Page 3 of All We Thought We Knew
He tossed my bag in the bed of the truck, then opened the passenger door and waited. I couldn’t see his eyes once again, but I didn’t need to. He and Mark joined the Marines on the same day. They’d boarded the same military transport airplane that took them to Vietnam. He and my brother believed in what they were doing. Mark tolerated my liberal views of the war, but they never sat well with Nash.
Now he was home, and Mark was dead.
I didn’t say another word and climbed onto the bench seat. Nash closed the door and came around to the driver’s side. The engine roared to life, and we headed north. My family’s horse farm was ten miles outside of town, a distance I’d covered a zillion times going to school, to a friend’s house, or to one of Mark’s football games. Today, the miles seemed heavy and endless.
In the fading autumn light, everything out the window seemed oddly foreign yet reassuringly familiar. Homes occupied by people who’d known me my whole life. Pastures dotted with horses or Black Angus cattle. After living in California’s big, overcrowded cities for a year, the serene pastoral sight stirred something deep inside me. A longing I’d ignored since running away from everything and everyone.
A longing I knew could never be satisfied in Tullahoma.
I stole a look at Nash.
I hadn’t seen him in four years. He’d been a lanky teenager when he and Mark left for Vietnam. War had filled him out with muscle and a hardness to his boyish features. Although he’d always been on the quiet side, his chilly silence gave evidence he had nothing to say to me. I, however, couldn’t help but wonder about his presence at the bus depot.
“Why did Dad ask you to pick me up?”
His fingers tightened on the steering wheel as a car whizzed past on the two-lane road. With a jolt, I remembered he only had one hand to drive with. I hadn’t noticed a thing different as he shifted gears and steered us toward the farm.
“I work for your parents,” he said, his eyes on the road ahead.
“You work for my folks? But you’re a—”
I clamped my mouth shut too late.
“A mechanic.” He glanced over at me, then back to the road. “Not too many people are anxious to hire a one-armed mechanic. Dale wouldn’t even give me back my old job at the auto shop.”
I didn’t know what to say. I’d heard some soldiers returning from the war weren’t welcomed home with open arms. Like a lot of people, I didn’t believe they should have been in Vietnam in the first place, but I wouldn’t’ve wanted Mark ill-treated had he returned. Since both gloating that I’d been right about the war or speaking words of sympathy over his injury seemed out of place, silence once again became the best response.
We passed the Allyns’ neat farm. I wondered if Paula, Mark’s girlfriend, still lived there with her parents. Mama hadn’t mentioned her in the handful of letters I’d received since leaving Tennessee. I’d stayed in so many different houses, parks, and communes over the last twelve months, receiving mail wasn’t easy. But I knew Mama would worry if she didn’t hear from me from time to time, so I’d ask a shop owner or friendly neighbor if I could temporarily use their address. That’s how Dad’s telegram found me.
Nash slowed the truck and turned off the main road onto a private drive. Tires bumped over gravel and potholes, stirring up a trail of dust behind us and a jumble of nerves in the pit of my stomach. As stars began to dot the sky, gentle hills and autumn green pastures awash in the colors of dusk filled my view. I didn’t realize I held my breath until it expelled from my lungs when the whitewashed, two-story farmhouse appeared over a rise.
Home.
Yet it wasn’t. Not anymore.
Nash stopped the truck next to the house and cut the engine. Neither of us moved to exit the vehicle. I glanced up to the second-floor window over the porch. Mama’s. Muted yellow light shone through the curtain.
Is she truly dying?
I’d avoided that question for four days. Refused to think about it. Even went so far as to accuse my father of lying just to get me home. But here in the yard, gazing up at her bedroom window, I could no longer pretend I didn’t know what was happening.
“How bad is she?” I didn’t look at Nash, not wanting to see the answer in his eyes I feared would cross his lips soon enough.
He didn’t respond right away. A heavy sigh came first, then he said, “Doc doesn’t think she’ll make it to Christmas.”
I sucked in a breath at the sobering truth. I covered my mouth to hold in the cry that rose in my throat.
Christmas was only seven weeks away.
“She’s a fighter though,” he continued. “She didn’t want your dad to tell you about the diagnosis. Not until, well, until it was close to the end.”
I turned to him. “Why? I would have come home sooner. How long has she been sick?”
“They found cancer three months ago, but it was already advanced.”
I sat, stunned. Three months? Didn’t cancer take years to getto the point of death? “Can’t they do something about it? Remove tumors. Treat it somehow.”
“They tried, but like I said, it was already bad. Chemotherapy might buy a couple months at the most, but there were no guarantees. With the cost and traveling to the hospital in Nashville...” He paused. “She wouldn’t do it.”
