A smile leaked out from beneath her stone-hard face.
MINUTES LATER, Hatfield waited outside the makeshift hospital room, peeking through the door’s crack to get a glimpse of what was happening. His hand continued to throb, but as he’d said himself, this wasn’t the time for crying. He stared at the wound, noticed the blood was hard and dark. Jess had told him to wash it out as thoroughly as he could, but it wasn’t easy. It would only start to bleed seconds after any kind of contact.
Clamping his fingers together was also a problem. He could curl each finger to within about a half-inch before the pain was too much. And pressing anything against his palm was agony.
From inside, Jess called, “Come on in, honey!”
Stepping in, he chuckled, “I assume I’m the honey you had in mind.”
“The one and only,” she said, her voice muffled by a scrap of cloth covering her face. “Make yourself comfy right here,” she said, patting the mattress to her right as she tended to Cecil.
Before getting onto the bed, Hatfield took a look around and saw bandaged and sleeping bodies. The damage they’d sustained was huge, and it wasn’t clear if they could realistically survive.
He took a seat on the mattress, watching Jess smooth out a bandage on the captain’s torso. His face remained rock-solid throughout, but Hatfield knew it had to hurt.
“Trevor,” Cecil slurred, his eyes growing bleary. “I want to talk to you about your father.”
Jess said, “You’re going to have to make it a brief talk, Captain. Once that Vicodin kicks in, you’ll be eight miles high—at least.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She gave her husband a playful shove to get him on the mattress, face-up, then started patting his palm with something that stung as Cecil went on.
“Your father, Trevor, was a man of great integrity. Courageous, wise, selfless.” His voice began to fade in volume and intensity. “And from what I’ve heard about your conduct when the compound was under siege earlier today, he would have looked up to you. You were exactly the man he wanted to be.”
“He wanted to be?” Hatfield asked. “What do you mean?”
“Well… “ Cecil whimpered, his voice growing dim, indistinct. “As you know, he was, by all means, prepared for battle but never actually had to fight. So he was never really tested. But I’m sure if he had been…”
“If he had been what?” he turned, waiting for a reply. But the captain was out.
Jess nodded to him as if she knew the end of the sentence. She bandaged his hand in silence. Afterward, she pressed a thumb against his palm, then stopped when she noticed the hard clench of his teeth.
“You think my hand will be okay?” her husband asked.
“Should be. But to be honest, I can’t make any promises. These aren’t exactly the best conditions to perform medical procedures.”
“Is it the medicine? What else do you need?”
“Well, we could always use more of everything just in case. But the main issue is germs. In a place like this, we can’t prevent cuts from getting infected.”
He stared at his hand, tried to clamp his fingers once again. More pain.
“Now we’re going to need you to find another room to recover. We really could use this bed.”
“Okay.” He dragged his exhausted body off the mattress, then kissed her on the forehead before moving away.
“Watch those germs, honey,” she said. “And thank you. I needed that.”
HATFIELD OPENED the door to the den and saw his son and daughter engaged in a heated ping-pong match. No arguments yet, but he figured it was only a matter of time. The competitiveness was live in their scowls.
He took a seat on the couch, watching them, happy to see some aspect of his family drifting back to normality. “You guys did a great job in the room, keeping everything clean and whatnot.”
When a ball slipped past his daughter, she sighed. “Thanks a lot for the distraction, Dad.”
Meanwhile, Justin celebrated his win with a series of fist pumps. “Yes, yes, yes! Victorious again!”
“Sorry, Tami,” her father said.
His kids took a seat next to him on the couch. Justin said, “That dude really seemed like he knew what he was talking about.”
“What dude?”
He pointed to the stack of articles. “Your dad.”
Hatfield couldn’t contain a laugh at the idea of someone referring to his father as a “dude.” That had to be a first. He picked up the stack and started reading in a random place. The first article he landed on was leadership, mostly a condensed speech he’d heard before. The kind he’d simply ignore. But somehow, the words resonated and mattered more than before.
The best way for a leader to lead, the sergeant had written, is by example. A leader doesn’t demand those under him do anything he won’t do—or can’t—do.
He looked at his hand, trying again to ball up his fingers. He failed once again. The words felt like an indictment. Am I a leader? he asked himself.
HOURS LATER, Hatfield walked into the living room. The homesteaders gathered there, taking the idle moment for chit-chat. Figuring this was as good a time as any to get to know the guys, Hatfield shook some hands and introduced himself.
It was nice to see how much he had in common with them—even the ones whose path he’d never crossed. The very fact that they were familiar with his father’s tactics and teachings meant they could relate like long-lost half-brothers who shared a father from their past.
After a while, the guys started a round of poker, with Hatfield learning to his surprise that the beloved sergeant was a fan of the game. He scooped up his first hand and took a look as a grin slipped onto his face. “Hard to imagine my dad doing anything for fun, especially gambling.”
From behind, an unfamiliar voice sounded off. “Oh, you’d be surprised, Trevor. That fellow was capable of all kinds of fun.”
He turned and saw a heavy-set, bearded homesteader, his face warmed by a smile as he walked to the poker table with a large rectangular box in his hand. “Of course, he always made sure the work got done before the fun began. And speaking of the old man, I came across this a few hours ago.”
“What is it?”
“Letters. To you. I expect he intended to mail them at some point but probably didn’t know where to send them.”
“Thank you.” He took the box, then gave the man’s face a closer look, noticing traces of gray in his beard, wrinkles in his face. He was slightly younger than Cecil. “You knew my dad?”
“Sure did. As a matter of fact, I served with him. He was a good man. A man of honor.”
The two men shook hands. “Trevor Hatfield, nice to meet you.”
“I’m First Lieutenant Stallworth. Call me Vinnie. You may want to finish playing before you check those letters out. Looks like a lot of reading.”
“Sure does.” Hatfield nodded and placed the box under the table, then tried to get his head back into the game. But he only lasted another five minutes before he had to scoop up the box and dash out of the room. “I’ll be right back, guys.”
In the den, which was doubling as the Hatfields’ bedroom, he saw his wife teaching his daughter how to knit while Justin read a magazine.
“What ya got there, honey?” Jess asked him.
“Letters. From my dad.”
Every head looked up as he opened the first letter.
Dear Son,
I hope you somehow get this letter. It’s taken a long time to write it. Your mother urged me to do so for several years, but if you know anything, you know how bullheaded and stubborn your father is.
I’m not sure how to begin this. There’s a lot to say, and I may not have the right words to say everything. You may have noticed I wasn’t great when it came to having the right words. And sometimes, when the situation demanded an emotional reaction, I didn’t have any words at all.