“It’s okay, doc. I have spent most of the last thirty plus years trying not to think about it.”
His eyes had adjusted to the light.
“Okay, maybe this’s more than you really wanted to know; but here goes with the short version. These two are bullet holes.”
He pointed to round scars on his chest.
“So’re these six on my thigh.”
The strain of reaching down to point them out made Hunter slightly light-headed.
“You don’t have to overdo. Take a breather.”
Hunter sank back into his bed and turned his head aside in his pillow.
After a moment, he felt better and continued his guided tour over the rough topography of his scarred body. “Burns here.”
Ten perfectly round scars—the hall marks of cigarette burns, of torture—indented his wrists and the dorsums of his feet and behind his knees.
“Bayonet stab wound.”
He pointed out a large deep scar in his flank.
“Just about did me in. The face scar came from a different fight, different bayonet. And these are knife cuts.”
Those scars could not be missed. There were two neat rows of knife cut scars, one on each side of his chest. Hunter rolled up on his side to reveal similar rows on his back. Dr. Risotti winced at the thought of what the man must have been through.
“How did you get those?” he asked respectfully.
“Death of a thousand cuts. I was captured by the Viet Cong.”
“I…I’m sorry, Mr. Caulfield. All I can say is thanks for what you did for us. I’m sorry to bring it all up again.”
“It’s okay. I survived. Too many didn’t.”
“Well, the whole country owes you a debt of gratitude, anyway.”
“Not really. I just did my job. But, you want to know what was the worst wound of all?”
Hunter’s face was dead serious.
“I would.”
“I came back out of country in May, 1975 after being in-country for most of ten years. I was walking through San Francisco Airport in my full dress uniform, the only clothes I had. Some young men and women walked up to me and yelled, ‘Baby killer! baby killer!’ Then a nice looking soccer-mom type lady came up and spat in my face.”
Throughout the rendition of his terrible physical woundings, the patient had not showed any self pity, anger, or pain of recall, but now he was fighting back tears. His teeth were gritted tight and his jaw clenched to prevent himself from being humiliated. The doctor, remembered his own rush to judgment as a teenager reared by liberal parents. He had been one of those budding hippies who had marched against the Viet Nam vets and shouted the same kind of slogans. He was ashamed for having abandoned thinking and for having behaved so badly in dishonoring the returning soldiers. What a difference there was now; every veteran was being treated as a hero.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Caulfield, I didn’t mean to pry.”
“I’m sorry, doc. I haven’t spoken about any of this to anyone but my wife, and I soon learned that even she couldn’t bear to hear about it. I guess I’m in a weakened condition, and I let down my guard. Sorry.”
“I’m glad you told me. You probably have some left over PTSD. Maybe it’s good for you to unburden.”
“When can this horrible Foley catheter come out?”
“How about now, my friend. Mind if I call you Hunter?”
“You can call me Harriet if you want, if you just get rid of that torture device.”
Dr. Risotti cut off the input tube to the fluid reservoir and released the pressure of the bulb in Hunter’s bladder. The Foley slipped out on its own accord. It felt like a porcupine was being pulled backward out of his raw urethra. The burning did not let up for fifteen minutes.
“Thanks a million,” Hunter said sarcastically.
“Think nothing of it,” Dr. Risotti said giving a mock sadistic smile.
Hunter laughed and felt a dozen new pains from the movement.
“I’ll go and see what I can find about your family. Were they in the park for sure?”
“Yeah—in the…what is it?…the Crystal Palace restaurant.”
The doctor blanched in recognition.
“I’ll look into it and get back to you, Hunter.”
He gave a brusque little wave, picked up his clip board and left.
Hunter was surprised at how tired he was after the talk. He fell back to sleep almost against his will. It was early afternoon when he awakened. Dr. Risotti and a late-middle aged man in a reverse collar shirt and black priest’s suit and utilitarian black lace-up shoes were standing in the room when he opened his eyes. He waited expectantly knowing their presence, especially with the solemnity of their facial expressions, could not be good news.
“Tell me the worst,” he said looking directly at Dr. Risotti.
“Hunter, I’m sorry, but the information we have is sketchy at best, but I’ll tell you what we know. You say your family was in the Crystal Palace. There have been no reports of them so far.”
He paused for a pregnant moment.
“Here it is, then. There is nothing left of the restaurant. Nothing. Where it was sitting is a crater ten feet deep and fifty-five feet across. The cops think it was a suicide bomber with two vests on, one front and one in back. The fire ball you described took out all buildings in a circle a hundred feet across. It was all gone in about five seconds. No bodies have been recovered…or even seen in that hundred feet diameter circle. Forensic teams are sifting through the bits of wreckage that are left. There’re no reports back yet, but it looks like it will be a matter of finding bits of DNA like what was done after 9-11. Incidentally, this was the deadliest attack on U.S. soil since the Twin Towers came down.”
He was rushing now, anxious to get it out before he choked up from looking into the stricken man’s eyes.
“The authorities have a preliminary guesstimate that as many as six hundred people or even maybe as many as a thousand were killed, another two thousand seriously injured. I’m truly sorry, Hunter. I can’t tell you how much I wish I could give you better news. But, with all of the confusion, who knows? Maybe they’ll turn up.”
