Finding My Thunder

by Diane Munier

  So that's how the last of my days with Danny went. We laid up in my room, just the mattress on the floor now and not much else. He left Monday morning and it was Sunday night and we had distracted ourselves with all the work, but now there was nothing but the truth.

  We'd been talking around things, leaping to the future. The idea of a business and a life together, it was a strong thing for us both. But the great divide…we were stepping to it now. He didn't want me to go to the airport, his family was going, and he wanted to be strong for them and if I was there…he didn't know. So he'd go in the morning, at 4 a.m., and I'd go on back to Naomi's and I'd be done with it here in this house, and with all of my sweet times with Danny in this room.

  I'd have to be strong, but there was something desperate welling up, well we had made such sweet love and we were holding each other, but his body…I didn't think I could bear to think of him hurt, and there would be so many wanting to hurt him, kill him. The way that VA hospital smelled and the fragileness of it…of those men…trying to knit back together…if he were hurt….

  I sat up and started to go over him with my hands.

  "What are you doing?" he said softly.

  "I…I just want to remember," I said.

  He relaxed his arms then, put them flat so I could do what I wanted. Well I knelt beside him, and I started with his face.

  "So serious," he whispered.

  I just nodded. He didn't need to hear my hysteria. I touched his face like Helen Keller might. "You know I think you're beautiful," I said.

  "Yes," he said. "But beautiful…that's you."

  I shook my head and felt some tears get free so I pressed my lips together and moved my attention to his neck, a strong column and he swallowed, his chest a breastplate of skin shielding his heart, his shoulders, strong burden-bearing friendship, his arms sinew, protecting, shielding, his hands busy and skilled generous, his stomach strong rows of muscle, his male parts the heat blast of what he told me he felt, his legs strong, powerful, speed, his feet strong and sure and quick to rush to help…now so ready to take him to strange places in strange boots on strange earth.

  He told me it was the same sun but we'd see it at different times. There was no good way to view this. It was wrong to be apart. This war was wrong. But I made myself be here, with him, not off in a future we didn't have. Didn't want. Well I didn't.

  So I smoothed my hand over him, and I asked him to roll over and I dragged my hand over the back of his head and his neck and over every inch of him, laying on of hands, the bible spoke, the transference of blessing, of power, I gave him all I had and I asked that through me God would give him more, and I would remember this…remember this, him warm and alive under my hands so whole, so perfect, so present and young…so strong…so young…so willing…so young.

  I stroked over him until I felt the craziness in myself simmer, calm. Danny didn't say, "Are you finished?" He didn't fight it, fight me, his eyes were closed, and he lay there for me and I smoothed over and over his flesh, so much love in me, so much give in me, so much want in me, so much prayer.

  Then I kissed where I had touched. I kissed him and I touched him and I stroked him. He was my warrior. He was my friend. My gift. I kissed him and I gave him. The loss I'd known…of everything before this…before him was lesser. Even my Mama…much as I loved her…even that was one step back from this giving of Danny Boyd to God's good grace.

  Danny wasn't mine. I didn't own him. I couldn't. Shouldn't. But I could know him. And God had shared him with me. And I wanted more. And I asked for more. Like Oliver Twist I held him up in my mind and to God I said…and I was sorry about the analogy…but I said to God in his high collar and his kinky cravat and his bad hair I said… "More please."

  I did. And angels gasped and devils grinned and the other humans who listened in from eternity's halls and eternity's pits put their hands over their mouths and waited to see what would happen next.

  When I laid next to him finally, I thought he might be asleep, but he was not. He was, however, in a deep state of relaxation. His eyes opened, just slits, but intense like always. "What was that?" he said, one side of his face scrunched on the pillow.

  I smiled a little. "A surrender," I said.

  He studied me for a moment, but his eyes were heavy and he let them close and I pulled as close as I could to him, gently slid my leg over him, put my arm around him, and that was how I spent the night, awake and suspended in that place, more please, please, please, for Danny…until it was time.

