“Which left you all alone.”
A sparkling slice of empathy for the child he’d been on that dark day he’d first been sent to the orphanage jabbed through his thoughts. He’d never been more alone in his entire life. “Come on,” he said, grabbing her hand and pulling her away as if he could flee the memory. “I want to show you something.”
They walked amid the darkness between the stones. Their way was lit only by the intermittent lights shining on the monuments and the lights of San Diego. After a brisk ten-minute walk, they arrived at a stone that also had the symbol of the Congressional Medal of Honor.
“This was the first SEAL I ever heard about by name.”
“A grenade was tossed onto a rooftop where he and others were operating. He threw himself on the grenade and saved the others. He was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. He was from Class 250.” He turned to Jen. “This is who I fight for.”
Jen nodded. She held on to his arm with both hands and hugged herself to him.
“My brother died a hero, too,” he said after a long pause. “Or so I always thought. Turns out he died because he wasn’t following orders … using his heart, not his head.” He turned to her. “I had it out with Holmes the other night. He told me what happened. It was an IED. One minute my brother was walking along the side of the road, the next he was trying to get some kids to stop playing in the street. Then the bomb went off.”
“Were any of the kids hurt?”
“No. He saved them.”
“Then he was a hero.”
“Holmes said that he ordered Brian to stay in place. He told Brian not to go to the kids.”
“So he disobeyed an order to save the kids. So what? You say you fight for the dead. Looks like your brother was fighting for the living.” She touched his chest. “You said he was using his heart and not his head like that’s a bad thing. You have a good heart, just like your brother. I hope that when the time comes, you go with your heart.”
“Even if it kills me?”
“Could you live with the alternative?”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “I couldn’t.”
“Sounds like you knew it all along.”
“It’s funny. I think I took my brother’s death harder than my father’s. In some ways, he was more of a father to me than our father was. He used to send me letters every month. Then when he was able, he made sure I was adopted.”
“How did he make sure?”
“He found a family who was looking for an older son. They’d lost their child in a car accident.”
“So you were their…”
“Replacement kid. Yeah. I know. But we needed each other.”
“Do you still talk to them?”
“At Christmas and birthdays I call them. They’re good people.”
She rubbed his arm. “You know, we’ve been dating for almost a year and this is the first time you’ve talked to me about your family.”
“Might have been sooner if we’d had a moment to breathe.”
She nodded, but the look on her face showed her doubt. They headed back to the car. The wind had picked up and she shivered against him. “Do you know what my favorite memorial is?”
“No. What is it?”
“The Homecoming statue. Not a memorial really, but it’s one that has been copied all over the U.S.”
“I’ve seen it.” It was a statue of a sailor returning home from a long time away. He’s holding his wife in his arms and his son is hugging him from behind.
“So you know what it represents, right?”
“No … what?”
“The living. Those people the sailor went out and fought for.”
Walker couldn’t help but grin. “You really want me to change my opinion, don’t you?”
“I do. I think it’s dangerous to fight for an ideal you can’t see. I think it’s dangerous to fight to impress the dead.”
“That’s a little bit of an oversimplification, I think.”
“Is it? I just want you to know that when you leave for wherever you’re going on this mission you’ll have someone to come back to besides a few old graves and a statue.”
“Is that so?”
Weaving through the stones, they came back to the parking lot from a different angle. Hers was the last car. She went to the passenger door. He opened it for her and let her slide in. He closed the door, and as he walked around the back of her car, he noted that something had changed in their relationship. He’d never told anyone else about his family, especially his father. Which only left one secret, and that one he wasn’t about to tell her or anyone other than the members of his team. At least they had a frame of reference.
36
SUBIC BAY. 1985.
Little Jackie waited in the pile of trash. The liquid from banana skins, coffee grounds, and rain-soaked rags seeped through his clothes, making him shiver. His teeth chattered. Beneath the soft skin of his bare chest he felt what could have been gravel. A piece of rubber he’d seen thrown away by the hookers on Llollo Street in Barrio Barretto rested like a deflated sausage two inches from his nose. A wasp crawled inside, causing the skin of it to wriggle and jump. He felt rats crossing the backs of his legs. When they sniffed at his skin, he fought the urge to jerk as their whiskers tickled the soft underskin of his knees.
Feral.
Like a pig.
Or a dog.
He was wild and eager to gnaw on something that screamed.
Twice, old men shuffled by, coming home from a day spent at the dump.
Each time he screamed like a dying cat.
Whenever the men would look over, he could barely contain himself with glee. Although they looked right at him, he knew they didn’t see him. He was invisible. He was like the air.
But then came the old cripple, pulling himself along with one withered arm, a hand gnarled like the fingers of a twisted branch. His skin was the color of old chocolate. He had a few hairs on his face and even fewer on his head. His eyes were the colors of olive pits and were sunken into craters of wrinkles.
Jackie could barely contain his laughter as he leaped free of the trash and high into the air. Pieces of trash sprayed the cripple. Jackie screamed like a beast. He picked up an old hubcap and swung it as hard as he could. He caught the cripple in the side of the head. The cripple screamed. The slick metal slid off without doing much damage, so he brought it around again, this time coming straight down with the hubcap on the crown of the cripple’s head. Blood exploded outward, the sight of it fuel for another swing of the arm. This time it came around in a flat arch, catching the old man beneath the eye.
The cripple fell to his side, his mouth twisted into a curl of fear as he whined miserably.
Jackie growled and peed on the man’s withered arm. Then he turned and ran, giggling all the way to wherever he was going, his bare feet slapping at the ground, all the way down La Union Street.
