Chapter 7: Hold The Line

Saturday, October 20, 2018

There were a number of interesting results from the show. The Matucket County Council protested that nobody was forced out and then began threatening to sue anybody who said so. Nobody listened to them, and they didn’t sue anybody. The FBI issued another statement that Matucket had been an essential part of the elimination of the terrorist threat and that they had never really lost track of anybody. Bo got a couple of interviews where he pushed the law-and-order card hard, which played well in Georgia. Say what you want, but even liberals like law and order when the alternative is foreign terrorists running loose.

The biggest result was that money poured in! The announcement that my insurance company refused to pay for the damage to our house angered lots of people. Within days CBS contacted us because they were receiving thousands of dollars in donations to repair the house! Never mind that the house had already been rebuilt. A day later the MPD called as well. They were getting some bad publicity about firing Mike and me but wanted to know what to do with the money. I got the impression they wanted to keep it, since it was being sent to the station, but the county counsel said they couldn’t keep it. Jack had already told me not to even think about sending it to him to pay him back for his loan. I was to pay it forward somehow. I checked with our accountant, since with my luck the IRS would consider it income. We funneled it to the local branch of the IAVA, the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, for veteran homelessness and housing programs.

Regardless, that occurred in October, since the show aired the last day on September. By the time that happened Kelly and I were in the midst of Tolley Hunter’s book project. She was pushing to write a book calledHold The Line, with a subtitle of The True Story Of The Rescue Of USO Tour 2006-15 or something similar. Even though I knew nothing about writing a book, she found a ghost writer, otherwise known as a ‘ghost’, to ‘co-write’ the book with us. I just remembered a movie from a few years ago called The Ghost Writer where the writer’s name was never given, and he ended up dead. Not exactly a positive harbinger.

The ghost’s name was Christopher Balvin, and he had written books by several Hollywood and Washington celebrities. I questioned him how this all worked, and he told me that Tolley had sold one of the big publishing houses on the idea of a biographic story. They couldn’t give a rat’s ass about me, but anything with her name on it was a guaranteed winner. They were paying his fee, which consisted of a flat figure with a percentage kicker. There were several conference calls with the three of us, and he flew in towards the end of September. This was going to be a lengthy visit, at least a week, while he interviewed both me and Kelly, along with our parents. He also wanted to get pictures of us from when I was a child, right up through my time in the Army.

He arrived at the house on Saturday, October 20. The weather was hot, hazy, and humid. He showed up shortly after we fed the kids lunch and we let him in and served up some sweet tea. Then he sat down with Kelly and me in the living room and we got started. “So, how does this work?” I asked.

“Think of this as a really long interview process. I am going to ask you a lot of questions and I want you to give me your history in as much detail as possible. I have some questions already figured out, but a lot of them will depend on answers in earlier questions.”

“Are you going to take notes or something?” asked Kelly.

He smiled and pulled a tablet computer out of a computer case he had brought in. He set that on the coffee table and turned it on. “Yes, I’m going to take notes, but I am also going to record our conversations. You’ve already signed the release on this, just like I’ve signed the Non-Disclosure Agreement. Trust me, after a few minutes you won’t even notice it’s here. It will pick everything just up like your cell phone can pick things up.”

“Oh.” Kelly looked at me and shrugged. I shrugged back. I sort of felt the same way. I still wasn’t buying that anybody would want to read a story about something that happened twelve years ago.

“Now, just like we discussed in earlier talks, the plan that seems the best is to alternate chapters on you and Tolley. Tolley is three years older than you, but if we start with a chapter on her, the difference won’t be significant,” he said.

“I don’t follow you,” I admitted.

He smiled and nodded. “Yeah, I’m not explaining it well. Say I write a first chapter on Tolley that starts with her birth and ends with her at the age of three or four. Then, I write your first chapter, which basically starts from that date. Properly written, it reads contemporaneously. I’ve never written parallel biographies of two principals, but I think this technique would work a lot better, for instance, than writing two separate biographies and pasting them together.”

“Okay, I guess. What do I know, right? I can wait until it’s done to see how it works out. It just seems so long ago, you know? This happened in 2006. It’s 2018 now, and it won’t end up being published until next year, 2019. I’m not even sure anybody will even care!”

Balvin laughed. “Mister Reaper, don’t take this wrong, but if it was just you, you’re right. Nobody would care. Let’s all face it. The reason this will work, and sell big, is because Tolley Hunter’s name is on it. Nothing personal, but that’s the way it works.”

“God knows, that’s true enough. I mean, I love Tolley, and she really is a great person, but she lives in a whole ‘nother world. Anyway, call us Grim and Kelly,” I told him.

“What about the rest of Bravo Three?” asked Kelly. “It wasn’t just Grim who rescued her.”

I nodded. “That’s true. If it had been just me, my head would have been on a spike along with everyone else’s. Have you talked to any of them?” Back when this idea popped up, I gave Balvin the details I could on the rest of the team.

“I’ve started, but that’s about it. I’ve made a few phone calls but haven’t sat down for any interviews yet. I’m not sure how much I’m going to get from some of them.”