Shane Comes Home

by Rinker Buck

  Shane and Leo immediately hit it off for a number of obvious reasons. They were both great skiers and fitness nuts, well-traveled and read, and there was much to talk about. She was beautiful and he was the hunky uber-marine. Shane had another quality irresistible to a single mother. He was great with children, they always adored him right away, and Leo could instantly see how well he handled Olive, how willing he was to rise early and run her off for lessons at the bunny slope or help her pick out sandwiches at the luncheon cafeteria. By the second day of the vacation, a pattern had emerged. Jonna, a less experienced skier, was exhausted by the evening and preferred remaining back in the resort babysitting Olive. Shane and Leo headed out for long runs down the WinterPlace slopes under the lights.

  Shane worked fast at everything, but this one set a record. By the time they had returned to Salt Rock for the annual round of Childers family Christmas parties, Shane and Leo were an item. The behavior amazed everyone. All through dinner at the relatives, Shane and Leo exchanged loving glances, Shane jumped up during dessert to fetch Leo pie à la mode, and when he called home to Wyoming to speak with his parents, Shane nuzzled in a big La-Z-Boy rocker with Leo, holding the phone in one hand while applying Leo’s nail polish with another. Whoa, Jessi, Jonna, and Aunt Mary thought. Was this a Romeo who had emerged out of sight in Europe and Africa or a new Shane? Public displays of affection had never been his style.

  But Shane was Shane and did everything in a hurry.

  “In anyone else a love affair this sudden would have seemed impulsive,” Aunt Mary Bias said, “but with Shane, who threw himself at everything so intensely, it seemed natural.”

  The relationship developed quickly after that. Every other weekend Shane began making the nine-hour run back to southern Ohio to see Leo, or sent her plane tickets to meet him in Charleston. They frequently met halfway, in Charlotte, North Carolina. In February, Shane brought Leo to Salt Rock for his grandmother’s eightieth birthday party, and everyone considered Leo a great catch for Shane—warm and bubbly, gorgeous to look at, and always stylishly dressed. She made Shane laugh, was loosening him up, and allowing him to flower as a full person, not just a Marine. And Shane was so good with Olive that everyone was touched. He bought her glitter kits and books to read, pulled her along on a plastic sled when he and Leo went running in the morning, took her to Saturday afternoon Disney movies when Leo needed a child-care break.

  Although they were concerned about how quickly the romance had developed, many of the Childerses thought that Shane and Leo represented a solid attraction of opposites, an exchange of baggage that might be good. They seemed to solve each other’s problems. Leo had a pronounced wanderlust, and she had no clear life plan that anyone could detect. Shane was directed and focused but could use a little bit more spontaneity in his life, which Leo would help introduce. It just might work.

  Besides, the new couple were so obviously in love, deeply. “I love him, I just love him so much,” Leo would write in e-mails to Jonna. “And Olive loves him too.”

  By late February 2001, when it came time to propose, all Shane’s perfectionism came out. This had to be done just right, the details were important—the kind of room he would rent at a Charlotte motel where they would meet, the engagement ring, Dom Perignon champagne. Typically, Shane was ahead of himself and had already picked out wedding bands, too. By early March, when Leo had accepted Shane’s proposal and the family was told, she and Jonna were out looking for wedding dresses, and Leo had even driven as far as Lexington, Kentucky, and Cincinnati to find the right gown and bridesmaid dresses. The plan was that Shane and Leo would exchange vows in The Citadel chapel on the day before he was commissioned as an officer in June, and then they would travel to Quantico for his basic officer’s courses and then settle somewhere near San Diego as he began work as a platoon leader at Camp Pendleton. Shane was exultant and Leo was telling friends that she was excited too—she’d found a great man to marry and southern California would be a welcome change after slushy, cold Ohio. Shane changed the beneficiary on his service-group life insurance policy from his parents to Leo.

