Veteran Avenue

by Mark Pepper

  Marie either wasn’t listening or had nothing to offer. She put the calendar down. Dodge returned them to the original point.

  ‘Marie ... the letter. How did Terence get you to write it?’

  ‘He convinced me I should cut all ties with the past. He reasoned that as long as Hayley kept seeing her grandpa, hearing stories about her real father, she would never accept his place in her life.’

  ‘Did they ever meet?’ Dodge asked. ‘Chuck and Terence?’

  ‘No. I think Terence feared if they did, Chuck might see through him. Either that or, face to face, Hayley might break down and tell her grandpa what she’d told me, only Chuck wouldn’t be so disbelieving.’

  ‘So how did it come to a head?’ John asked. ‘It obviously did.’

  ‘Yes, but it took another month, and when I tried to re-establish contact with Chuck he was long gone. If you hadn’t shown up today, I’d have gone to my grave not knowing what happened to him.’

  John wasn’t certain that meant she was pleased.

  ‘Sounds like I’m the one who’s most responsible for his death,’ she added.

  ‘Don’t you dare!’ Dodge said vehemently. ‘Marie, you need to forgive yourself, not take on even more guilt. If the man believed he’d had a vision, I don’t think anyone could have kept him from going up that mountain.’

  Marie merely smiled her thanks for his effort.

  ‘Do you want to hear what happened with Hayley?’ she said. ‘How I found out? I’d like to tell you. I’ve never felt able to speak about it before.’

  Dodge nodded; he knew about the healing power of first confessions.

  ‘My bladder woke me up one night around three a.m. Terence wasn’t in bed and I felt an instant sickness in my stomach. I knew something was wrong. I crept out of the bedroom and along to Hayley’s, and … there he was. When he saw me, he had the shock of his life. I should have been shocked, too, but at that moment I realized I’d always known Hayley wasn’t lying, I’d just refused to accept it. I’d been so desperate to have a man in my life that I’d blocked out the damage he was causing to Hayley’s.’

  ‘What did you do?’ Virginia asked.

  ‘I beat the shit out of him, went completely berserk. I could have killed him, I wanted to kill him. He didn’t fight back, he just started crying like a child. By that stage, Hayley was beyond tears. She just watched … eyes empty, soulless. There was no relief in her expression, but … I guess I hadn’t really saved her from anything.’ Marie smiled bravely at her guests. ‘It destroyed our relationship. We only made up a few days ago. Can you believe that? At last we can talk and I’m about to die – we don’t have any time.’

  Delicately, Virginia asked, ‘Is that what prompted you to make up?’

  Marie shook her head. ‘She needed me. She’s been having a rough time lately and she wanted her mom.’

  ‘Rough how?’ Dodge asked.

  Marie responded with a bitter smile.

  ‘Put it this way, Dodge: we Olsen women don’t have much luck with husbands.’

  The last thing Larry saw before he squeezed his eyes shut was DeCecco’s finger snap back inside the trigger guard. There should have been nothing else, not sight, sound, smell, touch or taste.

  There was a click. It was a mistake Larry would not have expected from a man so highly trained. There was no round in the chamber. DeCecco had neglected to work the slide and load the first one up from the magazine. It took a split second for Larry to think this, and he did not expect he would have more than a further two seconds before the oversight was corrected.

  ‘Larry.’

  Hearing a human voice, even DeCecco’s, made him want to cry. He opened his eyes and the tears were already formed. Released, they fell down his cheeks.

  DeCecco did now work a bullet into the chamber, but then lowered his weapon.

  ‘Remember what this felt like, Larry: the fear, the expectation of death. That’s what my wife’s been feeling; what you made her feel. So listen good. If anything like this ever happens again, you’re dead. And in case you’re thinking of killing me, you should know that I told my old team about you and the deal is this: anything happens to me or mine, they’ll come after you and they won’t make it quick. You’ll suffer first. But you leave us alone, they’ll leave you alone. Now, is that message plain enough for you? Does that pea-brain of yours understand the seriousness of your situation?’

