Memories Never Die Read online

  MEMORIES NEVER DIE

  C. Thomas Cox

  Copyright © C. Thomas Cox 2020

  All Rights Reserved

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Chapter Sixty

  Chapter Sixty-One

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  Chapter Sixty-Six

  Chapter Sixty-Seven

  Chapter Sixty-Eight

  Chapter Sixty-Nine

  Chapter Seventy

  Chapter Seventy-One

  Chapter Seventy-Two

  Chapter Seventy-Three

  Chapter Seventy-Four

  Chapter Seventy-Five

  Chapter Seventy-Six

  Chapter Seventy-Seven

  Chapter Seventy-Eight

  Chapter Seventy-Nine

  Chapter Eighty

  Chapter Eighty-One

  Chapter Eighty-Two

  Chapter Eighty-Three

  Chapter Eighty-Four

  Chapter Eighty-Five

  Chapter Eighty-Six

  Chapter One

  "Stee-rike three!" I bellowed with the enthusiasm of a professional umpire calling the last out of the World Series. Convincing my arthritic knees that they had an important mission to accomplish, I straightened my legs, coiled my six-foot-two torso, spun and released an emphatic fist pump to make my call clear. I then glared at the forty-something man, dressed in pressed khakis and a striped golf shirt, who had made my evening hell.

  Normally, officiating an under ten travel game doesn't blister my skin. Sure, there's the occasional coach who rolls his eyes at the size of my strike zone. The batter who argues he's safe even though the first baseman stepped on the base a full second earlier. Even the mom who believes my eyes are too old to follow the foul line into the outfield grass. Before that evening, however, I'd been able to shake off the criticism.

  Besides, sometimes folks do notice plays that I miss. After all, I'm just a retired Army officer trying to serve my community. The twenty bucks a game certainly isn't my motivation. But I'd never felt as degraded or demoralized as I did after dealing with that man's wrath. And, by the time I called his son out on the last pitch of the game, I was done with him.

  In response to my postgame glare, he hustled away from the diamond and jogged to his late model silver Honda Pilot, leaving his wife to retrieve his son. He knew I meant business, and he was not going to hang around to argue the call.

  Once he situated himself in the driver's seat, he glanced at me. He must've wanted to confirm I was no longer watching him. He was wrong. I did not avert my glare from his condescending face. His gel-hardened hair. His right ear that was strangely missing the bottom half -- I hoped he suffered when he lost that bit of flesh and cartilage. He needed to know he could never again treat me -- or any others in my profession -- with such cruelty. That, unless he altered his ways, he would no longer be welcome near any youth baseball field. It appeared to work. He looked away, threw his vehicle into drive, and zipped out of the parking lot.

  As I watched his tail lights vanish down the dirt road, his churning rear tires threw a cloud of dust between me and his license plate. I swore, though, that the numbers on the plate lacked the black color that should've distinguished them from the white background. Instead, it appeared as though someone painted the numbers white, which made discerning them nearly impossible. I'm not certain, though. My vision is not what it used to be.

  Regardless, I assumed that seeing him vanish in the dusky light brought about a peaceful conclusion to our one and only encounter...that I would never again feel the pain that his cruelty inspired. I soon learned, however, that our run-in on the ball field was just the beginning of my tumble into the dark abyss in which he dwelled.

  Chapter Two

  Claire backed out of the way after I shoved the front door open and stomped into the foyer like a petulant seven-year-old. "Seventy-years-old and still as feisty as the day we met!" she said as she shook her head. I couldn't blame her. It never took much to set me off, and my twilight years had yet to diminish my pride.

  "You should've seen him, darlin'. In all my years strapping on the umpire’s gear, I've never felt so scrutinized...so demeaned...so threatened. He even..."

  "Come on, Jimmy. I'm sure it couldn't have been that bad." She rubbed my back just the way I like. "Why don't you take off your cleats and join me in the kitchen? I just pulled chicken parm out of the oven."

  The aroma distracted me. Though her fabulous cooking wasn't what drew me to Claire fifty years earlier, it was an excellent but undeserved bonus. That she still called me "Jimmy" instead of "Jim," even after all these years, also helped soothe my frayed nerves.

  I started to shove forkfuls of breaded chicken into my mouth as soon as she finished grace, but I only had a chance to swallow once before she returned to what happened at the diamond. "Was it really that bad?" Though the same question could have been interpreted as sarcasm if it came from the lips of another woman, Claire's warm brown eyes and the way she touched my hand assured me otherwise.

