The Fourth Sunrise: A Love Story Read online

  “Which was what?”

  “Hold on, this is where the story gets really good.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  April 1971 – Hanoi, Vietnam - American Occupation Campsite, 10:30 p.m.

  “I couldn’t tell you how much I was against the war by the time I got drafted. But I did the right thing and went. It wasn’t easy and I had put baseball on hold for what I thought was a short time. Little did I know that I would never again step on a baseball diamond.

  “Some Army buddies of mine were playing cards with a couple of other guys in one of the barracks. Some guys in the room were of higher rank than others. The higher-ranked guys liked to have me around because I was a professional baseball player. By that point, I still felt I had a shot at the majors. I was still working hard in the minors before I was drafted. Most guys, that’s all they wanted to hear. They just wanted a guy around who reminded them of apple pie and baseball. I was like their mascot. And Captain Jack took a liking to me.

  “We often just talked about life. It was a different place then. Smoking grass and getting plastered on anything alcoholic was a daily occurrence. I liked Captain Jack. I could tell he was a really good guy.

  “When I first met him, I had no idea who he was. He was just like any other guy who would talk about his family. He really loved his family. He had a little boy and seemed to be all he could talk about was getting out of Hanoi alive so one day he could teach him to be as good as me in baseball. I gravitated toward Captain Jack because he was a simple guy like me. We liked fishing, playing cards, and just talking about anything that would keep us miles away from our actual day-to-day realities of bullets whizzing by our heads. Although he liked talking about his family, he only referred to them as his wife and son. It was obvious that he was holding back certain details about his life and I quite wasn’t sure why, but I respected his privacy.

  “On this particular night, there were six of us playing poker in Captain Jack’s barracks. Four captains and two privates. I was a private and so was this rich kid, Mike. We were playing a variety of poker games with lots of action. We were playing for money, hash, cigarettes, alcohol, or whatever someone had that another person wanted.

  “The other private was a rich kid whose dad sent us over a lot of extra supplies for everyone. So, he was more than welcome to any party the officers were throwing, especially a poker game where they could clean him out and make him write to daddy for more money.

  “I was playing on past winnings. I had cleaned up a couple of times in the past with some good poker nights.

  “‘Hey, do you think they are close?’ Captain Humphries said to Captain Jack. Captain Humphries was a tall, lanky white gentleman with blonde hair from Phoenix, Arizona. Captain Humphries and Captain Jack were the two big dogs in charge and if you wanted your stay to be as painless as a war could be, these were your two guys to know. We only fought if we had to.

  “‘They are always close,’ Captain Jack answered.

  “‘I think we should go out there tomorrow and just make sure those assholes aren’t getting closer to our camp.’

  “The other captains nodded their heads and this was talk I definitely didn’t engage in with an opinion. I knew my place. They might ask me what I thought from time to time, but it didn’t mean my opinion mattered to any of them. I knew nothing about war. I knew how to hit a 95-mile slider to right field.

  “Captain Jack looked at me and said, ‘What do you think, Murphy?’

  “‘You’re asking me?’ I asked. “I don’t think it’s my place to speak,’ I said. I never liked weighing in on war decisions. When it came to fighting this war, I was definitely a follower—a follower who wanted to stay alive.

  “‘You can speak when I tell you that you can speak, Murphy!” Captain Jack said to me. This is where Captain turned from the fun-loving Captain Jack persona into Captain Connelly, the bad-ass war hero. It usually took six beers or a bottle of whiskey, whichever beverage he chose for that kind of a night.

  “I knew he was being serious and sincerely wanted to know what I thought, so I tried to give him my best answer I could. ‘I think the safer we make camp, the better.’

  “‘Then it’s settled,’ Captain Connelly said, looking at his cards in his hand. ‘I’m raising you this joint and a pack of Marlboros.’

  “Then McCloud, the other captain at the table said, ‘I see your pack of cigarettes and a joint and I raise you a bottle of gin.’

