Chapter 68: Hero

Back inside, I took another pill and drank about half a beer while getting undressed and climbing into bed. Marilyn had already fallen asleep by the time I got into the sheets. I tried to close the drapes and shut out the daylight, but the entire place had been designed to be light and airy. Even the curtains seemed bright. It didn’t matter. I was out like a light in about thirty seconds and didn’t wake until dinner time.

I woke to find myself alone in the bed, but I heard the shower running, so my wife couldn’t have been up much earlier than I was. I lazed there a few minutes, getting back into things, until I crawled out of bed stiff and sore. I picked up my beer to finish it, but it smelled flat and stale and made my stomach churn. I took it into the bathroom with me and poured it down the sink.

My wife stuck her head out of the shower and asked, “How are you feeling?”

I smiled at her. “I’m fine. You?”

“I’m not the one with the stitches.”

I waved it off. “I’ll be fine.” I took the empty beer bottle and padded out to the kitchen. In one of the drawers, I found a roll of duct tape, so I carried it into the bedroom, along with a plastic bag.

The shower was off, so as soon as Marilyn was finished drying her hair, I asked her to come out. “Here, let’s make a covering of some sort and duct tape it over the bandage.”

“Won’t that hurt when you take it off later?” she asked, tearing a length of tape off the roll.

“Honey, I need a shower!”

Marilyn shrugged and nodded, and between the two of us we taped the bag over the bandage so it would be watertight. So armed, I headed into the bathroom and took a long and hot shower. Afterwards I had her tear it off, which hurt worse than the stitches! “Yowza! Watch it!” I yelled.

“You should have shaved your arm before I did this,” Marilyn commented.

“I will never ask you to go get waxed,” I replied. If it was anything like this, it really had to suck!

“I don’t understand.”

Probably not, now that I thought about it. Marilyn shaved, and occasionally plucked an errant eyebrow. She wasn’t into waxing. I explained, which earned me a loud, “Forget it!” I just nodded in agreement.

“I guess we’re not going swimming anytime soon,” she said.

“Not me, anyway. You can, and I can watch. I’ll be happy to oil you up in between laps,” I offered.

Marilyn had a robe on. “What are we doing for dinner?”

“Go out, I suppose.”

“I don’t want to go out. I’ve had my fill of going out for the time being,” she replied.

I shrugged and held my hands up. “I don’t think we have much choice. There’s nothing in the fridge, or at least not enough to cook. We only got some snacks and stuff unless I do omelets the rest of our stay.”

“No,” she answered, grumbling slightly.

“Get dressed. We’ll go get a pizza, maybe bring it back.”

“Okay.”

We dressed quickly and sorted through some of the flyers that Finch had left for us, finding a nearby place that did pizzas. I grabbed the flyer and the car keys, and we went in search of dinner. It was Sunday night, and relatively quiet. We placed our order and then sat down at a table over in the corner.

Marilyn was looking around the room covertly, and I noticed. “What are you looking for?” I asked.

She leaned forward and lowered her voice. “I’m wondering if anybody has seen us in the paper yet.”

I thought about it for a second. “I doubt it. By the time those guys got through sending in their stories this morning, the morning edition was already out. That means it will be delayed until tomorrow, and maybe not even then. This has got to be a really small story. ‘ Tourists robbed.’ Like that’s never happened before! It will probably be in the middle of the back section, buried under an ad for wrinkle cream.”

Marilyn looked hopeful at that. I was certainly hoping it would be true. Maybe we could have a tornado or earthquake in the meantime. I didn’t remember anything happening in the spring of 1982, but maybe I had forgotten a disaster.

Marilyn got quiet while we were waiting for the pizza to come over. “What’s up, honey? Sorry we came?” I asked. She had a bit of a nervous look on her face.

“Oh, no, it’s not that. I mean, it’s been a lot of fun, at least until the other night, and like you said, that sort of thing can happen anywhere.”

“So, what is it?”

“Okay. Now, don’t get angry. Just let me speak.” I nodded and made a rolling ‘move it along’ motion with my fingers. “Last night, in the bar, when you were in that fight, you almost looked like you were going to kill them.”

I just smiled and waved it off. “Oh, you know me, take no prisoners and that sort of thing.”

My wife wasn’t smiling. “That’s what I mean. I mean ... Carl, don’t be angry with me ... before we left Fayetteville, I heard stories. I mean, just rumors, not even stories, whispers, even. I never believed them, but last night, watching you in that fight, I started believing them.”

Suddenly I started getting very nervous and still. I knew where this was going and didn’t want to go there. “What did you hear, honey?” I asked her quietly.

