“Yeah. I’ve heard of that happening. I don’t get it. It’s not like any decent mechanic isn’t going to have more work than they can handle. Why rip people off? It just doesn’t make sense to me.”
“Unfortunately, those ‘core values’ the Corps taught you – Honor, Courage and Commitment – are not the ones practiced out in the civilian world.”
“They ain’t always practiced in the Corps, either.”
This was said almost in a mumble, as if I wasn’t supposed to hear it, with his head down looking at his plate, not at me. I wondered if this statement has something to do with why or how he was thrown out of the Marine Corps but, again, I knew better than to ask. I had finally figured out that Ty would tell me when and if he was ever ready to, not before. Asking him just got me growled at or ignored.
“How do you know about the core values, anyway?”
He looked at me suspiciously as he asked this.
“When Todd decided to become a Marine, I tried to learn everything there was to know about the Marine Corps. I wanted to be able, in some way, to relate to what he was going through as a Marine and to understand what it was that drew him to the Corps.”
“So what did you learn?”
“I learned a lot. Mostly I learned I was not cut out to be a Marine. I think you have to be born to be one. I also learned that to be a Marine makes you very special. In fact, from what I learned, anybody who could make it through boot camp deserves time off their sentence in hell.”
Ty stared at me in shock. I don’t think he was expecting that last part. After a moment, however, he threw back his head and the kitchen was suddenly filled with his rich, deep, booming laughter.
“I’d say you did learn about the Corps,” he finally remarked after he stopped laughing.
“Like I said, it was important to me to be able to relate to Todd and what he was becoming.”
Ty just nodded and didn’t say anything else.
“You do have therapy this morning?” I asked him.
“Yeah. And the counselor afterwards. I think they’re gonna give me the new cast today. The walking one.”
“That would be wonderful. I know bones knit quicker when you can put weight on them. I don’t know why, but I’ve learned that from the orthopedic patients I’ve dealt with who had broken legs. Are you about ready to leave?”
“Yeah, you finish dressing and I’ll stick these dishes in the dishwasher.”
I went to my room and finished getting dressed. I knew that getting Ty walking without the crutches was the first step to getting him well and independent. I just didn’t know what that meant in terms of our living together.
Chapter Seven
As Ty surmised, they did indeed put him in a smaller walking cast that day. A cast so small, we actually could now get a pair of baggy-type jeans over it so Ty could once again wear long pants. I went to Target again, this time with him, and we picked out several pairs of jeans along with some shirts and a zippered hoodie because the mornings and nights were still chilly.
Several days later was a holiday I was not looking forward to – Memorial Day. For the first time since Todd died, I was not going to be working at the hospital on a holiday. Instead, Ty had asked if he could come with me to visit Todd’s grave. That would be strange, too. Except for the day of the funeral, there was never anyone around when I visited Todd’s grave.
Ty was now getting around quite well on his half-cast and the cane, which had replaced his crutches, walking as much as he could each day. I could tell that he was really committed to getting better. I had to wonder, given what I had seen of this man for more than two months now, what he had done to get himself thrown out of the Marine Corps. To me, he seemed the very embodiment of the Marine Corps core values of Honor, Courage and Commitment. What had he possibly done to violate them? And, above all, would Ty ever come to trust me enough to tell me?
The morning of Memorial Day dawned bright, clear, and warm. There were leaves on the trees and all signs of the bleakness of winter were gone. If it weren’t for the mournful duty I had to visit Todd’s grave, it would have been a wonderful day for a picnic or to take a ride through the countryside. I always felt when I visited the cemetery it should be a grey and overcast day with drizzling rain. The weather should be as sorrowful as the activity.
