The Fourth Sunrise (11 page)

Sharee smiled. She was a good listener.

“When I got my freak injury playing volleyball, I made sure I snagged that picture before I left Hanoi. Hobbled over to it and all. Captain probably expected it was me who took it, but there was no way I was leaving without one.” I paused. “So, that’s the story of me and Captain Jack.”

“
Pretty remarkable. So that was it? You were able to get out of the war? Over a volleyball injury?” Sharee seemed a bit turned off that a volleyball injury ended my war career.

“
There’s not much you can do with a leg that was shattered in four places,” I protested.

“
But you were playing volleyball?”

“
It was in wartime in a war zone.”

“
But guys like Captain Jack were there to the end?”

I paused and looked at Sharee. She must have had someone close die or get seriously hurt late in the war. I didn’t want to argue or assume, so I decided to back off and decided to say what we were both thinking. “I was lucky and unlucky. I got very lucky as it comes to war. As it came to my life, my leg getting shattered couldn’t have been worse. I was never able to play baseball again at a professional level. Not only was my baseball career shot, I couldn’t be a soldier anymore either, for better or for worse.”

“War makes no sense to me.” Sharee was obviously disturbed by the concept of war in general. She decided to change the subject and I was happy to oblige. “Can I ask you a question?” Sharee asked.

“
Of course.”

“
Did you date other women before you were drafted?”

“
That all depends on what your definition of dating is. Did I remain celibate in the hope that someday the love of my life would come back to me?

“
I am curious if there were other women in your life?”

“
Well, I am a man, after all, who played a professional sport. We might not have had major league type groupies, but we had our fair share. I didn’t get close to another woman for ten years, and eventually I knew I had to get over her.”

“
Anyone serious?”

“
No one too serious. There was a Latina woman I met while I was in Albuquerque. We took a liking to one another. She was a little bit older than me and we seemed to be able to make each other laugh.”

“
Can I ask you a terribly personal question?” Sharee grinned.

“
Sure, go ahead.” I was nervous to see where this was going.

“
Were you a virgin the night you met Christine for the first time?”

Then a split second after Sharee asked the question she said, “Oh my God, I can’t believe I asked that! You don’t have to answer that. I didn't realize how incredibly personal that sounded until it came out of my mouth.”

I laughed. I looked at Sharee and gently smiled. “Yes, I was a virgin on that night.”

“
You were?” Sharee looked at me with loving eyes. “That is so sweet. You were this big sexy jock who hadn’t experienced a woman yet. Wow, what a detail. Let me ask you this, Joel? Do you think Christine was a virgin on that night?”

“
I doubt it. Especially, if she and her boyfriend, Captain Jack, were as close as they were. In my heart, I wanted to believe we were the same in that retrospect.”

Sharee smiled. “I would like to think she was.”

I smiled at Sharee’s youthful optimism. “Okay, romance writer. Hold onto that best-case scenario.”

We were both quiet. I wasn’t uncomfortable talking about sex. The subject sometimes had the ability to shut things down in a conversation when it was mentioned under the wrong circumstances.

I continued to drink my cold coffee and every now and then, I’d look at Sharee and smile, praying she would say something. I was running out of polite conversation. Thank God she did think of something. “Hey, you want to do something crazy?”

“
What?” I asked.

“
The fair is here tonight.”

“
I’m aware of that,” I said smiling. “I was hoping to take Christine there.”

“
I may not be Christine, but would you like to check it out? There is still a half-hour left. I know it’s not a long time, but it might be fun.”

“
Sharee seemed very eager and excited to go to the fair with me. She almost seemed flirtatious about it, which made me a tad uncomfortable, but even more excited that a young woman would like to spend time with me. This was definitely a first. “I would love to,” I said.

We both got up and Sharee grabbed her briefcase. I didn't understand why a woman would go on a date with a leather briefcase. Maybe it was some kind of weird second bag.

Chapter Fifteen

Present Day – Delta, Colorado - Coffee Shop, 1:30 a.m.

So, around 1:30 a.m. in the morning, Sharee and I got up from our cozy little table and went outside. I walked Sharee over to my truck.

“
Here I am. This beat-up wagon is mine.”

“
It’s charming.”

“
She’s been my baby for 40 years, so she is pretty damn charming all right. This truck is so full of charm, she should be in a museum.” I opened the door and let her in. She hopped in, briefcase and all. I wanted to ask her about the briefcase, but she wasn’t talking about it, so I just let it be.

I started my engine. I glanced over at Sharee and smiled. She must have trusted me after all this sharing to get in a truck with me, after meeting me only hours earlier. I was harmless and she knew it. I drove Sharee in my truck over to Deltarado Days 2012. I parked my truck in the front parking lot, as I had done many times over the years.

It was, once again, a beautiful summer Colorado night. The fair on this night truly didn’t look much different than it did any of the times I have gone to it. There was food, booths, game booths, but the thing that stood out the most that I had not seen before was a giant stage. Apparently, someone had performed earlier in the night. At 1:35 in the morning, it was empty. As far as I was concerned, it was the perfect spot for us to grab something to eat and sit on top of it.

“
Want to get a slice of pizza for old times’ sake?” Sharee asked.