Marilyn lowered her voice to a whisper. “When you were in Honduras, and that last jump dropped you and your men in Nicaragua, and you captured those drug runners, I heard at least two wives saying that you killed those men rather than let them talk about what happened afterwards, and that you burned their bodies.” She looked very guilty as she said this, guilty and embarrassed to be bringing it up.

“Okay.”

“Well?”

“Well what? You haven’t asked me a question yet.”

My wife rolled her eyes. “Well, is it true or not?”

I sat back and looked out the window to the pizza parlor towards the beach. I turned back, just as our order was brought out, so I delayed my answer a minute longer. Finally, when we were alone again, I answered very carefully. “Well, I have heard that accusation made. From a legal standpoint, that would be impossibly hard to prove. As far as I know, there have been no charges from any Nicaraguan authority demanding my extradition for any charges related to that mission. Nobody seems to have reported our presence, so the Nicaraguans have not made any protests. Certainly, any talk like that could compromise security and cause an international incident, so it would be best to not even ask such questions.”

She gave me an angry look. “You haven’t answered my question. Saying you can’t be found guilty is not the same as saying you are innocent.”

“Does it matter whether I am innocent or guilty?”

‘Yes!” She looked around to see if we were being overheard, and then lowered her voice again. “Carl, before last night I could just ignore it and pretend I never heard those rumors, but last night, in the bar, you looked like you were going to kill those guys. I have to know what kind of man I married.”

“You picked a hell of a place and a time to ask me this!” I replied gesturing at our surroundings.

“Please, Carl, I need to know.”

“Well, let me ask you a question. What if we had been at war, in combat, and while being shot at, I had killed four men. Would I have been the man you thought I was then?”

Marilyn shook her head. “But you weren’t in combat.”

“Marilyn, that mission was as close as I ever want to come to combat. If I did what you are asking me I did, it was necessary to the completion of the mission, not because I am a bloodthirsty killer. I only had two things I had to absolutely accomplish - get my men home, every last one of them, dead or alive, and keep the United States out of a shooting war, which is what could have happened if those four men had talked. I accomplished my mission.”

“That’s about as much of an admission as I’m going to get, isn’t it?” she asked.

“If the question is, if I’m the kind of man who could kill another man, then the answer is yes, I could do that. If the question is, have I done that already, I am not going to answer. You already know the answer; you just don’t want to admit it to yourself.”

“And last night?”

I had to shrug at that. “I don’t fight for fun. For fun I’ll go to the gym or the dojo, and there are rules and referees. In a real fight, there are no rules, and no refs, and people get hurt. I’ve never lost that kind of fight and don’t plan to. The question for you is whether you can live with a man who will do whatever it takes - whatever it takes! - to keep you and your children safe.”

“I don’t know what to think,” she replied, quietly. Then she put down her pizza. “I don’t think I’m all that hungry anymore.”

I guess that wasn’t at all surprising. I sighed and stood up. Marilyn went outside to the car while I paid for our meal.

It was a silent ride home. Marilyn didn’t even look at me, and I could see tears forming in her eyes. Back at La Valencia she didn’t say anything, but simply went inside and went into the bedroom. I didn’t feel like drinking a lot, but I wasn’t really all that tired. I grabbed a beer from the fridge and went out onto the back veranda and watched as the night deepened and the stars began showing.

I wasn’t sure what the result of this was going to be. I wasn’t worried that Marilyn was going to divorce me and throw me out of the house, but she was sure thinking about me in a way she had never thought before. I suppose at some point, every wife asks herself, just what kind of man she married? There’s always something that they don’t know about us. We have a secret vice - we’re a secret drinker, a cockhound, a gambler, an addict. Or maybe we’re a criminal or mentally disturbed or abusive. Sometimes the secret is a good one; Marilyn couldn’t complain about not knowing I had more money than I let on. Sometimes it’s a harmless secret, like the fact that I am both a lousy handyman and lazy.

I finished my beer and went into the house. The bedroom door was closed, so I went into the kitchen and got a second beer. Tonight, I wasn’t going to get drunk, but another beer would be fine. Then I would curl up on the couch and get some sleep. It wasn’t the first time I had slept on a couch, and it probably wouldn’t be the last. It was the first time on this go-around.

In my first life, Alison had been very colicky, and a couple of times I had gone out to the car and slept in the car, just so I could get enough sleep to go to work in the morning. Another time, while Parker and I had been on a Boy Scout camping trip, using Marilyn’s car as a people transporter, we had been sideswiped by a car in an accident in Pennsylvania. Marilyn had been furious over that, and I ended up sleeping in the living room a couple of nights while she worked it out.

It was late when I heard the door from the bedroom open. I had been nursing that second beer for over an hour, and I set it aside when I noticed my wife coming over. She was wearing her satin robe and looked very sad. I was laying on a chaise lounge. “Want to talk?” I asked. I moved over and patted the edge of the chaise.

