July Thunder

by Rachel Lee

  Sam heaved a sigh and sat in the chair nearest the window and farthest from his father. He felt resentful, wondering how Elijah could possibly believe he had any right to interfere in Sam’s life or to lecture Sam about anything. He’d lost that right a long time ago, when he’d told his son to take a permanent hike.

  Clinging to old wounds. That was what he was doing. He could imagine Mary—if she were still talking to him—scowling at him and telling him he was just like his dad. Maybe he needed to start acting like a grown-up instead of a resentful kid. Maybe he ought to at least listen. He was certainly old enough now to pick and choose which bits of advice would benefit him.

  He looked out at a young woman trying to corral three small kids and herd them toward the hospital entrance. The kids looked to be excited, which was odd, Sam thought. A hospital visit didn’t strike him as the kind of event that would send kids into running-around-the-parking-lot glee. Finally he looked over at his father, prepared to at least try to listen.

  “Do I get to find out the reason for this lecture, or is it a secret?”

  Elijah smiled. “No secret at all, Sam. You’re in love with Mary. Mary’s in love with you. And you’ve slammed the door on her like a harried mother on a door-to-door salesman.”

  Sam turned his attention back out the window, trying to conceal the pang in his heart. Mary was in love with him? No way. He didn’t need a magnifying glass to read the signs she was sending out. “So now you’re the village matchmaker?” he asked, without looking at his father.

  “I’m a father, Sam. Not a good one, I’ll admit, but I tried. And I’m trying now.” Elijah drew a deep breath. “But for the life of me, I can’t figure out what that woman could possibly have said or done that would make you act this way.”

  Keeping a tight leash on his feelings, Sam tipped his head back and looked at the ceiling tiles, then finally met his father’s gaze. “What exactly is it that I did? Mary won’t tell me, and this flailing about in the dark is getting more than a bit frustrating.”

  Elijah huffed. “You really are blind, aren’t you? I don’t know what all happened, but I do know she told you something and you’ve been cold as a stone ever since. The poor woman couldn’t even talk about it. She just sat in that chair, crying.” He paused to scratch at his IV site. “Maybe you learned compassion and forgiveness from me. Or the lack of same.”

  “Is that what you think?” Sam asked.

  “I don’t know what to think, son. All I know is that two decent people who love each other are on the outs, and it has something to do with what she told you.”

  Sam rose. “Yes, Dad, it does. But not the way you think, or the way Mary may be thinking.” He took a deep breath and looked out the window again. Whatever the mother and her three hyperkinetic charges had been up to, they were out of sight. Probably bouncing off the corridor walls somewhere, he guessed. He tried to find words. “Dad…”

  Elijah waited for a moment, then drew a breath as if to answer. But he let the reply go unspoken and settled back against the pillow, listening.

  “Something really awful happened to Mary a few years ago,” Sam finally said. Having found a place to begin, he found it easier to continue. “It was a horrible tragedy. She lost her son, and her husband blamed her. He dumped her, and she’s been tormenting herself with guilt ever since.”

  “And you shut her out because of that?” Elijah asked, an accusatorial tone resonant in his voice.

  “No,” Sam said. “That’s just it. I didn’t say anything! I mean, what is there to say that hasn’t been said by countless others already? It wasn’t her fault. She didn’t do anything wrong. But I realized those words would fall on deaf ears. I can’t mend her broken heart, Dad. I would if I could. I wish I had that gift. But I’m just a small-town deputy sheriff, with my own skeletons in the closet and my own wounds to lick. Not a psychotherapist. Not a priest. I can’t give her absolution, and I can’t peel away the layers of her psyche and heal that wound. I can’t be what she needs.”

  Sam paused and sat again. His shoulders sagged. “I can’t fix her, Dad. She’s torn up inside, and I can’t do a damn thing about it. Just like I couldn’t save Beth.”

  He pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes, as if trying to shut out some horrible image. Inside, he was a maelstrom of painful emotions, as if everything with Beth and everything with Mary had all come together to tell him just how helpless he truly was. Every day he helped other people, but the two most important people in his life were beyond his ability to help.

