“What do you want me to say?” he asked.
“I dunno,” I said. “Tell her that you’ve got some important documents you need to send her, and you’re trying to find out her address.”
“Dad,” Brant said, “I can’t do that, she’ll think I’m a creepy stalker, or a fake account logged on from Russia, trying to swindle her out of money.”
“Maybe I should do it,” Audrey said. “She won’t be as weirded out if a woman communicates first.”
“Please,” I said, waving my hand at the chair, as Brant vacated it.
My wife sat down and typed at the keyboard. Within seconds, she’d opened up a little chat window. She proceeded to make a formal introduction, identified herself as being a sometimes substitute teacher with the Sioux Falls public school system—which was totally true—and that she’d chanced across some paperwork that might belong to Kasheena, and how could she get this paperwork to Kasheena?
I breathed deeply after my wife sent the message, then rubbed my hands together.
“Thanks, honey,” I said. “And thank you, Brant, for being a wiz with the computer.”
“No problem, Dad,” he said. “I just hope she sends Mom a reply, you know?”
No sooner had Brant said those words than a little dot on the chat window turned green and a small bubble at the bottom said somebody on the other end was typing.
“We’re getting a reply,” Audrey said.
A few seconds later, she also said, “Kasheena is wondering what the documents are.”
My wife began to type back and forth with the stranger on the other end. Though, with how long I’d now lived with Kasheena’s little-girl face in my head, she didn’t seem like such a stranger to me.
“Ask her to video chat,” Brant said. “We can show her what Dad found.”
“Okay,” Mom said, and made the request.
Seconds ticked by, then the little light at the top of the laptop screen glowed and an inset window on the laptop monitor showed a shifting image of Kasheena—grown—as she stared back at us from her own laptop.
My wife took the envelope and the little printout picture and held them up so that the laptop’s camera could see.
“My husband is a Sergeant First Class in the South Dakota National Guard,” my wife said. “He recently returned from deployment, but found these two items stuck at the bottom of a locker at an Army post in Texas. We had to do some searching, but one of your album photos seemed to match this little image we have on paper. The name on the envelope matches yours too. We think these might have been written by—”
“Daddy!” the woman on the screen almost yelled, her hand suddenly to her mouth. Tears had begun to roll down her cheeks. “Oh my God, oh my God,” she repeated several times.
My family and I waited silently.
Kasheena composed herself.
“Daddy was in the Army, too,” she said over the little speaker in the laptop on our kitchen table.
“Any idea when your father was deployed?” I asked over my wife’s shoulder.
“It’s been at least ten years or more,” Kasheena said, sniffling. “He never came home from Iraq.”
I felt my heart sink and closed my eyes. So it was confirmed. Damn.
“Honey, I am so sorry,” my wife said, as she too began to sniffle. My little daughter ran to get Audrey a tissue and returned immediately.
“I mean,” Koneesha continued, “we buried Daddy when the Army brought him back, but that was it. He’d only been in Iraq for a few weeks when his truck hit an IED, or so they told us.”
“How can we get this to you?” Audrey said, emphasizing the envelope with Kasheena’s name on it. “I think we’ll all feel better if you have it in your hands, finally.”
Kasheena seemed to consider.
“I’m not sure my mom will like it. She and Daddy weren’t exactly getting along when he left.”
I thought about it. Maybe that was why he’d never sent the letter in the first place? Maybe he’d written about it, been unable to figure out a way to get it to his daughter without the letter passing through the mother’s hands first, and then he’d lost it—down the back of the very same locker I’d been using just a couple of weeks earlier.
“Still living at home?” I asked.
“Yes,” Kasheena said. “At least while I am going to school. Mom’s at work right now. In fact, I have to get to work, too. Let me think about this, okay? God, Daddy . . . you have no idea how hard it’s been to not have to think about him every day since he died. I’m almost wanting you to shred that letter, or throw it away . . . no, don’t do any of that. Let me get back to you tomorrow. And thank you, Mister . . .?”
