Her work as a physical therapist sought to accomplish that goal, to repair some of the less catastrophic damage of war. Her work as a war protester sought to insure that what had happened to Brian and others like him—and most of all, to the men who came home in body bags—would never happen again.
An hour later, she checked her watch again and gave a little gasp. She’d be late if she didn’t leave right now. She eased out of her place in the picket line and caught up to march beside Charlie Morgan, the group’s organizer and director of the Center for Peace. “I’ve got to run, Charlie. I have a client at three.”
“I hear you, man.” He held up two fingers in a V—the peace sign. Charlie had been arrested in the massive May Day protests in D.C. last year, and he wore the distinction like a badge of honor. “You go on. Do your good work, babe. We’ll see you tomorrow.”
She waved to a couple of other friends still marching, and carried her homemade sign to the parking lot where her red VW Beetle was parked. She stuffed the poster into the trunk in the front of the car. The sun had faded the words she’d painted red, to look like dripping blood: Baby Killers.
She drove too fast out to the mansion, not really wanting to explain why she was late. She wished every client she worked with had the kind of set-up Brian Lowe had. With most of her patients, she improvised, and had been known to use canned goods for weights if that’s all that was available. More than once, she’d paid for dumbbells out of her own pocket for long-term patients who could barely afford their next meal, let alone her services, or equipment for therapy. But obviously, she couldn’t afford to do the same for all her clients.
She wondered what Brian’s story was. He’d no doubt been drafted, although surely his father’s money could have bought him out of that situation somehow.
She had to remind herself that even if he had enlisted, that didn’t automatically make him a hawk. Still, she doubted he would support the cause she and Charlie and the others from the Center for Peace had devoted their lives to. Few veterans of this war did. It was probably best to avoid the topic of the war with Brian—even though the war was exactly why Brian had need of her services.
Pulling into the driveway of the mansion, she felt the same tug-of-war she’d felt yesterday when she first saw the place up close. People called the mansion “The House on Cranberry Hill,” though she didn’t know where the house got its name. She was pretty sure no cranberries grew in Missouri, let alone on this outcropping that overlooked the Mississippi. But living here must be like living in a fairy tale.
She immediately checked the thought, feeling guilty for entertaining it for even a minute. The stately old home was the epitome of the American dream, life at its best and all that rot. But in too many important ways, this mansion represented everything that had led this nation into an immoral and unjust war. Its opulence represented a bloated, affluent establishment that based all its decisions on money and power and greed. The wraparound porches alone covered more square footage—and probably cost more—than the tract house she’d grown up in.
Some people just didn’t get it. Money wasn’t the be-all and end-all. If people could just get their priorities straight, the country wouldn’t be in the mess it was in. War was ugly. There were solutions to the problems the government was supposedly trying to solve—but solutions that didn’t snuff out innocent life.
She parked the Bug and snatched up her duffel bag. She didn’t relish meeting Brian’s parents, though from what Jerald Lowe had said, they were out of the country on an extended trip. Their travels often graced the society page of the Hannibal Courier-Post. But what overseas holiday could possibly take precedence over their only son?
Jerald Lowe had paid her for a full month of private physical therapy—no small change—and while she’d deposited the check, she’d done so with more than a twinge of guilt. It wasn’t easy to weigh her need to make a living, against her disgust with the well-known excesses of Lowe’s lifestyle.
How ironic that the one thing their fortune couldn’t ensure was their son’s safety. Did Brian share his father’s ideals?
She chided herself. It didn’t matter. She was his client. She had to remain objective.
Jogging up the wide stairs, it was hard not to compare the entrance to this mansion with the entrance to the courthouse she’d just left. She shook off the images that superimposed themselves on her brain. Brian Lowe was a client and his politics or beliefs shouldn’t make any difference in how she viewed him. Easier said than done.
The muted doorbell chimed only twice before the door opened. Brian sat there, smiling up at her, looking even more of a hunk than she remembered.
He rolled his wheelchair in reverse and held the door for her. “Hi. Come on in. Miss…Nowlin, isn’t it?”
“Good morning. Sorry I’m late.” She stepped inside. “And please, it’s Kathy.”
He nodded. “Okay. Kathy.” A hank of straight, dark hair fell over his eyes. His hair still bore the contours of a military cut, but it was growing out.
He pivoted in his chair and led the way through the immense hall to the room that housed the workout equipment. She still couldn’t get over the set-up. And from the looks of his broad shoulders, he spent a lot of time in here.
Her evaluation yesterday had left her optimistic about Brian’s recovery. The fact that he’d built up his upper body would make her job considerably easier. Being able to support his weight without taxing his injured legs and knee would ensure faster healing as well.
She rummaged in her bag for her clipboard. “I’ve got a plan pretty well mapped out for you, but I want to do a couple more evaluation activities before we walk through a core set of exercises I have for you to do. Are you ready to get going?”
