Chapter 10 - The Unfinished Horizon
The blue velvet curtain dropped to the turf with a soft, heavy rustle.
The crowd of two hundred paratroopers didn't applaud. They didn't shout. They stood at the position of attention in the falling mist, their faces washed in the pale gray light of the midday sky, watching the letters carved into the granite slab beneath the crossed bayonets:
THE REESE-MILLER-BRADDOCK
COMBAT TRAUMA CENTER
“Dedicated to the ones who stayed in the ditch.”
Beneath the lettering were three bronze portraits: Thomas Reese, his face young and unlined, an M60 barrel slung over his shoulder; Frank Miller, sitting on an ammunition crate with a field dressing wrapped around his knee; and a young woman with wire-rimmed glasses, holding a hemostat in her bloody fist.
On the grandstand, General Caldwell handed me a wooden shadowbox containing the original Distinguished Service Cross citation, newly framed in red cedar taken from the hills of Giles County.
Beside me stood Staff Sergeant Marcus Reese.
He was still in his dress blues, the rain dripping from the brim of his cap, his eyes red-rimmed but clear as mountain water. Pinned to the center of his chest, right above his name tape, was the tarnished brass pin with the blue shield and the diving white bird.
"You look good with that pin, Marcus," I whispered as the band began playing the division song.
"It’s not mine, Captain," he whispered back, his voice thick. "It’s my granddaddy's."
"It’s yours now, son," I told him, patting his white-gloved hand. "You carried it to the gate. That means you own the weight of it."
The ceremony ended at 1200 hours.
The paratroopers were dismissed, their boots thundering across the wet turf as they formed up into companies to march back to their barracks. The television cameras were packed into their vans, the reporters driving off toward the highway to file stories that would lead the evening news from Louisville to Atlanta.
By 1400, the parade field was empty.
The mist had cleared, leaving the sky over the Kentucky plains a pale, washed-out violet. The smell of wet cedar and damp earth hung in the cold air.
I walked slowly down the sidewalk toward the parking lot, my rubber-tipped cane clicking against the concrete, my old handbag hanging from my wrist.
Walking beside me, carrying my umbrella and matching his long, youthful stride to my eighty-one-year-old shuffle, was Marcus Reese.
"You don't have to walk me all the way to the car, son," I told him, looking at the long row of vehicles parked under the sodium lights. "I know where I parked it. It’s the only Buick LeSabre with a cracked tail light and an engine that sounds like a threshing machine."
"I'm walking you to your car, ma'am," Marcus said softly. "And next Thursday... I'm buying the chili."
We reached the car.
Marcus opened the heavy steel door, bracing it with his hip so it wouldn't swing back against my knees. He helped me lower myself into the worn cloth seat, set my handbag on the passenger side, and closed the door with a solid, metallic clunk that sounded like an old vault shutting.
I rolled down the window two inches to let the cool air in.
"Marcus," I said.
He leaned down toward the glass. "Yes, Captain?"
"Your grandfather was proud of you," I told him. "Not because you wear those stripes. But because when the horn sounded, you didn't look for an umbrella."
Marcus smiled—a genuine, boyish grin that made him look like the photograph in the shadowbox. "Thank you, Captain Braddock. Get home safe."
I started the engine. The old V6 coughed twice, shook the steering wheel, and then settled into its rumbling, familiar idle. I pulled the gearshift down into reverse, backing out of the stall, the headlights cutting through the early dusk toward the main gate that led back to Clarksville.
As I reached the perimeter road, I looked in the rearview mirror.
Marcus was still standing by the curb, his hands tucked behind his back, his uniform crisp against the gray tarmac, watching the Buick until it rounded the bend.
I tapped the dashboard twice—an old habit Arthur and I had when we crossed a state line.
The road ahead was open. The yellow house with the too-many stairs was waiting for me forty minutes down the highway, cold and quiet, with its ticking clock and its leaking pipes.
My hip hurt. My knuckles were stiff from the damp wind.
I reached into the glove compartment, pulled out a cellophane-wrapped peppermint candy, and popped it into my mouth.
The sugar was sweet, sharp, and clean against my tongue.
In the passenger seat, resting on top of my purse, was a small, sealed manila envelope that Frank Miller had slipped into my bag before he got into his daughter’s truck.
Written across the front in Frank’s shaky, arthritic cursive were five words:
There was a fifteenth boy.
May you like
I kept my hands on the wheel, my foot steady on the gas, as the gray pavement of Route 41A stretched out into the gathering dark.
The rain had stopped, the sky was opening up, and somewhere out in the Tennessee hills, fifty-six years of silence were finally turning into a road that had no end.