She sat down next to me. “I’m sorry about how I behaved earlier,” she told me quietly. “I wasn’t being fair to you.”

“It’s all right; don’t worry about it,” I told her.

“I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

I reached out and patted her hand. “You didn’t do anything. It’s all right. I simply surprised you. I’m sorry about that.”

“I guess I never thought about things before.”

I nodded. “I know. Marilyn, your problem is that you think I’m a better guy than I really am. I work hard at being the kind of man you think I am, but sometimes I slip up. All I could think about when I was in Honduras was how much I wanted to come back to you and see Charlie. I’m sorry when I don’t live up to your expectations.”

Marilyn started sobbing and lay down in my arms on the chaise lounge. I wrapped my hands around her back and held her. She just cried and repeated over and over, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry...” Eventually she stopped and pushed herself upright. “I think I understand better now. You really are better than you think you are, but you’re also a lot tougher and harder than I thought you were. You’re strong, but you’re ruthless. Does that make sense?”

I shrugged and made a half smile. “Yes.”

“How did that happen? What made you so strong but so hard?”

I sighed. “I don’t know, hun. Hell, look at my family. The only way I could get out of there with my sanity was by being strong and hard and tough, and yes, even a little ruthless. I’m sorry I’m not the guy you want me to be. What happens to us now?”

“What do you mean?”

I felt a chill as I said the next words. “Do you still want me? Is there still an us?”

Marilyn’s jaw dropped when she heard those words. “WHAT? Carling! No! It’s not like that at all! I think I love you more than ever now. I just never thought about it before, not like this.”

I sighed and smiled. “You had me worried there.”

“Sorry about that. No, you be tough and I’ll be soft, and somehow, we’ll meet in the middle. How about that?”

“That sounds fine by me,” I answered.

“Come to bed, Carl. You’re my hero, so let me give you a hero’s thanks.”

I smiled at that. “I think I like that idea. You know, as the rescued fair maiden, you are going to have to really, really work at thanking me. Us heroes kind of expect it!”

Marilyn stood up and I climbed to my feet after her. “Don’t push it. You weren’t that much of a hero!” she laughed.

“And you’re not a maiden, either.”

“And whose fault was that?” She took my hand and led me inside.

We were late getting up the next morning. In fact, I completely skipped out my morning exercise routine, sort of. I was getting a totally different sort of exercise and getting sweaty doing it. Marilyn was working out with me, and she got sweaty as well. It must have been very aerobic, too, since we both were panting at the end of the routine.

A clatter in the living room roused us. Marilyn swung her head around afterwards, from where she was laying on top of me, and said, “Mrs. Wilkes must be cleaning up from the weekend.”

“Yeah, you were pretty sloppy,” I replied with a straight face.

That earned me a shot to the ribs. “You can be eliminated!” She rolled off me and climbed to her feet. “Well, somebody needs to take a shower, and I think you are too lazy to move.”

I sniffed the air theatrically, and said, “You’re right somebody does need to take a shower. Off you go.”

“I was going to invite you to wash my back, but just for that, you can stay in bed!”

I looked down my torso and saw that Carl Junior needed the rest. “I’ll just take a nap. Somebody kept me up all night long.”

Marilyn gave me a harrumph and went off to the bathroom. I put my hands behind my head and smiled. I dozed off for a few minutes but woke up when my wife tossed a wet washcloth at me. I rolled out of bed and smacked her on the ass as we passed each other, her leaving the bathroom and me entering.

Fifteen minutes later, I was showered and shaved, and dressed in shorts and a polo shirt. I also had forgotten about my new stitches, and I ripped the wet bandage off and tossed it in the garbage. The line of stitches on my arm looked red and angry but was relatively pain free. Maybe Mrs. Wilkes could scrounge up a bandage for it. No swimming for me the rest of the trip, though.

I looked at myself in the mirror, studying my nose. Most people never noticed that it was broken all those years ago. Maybe they thought it was supposed to be kind of bent down and a little spread out. One thing I could certainly say, my body really showed the beatings I had taken over the years. I scarred easily. Now my arm was just one more addition to the zipper factory.

Another reminder was my right knee. It had improved enough so that while I walked with a slight limp, it wasn’t hard to push it too much, and then it hurt like the dickens, and I needed the cane. Since the fight the other night, it was hurting me. I had skipped on the cane when we went out for pizza the other night, but I needed it now. I grabbed it and went out to the living room.

I hobbled over to the dining room table, where Marilyn was sitting and drinking some coffee while reading the newspaper. That was unusual in itself; my wife rarely reads the newspaper. She looked up at me and grinned at me. “Morning!”

“You really don’t have to worry about me getting in fights, hun. The way I’m going, the next time I decide to get into a fight, you’re going to have to push me into it with a wheelchair.”