The World Played Chess, page 28
He and Beau got along fine but they weren’t close friends and didn’t socialize. After nine months living together, they headed for home, and with an undergraduate student population of forty thousand, it was unlikely they would see much of each other again.
“You ready?” I asked Beau.
“Hungry,” he said, which was always his answer. “Can we hit Tommy’s on the way home?”
“What’s Tommy’s?”
“Oh, Dad, you have not had a chili cheeseburger until you’ve had Tommy’s.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell Beau that because of a weird iron issue with my blood, I had become primarily vegan. And this was one of those opportunities when I figured a chili cheeseburger with my son would have a far greater impact on my memories, not to mention my cholesterol and fat levels, than on my iron count. And I wasn’t about to pass up an opportunity to create a memory.
We ate the burgers at an outdoor bench in glorious sunshine, then jumped in the car and headed for home. I kept waiting for Beau to turn on the radio and use the aux cord to plug in his playlist, but he never did.
“Did I ever tell you about my final drive home from law school behind my buddy Thomas?”
“No,” Beau said.
“I had an afternoon final, but Thomas waited so we could drive home together. I didn’t finish the test until close to five o’clock. We should have just spent the night, but we were both anxious to get home. We came out of these mountains and descended into tule fog.”
“What’s tule fog?” Beau asked.
“Tule fog is a thick ground fog, like driving through pea soup. The headlights on my Ford Pinto could barely pierce it.”
“Shit, really?”
“We should have pulled over and stayed in a hotel. Not that either of us had any money, but we had credit cards.”
“Why didn’t you?” Beau asked.
Good question. By the end of law school I was twenty-five years old and couldn’t blame an undeveloped frontal cortex. I had a girlfriend, but more importantly, I wanted to get away from law school. It had been three difficult years, and I wanted to put it in my past. “We should have,” I said, “and I hope that if you ever find yourself in a similar situation, you have enough sense to do it.”
“Seems logical,” Beau said.
“It does,” I said, “but I wasn’t thinking logically. I just wanted to get home and see my girlfriend.”
“This the girlfriend you broke up with the next year?” Beau asked, smiling.
“Same one,” I said. “The next morning Thomas called and told me to turn on the news. The tule fog had caused a fifty-car crash that night and, by what we could judge, it happened just ten to fifteen minutes behind us. Twelve people lost their lives. Thirty people were hospitalized.”
“Shit,” Beau said again.
“Do you know why those people died and we lived?”
“Luck,” Beau said, shrugging.
I nodded and thought of that line from the Harry Chapin song, but my boy was not just like me. I had no doubt he would have stayed in a hotel. I’d like to believe I had something to do with that, but I think Chris’s death had more to do with it.
“But here’s the thing. We had the chance to make our own luck. We had the chance to pull over and get a hotel or, at worst, to sleep in our cars until morning—so did all those other people who didn’t and lost their lives. Don’t forget that. Sometimes bad luck is really dumb actions or inaction. You can make your own luck by making smart decisions.”
Beau looked out the window. “I could have been better at that this year,” he said.
There had been the phone call home after Beau’s first-quarter finals when he learned he had earned two Cs and a B-minus. There had been the poor girlfriend choice that had also ended badly, and a fight at a UCLA football game that resulted in a black eye and a trip to the hospital.
“It’s part of growing up,” I said. “Hopefully, you learned from the experiences, so you won’t go through them again.”
His spring quarter, Beau pulled two As and a B-plus.
I almost said, At least you had the chance to make your mistakes and live to talk about them, but I realized I wasn’t the best person to tell Beau how lucky he had been. The best person was a guy just about the same age as Beau, who had flown across the country to Los Angeles chasing a girl, and decided to stay for the sunshine, with no humidity. A guy who appreciated those small blessings.
“I have something for you to read,” I said to Beau, and I handed him William’s journal.
“What is it?”
I gave his question a moment of thought. “It’s a book about life as an eighteen-year-old young man, about growing up and growing old.”
“Sounds interesting.”
You have no idea, I thought.
Neither, it turns out, did I. Not fully.
Epilogue
August 26, 2017
It is prophetic, I suppose, my landing at the Seattle-Tacoma airport fifty years to the day after William wrote his first journal entry. Despite having traveled all over the world, I have never been to the Pacific Northwest. I’ve never seen the reason, though my good friend Thomas now resides in the Emerald City.
I get my rental car. I figure this is one of those glorious mornings I’ve heard about in the Pacific Northwest. At ten in the morning the temperature is comfortable. Not a cloud in the sky. I lower the window. The chill feels invigorating.
My destination is a place called Issaquah, which I’m told is twenty-two miles northeast of the airport and it should, according to the GPS on my phone, take me roughly half an hour to get there, though I have arrived smack dab in the middle of traffic.
I plug in and find a second route; this one avoids Seattle and weaves its way south around the southern tip of Lake Washington, but I soon find the 405 freeway a rolling parking lot. I sit back and relax. I’m not in any rush. I do not have an appointment. Some things are better discussed in person than over the phone.
