Keast, Karen

by The Surprise of His Life

  "Mr. Carr?"

  Fighting the moisture in his eyes, Walker glanced over at the pilot.

  "I can't hold the craft steady much longer. The wind is growing—"

  "I know," Walker said. He was no longer angry with the suggestion to call a halt to the search. It was the only prudent thing left to do. It was the only safe thing left to do. He'd promised Lindsey that he'd bring her father back but, obviously, miracles were running in short supply. "Make one more sweep. And then we'll head back."

  The pilot, sympathetic to the situation, started the helicopter on its final patrol. The harsh wind, like the palm of a huge hand, shoved the copter, while rain, needlelike, struck the cockpit with such force that it sounded like bullets exploding.

  Straining to see through the impending night, Walker stared out the window as the helicopter flew as low to the water as it could, far lower than it should have. The sea sped by, dark, menacing, mocking. The wind whispered a dirge, a deadly melody that played over and over in Walker's mind in a mournful symphony.

  It's over... over... you're going to go back without him... the sea has been victorious....

  Victory! Hell, yeah, we're going to beat the pants off the Wolverines! Their defense ain't worth dirt compared to ours!... Phyllis? You and Phyllis are gonna get married? Congratulations, though what she wants with a jerk like you I can't imagine... Yeah, we'll be in Nam at the same time. Those Vietcong won't have a chance! ...Baby? Phyllis is going to have a baby? That's great, man. Great! ...Of course, Bunny's pregnant. You didn't think we'd let you two get ahead of us, did you? ...Godfather. We want you to be Lindsey's godfather... Oh, God, man, what can I say? Phyllis shouldn't have died. You know we're there for you. We'll always be there for you... Tell me that this isn't what it looks like. You've betrayed me, betrayed our friendship. Betrayed... betrayed... betrayed...

  "I'm sorry, Mr. Carr," the pilot said quietly.

  "Yeah," Walker said, his throat so full he could hardly speak.

  Silently, the pilot began to turn the helicopter, bringing it in a wide circle and starting back toward the mainland. Walker knew that he was leaving a part of him behind. Maybe one of the best parts of him.

  He knew, too, that he was trembling. Fine tremors raced through his hands, making them unsteady. Pain gouged his heart. He closed his eyes, fighting the tears that begged to be shed. It wasn't supposed to end like this. It wasn't supposed to end now. Not when there was so much left to be said.

  "What's that?" the pilot asked some ten minutes and several miles later. They were well outside the proposed coordinates.

  Walker sat with his chin buried in his hand, staring out the window. "What's what?" he asked, visually following where the pilot led.

  "Over there. At one o'clock. I thought I saw a flash of something."

  Flare! The word jumped to Walker's mind, bringing with it a resurgence of hope. Sweet, sweet, nothing-sweeter hope!

  "Could it have been a flare?"

  "That's exactly what I was thinking. Let's have a closer look."

  The pilot brought the helicopter lower and lower, closer and closer until, even though encroaching night had spun a black veil about the world, something was visible within the ocean. A dark shape. A bulky shape. A shape that bore a resemblance to a man.

  "It's him!" the pilot shouted, and gave a war whoop.

  Walker said nothing. He couldn't. Instead, he pondered how strange it was that in the most traumatic times words were hopelessly useless. At least verbally. Internally, he prayed a prayer of thanks to a god that was still in the business of manufacturing miracles. Still without saying a word, Walker unfastened his seat belt and started to the back of the craft.

  "Throw down the rope!" the pilot shouted. "But make it quick. We're running low on fuel."

  Walker needed no prodding. He was already sliding open the copter door and readying the rope—a kind of harness device—for tossing overboard. Which wasn't going to be an overly easy feat. The wind tore violently at him, forcing him to grip the door opening for balance. Beneath him, he could see the water churning in a near whirlpool fashion as the wind from the helicopter blades battered the sea. He could also seen Dean. A speck in a big, big ocean.

  "Hang on, buddy," Walker whispered, leaning forward and dropping the rope. Saberlike rain cut him in the face, while the wind practically ripped his hair from the roots. His breath came hard and fast and hurtfully, and he could feel his clothes being plastered to him.