“We’re the Clifford family,” I said, putting both hands on my wife’s shoulders and squeezing. She put her hands over mine, and we smiled into the glow of the laptop’s screen.
“I’m Audrey,” my wife said. “Dave is behind me. And these are our kids: Brant, Kelly, and Piper.”
One by one, all three of my children shoved their faces into the image.
“Thank you,” Kasheena said. “God, I can’t believe this . . . okay, I am going to go.”
The image on the screen went black, and the little green dot on the chat window turned yellow.
Audrey sighed and logged out, then slowly closed the laptop screen.
“Well, that was something I don’t think either one of us expected when we got home tonight,” she said to me, her hands continuing to rub the top of my hands.
“It’s too bad he died,” my middle son said.
“I had a feeling,” I said. “But maybe if she has this letter, it can offer her some kind of closure? If my guess is right, her father got sent over before the Surge. I wasn’t there, then. But I know guys who were. It was rough.”
“Well, nothing more to be done about it tonight,” my wife said, dropping her hands and slapping them on the tops of her thighs. “Let’s break out the Monday night dessert, and maybe watch something in the den?”
All three kids voiced hearty agreement, and for the rest of the evening, we didn’t talk about the new connection we’d made across a decade of time and two states away.
***
When I got home from work the following day, Audrey was waiting for me at the garage door.
“She said she wants to meet us,” my wife announced.
“Kasheena?” I asked.
“Yup.”
I thumbed my lower lip, considering.
“It’s a day’s drive, to Chicago. We could make it, but just barely.”
“She says she wants to do it half-way,” Audrey said. “So it’s still a long drive, but we could do Madison this Saturday. Why don’t we get a room, take the kids, and make it a family overnight adventure?”
“Okay,” I said. “Did she give you any idea where in Madison?”
“Yup. At the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus. Near the lake. We’ll spring for food. Make it an afternoon picnic.”
“Sounds nice,” I said.
And that, as the saying goes, was that.
My work week finished, and we actually departed the Friday night prior, thus ensuring that the kids slept a lot of the way, and Audrey and I got a chance to talk. There was a room waiting for us, late the first night. And it would still be waiting for us when our rendezvous with Kasheena was over.
“I know this is one of those things the wives are always nervous to broach,” she said to me as I kept my eyes on the zipping surface of I-90, headed southeast.
“What’s that?” I said.
“The casualties,” Audrey said. “The men and women who never come back.”
I breathed deeply, thinking of the friends I’d never see again. People who’d gone to Iraq or Afghanistan to do a job, and were unlucky enough to find themselves in intimate proximity with a makeshift bomb or a bullet. And then of course there were the people who did come back, but who had wounds that went far deeper than their physical scars might tell. That was the harder p
art. We all knew it. The things you carried around with you, after you left country. Even I couldn’t quite get myself to de-compartmentalize. And I’d been fortunate enough not to see or experience anything truly awful. Just the usual mortars coming in from over the wire. Roll out of your cot, cover your ears, open your mouth, and wait for the booms. Then, wait and hope that neither you nor anybody you know got hit.
Ninety nine times out of a hundred, it had been okay.
But only ninety nine. There were always the ones who didn’t get a good roll of the dice.
“What do you want to ask?” I said finally.
“When you’re over there,” she said, “and you’re trying to do your job, and there are people trying to kill you for doing your job—even though you’re just trying to help those damned countries—doesn’t it freak you out a little bit? I mean, Dave, you’ve always been cool about the whole thing. And I know you’ve not seen the worst that theater can show you. But haven’t there been times when you’re kind of going out of your skull about the whole predicament?”
“Of course,” I said. “Especially when we were on convoy routes. That was when the tension would ratchet up, because we knew there were eyes on us. And you could never guess if one of those sets of eyes was connected to a pair of hands ready to trigger an IED. Didn’t matter if we had the gun trucks prepped for bear. By the time you can try to shoot at someone who blows you up, they’re always long gone. It’s just a question of picking up the pieces.”