  “‘Call,’ Captain Jack said. ‘I have a feeling you are going to be really sad, McCloud. I already have a made hand.’

  “‘Well, I’m glad we get to see a river card then.’ We were playing Texas Hold’em. The rest of us folded. They were betting all their top supplies. Both guys must have had monster hands.

  “Captain looked confident as the final river card fell on the table. He simply said, ‘I raise you a week’s salary.’

  “‘Are you kidding, Connelly,’ McCloud said, disgusted with the bet.

  “‘You know better than call me by my real name.’ Captain Jack was now all business. He must have had had a beast of a hand. Then he stated, ‘Next thing you know, this guy will call me Benji, and I’ll think I’m back at home in Delta, Colorado.”

  “‘What?’ I said, nearly spitting out my beer. ‘You said you’re from Delta, Colorado? You never said that before.’

  “‘You know I don’t like to mention details about my life,’ Captain Jack answered. ‘But I have just enough whiskey in me to not give a shit. I currently live in Virginia, where I lived for three years after my wedding. Before that, I lived in Colorado for my first eighteen years of my life.

  “‘You’re saying Delta, Colorado, and Virginia?’ I said very slowly, being sure to pronounce both places very clearly.

  “‘Yes, Joel, Delta, Colorado, and Virginia. I’m positive I told you that before.’

  “‘No, sir. You never have told me that. You never told me you were Benjamin Connelly from Delta, Colorado, who then lived in Virginia.’

  “‘Are you drunk, Private? Do you need to stop playing and get some sleep?’ Now he was really in ‘Captain Connelly’ mode.

  “I realized I was saying too much. The random chance that I would be in Vietnam, sitting at a poker table with the husband of the woman I had loved for years, was beyond my wildest imagination.

  “‘That wasn’t a request. You need to go back to your barracks, Private, and lie down.’ Captain Jack laughed to the other officers and said, ‘I never had someone get emotional about the facts about who I am and where I grew up.’

  “‘Maybe he likes you, Jackie-poo,’ the other shorter chubbier captain said, the one who looked like Mickey Rooney.

  “I stood up and I didn’t like what the others were insinuating. They had no idea how bizarre this situation was and I wasn’t about to tell them, but I was definitely going to let the little Mickey Rooney-looking guy get the best of me and call my manhood into question. He might be a captain, but I could still kick his ass.

  “I said, ‘With all due respect, Captain Half Pint. If you say something like that again. I will have to approach you as a man.’

  “Captain Connelly started laughing. ‘Did you hear that, Humphries? Private Murphy called Captain Mulligan a half pint.’

  “By this point, I was pretty sure that everyone was drunk. Captain Mulligan, the Mickey Rooney-looking captain, wasn’t about to let a private talk to him that way.

  “‘I bet you will approach me like a man,’ he laughed. ‘With your mouth wide open.’

  “And that did it. I wanted to hit someone and now I had an excuse. I lunged across the poker table and punched him directly in the nose and laid him out.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Present Day, Delta, Colorado – Coffee Shop, 1:20 a.m.

  “Luckily, everyone was too drunk to remember a thing from that night. I remembered every detail, however.” I looked across the table. Sharee’s face seemed stunned. I wasn’t exactly sure why. This was a side of
the story that needed to be told. I hoped I didn’t lose her.

  “Did you get in trouble for that punch?” she asked.

  “Captain Mulligan didn’t bring anything out in the open. I could probably thank Captain Jack for that. Captain Mulligan was a known drunk, and had enough problems of his own. But, needless to say, I wasn’t invited to any more poker games that the captains were putting on.”

  Sharee had a blank stare which surprised me with the bit of juicy information that I just gave her.

  “Are you still with me?” I joked, trying to get Sharee to show some life.

  “No, I definitely didn’t get lost. I’m just hanging onto every word.” Sharee then switched gears and asked, “So, it’s fair to say that you and Captain Jack were friends?”