“My nine and a thousand more,” Hunter said in a flat resigned voice.
Dr. Risotti and the chaplain put their heads down. They watched the life light go out of Hunter’s eyes. His face turned as gray as a stone, and he turned his head to the wall. The two men left the room sorrowing.
Father Umberto said, “I think that is the first time I ever saw a soul die in a man still living.”
Hunter was released four days later. His long-time secretary, Constance Nickelson, the COO of Starbright Corporation, Conrad Devlin, and a nurse met him with a limousine for the ride to the airport.
“Sorry about what happened,” Conrad said as soon as they were in the car. “What kind of info do you have about the family, boss?”
Hunter was looking at the floor. He responded with a lifeless calm. “No final news, yet. Looks bad, though.”
“We’ll do anything we can to help. You know that.”
“Thanks Conrad, but there’s not much to do for the moment. I’d just like to get home and to try and sort things out.”
The plane ride back to Denver International Airport was disconcerting for the COO and the nurse. Hunter did not volunteer any speech, and only answered questions perfunctorily. He was obviously lost in his thoughts, and from the look on his face, they must have been dark ones. At DIA, Hunter politely told the nurse his services were not needed.
“Conrad, do you think you could find who Daniel’s Mormon bishop is…was? I am going to have to think about a funeral.”
It was three weeks before three naval officers appeared at his door. The ranking officer, a Seals captain, introduced himself.
“Captain Caulfield, I’m Bob Withers. The SecNav asked us to come to directly with some news. May we come in?”
“Of course, where are my manners?”
The three men stood awkwardly
facing each other.
“Give it to me straight, Captain.”
“Captain Caulfield, we have the sad duty to inform you that your family members are casualties of war. It has been proved beyond any doubt that a Muslim terrorist suicide bomber blew up a double improvised explosive device in one of the most crowded areas of Disney World. We have positive DNA confirmation from some tissue fragments that match your wife, Rosie, one of your granddaughters—sorry, we can’t be sure which one—and your daughter, Donna. We don’t have confirmation for anyone else in your family. I’m sorry for your loss.”
The phrase sounded stock.
Captain Withers looked down, “God, man, I am so sorry.”
Hunter maintained his composure.
“Thank you Captain, Commanders. I’m sorry you caught such hard duty. I’ve been there and done that, and it never got any easier.”
“No, sir,” one of the two commanders said gently. “No, sir.”
The funeral was held two weeks later in the chapel of the Denver ward of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to which Daniel, Sr., Daniel, Jr., and Marie had belonged and where they had been so involved and happy after Daniel’s conversion to the faith. The ward bishop, a quiet, soothing, kindly man conducted the funeral with dignity, promises for a better future in the celestial kingdom—which Hunter took to be the Mormon heaven—and the assurance that Hunter would see his family again in the hereafter.
Hunter had never been much of a believer; and, after the fatal explosion, he had lost all faith in God, religion, in the goodness of his fellow men, and even in hope. He was not bitter exactly, but had an empty core. Where love had been, was now resignation. Where hope had been, was a deep void. He could not cry, whether because he was cried out or because his defenses had driven the pain into a compartment of his brain beyond reach.
Hunter had requested that no flowers be given. Instead, he requested that any donations be given to the survivors’ fund of the Disney World disaster. After the bishop’s short eulogy and funeral sermon, Hunter asked that anyone who knew the family might give a eulogy if they wished. The Elders’ Quorum president and the Relief Society president gave short reassuring talks which were glowing with praise for the members of their congregation and brief apologies for not having had the opportunity to know the other departed family members.
There was a feeling of unfinished business in the lone remaining member of the family. When the Relief Society president sat down, Hunter stood and walked slowly to the lectern and gripped the sides of the microphone base hard enough to turn his knuckles white as he composed himself for the upcoming ordeal.
“My friends, I can’t thank you enough for all you have done for my family. As I sat there listening to the beautiful eulogies, I felt like you should know all of the family that is no longer here. I am a practical man and not one for euphemisms; so, let me tell you about these people whose lives we honor today. On Saturday, December 14, at precisely the stroke of noon, a terrorist suicide bomber snuffed out the lives of about 729 total innocents in the name of his or her despicable religion.”
He paused to let that sink in, and the assembled funeral goers were silent, unused to funeral orations that were not full of sweetness and a blissful trust in the great beyond that beckons us all.
“There will undoubtedly be more once the forensics teams are finished with their work. Besides myself, there were nine members of my family. Here is a brief sketch about each of them; at least, in this place they can be known as human beings, not just statistics in an ongoing war of attrition that appears to be without end.
“I will go by families, starting with Daniel Caulfield, Sr., his wife Marie, and his son, Daniel Caulfield, Jr..”
Hunter moved quickly through the accomplishments of each of the three knowing that their ward member family already knew almost everything about them.
