witnesses. And so he did. Throughout the morning, he called Manuel, Javier, Peter, and Victor. Their presence seemed to make a positive impression on the judge, but he was tough to read. Then he called Catalina. With the judge’s permission, she called Gabby and Diego and let them describe their relationship with me. His demeanor changed slightly when they spoke. He thanked them for their courage and he asked Gabby if her neck had healed. She showed him her throat. Standing before the bench, she said, “But this isn’t what hurts.”
The judge responded, “What does?”
“I miss Rosco.”
Judge Werther nodded. “You mean your dog?”
“He slept with me. When that man put that knife to my throat, Rosco jumped on him.”
The judge looked at me, then back at Gabby. “How was it that Rosco slept with you?”
Gabby pointed at me. “Uncle Joe told him to.”
I’d never heard her call me that. I liked it.
The judge looked at me. “I thought Rosco kept you from having flashback dreams.”
“He did.”
“And yet you made him sleep with her.”
I shrugged. “I knew he’d protect her.”
The judge spoke almost to himself. “Which he did.”
He motioned for Catalina and Gabby to step down. To my surprise, my attorney next called the waitress from the diner, to whom I’d given the truck. She wore a dress. Carried her son in her arms. She told what I’d done, and the judge thanked her for traveling to testify. Next to take the stand were Becca and Tim.
After lunch my attorney called Allie, and she gave her account of me. Of us. She took her time and told the story. The judge must have been a great poker player. He was stoic and had the expression of a piece of granite.
Lastly my attorney called my brother. Bobby had asked to be a character witness. The cameras in the courtroom clicked off a thousand pictures as he made his way to the stand. He was dressed in jeans, running shoes, sleeves rolled up. He swore on the Bible and stated that the words he was about to speak would be the truth.
42
Bobby chewed on his lip and chose his words carefully. His posture wasn’t political. The senator wasn’t on the stand. My brother was. “Your Honor, there’s a piece of this story that no one—including my brother—is telling you.” He looked at me.
The judge responded, “Enlighten us, please, Senator Brooks.”
Whatever story Bobby had come to tell, he’d come to peace with it. He adjusted in his seat, crossed his legs, and folded his hands. And while his eyes were focused on me, he was staring forty-five years into the past.
“In September of 1972, my number was called.” He reached into his front shirt pocket and pulled out a yellowed and wrinkled document. “My draft notice.”
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, l
istening 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.
“He turned around and went back to the only thing he knew. War. Where he spent two more years. During which time he would be awarded this.” Bobby reached into his pocket, then opened his hand to reveal the Congressional Medal of Honor. The audience gasped. Even the judge’s eyes grew large. The network guys sitting behind live camera feeds could not believe what they were hearing.
Bobby continued. “Back home, my life spiraled downward. After rehab and therapy and nearly bankrupting Allie in the process, I cleaned up my act and ran for state senate, convincing all of you that I was a man of my word. In truth, I got elected on the sympathy vote. I based my campaign, and every one since then, on a very good lie. The lie that I’d lived the life my brother lived. It wasn’t difficult. I simply asked the US military for a copy of my records. And since they were in my name, I got them. Somehow no one in the media ever studied my ‘military record’ in any detail. Had they done so, they’d have quickly pieced together that I could not possibly have been drying out in Arizona and at the same time leading special operations in Laos. Or Cambodia. Or wherever he was at the time. Once elected, I learned I was good at politics because I could lie with the best of them. So I traveled up the political ladder and ran for the US Senate. I’ve been re-elected five times, primarily because I was really good at spinning that same lie and who’s not going to vote for a war hero and Medal of Honor winner? I’d made myself the poster boy for the Stars and Stripes. Wasn’t long before I found myself appointed to committees whose sole purpose was to control much of what happened in the military. Those appointments came with top-secret clearance.” Bobby took a deep breath. “A draft-dodging coward with security clearance . . .” He glanced at me. “Ironic, don’t you think?”
The silence in the courtroom was deafening.
He continued. “Even the set of military records the government gave me upon my request were incomplete in several areas. Given Joseph’s activities, much of which our government could not acknowledge, much of the file was highly classified; sections were black-lined or pages were simply missing. But with my classified security clearance, I dug around and patched back together the missing pages of my younger brother’s military service record. Only then did I uncover the true nature and extent of his service, where he was and what he did. Luckily for me, he’d served so well, so secretly, and with such distinction that his entire life was classified. Still is.”
He turned to Suzy, who sat in the audience with her jaw on the floor. “That’s the reason you couldn’t find it. Not to mention the fact that you were looking under the wrong name. But even if you’d had the right name, they’d have never given it to you.”
Suzy was shaking her head. Tears streaming down.
“When I read the reports of what he’d done”—Bobby glanced in his lap where he held my file—“I felt both shame and extreme pride. I had done the unthinkable. Joseph had taken my place. Even my name. He said yes when I said no. I knew I could never pay for what I did to him, but . . . for reasons I’ve never understood, Joseph has never unmasked me.” He looked at me and just shook his head. “For forty-plus years, he’s never told the story I would have told a thousand times over. And for forty-plus years, I’ve been standing on his shoulders, taking credit for his steps.”
Allie, sitting directly behind me, was muffling violent sobs. Suzy sat speechless. Nobody knew what to say or do.