  Larry nodded. DeCecco backed to the pay-and-weigh and barged it aside.

  ‘No more warnings, Larry. That’s it.’

  It was an afternoon without visitors, which Hayley spent watching TV and pushing her tongue through the gap in her front teeth. Amanda had been in that morning, and Marie had been scheduled to drop by later. The phone call to say she wasn’t coming should have been a disappointment, but for the other information it had conveyed. Her mom had just said goodbye to some visitors of her own, including an old Army buddy of her father’s with a few interesting tales to tell. She would not elucidate, except to say it had been an emotional meeting that had left her drained, hence the canceled trip to her daughter’s bedside. Hayley had pestered for details but Marie could not be swayed. After she was discharged tomorrow, she would hear all about it, first-hand from the man himself.

  Considering the course of recent history, not to mention the history of her younger years, Hayley felt in amazingly good spirits. She didn’t want to test this with a look in the mirror, but there was a distinct sense of a corner turned. She was facing a brand new horizon, and although the sun was perhaps a long way off cresting, she knew it was there, the promise of warmth and comfort, light and life. Out of all the bad she could suddenly see the good, and that was no abstract theory she had read in a book on positive thinking; it was truly how she felt. Although she was in a poor state physically, her body would heal or be healed by outside forces; although her mom was dying and their time together was short, any time was better than none at all after so long apart; although her marriage was over, she felt more like a widow than an estranged wife – the man she had married had effectively died the same day as Frank Dista; although she had never known her father, she was finally to hear the story of his last days – a lifelong wish come true; and although Malibu Mischief had gone, at least it had proved something: there were people out there who thought she was worthy of the big bucks. She was a star-in-waiting. Her day would come.

  If he had not exactly prayed following DeCecco’s departure from the washroom, Larry had certainly stayed on his knees for several minutes, fully aware of the significance of his position. Mortality had never been so clearly defined. Larry Roth was going to die. His day would come. It could happen next week or in another fifty years, but he had never been more dazzlingly aware of the finite nature of his tenure on this earth. He had checked in forty-two years ago with no say in the matter, and he would check out just the same way. The killing of others had not brought it home to him; quite the opposite. For him, offing six drug dealers was life-enhancing. He had derived a buzz from his power to order a bulk check-out. Even the profound effect of Frank’s death had failed to tap this seam in him. After Frank, he had become concerned with achievement and career goals; building an impressive résumé with which to increase the column inches of his own distant obituary.

  But DeCecco pulling that trigger, Larry believing one hundred percent that his time was up ... that made a person think. Really stop and think. If his death could be that easy, he needed a purpose to what remained of his life, a purpose beyond rank, respect, or even an Armenian pay-day. And the more he thought about it, the more he realized he knew exactly where to look for it.

  Hayley. Once upon a time, she had loved him. An unconditional love, unrelated to the size of his pay packet or the color of the shield he wore or the pension he was building for later life. In many ways, it had endured in spite of these, cutting through his trivial fixations to find the heart of the man, and provided there was love in that heart for her, she was happy. Year after
year she had endured the setbacks of her career with remarkable fortitude, and he had never understood how. Now it made sense. Success had not been the most important thing in her life, merely the icing on the cake. The tragedy was, his recent behavior had probably made it the most important thing in her life.

  He understood DeCecco a lot better now as well. For all his mockery of the white-picket-fence scenario, from Larry’s present enlightened viewpoint it looked just about perfect.

  While Virginia went back to her Santa Monica apartment to reconstitute her costume design portfolio, John stayed with Dodge up at Beverly Glen.

  Since leaving Venice Beach, Dodge had become disturbingly quiet, and the childhood abuse of Harry’s daughter was not the cause of it. In the end, Hayley had overcome. Having set her heart on an acting career, she had studied at the UCLA and then married a police officer. Countless bit parts had finally culminated in a plum role in Malibu Mischief. All this had made Dodge beam proudly like Hayley was his own flesh and blood, although John guessed his feelings may have amounted to something even stronger than that.