  But now, on the verge of marriage, Shane also seemed to be going overboard on the relationship with Leo, making erratic decisions that seemed shocking. He’d always dreamed of becoming a platoon leader in the marines—leading men in a combat rifle platoon is considered the most exciting, demanding job in the Corps—and now he had feverishly worked for three years to get a college degree and become commissioned. But he was ready to give it all up for Leo.

  “Shane was even willing to change his MOS (Military Occupational Specialty) in the marines away from the infantry to another area so he and Leo could live together more, without a lot of deployments,” Jonna said. “He was willing to completely change his life and career track for her. We all couldn’t believe it.”

  Then, by St. Patrick’s Day that year, it had all fallen apart and Shane and Leo had called it off. There had been a confrontation, mostly about Leo’s fear that she was being rushed and that all the arrangements for a wedding just three months away were too hectic. She had also begun to harbor worries about marrying a marine, one who might be quickly deployed anywhere around the world regardless of his military specialty, and Shane had insistently tried to talk her out of her fears. Shane told family members that Leo had backed out because she found him “too controlling.”

  But it was clear too that the whirlwind romance and sudden engagement hadn’t given them enough time to really explore each other or discover obvious incompatibilities. Shane’s marine career and the quick moves to Virginia and California with a daughter in tow were certainly a concern. And Shane’s intensity and need for total commitment must have been intimidating. In Charlotte, where Shane had proposed, Leo must have felt cornered, without enough time to really consider. And what would marriage be like to an uber-marine planner who was now maniacally organizing floral arrangements for the chapel, renting a banquet hall, and even selecting wine and entrées for the reception?

  The breakup was ugly, with all the usual recriminations of a canceled engagement—Shane was too demanding, too committed to the marines. Shane was clearly devastated and embarrassed to have been jilted just a few weeks after he had made the big announcement to the family and his friends. It was a crazy period in his life anyway because he was writing a senior thesis, wrapping up his final semester at The Citadel, and battling his MECEP unit over being commissioned in his utility fatigues. He spent a lot of time on the phone with Jessi and Jonna feeling sorry for himself about the botched engagement, and this became one of the few times in his life that Shane was openly unhinged and willing to expose his vulnerability to others. He seemed to understand that impulsivity, which in the past had served him so well, had hurt him here, and he was humbled.

  His Citadel professor Christopher McRae was one of those to whom Shane turned for help. Right after spring break he collapsed on a chair in McRae’s office, close to tears, obviously in need of a mentor over the cancellation of his engagement.

  “It was the first time Shane had spent a long time in my office,” McRae said. “Usually he was in and out in such a hurry. Leo had told Shane ‘You scare me,’ and he was very confused by that. His personality was so straight-ahead, persist, confront head-on, and that had always worked for him. But it didn’t work for this gal from Kentucky, and he just couldn’t understand that.”

  Shane buried his hurt and embarrassment over the breakup with Leo by telling family members and friends that he would probably just remain single. “Well, I guess I’m never going to get married,” he said. “I’m married to the marines.” After his commissioning Shane was busy throughout the summer of 2001 attending his officer training classes at Quantico, and then taking over his new platoon at Camp Pendleton in southern California. Then September 11 happened, training intensified, and all marines realized that they might soon be deployed overseas. It really was better for now that Shane was married only to the marines.

  Shane’s
commissioning week in the middle of June that year was a Childers family beaut. Joe and Judy flew in from Wyoming, Jessi and Jonna came down from southern Ohio, and they all bunked down together in a rented house at the local air force base. Shane’s itinerary for them was typically dense—the buggy rides through the historic district, Fort Sumter, tours of The Citadel, dinner reservations, and then Tommy Condon’s Irish Pub. Joe and Shane went for haircuts and to look at pickup trailers and came back late, annoying Judy on her birthday. When the Missionary Baptist Childerses arrived from West Virginia, Shane and Jessi scrambled madly around the house to remove all evidence of beer.

