The Bronze Star Clyde Gave Back

That was what Jarrod took. Not just a medal. A thing his father had hung beside his chair for thirty-five years and had never once said was worth any money at all.

The third shop was in Radcliff, a tan building between a vape store and a tire place, a few miles up Dixie Highway from Fort Knox. It had a lighted sign shaped like a diamond.

The man behind the counter was heavy and tired and had a tattoo of an eagle on his forearm. He looked at the photo, then at me, then back at the photo.

“Nope,” he said. “Sorry. I get a lot of soldiers’ stuff out here, rings and things. Never had one of those.” “Are you sure?”

“Ma’am.” He said it gently. “Sure as I’m standing here.” I thanked him and walked out. I sat in the truck, and the cold finally broke over me.

Three shops. It was a quarter to two. Vernon’s speech therapist came at four, and I had promised him I would be there, and I had no medal.

I put my forehead against the steering wheel and cried for about a minute, the ugly kind, with sounds.

Then I sat up, wiped my face on my coat sleeve, looked at my red eyes in the mirror and said, “Nora. One more.”

The fourth shop was farther out, at the south end of Dixie Highway, past the last stoplight. It had no diamond sign.

It had a hand-lettered card in the corner of the front window that said Buy Sell Loan.

Bells hung on the door. They sounded like a church.

The room inside was not big. There were guitars on the wall, and the glass cases had watches, and tools, and boxed-up rings, and a long shelf of old military belt buckles that someone had arranged by year.

A space heater clicked in the corner. It smelled like pipe tobacco and oil soap.

An old man sat on a stool behind the counter with a ledger open in front of him. Crew cut, gray as a nail.

A flannel shirt buttoned all the way to the neck. He did not look up when the bells rang. He finished the line he was reading and then set his pen down.

“Help you?” “I hope so,” I said. My voice shook, and I did not try to hide it. “I am looking for my husband’s Bronze Star and his dog tags. They would have been brought in Tuesday.”

I held out my phone. He took it in both hands, the way you take something that might break.

He looked at that picture of Vernon, thirty-one years old and thin as a rail, for a long time. I watched his eyes go to the ribbon. I watched them go to the cap under the arm.

“This your husband?” “Yes.” “Where is he now?” “The veterans hospital in Louisville,” I said. “He had a stroke on Sunday. He can’t talk.” Something moved in the man’s face, and it was not pity. It was more like recognition.

He handed me back the phone.