But you didn’t stay walking close to the Lord, did you, Delroy? No, you turned away from Him. And you are too afraid to tell anyone because you don’t know what would become of you without this mission in your life.
He rubbed his chin. The stubble that had grown there let him know he’d been at his task much longer than he would have guessed.
His eyes burning with exhaustion, he gazed at his blurred reflection in the stainless steel table where he’d been working. His skin was dark, nearly blue-black, and his image flowed like a dark pool across the metal surface. His hair was cut military style, high and tight, as it had been for thirty years, since the day he’d entered the navy. He wore his chaplain’s service dress blue uniform, but he’d left his white gloves and his tie in his pocket. The tie would go back on before he left this room.
Officially, he was off duty right now. Writing the letter to the dead man’s family was something he was doing at the request of the dead man himself. Back in sick bay, before the emergency surgery that had been ordered after Dwight had complained about severe chest pains and shortness of breath late last night, Dwight had asked him to take on this task—just in case …
Waiting in the medical department while the medical personnel worked on his friend, Delroy had expected to sit for hours till the doctors and nurses performed the surgery and got Dwight stabilized. The medical staff told Delroy there was nothing to worry about outside of the normal risks of bypass surgery—and given Dwight’s comparative youth and overall fitness, those were pretty small. At least, that was what they told him before they started cutting.
Delroy had believed them. Dwight had been in great shape, he was only fifty-two years old—only three years Delroy’s junior—and the doctors were top-flight military surgeons tempered by previous service in combat conditions. When she was in home port in Norfolk, Virginia, Wasp was counted as the fourth largest hospital in the state. She was part of the state’s disaster relief plan. Military medical aid didn’t come much better than the facilities on USS Wasp.
But the doctors were wrong this time. Fifteen minutes into the surgery, Chief Petty Officer Dwight Mellencamp had died on the table. Thirty minutes after the surgery had begun, the surgeon had been out in the waiting room, explaining everything to Delroy, and despite his personal grief, the chaplain had followed most of the medical jargon. The docs had done their best.
But it was still nearly impossible to understand that Dwight was gone. No longer would he play chess or share historical mystery novels or argue religion with the chaplain. Dwight had been a Christian of the old school—believing every word of the Bible as the literal truth. The book of Revelation had been a hot topic between them as they tried to imagine what the world would be like after the Rapture. Dwight was convinced that they were living in the end times, that the world had reached the point of no return when believers and nonbelievers would be separated by God’s own hand.
Delroy didn’t believe that, and their arguments had sometimes grown heated because Dwight believed so fiercely. Dwight had accused Delroy of hiding his head in the sand, of denying a truth so obvious that any child should be able to see it. Dwight had been growing in his faith, seeing things and making connections that Delroy was just unable to accept. Delroy thought that by debating the future with Dwight, he was defending the faith. Sometimes, though, after one of their discussions, he wondered in the dark of the night if Dwight was right. Perhaps he was the one hiding the lack of strength of his faith. Maybe he was only giving lip service to the beliefs his father had taught him so long ago.
“God help me, Dwight,” Delroy said in a choked voice. “I am going to miss you so much.” He placed a hand on the body bag, knowing that a few of the young Marine corpsmen and navy sailors on board Wasp would never have thought of willingly touching a corpse, even through the body bag.
Being with the dead man didn’t bother Delroy the way he knew it had bothered some of the other men who helped carry the corpse into the room. Back home in Marbury, the farming community he had grown up in, sitting up with the dead before the burial was a long-established practice. Delroy had sat up many nights, with his grandparents and his father and the people of his father’s parish.
But you didn’t get the chance to sit up with Terrence, did you? Despite the long years that had passed, tears stung Delroy’s eyes. Remembering was so confusing. Images of Terrence as a baby, as a gaptoothed four-year-old holding a chamois and helping Daddy wash the family station wagon, as a young man playing high school basketball, and finally as a Marine corporal in a dress uniform festooned with ribbons and medals. No chance at all.
Five years ago, his son, Lance Corporal Terrence David Harte, had come home from the Middle East sealed in a box that had never been opened. The military had handled the burial with pomp and splendor and brevity. Delroy, stationed elsewhere, had been flown home in time for the funeral.
After the funeral and most of the requisite bereavement leave, Delroy had opted to return to his post sooner than required. His wife had never understood that he couldn’t stay there in the home that he and Terrence had remodeled. Terrence had been everywhere in that house—in the pictures hanging on the wall, in the sink stand that was a half-inch longer on the right than it was supposed to be because Terrence hadn’t cut the