  I wanted to tell her exactly what happened. The sideways glances. The threats. The weapon. But while she massaged my back, I decided that I couldn't. I couldn't let her worry anymore. Not after the long hospital stays during which she didn’t leave my side while I fought cigarette-inflicted lung cancer. Or the nights when she washed my vomit-covered clothes after I spent too much time and money attempting to drink away my memories. Even the first few weeks we spent together -- Claire in her just-tight-enough Red Cross gown nursing me back to health after a surgeon pulled Viet Cong shrapnel out of my chest.

  Claire taking care of Jim. That was the refrain that we had sung during long periods of the half century we spent together. But she'd endured enough. I was not going to
let her keep worrying about me -- especially for no good reason. "It's fine, Claire. I just let a father's criticism get the best of me. You know how I can be."

  She nodded. I was feisty the day we met, and that never changed -- even after gray patches started to replace what she termed my hot blonde locks. From my initial attempt to climb out of that hospital bed and into her arms -- shrapnel be damned -- she always had to shove me back into place. But I was older, and I had to demonstrate to her that I was finally wiser.

  Why, just the week before I apologized to a woman who bumped into me while I was carrying my bag of produce out of the supermarket. She was texting on her cell phone -- as most young people are nowadays -- and not looking. But, even though she caused me to drop a couple of ripe, juicy tomatoes, I was the bigger person. I apologized to her, picked up the smashed fruits, and headed toward my car. Sure, I shot her a sideways glance afterward, but who wouldn't? With the price of produce climbing every year, I hate seeing any go to waste.

  Claire, however, didn't acknowledge the personal growth I was trying to project. "Maybe it's about time you hang up your cleats. You've been working those fields for the past five years...you've certainly done your part."

  I cocked my head. "This from the woman who alternates volunteer days between the library, soup kitchen, and animal shelter -- and knits afghans for seniors during her downtime.”

  She shrugged. "Just doing my part."

  "As - am - I!" Though I could never give the way she did, I enjoyed helping kids. And calling balls and strikes was something I could do...and something that I was reasonably good at. I wasn't ready to let her take that away from me.

  She patted the back of my hand and stood up, clearing the dishes as she did so. "Just an idea."

  I shook my head. After all, I couldn’t stay angry. Not with Claire. Not after all she'd done for me, and who she'd been to me. Who she still was to me.

  I stood up, kissed the top of her head, and wandered out the back door and into the yard. The grass still maintained its spring green, and most of the leaves had matured from the buds that first appeared just a few weeks earlier.

  Without warning, I heard rustling deep in the woods that bordered the rear of our lawn. I jerked my head toward the source of the sound. The woods appeared to have transformed into something more closely resembling a jungle. To my amazement, low vines now hung from the branches and obscured my view of the sunset. A slow-crawling mist reduced visibility even further.

  Still, I crept toward the rustling, expecting to find a squirrel or deer disturbing the leaves that the previous autumn left behind. Instead, the arm of a man appeared from behind the trunk of an oak…an arm covered by the loose, forest green military uniform which he wore. His hand gripped a MAT-49 submachine gun. As I jolted backward, the man popped out from behind the tree, raised his arm, and aimed the weapon directly at my chest. Similarly dressed men, with identical weapons, appeared within seconds. I was back in Vietnam.

  I held up my own arms in the universal sign of surrender. I knew I had no choice. However, they did not want to feed another POW. They pulled their triggers simultaneously, the sound of the exploding rounds radiating through the woods and bouncing around inside my skull. I collapsed to the ground, clutching my chest even though I could not feel the bullets' impact. Lying on my back, the canopy formed by the treetops glowed with a green luminescence I had never before witnessed. A luminescence that faded to black as I fell out of consciousness.

  Chapter Three

  When I awoke, I found myself lying in my own bed, my loose-fitting polyester umpire pants and sweat-stained tee shirt replaced by my white terry cloth bathrobe. I forced myself to a sitting position, and propped a couple pillows behind my aching back. "Claire," I called. I received no response. "Claire!" I shouted. I wanted to understand how I had arrived in my room. And I prayed that the transformation of our woods was nothing more than a twisted dream.

  "Glad to see you up, dear," she said as she delivered a cup of New England clam chowder -- my favorite one of the eight soups in which she specializes -- on a small tray. "How do you feel?" She placed her palm against my forehead instinctively, knowing full well that a fever was no more the culprit behind my delusions than it is the cause a child's nightmares.

  "I'm fine, Claire," I stammered. Although I didn't intend to relay how much her nonchalance annoyed me, I could not hold it inside. "Just tell me how I arrived in bed."

  She shook her head and sat beside me. "I'm afraid it looks like you had one of your episodes." I wanted to deny it...to tell her I didn't believe her. To argue that my backyard delusion occurred after I'd tucked myself in. That there must be a more acceptable explanation as to why she waited on me -- a heart attack or stroke, perhaps. Unfortunately, I was certain she was right. The memory lapse, blackout, and residual anxiety were too familiar. Like a felonious and impoverished cousin whose underhanded attorney negotiated his parole, my once dormant episodes had returned.