He shrugged. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Something about the way he said those words struck a melancholy chord in her. Looking at him—only a year older than she was, just starting out in life—it jolted her to realize that Brian put a face on the American GIs she’d felt such ambivalence toward. She’d imagined what John, the POW whose bracelet she wore, might look like. If she were honest, when she’d first started wearing it, that bracelet had been as much for show as for the sake of the man whose name was engraved upon it. But as she’d prayed for John over the past two years, he’d become very real to her, and her reasons for wearing the bracelet had become more authentic.
But today, for perhaps the first time, she was starting to see that behind every U.S. soldier, there was someone like John and like Brian Lowe. A young man with a story, with a family back home, and a future that had been put on hold by the evils of war. A man who risked his very life when he set foot on foreign soil.
The implications shook her more than she cared to admit. She thought of the homemade protest sign in the trunk of her Bug and was glad she hadn’t propped it in the window of her car like she sometimes did.
Miss Nowlin—Kathy—paused in the doorway to the exercise room and looked around the space as if assessing what was next. Today she wore a tie-dyed T-shirt and had a beaded headband tied around her forehead, its thin leather strings disappearing into her thick auburn hair. He’d never been crazy about the hippie look. Too many connections to rebellion and the drug culture—and more recently, with the hatred spewed at returning veterans by the anti-establishment, anti-war faction.
But Kathy Nowlin’s sweet smile dispelled any such connections. And those hip-huggers did hug her in all the right places.
“Okay…let’s see…” Her gaze landed on the whirlpool tub. “Oh, this is great…you’re already using hydrotherapy.”
He shook his head. “They just installed it. My father heard it was supposed to be a cure-all. But I haven’t tried it yet…not sure how the thing even works.”
“Oh, you’ll love it. We’ll try it out tomorrow. I don’t know if it’s a cure-all, but I’ll teach you some resistance exercises you can do in the water. And it does help to relax the muscles, and keep them from atrophying.�
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She knelt in front of his chair and lifted his leg the way she had during the evaluation yesterday. She flexed his knee, pushing hard against his leg with the weight of her body. It hurt like blazes. But he managed to remain stoic.
“You’re really not too bad in that department,” she pronounced when she’d finished torturing him. “You have good strength and muscle hypertrophy—even in the damaged mus—”
“Whoa…speak English please. Hyper-what-y?”
She wrinkled her nose. “Sorry. Hypertrophy. It’s sort of the opposite of atrophy. It just means you have good muscle bulk.”
“Oh, you mean I’m a hunk. Why didn’t you just say that.”
She rolled her eyes. “Yeah. That.” Gently, she lowered his leg and positioned his foot on the footrest, then rose and took a step back. “Can you transfer to a chair for me? I’d like to evaluate your balance.”
“Not too bad in that department?” Feigning exasperation, he wheeled himself closer to the chair she indicated and set the brakes. He tightened his fingers around the arms of his chair, feeling slightly self-conscious beneath her watchful eye. “I’ll have you know that I am a very well balanced individual.”
She rolled her eyes again. “You’re also a very certifiable dork.”
“Hey…now that doesn’t seem very professional.”
She shrugged. “You started it.” She moved closer, no doubt to spot him in case he couldn’t manage the feat.
He laughed. “Touché.” He managed a textbook transfer to the waiting chair, and looked up at her with a smug nod, grateful for the lean, strong muscles of his shoulders and back.
She nodded, obviously satisfied with the way he’d accomplished the transfer. “So, your upper torso isn’t affected at all?”
“No, it’s only my knees. And my left foot to some extent.”
“Amazing how two joints can mess up your whole life, huh?”
The gleam in her eye made him wonder if she was making a pun about a different kind of joint. He’d learned more about marijuana in Nam than he ever wanted to know, but he’d managed to stay away from the stuff. Not that he hadn’t been tempted by some of the “stress relievers”––wine, women, and drugs––that were readily available over there.
He pushed away the thoughts and shrugged in reply, opting to play dumb. He hoped she wasn’t into the drug scene. She seemed like a nice girl.
She extended his arm and ran a finger up and down it. His skin puckered into gooseflesh. She eyed him. “You’re feeling that, I take it?”
“Yes. I feel it.”
“How about this?” She stroked a finger lightly along the inside of his arm. “You feel that?”
Did he ever. “Yeah…it tickles. I told you, I’m fine from the knees up.” Realizing how that might sound, he quickly added, “You just get these joints working again.” He put his hands on his knees, challenging her with his eyes.
She looked away, and knelt beside his chair. She propped the right footrest up and lifted his leg, trailing a finger from the base of his toes to his heel.
“Hey, I’m serious. I’m ticklish!”
She laughed. “Sorry. But listen, that’s a good sign. Be glad.”
She took her same spot from yesterday, sitting cross-legged on the exercise mat on the floor.
“So…your surgeries were at Walter Reed General, right? That’s what your records said…”
“Yeah…spent four months there.”
“In Vietnam?”
“No. In the hospital. I was in Nam for two years.”
“Oh.” She bit her lip and looked away, no trace of her former playfulness lingering in her expression.
He wasn’t sure how to interpret her sudden silence, but something changed in her demeanor, and for the rest of their session, Kathy Nowlin was all business.
