2 | The Soldier in the Photograph
The next morning I was back at the veterans' home before the sun had fully come up.
I told myself I was just curious.
But that was a lie.
I had spent the whole night staring at the ceiling, thinking about that photograph and the name Rex and the way the old man had looked at me like he was carrying something heavy.
His name was Harold.
One of the nurses told me that when I asked at the front desk.
Harold Meeks, room 114.
He had been there for three years, she said, and he didn't get many visitors.
I knocked on his door at seven o'clock, and he called out for me to come in.
He was sitting in his wheelchair by the window, still in his pajamas, with the folded flag on the table beside him.
"You came back," he said.
"I said I would, sir."
He smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes.
"Sit down," he said.
"This is going to take a while."
I sat in the vinyl chair across from him, and he picked up the photograph from the table.
He held it out to me, and I took it carefully.
The soldier in the picture was young and lean, with a jaw that hadn't yet been hardened by anything.
My father.
The dog beside him was a German Shepherd, sitting tall and proud, with a leash held loosely in the soldier's hand.
"That's Rex," Harold said.
"The first Rex.
Your father's first K-9."
I looked up at him.
"I didn't know he had a dog."
"He didn't talk about it," Harold said.
"Most of us didn't."
He paused and looked out the window.
"We were in the same unit, your father and me.
Vietnam, 1969.
He was the handler, and I was just a kid from Ohio who didn't know which end of a rifle to hold."
I turned the photograph over in my hands.
On the back, in faded ink, someone had written: Dregeany and Rex, Pleiku, 1969.
"He never mentioned you," I said.
It came out sounding like an accusation, and maybe it was.
Harold nodded slowly.
"I know," he said.
"That's because I'm not someone he would have wanted to remember."
I set the photograph down on the table between us.
"What does that mean?"
Harold didn't answer right away.
He reached for the folded flag and ran his fingers along the crease.
"Do you know what this is?" he asked.
"It's a flag," I said.
"Like the one I was carrying."
"No," he said.
"This is the flag they gave me when they thought I was going to die."
I didn't understand.
"They give those to veterans when they pass away," I said.
"Or to families."
"That's right," Harold said.
"But sometimes they give one to a man who's dying, just so he can hold it while he goes."
He looked at me, and his eyes were clear and steady.
"I held this flag in a hospital bed in Da Nang, and I told myself if I made it home, I would find your father and tell him the truth."
"What truth?"
He set the flag down and looked at me.
"Your father saved my life," he said.
"But not the way you think."
I waited.
The room was very quiet, and I could hear the clock on the wall ticking.
"There was an accident," Harold said.
"A training accident, a few months before we shipped out.
A dog died."
I felt a chill.
"What kind of accident?"
"The kind that gets a man court-martialed," Harold said.
"And your father took the blame for it."
I stared at him.
"Why?"
Harold looked down at his hands.
"Because I was the one who caused it," he said.
"And he knew I wouldn't survive a court-martial.
I was barely holding on as it was."
I didn't know what to say.
My father had never told me any of this.
"He took the blame for you," I said slowly.
"And you let him?"
Harold nodded, and his face crumpled.
"I was a coward," he said.
"I've been a coward for fifty years."
I stood up.
I didn't mean to, but I couldn't sit there anymore.
"Why are you telling me this now?"
Harold looked up at me.
"Because I don't have much time left," he said.
"And because I need you to know that your father was a better man than I ever was."
He picked up the photograph again and held it out to me.
"Take it," he said.
"I've been holding onto it for too long."
I took the photograph, and my hands were trembling.
"What about the flag?"
I asked.
Harold looked at the folded triangle on the table.
"That's a different story," he said.
"And if you come back tomorrow, I'll tell you the rest."
I walked out of that room with the photograph in my pocket and a hundred questions in my head.
My father had taken the blame for something he didn't do.
And the man who had let him do it was sitting in room 114, waiting to die.
I didn't know whether to feel sorry for him or hate him.
May you like
But I knew I would be back the next day.
Because I needed to know what else Harold was hiding.
