The Letter Keeper

by Charles Martin

  After a few weeks, she relented, they put their publicity engine behind the book, and then they released the first video interview with Casey. Casey had been trafficked for a lot of reasons, but one of those was that she was quite possibly one of the most beautiful people any of us had ever seen. And despite the horror she’d lived, she still was. Scars and all. What’s more, her eyes did not speak anger or bitterness. They spoke something else. Something intangible that you can’t buy or fake.

  It was close to kindness but deeper than that.

  Word of mouth picked up, the video went viral, and so did the momentum. A few weeks later, given the presale numbers, my publisher called to thank me. Casey’s book was promising to be a big seller. She was elated. And while that excited her, it scared Casey.

  Chapter 14

  Ellie and I climbed to the Eagle’s Nest before daylight. Something she’d taken to doing lately. And something I loved doing with her. Her athleticism reminded me of Marie, and while I couldn’t explain it, every step we took toward the clouds healed something in me.

  At the top, I built a fire in the fireplace while she boiled water for hot chocolate. With fire and steam, we met on the couch. She sat alongside me, threw a blanket across our feet, lifted my arm up and over her shoulder, and then gently pressed her index finger into my chest like she was pressing Play on a cassette player. That was all she needed to say.

  My senior year rolled around. My friendship with Marie had blossomed from kids searching for sharks’ teeth, to dragging her out of the ocean miles from shore, to two kids in love and worried about what next year might bring. For the first time in either of our lives, we were staring down the uncertainty of life and unable to answer the questions that swirled beneath the surface. Given Marie’s love of everything other than school, her college options were few and none overlapped with mine. Given track, mine were many. For three days, I kept the letter hidden. Colorado was a long way from Florida. And I wasn’t sure how it had come to be because I’d not sought it out or applied. It simply appeared.

  When she found it, she feigned a smile and shook her head. “An appointment.”

  I waved it off. Acting as if I’d dismissed it outright.

  She waved the letter. “They don’t hand these things out to everybody. You’ve got to be somebody to get one of these.”

  While I could run fast, my test scores revealed something I did not know—I possessed a particular problem-solving skill set that the U.S. government valued. Through some analytical engine, they surmised that I was able to make quick decisions based on limited information and not second-guess the decision. Based on this, I had been “invited” to join next year’s cadets at the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.

  Marie looked at me with admiration. I was looking at a map, counting the states between us.

  She ran her fingers through my hair. “I’ll come see you. You can take me flying.”

  “I don’t . . .”

  Marie didn’t like being alone. I’d known this since we were kids. And she knew that I knew this, but she also didn’t want to be the reason I declined the appointment. So she put on a show. “Bish—” Marie called me by my middle name. She was the only person to do so, and most often she used an abbreviated version. She said it again. “Bish, it’s free. You don’t pay a dime. Actually, they pay you while you’re in school.”

  That was the loneliest bus ride of my life.

  By Thanksgiving I was cold, tired, and ready to quit. Every minute of every day was filled from before sunup to after sundown. Every decision was dictated. What we ate. How we dressed. How we spoke, walked, and marched.

  For cadets, calisthenics were a daily requirement. Whether we liked it or not. We marched, we ran, and we did push-ups, pull-ups, and sit-ups until most of the class either threw up or quit. Once a month, we ran this three-mile obstacle course. For time. Through the woods, over a mountain, up ropes, down ladders, through the mud or snow or ice, and every member of the company was required to cross the line under a certain time. If not, the entire company ran it again. And again. Until the requirement was met. To make matters worse, they started us at two-minute staggers and we were given orders not to assist one another. This was more time trial than group race. It was our job to get ourselves over that line, and they were measuring our individual ability to push ourselves, not our corporate ability to come together.

  I understand the need for a fit and strong army. It’s common sense. But some people’s bodies just weren’t made for speed. And even less for power. Few produced both. The first time we ran it, they had started me about fifth—and because it can take over an hour to complete, I passed everyone in front of me. So, having finished a few minutes before everyone else, and staring at a line of cadets strung out across the mountain, I could easily see some would never make it. Much less on time. I understand now that this was part of the weeding-out process and, in hindsight, maybe I should have let them weed out a few. It might have made life easier, but something in me just could not do that.

  So, against orders, I turned around. Ran back. Which did not go unnoticed. I didn’t make a very good cadet anyway, so if they wanted to get rid of me, I thought I’d help them out. Some of my fellow cadets appreciated it since they didn’t want to run it again. Some were jealous and thought I was just brownnosing for notoriety and advancement.

  Neither was the case.

  Regardless, while my fellow cadets were granted a twelve-hour leave, I marched or cleaned or stood at attention in the freezing rain.

  The week prior to Thanksgiving everyone in our company crossed the line with seven seconds to spare. The only company to do so. Even my critics were thankful. It meant a weekend pass—even for me. But while I excelled in the physical and mental aspects of being a cadet, I didn’t really fit in and wasn’t good at making friends. I wanted to, but more often than not, I found myself alone and left out. While friendships and packs naturally formed, I remained a group of one. One day two of my company commanders were talking and didn’t know I was listening. One described me to the other as “Does not play well with others.”

