headed toward the kitchen. Once there he brought a fresh cup out of the cupboard and filled it for Cooper. Then he filled his own cup. Then, to Cooper’s surprise, he put cream and sugar on the table, along with a spoon. And he sat down.
Cooper didn’t really know where to begin. “Mac said you’ve been hanging around the bait shop for a few years now.”
Rawley nodded.
“Where did you work before that, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“Odd jobs. Here and there.”
“And lived here with your dad?”
He shook his head. “I just got reconnected with my dad four years ago. Ben forced that issue,” he said, naming their late friend.
“Where were you living before that?” Cooper asked.
“Here and there.” Cooper decided to wait him out. He sipped his coffee, excellent coffee, and just didn’t speak for a couple of the longest minutes of his life. “I didn’t get on with people so much after the war,” Rawley said. “It wasn’t like now—folks didn’t celebrate Vietnam soldiers too much. Made a person want to disappear. That, and bombs going off while you sleep—makes a man just want to be alone.”
PTSD issues, Mac had said. “Understandable,” Cooper said.
“I stopped by to see my dad sometimes. Just for a day or so, every few years or so, but not for long. I had burdens. You know.”
“I know,” Cooper said. And he thought, there are so many of us. Men without strong attachments who just wander. Cooper didn’t have PTSD issues that he was aware of, but he still felt like a loner often enough. And, like Rawley, after leaving the service he hadn’t gone home to his family. He’d kept moving.
“My dad used to fish off Ben’s dock,” Rawley said. “He’d have a shot of Wild Turkey sometimes before heading home. Ben found me. I hung out with a couple of vets around Eureka, not too far from the VA. Sometimes if we needed something, like food or money to eat, the VA was as good a place as any. Used clothes, too. Then Ben said my dad was doing poorly. He hadn’t been fishing in so long, Ben checked on him and my dad couldn’t get himself upstairs to go to bed most nights so he slept in the chair. Ben said my dad needed help. He said he’d give me a part-time job if it could be worked out.”
“So you came home to help your dad,” Cooper said.
“It’s different coming home because you’re needed than coming home because you’re needy,” Rawley said.
Cooper lifted his coffee cup to his lips. “Exactly right,” he agreed.
They drank their coffee in silence for a while.
“So, you have a house here,” Cooper said. “Place to live and a job. I guess that means you’ll be staying.”
“It’s almost habit now,” Rawley said.
“You keep this place real nice, Rawley,” Cooper said. “It must have made your dad real proud to leave it to you.”
“Like I said, it’s just us. Buried my mother some thirty-eight years ago. The Red Cross brought me home from Vietnam. Since I was an only son.”
“And then you went back?”
“Yeah. But that was okay at the time. I knew how to act over there. I wasn’t real sure over here. Times were different. Soldiers weren’t heroes back in those days. It was hard times here.”
“I’m glad you told me this, Rawley,” Cooper said.
“Why?”
“It’s not easy to work side by side with a man you don’t know anything about,” Cooper said. “I realize sometimes a man’s private.”
“I ain’t all that private,” he said. “Sometimes you get to know a person and you’re sorry.”
Cooper laughed. “I guess that’s true, too.” He drained his cup and stood up. “You order a box for your old man yet?”
“Yup,” Rawley said, standing.
“No funeral, huh?”
“A graveside prayer. A prayer for soldiers, that’s all he wanted. He was real specific. He was in the Army, too. But I think he ordered it up more for me. He was that kind of man.”
“Where is the service?” Cooper asked.
“Why?”
“I thought I’d come.”
“Why?”
“You’re my friend.” Cooper remembered the day Rawley handed him the envelope with Ben’s will and a key without a word and then just high-tailed it out of there. “In fact, one of my first friends since I’ve been here, even if you did leave me to deal with that shithole of a befouled bait shop alone.”
And at that, Rawley grinned. He had a good pair of dentures. “Stank up real bad, didn’t she?”
“Real bad,” Cooper agreed. “But that’s rotten septic over the dam. Now, I’d like to take care of that casket for you, Rawley. I think if Ben were alive, he’d want to do that.”
“Charity don’t sit well with me,” he said.
“Sure it does. You took all Ben’s old clothes and stuff to the VA. The washers and dryers, dishes, glassware and flatware went to some church group you knew about. You could’ve kept it and had a garage sale, but you didn’t. I have no doubt you’d give the shirt off your back if someone needed it. Now take the sign out of your truck, tell me what funeral parlor is taking care of the box, what time to be at the cemetery and where. Let’s not argue. I wouldn’t offer if I didn’t want to.”
So Rawley told him where to be at 10:00 a.m. on Thursday.
“You have a suit?” Cooper asked.
“I don’t need a suit. My dad might not even recognize me in a suit.”
Cooper laughed. “My brother-in-law is some big-shot executive, but he got fat. My sister sent me a few of his suits. I’ll be here at eight on Thursday morning with one of my hand-me-down suits that I never wear, anyway. If you don’t drown in it, it’s yours. With any luck, you’ll wear it exactly once. Unless you get married or something.”
“Coop,” he said, using a name on him for maybe the first time. “Ben was right about you. You’re a kick in the ass.”
“Yeah, that’s me. Flattery will get you nowhere.”
* * *
Rawley filled out the suit pretty well. There was more to him than met the eye. In his old worn-out jeans and shirts, with his thin hair and drawn face, he looked scrawny, like a skinny old guy, but in fact he was sixty-three, long-legged and had some strong arms on him. Cooper should’ve guessed; Rawley worked pretty hard at the bar, especially buying and delivering large boxes of supplies. And now that he thought about it, there had been no wheelchair lift in their