  The night that he was commissioned, Shane, Jessi, and Jonna hit the town. They started at Tommy Condon’s, and when that closed they moved to several other bars, finally ending up quite late down at Folley Beach. To sober up, they stripped to their underwear, dove into the water, and then Jessi got carried away by the current and cut her foot on some rocks. Shane swam over and rescued her, pulled her back to shore, and then they headed back for the house in the pickup, laughing, shrieking to the music, remembering all their ridiculous times together. They were expectant for Shane now, but there was also a heavy sense that their period together was passing. Their Charleston–West Virginia years were over.

  At the air force gate, Shane flashed his new military pass. The security guard snapped to attention and saluted.

  He was a lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps now, and that was his first salute.

  On Friday afternoon, Captain Hutchison finally learned that Shane was coming home. The casualty branch at Quantico informed him that Shane would be arriving in Billings in the cargo hold of a United Air Lines flight at 9:20 P.M. Saturday, with a marine escort riding as a passenger on the same flight. Hutchison immediately called Laura Richardson at the funeral home in Powell to make arrangements for transporting the body and coffin to Powell. Airport pickups of deceased residents or former residents of town are common for funeral directors, and generally they are made with a windowless van. But Richardson informed Hutchison that in this case, out of respect for Shane’s status as a military hero and the first casualty of Iraq, she would be returning him to Powell in her best funeral hearse.

  Hutchison and Richardson discussed how it would be best to tell Judy and Joe. They agreed that Hutchison would inform the Childerses right away and escort the hearse carrying Shane to Powell on Saturday night—another step way beyond the CACO manual that Hutchison wanted to make as a reassuring courtesy to the Childerses. Richardson advised Hutchison that lifting Shane’s coffin out of the airliner might have to wait until the other cargo was removed, and that it would probably be almost midnight before they left the Billings airport.

  But Richardson was also enormously relieved. Shane’s arrival on Saturday would allow them to view the body and make a decision on Sunday about an open or closed casket at the wake. The wake and reception could then take place on Monday, and the funeral and burial on Tuesday. The complicated details of an honor guard at two locations and a funeral parade through town were mostly in place and could be fully activated now. She and Hutchison had been under considerable pressure, but now they could move ahead with their plans for what was expected to be one of the biggest funerals in northern Wyoming in ten years.

  “Kevin, you’ve just done such a wonderful job holding together the details on this,” Richardson told him over the phone. “I’m so impressed.”

  “Well, Laura,” Hutchison said. “I’ve just been doing my job. You’re the one who’s really be so helpful on all of this, knowing what to do. I’ve enjoyed working together.”

  Richardson hung up deeply touched, but also mildly frustrated by her dealings with Hutchison and his Billings marines. This group was so wonderful, so warm and detail-oriented, and never pushing work off onto others that they could do themselves. It reminded her of how different Hutchison and his team were from other officers she had dealt with on military funerals. Captain Hutchison, however, was so self-effacing and hard-working that she worried that he was too devoted to take time out for himself.

  But she would be busy now putting all the rest of her plans for the Childers funeral and burial in place. She would have to arrange with the airline to have the proper conveyor truck available for off-loading, clearance to get her hearse through security, and so much else. She didn’t have much time after that to dwell on the personality of Captain Hutchison.

  Down in Powell, when he reached her by phone, Judy Childers received the news calmly, renewing Hutchison’s concerns about the emotions she was holding in. But he also knew that focusing on the specifics seemed to be comforting to Judy, so he explained about the late-night arrival, the escorted hearse ride to Wyoming, and how things seemed to have fallen in place for the Monday wake and the Tuesday funeral.

  “Judy, we’re going to ride from Billings with the hearse,” Hutchison said. “We will be with Shane all the way.”

  Judy told Joe when he came in from feeding his cattle, and he took it hard. He was all cried out now and didn’t break down, but instead sat at the dining-room table with his USS Tortuga cap on and a glum expression on his face, eyes welling with tears as he stared at his folded hands. He and Judy briefly discussed the arrangements for delivering Shane to the Powell funeral home and then Joe sat quietly at the table before returning outside, staring at his hands and the walls.

  Later, Joe would say that it was the words, just the words that Judy said, that made him feel so profoundly sad.

