by Pamela Morsi
“Italy?” The woman’s voice was incredulous. “He’s going fly-fishing in British Columbia.”
“Oh well, never mind,” I said, and hung up before she had a chance to ask any more questions.
I raced back to the phone in the bedroom.
“Ms. Pipington, I’m so sorry to have kept you waiting,” I said. “I’ve checked with my husband and we’ve decided that it would be perfectly wonderful for Brynn to go with you to Italy this summer.”
“Marvelous,” she said. “I think it will be a memorable, broadening experience for her.”
“I think so, too,” I said.
I sat there for a long moment, sorting through my thoughts. Chester must be right. Brynn was a lot more like me than I thought.
I laughed out loud.
In the following weeks, as spring heated up to summer, my newly resolved motherhood crisis, fabulous job and new/former name had me so cheered up and optimistic about life, I just had to share it.
Chester had mentioned on my last visit that he very much wanted to meet Scott. I considered inviting Scott to go to the nursing home with me, then real inspiration dawned on me. One summer Sunday I decided to skip church and called Scott just after breakfast.
“You want to go for a drive with me this morning?”
“Ah, yeah,” Scott said, still kind of yawning. “Where?”
“Oh just around, we’ll take a picnic.”
“Sure, okay,” he answered, perking up.
I made all the appropriate calls. Fixed some salad and sandwiches and pulled up in front of the store about ten o’clock.
I beeped my horn instead of going inside. Scott came out to meet me, wide-eyed.
“New car?” he asked, as he opened the passenger door.
I nodded. “Bought it this morning. Do you like it?” “It’s…it’s cute.”
“Faint praise,” I claimed.
“It’s your car,” he said. “Do you like it?”
“I do,” I told him.
“I’m surprised you didn’t get a convertible,” he said.
“I would have,” I told him. “But the Beetle doesn’t come in that model. Two or three years, the dealer told me.”
“That’s a disappointment,” he said.
“Yeah, but the sunroof is nice,” I admitted. “I think I actually like it better than the Z3.”
“I hope you got a good trade-in,” he said. “You could get three of these for the price of that BMW.”
“Who would want three of these?” I asked, teasing.
We drove out to Bluebonnet Manor Assisted Living.
“Got to pick up another passenger,” I told him.
Scott seemed amenable to that.
And Chester was thrilled to be getting out for the day.
The nursing staff was far less so.
“Just keep a close watch on him,” Anje told me. “Don’t bump him into anything. If he gets a cut or scrape, I want to know about it.”
“Of course,” I told her.
“If he starts getting overtired, he might appear either jittery or faint,” she said.
I nodded appropriately, but secretly I figured that if Chester got overtired, he’d just tell me so.
“He has to be back here in time for his two o’clock needle,” she told me.
I nodded, assuming she referred to those shots he often had. B12, Chester had told me.
“Neither I nor the doctor think this is a great idea,” she told me. “But Chester’s so happy about it, we just couldn’t disappoint him.”
I was glad.
I introduced my two favorite guys to each other and, because Chester didn’t weigh much, Scott, with his heavily muscled arms, was easily able to scoop him out of the wheelchair and into the backseat.
“I knew this little Volkswagen bug was made for me,” he joked. “There’s only room in the back seat for one leg.”
We all laughed. Scott caught my eye. I could tell that he, like me, was impressed with the guy’s wonderful heart.
“It looks like we’ve only got two good legs between the both of us,” Scott told him. “I hope Janey doesn’t have a sack race planned for this picnic.”
With the sunroof open and Patsy Cline on the CD player, we drove out to Lago Vista Park. We found a wonderfully secluded table that looked out over the city and was cooled by the feathery shade of an ancient mesquite.
Chester breathed in the fresh air and gazed off into the distance as if he could actually see what was there.
I unpacked the lunch while he and Scott got acquainted. Amazingly, Chester remembered many of Scott’s letters that had been in the paper. Including one he’d written over five years earlier on euthanasia.
“I can’t believe you remember that,” Scott told him. “That seems like a lifetime ago.”
Chester shrugged. “When a man says something that you totally agree with, you remember it.”
“You flatter me,” Scott said.
Chester shook his head. “No,” he answered. “I admire you.”
The meal was leisurely and interesting. I was delighted at how well my two men friends got along. And even more pleased at how well Chester fit into the pattern of philosophy and funniness that characterized conversation between Scott and I.
The food disappeared and I poured more iced tea.
“And now, gentlemen,” I announced. “Can anyone guess what we have for dessert?”
“I hope it’s some of that wonderful pie your friend makes,” Scott said.
“Wrong,” I said, and made a sound like a game-show buzzer.
“Chester, your turn.”
He shook his head.
“Tah-dah!” I said, pulling three Snickers bars out of the bottom of the basket. “This is Chester’s favorite,” I told Scott as I passed them around.
Scott and I both immediately tore into the candy wrapper and began consuming our sweet chocolate treat. I glanced over to see Chester just looking at his.
“Don’t tell me,” I said. “You’re going to save it for later.”