  “Friends…” I laughed. “No. No one was Captain Jack’s friend. What you were was someone Captain Jack tolerated and he was somehow amused by your presence.”

  “So, you didn’t like Captain Jack?”

  “Are you kidding? I loved him! After the poker night, Captain Jack’s and my friendship was more one on one. He and I got close enough to where he began showing me pictures of his family. He was very private about showing me pictures of Christine. He said he didn’t want other men to have impure thoughts about his wife. He had nothing to worry about with me. I had nothing but respect for her and it showed.” Sharee smiled and again I was thrown off by her response. “Is everything okay?” I asked.

  “You’ve got to see it from my perspective. I’m a romance writer. The amazing detail and twist in this story is that her husband was your captain in Vietnam. It’s too unbelievable. A publisher would never buy it. It’s the meat and potatoes of the first act. So, what kind of relationship did you exactly have with her husband? Did you two become best friends?”

  “Well, I was there only for a couple more months, but Captain Jack and I were pretty inseparable. Frankly, as long as he was close, I felt close to Christine. It was weird. He was this odd window to her and I valued every story and every detail he ever gave me about Christine.”

  “And he never suspected anything?” Sharee asked

  “How could he? The way he saw it, him talking about his family only reminded me of home. He had no idea that I was eating it up every time he mentioned Christine’s name. Every once in a while, he’d tell me a wonderful story about Christine and I wanted to know more, so I had to be tricky on how I got him to give up that information. Captain Jack was a gentleman and wouldn’t dare talk about anything personal except in an offhand way. He told me random, funny stories about Christine trying to fix the sprinklers or how their son used to run her into the ground when he was a baby.”

  Sharee smiled.

  “Like I said, the best part of my friendship with Captain Jack was that he had at least ten pictures of Christine and I didn’t have a single photo. I hadn’t seen her for so long, at times, I wondered if I could even remember what she looked like. But Captain Jack had a great collection of photos ranging from silly to very professional. There was one that was my absolute favorite. It was photo where Christine is wearing a white dress. Not a wedding dress, but she looked beautiful nonetheless. She was just smiling and facing the camera. It was exactly how I remembered her.”

  Sharee smiled. She was a good listener.

  “When I got my freak injury playing volleyball, I made sure I snagged that picture before I left Hanoi. Hobbled over to it and all. Captain probably expected it was me who took it, but there was no way I was leaving without one.” I paused. “So, that’s the story of me and Captain Jack.”

  “Pretty remarkable. So that was it? You were able to get out of the war? Over a volleyball injury?” Sharee seemed a bit turned off that a volleyball injury ended my war career.

  “There’s not much you can do with a leg that was shattered in four places,” I protested.

  “But you were playing volleyball?”

  “It was in wartime in a war zone.”

  “But guys like Captain Jack were there to the end?”

  I paused and looked at Sharee. She must have had someone close die or get seriously hurt late in the war. I didn’t want to argue or assume, so I decided to back off and decided to say what we were both thinking. “I was lucky and unlucky. I got very lucky as it comes to war. As it came to my life, my leg getting shattered couldn’t have been worse. I was never able to play baseball again at a professional level. Not only was my baseball career shot, I couldn’t be a soldier anymore either, for better or for worse.”

  “War makes no sense to me.” Sharee was obviously disturbed by the concept of war in general. She decided to change the subject and I was happy to oblige. “Can I ask you a question?” Sharee asked.

  “Of course.”

  “Did you date other women before you were drafted?”

  “That all depends on what your definition of dating is. Did I remain celibate in the hope that someday the love of my life would come back to me?

  “I am curious if there were other women in your life?”

  “Well, I am a man, after all, who played a professional sport. We might not have had major league type groupies, but we had our fair share. I didn’t get close to another woman for ten years, and eventually I knew I had to get over her.”

  “Anyone serious?”

  “No one too serious. There was a Latina woman I met while I was in Albuquerque. We took a liking to one another. She was a little bit older than me and we seemed to be able to make each other laugh.”