  Then the bombshell: where Hayley was at that very moment, and why. Dodge had looked ill, worse even than at Donnie’s funeral. Studying a newspaper report of the screwed drug bust, he had stared so hard at Larry’s picture that John had thought the page would ignite. Leaving them alone, Virginia had entrusted John with quite a job: he had to get her father talking.

  ‘Will you have a beer with me?’ he asked as a start.

  Dodge nodded, so John went to the kitchen and brought two cold ones back to the living room.

  ‘How do you feel about tomorrow?’ John asked, settling.

  ‘I don’t know how I’ll react seeing her all beat up like that.’

  ‘Bet you’d like to kill her husband, eh?’

  ‘Wouldn’t you? This is the girl whose photo you’ve carried since you were a kid. I know you saw my face when Marie told us what had happened, but I was looking at you, too, remember? If he’d walked through the door that second, you’d have ripped his throat out.’

  John shook his head.

  ‘Sure you would,’ Dodge insisted.

  ‘No, I’d have taken Harry’s pistol and put one through his eye.’

  Dodge gave a big grin. ‘I’ll drink to that.’ And they both did.

  ‘About the pistol ...’ John said, ‘... it’s a SEAL weapon. How did Harry get hold of it?’

  ‘He picked it up the year before I got in-country. He told me the story. He was down at the Recondo School at Nha Trang, his three weeks nearly up. A couple of SEALs had been getting some R ‘n’ R at nearby Cam Ranh Bay and were heading back to their camp on the Bassac at Long Phu. Five minutes in, their helo has engine trouble and goes down in Charlie’s back yard. Harry volunteered to join one of the LuRP teams heading for the crash site. Long story short, the SEALs were extracted just as the VC closed in on their position. Harry struck up a rapport with one of the SEALs who gave him the Hush Puppy as a thank you. It became a treasured possession, and useful on many occasions.’

  ‘Who brought it back to the States?’

  ‘I did. I was gonna keep it for myself – and one or two other bits and pieces. After a while, I didn’t want them, couldn’t even look at them. I thought Harry’s father might appreciate them. I knew the military would have taken care of Marie with the medals, the dog-tags, things like that.’

  ‘So how did Chuck end up with all of it?’

  ‘I expect that bastard Terence found it hidden away and mailed it to him without Marie’s knowledge. But … could have been worse, he could have put it all in the trash.’ Dodge drank, swore softly and shook his head. ‘Harry’s death changed everything. I sometimes think it’s the ones who died in Vietnam who got off easy. Their suffering ended with their last breath. What about the living? Marie lost a husband, Hayley a father. Then Hayley got a stepfather who stole what was left of her childhood, which led to mother and daughter not speaking for years. All because one man died. But you know what’s really sick? I came back alive and still managed to screw up the people I love. You heard Ginny at the hospital.’

  ‘Hey, Virginia’s doing fine. And she loves you. If you’d really caused her any damage, she wouldn’t have looked after you this long. She wouldn’t have been able to.’

  Miserably, Dodge said, ‘Okay, but what about Donnie?’

  ‘Dodge, people join the military for different reasons. I joined the Legion to spite my parents. Your son joined the Army to emulate you. If you can’t be proud of him, at least accept that he was proud of you. Whatever Donnie went on to do after Desert Storm was not your fault.’

  ‘And my wife?’

  ‘I can’t answer that one. But she didn’t leave you, did she?’

  ‘I’ll never know why not.’

  ‘Because she loved you?’

  ‘I wrecked her life,’ Dodge said, and drained his beer.

  ‘Did she love you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then how could you have wrecked her life?’ John asked. ‘If you love a person, you don’t regret meeting them no matter what happens afterwards. You may wish the path had been smoother, but if you can look back and wish you’d never met, that’s not love. You probably made her feel more alive than anyone.’

  ‘And how d’you figure that?’ Dodge said gruffly.

