Troy’s Dad invited Pat and me down for a surprise cookout for Troy’s birthday. On the drive down Pat told me about how Troy’s time in the service and how he came to work for Capitol Ambulance. “Troy was a natural soldier,” Pat said. “He loved everything about it – the challenge to be the best. He went to Ranger School and broke training records that had stood for years. He was training for Desert Storm when they found him unconscious. He’d been lying in a field for two days. He’d camouflaged himself so well, no one could find him. His blood sugar was over 1000. He almost died. Instead of parachuting into the desert, he’s getting off a greyhound bus in small-town USA dressed in civvies, a medical discharge in his pocket.
“He came home, did nothing but hang around the house. I was worried about him. Here the two things he’d loved – competitive sports and the military -- were gone from his life. I’d try to get him down to the Y for pick-up games. He could still shoot the lights out, but here he’s playing against middle-aged men with beer bellies and braces on their knees and hot shot kids who like to gun. It seemed meaningless. There were no crowds. Nothing was at stake. He was morose all the time.
“One day I say come with me to work. I’d just started working for Capitol. When I got out of college, I was a salesman for a book publisher. So much for an English degree. I wasn’t bad at it, but it did nothing for me. I thought I’d try the EMT stuff to see if I had the stomach for medicine. Maybe go back to school. Maybe even try for medical school. I loved the job. It seemed a natural for Troy.
“First night he comes out we do a shooting to the head, a double fatal on the highway, and a major MI. Troy signed up for EMT class the next day. He doesn’t always get the applauding crowds here, but when he walks in the house they look up at him like he is a god. You’ve seen that. This is his battleground. This is where he is who he is. They’ve taken that away from him now, and he has nothing left. I don’t know what to do. He’s keeping a good face, but obviously he’s hurting.”
Troy and his Dad lived in an old farmhouse on ten acres of pine forest. In the backyard was a three-quarter basketball court his father had built for Troy when he was a kid. There was a pitching mound, sixty feet from a home plate. His Dad grilled us New York steaks and split lobsters rubbed with mesquite seasoning. He roasted quail on a spit, and shucked fresh oysters and clams. He had a giant ice chest filled with bottles of a local pale ale. Six months before I wouldn’t have touched a beer, but I had had a few now and then with Kim, and I had managed to keep it in control. I didn’t say no when Troy handed me one. We ate, drank, played cards and told stories.
Listening to Troy and Pat tell their tales reminded me of my best friend from childhood, Billy White, and our times together and the cookout our families had for us before we left. We drank all day and into the night where after everyone else had gone to bed, and the fire had dimmed to embers, just Billy and me remained out in the yard. We sat in the rocking chairs we’d taken off the porch, the keg of beer between us that we were determined to finish off. We had a bucket of oysters and clams that we shucked and ate raw, tasting the sea in their salty juices. Overhead shined the Milky Way, which Billy said his grandfather called “The Road of the Gods.”
If there was a time I would want it to be, it would be then. We raised our beers to the heavens, praised nature for making us young and strong, believing our fates were our own to create.
“You want another beer or are you drifting off?” Troy asked, holding a cold bottle up for me.
“No, no, I’m fine,” I said. “Yeah, I’ll take it. Thanks”
We clinked our beers all around.
I’ll admit there were times in the past when it hurt just to be alive, but I was glad for that night, for the energy of Pat and Troy’s friendship, for being able to remember the good times.
