The Bronze Star Clyde Gave Back

I put my forehead against his shoulder, and I let myself cry in front of two nurses and an aide, and Vernon’s good hand came up and rested on the back of my head, and he stayed that way, very still, saying nothing at all.

Kim came around the bed and laid a hand on my back. She said nothing either. One of the nurses was crying quietly into a tissue by the door.

After a while I sat up. “It was Jarrod,” I said. I said it plainly. “He sold it for three hundred dollars. I got it back. It’s here.”

Vernon closed his eyes. I saw a tear run down into the crease beside his nose and I did not wipe it away. I let it be. Some things a man is allowed to have.

I slept that night in the chair in his room. The nurses brought me a blanket, a pillow and a cup of decaf that tasted like the inside of a tin can.

Around ten, Kim stopped at the door and said, “You know, Mrs. Hensley, we are not supposed to let people sleep in here.”

“I know,” I said. “I’m going to be real busy at the other end of the hall.” “Thank you.” She went out. The light in the hall switched down.

Vernon slept with the medal pinned to the pillow beside his cheek and the dog tags wound around his fingers. I watched his chest rise and fall in the blue light from the monitor and I thought, over and over, about Jarrod.

I went home Thursday at noon to feed the cat and shower and get Vernon’s mail.

I was on the front porch with a handful of envelopes when I heard a car at the end of the drive. Not Jarrod’s. Jarrod’s truck had been repossessed in July.

It was a gray sedan I did not recognize, with a cracked taillight, and it pulled up slow, and stopped a good way back from the house.

The passenger door opened. Jarrod got out. He looked terrible. I will not say otherwise. His ball cap was pulled low and his face was gray under three days of beard.

His jacket hung off his shoulders. At thirty-one years old he moved like a man twice that, careful on the gravel, as if the ground might tilt.

He stopped at the bottom of the porch steps, the steps he had rebuilt himself two summers ago. For a long moment neither of us said a word.

“Where is it?” he said finally. His voice was hoarse. “Dad’s stuff. I went by that place. Clyde said you came.” “It’s with your father.”

“Is he okay?” “He’s in the hospital, Jarrod. He had a stroke.” “I know that. I know.” He swallowed. “I texted.” “You did.” I let that sit between us.

The wind moved the dry leaves across the porch. A truck went by on the county road, and the dog at the Hendersons’ barked twice.

Jarrod looked at his boots. “I was going to get it back,” he said. “I swear to God, Nora. I was going to have the money by Saturday.”