noticed Nate, then started up a sea of whispers in the coatroom.
“As soon as you all take your seats and get your morning work done, I’ll tell you about our visitor,” Jenny called over the clamor. Focus on the class, not Nate. And maybe that quivering in her gut would stop.
The children nearly knocked each other over trying to get to their desks. Pencils flew across papers faster than cars zipping around the Indy 500 raceway. Like dominoes in reverse, one hand after the other shot up into the air, signaling they were done.
“If I’d known a visitor would get you all to work this hard, I would have brought one in a lot sooner,” she said, laughing as she collected their papers. She waved Nate up to the front of the room. “Class, this is Master Sergeant Nathaniel Dole. He grew up in Mercy and even went to this school. He’s a marine and he’s visiting our class this week, as part of our reading project on heroes.”
There were several exclamations of “Cool!” from the back of the room, a couple of yawns and several whispers between the children.
“Now, I’m sure you all have questions for Sergeant Dole. We’ll do a brief question-and-answer period today and maybe another one tomorrow. Now, who has a question?”
A dozen hands reached upward, fingers wiggling. Jenny laughed and gave Nate’s shoulder a pat. “You’re on,” she whispered.
Nate got to his feet and eyed the crowd. “What do I do?” he whispered to her.
“Just be honest. If there’s one thing a kid can spot from fifty paces, it’s an adult telling a lie. No gory stories, of course, but you can tell them the truth. The goal here is to get them more interested in heroes so they’ll want to read about them, too.”
Nate shook his head. She had him confused with the man he used to be. “I’m not the right man for that.”
“You’re perfect.” Jenny gave Nate a long, slow smile that ricocheted through him with the force of a hurricane wind. “The one thing you always did well was be a marine.”
If she only knew, he thought, how right she was.
He wasn’t a marine anymore, not the kind he’d dreamed of being. And thanks to the bullet that had torn through his knee, he never would be again.
Jenny walked over to her desk, leaving Nate to face the class alone. He pointed first to a little girl with blond hair who seemed to have a continual sniffle. “What’s your question?”
She dabbed at her nose with a crumpled tissue. “What’s a marine do?”
He drew himself up and gave her a nod. “Good question. The grunts are the first ones into the hot spots. For instance, we’d take a beachhead with an amphibious assault and cordon off an LZ, then…” His voice trailed off as he noticed the furrowed brows surrounding him. “Uh, we go in first when there’s a war and make a safe place for planes to land the other troops.” He pointed next to a small boy with glasses.
“What happened to your leg? How come you got to have a cane?”
“I, ah, had some knee surgery.” Not exactly a lie. Not quite the truth, either, but there were some things he wasn’t ready to talk about, Jenny’s advice about being honest be damned.
“Where’s your gun?” Jimmy interrupted, before he could be called on.
“I don’t carry it when I’m not on duty.” He pointed to a girl in the back row who had her hair in twin pigtails. His mother, he remembered, had always done his sister’s hair like that.
For a second, he felt a pang at not having seen Katie since he came home. He missed her and his brothers—Jack, Luke, Mark. All were married now, settled down with families—nieces and nephews he barely knew because he’d been gone from Mercy more often than not.
He shook his head and, with skills honed over years of being apart from his family, Nate brushed the thought away. His mother had been calling and asking him over, but he’d made one excuse after another. He’d see his sister and brothers when he was ready. When he could somehow explain the man he’d become.
He was far from being able to do that right now.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear your question,” he said to the little girl.
“If you’re a marine, how come you’re not dressed like one?” she asked. “How come you’re not wearing your uniform?”
Nate’s grip on the cane tightened. The muscles in his jaw formed into immovable lumps, as if someone had injected them with concrete.
The question wasn’t a hard one. But it required an answer more complicated than he could give to a group of nine-year-olds at eight-thirty in the morning.
“I just decided to wear something else today,” he said finally.
“Can you wear your uniform tomorrow?” Jimmy asked. “I bet it’s really cool. Do you have a lot of medals and stuff?”
He’d had medals. Past tense. He thought of the dark-blue coat, once hung with ribbons and golden pins whispering of past deeds.
But now…
Now he didn’t wear it anymore. It had been far too painful a reminder, so he’d stuffed it into the dark recesses of his closet. A few months ago, that uniform had been his life. He didn’t have the athletic prowess of Mark, the brains of Luke, the business acumen of Katie or the focus of Jack. Nate thrived on action, adventure. And the only thing he seemed to be good at, since the Christmas he got his first G.I. Joe, was battling the bad guys—and winning.
Now that he wasn’t wearing the clothes of a marine, he felt lost, as if he wasn’t sure what uniform he was supposed to wear anymore.
“Can you wear your marine clothes tomorrow? I bet it’s really awesome,” another boy said.
“No.” Nate’s voice came out tight and strangled. He cleared his throat and tried again. “No, I can’t wear it.”
“Why not?”
“Yeah, why not?”
He cast a help-me look at Jenny. She grinned at him and stepped forward. “That’s enough questions for today,” she said. “It’s eight-forty-two. Time to get started on our vocabulary words. Now, everybody copy down…”
While she talked, Nate scooted around the desks and made his way to the back of the room. He slipped his free hand into his pocket and fingered the piece of paper that had arrived that morning on his fax machine. Whether he liked it or not, he had to stay in Jenny’s class for the entire week.
After Jenny had left, he’d called his V.A. doctor, thinking the physician would tell Nate he had a good reason to go on staying at home and off his knee. But no, the doctor had disagreed, and when the story of Jenny’s visit had slipped out, he’d ordered Nate to a week in Jenny’s class as “therapy” for his knee. Whether this was going to be good for him or not remained to be seen.
Looking at the wide-eyed, eager faces around him, he realized Jenny had been right.
These kids were going to eat him alive.
3:04
