The Truck Driver at the VFW Breakfast
I want to say here, so it is fair: Todd did not know. Mark had never told him a single thing. I do not think Todd knew there was anything to know.
But he knew a man had walked into a VFW hall on Veterans Day and my husband had knocked his own chair over getting to him. Anybody with eyes knew that meant something.
And he said it anyway. Maybe because of it.
He started in on the sausage, and then the sausage was on his fork, and the fork was pointing.
“Tell them, Mark. Go on. Tell everybody what you did over there.”
And then, “He drove a truck. That’s it. That’s the war story. My little brother just drove a truck.”
And then, while some people laughed, he leaned toward Ray, friendly, like they were in on it together. “Right, Ray? Nobody’s shooting at the truck drivers.”
I saw Ray’s jaw set.
I saw Mark’s hand go flat on the white paper tablecloth, next to his plate. His knuckles went white. That was the only thing about him that moved.
Emma put her fork down. Across the table, Ray’s boy had stopped chewing.
I could have said it then. I had the whole thing in my mouth. I had twenty years of it. But I looked at Mark’s hand on that paper, and I knew I would never forgive myself if I took it from him.
So I smiled at Todd, and I thanked him, and I passed the syrup.
I did not say anything to Ray when I did it. I did not wink or nod or anything like in a movie. I just held the pitcher out across my husband, and Ray reached for it, and our eyes met over it for about one second.
He took it. He did not pour any.
He sat there holding that heavy glass pitcher in his burned right hand and looked at Mark for a long moment. Mark did not look back. Mark closed his eyes.
Ray said, very quietly, just to him, “I’m sorry, Krueger. I can’t let that one go.”
Then Ray pushed his chair back and stood up at the table, still holding the syrup.
The griddle hissed behind the counter. A little boy two tables over dropped his fork on the floor. Somebody’s hearing aid whistled.
“Before anybody eats,” Ray said, loud enough for the whole hall, “I need to tell you what that truck driver did.”
The room went quiet the way a church goes quiet. Even the Auxiliary ladies stopped. One of them stood with her spatula in the air and a pancake on it.
Ray did not make a speech. I want you to know that. He talked like a man from Green Bay telling you how to get to the bridge. Plain and slow.
“My name’s Ray Kowalski,” he said. “I was in the same transportation company as Mark Krueger. Iraq, 2004. We drove convoys. Fuel, water, food, ammunition. Whatever they needed up the road, we hauled it.”
“That spring the roads got bad. They’d bury bombs in the road, in a dead dog, in a pile of trash. Then they’d wait for the convoy and set it off and open up on you from the side of the road.”
He shifted the syrup to his other hand.
“April of ’04, we were running north of Baghdad on the main supply route. I was driving. Mark was in the truck right behind me. About a quarter mile out of a little town, the road blew up under my cab.”