“
I would like that,” I said. We walked over to the pizza stand and we ordered two pizza slices and two Cokes. It came to $8.00. I smiled and winked at Sharee and said, “Fifty years ago, this wasn’t even a buck.”

“
Times have changed, sir,” the young man said from behind the pizza stand. I laughed and told him, “Boy, do I know it.”

We made our way to the stage with our slices of pepperoni pizza and soda pop and we sat and ate. Here I was once again, going late into the evening at Deltarado Days. But this time, it was with a completely different girl. Reliving this was turning out to be a little bit of fun. Sharee was sweet and I enjoyed her company.

“So, Joel,” Sharee asked. “Whatever happened to your friend Douglas?”

“
Oh… Douglas. He’s actually a bigger part of the story than you might think.”

“
Why is that?”

“
Well, Douglas eventually made it up to the big leagues and had at least .300 at bats at the major league level. Like me, sports injuries plagued him and in 1976, he was diagnosed with leukemia and had to quit the game.”

“
Oh no! That’s awful.”

“
Yup, he died a year later. He was a very good friend.” In that instance I felt the loss again. “Once my playing days were over, I picked up some odd jobs, but none was more rewarding that heading up the Douglas Ward Leukemia Foundation. I still run the foundation to this day. We have helped a lot of really good people.”

Sharee looked at me and couldn’t quite gauge what to say. It was an abrupt bit of information to be dumped on her, but Douglas was an important part of my life. Still is.

“That’s fantastic that you turned something painful into something positive.”

I smiled and accepted her compliment. Even to this day, it was painful thinking about the death of my friend. He was a great person. I was lucky to know him. I paused and thought about my friend and smiled.

Once again, there was a lull in the conversation, not for the lack of communication, but being able to catch up to how deep these conversations were ending up. I think we were both digesting it all. It was real easy to talk to Sharee and I liked that. It usually wasn’t easy for me to open up to people. Sharee made it easy. She looked me in the eye and asked a lot of questions that told me she was interested. It was amazing this pretty young girl would be even remotely interested in my life. She eventually broke the silence and asked, “When and how did you meet Christine again? I’m dying to know.”

I swallowed my bite of pizza and said, “Every failed relationship I had in my late twenties and early thirties made me think about Christine more and more. I longed for that innocence, the innocence that we shared just slow dancing. I wanted to repeat the love I had in my heart, but I couldn’t find it elsewhere. My heart had met its one true love and I was lost, trying to find someone else who was not Christine. So, finally, I came to the conclusion that I had to see her again.”

“What did you do?” Sharee perked up.

I looked at Sharee and shyly said, “I came here five years in a row.”

“Here? To Deltarado Days?” She looked up and down the three streets and smiled. “Did you have any luck?”

“
Yes, eventually. The seventies were ending and the eighties were here. Reagan was president and after a little scare with some lunatic trying to shoot him because he was in love with Jodie Foster, America had started to turn itself around and there was a lot of national pride, especially with the Olympics being hosted in Los Angeles in 1984. The United States was hosting the Olympic Games for the first time in a very long time. Even two years before, people were all feeling Olympic fever. The only fever I had… was a longing for Christine.”

“
So, you came here in hopes of seeing her five years in a row?” Sharee asked surprised.

“
From 1978 to 1982,” I said, answering the question.

“
So, you met her in the fifth year?” Sharee asked.

I leaned back and looked at the night sky and said, “Yes, I did. It was a night much like tonight.”

July 1982 – Delta, Colorado - Deltarado Days, 9:00 p.m.

“
I had come so many times that I had actually made friends in the town. I was always too embarrassed to tell anyone from the town why I was really here. Instead, I just told them that I just dug Deltarado Days.

“
It was 1982, and it was the final night of the fair. I almost didn’t show up because I figured there was little chance she would show up on the last night. But I was wrong. Thank God, I was wrong.

“
I thought I’d show up right when it got dark because I would dip in and then dip out once I’d made my rounds around the fair, looking every single woman in the face. It had been fourteen years and she could have had a lot of changes in her appearance.

“
As I walked around the fair, there was a lot of rock and roll and other types of music playing. It was terribly loud and I was getting a pretty bad headache. I did something I had never done in all the years I had gone to Deltarado Days. I decided to go the nurse’s station at the far end of the fair and get some aspirin.

“
The nurse’s station was a portable building that was about the size of a school bus. It was at the very end of fair and it took a good five minutes to walk to it.

“
Finally, I arrived. I went up a small ramp and opened the door.

“
As I opened the door, everything seemed to go in slow motion. I turned the doorknob and the door slowly flew open. I looked in and at the same moment the door opened, a woman in her early thirties looked up at me.

It was Christine. I nearly passed out from being surprised. She had on a nurse’s cap and she looked me in the eye. When she saw me, she looked like she had seen a ghost and who knows what I must have looked like when I saw her.

‘“Christine,’ I said in a very calm voice.

‘“
Joel,’ she answered immediately.

“
I didn’t know why but tears were dripping from my eyes, which caused her to tear up, too. It was odd way to greet each other for the first time in years. But it was honest. It was as honest as we had left things fourteen years before. ‘You look fantastic,’ I said, regaining my composure.

‘“
So do you,’ she said, looking me in my eyes like she had done fourteen years before. It was as if she didn’t miss a beat.

“‘
I wasn’t sure you’d remember me,’ I said.