The Good Guy (29 page)

Sixty-Four

P
ete’s cable service had been restored, and no
one had taken his computer. He switched it on, encouraged Linda to sit at the keyboard, gave her the website address, and left the room.

On the website, this was the citation she found when she typed in Tim’s name:

Sergeant Timothy Eugene Carrier, for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty. A platoon of Sergeant Carrier’s company, while on operations, discovered a warehouse in which mass executions of civilians sympathetic to the democratic movement were under way. As the platoon fought to seize possession of the building and rescue the prisoners therein, which included scores of women and children, they were attacked from the rear and surrounded by a large enemy force. Realizing that the unit had suffered casualties depriving it of effective leadership, and aware that the platoon was even then under attack, Sergeant Carrier took eight men and proceeded by helicopter to reinforce the beleaguered platoon. Sergeant Carrier disembarked with his men from the helicopter, which was disabled on landing by enemy action, and braving withering fire, led them and the helicopter crew to the trapped platoon, where indeed every ranking officer had perished. For the next five hours, he moved fearlessly from position to position, directing and encouraging the troops. Although painfully wounded in the leg and back by fragments of an enemy grenade, Sergeant Carrier directed the valiant defense through repeated enemy assaults, apprising headquarters of the platoon’s plight. When the warehouse was breached by enemy forces, he personally held them off at the critical doorway for a grueling forty minutes, collapsing of his numerous wounds only when the enemy retreated upon the arrival of reinforcements for which he had called. Sergeant Carrier’s actions saved his fellow Marines from capture and minimized the loss of life. A full inspection of the warehouse complex revealed 146 dismembered and beheaded civilians, 23 of them women, and 64 of them children. Sergeant Carrier’s valiant devotion to duty and indomitable fighting spirit had helped to save another 366 civilians being detained there, 112 of them women, and 220 of them children, some of them infants. His leadership and great personal valor in the face of overwhelming odds reflect great credit upon himself and are in keeping with the highest traditions of the Marine Corps and the U.S. Naval Service.

This man with his big sweet head and his tender heart had been presented with the Congressional Medal of Honor.

She read the citation once, shaking with awe. She read it again, through tears, and then again.

When Pete decided that she no longer needed to be alone, he came to her, sat on the edge of the desk, and took her hand.

“My God, Pete. My God.”

“I was in the original platoon at that warehouse, when he came with his eight men.”

“When you grew up together.”

“Later this evening, at dinner, you’ll meet Liam Rooney, who was one of the men Tim brought with him. And Liam’s wife, Michelle—she was the pilot of the downed helicopter. You know in the citation, where it says he led his men and the chopper crew through withering fire?”

She nodded.

“What it doesn’t say is first he put a tourniquet on Michelle’s arm. And when he led them through withering fire, he was sheltering her and half carrying her.”

For a while she could not speak, and then she said, “Every idiot from coast to coast knows who Paris Hilton is, but how many know
his
name?”

“One in fifty thousand?” Pete guessed. “But he wouldn’t have it any other way. That’s a small club he’s in, Linda. I’ve met several other men who’ve received the medal. They’re all different in many ways, and different ages going back to World War II, but in some ways they’re all the same. One thing, and it really impresses you when you meet them, one thing none of them does is talk about what they did back then, and if you press them on it, you see it embarrasses them to be thought of as a hero. There’s this humility that I don’t know if they were all of a type born with it or it came from the experience, but it’s a humility I know damn well I’ll never have.”

They went into the kitchen.

Mary stood at the sink, peeling apples for a pie.

Linda said, “Mrs. Carrier?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you.”

“For what, sweetheart?”

“For your son.”

Sixty-Five

T
he sky was vast, and the plains, and the green
fields of early corn, and across the vastness lay the quiet of things growing and of men patiently tending.

Tim had been stopped at the turnoff out at the highway, where he had been delayed awhile, and then he had driven a half mile along the lane to the farmhouse.

Two stories, roomy, but in no sense palatial, the house met the world through a veranda that encircled all sides of it. The white clapboard walls were so impeccably maintained that in the flat clear Midwest sun, he could detect no peeling paint, no smallest weathered patch.

Previously he had seen the house in photographs, but he had never been here before.

He had dressed in his only suit, one of two white shirts that he owned, and a new necktie that he had bought especially for this occasion. When he got out of his rental car, he had adjusted the knot in the tie, brushed his hands down the front of the coat to get rid of lint, if there was any, and looked down to be sure he didn’t need to spiff up the polish on his shoes with a quick rub on the back of each pant leg.

A pleasant young man in more casual dress had come out from the house and led him to the front porch, asking if he would like a glass of iced tea.

Now Tim sat in a handsome rocking chair on the veranda, with a glass of excellent tea.

He felt big, clumsy, costumed, but not out of place.

Every length of the veranda was furnished with bentwood rockers and wicker armchairs and wicker sofas and small wicker tables, as if in the evening neighbors came from all around to enjoy the commodious porch and talk about the weather.

She didn’t keep him waiting. She arrived in boots, tan jeans, and a crisp white blouse, much more casually dressed than on the one previous occasion when he had been in her company.

He said that it was a pleasure to see her again, and she said the pleasure was all hers, and made him feel that she meant it.

At seventy-five, she was tall and trim, with thick gray hair cut short, and her blue eyes were as direct as they were clear.

When she shook his hand, her grip was firm, as he remembered it. Her hands were strong and darkly tanned and well used.

They drank tea and talked about the corn and about horses, which she loved, and about the joys of a Midwest summer, here where she had been born and raised and hoped never to leave. Then he said, “Ma’am, I have come here to ask you for a favor of great importance to me.”

“Just ask, Sergeant Carrier, and I’ll do what I can.”

“I’ve come here to request a private meeting with your son, and it’s vital that you yourself directly speak with him about it.”

