He’d left his Jeep just before Needle Tunnel where the dirt road that followed the old railroad bed was blocked by large boulders. From there he had hiked upward. The divide was his favorite place, and the green valley below had been Marie’s favorite. They’d found it shortly after the 10th Special Forces Group-and Dalton with it-was moved from Fort Devens, Massachusetts, to Fort Carson, Colorado, during a round of base closings.
They’d driven up into the mountains on a fall weekend. Dalton had noticed the small sign indicating Rollins Pass on the side of the Peak to Peak Highway and turned onto the dirt road. It was something they often did, taking new roads to see where they might lead.
Marie had fallen in love with the valley, the hills on either side sprinkled with aspens just turning. Dalton had been fascinated with the rail line, which ended at Moffat Tunnel, the highest railroad tunnel in the world. Even more intriguing to him was the old railroad bed that wound its way two thousand feet higher, over the Continental Divide, where the original rail line from Denver to Salt Lake had gone before the Moffat Tunnel was built. Nearby were piles of weathered timber, the remains of a three-mile-long shed that had been built over the rail line over a hundred years ago to protect it from the snow that covered the ground here three quarters of the year.
The wind was out of the west, piercing his Gore-Tex jacket with icy needles of cold. The leathery skin on his face felt the bite of the late fall air, but he had been in such extremes of weather throughout his military career-from the brutal heat of the Lebanese summer to the freezing of a Finnish winter-that he took little notice. He’d driven above the tree line two thousand feet below. The terrain at this altitude was rock strewn with patches of snow even at the height of summer. A few stunted bushes struggled to grow among the stone and snow.
Marie had always laughed at his wonder that at this exact location two drops of rain or two flakes of snow less than a foot apart on either side of the Divide would end up in oceans three thousand miles apart. Her laughter had been one of the many things he had loved about her. The last time they had come here together, as the amyotrophic lateral sclerosis was just beginning its deterioration of her body, they had both known she would never be able to make the climb. They’d simply sat in the Jeep and looked out over the countryside, a thousand feet short of the Divide. It was a bittersweet memory, the beginning of the end.
He grimaced as he took the small backpack off his right shoulder, the pain from the bandaged wound in his left shoulder a sharp reminder of recent events. He set the pack down and unzipped it. The only thing inside was a small teakwood box. Carefully he took the box out. Protecting it from the wind with his body, he carefully opened the lid and removed a faded letter from an insert on the top. The paper was thin and worn, the creases sharp from years of being carried.
Washington , D.C.
July 14, 1861
Dear Sarah,
The indications are very strong that we shall move in a few days, perhaps tomorrow, and lest I should not be able to write you again I feel impelled to write a few lines that may fall under your eye when I am no more.
I have no misgivings about, or lack of confidence in, the cause in which I am engaged, and my courage does not halt or falter. I know how American civilization now leans upon the triumph of the government and how great a debt we owe to those who went before us through the blood and suffering of the Revolution.
And I am willing perfectly willing, to lay down all my joys in this life to help maintain this government and to pay that debt.
Sarah, my love for you is deathless. It seems to bind me with mighty cables that nothing but omnipotence can break. And yet my love of country comes over me like a strong wind and bears me irresistibly with all those chains to the battlefield.
The memory of all the blissful moments I have enjoyed with you come crowding over me. And I feel most deeply grateful to
God, and you, that I’ve enjoyed them for so long. And how hard it is for me to give them up and burn to ashes the hopes and future years when, God willing, we might still have lived and loved together and see our boys grown up to honorable manhood.
If I do not return, my dear Sarah, never forget how much I loved you nor that when my last breath escapes me on the battlefield it will whisper your name. Forgive my many faults and the many pains I have caused you. How thoughtless, how foolish, I have sometimes been. But oh Sarah, if the dead can come back to this earth and flit unseen around those they love, I shall always be with you in the brightest day and the darkest night. Always. Always.
And when the soft breeze fans your cheek it shall be my breath. And the cool air at your throbbing temple, it shall be my spirit passing by.
Sarah, do not mourn me dead; think I am gone and wait for me. For we shall meet again.
Sullivan Balue
Tears rolled down Dalton ’s face, as they did every time he read the copy of the letter. Even though he knew the words by heart, he read them again, just to see the handwriting, to bring back the memories. Marie had sent him a copy of the letter when he was a prisoner of war in Vietnam. She’d sent it with every letter she wrote, hoping one of them would get through, knowing that it would touch his soul. It was written by a Union officer from Rhode Island to his young wife a week before the Battle of the First Bull Run. He was an officer who was killed in that first major battle of the Civil War.
Marie knew Dalton had always had a fascination with the War Between the States, brother against brother in savage fighting. A war with many causes, some noble, some not so noble, but still in Dalton ’s opinion a good war-as good as any war could be-given the root issue of slavery. A good war-Dalton shook his head. He wished he had served in a good war, but he doubted he had. Even in the Civil War the soldiers had been the ones to pay the price of the folly of those who led them. The vast majority of Southern soldiers were poor farmers who didn’t own slaves; in the Northern army, the rich bought their way out of service, hiring the poor to replace them in the ranks. The cause may have been noble, but the methods weren’t, and it was the foot soldier who paid the price.
Decades earlier, Dalton had been held prisoner of war for five years in the Hanoi Hilton, and Marie had waited for him then, as she had during all the subsequent deployments. He’d fought in El Salvador, Grenada, Lebanon, Somalia, and Iraq. And now, most recently, the strangest battle of all, as a Psychic Warrior assigned to the highly classified Bright Gate project. He had helped destroy a rogue Russian Psychic Warrior who had threatened the world with nuclear destruction. In the end, it had turned out as all previous battles had, with man against man, face to face.
Even this last fight, though, had been bittersweet. He had lost most of the team he had led, and the opponent, a Russian named Feteror, had turned on his own country due to the barbaric treatment he had endured, being enslaved to a computer, his body surgically whittled down to the mind and little more. When Dalton had learned the true nature of Feteror’s condition, he’d had a greater understanding of the Russian’s actions.
There was another aspect to the letter, though, that had been an integral part of their marriage-their inability to have children. They’d been tested many times over the years, and it always came down to the fact that injuries Dalton had received during torture while being held prisoner had removed his ability to father a child. They had discussed adoption, but with all his deployments it had never seemed like quite the right time and the years had gone by. He felt as if he had taken everything from Marie and given her little in return.