Chester looked sheepish. “I’m stuffed,” he said. “That sandwich, the salad, the fruit.”
I laughed. “Scott,” I said, “this guy tells me he loves these Snickers. I’ve been bringing them to him every week for the last six months, and I have yet to see him take one bite.”
Scott chuckled with me. “Give the guy a break, Janey,” he said. “Maybe he likes them so much, he wants to savor them in private.”
“That’s it exactly,” Chester said, though he was still acting a little ill at ease.
I thought it a bit weird, that instead of just putting the candy bar in his pocket, he carefully folded it into a napkin first. When he caught me observing him, he made an excuse.
“Don’t want it to melt and get on my shirt,” he said.
That seemed unlikely but I didn’t want to make a case out of it.
The moment passed and the conversation moved on. I talked about Brynn’s cryptic messages from Europe. She wanted to share her good time, but provide as little actual information as possible.
Chester told a funny story about one of his former neighbors who pretended, for fifteen years, that she had a dog.
We all laughed together and traded stories of silly things we had done.
Scott bragged to Chester about all the changes I’d made in the store. He talked about his new computer, the miracle of e-mail and the luxury of spellcheck and cut and paste.
Chester listened with as much attention as if he were thinking of getting a laptop of his own. But being Chester, he did come out with the question that was on his mind.
“Why are you running this antique business?” he asked. “Before Jane stepped in, you could hardly keep it in the black. What is that all about?”
I had wondered that myself, I’d even asked Scott about it more than once. I couldn’t remember if I’d mentioned it to Chester, or if the situation simply appeared as curious to him as it did to me.
Scott hesit
ated a long moment. I thought he might be thinking up an excuse not to answer, or giving Chester time to back off and say it wasn’t any of our business. Neither happened.
“I made a promise,” Scott told him.
His words hung out there on the breeze, almost floating in the quiet of the summer afternoon.
Scott glanced in my direction a bit uncertainly. I knew this was something he wouldn’t normally share. And he was afraid of what sharing it now might mean. Could he trust me with the truth?
“I guess Jane told you that my father was a junkman,” he began.
Chester nodded. “I remember that store,” he said. “Never went in there myself and I don’t recall ever meeting your father, but I remember walking by.” Chester laughed. “The place was bulging at the seams with just about everything imaginable.”
Scott smiled, pleased. “He did seem to have everything,” he agreed. “And the old man could lay his hands on any piece of it in five minutes.”
“That’s why he never bothered to keep good records,” I said.
Scott agreed. “Before antiquing was fashionable, my dad took up collecting odds and ends. He bought junky old cars and equipment, used furniture, other people’s castoffs. He was convinced that the things people had used, or the things that still could be used, shouldn’t just be filling up garbage dumps. Whenever I read an article about the virtues of recycling, I am reminded of Dad and think that maybe he was ahead of his time.”
“That happens,” Chester said. “So your father must have loved his business.”
“Oh, he did,” Scott answered. “My mother hated it. She thought it was low-class. She thought Dad was low-class. He kept the garage full of stuff for years. When we moved out of Sunnyside to the suburbs she wouldn’t allow him to bring any of his treasures. That’s when he bought the building downtown. She absolutely forbade him to bring any of his ‘trash’ into her new house.”
Scott made a face, indicating that that edict hadn’t gone over so well in his childhood home.
“She was equally stern,” he continued, “about not wanting me in the store. I think my father knew that the junk he bought would be worth something someday, but I think, as he grew older, he worried that the value of his collection might not be appreciated in his lifetime. He tried to push me into becoming a part of the business.”
“How did you feel about that?” Chester asked.
Scott laughed. “I was a super-cool dude with long hair and a hot bike. I was not the least bit interested in old washtubs and kerosene lamps.” He glanced over in my direction. “That was before I learned that touching them was touching history.”
I was heartened that he’d remembered my words.
“What interested me was ideas,” Scott said. “I wanted to live in the world of ideas. I didn’t know for certain what I wanted to do with my life. But I felt very sure that it did involve college and it didn’t involve the junk business.”
“I’m sure your father wasn’t very happy to hear that,” Chester said.
“I put off telling him,” Scott admitted. “When the time finally came, it wasn’t easy. Dad and I really had it out. We said terrible things to each other.”
He rubbed his temples as if it hurt him just to remember.
“The argument went on for weeks,” he said. “My mom got into it, too. She was on my side, of course, but that just made it worse. They’d been having trouble for a long time, but she picked this fight to finally tell him she wanted a divorce. He moved into the store, and they both hired pit-bull lawyers.”
“Oh, Scott, I’m so sorry,” I told him.
Chester concurred.
“It was awful,” Scott said. “And it just made Dad dig in his heels even more. He refused to pay for college. He said I could work in his business, or I could just forget that I was his son.”
My heart ached for Scott as he said these words.
“Maybe Dad knew he wasn’t well,” he said. “Or maybe he never thought I’d really go against him. But I did. I volunteered for the draft. I figured I’d do my two years and use the G.I. Bill to go to college. I was on my own at last and I was glad to get away from them both.”