Audrey was silent for many minutes.
“I wonder if Kasheena’s father ever regretted going over. For that matter, do you ever regret it?”
Now I was the one who was silent.
“Sometimes,” I said. “But also, sometimes not. We make a lot of money as a family when I am deployed. Even more than when I am at the plant. But more than that, it’s about the country. That oath. ‘Protect and defend the Constitution of the United States . . .’ You remember when I was just a Private First Class, right? Before the terrorists hit the Towers in New York? Do you remember how I felt about serving then? How I was proud to be following in my Dad’s footsteps, and my Grandpa’s before him? Service has been something Clifford men just do. And we do it because the country needs somebody to do it. I was proud to raise my hand in front of the flag, that day at MEPS. We’d only dated a couple of times at that point, and I went off to Basic Training. But when I came back from AIT, do you remember me then?”
“You were so damned proud,” Audrey said, and laughed. “And cocky as hell. You in that green suit they made you wear. All skinny and full of yourself. Frankly, I like the new dress uniform better. With the blue, and the gold piping down the side of the pants. You look more distinguished. Hell, you are more distinguished. Ribbons and history and rank. You’ve grown up, Dave. And you’ve become a man—a man I am proud to be with, by the way.”
I felt a little lump hit my throat, as Audrey’s hand touched my hand on the steering wheel.
“Thanks, honey,” I said, swallowing hard. “Would you believe me if I told you that all I’ve ever wanted, in the end, is to make sure you can always say you’re proud to be with me? That’s another reason I’ve stayed in. Why I’ve been willing to keep going, even after three deployments, and so much time away from home.”
“I know,” she said. “I know.”
***
It was a gorgeous day by the lake. The campus was exquisite. My kids were slowly parsing out pieces from a loaf of bread—for the ducks who’d gathered—while Audrey and I sat at a table with Kasheena. We’d spent the whole meal asking Kasheena questions and getting to know her better. She was an only child, and her mother and father hadn’t been on the best of terms. Looking backward, Kasheena guessed that her arrival in the world had been untimely.
“Teen mother,” Kasheena had said. Which may have explained why Kasheena’s mother was so hell-bent on ensuring Kasheena herself didn’t make the same mistake. She was in school at her mother’s command, and steering clear of relationships until Kasheena was well enough on her own and able to support herself.
“Which isn’t a bad idea at all,” Kasheena said, “even if my Mom’s is a total bitch about it sometimes.”
“You’re a grown woman now,” Audrey said. “You can make your own choices.”
“I know,” Kasheena said. “And I do. Believe me. There’s one guy at school—he’s studying to work in pharmacies—that I’ve been kind of interested in. Not that I let my Moms know what’s going on. She’d peel the paint off the ceiling.”
“Sounds like your Mom has worked very hard to try to put your feet on different path from hers,” I said.
“Yeah,” Kasheena said. “And she never let either one of us forget what she thought about Daddy, either.”
“Even though you had the SGLI insurance?” I exclaimed. “That was several hundred thousand dollars paid out.”
“Sometimes I think that money was the only reason my Moms could tolerate saying Daddy’s name around the house. That money let us move away from the bad part of town. It’s also part of the reason I can go to school now. Though I’ve got a part-time job that helps. I’m even thinking about the military, too.”
“Army?” Audrey asked.
“Go Air Force,” I interjected. “Better bases. They treat you better, too.”
Kasheena laughed. “Air Force, yeah, something like that. Anyway, I haven’t made up my mind yet.”
The whole time we’d been talking, the envelope had remained untouched in Kasheena’s hand. She’d accepted it gratefully and offered me a handshake and my wife a hug. Kasheena was eloquent, smart as a whip, and I thought to myself that I’d have been damned proud to call her my little girl. I hoped that somewhere in the universe, Specialist Kareem George Johnson was proud of her. Even if he couldn’t be here in the flesh to say it. Kasheena had shown us one of the few pictures she had of him on her phone. He was wearing the old BDU uniform and the black beret. A hulking figure—weight lifter? Defiant chin. Eyes that looked at you—hard.
