Bridges

by Janice McLeod

  Early one morning Sonny pulled his rig into a truck stop in Topeka Kansas to re-fuel and check in with the home office concerning his next assignment. The dispatcher explained that one of the men on the southern run was taking a week off to be home with his wife who was about to deliver their first child, and someone would need to take care of his orders for a few days. Sonny was told to pick up his load in Kansas City then head south east to Ashville North Carolina then Charleston, South Carolina, and on to Savannah Georgia. The dispatcher concluded that their might be a need to then head for Jacksonville Florida; where there was potential cargo at Mayport, he would let him know. As Sonny plotted his course, through Missouri and Tennessee to deliver his first supplies in Ashville, he reminisced about the mission and his friend Father Ed in Ashville but decided not to contact him as his schedule would be tight. He had made a point to send Ed a post card now and then wherever he might be on the road, just to say hello and let him know he was OK, a way to stay in touch. He vowed to do that again from the southland. Sonny would never forget all Ed had done for him and hoped that in the future sometime, under much brighter circumstances; they could have a real reunion.

  After making the first drop of his journey, Sonny traveled on down Highway 176 just south of Ashville and decided to have dinner at a truck stop Café with a large glowing neon sign, where he saw other semi’s parked in a side lot. When he pulled in along the other big rigs and killed his engine, he rubbed his face with his hands a glanced in his mirror while he combed his hair. As he sat there for a moment he checked his map and saw that he was just outside the small town of Hendersonville, then putting the map aside with some other paper work, he got out of the truck and made for the door of the Café. When he stood within a few feet of the door he got an odd feeling that he had been there before but his travels had never taken him south, so he shrugged it off and entered the Café. Once inside he began to have a tingling sensation and a stronger sense of recollection. He seemed to perceive where everything was located; the fountain area with its tall stools, the check—out counter and the window seats in the front of the Café. Startled, with the sense of panic growing within him, he tried to calm himself and looked to find a seat. The only one available was along the back wall. When he slid into the booth, he tried to get a grip on the strange feelings that were beginning to overwhelming him. Suddenly he remembered the incident at the Ashville cinema a couple of years back that had started this same way. As the waitress arrived at his table, wearing her crisp pink and green uniform, Sonny gasped for air and thought he was going to pass out. The waitress quickly put down the water and utensils she was carrying and reached for Sonny’s arm and ask if he was all right, for the color had completely left his face and he was now shaking all over. He grabbed the edge of the table and continued to gasp for air as the waitress ran to get her boss. When she rounded the corner of the kitchen door she yelled, “Dan come quick, I think one of our customers is having a seizure”. Dan quickly threw down his towel and followed her to the dining room. “Hey buddy are you OK?” asked Dan, as he slid into the booth next to Sonny and asked if he needed a drink of water, which Sonny motioned for and drank. Slowly Sonny was helped to his feet and escorted into a small office off the kitchen and assisted to a cushioned chair beside the desk. Looking up at the concerned expressions on the faces of Dan and his waitress, he did his best to explain what he was feeling, memories that were so clear and vivid that they were frightening, because he was a man without a past. As Dan studied Sonny’s face, now crumpled with emotion he examined the contours of his features, the slight scar below his right ear that straggled onto his jaw line. “How did you get that scar on the jaw” asked Dan? After a minute or so Sonny and Dan looked at each other and in a moment of stunning clarity, they both spoke at the same time. Sonny saying he had been kicked in the head and Dan saying he was the man found in his parking lot a couple of years ago that had been beat-up and robbed. “Oh my word” said the waitress, I remember that, we didn’t think you were going to make it”. Sonny was shaking again as he remembered being attacked and then waking up in the Ashville Hospital. “Oh my word” the waitress said again “You are that poor man.”

  With the dinner rush nearly over, Dan fixed a plate and brought it back into his office and sat with Sonny as he tried to eat. Dan filled him in on the details of that tragic night he was attacked, as best he could remember. He said he was nearly beaten to death right outside his door and how terrible he felt about that. He mentioned that while Sonny was still in the hospital, he had traveled to Ashville to see him but that he was still unconscious and they had no idea if he would ever wake up. Sonny wiped his mouth, leaned back in the chair and stared at Dan. He thanked him for his understanding and told him how hard it was to live with huge chunks of his life missing, to which Dan said,” I can’t even imagine, you are just so lucky to be alive”, two others were not as fortunate as you. “What do you mean two others” asked Sonny? “About the same time as your robbery, there was a string of others, a man and his son were attacked and killed one night coming out of a grocery store” said Dan. “Finally that ring of thugs was apprehended and tried”; Thank God they are now in the State Pen where they belong” explained Dan. Sonny commented that he thought it was odd that the police never contacted him after his mugging. Dan then said that he knew the officer who had responded to the call at the Café that night, a man by the name of Fred Ellis. He went on to say that Officer Ellis had made several calls up to the Ashville Hospital asking about Sonny and his condition, for he was anxious to interview him on the chance he had seen or heard something that would help in his investigation, but every time he inquired he was told, the patient was still unconscious. In the mean time there continued to be more incidents of the same kind and the small, two men, Hendersonville police station, was forced to move on with the hot cases they were dealing with, Ashville not being in their jurisdiction. Dan said “It was later concluded, because of the similarities in all these cases, including yours Sonny; that the same group had committed these crimes and once the perpetrators were caught and convicted, these cases were put to bed”. He went on to say that no one knew Sonny had suffered amnesia. It was assumed if you ever woke up you would simply go on with your life. Dan who sat with his legs spread and his elbows resting on his knees, now webbed his hands together and stared down at the floor shaking his head and said, “I truly regret this whole sorry mess and the pain it has caused you, if you can think of any way I can help just ask”.

