Finding My Thunder

by Diane Munier

  Oh, I wanted him. I wanted him in my arms. Nothing else mattered. I would never want anyone but him, not ever.

  “Oh my heart, my heart,” I whispered as my eyes started to devour his words. I was on my bed, on my stomach, his picture propped on my pillow so I could stare at him as I read.

  He hated the army. He hated it. The letter was vile, full of cursing. He hated his sergeant, the drills, the food, the constant degrading and screaming, the whole thing.

  I didn’t expect him to hate it so much. I thought he’d fall right in seeing as he was kind of a joiner, but no. Hate.

  Then he got to it…he was living in constant worry for me, worry that I was being treated badly. He wanted me to write him every day. He was going crazy not hearing from me. He needed to hear from me. He had always needed me. He wanted me so badly. He lived on the memories…he went to sleep thinking of each word, each touch. He was an idiot to have broken with me and wasted time but he thought it was the right thing. I was the only one who made sense to him, what he felt for me, it was the realest thing in his life. He would never forgive someone if they hurt me.

  He would get a break when he finished basic before they shipped him to Nam and he was counting the days, the minutes until he could be with me. And he wanted to be with me in every way possible before he left. He was done holding back. If I didn’t feel the same I had to let him know. They told them to break it off with their girlfriends back home. They told them that statistically girls didn’t wait and it was harder to get a Dear John in combat, even life threatening. So break it off now, they said.

  Fuck them, he said. But if there was any doubt, or anyone else I had to tell him now. He wanted to know how I felt. Everything. He didn’t want me to hold back either.

  He wanted to know how I got to the airport. He wanted the whole story. Had I seen Sooner? Dickens or Annie? He wanted to know everything. He wanted me to write him every day. He understood if I couldn’t, but as much as I could. He wanted all the details no matter how stupid I thought they were. He wanted pictures of me. Any and all.

  He was barely aware of his first flight ever. They were in the air before he was really present. That’s how much my being at the airport had rattled him. He was elated and so worried for me. He wondered what they would do to me when he got on the plane, but he saw them leave though he was barely aware.

  Write me, he said again at the end. As soon as he could call he would, maybe in a week. It would be on a Sunday. He’d let me know. He wanted to hear my voice. He added that California was beautiful from what he’d seen and someday he wanted to see it with me.

  Then he signed it, Love Danny.

  I couldn’t believe it. It exceeded my hopes, almost as if I’d gotten drunk and wrote it myself to myself, making him say what I longed to hear…about us, not about his hatred for the army.

  His angst was my angst. I hated to think he was already suffering with his choice. And he wasn’t even in Nam yet. He wanted me to write everyday, so I grabbed a tablet and started to write.

  I said, “I just finished your letter. When I got home from school I went straight to the mailbox like always and when it was there I was so happy and relieved I ran straight to my room and opened it and flopped on the bed. Thank you so much for the picture. You’re so handsome in it. I didn’t get to tell you…I love your hair…that song by Nina that we danced to, remember? But with your head shaved…your eyes…well I love them too.

  “I’m okay, first off. Haven’t seen Sooner or your brother or sister yet. I will though.”

  Then I went on to tell him about school, about the sit-in. I wanted to put his mind at rest as much as I could. It was difficult sometimes at school, and there had been things, but nothing I couldn’t handle so far.

  When Naomi got home I was still writing. I was on the part where I was telling him I couldn’t wait until he was finished with basic so we could be together but that also made me sad because it meant he was that much closer to going to war. So I told him I was conflicted, but not about us being together in every way. I’d been ready for that before he left, I said. I hated to put that on him, but it was true. And that’s when Naomi appeared in my door.

  She went right to the lamp. “You’re going to ruin your eyes,” she said cause I was writing in the dark.

  I grabbed the picture and Danny’s letter and now my own.

  “I see he wrote,” she said.

  “Yes Ma’am,” I said, trying to be patient that she’d interrupted me when I was on a roll. She sat on the one chair.