I make my way east on the I-90 freeway. Traffic lightens. I will arrive before noon. Before, I hope, William has started his day, whatever that entails. I know little about him, which sounds odd to admit. An internet search revealed that he worked as a drug and alcohol rehabilitation counselor at a VA hospital in Seattle, which means he worked with veterans. He gave back. A property records search revealed he owns a home in Issaquah with a woman I assume was the wife he mentioned in the letter that accompanied his journal. An obituary in the Seattle Times indicated his wife died of cancer, as he wrote, and was survived by a daughter from a prior marriage. William’s LinkedIn profile provided that he retired not long after his wife’s death.
I could not find a phone number, neither a landline nor a cell phone. I’m uncertain whether I would have called. Even now, I’m not quite sure what I will say to William. I can’t very well say I was in the neighborhood and thought I would stop by. But I don’t think I will have to say much. I suspect he will know why I have come. I hope he understands.
The woman’s voice on my GPS instructs me to take the Front Street exit and proceed south through a quaint commercial district of one-story brick and wood-slat buildings. It looks like an old mining town, but with modern amenities. I stop at the only stoplight in town, which gives me the chance to look around. A theater. A Subway sandwich shop. A hardware store beside a cannabis store. A pharmacy and a grocery. I can see William walking these streets, far from his memories, happy. At least I hope he’s found happiness.
I proceed out of town and pass one-story houses that have become home to dental practices, an architectural firm, a State Farm Insurance office. Farther out I pass apartments, a Lutheran church. I wonder if William ever found God again. Front Street becomes Issaquah-Hobart Road and the density of houses declines and the space opens to trees and lush green lawns. Another mile and the GPS voice tells me to turn right. I proceed down a gravel road with white fencing and drive to a one-story clapboard home. A car sits idle in the carport. The home is a sky-blue color with a white porch railing. A porch swing hangs motionless from two metal chains. The front door is white with two asymmetric colored-glass windows in the corners. I am struck by the quaint and peaceful setting.
I push out of the car before I have the chance to talk myself out of this encounter, and make my way to the front door, which I find ajar several inches. I can see inside. The hardwood floors glisten, inlaid with a mosaic design running along the edges of each room, the pattern uninterrupted by any furniture.
The door creaks open, and I step inside to the smell of freshly painted walls and redone floors. The staircase is directly ahead of me; the wallpaper leading up the stairs is an old-fashioned country pattern. To the right, a lamp hangs over an empty rectangular dining room. To the left, the centerpiece of the front room, is a white brick fireplace. I can see William seated there, reading, his wife nearby. I can see holiday gatherings, a family sitting down at the table to eat a Thanksgiving meal. I realize I am embedding William in Norman Rockwell paintings from the book on the coffee table in the front room of my home.
My heart is breaking. I’m too late, I think.
“Can I help you?” A woman approaches from down the hall.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “The front door was open. Are you related to William?” I think perhaps she is the daughter William wrote of in his first letter to me.
“No. I’m his real estate agent.”
“I didn’t see a sign. Has the house sold?”
“Last weekend,” she says. “I took the sign down today. We had seven offers in two days, every one of them over the asking price.” Real estate inflation has come to Seattle, along with traffic. Good for William. She puts out her hand, which I shake. “I’m Dawn Richards,” she says. “Are you looking for a home in Issaquah?”
“No. I’m just visiting from California. I was hoping to find the owner, William Goodman. I knew him many years ago. Looks like I’m too late.”
“He had a motor home. He and his wife. She passed about two years ago. He fixed up the house, hired me to put it on the market, and took off. He left instructions to put his money into a bank account.”
I smile. “He didn’t say where he was going?”
“I don’t think he had any set plans. He signed the papers remotely on my company website, and I deposited the money into an account in town. How did you know William?”
“I worked with him almost forty years ago on a construction crew. I haven’t seen or talked to him since.”
She gives me a puzzled look, clearly intending to ask, Why, then, are you here?
“A couple years ago he sent me a letter, with a journal he kept while in Vietnam. I finished reading his journal and hoped to speak to him.”
She squints, as if having trouble believing my story. Then she says, “Did you say you live in California?”
“Yes.”
“Burlingame?”
“Yes,” I say, intrigued by where this is going.
“You’re not . . .” She pulls out a white envelope from her storage clipboard. “You’re not Vincenzo, are you?”
I laughed. “Vincent,” I say. “Vincent Bianco. Though William used to call me Vincenzo.”
She gives a soft chuckle, shaking her head as she hands me the envelope. “William asked me to mail this after I sold the house. This is really too strange.”
I recognize the same scribbled handwriting from the manila envelope sent to me almost exactly two years ago. As before, American flag stamps adorn the upper-right corner. As before, William did not provide a return address. “He asked you to mail this after the house sold?”
“Yes,” she says.
I pause. William didn’t want to talk about what he wrote in his journal. I can understand why. I’ve read a lot about Vietnam veterans, and what I’ve read is that many won’t talk about their experiences. There are many books, but most veterans keep to themselves.
“You look like you’re on your way out. I don’t want to keep you.”
