Dog and I watched her twirl the black greatcoat, fling the tinsel-threaded cha-cha fun fur scarf over her shoulder, and march between the parked cars of the Best Buy parking lot as if it were the steppes of Russia.
I looked down at Dog. “Show off.”
Smiling and wagging, he looked up at me.
“Yep. Laugh now. PetSmart is right next door, and I bet she’ll want to get you a pair of those reindeer antlers with the jingle bells.”
After loading the beast back into the truck, I stood there for a minute, thinking that I really didn’t want to get in yet. The air was bracing, and maybe that’s what I needed, a little slap in the face. I stood there for a while watching the cars wheel in and out of the parking lot and hoping my mood would shift like the traffic.
I remembered the first Christmas with Cady and how she’d refused to go to bed—the life of the party at eight months. My wife and I had had a Christmas picnic by candlelight on a Hudson’s Bay blanket we had thrown on the floor beside the crib. It was the best Christmas dinner I ever remember having.
Glancing at my profile in the side window of my truck, the clinging flakes blocking my inspection just enough so that I could stand the view, I gave the hard eye to the left tackle of the almost-national-champion University of Southern California Trojans, to the First Division Marine investigator, and to the high sheriff of Absaroka County—informing him, in no uncertain terms, that it was time he straighten up and fly right.
He didn’t seem overly impressed, so I took him for a walk.
* * *
It was crowded at the entrance of the electronics store, with the lights spilling from the whooshing pneumatic doors and the trumpeting of classical Christmas thundering against the heavy glass where stickers held a large red and white December calendar informing the world that only three days of shopping remained.
I ambled through the empty handicapped spots around a green Wrangler toward the concrete pillars that kept the populace from parking inside the store. My eyes shifted past the calendar to a lean young man in a Navy dress uniform and an arm sling. He stood by a large cardboard box that had been covered with gold- and silver-foil wrapping paper, on top of which was pasted a red toy train logo carrying the words TOYS FOR TOTS.
As an inactive Marine—because there is no such thing as an ex-Marine—I was intimate with the program that had been started back in ’47 and had manned the bin in front of Buel’s hardware store numerous Christmases back home in Durant.
The charity had been started by Marine reservist Major Will Hendricks when his wife, who had made a doll to donate to a needy child, couldn’t find an organization to which she could give it. Along with being a Marine reservist, Hendricks had also been a director of public relations for Warner Brothers and used his considerable influence to place bins to collect used toys outside movie theaters. Decades later, collections had been switched to include only new toys when the mixed message of giving out hand-me-downs as a point of hope had become controversial. In the nineties, the secretary of Defense had approved Toys for Tots as an official mission of the Marine Corps Reserve.
I made eye contact with the young Navy chaplain. “You get drafted?”
He grinned. “We minister to the Marines, and since I’m on medical leave I’m considered an unofficial reservist.” I looked down at his right sleeve and could now see the small cross above the arm bands. He dipped his head a little, going so far as to loosen the arm sling at his chest to reveal the collar underneath his uniform jacket. He looked up at me under the patent leather of his dress lid. “Semper Fi?”
I spread my gloved hands. “Ours is not to question why.”
He stuck out his own hand. “Corporal Gene Burch.”
We shook. “Lieutenant Walt Longmire.”
“Whoa.” He saluted and studied me closer. “Vietnam, Lieutenant?”
“’67–’68. You?”
“Afghanistan.”
I glanced at the front of the store as the door swept open and a young couple exited with numerous bags; I stepped to the right and positioned myself out of the way. The chaplain gave the pair a smile, but they ducked away quickly, embarrassed at their lack of largess.
I shuffled my boots in the snow. “That must’ve been fun.”
He nodded. “Until I dislocated my shoulder and they sent me back home on medical leave.”
I studied him a little closer and pegged his age to be mid twenties. “How’d it happen?”
His turn to look embarrassed. “I got backed over by a Humvee.”
I wasn’t quite sure what to say to that and fell back on an old holiday favorite. “Well, at least you get to spend Christmas with your family.”
He nodded again and looked at the riptide effect of the snow on the sidewalk as the doors continued to open and slide shut. “My father, he’s the only one left—no brothers and sisters. I’m it.” He glanced back up at me. “He was a jarhead, third division—Vietnam like you, Con Thien in ’67.”
I leafed through my military history and came up with the combat base and site of numerous battles only three kilometers from North Vietnam that most Marines had referred to as the Meat Grinder. “Gung ho.”
“Yeah, he’s pretty proud of that.”
“Well, he must be glad to have you home.”
His response held little enthusiasm. “Yeah.” Another couple emerged, this time pausing to place a box with an electronic robot in the chaplain’s hand. “Thank you both and have a Merry Christmas.” He watched them half walk, half slip to their vehicle and then placed the toy in the half-full bin. “You have family in the store?”
“My daughter.”
He looked beyond the large maroon metal-framed doors. “The redhead?”
“Yep.”
“She waved and knew my rank.”
“She would.”
He glanced at me again, just to make sure I knew that there was no disrespect intended. “If you don’t mind me saying so, sir—she’s hot.” I raised an eyebrow, and he shrugged a response. “Hey, I said I was a chaplain, not a eunuch.”
I laughed. “She’s in the process of trying to cajole me out of my bad holiday mood.”
“Hey, it could be worse; you could be like my father and be in a bad mood year-round. I think it’s hard for him; I mean, all he does is sit around the house and read the newspaper.”
I wasn’t quite sure what to say to that either, so I just stood there.
After a few swishes of the door, which produced one Barbie princess, he spoke again. “He’s not a bad guy, my old man, but I don’t think he understood me joining the Navy and certainly not joining the clergy.” He paused again. “He was a career Marine and he keeps asking me about medals. You know, why it is that I don’t have any.”
I glanced down at the service bars and the Purple Heart on his chest, visible just under the sling.
“He says those don’t count.” He rearranged the injured arm and placed the other hand in his pants pocket. “I get the feeling that he thinks I’m some kind of . . . I don’t know.”
I thought about how the Army and Marines had lost a hundred chaplains during WWII—the third highest mortality rate behind the infantry and Army Air Corps—and how, on the USAT Dorchester in 1943, four chaplains had given their life jackets and lives for others.
“I’m sure he’s very proud of you.” I paused a moment and then went ahead. “When I was in Vietnam, I remember thinking how I was glad that I wasn’t the guy without a weapon.”
He smiled at me, and, as he accepted a Spirit DVD for the cause, I could hear that there seemed to be some sort of hubbub going on at the center of the store—probably a fight over the latest computer game cartridge.
“It takes a lot of guts to be in the thick of it on the front lines with nothing to take cover behind other than your convictions.”