  Early the next morning Sonny waved good-by to Dan as he pulled out of the Café drive. The two men had sat up all night talking after locking up the diner. They then walked the short distance down the lane to Dan’s home, where both men crashed for a few hours. The next morning Dan insisted on feeding Sonny a hearty breakfast and plenty of hot coffee before he hit the road, and now stood at the Café door with a towel over his shoulder and his hand in the air, while Sonny pulled away over the hill and out of sight. As he drove along that morning, Sonny reflected on his situation and took an accounting. He now knew a few important facts about himself that may eventually lead to other clues. He knew his name and that he had been in the Army during the war and now had discovered where he had nearly lost his life and why he had never talked to the police about his mugging. Bits and pieces of a puzzle, that now represented his life, were slowly coming together. His continual prayer in recent weeks had been, that he would hear from the Army and that the remaining pieces might reveal information that would lead him back to the life he had once known.

  By the time Sonny rolled into Charleston, South Carolina it was late in the Afternoon. He had just enough time to drive to market Street and drop his supplies before the work day ended. After his delivery, he pulled his rig into a side alley and parked it out of the way so he could take a stroll and search for some dinner. Now that he had a few minutes to himself and could think and take in the sights, he realized that he felt so comfortable here in this city that had a
familiar feel. Even the smells that permeated the air, drifting down the street from the various eateries, seem so right and natural to him and it was at this point it popped into his mind that he loved She Crab Soup. Wondering where that thought came from, he almost laughed out loud. After his supper at a side walk Bistro, he took a short walk to a nearby park and sat on a bench to let his supper settle. Looking off across the street at the old historic buildings and beyond to the water front; the scent of salt on the sea breeze further aroused his senses and it slowly came to him he had been here many times before. Emotions of contentment mixed with amazement filled his soul. Later as darkness fell, he moved down US 17 toward Savannah Georgia. On Each side of this ribbon of road were large tracks of land, majestic in their isolated beauty. The dense, lush coastal marshland, only disturbed by the tide and dusk that now blackened the tree line on the horizon, was set against the flaming sky, and sea birds made for their roosts in the tall oaks and bushy palmettos. Moving along the highway Sonny put down his window and stretched his arm out into the night air while emotion brimmed in his eyes; for here in the southland, he sensed he was home.

  Dense mist rose from the Savannah River the next morning as Sonny crossed its bridge looking for the marker announcing entry into the state of Georgia. Drawing closer to the city he began to feel pangs of remembering, ghostly images passing through his mind, hushed yet visible, harbingers of memory still elusive, undefined yet ever present. Slowly pulling his truck over the cobble stone streets along the water front, he backed his rig up to the loading dock of a warehouse and cut his engine. As he quietly gazed across the river in the stillness of the early morning, he was flooded with feelings he could not explain or rationalize. Intuition told Sonny he needed to spend some time here, to sort things out in his mind, to uncover the longing that had now pierced his heart.

  While Sonny waited for the warehouseman to arrive and open the doors, he contacted dispatch and asked about the cargo at Mayport and was told that a trucker making the Mobile, Pensacola, Jacksonville run had been able to load that shipment yesterday, so Sonny was cleared from that order. Sonny told the dispatcher he really needed to take a few days off to handle some personal business and would like to call in next week for an assignment. Reviewing the order mandates with the route supervisor, the dispatcher came back in moments confirming Sonny’s leave. Brock Harmon, Manager of the warehouse soon greeted Sonny with a hand shake and introduction. Soon the two men headed inside to do their paper work and have some coffee. As the semi trailer was unloaded by warehouse workers, Brock and Sonny had a chance it visit and make small talk for a few minutes. Sonny explained that Cid Andrews the usual driver for this run was busy becoming a father, so Sonny had taken his place. Brock laughed and said he had been blessed a couple of times himself and asked if Sonny had children, to which he replied no. Then Brock looked at Sonny and said “You know you sure look familiar for some reason. I graduated high School with a Sonny Boone over in Jesup, class of 42”. “As I recall”, Brock went on, “He had a good looking older sister named Katie, all the guys tried to date; their mom and dad owned a hardware store on Main Street”. Sonny smiled and nodded, and gave no response.

