A Hero Comes Home

by Sandra Hill

  This was crazy. He shook his head to clear it. There was nothing outstanding about this girl. He’d seen and dated ones much prettier. In fact, normally he would be more attracted to her friend, the taller blonde wearing a red figure-hugging sundress.

  But, no, it was the one with the caramel eyes who drew him. He couldn’t stop staring.

  She noticed his staring. And stared back at him, her head tilted in question.

  His heart skipped a beat, and then began pounding. Ka-boom, ka-boom, ka-boom.

  She’s the one, a voice in his head said.

  The one what? he answered.

  But he knew. The men in his family were reputed to fall hard and instantly for their “one true love.” Yeah, hokey as that was, it was a tradition they all believed in, those who had fallen, that was. He’d always jeered at the notion. Until now.

  This could not be happening to him. Not at this time. He was only twenty-three years old. A recent college grad, two years into his military duty, he’d recently joined the elite Delta Force unit.

  Without thinking, he smiled at her.

  She blinked several times, then smiled back at him.

  And he fell, “hook, line, and sinker,” as his dad, a commercial fisherman, was wont to say, into a deep, deep, forever love.

  Or so he’d thought for many years, Jake mused now in his hospital room. Until the arguments with his wife kept him away from home more than necessary, until a sadistic Taliban operative taught him that maybe she’d been right, maybe he was not worthy of love.

  Call me maybe . . . or not . . .

  For the next week, every evening Outer Banks time, Jake made phone calls home, which he loathed, but looked forward to with a passion that scared him. He didn’t want to be that needy. Neediness made him weak, even weaker than he already was.

  And, despite the option being open to him, he passed on FaceTiming calls. He wasn’t ready to show his sorry self to anyone, not even his family. He didn’t want to scare anyone, especially his young boys.

  The first call to his father was the hardest. Their relationship had been broken for a while after he’d refused to go into the commercial fishing business with him after college, but they’d put that behind them in recent years, or so he’d hoped. After that, they’d been awkward with each other, always nervous of saying the wrong things. Like now.

  “Jacob? Is it really you?”

  “Yep. It’s me, Pop. How’s the fishing?” That’s certainly a safe question. Totally irrelevant but what the hell!

  “Up and down, as usual,” his father said. Not to be diverted, he said, “I couldn’t believe it when they told me you were alive. Three years in a cave? Really? You, who hated tight spaces! Could barely stand to sleep overnight in the cabin of Lazy Days when we went out on extended trips.”

  Jake had become adept at avoiding questions about his POW experience, per Major Butt-inator’s Do’s and Don’ts list. Mainly, he avoided any questions specific to his three lost years. Made a joke or sidetracked the conversation. Thus, he was prepared for his father’s comment. “It was a big cave,” he remarked. “But, hey, is that old rust bucket still staying afloat?”

  “Bite your tongue, boy. Lazy Days will be riding the waves when you and I are both gone.” He seemed to realize what he’d said then, referring to Jake’s death, and muttered a curse under his breath.

  Great! Now everyone is going to be overly sensitive over what they say around me. They’ll be avoiding any words like pirates (as in eye patch or peg leg), or missing people (whether soldiers or young girls off the streets), or caves. Well, fuck that!

  “And you, Dad . . . no thoughts of retiring?” Another sidetrack.

  “Hell, no! I’m only sixty-two. Why would I retire?”

  Maybe to relax once in a while. Maybe to spend time with your family. Maybe to stop beating up on a body that could take only so much abuse hauling nets and two-hundred-pound fish. But then, Jake realized that those same suggestions could be applied to himself. An unsettling thought!

  “Is Old Mike still with you?” Instead of answering a question, turn the tables and ask your own questions, Major Durand had suggested in one of their annoying “facilitation” sessions.

  Old Mike had been his father’s first mate on the thirty-five-foot boat as long as Jake could remember. Even when he must not have been all that old, though he had to be close to seventy now. Jake had no idea where the crotchety character had gotten that nickname, or where he’d come from.