  I shook him awake, and he awoke with a start and he scrambled then, already leaving me, already pulling away, on the clock, sense of duty. Fumbled dressing, time breathing fire. Kisses and clutches then, at the top of the stairs, then down the stairs, then at the door, on the porch, in front of the house.

  I love you, I'll write you, I'll think of you every minute, I'll be home before you know it, don't cry, I'm not crying, I love you, go now, I'm going now, go inside, don't watch or I can't go, go on I want to watch, good-bye, good-bye.

  In the house that was no longer any part of me, in the room where I said good-bye to the memories two ghosts made just minutes before, out the door, clutching the bag, the remnants of my Arabian nights of wild love. With my love.

  The Canna garden still and decayed. The ghost of my dog greeting me in the yard. Naomi asleep, the bag of sheets still warm from our bodies and the candle still mellow and my pillow the shroud of Danny's face upon it, accordion pleat from his drool, now placed in the space I called home with my grandmother. My spinster's life. I was a nun. I was in the army too, of school and work and duty to God. We were all going to march now, we were all going to fall in line.

  Tapping on my window. It was him and I made a noise like a wounded bird and I ran down the hall and into the living room and on the porch and he was there and I jumped in his arms and my lips, my hands, on him and he held me so close and my ankles were crossed behind me, but I wouldn't know that until I thought about it later. He kissed me wild, and he said… "You didn't know you'd see me again so soon," and he was laughing.

  And I laughed too, and cried, and I said, "Why? Why?"

  He said, "I wanted to show you…there's good. There's surprises. You don't know it all," and he was squeezing me. Then he set me on my feet and one hand on my arm, with the other he fished in his pocket and pulled out a jewelry box and gave it to me.

  "This is for you. I know you didn't want it. Put it on quick I got to go."

  I opened it and with my hands shaking, put the little silver ring on quick. It was easy on the eyes, nothing showy, just sweet, just perfect.

  "Smile," he said, his hands on my shoulders.

  "I am," I said.

  He gave me a sweet, soft kiss. Then he let me go. As he walked quick to that car he said, "Keep smiling." Then before he got in he looked across the hood at me and said it again, "Keep smiling."

  And holding that empty box against me I stood grinning at him, laughing a little, and he waved and pulled off in Sukey's car.

  I gasped when I turned around to go in. I was still smiling. Naomi was in the doorway her eyes swollen with sleep and her hair in pins. Her mouth was open but she took me in, shaking her head. "Well…if the Lord has not returned I am going back to bed," she said.

  I went to her and hugged her because I'd been the most rebellious awful granddaughter, full of secrets. She hugged me back right away.

  "Is he off then?"

  "Yes," I said.

  She pulled back and patted me. We parted, her to her room, me to mine. I laid down, still holding the box, and held my splayed hand up to check that little ring. I had to laugh some. It was never all bad, it never was. His lesson had been simple and true. I had so much, I already had so much with him, and I'd given him all that I could, and I'd keep on giving and building, and I was so…blessed…and nothing took that away… nothing could.

  I kissed that ring, put my lips on it and held them there.

  This was more.

>   Finding My Thunder 48

  Monday morning, as Danny was enroute to Vietnam, I was sitting in Principal Brown's office with my forged letter concerning truancy and poor grades. "Your parent needs to be here," the principal was saying.

  "Yes sir," I said. "But my father has had a stroke. It's put some extra pressure on me…the trips to the hospital. I haven't meant to mess up with my schoolwork. I just…it's hard what with…I will get better now."

  "And who is watching over you? I know your mother passed," he fumbled through my records, the one I filled out hastily when I'd registered the day school started, "Oh my, just months ago. Do you need to see the school counselor?"

  "Um…no sir. And I live with my Grandmother."

  "Then she needs to come in," he said.