  Climbing back into his truck, Sonny could barely breathe. Placing both hands on the steering wheel, he rested his forehead on his hands and tried to absorb what had just happened. He had been handed some astounding information. If he was in fact the same Sonny Boone that Brock spoke of, he may indeed have a family and a home. He arranged with Brock to leave his trailer in his warehouse lot for a few days and decided he must drive to Jesup and visit this Boone Hardware store on Main Street. Coming in on Highway 84 he entered the small rural town and had no trouble locating the store. Sonny sat in the truck looking at the store front for several minutes and again began to experienced those feelings of remembrance; of things familiar yet ill defined. Taking a deep breath he prepared himself to enter the store; praying fate would be kind. Opening the door, he stepped over the threshold to a jingling bell, alerting those inside of a new client in from the street. Four or five people browsed the aisles, picking through bins for this and that. Near the front window, a tall gentleman with a bald head and glasses was in deep conversation with another man concerning a spring needed for his sprinkler head, an ancient rain bird that had given up the ghost. Sonny quietly walked the aisles and ended up near the back of the store where a small office was located. Through the open door he noticed a short, plump woman going over the books, her adding machine plunking away as a long tape headed over the edge of the desk toward the floor. She had a pencil tucked behind one ear, along with several strands of curly gray hair that framed her intense round face. Suddenly, behind Sonny’s back came a voice that said, “Hi, may I help you”. Sonny quickly turned to follow the voice, as the woman in the office looked up to see who was standing near her door. The tall thin man looking from clear, blue, gentle eyes, behind the spectacles on his face, was Sonny’s dad.

  It came to him in a sweeping gesture of recognition; like awaking from a long, deep sleep and re-entering the world to find it the way you had left it. For one short, bewildering moment, Sonny, his mother and dad stood there in the surreal moment, as if spell-bound, for none was able to speak. In the very next instant, Sonny and his dad were in each others’ arms and weeping. Sonny’s mother rose from her desk and ran through the doorway to embrace the two men. The next several minutes were used to wipe at one another’s tears and exclaim their shock at being together again, after their resignation to the realities that this moment might never ever happen. With the store now empty, the door was locked and the close Signe posted in the window. The family huddled in the small back office in chairs pulled up around the desk. Virginia hastily made coffee in a small galley kitchen off the back hallway and returned with a steaming mug for ever one. After putting the coffee on the desk, she could not help throwing her arms around her boy again and kissing his face. As she settled in her chair, the three began sorting out the tragic tangle that had been their lives since Sonny’s disappearance.

  Later, taken home to his boyhood room, he now lay on the bed, in the cool, calm, of the night and thought about all that had happened to him. Both he and his parents had told their full stories to each other; of all they had experienced through these difficult two and a half years. With either a quirk of fate or perhaps something more richly powerful and spiritual, Sonny had been brought to his families door step. If he hadn’t been asked to take Sid’s run and come south, none of this would have happened. Yet Sonny felt like God had taken him by the shoulders and literally guided him home. During the afternoon, when he had described for his parents, the profound torture he had gone through, not knowing who he was, they shook their heads in disbelief that someone so depraved would rob and leave him for dead. As the discussion turned to his parents and what they had been through, they asked him if he remembered Gina. At the very sound of her name, it was as if another light turned on in his head. Once again with a flood of emotion he remembered his darling young wife, his soul mate. Sonny’s parents shared with him the deep depression that engulfed Gina after his disappearance and then the bomb shell came; “And you have a beautiful little son named Samuel”, said Virginia. Sonny now remembered his wonderful smiling Gina, his very heart; the last night they were together wrapped in each others’ arms, the night Samuel was conceived. Now how he longed for her, with an urgent, yet fearful desire. Although his parents had told him Gina had returned to work at the Library and was still living at her parents’ home, he worried about her reaction at finding he was alive and back in Jesup. Had she forgotten him, the passion and dreams they had shared and moved on with her life? Was there someone else she was now interested in; and if she was, how could he blame her? And a son, he had a son; a stunning truth he had been totally unprepared for.

  After Breakfast, a nervously excited call was made to Gina in Savannah. It was Sunday morning and the Library would be closed, so Gina would be home with Sam. When t
he phone rang at the Harris’s, Gina picked it up to hear the happy voice of her Mother-in-law. After a brief greeting and inquiry about sweet Sam, Virginia said that she had a startling, wonderful surprise for her and asked her to sit down. Gina laughed and asked what on earth Virginia was up to. “Never you mind” said Virginia “Just do it”. “OK, I am sitting” said Gina; still laughing, wondering what kind of prank Vie had up her sleeve. “I have someone here that would like to speak to you Gina, now hold on” said Virginia as she handed Sonny the phone. “Hello darling, its’ Sonny” he said. For a moment there was silence and Sonny wondered if Gina was still on the line, then slowly she said “Sonny, is that really you”? “Yes honey it is me” he said. “There is so much I need to tell you, so much has happened to me, to us, when can I see you” he asked?