by Shawn Inmon
The nurse read through the next few paragraphs and pity spread across her face. “I have met someone else, and he has asked me to marry him—“
“—That’s enough.” Scott looked away.
“I’ll leave it here for you on your table.”
“No, please don’t do that. Take it away.”
She glanced at the page, read the rest, and then tucked it away in the pocket of her uniform. “I sure will. Private McKenzie, is there anything else I can do for you?”
Scott couldn’t make eye contact with her. Couldn’t speak. Couldn’t even move to acknowledge her question.
The nurse left him alone.
Chapter Six
Two years to the day after he had enlisted, Scott McKenzie was released from the hospital in San Francisco. He didn’t precisely receive a clean bill of health, because he was never likely to achieve that. He had regained most of his normal functions, though, and that was the victory the Army was looking for.
He received an honorable discharge. Because his wounds were considered severe and the army judged he was unlikely to be able to find work, Scott was eligible for the upper end of the Veteran Disability Compensation. It would pay him monthly for as long as he was alive.
He was issued a sturdy cane, but he felt like an old man when he used it. As soon as he was outside the hospital, he leaned it against the wall and walked away. He wasn’t steady on his feet, but he didn’t fall over.
If I start using that damn cane, it feels like I’ll always be using it. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life hobbling along if I don’t have to.
Johnny Johnson, one of the orderlies that Scott had come to know well enough to call a friend, loaded him into his beat up 1962 Cadillac convertible and gave him a lift to the bus station. Johnny carried Scott’s bag, helped him buy his ticket, and did what he could to transition Scott back into the real world.
Scott got on a Greyhound headed east. Evansville was the only place he knew to go. Home is where your family is, where they have to take you in. He had called ahead and talked to Cheryl, who was midway through her senior year in high school. He let her know he would be home before Christmas.
He settled into a seat toward the back of the bus and hoped that no one would sit beside him. He didn’t object to people, but he was still awkward standing and walking, especially on a bus. He didn’t want to have to hold his bladder through each leg of the trip, but also didn’t want to step all over someone to get to the cramped facilities.
Scott didn’t have a book, and he didn’t buy a newspaper. He leaned his head against the cool, tinted window and watched America roll by one mile, one billboard, one tiny town at a time. After seeing nothing but the inside of a hospital for so long, the changing view was a blessing. He dozed off and on, changed buses four times, and ate a lot of vending machine and small-town diner food. All of it was a marked improvement on his diet of the previous two years.
When he was half a day away from Evansville, he called home from a payphone to let them know what time he would be in, barring any breakdowns, traffic, or major storms.
When the bus finally rolled into Evansville, Scott was glad to get off the bus. It had gotten him there, but sitting in one position for that long didn’t agree with his injured body. He limped off the bus and looked left and right, expecting someone might be there to greet him. He turned up the collar of his green army-issued coat against the wind and spitting snow. He didn’t recognize anyone. He tipped the driver a buck to haul his suitcase inside the depot for him, then sat and waited.
The inside was like every other bus depot across America in the early 70s—dingy, with dirty tile floors, molded-plastic seats attached to each other, and a sense of despair that hung in the air. Bus stations were the dropping off point of the lower middle class and poor. In large cities, hustlers flocked to them to find marks who were literally fresh off the bus from Kansas, or Iowa, or any of the other flyover states. Evansville wasn’t big enough to attract any of that. It just smelled of too many weary travelers and too little disinfectant.
Scott took all this in, then fixed his eyes on the two sets of double doors that led inside and waited.
I talked to both Cheryl and Gram. There’s no way they’d forget about me. I could call them again, but I think instead, I’ll just wait.
Snow was swirling in tiny cyclones on the ground, but not so much that the roads would be difficult. If he had learned anything in his two years in the army, though, it was how to wait patiently.
When he first sat down, the neon clock over the doors had read 3:22. By the time it read 5:15, it was almost dark outside.