On the way to the cemetery, I stopped at the same florist and picked up the small wreath I’d ordered to place on Todd’s grave. The wreath was red, white and blue carnations with a small American flag. It had its own small, wire tripod stand to place on the grave. I drove to the cemetery and parked below the knoll where Todd was buried. I notice Ty was having some difficulty making it up the hill. I wanted to offer help but I knew that unless he asked for it, my offer would not be appreciated. It vaguely crossed my mind that Ty seemed to know where Todd’s grave was on the ridge. However, that couldn’t be right, as he’d never had a reason to visit Todd’s grave before.
Ty stood there, leaning on his black wooden cane, looking down on Todd’s grave while I knelt on the ground and pressed the wire tripod with the wreath into the ground. I then stood, looking down at the grave. I couldn’t talk out loud to Todd the way I usually did, not with Ty there. I didn’t know what else to do and was just about to head back to the car when Ty suddenly spoke, his voice low and quiet. So quiet that, at first, I could barely hear him.
“I knew him.”
“Knew who?”
I couldn’t, at first, understand what Ty was talking about.
“Todd. Your brother.”
That should have shocked me but, for some reason, it didn’t.
“Where did you know him? In boot camp?”
“No. I went through boot camp a couple of years before he did. I knew him in Iraq. He was sent into our platoon, along with some other guys to fill in spaces where we’d lost guys.”
“How…how well did you know him?”
This conversation was totally unreal to me. I was doing everything I could not to scream these questions at Ty, to demand that he tell me how the fuck he’d known my brother and why the fuck he hadn’t told me. But I knew if I did, Ty would just stop talking and I’d never know anything.
“He died in my arms.”
We stood there, staring at each other over Todd’s grave.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Ty stopped looking at me and looked down at the grave.
“I…I didn’t know how.”
That answer didn’t make any fucking sense but I realized it wasn’t complete. I knew if I just waited, Ty would tell me the rest of it.
“Todd loved you. Loved you more than anybody. He wanted to make sure you were never alone. He made me promise if somethin’ happened to him, I’d come here and find you and look out for you, just like he would’ve done. The last words he ever spoke were, ‘Take care of Tim.’”
“So what happened? Why didn’t you come?”
“At first, it was because of me bein’ in the hospital. What the fuckin’ surgeon told you is right; those are shrapnel wounds he saw in my legs. Got them from the same bomb that killed Todd. Nearly lost my fuckin’ legs. I was in the hospital for almost six months. Had to relearn how to walk.”
“Okay, I can understand that. What about after the hospital?”
“After that there was the court-martial. That took nearly a year and then they threw me out. I didn’t know what to do then. It was one thing to show up here as your brother’s buddy – another Marine. It was a whole different thing to be a disgrace. To be fuckin’ thrown out of the Corps. How could I come to you like that?”
“Do you really think that would have mattered to me? I know no one else who can tell me about Todd, who can tell me what life was like for him in the Corps. No one who can tell me what happened in Iraq but you. Do you really think I would have cared that you got thrown out?”
“I cared! I didn’t want you to know me like this.”
Ty turned his back to me and started walking away from Tod
d’s grave.
“You were the one who kept leaving the flowers, weren’t you?”
He stopped and looked back at me.
“Yeah. I didn’t know what else to do. You ain’t the only one who loved him. He was my only friend ever. The only guy who never let me down. And I was lettin’ him down. I kept followin’ you. I knew where you lived and where you worked. I kept tryin’ to think of some way to maybe just run into you and strike up a conversation. Only problem is, I ain’t any good at that shit. ”
“No. You’re not.” I smiled at him. “So how did you get hit by the car?”
“You never knew it but I used to hide outside your house and watch at night, make sure that nobody bothered you or nothin’. Then I’d head downtown after dawn and make it to the mission on Vine Street for breakfast. They’d let me take a shower there sometimes. I was on my way downtown when I got hit by the car.”
“You were taking care of me, just like you’d promised Todd.”
“Yeah. Tryin’ to, anyway. But I let him down.”