“I have another showing. I have to lock up, but you’re welcome to sit on the swing or porch steps to read his letter, if you like.”
“Thanks,” I say. “I’d like that.”
I step out onto the porch. Dawn Richards closes the front door and deadbolts it. It feels like she is closing a life lived. “Do you know anything about the people who bought the house?”
“A young family,” she says. “They’re moving out of Seattle and want more room, more land. They want to slow down and spend time with their children.”
I can imagine a young boy riding a bike in the yard, a young girl in a dress on a swing fastened to a limb of the oak tree. More Norman Rockwell paintings. My ideal of a bucolic existence, one without wars. One in which the family would walk into town to eat a meal, catch a performance at the local theater, and walk home again, the boy kicking a can. A life I could imagine from my youth. One not constantly interrupted by cell phones or social media. I have a thought and yell to Dawn Richards, who is just about to get into her car. “Did William leave a cell phone number?”
She looks up. “Not with me.”
“An email address?”
She shakes her head. “No.”
I smile and wave. Then I sit on the porch swing, and I think again of that Norman Rockwell painting. Now I’m in it. It is why I came to the Northwest, I suppose. I just wanted the chance to know that William is okay, that he’s led some semblance of a good life. Maybe that’s why William has left his home, taken to the road in his RV, so he can remember the good life he had here, with his wife, and won’t have to watch it deteriorate in his old age. Another family will have the chance at that bucolic existence.
As Dawn Richards’s Subaru pulls onto the gravel drive and back to the street, I sit on the porch swing and watch her go. The cables creak under my weight. I swing gently and imagine William and his wife sitting here on a warm summer evening with time having no meaning, just existing.
I debate whether I want to open his letter and read the final words William has written, whether I want to spoil the beautiful life I have imagined. In the end curiosity wins, as it always does, and I carefully tear off a small strip from the end of the envelope and pull out the letter. Two photographs fall into my lap, facedown. One is older, I can tell by the framing. I turn it over. It is faded, but unmistakable. It is a picture of me, Mike, and William in our Northpark Yankees uniforms, the trophy we won that summer resting on a table at the Village Host restaurant. Mike is in the middle, wearing a battered straw cowboy hat, his blond hair flowing beneath it. William is on the right, his dark hair equally long, his face tan. William is smiling and holding up his index finger. I am on the left, kneeling, also with a finger extended, also smiling. My hair, too, is parted in the middle and falls below my ears. The ’70s. The fashion decade we’d all like to forget.
I turn over the second photograph. It is a picture of a man I hardly recognize, but for the mischievous sparkle in his blue eyes. William. His hair, what he has left, is nub short. He is no longer the lean young man in the prior picture. He has put on weight, though he is not fat, just thicker with age, as am I. He stands on this same porch, his arm around a woman, the porch swing behind them. I can tell by their embrace, the way she leans into him, turning slightly so that her left arm can reach across his body and hold him, that they love one another. That they are in love.
I set both photographs on my lap, overwhelmed with emotion. A part of me smiles. A part cries. A picture is worth a thousand words, but I’d still like to read William’s.
I open the letter.
Vincenzo:
By the time you read this, I will be gone. Don’t panic. I have an RV. LOL.
I’m selling the house and taking to the road, as I did so many years ago when I lived in my El Camino. By comparison, this will be luxurious.
I’ve decided to see the United States. I don’t want to sit in this home alone. I don’t think it would be good for my psyche. It’s been lonely since my wife’s death. I’ve tried to fill the days hiking in the mountains near our house, fishing the streams, gardening out back, but I’ve come to realize that I’m just killing time, the way we used to kill time in Vietnam. We killed time until we died.
I don’t want to kill time. I don’t want to die. I want to live—however many years I have left. I owe it to Victor Cruz and all the others who didn’t make it home, who never got the chance to grow old. I’m going to go see the national parks in Utah. I’ve taken up photography again. I took one of those MasterClass courses on the computer with Annie Leibovitz. I couldn’t do it for many years. I feared I’d put my eye to the lens and see all those horrors I witnessed through that lens so many years ago. But I didn’t. I saw only the beauty of nature and of the living.
Speaking of photographs, I have two for you. The first I hope you recognize. That was taken at the Village Host in Burlingame the night we won the league softball championship. You, me, and Mikey. I found a scrapbook when I was cleaning out my things, downsizing before the move. I never threw it out. I’m glad I kept it. I wish I had kept my medals. I would have liked to have shown my grandkids.
I think I wrote when I sent the journal that I have a daughter from Cheryl’s first marriage. That’s my wife’s name. Cheryl. Her husband was a Vietnam soldier who didn’t make it home. We met at grief counseling at the VA. My daughter was just eight when Cheryl and I married, so I raised her as my own. She has three children. Her oldest, a boy, is about the same age as you in that picture. He’s a bit of a wild child, but a good kid. I’m hoping I can talk some sense into him before he heads off to college. Boys that age are too easily forgotten. We simply expect them to pass from their teenage years into manhood, with all its responsibilities, without any help. It’s a tough transition. Nobody hands you an owner’s manual that explains
1. how to be a man,