  “Hilly…I went to the market on the square and there was an ambulance at Lonnie’s shop.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I stopped there and the police told me Lonnie had an accident. Well…I saw them roll him out on the stretcher. Didn’t look like he was conscious.”

  I stared at her and she at me.

  “He fell down some steps there…cellar steps and that other one works for him…Robert? He said he went down there sometimes but he must of slipped. Well that one came back from lunch, that Robert, and he thought Lonnie was still at the tavern eating his lunch so he just didn’t think much of it. Then a few hours later he went up the street to check and they hadn’t seen Lonnie…and he finally figured it out and called down in that cellar and the lights were out so he got a flashlight and saw Lonnie at the bottom of the stairs then. He’d lay there all that time.”

  I sat up on the bed and laid the papers and Danny’s picture aside. “What did they say? Is he going to die or something?”

  “They don’t know. They spent a long time getting him moved. There was oil on the steps. They nearly fell themselves. They don’t know how many injuries. He never did come around.”

  My hand reached for and located Danny’s picture. I held it against my thigh.

  “What…what should I do?”

  “Loreena was there…most everyone was on the square…but they still aren’t married, those two. But she went along. So he’s got someone there.”

  I kept staring at her.

  “You know I heard that Robert say Lonnie was the only one ever went down there. He’d get moody and go down there and take out the light bulbs and he wouldn’t come up no matter how much they called. And he thought maybe that’s what this was.”

  “How often did he do that?”

  “Not too often Robert said cause Bixby asked him that. He said the last time was after your mama died.”

  That would have meant Danny was there. He’d never mentioned such a thing. He’d never said.

  I looked at his picture, his beautiful face, his eyes.

  I looked. He’d never mentioned that…about Lonnie.

  Finding My Thunder 37

  “What should I do?” I asked Naomi, concerning Lonnie.

  “Pray. That’s the most powerful thing you can do. And you can call to find out how he’s doing. They’ll tell you over the phone. Then, when he wakes up…it’s up to you.”

  “I think seeing me might upset him more,” I said.

  “It might,” she said.

  “I can’t really do anything,” I said.

  “You can’t,” she said.

  “I think I’ll just call…maybe now. I’ll call now, and then…every so often to know his progress,” I said.

  “Sounds like a plan,” she said.

  So that’s what I did. He had still not regained consciousness, they said. His vitals were stable. He was in intensive care being watched closely. They had x-rayed him and there were some broken bones. Some swelling in the extremities, so probably internal bleeding. They’d know more in a few hours.

  I hung up the phone. It was a helpless and strange feeling. I had given up the house with little more than a ripple. This felt similar. By staying away…it was so confusing. But he was my father.

  “Naomi,” I said.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “When you and me were talking about Eugene and I wondered if he could be my father…and you said Lonnie Grunier was my father�
�.”

  “Yes?”

  “And you said something about the blood, and Eugene couldn’t be my father because of his blood….”

  “I don’t remember saying that. I did say he was not your father when you asked and I may have said the blood type pretty well ruled out such a possibility. That’s what I would have meant. Renata and Eugene were brother and sister.”

  “Were they more?”

  “Hilly,” she said like she’d caught me playing in the toilet bowl or something. “Sometimes I think you like to torture yourself with these things. Isn’t life difficult enough?”

  “If Lonnie knew the truth, he would….”

  “He might have killed you. Certainly your mother.”

  “He did kill her. Pretty much.”

  “I know what you are trying to say…but you have to find a way to turn him over to God.”

  “I have,” I said. “And now he’s lying in the hospital unconscious. Is that how God works?”

  “You’ve heard me talk about how God works all your life. God works in many ways. All mysterious.”

  “Yes Ma’am. What if this is God?”

  “That’s God’s business. Last I looked he doesn’t operate like that or we’d all be in trouble.”

  “I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking you.”

  “Let it sit, then. Pray for that man.”