  His father cleared his throat, then said, “You come home, son, y’hear? You and me have fences to mend.”

  Jake could swear he heard tears in his father’s voice, which was impossible. His dad was not an emotional person, being a native New Englander who’d maintained his stoic, undemonstrative personality. In fact, he didn’t think he’d ever heard him use the word love. Not that he doubted his father’s love for him or for his mother, for whom he’d moved to her hometown in North Carolina after their marriage. It just wasn’t ever spoken of. Especially not when Jake had about broken his heart in leaving the Outer Banks for a military career, instead of the damned family fishing business.

  In truth, Jake couldn’t ever recall telling his father that he loved him, either. Though he had loved him. Unconditionally. Despite his pigheaded, inflexible ways.

  “Dad, there are no fences,” he assured his father. “We’re family. Always have been, always will be, even if you are a stubborn sonofabitch.”

  “Takes one to know one,” his father choked out.

  Definite tears. Especially when he said, “I wish your mother had lived to see this day. She prayed for you every day, even after we got the death notice.”

  He had to ask something that had been nagging at him. “Dad, did I cause Mom’s death? I mean, she was only fifty-five when she passed. Was her worry over me what brought on the heart attack?”

  “Forget that idea right now, son. Your mother had an undiagnosed heart condition. Runs in her side of the family. Good Lord! With all you’ve been through, don’t go looking for trouble.”

  Jake didn’t argue, but he wasn’t convinced, either.

  Then there were the calls to Sally, which were uncomfortable, to say the least. Mostly, they talked about all that had happened in Bell Cove the past three years, especially regarding the bakery she’d started with his death benefits. “A sweet reward!” he’d joked.

  She hadn’t laughed.

  A morbid joke, yeah, but give me some points for trying to break the ice.

  He liked hearing her talk about the bakery, how she’d started out there, working part-time for the former owner, Delia Kohler, after his last deployment, then buying Delia out when she retired.

  “At first, I was such a klutz in the bakery, as you can well imagine,” Sally told him. “Remember the time I made brownies and they were so underdone we had to eat them with a spoon?”

  He remembered, all right, and he remembered where they’d eaten them, and where the splatters had landed, and how they’d cleaned them up. Smiling, he replied, “No, I don’t remember that, but I recall you asking me one time what a whisk was.”

  “I’ve come a long way, baby. In fact, I bet I have a dozen different whisks in my bakery at the moment.”

  “A girl can never have too many whisks, I suppose.” That was as lame a joke as anything I’ve ever heard. Jeesh! Stop trying so hard, man. “So, what’s the specialty in your bakery? Wasn’t Delia big on pies?”

  “Cookies.”

  “Huh?”

  “That’s my specialty. Yeah, I offer artisan breads and special-event cakes, and six flavors of homemade ice cream in fresh-baked waffle cones during the summer, but I wanted something people could buy and eat on the street when they’re walking around the square. Something people could hold in their hands and not make a mess, like filled cupcakes. Donuts are good for that purpose, but practically every bakery on the Outer Banks does donuts, some very good ones. I had to have something unique.”

  “C
ookies are unique?”

  “Mine are. They are the size of saucers, and I call them Mookies . . . as in monster cookies.”

  He chuckled.

  “Don’t laugh. The most successful bakeries have something unusual, like the Apple Uglies at the Orange Blossom in Buxton.”

  “I love those! So, what kind of Mookies do you make?”

  “It varies. Some of them are seasonal, like Cove Candy Cane Crunch at Christmas, and Strawberry Shores in midsummer. Jello Waves all through the tourist season because of the bright colors, which the kids love, and the usual ones, too, like Chocolate Chip Coasters. Surfin’ with Ginger. Sandy Tarts. Butterscotch on the Beach. Tides of Peanut Butter. Walnut Wafer Waves. Salty Caramel Shells.”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa! I get the picture. What I like most is how passionate you seem about all this. But I wonder, well . . .” Why hadn’t she gone back to New York when he’d “died”? Why hadn’t she resumed an aspiring career with singing? As far as he knew, the only singing she’d done since he’d brought her to Bell Cove was in the church choir, and he didn’t know if she’d even continued with that. Surely, her parents would have welcomed her back to the city, even with three kids. But these were questions best saved for another occasion.