  ‘Because she had to struggle. She knew she had something worth fighting for. Some people never know that passion their whole lives. They’re the ones I feel sorry for.’

  Suddenly Dodge was smiling, as though at some private memory. He snapped out of it, gave John a long, scrutinising look, and spoke.

  ‘It is not the critic who counts, not the one who points out how the strong man stumbled or how the doer of deeds might have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred with sweat and dust and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who, if he wins, knows the triumph of high achievement; and who, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.’

  ‘I like that,’ John said. ‘Where’s it from?’

  ‘It’s called The Man in the Arena. From a speech by Theodore Roosevelt. I knew it from school, but it was Harry made me memorize it. He told me one day it would make sense, but the only thing puzzling me was why he thought I didn’t understand it already; seemed pretty straightforward to me. But what you just said, about people who never experience passion ... that gives it a whole new slant. It’s not just about soldiers fighting wars. It’s about passion in whatever you do. What makes a life worth living, that’s also what makes it okay to die.’

  John merely smiled. Dodge was finally battling his demons with the one force they could not resist: reason. He was using reason to justify his own passion for war, and the passing of a wife who had loved him despite the mental wounds that passion had inflicted upon him.

  ‘John, do you think that’s what Harry meant? I do. Shit, all this time I’ve been my own worst critic, looking back on the person I was – the man in the arena – pointing out how I’d stumbled in life, never giving myself any credit, always thinking I wasn’t worthy of love. But my wife gave me credit, didn’t she? Every day she loved me. We were two of a kind. I faced death so many times in Vietnam and I never ran. And when she knew the tumor had gotten hold of her, she wasn’t afraid either, because she’d known the great enthusiasms, the great devotions.’

  Dodge grinned to himself.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, and the tears began rolling freely down his face.

  Joey was already seated in his black-and-white when Larry emerged from the hospital into the sunlight, where he stopped briefly, as though dazed, as though seeing the sun for the first time. Or as though he believed five minutes ago he would never see it again.

  Larry gathered hi
mself and headed over to a white Beetle, got in and drove off. Joey eased the Charger out of the lot and slipped in behind to follow, not holding back in the traffic to hide his presence. Rather, he stuck close to Larry’s rear bumper, and noticed his eyes return again and again to the rear-view mirror until he indicated and pulled into the curb, and Joey followed suit.

  Larry got out of the Beetle and walked back to the Charger, a reversal of the normal traffic-stop procedure. Joey thought he looked frustrated more than angry; certainly in no mood for an argument.

  ‘What are you doing, Joey?’ Larry asked.

  ‘Watching you.’

  ‘Why? You don’t believe your message hit home? I got the message, Joey, loud and clear. I believe you. I fuck with you or yours, I’m dead.’

  ‘Correct. Where are you headed now?’

  ‘Home,’ Larry said, his tone almost pleading to be left alone. ‘Where I’m going to open a bottle of Jack Daniels and drink myself unconscious. I’ve had a shitty day. You may have noticed.’

  ‘No more so than my wife.’

  ‘Accepted. But what do you want me to do, Joey? I can’t turn the clock back.’

  Joey shrugged. ‘I don’t want you to do anything. You carry on. I didn’t indicate for you to pull over. I have lights and a siren for that.’

  Larry closed his eyes, shook his head, let out a deep sigh. ‘I take it,’ he said, ‘that you’re coming all the way to my apartment.’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘For how long?’

  ‘Can’t say.’

  ‘Well, I can show you a parking spot where you can get a good view of my front door and my fire escape, both at the same time. That way you’ll know once I’m inside, I can’t leave without you seeing. Thing is, Joey, you’re gonna have to return the cruiser at some point and go back to the hospital to see your family.’

  ‘Is that a threat?’

  Larry snorted. ‘No, Joey. It’s a simple fact. You can’t watch me all the time, so why watch me at all? You’ve got to trust me. I’m done ruining people’s lives. So you get on with yours and I’ll get on with mine. And, by the way, thank you for allowing me to do so.’