  I nod. I wanted it to be God, not out of hatred for Lonnie or anything at all concerning him. I had my own reasons. I surely did.

  “Do you need to tell me something?” she asked.

  “No,” I say quick. “I don’t know anything. I’m just wondering.”

  She sat back and kept looking at me, and like I said before, her gaze could be really hard to hold.

  It’s five days later when Lonnie wakes up, but then he doesn’t really come around. He has trouble speaking, trouble moving at all. He’s lethargic, irritable. They x-ray him but they are not sure. Seems he has brain damage. They think he’s had a stroke, or a series of strokes.

  Naomi travels the yard from our house to Lonnie’s. She carries a pie. Just the boy is home. He takes it and says, “Thank you.”

  He’s a freshman. I see him sometimes at school. I don’t know him but I know this, he doesn’t have a clue who he is.

  Robert comes over that same night. “Hey,” I say.

  “Hilly,” he says, “we need to talk some.”

  “Is Sooner okay?”

  “She sure is. She has her own cushion at the table…that same one. And the pups, you wouldn’t hardly know them. We’re all so attached. It sounds like a kennel at our house.”

  We laugh some.

  “You look good,” he says and I look down at my long skirt and my bare feet.

  We sit side by side on the porch stairs. It’s so pleasant out now that it’s fall.

  “Hear from Danny?”

  “Pretty much. Twice now. But I write him every day.”

  “That right?”

  “Sure.”

  “Well…I just went to see Lonnie. He’s…I don’t know what to think. It’s gonna take a miracle…and it’s like…I think he’s given up on himself or something, there’s no fire in him, you know? That just ain’t Lonnie.”

  “Can you carry on by yourself?”

  “That’s the thing. I can’t do it all.”

  Him and me…we just kept looking at each other. I was thinking how cute he was and wondering what Hannah would think of him. He had some of her same views and those two together…well she wouldn’t think a thing of the age difference. But did she really need another man in her life? Probably not. And he had all kinds of women.

  “Why don’t you come back to work with me? Maybe together….”

  “Me? I…got school.”

  “Yeah, but…who’s gonna take care of Lonnie? I mean…think about it.”

  “Well Loreena, I suppose.”

  “Where is she? The nurse told me no one comes to see him. She wanted to get married while he was practically still in the coma. He about went crazy…crazier and they like to couldn’t get him calmed down. Well…I talked to her some and she’s gone through all his business. She knows what he owes. Fact is…she’s moving out of that house. She said she’s tired of carrying everything and that place ain’t what she thought. We’re in shit so deep at work. He ain’t handled nothin’. I got to get paid somehow. I’ve sold off some of the scrap and just kept the money. I ain’t trying to screw him…well like he does me…but I got to eat, too.”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “You’re still his daughter,” he said.

  “Yeah, but…you know how it is. He’s disowned me.”

  “Well…typical Lonnie, he didn’t bother to make it legal so…you’re still his daughter. Something happens to him, it goes to you. That’s what me and Danny always said.”

  “Why were you talking about it with Danny?”

  “Cause he was so pissed off the way Lonnie treated you. You know Danny…he can’t be passive about anything…especially where you’re concerned. If he could of killed Lonnie and hid the body…he’d of done it.”

  “You do know he broke up with me before he left?”

  He shook his head. “Nah. Not really. He pushed you back for your own good. You’re the one for him. Not that I believe in it, but he ain’t gonna change.”

  “Let’s go over to the shop so I can look at things,” I say. But it’s not just the paperwork I want to go through. I want to see the cellar.

  “You don’t want to go down there. There’s rats down there,” he said.

  I am against the wall on the stairs, around five feet away from him. I can see the dark stain from the oil on several of the stairs. “He came down here sometimes,” I repeated from what Naomi had said.

  “Sometimes,” he said. “That’s why there’s no light. He’d sit in the dark and drink his whiskey. Hard stuff for hard times I guess.”