  “What?” she prodded. “What do you wonder about?”

  “I wonder why you haven’t sent me any cookies this past week,” he said.

  “By the time they arrived there, you’d already be here,” she pointed out.

  Which was something he did not want to think about now. Not yet. Time was going by too quickly now that the decision had been made for him to go home.

  So, in their nightly chats, he and Sally skirted around anything involving their personal relationship. Most guys in his situation would be engaged in tantalizing discussions of what they wanted to do with their wives when they got home, mostly related to beds and naked bodies. Once he’d teasingly said, “So, I guess we’ve been given another chance to get us a John,” based on their naming their kids after the four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and John, which ended with that third son.

  Jake’s remark had been met with silence.

  Guess there won’t be any action in that regard, at least not right away. What had he expected when her last words to him when heading out for deployment three years and three or so months ago had been “You selfish bastard!” followed by a slammed door.

  At first, Sally had asked questions about his captivity, but eventually gave up when she never got real answers.

  Like “What did you eat, living in a cave?” As if his diet had been important during those brutal days!

  “Bat wings,” he’d replied. “They taste just like chicken wings without the sauce.”

  “Why do you always have to make fun of me like that? As if I don’t have the brains to understand what you do. Or that I can’t take the truth.”

  “I wasn’t making fun of you. I was making fun of myself.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  Or, “How did your leg get injured? And your eye? Oh, Jacob! Your beautiful eyes!”

  Sally had been attracted to his blue eyes from their first meeting, said they were among his best features. “I still have one left.”

  “That’s not funny,” she’d said. “How did it happen . . . the eye and the leg?”

  “I always was clumsy,” he’d answered.

  “That doesn’t even pass the giggle test.”

  Which was true. He’d never been clumsy. Just the opposite. Highly coordinated and able to spin on a dime and land on his feet.

  Mostly, they talked about the boys.

  “Matt considers himself the man of the family since you’ve been gone.”

  “That’s quite a load for an eight-year-old.”

  “Yes, but he takes it seriously. You’ll have to be careful not to step on his toes.”

  “Point taken,” he said.

  “Mark suffers from the typical middle child syndrome.”

  Sad to say, Jake had no idea what that was, and he’d said so.

  “Middle children often act out because they feel their older siblings get all the privileges and can do things they can’t just because of their age, while the younger children get more attention.”

  Jake groaned. “So, what do I do about that?”

  “Just give him equal attention.”

  “How about Luke? What’s his problem?”

  “None at all. Happy-go-lucky and mischievous as all get-out. The most like you, I suppose. He’s missing two of his front teeth at the moment, and he’s very self-conscious about it. Whatever you do, don’t mention his lisp.”

  Then there were the short conversations with the boys themselves.

  Matt said, “I remember you.”

  “That’s good. I certainly remember you.” And the day you were born. Six pounds, six ounces. Beautiful. And I was there to “catch” you when you came out, big guy. Sad to say, I was not there for Mark and Luke’s births, being on active ops at the time. “Guess you’ve been the man of the family since I’ve been gone. Hope you’ll help me get the swing of things when I return.”

  “Yep. There’s lots to learn,” Matt said.

  Jake could tell that Matt was pleased at his not taking over unilaterally. As if he would! Jake had been away too often even during normal times for that.

  “Will you be back in time for the scout banquet? I’ll be getting my Bear badge. Mark and Luke are only Lions, but Mark will be moving up to Wolf, if he finishes his badge requirements in time.” In a whisper, he confided, “Mark is terrible at tying knots, even with PopPop helpin’ him.”