He’d have made a tough, imposing NCO. Had he lived.
Perhaps using a little bit of that good old woman’s intuition, my wife invited me to walk with her down by the water, while the kids kept feeding the ducks—and Kasheena could have a few minutes alone, to read the words which had been meant for her oh so long ago.
We didn’t say anything as we strolled. It was a bright day, but not too warm. Audrey’s eyes stayed on the water the whole time. And for good reason. It was beautiful.
When we got back to the table, Kasheena’s face was wet.
“Only the grace of God could have made you find this,” she whispered to us as we sat back down. The pages of the letter were laid out on the table. “All this time, and I never really had any idea. I was too young when Daddy died, and Moms never told me much either. He wanted so much for me. He was sorry he couldn’t work it out with Moms. He hoped that when he got home, he could find a way to make it up to me. To both of us. And he promised that, one way or another, he’d find a way to take care of me. Oh, Daddy . . .”
Kasheena curled around herself, arms wrapped tightly over her chest, and wept quietly.
Audrey went to sit beside the young woman and put an arm around Kasheena’s shoulders.
“You know, in a way, he kept his promise,” I offered, feeling somewhat awkward. “He couldn’t be here for you, but his legacy was. At least, the money was there when you needed it. Trust me, sometimes that’s the most important part of the whole thing. You know that no matter what happens, your family is going to be able to take care of itself in your absence. Audrey and I have SGLI and we have a civilian policy. Just to be sure.”
“I read the letter, too,” Audrey said. “I think what Kareem wanted most was for you to be happy. He thought it would be hard. He was sad he might not get the chance to see it happen. But he wanted you to be happy. It seems to me like you’ve got all the puzzle pieces put together for a great life. I sincerely hope you live it to the fulle
st, my dear.”
“Thank you,” Kasheena said, sniffling at a wad of tissue she’d pulled out of her jacket pocket. “I’m glad there’s people in the world who really do care. You could have thrown Daddy’s letter away, and you didn’t. That’s the Lord at work, I believe—He wouldn’t let you throw it away.”
And I sure as heck wasn’t going to argue with her.
“If your father and I had exchanged places,” I said, “I’m sure he’d have done the same for me. Or at least I hope he would have.”
Kasheena nodded her head up and down vigorously, then wiped her face, took a few minutes to compose herself, and smiled.
“Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know it would hit me like this.”
“And I’m sorry Kareem isn’t here to tell you what you mean to him in person,” I said.
Again, she nodded vigorously. But held up the letter. “Close enough.”
Audrey and I exchanged glances and knew we’d made the right choice. Then we called the kids back from the water’s edge and prepared to pack up what was left of our meal. Kasheena promised to keep in touch, and we made the same promise. I also silently hoped that, in the fullness of time, we might get to meet Kasheena’s mother some day. Perhaps there were some old wounds there that only another parent could understand? And possibly help heal?
In any case, we left feeling like we’d done a worthy thing—for the beautiful, long-lost daughter of a serviceman I’d never known, and yet, who was also one of a million different brothers. All of us scattered across time and any number of wars. Yet the common thread remained. A binding fraternity of oaths, as well as struggles.
About Brad R. Torgersen
Brad R. Torgersen is a full-time healthcare tech geek by day, a United States Army Reserve Chief Warrant Officer on the weekend, and a Science Fiction writer at night. His stories have been nominated for or won numerous awards, including three readers’ choice selections from Analog magazine. Brad’s novels are published through Baen Books, and his short fiction collections are published through WordFire Press. Married for over two decades, Brad resides in Utah, with his wife, daughter, one cat, and one dog. (In other words, a blessedly normal Middle American family existence.)
Freedom's Light: Short Stories Page 17
