I’ve been takin’ care o’ ye ever since; in your early years with the help o’ a housekeeper. Ye remember how Mrs. Tolliver took care o’ ye ‘til ye were fourteen years old.”
“Oh yes, Uncle, Mrs. Tolliver was very kind to me.” Thinking again about his lost siblings, Richard asked, “What were my brother and sister like?”
“Well,” answered Mac, your sister was a darlin’ lady with bright red hair. She was a gentle soul, like your mom. I remember she liked to tease a lot. Cathy was devout in her Christian beliefs. She taught Sunday School, and served as a volunteer, helpin’ disabled children. She was just startin’ her senior year o’ high school, and she was smart. She planned to go to college and major in English. As I recall, she had this dream o’ one day becomin’ a writer. Her favorite authors, she used to say, were Jane Austen and Madeleine L’Engle.” Mac’s voice dropped. Almost as if he were talking to himself, he said, “Sadly . . . she never got the chance to fulfill her dream.”
Richard interrupted the silence that followed his uncle’s words. “What about my brother?”
“Yes, your brother Roger,” replied Mac, nodding and smiling. “Even though he struggled a wee bit here and there, he was a gude lad. I can still hear your dad braggin’ aboot how well he played basketball. This was when he was in high school. He loved sports and was gude in all o’ them, as I recall.”
“Was Roger a good student in school?” Richard asked.
“Roger dinna take to studies very well,” Mac responded. “He had some trouble findin’ himself after he graduated. He would stay with a job a couple o’ months and, when he’d start to get somewhere, he’d up and quit. Your mom and dad worried aboot him.”
“I bet mom and dad worried a lot about him when the Vietnam War came along.”
“Yes. Roger was eighteen, the right age—or the wrong age, however ye want to look at it—to be drafted. He went into the Army and after his trainin’, was sent to Vietnam—into the thick o’ the fightin’.
“Did you notice if the war changed him very much?”
“I never really heard how the war affected his outlook on life. As ye know, Richard, he came back after aboot a year with one leg gone.”
Mac stood up from the table and pointed below the knee of his left leg. “He wore an artificial leg from here doon,” Mac said softly.
Richard looked down at his left leg and patted it. “I don’t know how I would have taken the loss of my leg. I hope I would have been as brave as Roger.”
“I never heard him complain or indulge in self-pity, even when he could only watch certain sports, instead o’ participatin’ in them as he once did. Your mom told me that he packed away all o’ his trophies in his room—I guess they were too much a reminder o’ earlier days when he excelled in basketball and track.”
“Did Roger feel bitter about the war, do you think?”
“I don’t think he felt bitter aboot the war. But he dinna understand why people looked doon on him for answerin’ the call to serve.”
“People weren’t rude to him, were they?”
“When Roger first came home he walked with a cane. On one occasion, he was walkin’ downtown with his cane and a young man came up to him and asked him if he’d lost his leg in the war. And when he replied he had, the man said, ‘Got what ye deserved.’”
“Poor Roger. That kind of treatment must have been hard to take.”
“The man who went to war liked to laugh. The man who returned rarely did. Your sister could get him to laugh a wee bit.”
“What did my brother look like? Do I look much like him?”
“Ye don’t favor your brother . . . very much.” Mac looked closely at Richard and then squinted into space, as if he were forming an image of Roger from memory. “While you’re tall and slender, Roger was stocky and muscular in build. His hair was dark broon like yours, and his eyes were blue like your father’s, while yours are hazel like my dear Kathleen’s and your mither Mary’s. His face was rounder than yours. Ye both were born with the Hawkins’ chin—square jaw with a cleft. He dinna have a mustache as ye do; he had a beard for a while after he returned from Vietnam. And one more thing, like ye, he had a slow smile; as if he had to think aboot it first.
At this point, Mac sat back in his chair, lethargically stirring the half-filled cup of tea in front of him. His mind was on the events that led up to the accident that had taken away some of the dearest people in his life.
“Well, I guess I might as well clear the table,” Richard said. He saw that his words interrupted his uncle’s thoughts about the past.
“What? Oh, the dishes. Aye. Ye don’t have to do that. I believe it’s my turn.”
Richard got up and picked up his plate. “You made dinner; why don’t you let me take care of the dishes tonight. Then you can watch one of your favorite TV shows—the Boston Pops is on.”
“Well, okay if ye’re sure.” Mac went into the living room, and settled himself before the TV.
3
A Pleasant Interruption
Rinsing dishes in time with a Viennese waltz, Richard was about finished when the phone rang.
“I’ll get it!” yelled Mac.
Richard heard his uncle say, “He canna come to the phone right now. Can I take a message?”
“Uncle Mac, I can take it!” Richard yelled.
“It’s a lassie on the line. A bonny lass I bet.”
“Hello. This is Richard Hawkins.”
“Richard, this is Melissa Ingram. You rescued me from those men in the van today. The policewoman gave me your name and phone number. I’m not calling at a bad time, am I?”
“No, not at all, Melissa. How are you? I hope you had no bad effects from your experience.”
“Yes, one bad effect.”
“Oh . . . may I ask what?”
“Embarrassment. I’m embarrassed, because I never thanked you for coming to my rescue. Those men . . . were . . . I don’t know who they were. But it’s clear they wanted to hurt me. Who knows what they would have done? But for you, they would . . .”
Richard could hear Melissa’s voice choke up. Soon he could hear her crying.
“I’m sorry, Richard . . . just . . . give me a minute. I’m sorry . . . to lose . . . control this way.”
“That’s okay, Melissa. Take your time. I can wait.”
Soon the sobbing at the other end of the line lessened. Richard heard Melissa ask someone for a handkerchief.
“I’m all right now. I told myself that I wouldn’t lose control. But, here I go, crying in your ear.”
“You