  The rope danced in the air, becoming nothing more than a puppet dashed about by the wind. It also stopped short of reaching Dean. He saw Dean make the effort to grasp it, but failed to do so. Even if the rope had been longer, Dean had been weakened from hours in the sea. The rope was going to have to be handed to him on a silver platter.

  Walker cursed, then shouted to the pilot, "Lower!"

  "I can't go much lower!"

  "We've got to!"

  Contrary to what he said he could do, the pilot did inch the craft lower. The rope swung, arched, struck Dean. Dean grappled for it but, again, the lifeline, manipulated by the wind, eluded him.

  Walker could feel his friend's frustration. It mirrored his own. "C'mon, Dean," he coaxed. "One more time."

  The next time the rope came Dean's way, he didn't even try to grasp it. Exhaustion had set in. He simply bobbed with the pitching sea, as though saving his energy for one last attempt.

  "All right, buddy, this is it," Walker crooned, trying to direct the rope once more toward his friend. "We're gonna do it this time, or I'm gonna kick ass." Slowly, slowly—no, back some!—Walker fought to control a flaxen line that clearly owed its allegiance to the wind. "Okay, okay, a little more... just a little more... now grab it, Dean!"

  Dean, of course, hadn't heard a word, though perhaps he'd felt the heart-guided instructions. In any event he did grab the rope, fumbled it, then grabbed it again. Walker felt the pressure of his friend on the other end of the line and thought that nothing had ever felt so wonderful. It tugged clean through to his heart.

  "Can he get the harness on?" the pilot shouted.

  "He'll get it on," Walker said assuringly.

  In due time, after a couple of aborted attempts, Dean did fit the harness about him, after fighting to get it over his orange life preserver. He then gave a thumbs-up—or an exhausted something that passed for it.

  "I'm bringing him up," Walker called as he started the hydraulic lift.

  With a crank and a whine, the rope began to tighten. In seconds, Dean was being drawn from the sea. Dangling, his head angled to one side, he looked like a hanged man. Even through the pummeling rain, Walker could tell that Dean's eyes were closed. Was he, too, praying? Was he, too, regretting all that had been said between them?

  Less than a minute later, when Dean came even with the open door, their gazes met and held before Walker shouted, "Hang on! I'll pull you in!"

  Walker reached for Dean even as Dean reached for Walker. Both missed. Walker tried again and this time threw his arm about his buddy's waist. Wet and tired, Dean weighed a ton. On a grunt, Walker hauled him inside the aircraft. Both men tumbled to the floor. Emotionally and physically exhausted, they simply lay there.

  "Got him?" the pilot shouted.

  "Yeah!" Walker called back as he somehow managed to slide the door shut behind him. "Let's go!"

  Dean, lying precisely where he'd been dragged on board, and Walker, edging himself to lean against a wall, studied each other. Dean's hair was plastered to his head, as were his clothes to his body. His lips had begun to turn a pale blue, while his skin looked as pallid as new-fallen snow. One of his shoes had disappeared, leaving nothing but a soggy sock to protect his foot. A vine of seaweed, dark green and slimy looking, draped about his other shoe. All in all, he would have passed for a bedraggled puppy.

  But then, Walker suspected that he looked little better. He, too, was drenched from head to foot. His heart pounded so loud in his chest that he would have sworn that it was audible. Curiously, it
was pounding harder now than when his friend had been missing. It was as though, now that it was over, now that he saw the visible proof of what he'd almost lost, a vial of adrenaline had been shot directly into his veins. He suddenly felt weak-kneed and as listless as the puppy Dean looked like. He also hurt in every joint and muscle of his body. On the flip side, he'd never felt more exhilarated.

  "W-what in hell took you so long?" Dean asked finally.

  "Why in hell didn't you go down where you were supposed to have?"

  "D-didn't want to make it easy."