He turned away from me again but he didn’t move. He just stood there, his back to me and to Todd’s grave. Suddenly, I saw his shoulders start shaking. He was crying. It was disconcerting to see such a huge man cry. Especially one who I knew was trained as a warrior with the ability to kill with his bare hands. I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to reach out and touch him, to give him some kind of comfort but I knew he probably wouldn’t accept it if I did. Finally he seemed to quiet and so I spoke.
“This changes things, you know.”
He turned and looked at me.
“What do you mean?”
“It does change things. Oh, I still want you to stay with me and I still want you to go to school. I still want you to put your life back together. You were Todd’s friend. You were the one he trusted to, how did you put it…look out for me and keep me from being lonely? Well, it’s about time you started doing your job. And part of your job is telling me the truth – no more lies.”
With this, I turned and walked slowly down the knoll to the car. I didn’t look back. I knew Ty was following me. Somehow I knew that a change had happened for me on that knoll. I still loved Todd and I still missed him but, for the first time since he died, I had a small glimmer of hope that I wasn’t going to spend the rest of my life alone.
Chapter Eight
Ty and I didn’t speak all the way back home. I noticed that every so often he would look over at me but he didn’t say anything. I didn’t, either, because there wasn’t anything I could think of to say. I still wanted to know why he’d been thrown out of the Marine Corps but, in some ways, it didn’t really matter. I knew who he really was now. Knowing he was Todd’s friend bolstered my belief in Ty’s basic goodness as a person. Todd would never have been friends with someone who wasn’t a good person.
What Ty didn’t know, and I wasn’t about to tell him for a while, was that Todd had told me about him. Todd had never used Ty’s name, so I didn’t know it was him, but he had talked about him in e-mails. He’d told me that he had this close buddy he wanted to bring home with him so he could meet our parents and me. Todd had told me how grateful that he was to this guy for taking him “under his wing” and helping Todd adjust to being in Iraq. He told me that this guy was a real “bad-ass” but was also one of the most intensely loyal and courageous people Todd had ever met. Considering that was how I felt about Todd, this was high praise indeed.
When we got home, Ty went to his room. I went to the kitchen. I figured we both needed some lunch. When I went to get him for lunch less than an hour later, however, Ty wasn’t in his room and all his clothes were neatly folded on the bed, which had been meticulously made. I knew immediately he had left, though where he’d go with no money and one leg still in a cast was a mystery in itself. But I also knew Ty’s humongous pride would not let him stay after admitting to lying to me. Just as his pride has kept him from coming to me in the first place and letting me know Todd had sent him to take care of me because he’d been too ashamed to admit that he’d been thrown out of the Marine Corps.
I quickly ran and got in the car, pulling out of the driveway and trying desperately to see where he had gone. I didn’t figure that with one leg in a cast, he could get very far very fast but I couldn’t find him anywhere. I started driving, making circles around the house, moving further and further out until suddenly my cell phone rang. I looked at the caller ID and it was the hospital. Fuck! Could there be a worse time?
“Hello?” I answered.
“Tim, I need you to come in. There’s a situation here I think you need to deal with.”
I immediately recognized the voice. It was Kathleen. I didn’t want to blow her off but, at the same time, I needed to keep looking for Ty. However, I didn’t really have any choice in the matter.
“Okay. I’ll be there in a couple of minutes. Are you sure this isn’t something that could wait for a while?”
“No, it can’t wait. I’ll see you shortly, all right?”
“Yes, I’ll be there in about five minutes.”
I drove to the hospital and parked in the employee parking lot. I went to the second floor of the hospital where Kathleen’s office was and knocked at the door. I heard her tell me to come in and I opened the door. I was a bit stunned, needless to say, when I saw Kathleen sitting at her conference table with Ty, both of them drinking coffee and Ty eating his way through a plate of cheese Danish.
“Come in, Tim. Mr. Gunther and I were just having a discussion. It seems he feels he needs to be placed in a shelter. He feels he is no longer welcome in his current placement, mainly because he’s been less than honest with you. I’ve tried to assure him that I know you extremely well and that I was sure that you have no desire for him to move out.”