  Finally he dropped his hands and looked out the window again. There were things he could do and things he couldn’t do, and the things he couldn’t do had been tripping him up his entire life.

  After a long moment, Elijah spoke. “Sam, do you remember Brother Crauley, who came to stay with us in San Diego? The Navy chaplain?”

  Sam shrugged. “I guess. It’s been a long time, Dad. And I wasn’t paying much attention to the home front when we lived in San Diego.”

  To Sam’s surprise, Elijah smiled. He’d been expecting another of his father’s withering glares.

  “You were busy with Scouts and soccer, son. You were a kid doing kid things. But Chaplain Crauley was a buddy of mine in seminary. He had a couple months medical leave from Vietnam, and we lived near the base. So he came to stay with us while he was recovering.”

  Sam turned, the memory now rising from the ashes of his childhood. “Oh, yeah. He got shot or something, right?”

  Elijah nodded and touched his upper arm. “Right through the arm. Shattered the bone. He told me about the night it happened. He was with the Marine Corps, somewhere in a rice paddy. His platoon was pulling back to evacuate, and one of the men stepped on a land mine. Jack Crauley went back for him and was pulling him toward their evac area when an NVA sniper hit him. He said it felt like someone had smashed his arm between a hammer and an anvil.”

  “I remember now. His right arm was in a sling, so he had to eat left-handed. Mom had to cut his meat for him at dinner.”

  “That’s right,” Elijah said, his eyes clouding for a moment. “Your mother was always a sweet woman that way.” He drew another breath and continued. “Anyway, he’s lying there on a levee between two rice paddies, and the platoon corpsman comes up. Jack said he was screaming to wake the dead. Didn’t want to let the corpsman touch his arm. But the medic gave him a shot of morphine, calmed him down and splinted his arm, gentle as a dove. Jack looked up through a grimace and asked how the corpsman could be so tender. And he said the man smiled and said ‘I’ve been wounded, too, padre.’ Jack told that story in a sermon one night at our church. He said we’re all called to be wounded healers.”

  “You’re saying I should talk to Mary.”

  Elijah smiled again, a gentle smile. “What I’m saying, son, is that you especially should talk to Mary. Because you lost Beth. Because you’ve been wounded. She doesn’t need absolution or psychotherapy. Or if she does, that’s not what she needs most. What she needs most is the tender, gentle touch of someone who’s been wounded, too.”

  Sam turned back to the window. The scene before him made sense now, as the woman and children returned to the car with a man in tow. Bringing Daddy home. That was why the kids had been so excited.

  “I don’t know what I can do except tell her how I feel,” Sam said. “I don’t know what else to say.”

  “Maybe that’s all you need to say, Sam. Maybe that’s what she needs to hear, more than anything in the world. And maybe…just maybe…that’s what you need to hear yourself say, more than anything in the world.”

  Elijah reached out his hand and waited for his son to take it. Only after Sam’s hand rested in his did he speak again. “Beth was a wonderful woman, son. I know I never met her, but if you loved her, there’s not a doubt in my mind that she was wonderful. But you need to love again. To honor her memory. To heal Mary. And to heal yourself.” He squeezed Sam’s hand. “And maybe to help an old man feel like he wasn’t
such a failure as a father after all.”

  Sam felt a surprising, totally new, rush of tenderness toward Elijah. Awkwardly he leaned down to kiss his father’s forehead. “You’re not a failure, Dad. It just took us longer to succeed. I love you, Dad.”

  “I always loved you, son. Always will. And I’m proud as punch to be your father.”

  On the way out of the hospital, Sam ran into Joe and Louis. They were coming in through the automatic doors carrying a big spray of flowers. Sam greeted them warmly and asked who they were visiting.

  “Your dad,” Joe said.

  “My dad?” The idea stunned Sam.

  “Oh, he’s not such a bad old bird,” Louis said. “We’ll sweeten him up and bring him round. Sometimes you just have to get people to see past the stereotypes to the real human beings behind them. He’s starting to see.”

