“Hey, Mr. B. Hey, Mrs. B.,” Chris said. “Hey, Mary Beth.”
“Sorry about the loss, Chris,” I said as Elizabeth and Mary Beth tried to console Beau.
“We played well,” Chris said. “If it wasn’t for the cheap shot, we would have won.” He put his hand on Beau’s shoulder. “We have more games to play. The season isn’t over.”
I knew for Chris there would be many more games, but for Beau that was far from a certainty.
“I’ll drive Beau’s car,” Chris said.
“We’ll follow you to our house and I’ll drop you off,” I said. “Let’s go, Beau.”
Beau never looked at me. He looked to his mother. “I’ll ride with Chris.”
I started to object, but Elizabeth gave me a quick head shake. Then to Beau she said, “We’ll meet you at home.”
In the car, I said to Elizabeth, “Did I do the right thing?”
She looked at me like I was crazy. “Of course you did the right thing. If you hadn’t told them to take his helmet, I would have hit you over the head with it.”
“I’m not sure he’s going to get over this. I know what this game meant to him.”
“It was a game, Vince. Just a high school football game. Don’t make it out to be more than it is. He’ll get over it. If this is his biggest disappointment in life, he’ll be damn lucky.”
“Tell that to Beau.”
“I will,” she said, defiant. “And someday he’ll realize I’m right. No one died out there. No one was seriously hurt. Beau’s coming home tonight. That’s all that matters.”
I blew out a held breath. She was right, of course. William’s journal reinforced that.
She continued. “You know Beau. He never stays mad long. He’ll get through this, and he’ll forgive you.”
“Forgive me?” I said, indignant. “For what?”
“He’s just disappointed, Vince. Don’t make this personal.”
I shook my head. “Of course it’s personal. That’s my son.”
“Our son,” she said. “And no one is saying you made the wrong decision.”
“He doesn’t know what disappointment or loss is,” I said. We had given Beau and his sister a lot more than I ever had. Vacations to Europe and places like Disney World in Orlando, Florida, and like Scottsdale, Arizona. We could afford to send Beau and Mary Beth to whatever college they chose. I lost my best friend to a heart attack at forty. I lost my dad to cancer at just seventy-six. I never even met my grandfather, and I never got the chance . . . I stopped. I’d had the chance to write, but I’d chosen money and stability instead of the dream. I couldn’t lay that at anyone’s feet but my own. “He has no idea what loss is,” I repeated.
“Did you at that age?” she asked.
I hated when she used common sense.
I did not, of course. Not before the end of that summer when I worked with William. I would get a painful lesson on loss, and a perspective that eluded most young men at eighteen years of age.
April 7, 1968
I thought the hardest part would be making it through that first night on guard duty, wondering if I would even awake to a tomorrow. I figured I’d never again be so happy to see a sunrise and the light of a new day, that bright orange ball rising above the treetops, that strip of fuchsia on the horizon, ribbons of pink and yellow painting the underside of the persistent haze. Color would mean I’d survived; I’d lived another day in-country.
Kenny had not.
Daylight has brought a harsh reality.
Kenny is dead.
Though I say the words, I don’t believe them, not fully. Kenny took a bullet in the eye that blew out the back of his head inside his helmet. A one in a million shot, Cruz said. Just bad luck. Kenny never cried out. Never made a sound. He just lay there, with his M-16 pointed toward the wire. Like he was hunting.
He was the hunted.
“Why’d he leave the foxhole?” Cruz asked.
“I don’t know,” I responded.
“Goddamn it. It’s your job to know. You’re a team. Didn’t I say don’t leave the damn foxhole. Didn’t I say that?”
“You said it.”
“Then why did he leave? You should have drug his ass back down.” Cruz swears. “Goddamn FNG.”
I wish I hadn’t called Kenny “Haybale” or thought of him as Gomer Pyle. I feel bad about it, and now it’s too late to apologize. What did my mother say about words being like arrows? Once you shoot them, you can’t take them back. Not from Kenny. Not ever.