  “Can I ask you a terribly personal question?” Sharee grinned.

  “Sure, go ahead.” I was nervous to see where this was going.

  “Were you a virgin the night you met Christine for the first time?”

  Then a split second after Sharee asked the question she said, “Oh my God, I can’t believe I asked that! You don’t have to answer that. I didn't realize how incredibly personal that sounded until it came out of my mouth.”

  I laughed. I looked at Sharee and gently smiled. “Yes, I was a virgin on that night.”

  “You were?” Sharee looked at me with loving eyes. “That is so sweet. You were this big sexy jock who hadn’t experienced a woman yet. Wow, what a detail. Let me ask you this, Joel? Do you think Christine was a virgin on that night?”

  “I doubt it. Especially, if she and her boyfriend, Captain Jack, were as close as they were. In my heart, I wanted to believe we were the same in that retrospect.”

  Sharee smiled. “I would like to think she was.”

  I smiled at Sharee’s youthful optimism. “Okay, romance writer. Hold onto that best-case scenario.”

  We were both quiet. I wasn’t uncomfortable talking about sex. The subject sometimes had the ability to shut things down in a conversation when it was mentioned under the wrong circumstances.

  I continued to drink my cold coffee and every now and then, I’d look at Sharee and smile, praying she would say something. I was running out of polite conversation. Thank God she did think of something. “Hey, you want to do something crazy?”

  “What?” I asked.

  “The fair is here tonight.”

  “I’m aware of that,” I said smiling. “I was hoping to take Christine there.”

  “I may not be Christine, but would you like to check it out? There is still a half-hour left. I know it’s not a long time, but it might be fun.”

  “Sharee seemed very eager and excited to go to the fair with me. She almost seemed flirtatious about it, which made me a tad uncomfortable, but even more excited that a young woman would like to spend time with me. This was definitely a first. “I would love to,” I said.

  We both got up and Sharee grabbed her briefcase. I didn't understand why a woman would go on a date with a leather briefcase. Maybe it was some kind of weird second bag.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Present Day – Delta, Colorado - Coffee Shop, 1:30 a.m.

  So, around 1:30 a.m. in the morning, Sharee and I got up from our cozy little table and went o
utside. I walked Sharee over to my truck.

  “Here I am. This beat-up wagon is mine.”

  “It’s charming.”

  “She’s been my baby for 40 years, so she is pretty damn charming all right. This truck is so full of charm, she should be in a museum.” I opened the door and let her in. She hopped in, briefcase and all. I wanted to ask her about the briefcase, but she wasn’t talking about it, so I just let it be.

  I started my engine. I glanced over at Sharee and smiled. She must have trusted me after all this sharing to get in a truck with me, after meeting me only hours earlier. I was harmless and she knew it. I drove Sharee in my truck over to Deltarado Days 2012. I parked my truck in the front parking lot, as I had done many times over the years.

  It was, once again, a beautiful summer Colorado night. The fair on this night truly didn’t look much different than it did any of the times I have gone to it. There was food, booths, game booths, but the thing that stood out the most that I had not seen before was a giant stage. Apparently, someone had performed earlier in the night. At 1:35 in the morning, it was empty. As far as I was concerned, it was the perfect spot for us to grab something to eat and sit on top of it.

  “Want to get a slice of pizza for old times’ sake?” Sharee asked.

  “I would like that,” I said. We walked over to the pizza stand and we ordered two pizza slices and two Cokes. It came to $8.00. I smiled and winked at Sharee and said, “Fifty years ago, this wasn’t even a buck.”

  “Times have changed, sir,” the young man said from behind the pizza stand. I laughed and told him, “Boy, do I know it.”

  We made our way to the stage with our slices of pepperoni pizza and soda pop and we sat and ate. Here I was once again, going late into the evening at Deltarado Days. But this time, it was with a completely different girl. Reliving this was turning out to be a little bit of fun. Sharee was sweet and I enjoyed her company.