“Understandably,” I said, sympathizing.
“I got a note from Dad at boot camp,” he said. “He said he was sorry about how things had worked out. He said he was proud of me and he wished me well.”
“That was good,” I said.
Scott nodded. “He asked me to come see him before I shipped out.” He shook his head. “I spent my furlough traveling around the country, enjoying myself. I hardly gave the old man a thought.”
The guilt was evident in his voice.
“It’s the way we are when we’re young,” Chester told him. “We can’t see any farther down the road than the end of our nose. Don’t beat yourself up about it, we are all like that.”
Scott thanked him for the reassurance.
“So you went to Vietnam,” I said.
He shrugged. “I went where they told me to go. I did what they told me to do,” he said. “I was a pretty good soldier, I guess, for about eight months.”
He glanced toward me with a big grin.
“The definition of a good soldier,” he told me by way of explanation, “is that you don’t get yourself or anyone else killed.”
Chester liked that. He chuckled a little bit.
Scott talked about the war as if it were basically one long unpleasant walk through the jungle, punctuated by boring days in camp. He found the world in Vietnam to be very different from anything he’d ever experienced. He made a few friends. He decided that he didn’t like military life.
“Then one morning we were out on patrol,” he said. “It started raining, nothing ever happened when it was raining, so we started back to rejoin our group. We were on what was thought to be a safe road. A jeep passed us. It was right it front of me, no farther away than you are.”
Scott’s eyes took on a faraway look, as if he could gaze off into the distance and see it again just as it had looked then.
“I’m still not sure what happened,” he said. “The jeep ran into a trip wire or the road was mined or a grenade landed under the gas tank. Suddenly everything around me exploded and I was blown up into the air.”
Scott dragged a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped the sweat that had suddenly dampened his forehead.
“When I hit the ground, I landed away from the road,” he said. “My weapon was gone. There were shots being fired from two directions and I was in the middle.”
His tone was matter-of-fact but it came out of his mouth at a volume barely above a whisper.
“I tried to get deeper in the grass,” he told us. “That’s when I realized I was hit. Any little movement felt like hot knives being stabbed into me.”
I noticed that Scott had begun to rub his bad leg.
He paused. The quiet settled all around us. I caught Chester’s eye. It was as if we both knew it was not the time to press.
A moment later Scott seemed to realize he was no longer speaking. He cleared his throat, sat up a little straighter and spoke once more.
“The firing was so heavy at first that I kept my head down. When it started to lighten up, I was grateful, until I realized why,” he said. “My unit was moving back, away from me. I wasn’t in any shape to go with them. If I called out, I wasn’t sure they could get to me, and if they couldn’t, Charlie would sure know my location.”
Scott took a deep breath and shook his head.
“I had no choice but to lie there in the grass, pretend I was dead and hope that nobody came up close to check,” he said.
Scott glanced in my direction. It was difficult for him sharing this, but he was determined to do so.
“I don’t know how long I was there,” he said. “Nearly thirty-six hours, someone estimated later. I was losing a lot of blood, so I went in and out of consciousness. I thought about my dad and about the junk business and how hard I’d fought to get away from it. D
ying in that grass suddenly seemed so much worse than working in the store.”
He became uncomfortable as he tried to explain.
“God and heaven and all that sort of thing seemed really close to me out there,” he said. “So I prayed. I said, ‘Please get me home.’ I didn’t ask to be whole. I didn’t ask to be happy. I just pleaded for that one thing, ‘If you’ll just get me home,’ I promised, ‘I’ll stay and run that store for the rest of my life.’”
Scott hesitated, glancing up at Chester. “And I have.”
The silence at the table lingered. The summer breeze was the only sound in our ears, that and the distant cry of a mockingbird. The three of us sat, sharing that table and something just as tangible.
Unexpectedly, Chester burst into laughter.
“What do you know, Jane,” he said to me. “Scott Robbins is one of us.”
Chapter 20
ANJE HAD TAKEN charge of Chester the minute we’d driven up to the doorway. We weren’t late, but she acted as if we were, fussing over Chester, who looked as happy and flushed with health as I had ever seen him.
“Thanks, Chester,” I told him, preempting any gratitude that he might have wished to express. “I had a wonderful Sunday with you.”
He laughed. “Don’t you forget it,” he said. “It was one of the best days of my life. It was the two of you that made it so.”
We were shooed away and he was taken to his room. Scott and I got back into the Beetle and headed downtown.
At the red light on the intersection, I pointed to the infamous spot on the divided highway. “That’s where I had my accident.”
Chester and I had both revealed our own personal vows and the stories behind them.
Scott glanced at the place and then back toward the Assisted Living Center. He didn’t say a word, but I knew what he was thinking.
“It’s amazing that Chester saw me,” I said. “Even more so when you think of him getting down here to save me and having the foresight to bring that butcher knife.”
Scott nodded. “That’s the way I feel about the patrol that had somehow missed the road and was wandering through the grass to stumble over me thirty-six hours after I was hit.”
