The Bronze Star Clyde Gave Back

Then he reached under the counter and set a gray cardboard ticket box on the glass, and began to flip through it with one thick finger, slowly, the way a man reads a hymn he has known since childhood.

“Tuesday,” he said. “Young fellow. Ball cap. His hands shook so bad he could hardly sign.” My throat closed. “Three hundred dollars,” the old man said.

“I told him it wasn’t worth that. He said it was the only thing he had left worth three hundred.”

I did not say anything. I could not. I had my purse open before I knew I was reaching for it.

“Sir, I will pay the three hundred. I will pay whatever interest you need to charge. I have cash. I have the checkbook. Please.”

He looked at the purse. Then at me. He did not smile, exactly, but the lines around his eyes softened. “Put that away, ma’am.”

“I am not asking for a favor. I just want to pay what he owes.” “I know what you want.” He opened a drawer under the counter, and I heard the soft rattle of something metal. “Put it away anyway.”

He lifted out a small velvet box and set it on the glass between us.

I knew that box. I had polished its lid with my sleeve a hundred times, standing by Vernon’s chair on a Sunday afternoon while he read the paper.

I knew its dent in the corner, where Jarrod dropped it when he was nine. I knew it the way you know your own front door.

The old man opened the lid. The medal lay on its ribbon, bronze with a star, a little worn at the points. Beside it, he laid the dog tags, one on top of the other, and the chain curled between them.

“My name is Clyde Dillard,” he said. “Army. Vietnam. Nineteen sixty-eight and sixty-nine.” I nodded. It was all I could do.

“I run a pawn shop,” Clyde said. “It’s a decent business, most of the time.

I have a good many people come in with a wedding ring, or a television, or a chainsaw, and I give them what I can, and most of them get their things back. That is the job.”

He tapped the box with a finger. “But every so often a boy comes in with something he has no business selling. I didn’t put this one in the case.

I read the name on the back of the tags before I wrote the ticket.” He looked at me. “Your husband’s name is Hensley.”

“Yes.” “The boy’s name is Hensley too.” I could only nod.

“I should have called someone,” Clyde said. “I thought about it. I had the phone in my hand.

But he looked like a young man who had been sick a long while and was trying not to fall down in front of me. I told myself I would hold it. Give him time to come back.”

He closed the box. “He didn’t. You did. That’s the right person.” “Please,” I said again. “Let me pay you.” “No, ma’am.”

He closed my fingers over the box himself, with both his hands wrapped around mine. His palms were dry and warm and hard as a boot sole.