  I never understood this. And I never understood the constant disconnect between what I experienced and what I intended. It was as if I was living in one world, and everyone else lived in another. Plexiglass in between.

  Meanwhile, letters from home dwindled. What had started out as three or four a week became one a week and then one every three or four weeks. Four pages became half a page. For most of our lives, my presence—time with me—had filled the hole in her heart. Marie had grown up with no father. Had never known him. No name. No picture. No nothing. So she grew up with an insatiable need to be needed. To be reminded that she was beautiful and of value. When we met as kids, and throughout high school, I filled that. At least for a time. But during our freshman year at college, word trickled back that she was a regular at most every party. I knew her well enough to know she was hurting, and being around people having fun numbed her ache and medicated the loneliness. Because she’d never known it, physical presence and touch affirmed her at a deeper and louder level than letters from Colorado. So while I wrote every day, the infrequency of her responses told me that either she wasn’t listening or she’d begun listening to someone else.

  The only place I found solace, and the only place I knew freedom, was on the track. So when they cut me loose to train, I did. A lot. And because winters in Colorado Springs are both cold and white, I spent hours in our indoor track facility.

  Most days, as I ran in circles, a fit, G.I. Joe–looking individual would sit up high in the cheap seats, eat a sandwich, and watch me run. What made the sight strange was his clothing. He wore white robes and a collar. An odd sight amid the uniformed world around me. And what was odder was that my training schedule was determined by other people, so my times on the track changed daily. There was nothing consistent about them, which they did on purpose to keep me from finding comfort in routine. And yet, every day, t
his robed man appeared high in the seats and watched me.

  The first week in December I’d made up my mind that I was finished. The U.S. government could shove their appointment. I was beyond miserable. Over the last month, I’d secretly put in applications to run for schools closer to home. Closer to Marie. In her few letters of the last month, she’d even started talking about dating other people. Just for a while. But nothing serious. Till things get back to normal.

  Two weeks before Christmas I was a fuming ticking bomb venting my anger through a workout we called “Flying 200s.” Run two hundred meters, walk two hundred, run two hundred, and so on. And like every other day on the track, White Robes stared down on me while digging his hand into a bag of potato chips, a camera slung around his neck.

  After the workout, I was lying on the turf, trying to breathe, when he appeared alongside me, his shadow stretching across me. It was the first time he’d ever walked out onto the track. Mind you, he had not said a word to me in over four months. By now, I had learned not to speak unless spoken to.

  He dropped a potato chip in his mouth. “You like Nashville, Tennessee?”

  “Sir?”

  “Simple question.”

  I sat up. “Sir, I don’t—”

  He licked his fingers. “How about Montreat, North Carolina?”

  “I’ve never—”

  “Statesboro, Georgia?”

  All three cities contained colleges with track programs where I’d applied in the last month. And I was the only person on planet earth who knew that. Or so I thought. “Sir, I—”

  He stepped closer. Within two feet. Emptying the bag of chips into his mouth. “Tell me something”—he spoke around the crunch—“why’d you turn around? Go back?”

  I shook my head. “Sir, I’m confu—”

  “The obstacle course.” He thumbed over his shoulder. “You went back. Why?”

  “They weren’t going to make it.”

  “Why do you care? Did you know them?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Do you now?”

  An awkward silence. “I’ve tried, but . . .”

  “And?”

  I shook my head. “Not really.”

  “Not really or no?”

  I pulled on a sweatshirt. “No, sir.”

  “Why?”

  “Well . . . we’re busy during the day and there’s not much time for social—”

  “No, why’d you go back?”

  I shrugged. For the first time I answered his questions with a question. “Does it matter, sir?”

  His eyes studied the track where I’d been running and ended at the puddle of sweat next to me. “You disobeyed an order not to. The obstacle course is, by design, a singular achievement. It’s why they stagger the start.”

  “And yet we suffer as a group if one person doesn’t make the time.”

  “Orders are orders.”

  “It’s a bad order.”

  “That attitude’ll get you thrown out of here.”

  “Sir.” I glanced around to make sure no one else was listening. I figured any conversation with a priest was protected. “Do I look like I care?”

  He raised his eyebrows. “You know you’re only the second one on record to do that.”

  “What? Disobey an order?”

  “No.” He laughed. “Go back. Return to help the stragglers cross the line.”

  “Maybe I was the only one who could, sir.”

  He nodded, “Maybe.” Then he wiped the corners of his mouth with a napkin. “All three of those colleges are going to deny your application.”

  “But, sir—”

  “Along with the other seven to which you applied.”

  In truth, I had applied to ten schools. I didn’t know how he knew, but I did know he knew what I’d been doing in my spare time. I said nothing.

  He waved his hand across the world of the academy in front of me. “You don’t like our fine institution?”

  “It’s not that, sir.”

  He knelt. I could feel his breath on my face. “What is it then?”

  “Don’t really fit in, sir.”