  "She works," I said hastily. "But I'll do better. I promise. My father…he's in rehabilitation now. Things have…they settled down some. Well a lot. They're better. Really better." First rule of lying effectively, talk as little as possible. Let others draw the conclusions they need to make themselves feel better about what you're trying to get by with. I'd read that in a really horrible book. I think a serial killer said it. But he'd evaded capture for years so…

  The principal sighed. Yes, I could hear his thoughts. He was so sick of kids. He could barely stand us. So he created a happier idea of us, and I was just what he needed to make himself feel better, like he could really do some good in his position and it wasn't all board meetings and parent meetings and paperwork and this ugly office with tiny windows where kids lied to him. I was almost saving myself with my hopeful attitude, so all he had to do was extend mercy and I would be the best dinner party story he could ever tell his friends if he needed some strokes…and didn't we all.

  "We'll give it the rest of the week. If you do better…make school every day on time, get your work done, then by the end of the week, we'll see. But take this letter home and have your grandmother sign it under your father's name. I need to know that your responsible parent or guardian is aware of this dilemma."

  I had a new name to forge now, a new sin. "Yes sir," I said. And I considered I might quit school altogether. It was really robbing me of the time needed to do something real and if it wasn't for Naomi I wouldn't be here today. That was the truth.

  I lost Lonnie's truck on Wednesday and bought it back from the bank on Friday. There went two thousand of my dollars. I cut French class in the afternoon to meet with Mr. Stevers, a real creeper that talked more to my chest than to my face. I met him at the bank and bought the truck, missing the test on feminine and masculine pronouns so I could keep transportation so I could get around and drive to see Allie, and Lonnie, and set up a business on which hinged my and Danny's entire future.

  If I got caught, meaning if my French teacher figured out that after embarrassing him by mumbling how I'd started my period and needed to be excused from class, was complete bull, then I might be in trouble again. But seeing as he was not married, and seemed very strange and solitary and was always flushing red around the female students who teased him once they figured out he was easily degraded, it wasn't likely he'd pursue the truth concerning my monthly visitor, a visitor which was highly irregular anyway and hadn't made an appearance for six months truth be told. Not unusual for me as I'd never been regular in that way.

  So I was managing things as well as I could.

  The other thing was the call I intercepted from the hospital. They were suggesting we allow Lonnie to be transferred to a state run nursing home. He refused to cooperate with physical therapy and there wasn't anything else they could do for him. He was severely depressed, unable to speak clearly, mostly bed ridden, refusing to do his exercises which left him bed bound and wheelchair bound.

  Lonnie was deteriorating and giving up. He wanted to come home but there was no home to come back to. There were no people. And the amount of care he needed was daunting and impossible.

  There was a for sale sign in front of his house, formerly my old house, my Mama's house, my great-Grandmother's house. It was being sold to pay Lonnie's debts. His shop was cleaned out, its contents on a truck bound for auction, a For Rent sign in the building's window. Papers attesting to a medical discharge from the army and his marriage to Mama were in a box in Naomi's basement. His wife was in a grave, his daughter saved from homelessness by the Negro woman who had filled his boots too many times, his girlfriend back to the life she'd never left and good thing. And Robert his faithful employee had fleeced him until the sheep had no wool and no skin either. We had all survived him and it hadn't been easy. He never made it easy.

  Then there was that other thing. Danny's brother Sukey. He was at school now. But that wasn't new. Sukey had been at school my whole life. He was a senior and we did not share classes, not even lunch, but I saw him every day, taller, thinner, muscular, silent, stony-faced with a blond ponytail. I caught him staring at me more than once and when we had assembly, I felt his eyes on me and when I looked to see, he was there, in the back, looking at me, and I looked away. But there was no threat in the look, no kindness, just a looking, unapologetic looking. He was different. He didn't hurry around, mouthy and loud and vying for attention and social position. He was like a shadow of that boy. He was this boy, ticking quiet.

  I remembered him and Danny had fought. I didn't know how it was between them. I didn't know if he'd gone to the airport to see Danny off, but I suspected that was why Danny didn't want me to come. He was protecting me. That's what I assumed.