  I bit down hard on my upper lip and relished the resultant physical pain. Pain I could control. Pain I was certain I could endure. Pain that did not threaten to once again drive me to drink. Pain that did not unleash hell into my life.

  I was, after all, an old man. A man who had endured the repercussions of his position on the front lines of a controversial war for decades. A man whose violent history caused his wife to accompany him to hundreds of psychotherapy sessions in a seemingly endless attempt to defeat the resultant post-traumatic stress. A man who did not want his equally aged wife to spend the remaining years of her life comforting him. I needed to defeat the demon inside me.

  While she stroked my thinning hair, I searched the recesses of my mind to determine why, after twenty-plus years of freedom from my episodes, they returned so suddenly...so dramatically. I needed to figure out their cause on my own, for I was not going to waste the rest of my life sitting through twice-weekly therapy sessions. Instead, I was going to -- on my own -- stamp out the kindling that fueled the flames that burned within my tortured mind.

  I recalled that Dr. Benjamin Higgins -- my last shrink -- said reminders of past traumatic events, particularly reminders that my brain could consciously or subconsciously relate to my experience in Vietnam, often served as triggers. Televised Vietnam documentaries, looking at pictures of my time overseas, and even the sound of gunfire had initiated my past episodes. But it had been years since I allowed any such triggers to intrude into my life.

  Claire turned her eyes to meet mine, and she rested her palm on the back of my hand. "You sure you're past whatever happened at the baseball game?"

  I nodded reflexively. But inside of my skull, her words -- and the face of the cruel father -- felt like a knife stabbing my brain. She was right! Unknowingly, she had uncovered the root of my most recent pain. I couldn't, however, admit that to her. She would think me crazy for thinking that a man on United States soil could possibly remind me of the monsters with whom I battled in the early 1970s. But she wasn't there. She wasn't on the front lines of the war, and she wasn't behind the plate during the ballgame. How could she possibly know, or be expected to believe, that the Vietnamese father of a ten-year-old ballplayer threatened to take my life?

  Chapter Four

  I sighed in relief when Claire stopped asking about the baseball debacle. I was surprised that she also stopped discussing my episode. I wasn't quite sure why she decided to give me space, but I appreciated the silence.

  I finished my soup, took a quick shower, and crawled into bed. I was relieved to find her already asleep, which allowed me time to develop a plan. I'd decided that I needed to confront the father from the baseball game.

  I was confident that, once the father and I spoke outside of the heated confines of the park, I would learn that he is a kind-hearted gentleman who cares deeply -- maybe a little too deeply -- about his son. He would realize that, although I try to make accurate calls, I'm only human. We would then shake hands, and I would no longer associate his Vietnamese heritage
with my wartime exploits. This, I hoped, would release me from the plague of future episodes I was certain I would otherwise have to endure.

  During my lengthy tenure as a Dairy Township umpire, I had formed an easy friendship with Gene Fischer, youth baseball commissioner. In addition to working side-by-side on rules changes and enforcement, we spent the occasional Saturday on his boat in an often unsuccessful attempt to lure Smallmouth Bass out of the Susquehanna River. I was certain that, if I asked, Gene would provide me a copy of the 10U Mud Hens' roster. He would also have access to the names and contact information of the players' parents.

  I hoped -- and assumed -- that, based on the surnames on the roster, I could pick out the Vietnamese boy with little difficulty. He was, after all, the only non-Caucasian on the team. Gene would then provide me the name and contact information of the boy's father, which I would use to reach out and set up a quick meeting on neutral grounds. After a brief chat, the father and I would go our separate ways, and I would forget about our confrontation. The conversation would set me free.

  Confident in my plan, I closed my eyes and drifted into a peaceful sleep.

  ***

  I awoke to the pleasant aroma of bacon and hot coffee wafting into the sunlit bedroom. And, although I could see the wooded backyard through the half-open slats of the window blinds, its trees no longer reminded me of the jungle in which I once operated. I grinned.

  After sliding my feet into slippers, I shuffled into the kitchen, where Claire greeted me with her warmest smile and an embrace. She did not ask me anything. Rather, she pointed to the steaming mug of black coffee and plate of crisp bacon, over-easy eggs, and buttered toast that sat on the table in front of my chair. "Go on," she said when I looked at her perplexedly. "Eat."

  Never before had Claire let one of my episodes go so easily. Although I wasn't shocked that she stopped pestering me the night before, I assumed she would return to her questioning in the morning. Her silence, I was afraid, was worse.