  "Yeah, well, you didn't," Walker said. On some plane he noted that the pilot was heading for home. He also heard the pilot on the radio, reporting that they'd found Dean and to call his family. A vision of Lindsey came to mind. Life. Death. The passage between the two was short, the journey sometimes so unexpected. Hadn't he learned that from Phyllis's untimely death? Did it take nearly losing Dean to once more remind him of this? And when it was all said and done, wasn't loving the only thing that mattered?

  Say you don't make it to a hundred and ten. Say I don't make it to eighty-six. Couldn't we just be happy we had twenty, thirty, thirty-five years together?

  I want to be fair to you. I have to leave you free.

  Being in love is like being pregnant. You can't be just a little bit. You either are or you aren't. And when you're in love, Walker, you commit all the way. You take all the chances. You don't compromise. And you damned sure don't leave your partner free to walk away!

  "The engine... it just gave out...."

  Walker brought his attention back to his friend.

  "...p-pitched the copter into the s-sea. Totaled. The c-copter's totaled."

  "That's what we pay insurance for."

  "D-do you have... water?"

  Walker glanced around, spying the thermos from which he and the pilot had fortified their flagging spirits a couple of times. "How about some coffee?"

  "Anything... wet."

  Uncapping the thermos, Walker poured out a half cup of black coffee. He handed it to Dean. It was then that he noticed how badly Dean was shaking. "Here," Walker said, helping Dean to raise his head and holding the cup to his mouth. He drank slowly, but greedily.

  "'Water, water everywhere, but not a d-drop to d-drink,'" Dean quoted the famous poem, a lopsided smile on his face.

  Cold.

  Dean was as cold as death.

  Walker could feel the numbing chill in his hands and face as he held the cup to his friend's lips.

  Laying the thermos aside, Walker grabbed a blanket. "Put this around you," he ordered, pulling Dean to him as though he were a baby and draping the blanket about him. Gently he leaned him back—this time against the wall—and gathered the woolen blanket about his neck.

  He had just started to remove his hands when Dean abruptly reached for him. He caught Walker's wrist. The power behind his clasp belied his exhaustion. The two men stared. Brawny Dean. Agile Walker. Friends for a thousand years.

  "You son of a bitch," Walker whispered at last, "you scared the hell out of me!"

  Dean said nothing, though his eyes glazed with tears. And then Walker pulled him back to him. He held him. Tightly. Unashamedly. As his own eyes filled with tears.

  Chapter Twelve

  "I've screwed everything up," Dean said as he peered into the thermos cup full of coffee, as though there might be answers there that he could find nowhere else.

  The helicopter was only miles away from the mainland. Though still wet, Dean had stopped shivering, possibly due to the added coffee Walker had insisted he drink. After their emotional exchange, nothing more had been said. Nothing more needed to be. They might be friends who were at odds with one another, but nonetheless they remained friends. Death's tapping at the door had put their friendship into perspective. Apparently, it had other things, as well.

  When Walker, who leaned negligently against the far wall, said nothing, Dean glanced up and over at him. "How can you work all your life building relationships, then flush them down the toilet?" Before Walker could comment, Dean added, "I spent twenty-something years loving Bunny and being loved by her, then whoosh—" he swiped his hand through the air "—I throw all that away."

  "Did you?" Walker asked frankly. At Dean's look of incomprehension, he clarified, "Did you throw it all away?"

  Dean laughed rich notes of sarcasm. "I'd say I came as close as any man ever did."

  "Close isn't the same thing as actually doing it."

  "I've cheated on my wife, I've asked for a divorce, which she's probably more than happy to grant me and I've alienated my daughter. All in all, I'd say I've come closer than close."

  "Both are worried sick about you."

  The look in Dean's eyes said that he longed to believe that were true, but then he dropped his eyes as though to say that, even if it were, he didn't deserve their concern.

  "Don't be so hard on yourself," Walker said. "Growing older isn't easy for any of us. You panicked. There's no shame in fear."

  Fear. It dawned on Walker that maybe that was the basis of his refusal to marry Lindsey. Maybe the reason wasn't nearly as noble as he'd like to believe. Maybe he wasn't nearly as concerned about leaving her free to walk away as he was afraid of what would happen to him should she choose to leave him in the future. Maybe he wasn't nearly as concerned about being fair to her as he was about protecting himself. And maybe that fear rested in the fact that he saw himself growing older—older and unable to hang on to someone as young and beautiful as she. Maybe he and Dean shared the same fear after all, each merely seeking different routes of expression.