  To think that both of us were so connected to Danny and yet unable to share, to comfort one another, to speak, to even be friends. It was so strange. We were so strange. The human race. The strange human race, the pinnacle of God's creation, at war with one another. Strange.

  The weekend was busy. A visit to Lonnie. The reality of the VA hospital yet again. My father's despair. I hoped for apathy, I don't know why, the hope he was going numb inside and barely aware.

  But it wasn't that way, that terrible way, it was worse. He suffered.

  I talked to him and I heard my own youth, my own distance from his Raggedy Andy life and how he had to feel laying crumpled and dependent on others for everything, for every act.

  "They said you wouldn't work at getting better," I said, and it was so strange and foreign to be like this, to pretend we were normal enough to care about one another's lives, to act like we knew each other.

  "Lonnie…they're sending you to another place…where they can care for you. You need so much help…." Here came the hand, plucking at me, spastic, the long sound of no. The long o sound.

  "I can't…," tears choking me, but not reaching my eyes. I knew life was brutal. He had taught me that. I wasn't bitter. I wasn't angry. It was so, that's all, and the truth… it's all I had to give. "It's state run, government paid…and they'll care for you there, and I'll come sometimes…if you want. I…I don't know what else I can do." I thought I heard him say God, then say it again, short o this time. Long o. Short o.

  No. God. No. God.

  I gripped the iron footboard on his bed. There was no way but through. He had refused to go forward…and now they sat him on the pot. There was no way but through. You had to keep fighting. And when you quit, they dragged you forward and did the things you did for yourself. And then…you lived and breathed in captivity. He was a proverb and a by-word, and I didn't say it meanly.

  "Lonnie…I can't take you home."

  He was grimacing and moving his head and sputtering and gasping. His hands were spastic and curled uselessly, and his bony legs were laying there, his feet just anemic pale yellow and soft and not going anywhere.

  "You'll have care, that's the thing," I said. I knew it wasn't the thing.

  "Diiiiiiiiii," he got out, long i.

  "I…can't help you with that," I said. Now that was an odd response. From me. It came out really quick, before I thought too much about it. So I lowered to the chair beside his bed. "I mean…I understand you might feel really discouraged."r />
  This made him mad. He had no trouble showing anger. Not ever.

  "Calm down," I hissed, putting my hand on his arm.

  He did work on it some and he lay there pretty spent, tears leaking.

  "I'm trying to talk to you but they're going to come in here and then it'll be over," I was whispering loudly.

  He kept saying the pathetic word, diii…trying to turn himself toward me.

  "I can't help you die," I said. "I can't…take you home to die. I can't kill you…I can't help you," I said, my hands going from my temples to be open in front of me. I was so angry he would ask this, too.

  He stared at me, much as he could before his head would spasm then he would work to get me in his sites again.

  "You're not…trying," I wiped at my eyes, so angry.

  I wished I'd brought Naomi. She would know what to say, how to speak to him.

  Better than me.

  "Ever think…maybe you're supposed to live and learn some things over? Ever…ever see it like that? Like a second chance?" I was crying in earnest now…

  "It's hard…I know it…but…if you could be a better man…for the time left…if you could make some peace…show some kindness…I don't know. I don't know. You had it hard…and Mama and you…all the bad times between you…bad feelings…but now…the way things are with us…we're trying…aren't we? I mean…I'm here. I don't know what it means to you. I'm…willing to…I forgive you. Okay? I held some stuff against you…but I forgive you." I cried harder now, but I sniffed and sucked it back in, "All that bitterness…and hate. Maybe you need to own up to it all. Admit it. Make your peace. Then…maybe it's time. Maybe a better place, a door will open up and you'll walk again and you'll be perfect…and it will be perfect," I was crying and part of me thought I'd surely lost my mind, but it came to this and I knew it had to, it should, and he was listening, whether in despair or neutral or even hopeful, I couldn't have said. He was just so still. I touched his shoulder. It was so foreign to touch him, reaching through the fence and touching the growling dog, but still now, and if he hadn't moved inside, I had.