As Dawn Richards’s Subaru pulls onto the gravel drive and back to the street, I sit on the porch swing and watch her go. The cables creak under my weight. I swing gently and imagine William and his wife sitting here on a warm summer evening with time having no meaning, just existing.
I debate whether I want to open his letter and read the final words William has written, whether I want to spoil the beautiful life I have imagined. In the end curiosity wins, as it always does, and I carefully tear off a small strip from the end of the envelope and pull out the letter. Two photographs fall into my lap, facedown. One is older, I can tell by the framing. I turn it over. It is faded, but unmistakable. It is a picture of me, Mike, and William in our Northpark Yankees uniforms, the trophy we won that summer resting on a table at the Village Host restaurant. Mike is in the middle, wearing a battered straw cowboy hat, his blond hair flowing beneath it. William is on the right, his dark hair equally long, his face tan. William is smiling and holding up his index finger. I am on the left, kneeling, also with a finger extended, also smiling. My hair, too, is parted in the middle and falls below my ears. The ’70s. The fashion decade we’d all like to forget.
I turn over the second photograph. It is a picture of a man I hardly recognize, but for the mischievous sparkle in his blue eyes. William. His hair, what he has left, is nub short. He is no longer the lean young man in the prior picture. He has put on weight, though he is not fat, just thicker with age, as am I. He stands on this same porch, his arm around a woman, the porch swing behind them. I can tell by their embrace, the way she leans into him, turning slightly so that her left arm can reach across his body and hold him, that they love one another. That they are in love.
I set both photographs on my lap, overwhelmed with emotion. A part of me smiles. A part cries. A picture is worth a thousand words, but I’d still like to read William’s.
I open the letter.
Vincenzo:
By the time you read this, I will be gone. Don’t panic. I have an RV. LOL.
I’m selling the house and taking to the road, as I did so many years ago when I lived in my El Camino. By comparison, this will be luxurious.
I’ve decided to see the United States. I don’t want to sit in this home alone. I don’t think it would be good for my psyche. It’s been lonely since my wife’s death. I’ve tried to fill the days hiking in the mountains near our house, fishing the streams, gardening out back, but I’ve come to realize that I’m just killing time, the way we used to kill time in Vietnam. We killed time until we died.
I don’t want to kill time. I don’t want to die. I want to live—however many years I have left. I owe it to Victor Cruz and all the others who didn’t make it home, who never got the chance to grow old. I’m going to go see the national parks in Utah. I’ve taken up photography again. I took one of those MasterClass courses on the computer with Annie Leibovitz. I couldn’t do it for many years. I feared I’d put my eye to the lens and see all those horrors I witnessed through that lens so many years ago. But I didn’t. I saw only the beauty of nature and of the living.
Speaking of photographs, I have two for you. The first I hope you recognize. That was taken at the Village Host in Burlingame the night we won the league softball championship. You, me, and Mikey. I found a scrapbook when I was cleaning out my things, downsizing before the move. I never threw it out. I’m glad I kept it. I wish I had kept my medals. I would have liked to have shown my grandkids.
I think I wrote when I sent the journal that I have a daughter from Cheryl’s first marriage. That’s my wife’s name. Cheryl. Her husband was a Vietnam soldier who didn’t make it home. We met at grief counseling at the VA. My daughter was just eight when Cheryl and I married, so I raised her as my own. She has three children. Her oldest, a boy, is about the same age as you in that picture. He’s a bit of a wild child, but a good kid. I’m hoping I can talk some sense into him before he heads off to college. Boys that age are too easily forgotten. We simply expect them to pass from their teenage years into manhood, with all its responsibilities, without any help. It’s a tough transition. Nobody hands you an owner’s manual that explains
1. how to be a man,
2. how to be a husband, and
3. how to be a father.
Everyone just expects you to do it.
So . . . What else?
I’m going to keep another journal, the second one in my life. And I haven’t had a drink or a drug in thirty-seven years and counting. Sober and happy.