Suddenly, Cheryl burst through the doors, looking frantically for Scott. He raised his hand to wave, but she had already spotted him and before he could get up out of his seat, she had crossed the room and threw her arms around him.
Her words came in a rush. “Oh, Scotty, I’m so sorry. Today was all about you. Gramps and I painted your room and were getting it ready for you, but just when we were coming to get you, Gram fell. She didn’t slip and fall. She was walking across the kitchen, then she was down. She wasn’t unconscious, exactly, but she wasn’t making sense, either. We called the ambulance, and then followed it to the hospital. That’s where we’ve been, trying to find out if she’s going to be okay. I’m so sorry we weren’t here to get you...” Hot tears spilled and ran down her cheeks. “Oh, Scotty, look at you. You’re so thin. Haven’t they been feeding you?”
Scott ignored the question and tried to process the speech his sister had delivered. Trying to slow Cheryl down a little, he said, “Help me with my duffel, will you? If I carry it, it throws me off balance. I’m not walking too great yet.”
She tilted her head and a look of profound sadness passed over her face as the reality of her wounded brother sank in. Scott had always been her warrior, her protector. Now he was frail and broken. Intellectually, she had known how badly he had been injured. Now it sank into her heart. She brushed her tears away and did her best to smile at Scott. “Right. Come on, let’s get back to the hospital.”
She picked up his duffel bag, which wasn’t heavy, then slipped her other arm around Scott’s waist. Scott did better with his walking when left alone, but it felt so nice, he didn’t say a word.
Outside, the snow had picked up and they drove to the hospital in a kaleidoscope of oncoming flakes.
Scott glanced at Cheryl as she drove. When I left, she was still a girl. Now, she’s definitely a young woman. She didn’t even have her license yet then. Now look at her, driving through a snowstorm like a pro.
“I know you probably won’t want to talk about it when Gram and Gramps are around, but how bad was it?”
I don’t want to talk about it when anyone is around, sis. I can’t tell you that, though, because we always told each other everything.
“The war is hell, but being in a veteran’s hospital is so much worse. I’d rather die than go back there.”
“Scotty!”
Scott shrugged. “I didn’t say I’m ready to jump off a bridge. I just could never go through that again. You know when you go to the pound and see all the abandoned cats and dogs? It’s a little like that, but it smells worse.”
Cheryl wrinkled her nose. “I’m so sorry this happened to you. We’ll get Gran patched up and nurse both of you back to health. Everything will be good again.”
It doesn’t feel like it will ever be good again.
They found a spot inside the parking garage, which Scott was grateful for. He hadn’t been forced to try out his newfound balance on slippery walkways yet.
Inside the hospital, they hurried as best they could down the long corridors and into a shared room.
Scott leaned over and kissed his grandmother’s cheek. Her eyes fluttered open, a mixture of fear and surprise in her eyes.
“Oh, Scotty, oh my boy. Give me a hug!”
Scott did his best. Between his partially functioning arms, and her palsied, shaking hands, they wr
apped each other in an awkward embrace.
Gran held Scott’s face and looked deep into his eyes for long moments. She looked past his eyes and into his soul. Finally she said, “Oh. Oh, Scotty, I am so sorry.”
When she released him, Scott walked to his grandfather, who appeared unchanged from the last time he had seen him, and hugged him, too. The old man held Scott out at arm’s length, then shook his head. “You look like you’ve been drug through a knothole backwards.”
Scott could only nod in agreement.
“We’ll get him home and get some good food in him,” Cheryl said.
Scott looked at his grandmother, expecting her to chime in with how she would be up and around in no time, making her chicken and dumplings and beef stew for him. Instead, she remained quiet.
Scott leaned over her again and whispered in her ear. “You okay?”
She didn’t answer, but gave the slightest shake of her head.