  "You wouldn't have panicked," Dean said.

  "Don't be too sure."

  Dean half smiled. "You know what the real kicker is? When I was bobbing around out there on the ocean, it struck me like a ton of bricks that I wasn't afraid to die. I didn't want to, but I wasn't afraid to. What kind of sense does it make not to fear death, but to fear growing older? Which is what growing older is really all about, isn't it?"

  "In the main, yes, but you were afraid that life was passing you by."

  "Yeah, and so I reached for something that didn't matter and in so doing turned loose of everything that did."

  "Lindsey still loves you. Nothing's ever going to change that. She's sick about what happened between the two of you."

  At the mention of the fight between him and his daughter, pain streaked across Dean's face. "She and I had never even had words, not any real words," he said, repeating almost exactly what Lindsey had said. "You know, the ironic thing was that I decided the night before not to see Michele again. I really had," he said as though he thought Walker might doubt this eleventh-hour decision.

  "I believe you," Walker said, and he did.

  "I think I only saw her Friday night because I knew Bunny was with this Don person. Even before, I knew what I was doing was wrong. Not only to Bunny, but to Michele, too. Michele kept saying everything was in the name of a good time, no strings attached, but I sensed that she was getting involved. I didn't want to hurt the kid. I was afraid that she was going to want something from me that I just couldn't give. The truth is that I like her, but I don't love her. I love..." He stopped, as though he no longer had the right to say what he'd been about to. Instead, he said, "I don't love Michele."

  Dean downed the last of the hot coffee, stoppered the thermos, and leaned back. The approaching storm buffeted the copter back and forth. Both men were aware that another subject, as stormy as the weather, had yet to be broached.

  "Dean..." Walker stopped, searching for the right words, then decided that there were none. "How I feel about Lindsey isn't going to change. I love her. It's that simple, but I want you to understand that I didn't start out knowing this would happen. No one could have been more startled than I was. No one could have fought it any harder than I did."

  Dean started to speak, but Walker halted him.

  "No, I want to say this. Of course I understand how you feel. Don't you think
I'm well aware of what a strain this puts on our friendship? Don't you think I know that I have some responsibility to you and Bunny? Don't you think I've asked myself how I'd feel if the situation were reversed, if you were in love with my daughter? I have. God, I have! A dozen times!"

  This time Dean said nothing, and Walker wished that he would—anything to fill the silence that now loomed before them. In the stillness, Walker heard the rain splattering against the helicopter, the chop, chop, chopping of the blades, the pounding of his heart. Say something, dammit! But Dean didn't, and Walker heard himself speaking again. He wanted so desperately for Dean to understand.

  "After Phyllis died, I just went through the motions of living. I got up, I did what was expected of me, I went to bed. Only the time I spent with Adam mattered. Only then did I feel... I don't know, alive. But he grew up, left home, and found his own way in the world. Life seemed lonelier after that. The motions got harder to go through. And then came Lindsey. She had—has—a vitality that I'd long ago lost. She's sweet and honest and so filled with life. She makes me feel... young. Ah, hell," Walker said, scrambling his fingers through his hair. "Maybe I'm just having the same mid-life crisis you are. Maybe I'm just trying to hang on to my youth."

  "No," Dean said quietly.

  So quietly that Walker glanced over at him.

  "I could tell Saturday morning that what you had with Lindsey was different than what I had with Michele. Mind you, I didn't much like what I was seeing, but I could tell that it was different. When Lindsey brought up Michele, I just felt... dirty. Even through my shock and anger at finding you two together, I could tell that you didn't feel that way about what had happened between you and Lindsey."

  "No," Walker said, "that may be the only thing I haven't felt. Confused, elated, disbelieving, concerned, but not dirty. Never that."

  The two men heard the pilot asking for clearance to land, which meant that the airport was near. Soon the world, life, would once more intrude.

  "I—" Dean began.