  The idea of Elijah entertaining a visit from two gay men brought a smile to Sam’s face for the first time in two days, at least. Maybe longer. The muscles in his cheeks felt unaccustomed to the expression.

  “You grin,” Joe said. “But let me tell you, when I stopped in to see him this morning, he said he was going to ask the church to give us all the cut timber so we could rebuild our cabin.”

  “Really?” Sam felt as if the whole planet had just changed its direction of rotation.

  “Really,” said Louis. “He really wants to be a good guy.”

  Maybe he did, Sam thought as he headed for his car. Maybe Elijah’s main failing had always been trying too hard. The idea of perfection could be an unforgiving taskmaster, not only for the person who was trying to be perfect himself, but for those around him who he wanted to be perfect, too.

  He hadn’t made the decision consciously, but he found himself parking in front of Mary’s house. Her living-room lights were on, inviting. Or maybe they looked inviting because he knew she was inside.

  He didn’t get out of his car immediately but sat there in the dark and tried to figure out what he was going to say to her. It all seemed so jumbled up inside his head and heart that he didn’t know how he was going to make sense out of it for himself, let alone for her.

  But if what his dad said was true, that she had been crying because she felt he had rejected her… Well, it wouldn’t matter much what he said as long as he showed up. As long as he showed up and didn’t say the wrong thing.

  Feeling nervous and uneasy, he climbed out of his truck and headed for her door. He didn’t know what he would do if she wouldn’t let him in, but he at least had to mend whatever hurt he’d inflicted. At least tell her that he hadn’t wanted to hurt her. Even if she wouldn’t hear another word from his mouth.

  The woman who answered the door looked a lot older and wearier than the Mary he’d met. Her eyes were hollow and almost expressionless as she looked at him.

  “Can we talk?” he said without preamble.

  “What’s the point?”

  He shifted on his feet, fighting the urge to slink away like the cur he was. It hurt to realize he’d put that look on Mary’s face. He’d never wanted her to look anything but happy, and instead his bollixed emotional state had made him hurt her.

  “The point,” he said finally, “is that we need to talk. I think there are some misunderstandings. But I can tell you one thing for sure, Mary. There won’t be any point to it if we don’t talk.”

  After a few seconds of hesitation, she stepped back and let him into the house. Neither of them seemed to want to sit. In fact, Mary stayed close to the door, as if she wanted to be able to run on a moment’s notice.

  “This is terrible,” he said finally.

  “What is?”

  “Me. I’m a cop, right? I’ve got smart ideas and words of advice for most of the world. Call me in on an emergency and I know exactly what to do. I can talk fighting couples into making peace. I can soothe accident victims. I can sort out neighborhood squabbles. Hell, once I even talked a burglar into putting down his gun.

  “But it’s different when it’s somebody I care about. Suddenly I don’t have any smart words or good ideas. Damned if I don’t get tongue-tied.”

  “You don’t sound tongue-tied to me.”

  “That’s because I’m not talking about the things that hurt yet.” His heart was beating nervously, and he felt his mouth go dry. This was not going to be easy. In fact, it was probably the hardest thing he’d ever done. And right now he felt like a blindfolded man walking into a minefield.

  “I don’t talk much about what I really feel, Mary. I’m not good at it. But maybe I need to change that. So here goes. I believe in saving the whales and what’s left of our forests. I worry about the ozone layer and world hunger, and I joined one of those organizations where you send in twenty bucks a month to feed a hungry child. I’ve got five kids right now, and I write to them at least once every two months and send them some little doodad I think they’d like.”

  Was he imagining it, or was her face softening just a shade? “I think we ought to pay down the national debt, and I think we ought to pay more for food so that family farms can make a living. And I think we all need to do a much better job of taking care of one another than we do now.”

  He thought he saw the slightest nod of her head, but he couldn’t be sure. “Which leads me to my next point. I haven’t done a very good job of taking care of you. Last night…last night I just plain didn’t know what to say. And I think, to be honest, I should admit that all I could seem to think of were clichés I figured you’d heard a million times and didn’t believe anyway.”