Chapter Seven
Cora Bell, born Cora Lee Newsome, known as Gran to Scott and Cheryl, never left that hospital. She had suffered a stroke while waiting for Scott’s arrival. The next morning, she had a heart attack and died. She was surrounded by those who knew and loved her best.
Scott’s homecoming, which was never destined to be a happy occasion because of the extent of his wounds, became even more somber and muted. When they finally got home after Cora had died, Cheryl parked her grandparents’ Plymouth in the driveway. Scott saw a handmade banner above the front porch. It read, “We’re glad you’re home, Scotty!” The snow of the previous day had turned to rain, and the words were smeared and running. One corner of the banner hung down and flapped in the breeze.
Cheryl followed Scott’s gaze and shrugged. “It looked a lot better yesterday.” She helped Scott out of the car and up the slippery walkway and steps, then went back for Earl, who was also a little unsteady on his feet.
It had only been two years since Scott had called the story-and-a-half house home, but it seemed to have shrunk in his absence. In his memory, it was lit by a warm fire in the stove and the smell of something delicious coming from the kitchen. When he walked in, the house was cold and walls seemed to have moved inward several feet. The absence of his grandmother hit him hard.
Earl immediately went to the woodpile out back so he could get a fire started. Cheryl bustled around in the kitchen, trying to throw together a lunch for them. She wasn’t Cora, but she had learned at Cora’s apron strings. Scott, meanwhile, sat on the couch, watching the rain and feeling like a stranger in this familiar land. Before lunch could be served, he drifted off.
Cheryl and Earl let him sleep, and when he woke up, darkness was gathering outside. He had laid over in his sleep, and Cheryl had covered him with a quilt.
“Guess I needed some sleep.”
“Guess we all do. You just got a head start on it. Good for you,” Earl said.
Now that Scott wasn’t so bowled over by everything that had happened, he took a longer look at his grandfather. His first idea that he hadn’t changed was either wrong, or he had aged a decade in the preceding twenty-four hours. His cheeks were sunken and he seemed to be melting into himself.
Cheryl made dinner and they ate on TV trays, silently watching the news.
The house was often silent over the next few weeks. Cheryl was gone to school during the day, finishing up the last few days before Christmas vacation. Earl, who typically spent his days in his basement shop happily messing with one woodworking project or another, mostly sat in his chair doing nothing.
The American Psychiatric Association wouldn’t list Post Traumatic Stress Disorder until 1980, but that didn’t mean it didn’t exist. In World War I, it was called “shell shock.” In World War II, it was “combat fatigue.” During the Vietnam War, it was typically called “Post-Vietnam Syndrome.”
Whatever it was called, tens of thousands of broken and damaged soldiers brought it home with them. Many thought that when they returned home, it would take a few months to reintegrate into a society where someone wasn’t trying to kill you every day. Scott was one of those. He believed that a few weeks or months of quiet life back in Evansville would cure the depression, the nightmares and flashbacks, and the overall numbness he felt.
Scott was wrong.
The longer he sat in his grandparents’ house, the more anxious and fidgety he became, and the more prevalent his nightmares became. It wasn’t unusual for him to awaken the house with his screams.
Earl and Cheryl did their best to treat his injured psyche with love and understanding. They knew where he had been and what he had been through. What they didn’t know, was what they could do to help heal him.
Scott did what he could to exorcise his demons. He tried helping Earl with his projects in the basement. He did his best to read books, but found he couldn’t focus for more than thirty seconds at a time.
He got rid of everything from his army days except for his Purple Heart, which he gave to his grandfather. He ceremoniously burned the army jacket he had worn home from the war. It was tough and built to withstand a lot, but he poured half a gallon of gasoline on it and let that soak in, then dropped it in the burning barrel. That did the trick.
Finally, by the spring of 1973, Scott’s mood swings and anxiety drove him to take a bus downtown, where he found a bar called The Rusty Bucket that was frequented by other vets and blue-collar workers. The clinking of glasses, the softly playing jukebox, and the crack of a cue ball breaking a fresh rack soothed his soul. The beer, and later in the day, the whiskey, helped him self-medicate and hold his inner demons at bay.
