Chapter 3: Keeping the Promise

Sue

I gave him Bev’s address with some lame excuse that we could not get mail at school. He gave me his and walked me to the door. We must have kissed for 15 minutes before he finally left. I ran inside and up to my bedroom. I hated to wash my face because I was about to turn back into a pumpkin.

The next morning Bev and I talked. She thought it best what he had decided to do. I started writing him that night.

I wrote almost every night. I started getting letters back from him at Bev’s. He was in Viet Nam but he never wrote about what he was doing. He always told me how much he missed me and how he loved me. Love? Yes he said he loved me! I told him I loved him also.

The holidays came and he sent me a gift. A silver neckless with a small diamond studded cross. It is beautiful! I cherish it to this day.

April finally arrived and I was asked to the prom! The problem was the tobacco chewing redneck that asked me had no idea how much I loved John. I tried not to laugh in his face when I declined his invite. I never regretted missing my senior prom. But around the first of May his letters stopped. At first I played it off that he was in the field and could not write. But they just stopped. One day I was talking to Bev and she said he might have been killed!

Oh God no!

I cried for two days.

Graduation came and Mom and Dad had this great idea. Dad’s parents were dead and had left him a small farm. His brothers and all of mom’s family lived up there so we moved. Now I am working at a restaurant in town. I have not been on a date since John and I went to the Ball. My life is depressing.

Captain John Wade---I am not dead. We were moving to an LZ when we came under a mortar attack. I was hit in the head and along my right side. I was sent to a field hospital then to a ship then air lifted to Okinawa then on to Hawaii. I was in a coma all this time. I found out where I had been by reading my medical records.

Now five months later I am in Bethesda waiting to be discharged from the Marine Corps. Seems they have no further use for an officer with a plate in his head and only one eye. After I woke up I had a hard time remembering what happened but now I am finally back to normal. The problem I have is all my personal gear has not caught up with me. I can’t remember Sue’s sister address or a phone number. And what was her sister’s last name? I remember Sue’s name but her sister was married to a guy named Jim, I think, but what was their last name?

The Marine Corps had continued to pay me so I had an account with a ton of money the day I was discharged. The bureaucrats were still arguing about how much disability I was going to receive but I wanted to find Sue and tell her I was alright. I know she must be worried. I bought a new truck and drove to Memphis.

I walked into the Baptist School of Nursing almost a year after I had posted my request for a date. In the lobby I was directed to admissions. After explaining my plight to a very nice lady she told me there was no Sue Donaldson registered. After checking I found out that she was never a student at the school. Okay, this is going to be a quest. “Where’s Sue?” or better yet “Who is Sue?”

I remember her telling me that she graduated from high school in Helena Arkansas where her father worked at a fertilizer plant on the river. Next stop on this quest, Helena!