  She drew a shaky breath and bit her lower lip.

  “I mean, what am I going to tell you, Mary? That it wasn’t your fault? I don’t think it was. God, I’ve been around kids enough to know how slippery they are and how fast they move. Not two months ago I was called when a motorist hit a four-year-old who rode down the driveway on his tricycle right in front of her. He was okay, by the way, except for some fractures, because the driver was going really slow. But the woman driving was hysterical. She’d seen him on the driveway. She knew he saw her, because he looked right at her. Then zip. He dashed right in front of her. She couldn’t believe he’d done that.”

  Mary looked down, and he felt suddenly cast adrift now that he couldn’t see her eyes anymore. “The point is, kids are slipperier than eels. And not every accident can be prevented. I know that.”

  He waited, but she didn’t say anything. No help there. So he plunged on.

  “I understand that you probably weren’t responsible, Mary. But I also know that me saying that doesn’t make you feel any better. You feel guilty. You feel like you should have done something more. I understand that, too, because I feel that way about Beth.

  “So none of the things I could say are going to make you feel any better. I knew that last night, and I was casting about for something, anything, useful to say to you, and I guess you thought I was rejecting you. But I wasn’t. I was thinking, Mary.”

  She still didn’t look up, but finally she spoke. Quietly. “What were you thinking, Sam?”

  “I was thinking that you had a deep, deep wound. And I was wondering if there was anything I could possibly say or do to help you with it. I mean, I’m not exactly great myself. You’ve seen enough of my stupid old scars to know. I was wondering if anybody as messed up as me would be any use to you at all.”

  Now she did lift her head, and pain showed in her gaze. “Sam…”

  “Hey,” he said with mock humor, “I’m on a roll here. Exposing my soul. Let me get on with it before I chicken out.”

  She nodded.

  “So it wasn’t that I didn’t care, or that I was appalled at you or anything. I was feeling helpless. I’m no psychotherapist, Mary. And I wasn’t there when your son was killed. Nothing I can say is going to make you feel one whit better. Just like nothing anybody can say is going to make me feel better about Beth.”

  “What happened with Beth?”

  “We were out skiing. I don’t know exactly wh
at happened. I was behind her, and she seemed to lose control, and the next thing I knew, she ran into a tree at about sixty miles per hour. Skull fracture. I sweated a lot afterward. I still sweat about it. What if I’d been able to get the ski patrol there sooner? What if I’d lifted her on my back and carried her down the mountain instead of waiting. What if I’d gone first and found that rough spot? What if…? I mean, you can always try to work out ways that things could have been different. We all seem to spend a lot of time doing that when something terrible happens.”

  She nodded. “Yes. We do.”

  “So I wasn’t there that day, and I can’t second-guess you. And you can dismiss anything I say because I wasn’t there. And that’s the kind of thing I was thinking last night.”

  She nodded. “I’m sorry.”

  “Let me finish. Like I said, I’m such an emotional basket case myself, I was worrying whether I’d just be a burden to you rather than a support. But maybe…maybe if two people who seem to have only one emotional leg to stand on lean on each other…maybe they can walk. Maybe…maybe you don’t need my support as much as you need my understanding. I can’t take away the guilt, Mary. But I can understand it.”

  She nodded, and some of the tension seeped out of her face. “Maybe.”

  “But here’s the other kicker. You said you couldn’t trust me. And without trust we can’t get anywhere together. You’ve got to trust me to move my leg when it’s time, and I’ve got to trust you to move your leg when it’s time, and we’ve both got to trust each other to hang on. Or we might as well just sit down and give up.”

  Tears were welling in her eyes, and they caused him to step closer. “Mary,” he said huskily, “I’d trust you to raise my child.”

  Her eyes grew huge. She gasped, and then her tears began to fall in earnest. A moment later she was in his arms, clinging for dear life.

  “I’m sorry, Sam,” she sobbed. “I’m so sorry. I was just so afraid. I started to care so much for you, and I was sure you were going to dump me when you found out about me. I was afraid of how much it was going to hurt! So I pulled back….”