  “Joe, Shane’s coming home,” Judy said. “Kevin Hutchison called and said that Shane is flying in on Saturday night.”

  Shane was coming home. Those words had once made his heart sing. Shane was flying in from Geneva or Nairobi, Shane was driving cross-country in his pickup after completing his officer’s courses at Quantico, and then heading off to Camp Pendleton to lead a platoon of marines. For three or four days before Shane visited, Joe would be passing through the routines of his day—driving off to Northstate Corp. for work, cruising the hardware stores, working with his horses in the barn—and then his heart would momentarily race about his son’s arrival. It would be so wonderful to see him, and Shane was a sudden burst of energy on the ranch, alleviating the loneliness of Joe and Judy’s empty nest. But now Shane was really, really coming home, for good, in a coffin selected from the choices in a government CACO manual.

  It was very hard on Joe and, after sitting for a while longer in the dining room, he headed out for the barn to find some work to do.

  A SOLDIER COMES HOME

  On Saturday morning the Bighorn country was sunny and bright, a pristine landscape out of a photography book on the American West. Before dawn a broad cold front had moved east over the Rockies and now the ceiling and visibility were unlimited in the dry air. The big sky was an intense azure blue, with purple fringes radiating along the peaks of the Beartooths and the Pryors. It was a perfect day to be out with the team, and Joe and his son Sam were up early to feed the cattle. The jingle of harness and the pounding of hooves echoed across the prairie, thrown back by the fortresslike walls of the Polecat Bench.

  Like the weather, which would finally turn balmy later in the day, the towns of Powell and Cody had extended a warm generosity to the Childers family and those arriving for the funeral. The motels in both towns were now offering steep discounts and even free rooms to family members and friends who had traveled to Wyoming, and three Powell florists had pooled their resources to prepare flowers for the funeral and grave service. Funeral directors from all over Wyoming had provided the free services of their regular hearse and limousine drivers for the procession through town, and the Powell Chamber of Commerce covered the cost of decorating the lampposts and storefronts for the funeral parade with ribbons in red, white, and blue. Later, to get away from the funeral bustle around the Childers house, Jessi Walker drove into Cody to hit the downtown tourist strip. At a crafts store, she found a kachina doll she really wanted, but the two-hundred-dollar price tag
was too much. When the owner learned that she was Shane Childers’s cousin, she insisted that Jessi take the kachina doll for half price.

  Sam Childers and his wife, Cori, were the recipients of similar generosity in far-off South Dakota. As they were traveling west on I-90 for the funeral, their minivan broke down near Salem, South Dakota, and they were towed to the Salem Auto Center there. The mechanics at the dealership informed Sam that repairs to his van would take several days, but finding a rental car in that remote part of South Dakota proved impossible. When the dealer realized that Sam and his family were traveling back to Wyoming to attend the funeral of his brother killed in Iraq—they had read about Shane in their local papers—they pulled a new minivan off of their sale line, put on dealer’s plates, and rented it to Sam for the bargain price of thirty-five dollars a day.

  This would be the first of many transforming moments that Sam experienced during the funeral week for Shane, a brother for whom he held troubled, unresolved feelings. Their sibling relationship, scrappy and typically competitive as boys, had been a series of missed approaches once they were adults. The difficulties between them had bothered both brothers for years, and Sam had always felt that once they were in their forties and Shane would have enough time after retiring from the marines, they would patch things up. But with Shane’s death in Iraq, that wouldn’t happen now, and for the first time Sam was shouldering family responsibilities and confronting old feelings without the shadow of a strong and domineering older brother. For his first few days in Wyoming, Sam was mostly trapped in a conundrum of confusion and doubt. If Shane had been there, Sam would have known exactly what to do—stay in the shadows and follow Shane’s lead. Sam had always been the quiet, younger brother, the one who could afford to dodge family functions by going fishing alone, or entertaining himself in the corner with a few like-minded friends, because Shane was effortlessly social and dominated the room. But now that family dynamic was irrevocably over. Sam was the only son left.