I’ve forgiven God.
I didn’t really have much choice if I wanted to be sober, but I realize now it was the right thing to do. My beef wasn’t with God, it was with the war. It took a long time to figure that out, though. I had to forgive myself first. If you read my journal, you know why. I hope you did. But I realize that when I wrote that final entry I left you in a bad place, a hopeless place that I once inhabited. That wasn’t fair. I’ve come to realize that no situation is hopeless unless we let it be.
I take responsibility for what I did. If I could take back that one moment in time, I would. But I can’t.
I had to find a way to live with it. To live with that young boy. Years of counseling helped. He’s still around, though he no longer haunts me. I no longer fear seeing him. He is my moral compass, my conscience. Whenever I get angry, he’s there to calm me. The way you did that day when you stopped me from swinging the sledgehammer at whatever that guy’s name was. Whenever I want a drink or a smoke, he’s the consequence of going down that rabbit hole again. He’s pushed me to lead a good life, to make amends, and I’ve tried. I worked with other veterans fighting similar demons for almost four decades. I like to believe I also taught them how to turn a foe into a friend.
I imagine I’ll have a conversation with that boy when, hopefully, I reach those pearly gates. I imagine he will be there to greet me, I hope with a hug and not a fist.
I will finish my twelve steps in the afterlife. I will make amends with him and his family.
You gave me that chance, Vincent, when you listened, and when you stepped in front of that sledgehammer and kept me from ruining what was left of my life. Because of you I met my wife and my daughter, and I found myself. I hope you know that.
Todd Pearson. I wonder if you’ve thought of him? I looked him up. Step eight in my recovery—make a list of all the persons I have harmed and be willing to make amends. Turns out Vietnam killed Todd and he didn’t even know it. Died of cancer from Agent Orange in his forties, like so many other veterans. I spoke to his wife—he divorced and remarried.
Well, I’ve rambled long enough. And now I need to ramble along.
I hope this letter finds you well. If you ever talk to Mikey, please give him my best. And, you never know. I just may drive this RV up to your front door one day and honk the horn. I hope you won’t mind seeing an old friend.
I think of you as a friend, Vincenzo. And I thank you for being there and for listening. You have no idea what it meant to me.
Peace. Semper Fi.
William
PS. If we do ever see each other again, I want the true story of what happened with that Italian girl from New York that summer. I know you didn’t tell me the truth, and I applaud you for your discretion. But I’d still like to know.
I lower the letter and look out at William’s yard. I don’t cry. I smile.
I’m happy for William. It’s what I needed to know, why I came. I needed to know he was all right. I do have one disagreement. This will not be his second journal. It will be his third.
I was also William’s journal that summer so the stories didn’t, maybe, drive him crazy. He told me his stories and, maybe, I don’t know, maybe he felt a little better.
I like to believe so.
I’m glad he told me about Todd, but sad, also, at his ending. Some years after working for Todd, I, too, had searched for him. I went by the house on Bayswater, where he no longer lived. The post office had no forwarding address. Likely he moved out of the house when he and his wife divorced. Years later, I looked him up again, this time using the internet, though I figured the chances of Todd being on social media were slim to none. None. I never did find him. Now I know why, and I can also shut that door. He is another life lost to Vietnam, a name that hopefully will also be etched on the black granite memorial in Washington, DC.
Maybe someday I will write that book William suggested, that owner’s manual for young men. Maybe I’ll catch that dream, of being a writer, for both of us.
Or maybe I’ll just tell the story of William, of Vietnam, and the summer of 1979.
Maybe.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
There is a saying we writers hear bandied about: “Write what you know.” Most writers I know say the better adage is “Write what you’re interested in.” Stories such as The World Played Chess and The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell come from the heart. As I explained in my acknowledgments in the latter book, I have never had ocular albinism and I was fortunate to only have been bullied in one instance that I can recall. But I do have a brother with Down Syndrome, and the subject of bullying and what it does to both the bully and the victim interested me. So I researched it, and in the process, I found Sam Hell and ocular albinism.