She smiled. “Fortunately, he and I have always been on excellent speaking terms except for a month when he was in the Navy and thought he had to marry a girl I flat-out knew was wrong for him.”

“How did that turn out, ma’am?”

“To my relief and considerable amusement, he discovered that the girl had no interest in marrying him.”

“I’m getting married myself in a month,” Tim said.

“Congratulations, Sergeant.”

“And I’m flat-out sure that she’s the right one.”

“Well, you’re older now than my son was then, and I daresay more sensible.”

They talked about Linda for a while, and then they talked about the meeting he wanted, and why he wanted it, and he didn’t tell her all of it, but he told more than he had intended.

Sixty-Six

I
n the red twilight, the evergreen forest stood in a
fragrant vaulted hush, like a cathedral in which only owls worshipped with a one-word prayer.

With consummate grace, the large shingled house shared the last slope with the trees and faced onto a long lake that burned with the reflected fire of the sky.

A man escorted Tim down a set of softly lighted stairs from the deck, to the shore, to a pier that led out about a hundred feet into the water.

“You’re on your own from here,” he said.

Tim’s footsteps were hollow on the planks, and waves lapped gently at the pilings, and in shadowed water somewhere to his right, a fish jumped and splashed.

At the end of the pier stood an open pavilion large enough to seat eight for dinner. This evening, the table was small, and only two chairs were provided, both turned to face the western sky and the sky repeated in the water.

On the table were a tray of sandwiches covered by a glass lid, and a small silver-plated chest full of crushed ice in which four bottles of beer were nestled.

Tim’s host stood to greet him, and they shook hands. His host opened two beers. They sat to watch the fading twilight, drinking from the bottles.

Red bled to royal purple, and as the purple darkened, stars rose to crown the night.

At first Tim felt awkward and could not easily think of small talk and wished that nearby had been a nice work of masonry on which he could have commented favorably, but there was not a stone or brick in sight. Soon, however, he had been made to feel comfortable.

The pavilion lights were not on, but moonlight bounced off the dark water, and the night was bright enough.

They spoke of their mothers, among other things, and they both had stories as funny as they were tender.

Over sandwiches and the second bottle, Tim told about the killer with the hungry eyes and Wentworth and all that had happened. There were many questions, and he answered them, and then there were more, for this son of the Midwest was a thorough man.

Putting Mickey McCready’s DVD on the table, Tim said, “What I ask, sir, for the sake of my family, is you do your best to go at them from a direction that doesn’t look like you started from what I’ve brought to you.”

He secured a promise to that effect, and he believed that he could trust it.

In a sense, he was opening a door here. He had an instinct for doors, and this one felt safe.

“Sir, that video shows twenty men, all their faces clear enough, including Wentworth’s, whatever his name might be. They all work in law enforcement or in government somewhere, so they have photo ID on file. Run a comparison using facial-recognition software, you’ll find them. I figure each of those twenty will give up twenty more, and so on. But I’m telling you how to do what you know better than me.”

A while later, an aide approached along the pier. He nodded to Tim, and to his boss, he said, “Mr. President, that call you were hoping for is coming in five minutes.”

Tim rose with his host, and they shook hands.

The President said, “We’ve been a long while at this. My limit’s two, but would you like to have another beer before you go?”

Looking around at the black lake and every wavelet silvered with moonlight along its crest and the black trees rising at every shore and the black sky pierced at a thousand points, Tim said, “Thank you, sir. I don’t mind if I do.”

He stood until the President had walked back the entire length of the pier, and then he sat once more.

A maid brought the beer and an icy glass on a tray and then left him alone. He didn’t use the glass, and he nursed the beer.

From far away across the lake came the enchanting call of a loon, and the echoes were likewise enchanting.

Tim was as far away from home here as he had been at that white farmhouse on the plains, but he felt at peace because it was all home, really, from sea to sea.

Sixty-Seven

T
hey could not afford the prices in the south or
in the Bay Area, so they found a small town that they liked along the central coast.

Even there, they could not afford to live on the water or with a broad view of the sea, but they bought a 1930s house with good bones.

While they remodeled the property, keeping it true to its period, they lived in an on-site trailer. They did most of the work themselves.

His family—which in his definition included Pete, Zoey, Liam, and Michelle—came north for the housewarming between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Michelle brought the finished lion chandelier, and Linda cried at the sight of it, and cried again at the news that Michelle was pregnant.

He found a job building a wall, and then a patio deck, and each project led to another. Soon most people in town knew him: Tim the mason, he cares about his work.

With the house finished, Linda had begun to write again. A story that was not full of anger, in which the sentences did not drip with bitterness.

“This will go somewhere,” he said, after she gave him the first few chapters to read. “This is the real thing. This is you.”

“No, big head,” she said, shaking the pages at him. “This isn’t me. This is us.”

They did not have a TV, but they bought a newspaper some days.

In February, nine months after Tim had killed Linda’s would-be murderer, the media was full of stories about conspiracies and indictments. Two prominent politicians committed suicide, Washington quaked, and political empires fell.

They followed the news for a week, then didn’t.

In the evenings, they played swing music and old radio programs—Jack Benny, Phil Harris, Burns and Allen.

They had sold her ’39 Ford, in which the killer had left them a remembrance, and they talked about buying another one if her book did well.

Like Pete, Tim had sometimes dreamed of the severed heads of babies and of a distraught yet grateful mother who had lost one child but not two others, and who had in a fit of conflicting emotions torn her hair out by the roots to plait it into simple ornaments because she was poor and had nothing else to give to signify her gratitude. He dreamed of those things no more.

The wide world remained dark, and greater darkness threatened. But he and Linda had found a small place of light, because she knew how to endure and he knew how to fight, and together they were whole.