“Next is the family of Stephen Grandel, M.D., his wife, and my beloved daughter, Donna Caulfield Grandel, PhD, their son Evan, and their twin daughters, Camille and Genevieve, age two. Stephen was chief resident in neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins University Hospital. In six months he was slated to join the faculty at Cornell University where he would combine the practice of surgery, surgical teaching, and research in his chosen subject—mathematical computer models of epigenetic memory processes with an eye to attacking the root causes of dementias such as Alzheimer’s disease. His wife…” Hunter’s voice faltered for a few moments, and he fought back tears. “his wife, my little girl, was a PhD computer genius employed in mining engineering and security protection for computer networks. She was a loving wife, an outstanding extreme sports athlete, and a doting protective mother. The birth of Donna was the greatest joy of my life.
“Evan was a club soccer player and a rascal, full of fun and mischief. He was bright, obedient—most of the time—and full of curiosity and questions. He had his whole life in head of him. Who can say what heights he was going to climb, what service he would render? And he is gone, murdered for the sake of a cruel, mistaken, bigoted religion—for nothing. The two little twins, Camille and Genevieve, were funny, exasperating, loud, demanding, amusing, loving sprites who brought humor and affection wherever they wandered. And they are gone—all of their beauty, grace, enthusiasm, and wonder… Gone.” He paused again fighting for control.
“And finally, there is my Rosie, my wife, my love, my support. She was an uncommonly loyal, supremely decent woman. She was bright, had a steel spine, and was a down-to-earth hard worker, loving mother, grandmother, and friend. She was my friend, and she meant everything to me. I have been robbed. I want to believe in your God and your after-life survival and purpose if only so that that good and beautiful woman can obtain her just reward. Perhaps one day when there is a measure of peace on the earth—and the vicious attackers stopped—my frozen heart will thaw enough to let in the concept.
“I have heard much today about the goodness of God and his holy plan. The bishop spoke eloquently about forgiveness and about going on and triumphing over adversity. I have to say to him that I may someday be able to forgive, but that will only be after there is justice. I may one day feel that I have triumphed and can move on, but now there is a cavernous hole in me, a wound that will not heal. I am not a religious man. Pray for me. I have lost touch with the heavens.
“Again, thank you for all you have done. I will see those of you who plan to attend the short ceremony at the gravesite right after this service.”
There was a closing prayer and a plea to the congregation’s Heavenly Father to attend to the spirit of Rosie and her family to let them rest in peace and to be welcomed into the presence of the Lord one day. Hunter’s short speech had made almost everyone in the audience very uncomfortable. He had said things that one did not say in funerals. But—after all—he was not enlightened in their happy forward looking faith. They pitied him, more for the threat to his soul than for the admittedly terrible loss he had suffered.
CHAPTER THREE
December
The internment site ceremony was very brief—a dedicatory prayer and a brief eulogy by Earl Dactel, CEO of Consolidated Mining. It was a cold December day with an added unpleasant wind-chill index, and only a handful of friends of Stephen and Marie’s from the ward, and of Daniel and Donna’s from their respective university and business attended. There were no caskets or even urns—only a simple brass plaque engraved with the briefest of summations of their lives: their names, dates of birth, dates of death—chillingly, nine memoria all with the same date—lined in two serried rows. Hunter was all but oblivious to the words of the bishop’s counselor’s prayer, to the cold, and to the few people left to shake his hand and to repeat their condolences. It was too cold for anyone to stand around, especially since Hunter was pretty much noncommunicative.
He stood silently and alone in the cold reading again and again the names and dates on the plaques until the visual impact was forever indelibly implanted on his psyche and in nonerasable brain tra
cts. It was growing dark when he finally turned and reluctantly walked away towards his car.
From behind the shadow of a large Colorado spruce, a tall patrician figure stepped into view.
“Hunter,” the man said softly, but just loud enough to be heard in the stillness of the growing evening dark.
Hunter recognized the voice; but, at first, could not attach a name to it.
“Hunter, it’s Oliver. I wanted to catch you alone to tell you how terrible I feel for what you have suffered. I was at the funeral. Your talk was powerful. I’d like to talk to you about it.”
“Oliver? Commander Oliver Prentiss, the friend who had my back all those years. It has been a long time. It’s too bad that we had to get together on this occasion. I’m not up to much socializing, I’m afraid. Forgive me.”
“There’s nothing to forgive. I very much want to talk seriously to you when you have had a chance to collect yourself. Here’s my card—has my home address and number. Natalie and I would like you to come to dinner at our place in Georgetown. Could you fly out the next week or so?”
“Let’s make it the first Sunday in January. I have to get all of my nine departeds’ business in order. I should be able to do that by then. How would that be?
Oliver checked his Blackberry.
“The 6th. That would be great. Call me if there’s a problem. I will understand perfectly. We should get together. We have a lot to remember, a lot to talk about, and I have a proposition for you.”
Hunter raised his eyebrows.
“Not now. You need to get some rest. What I have to talk to you about will require that your mind be clear. It can wait.”
“Thanks, Oliver. I admit to being curious and that my mind is far from clear right now. I’ll be better company by then.”
The two men shook hands warmly and separated into the darkness.
Sheep Dog and the Wolf Page 3