The young man on our porch stood very straight on two legs. One of them was made of carbon fiber and steel, visible below the cuff of his khakis, and he balanced on it with a wary, concentrated look, like a man walking on ice. He was about thirty, with short brown hair and the sharp jaw of Ken. He wore his Army dress uniform, the ribbons crooked on one side. His hands were shaking at his sides. “Mrs. Hendricks,” he said. “I am Travis Coleman. I am so sorry for the trouble. I promised my uncle I would walk to the door.” Brooke gasped. The hand of Ken dropped to his side. “Travis,” he whispered. “You did it.”
I stood in the doorway and understood nothing and everything at once. “Uncle?” I said. Ken nodded, with his eyes wet. “Gail, this is the son of my sister Marie. Marie is gone, you remember. She died of cancer eleven years ago. You and I were at the funeral. We were told Travis was in the service, and we lost track of him.” His voice cracked. “I found him last spring. He was in a VA hospital in Charleston, on the fourth floor, after an explosion in Kandahar. He lost his left leg below the knee. He had a head injury. He had no family. He was twenty nine years old, and nobody had visited him in five months.”
We brought him in and sat him in the good armchair. He settled carefully, and Brooke brought him a glass of water. Ken stood beside the window and talked with his arms folded across his chest. “I wanted to tell you right away,” he said. “But Travis asked me not to. He said he did not want anyone to see him like that. In the chair, in the pajamas. He was so ashamed. He made me swear I would say nothing to anyone until he could walk to a door on his own two feet.” He gave a broken laugh. “So I lied. I told you it was Charlotte, and the bank. I am sorry. I kept a promise to a boy. I broke one to my wife.”
A soldier in dress uniform walking on a steel and carbon leg made good on a promise kept for two years in secret.
I sat very still, trying to make sense of the moments I had imagined. The long drives. The hidden payments. The false name on the sign in sheet, which was simply the last name of Travis, Coleman, that his mother had given him. Seven hundred dollars a month, two years, for the rehabilitation facility that the VA did not cover. Every dollar of it was true. It was only the story that was wrong. “Ken,” I said slowly. “For two months, I thought my husband had another family.” “I know,” he said. “I am so sorry, Gail.” I turned to Travis. “And you thought you could not tell us because you were embarrassed?” His chin trembled. “Yes, Mrs. Hendricks. I thought you would pity me.”
I got up from the sofa and crossed the room, and I knelt in front of the chair, in my good dress, on the old carpet. I took his hands in mine. They were large and calloused, with a scar across the knuckle. “Travis,” I said, “I want you to listen. I have spent thirty years raising a daughter, and burying a mother, and loving a stubborn man. I am not impressed by legs. I am impressed by a boy who learned to walk again so he could knock on a door.” His face crumpled. He bent forward, and I held him while he cried, a grown soldier in a dress uniform, and I felt the shaking go through his whole body.
Brooke had her hand pressed against her mouth. She had the eyes of her father, I thought, big and brimming, and I loved her very much. “Cousin Travis,” she said, in a thick voice, “I work at the legal aid clinic at that VA hospital. I have been walking the fourth floor for six weeks. I have seen you in the hallway. You always had the hood of your sweatshirt up.” Travis laughed through his tears. “I thought you were a social worker. You kept staring.” “I kept thinking you looked familiar,” said Brooke. “I kept thinking you had the jaw of my dad.” They stared at each other, and then both started laughing, helplessly, so hard that Ken had to sit down.
Travis stayed for dinner, which became a feast, because I put everything I had on the table. He ate three helpings of pot roast and two slices of pie, and told us, in bits and pieces, about the long months of rehab. The first day he stood without a rail, and the way he sat on the floor afterward, crying, while an orderly pretended to tie his shoe. “I swore I would walk to a door for you,” he said to Ken. “That was my only goal. I counted the days.”
Ken had put his napkin over his face. I reached over and took it away and held his hand on the tablecloth. “You kept a promise,” I said. “To a boy who needed it kept. I would not have married you if you were any other kind of man.” He looked at me, and the old, boyish, bewildered look came over his face, the one I fell in love with on a church step in 1993. “You are not angry?” he asked. “I am furious,” I said cheerfully. “I will be furious for about a week. And then I will forgive you. Pass the green beans.” Travis laughed so hard he spilled his water.
He moved into our guest room in December, with a duffel bag and a framed photograph of his mother. He is enrolled at the University of South Carolina now, studying social work, and he intends to counsel other veterans. Ken is paying his tuition, and Travis is paying it back, one tiny check at a time, which Ken keeps in a shoebox and refuses to cash.
At the graduation of Brooke from law school, in May, he stood in the second row in his uniform, with Ken on one side and me on the other. When her name was called, he stood up first and applauded, and the whole row stood up with him. Afterward, on the lawn, under the oak trees, he pulled me into a hug. “Aunt Gail,” he said into my hair. “Thank you for knowing how to be angry and kind at the same time.” I told him that I had practice, with his uncle.