Bobby turned to the judge. “The Latin word meritare means ‘to serve like a soldier.’ From it we get the word unmerited. My brother went to war when he wasn’t technically old enough to go. Barely seventeen. He went without complaint. While there, we taught him how to defend those who could not defend themselves. He did that then. He’s done it his whole life. He’s doing it here, today.” Bobby looked at the judge. “That gift to all of us was then and is now unmerited.” Bobby was calm. Not the least bit anxious. And when he looked at me, for the first time since we were kids I saw my brother in his eyes.
Even the judge was speechless. Bobby paused, then looked back up at him. “A long time ago, my brother gave me what I did not deserve, and, ever since, has taken from me what I did deserve. He may be on trial, but he’s not the criminal. If I could step out of this chair and take his chains, I would. I’d serve his sentence—whatever it may be. I ask this court for mercy.”
43
My heart was pounding in my ears. The pain in my chest had grown unbearable. I slumped over, causing my attorney to ask me if I was all right. I couldn’t respond. Allie stood behind me and put her hand on my back. The cameras turned toward me. Whatever had long held back the pain in my chest was finally losing its grip.
I tried to stand, but I couldn’t move most of the left side of my body. My heart sounded like Niagara in my ears and it felt like someone had shoved a spear through the center of my chest and out my back. I was having trouble breathing. Whatever I was doing got everyone’s attention because all hell broke loose in that courtroom. Their faces suggested everyone was screaming, but I couldn’t hear them. The world I was living in had gone quiet.
Somehow I ended up on the floor where the fluorescent ceiling lights seemed brighter. Somebody had ripped off my shirt, and somebody else hovered over me, holding two paddles. They screamed something, and I was pretty sure I didn’t want them to do what they were about to do, but they slammed the paddles onto my chest and I remember seeing a flash of white light.
And where most people will tell you that in a time like that they saw some great light, I did not. My world went black. Not a sliver of light anywhere.
Since I was nine years old, while I had tried to force my mind to forget, my body had kept a debt ledger, a record of wrongs committed against it. When those things were spoken out loud, brought out into the open, they were torn from their cages, doors ripped off the hinges. What had so long been imprisoned in me now left my body in much the same way the pain had left Allie’s. Involuntarily and with great speed.
The only way I know to describe what I felt is to say that my chest exploded.
And it felt good.
44
My mother held the draft notice in her hand. Her hand was shaking. Tears were dripping off her chin. She was leaning on the hood of my Corvette, staring out across the water. I turned her toward the beach, and we started walking. For a mile, neither of us said a word.
Finally she spoke. “Bobby never met a stranger. He trusts everybody. It’s one of the reasons I love him, but he won’t last a week over there.”
She was right. He wouldn’t.
She crossed her arms. “And you’ll be getting a notice in a few months.” We kept walking. An endless shoreline. No hope in sight.
Mom had worked two, sometimes three jobs since Dad left. She’d clothed us, fed us, nursed cuts and bruises, put up with us. A single mom raising two boys, she’d given us everything she could. She had denied herself any small pleasure to see that we had shoes like the other guys, so they wouldn’t make fun of us. To make sure Bobby had glasses that allowed him to read the chalkboard. To keep a roof over our heads. When times were tight she shopped at the Salvation Army and then wrapped the clothes in K-Mart bags so we wouldn’t know. Mom had not known a life of luxury or ease, but she’d worked hard to make sure we had not known a world as harsh as the one she was living in. Walking down the beach, she held the piece of paper that was going to take everything she had in this world.
“I’ve got a little money saved up.”
She pushed her hair out of her face. “I want you to take your brother and go to California. Maybe Canada. You can come back when it’s over.” She straightened. “There’s no shame in that.”
I eyed the paper. “Does Bobby know?” I asked.
She stared out across the ocean. Shaking her head. “I couldn’t . . .”
Mom stared at the paper, holding it in both hands. Then with anger bubbling, she tore it in two. Then again. Then she just stood there with the four pieces of her heart crumpled in one fist. “I will not live to see both my sons buried. I will not die a childless woman.” She pointed at the Corvette, her resolve growing. “I want you to leave tonight.”
“Mom?”
She knew what I was going to say before I said it. It’s why she had brought me out there. Her lip trembled and she shook her head.
Dark clouds had blown in from the east. The air was thick with electricity. Lightning flashed in the distance. The wind turned and blew in from the south. We saw the sheets of rain rolling toward us. The earth bloomed and smelled of that pungent freshness that rises up out of the dirt just before the rain. I stretched out my hand, uncurled her fingers, and picked the four tattered pieces off her palm.
“Everyone’s always saying how we look like twins,” I said.
She tried to sound strong. “No.”
I looked at my mom. “Don’t tell him until I’m gone.”
She knew I was right. She could keep one son or lose both. She whispered a second time, “No,” but there was no resolve in it. It was as if she were talking to God more than me.
She crumpled into a pile on the sand just as the rain came down in sheets. The heavens opened and rocked the earth. A dozen times, maybe more, lightning flashed. At one point the hair on my neck stood up, and the thunderclap cracked above us.
Mom clenched her fists and tried to hold back the sobs, but soon the wave of emotions crashed over her. She rose up on her knees and screamed at the storm. “They’re all I’ve got! All I’ve got!”
Send Down the Rain Page 22
