past ten at night, Captain J. L. Kilmer, First Marine Division, ceased being my father and became my
mother?s legend. I grew up with his Purple Heart and Navy Cross framed beside his picture over my
desk so I would never forget him. Guadalcanal will always be an ugly, worthless, sliver of real estate
in the middle of nowhere that nobody should?ve died for. Later, I was to learn firsthand about that
kind of dying.
Anyway, his LST was blown out from under him on the first wave going in. He never even got his
feet wet.
But I know about my old man, about what he believed, and about the place where he died. My mother
made sure about that. The lessons she taught me while I was growing up always started the same way:
“Your father used to say.
Then she?d hit me with the payoff line.
I was probably sixteen or seventeen before I figured out that in order for my father to have passed on
to my mother all the bromides fed to me during my formative years and attributed to him, he would
have had to talk constantly, twenty-four hours a day, for the entire two years they were married. My
father image was created by my mother. But it worked. By the time I got on to her, I figured my dad
at twenty-two was wiser than Homer, Socrates, Newton, and Ben Franklin all rolled up in one. Funny
thing is, I guess 1 still do.
“Your father used to say, „Anything that comes too easily isn?t worth having.”
1 should have listened to that reprise as I ran through the rain, but I had other things on my mind, It
went in one ear, out the other, and never slowed down along the way.
When I entered the Dunetown terminal, I was slapped back to reality in a hurry. It was a city block
long, with a moving sidewalk, a twenty-four-hour snack shop, a fancy European-type restaurant, and
two bars.
In the time it took me to walk the length of the terminal and pick up my bags, I saw a first-class dip
from Albuquerque named Digit Dan Delaney, two hookers from San Diego whose names eluded me,
and a scam artist from Detroit named Spanish Eddie Fuereco, spinning the coin with a mark in a
seersucker suit and a Hawaiian shirt.
„They were all working. „That told me a lot.
The lady at the airline counter had an envelope for me with car keys, registration, confirmed
reservations at the Ponce Hotel, and a map of the town showing me how to get there. There was also a
message that had been phoned in twenty minutes earlier:
“Urgent. Meet me at emergency entrance, city hospital, soon as possible.?
It had been phoned in by a Lieutenant Morehead of the local police. And that reminded me of why I