Ty just sat there, his back to me, not looking at me and not speaking.
“I know that to be absolutely true,” I replied. “I don’t want him to move out. In fact, I understand why Mr. Gunther was less than honest about some issues in the past. On top of that, I have been searching desperately for him, hoping to find him and beg him to come home.”
“Why would you want me to?” Finally Ty spoke, his words quiet and gruff.
“Because you were my brother’s friend. Because my brother died in your arms. Because I don’t have my brother around to care about anymore but I have you. And you need to stay because you promised Todd that you would take care of me.”
None of us said anything for a while. Then Kathleen got up and looked down at Ty.
“I’ve got some patients to see. I think you and Tim need to talk this out, either here or at home. Either is fine with me. Just close the door when you leave.”
Kathleen reached down and gently stroked Ty’s head and then left the room, lightly squeezing my arm as she went past. I sat down at the table where she had been. Ty at first kept his head down but then, finally looked up at me.
“I spent months in Bethesda Naval Hospital. They thought I was gonna lose both of my legs but there was this one surgeon who refused to give up on me. He was finally able to get all the shrapnel out and to heal my legs so I didn’t lose them. I was learning how to walk with crutches, just getting ready to move to outpatient status when it happened. There was this nurse’s aide. About nineteen years old and cute as fuck. I hadn’t had sex in months. In fact, most of the time, I had been so doped up I couldn’t even pull my pudd. That night, my dick just got hard and wouldn’t go down. The little nurse’s aide offered to help me out.”
“Hand or mouth?” I smiled at him.
“Whatever I wanted. So, of course I said ‘mouth.’ But the supervising nurse on the floor was a real bitch and somehow she saw what was going on and reported us. That led to us both being court-martialed.”
“Wait a minute! You got court-martialed and thrown out of the Corps for getting a blowjob from a nurse’s aide? Are you shitting me?”
“Uhh…there’s somethin’ I kinda left out.”
“What? Like the fact that the nurse’s aide was the daughter of the Commandant of the Marine Corps or something?”
“He wasn’t anybody’s daughter.”
There was dead silence in the room for a long time. Again, Ty wouldn’t look at me.
“But surely,” I finally said, “Marines get blowjobs from guys all the time from what I’ve heard. It’s no big deal. Why didn’t you just tell them that you were straight and hard up? You didn’t do anything to the nurse’s aide, did you?”
“You don’t get it, do you? You ever hear of fuckin’ ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell?’ You get caught doin’ anything that is considered gay in any way and your ass is out. Period. Besides, I wasn’t gonna lie like that. I didn’t do anything to the kid because I was too weak. I would have if I could. I’m just as gay as he was!”
This last, Ty practically screamed at me and then looked away.
I was stunned. Almost too stunned to ask my next question.
“Did Todd know?”
Ty turned back, looking at me quizzically.
“Yeah. He did. He’s the only person I ever told until the court-martial.”
“I take it that it didn’t bother him.”
“Nah. He told me I wasn’t the first guy who told him. He would never tell me who the other guy was. I guess it was one of his high school buddies.”
“No. It wasn’t one of his buddies.”
“You know who it was? Did Todd tell you?”
“Yes, I know who it is, but Todd didn’t tell me. I told him. I was the guy who told him that I was gay.”
Ty just sat there, looking stunned. He opened his mouth to say something but nothing came out.
“That’s why Todd wanted to bring you home with him. It’s also why he wanted you to promise to take care of me.”
Ty shook his head.
“No! That’s not possible. He wouldn’t be tryin’ to fix us up. That makes no sense at all.”
“The night I told Todd I was gay, I complained about the fact that I didn’t know how to find other guys who were…that things were so unfair. Todd could just walk up to any girl and ask her for a date. I could easily end up with the shit kicked out of me for asking a guy the same thing.”
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