  Boy Scouts, Jake realized. Sally must have told Jake that they were in scouting, but it had slipped his mind. “When is the banquet?”

  “Two weeks.”

  “I should be there,” he promised and gulped at the prospect of appearing at such a semipublic event.

  When Mark came on the line, the first thing he said was, “Just so you know, I can’t tie knots worth diddly-squat.”

  “Diddly-squat, huh?”

  “That’s what PopPop sez. Not to me, but I heard him tell that to Old Mike. I’m just dumb.”

  “You’re not dumb, Mark,” he said to his clearly insecure son. “Can you keep a secret?”

  “Uh-huh,” Mark replied, tentatively. Probably no one had ever trusted him enough with a secret before.

  “I had trouble with knots, too. In fact, PopPop told me directly, ‘You’re never gonna be a fisherman, son, if you can’t tie a damn . . . darn knot.’ I had the hardest trouble with slipknots. Almost didn’t earn that badge.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. I’ll help you practice. I have a special trick for remembering the order of the ties.”

  “Yay! I can’t wait till you get here,” Mark said, then confided in a whisper, “Matt is too bossy.”

  By the time he got around to Luke, Jake was generally smiling.

  “My birfday ith next month,” Luke said with the cute lisp Sally had warned him about. “Thammy Thmith got a python for his birfday.”

  “Um. I don’t think your mother would like a snake in the house.”

  “Thath what she said,” Luke said dolefully. “Maybe a little one.”

  “Wouldn’t a dog make more sense?”

  “Whoop-ee! Daddy’s gonna get me a dog for my birfday,” he’d heard his son yell to whoever was in the room with him.

  He hadn’t exactly said that, had he?

  And so it went, as the days went by way too fast before Jake got the go-ahead to leave Germany.

  Chapter 5

  Turns out, you can go home again . . . even if you don’t want to . . .

  A week later, Jake was in the passenger seat of a small two-seater Viking Twin Otter, a float plane, being piloted by his old friend Ethan Rutledge. Both of them were wearing those heavy earphones that allowed them to speak to each other over the loud noise of the engine, while Ethan’s connected to air control somewhere on the island, as well
.

  Both Sally and Jake’s father had offered to pick him up . . . Sally at the airport in Richmond, or his dad on his fishing boat across the bay. But Jake knew from his nightly phone calls that reporters were bird-dogging them. Since the government would give the press no more information, especially not a timetable for his return to the USA, they figured his family would be their best bet for making contact with him. In fact, Landstuhl was glad to be rid of him after weeks of newshounds by the dozens trying to “storm the gates” of the hospital looking for him.

  In any case, it was a short aerial trip over Bell Sound from the mainland to the Outer Banks, unlike the long but scenic drive along the beach road and several ferries to the barrier island, with the Atlantic Ocean on one side, and various bays and sounds on the other. Such a leisurely trip could take six hours or more from end to end in high season, which he would have, nonetheless, much preferred . . . in fact, which he’d dreamed about on numerous nights of his imprisonment, especially following days of torture.

  Cruising along in his old pickup truck, windows down, a salty breeze coming in off the ocean. Fishing boats and sailboats in the distance. The occasional lighthouse. Surfers and beachcombers.

  However, his leg could never have stood the pain of being in a driving position for that long. Besides, too many people would recognize him along the way . . . either from growing up on the Outer Banks, or from his picture being flashed on national TV, repeatedly, following the news conference last week in DC where his rescue had been announced by the president, along with the secretary of defense, a congressman, and other high mucky-mucks.

  Jake had declined to attend, even when he’d gotten a personal invitation from the president himself via Skype. Declined was too soft a word for his “Hell, no!” refusal, delivered in as polite a manner as he could manage for the POTUS while still conveying his point. He never could have regurgitated all that “fake news” crap they’d concocted about his MIA (not POW) experience without . . . well, vomiting.