Chapter 3
Kathy parked in the alley west of her apartment. Leaving everything but her purse in the car, she took the stairs two at a time to her tiny loft overlooking Broadway.
Inside, she parted the curtain of love beads hanging in the entryway and padded through the apartment, flipping on lights one by one. On her way through to the bathroom she switched on the television. The drone of the six o’clock news filled the silence as she showered and changed into her nightgown.
The days were growing longer, but rain clouds darkened the sky outside her wide windows, and the neon lights of the stores on the street below reflected off the painted walls. A flash of lightning zagged across the sky and the TV added its intermittent flicker to the cacophony of light.
Kathy fixed a salad in the kitchen while rain splattered the roof and the broadcast catalogued the day’s war fatalities as if they were a grocery list. Sprinkling homegrown bean sprouts and chunks of tofu over salad greens, she turned her full attention to the dispassionate voice of the newscaster. “Aided by U.S. Navy gunfire and B-52 bombardments, South Vietnamese troops began a counter-offensive to retake Quang Tri Province south of the DMZ.”
No doubt reports of many more fatalities would follow. Not just U.S. military, but Vietnamese civilians. Women and children. The film footage that filled the TV screen made her sick to her stomach and a black cloud of depression settled over her as thick as the one that hung over Broadway tonight.
She took her salad and drink to the TV tray set up in front of the sofa. But after a few minutes, she got up and snapped off the TV. She put an album on the stereo, and soon Pete Seeger’s mellow voice crooned to her. Where Have All the Flowers Gone?
Sometimes she wished she could just stick her head in the sand and pretend the war didn’t exist—the way her mother had ever since the day a military vehicle had pulled into their drive to deliver the news that her father would never be coming home from Korea. Kathy had been an infant at the time, but she’d heard the story often enough she almost felt she remembered it.
She’d thought her mother would be proud of her efforts to fight against this war. Instead, Mom had withdrawn from her. These days, Betty Nowlin spent her time decorating and redecorating the same little house she and Dad had shared as newlyweds. And shopping for the perfect wardrobe she’d never been able to afford while she was struggling to raise a daughter alone.
Mom wanted to hear nothing about Kathy’s activities outside of quick reports of her work as a physical therapist. Kathy thought her mother was proud of her accomplishments—a college degree, independence, a good career. But they didn’t see eye to eye on much anymore.
Looking around her tiny loft, she tried to picture Brian Lowe alone in that huge, beautiful mansion on the hill. Something about the image tugged at her heart. If only she could help him to regain his strength, his ability to walk again.
She’d only worked with Brian for two days, but already he was challenging the stereotype she had of this war’s veterans. There seemed to a minimum of bitterness in him over what the war had done to him. She sensed his frustration with his limitations, sure. But she’d seen none of the hostility, none of the hawkishness so many returning soldiers expressed in TV interviews and in the counterprotests they sometimes staged.
The war had changed Brian’s life more than most. Taken away things most men his age took for granted. She might be able to help him walk with the aid of canes or a walker, but frankly, it would be something of a miracle if he were to ever walk on his own again.
Surely he had regrets. Surely he was angry at the terrible price he’d paid for this unjust war. But if he was, he hadn’t let her see it. But then, that was bound to change. She hadn’t pushed Brian yet. And she had a reputation for being pushy.
She smiled, remembering their playful banter this morning. But her smile faded as she thought of the work he would need to do to get back on his feet. She was proud that she was known for getting the most from her patients. And if she was going to accomplish that with Brian, she’d have to push him to a point where he probably wouldn’t like her very much.
That thought bothered her more than she wanted to admit, e
ven to herself.
Brian made the nightly tour of the downstairs rooms of the house, turning out lights and locking doors. It seemed a waste for one man to be living in this huge house. Of course, his parents would be back in a few weeks, but he knew them well enough to know they would only stay long enough to be sure he was getting along okay. Then they’d be on their way back to Cartagena.
He tried to be happy for his parents. After chasing dreams of fortune—and being pretty successful at it with their construction business—they had grown restless and sought something to give their life deeper meaning. Two months after he shipped out to Vietnam, they turned the management of the business over to one of the vice-presidents, closed up the mansion, and answered the tug of God’s call on their lives. They’d spent the last two years building houses for the less fortunate with Casas Para Cartagena.
Only recently, his dad had told him, with tears welling in his eyes, that it was Brian’s faith that had brought them to their senses, made them search their hearts and renew their faith in God. He was happy for them. He really was. But sometimes he had a hard time squaring Dad’s teary confession with the image of his livid response the night Brian told them he’d enlisted. The weeks-long silent treatment Dad had given him still stung.
He knew much of his father’s anger—and his mother’s tears—had been from fear. One of Dad’s managers in the construction company had sent a son off to war. Danny Brigmann had never come home. Not even his body. He was listed MIA—missing in action. Brian had little hope his body would ever be found, let alone that Danny would come home alive.
He understood his parents’ fear that the same fate might befall him. Still, it hurt to leave home, to hop on that bus to boot camp not knowing if he’d ever see them again. Not knowing if they’d ever forgive him. They had allowed him to cross that ocean without their blessing. And that was hard to take.
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