Time passed. Earl eventually returned to his woodworking. Cheryl graduated from high school and got a job working as a receptionist at a veterinary clinic. Scott contributed part of his monthly check to the household and spent the rest at the Rusty Bucket.
The three of them moved in different directions.
As the months passed, Earl got thinner and thinner. He had never been a heavy man, but since Cora had died, he had become whippet-thin. By the time he went in for his annual checkup and the cancer was discovered, it was too late. He was gone by Halloween.
For the second time in less than a year, Scott and Cheryl buried a grandparent. It wasn’t as traumatic as when they lost both parents at once, but when Cora and Earl passed so close together, it felt like they were orphaned all over again.
Scott’s drinking had progressed to a point that a few glasses of beer and whiskey at the bar were no longer sufficient to dull his pain, and he began to stop at the liquor store each day to bridge the hours between closing time and when it reopened the next morning.
He had reached that tipping point where one drink was too much, but one hundred wasn’t enough.
Cheryl worried and fussed about Scott’s drinking, but it was like trying to hold the tide back with your hands.
By the time Scott had been home for a year, he knew he wanted to leave. He wanted to go to the open road, stick his thumb out, and see where fate took him. The only thing that stopped him from doing so was that he couldn’t imagine abandoning Cheryl, even though he was effectively no help to her.
Cheryl had begun dating Mike, a man who had brought his cat into the vet clinic a few months earlier. He had taken to spending most evenings at the house, which helped Scott feel less guilty about staying later at the bar.
On Christmas morning, Cheryl made biscuits and gravy for breakfast, and she and Scott exchanged their gifts. A new watch for Scott, and new seat covers for Cheryl’s Pinto. By noon, Scott was on his way to celebrate the day with his other family at the Rusty Bucket and Cheryl went to dinner at Mike’s house.
The next morning, she sat Scott down and showed him an engagement ring on her left hand.
Scott was as present as he ever was, because he’d already had a few nips off the flask he kept in his bedside table. His motto had become, If you never sober up, you’ll never have a hangover.
Scott smiled.
Cheryl said, “I
think that’s the first honest-to-God smile I’ve seen on your face in I can’t remember how long.”
“I know, I know. I’m not doing too good, am I?”
Cheryl didn’t contradict him, or bother to correct his grammar.
“So, aren’t you guys moving pretty fast? You’ve only known each other, what, a couple of months?”
“Yes, but when you know, you know. You and I need to talk, though. What do you think is best? Mike’s sharing an apartment with two friends, but he’s thinking we should get a place of our own. I don’t want to leave you here all alone, though.”
Scott shook his head. “No. That doesn’t make any sense. I’ve been thinking about taking a little trip, anyway. You and Mike should move in here. If you don’t mind keeping my bedroom open until you fill this place up with kids, you two stay here. I’ll come back and stay when I’m not on the road.”
“What does that mean, ‘on the road,’ anyway? You gonna become a hobo or something?”
“I don’t know what it means. That’s what I want to find out.”
Chapter Eight
Cheryl and Mike’s wedding was at the end of April. By then, Scott was antsy and itching to get out onto the open road. He agreed to stay in Evansville and watch the house while the newlyweds went to Florida on their honeymoon. As soon as they returned, he was off.
He traveled light. Everything he needed fit into a canvas knapsack on his back.
He hadn’t continued with his physical rehabilitation once he had gotten home, but he had begun to move little by little, and by May of 1974, he walked almost without a hitch in his step. He wasn’t strong yet, but he was upright, and that let him get moving.
He shouldered his pack, walked to Interstate 69 and stuck out his thumb. He didn’t have a specific destination in mind, but several of the vets in the Rusty Bucket had talked about a place in Mexico that was welcoming to veterans of all wars. Even better, their monthly checks stretched a lot farther there.