  He nodded. “I’d agree with you.”

  Then his expression changed. More curious. Less interrogating. “But that raises the larger question.”

  Now I was confused. “Sir?”

  “Have you ever?”

  “Ever what?”

  “Fit in?”

  I was about ready to punch this joker in the teeth. I sized him up. My size. Maybe thicker, but I was younger and faster. “Not really.”

  “Least you’re honest about it.”

  “Never been much of a liar.”

  He was about to leave when he turned back. “You haven’t answered my question.”

  “Which one?”

  His expression softened and his eyes focused on me. “Why’d you do it?”

  “You mean turn back?”

  He nodded.

  “I don’t think you’d understand.”

  “Try me.”

  It was no use. What would a priest know about that anyway? He was just some passive has-been with nothing better to do than hassle me. A pansy, passivist has-been who, because he couldn’t hack his time here, spent his days now trying to redeem his pathetic life by convincing the disheartened to lay down their arms, choose the pathway to peace, and turn the other cheek. I shook my head. “Just something somebody told me a long time ago.”

  He chuckled. “You mean after you climbed back onto Jack’s boat a second time?”

  “Sir?” How would he know about that? I didn’t put that in my application, and I’d never told anyone else—save Marie. I stood there with my mouth open.

  He leaned closer. “David, maybe we’re not trying to get rid of you.” He patted my shoulder. “Maybe I’m just trying to figure out why you’re really here . . . and who you want to be when you grow up.”

  “You said I was the second. Who was the first?”

  He considered my question, then without another word, he walked off. Laughing.

  Given that all ten schools denied my application just like he said they would, I returned for the spring semester having seen very little of Marie over Christmas break. She’d been aloof, tight-lipped, emotionally distant, and surprisingly fragile. I wouldn’t say unkind because there were moments when she let down her wall and I saw glimpses of the old Marie, which bolstered my hope. But the person to whom I’d returned was guarded. Despite my every attempt, I could not reach her. Where we’d once talked about anything at any level, she’d spent two weeks keeping me at arm’s length, making excuses as to why she couldn’t see me. Even when we did see each other, she never dove beneath the surface. And yet for most of our lives that’s where we lived. I knew something was wrong when I invited her to our island and she turned me down.

  Nothing made sense.

  If I’d left Colorado in a bad mood, I returned in one slightly worse only to find that my entire academic schedule had been changed. The classes I’d selected were nowhere to be found. I also discovered I had a new advisor. Some guy I’d never heard of in some building I’d never entered in a far corner of the campus to which I’d never ventured. The office was a dungeon of sorts—off by itself and connected to nothing. When I walked in, I found the white-robed eater of potato chips. Pieces of Nikon cameras were spread about the room. Black-and-white pictures on the wall. This time he was dressed in BDUs, his black boots were polished, and the look on his face a little less passive. More chiseled.

  “You’re late,” he said without looking at me.

  As I studied him, I realized his BDUs were not standard issue for the academy. The color and pattern were different. The one thing that did stick out were the markings on his collar, which said he was a colonel. Of that I was certain. And given the depth to which I’d disrespected him in our last conversation, I was also certain I was headed to either a military prison or a level of discipline I would not enjoy. I had a feeling my weeding out was about to
start.

  I had just run a mile and a half through the falling snow, which now produced a puddle on his office floor. “Sir, I want to apolo—”

  He tossed me a key and pointed to a room next to his office. “Three minutes.”

  I held up the key and glanced at the room.

  He continued. “Two fifty.”

  I thought I’d try a different tactic. I held up my class schedule. “Sir, I think I’m in the wrong . . . Um, I didn’t—”

  “Two forty-five.”

  While I was not an extraordinary cadet, I had learned when to shut up, and now was one of those moments. So I opened the door and found a locker with my name on it. Inside, I found several sets of clothes, fleece sweats, shoes, boots, and BDUs that matched his—all my size. Having not been told what to wear, I pulled on something similar to what he was wearing and returned to his office. He threw a small backpack at me and said, “Follow me.”

  “Sir, I’m going to be late for my next class.”

  He spoke over his shoulder. “I am your next class.”

  We ran out of his office, through the campus, and immediately up one of the mountains that served as the rather picturesque backdrop for the academy. He took the lead, picking his way up a narrow track with the agility of a cat and strength of a bear. I followed, amazed at his conditioning and his fitness. Never once did he stumble or misstep. When we reached the peak some forty-five minutes later, he wasn’t breathing much harder than I.

  Finding a suitable lookout, he sat and motioned for me to do likewise. More than a thousand feet above the academy, all of Colorado stretched out before us. Had I not been so confused, the view would have taken my breath away. He pointed to the trail we’d just run up. “You like my trail?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He glanced at me. “But you could have run it faster.”

  I could have. “Yes, sir.”

  “Why?”

  “Why what, sir?”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  I shrugged.

  For the first time I got the impression that he was about to speak with me and not at me or to me. “Lesson number two: no shrugging. Indifference is the twin sister to resignation, and both will kill you or get you killed.”