  “Can you get light bulbs so we can see what’s down here?”

  “He broke the bulbs off. We’ll have to dig out the sockets.”

  “Then…do we have more flashlights?”

  “Wait here,” he said, and he came down a step or two and handed me his flashlight, then went back up. I squatted and shone the light around. I could see the old block wall a bit, the grime, a board shelf and old trash on it. He could sit down here with the lights broken out? Why?

  Robert came with two more flashlights, neither of them very good. We went down carefully then, shining the lights. It looked like a dirty old cellar. Nothing down here he would have been working on. Nothing but a filthy floor and a workbench of sorts and a couple of shelves and a box of various rusty metal fittings and a stack of old green pads and some brown paper. There was rustling, and a hole in the wall that cool air came out of and in the opening, right there, a half drunk bottle of Jack.

  We went back up.

  I looked around. “That oil,” I said.

  “Yeah…I don’t know. That’s grease.”

  “Did he carry something down there?”

  “He didn’t have anything when they brought him up. You saw. It’s a spill looks like. He could of done it anytime. That stuff….”

  “It doesn’t absorb into that old wood?”

  “You can still see it. It’s not absorbed yet.”

  “Yeah. The stairs are so worn you could fall anyway,” I said.

  I went to the desk then and started to casually look through the mess.

  “Remember you said there was money due. We got so many people showing up here for money. He yanked the phone out of the wall.”

  “What’s he been doing?”

  “He was going to let Loreena keep the books and fix it, but I don’t think she was interested. She’s got her own business to run. She tried some but you can’t tell him what to do. I think she was…fed up.”

  “She’s not going to stick with him?”

  “Don’t seem like it.”

  “Well, nothing we can do.
”

  I found a box and started to put all the paper in there, the checkbook and a couple of ledgers. I fit as much in there as I could carry.

  “I’ll take it home and see. He’d have a fit though. He don’t want me here.”

  “But Hilly…it’s like I said…you’re the daughter. You’re it. He’s not…he’s not in charge anymore. Not now. Hilly…you need to go see him…see for yourself. Let me take you. You don’t even have to talk to him. Just take a look.”

  “He didn’t want me,” I said hatefully. “He hated me…he hated my mother. He wanted to kill us…that’s what I felt from him…murder. He hated us that much. It had to be hidden from him that my mother had a black father. People had to hide what they were…who they were. He’s a villain. He’s Hitler. He’s Goliath. My whole life…nothing. He let us starve. We had to dismantle our house…sell bits and pieces. He’s the reason we’ve invented free love. He’s shit. Inside…he’s all shit.”

  My face was on my knees now. My deal with God? Up in the air. Robert was just this open gate, I could say anything to him and he wouldn’t punish me for it or even need me to explain it. He wasn’t anything like Hannah. I’d been so wrong. She’d be going crazy over what I’d just said. She’d hate with me. But Robert, he’d dig through it and keep me looking at what mattered.

  “This might be a real shot for you,” he said. “Maybe you could make this place pay…something. Or maybe close it down…I don’t know. But don’t you want to try? You did this summer. You tried. Now he can’t stop you.”

  “But don’t we need him?”

  “For what? If we could get this place going…manage it…we could hire someone else.”

  “You’ve got my head spinning.” This is how he was like Hannah.

  “I’ve got some really good shit that will do that anytime you want,” he laughed.

  “Oh yeah? Not at work,” I said.

  “No…a…right.”

  He was like a big kid. On the way home I told him we could go by the hospital. Maybe I did need to see what had happened for myself. I walked in there, knowing my way around really well. I asked at the desk and they told me it was late, but I hadn’t been there before and they were aware so they said I could go in. I tried to say I just wanted a look, but they didn’t care about all that, so I just shut up and went down the hall and it was a series of bays, not rooms like usual, but stalls, each one a dwindling, just hanging-on someone. Sometimes a friend or loved one sat near, sometimes not. Then in the last bay, Lonnie.