Chapter 11

Sunday, April 1, 1990

“Where is everyone?” Sam asked walking out to join Al where he sat on the deck with a cup of coffee.  He’d woken up early feeling much better than he had in several days.  He’d been surprised when he made it to the bathroom to shower and back to the bedroom to finish getting dressed without anyone attempting to send him back to bed.  It was only when he’d arrived in the kitchen that he realized that the reason he’d been successful was that no one was around.  No one except for Al who he spied out on the deck.  Grabbing a cup of coffee from the coffee maker, he went out to see what Al was up to.

Al put down his cup of coffee and folded the newspaper he’d been reading before turning to face Sam.  “They went off to church a little while ago.  You’re looking a lot better today than you have been,” Al said getting a good look at Sam.

“I’m feeling better,” Sam agreed sitting on the deck chair near Al.  He ran his finger along the edge of the coffee mug and looked out at the ocean.  “Were you and Mom in my room last night?” he asked shooting a sideways look over to Al.

Al picked up his cup again and took a sip from it before he answered.  “What makes you ask that?” he questioned guardedly.

Sam continued to stare out at the ocean hiding what he was thinking.  “I thought I woke up for just a little while and saw the two of you.  I wasn’t sure if I really was awake or if I was dreaming.”  He took a quick drink from his own mug of coffee before looking over to Al.  “So, were you there or not?”

Al debated for just a minute lying to Sam and telling him that he had been dreaming, that no one was in his room last night.  Just as quickly, he dismissed the idea seeing no real point to it.  He looked straight ahead to the ocean as Sam had been doing.  “Yeah, we were in there last night.”  It was a straightforward answer to a straightforward question.  Sam hadn’t asked for a reason why and Al saw no need to volunteer the information.

Sam leaned over in the chair so that his elbows rested on his knees and rolled the mug back and forth between his hands.  “So…uh…was I having another dream or something?”  Although he asked the question of Al, he directed it to the decking under his feet.

So much for not volunteering information Al thought.  He should have known ‘why’ would be Sam’s next question.  He put the mug he was holding back down on the small table that separated the chairs and leaned forward mimicking Sam’s posture.  He let his loosely clasped hands fall between his knees as he kept looking out at the horizon’s edge while he mulled over just how to answer Sam’s question.

Taking Al’s silence as an affirmative answer, Sam sighed and sat back in the chair slouching down.  “I was, wasn’t I?”

The temptation to let Sam think that Al’s and Thelma’s presence in his room last night had been brought on by his own nocturnal demons was very attractive to Al and he had to fight not to give in to it.  He heaved a deep breath deciding that it was time to take Thelma’s advice and confide in Sam about the dreams he’d been having.  “You weren’t dreaming last night, Sam.”  He didn’t take his gaze off the distant horizon, squinting into the brightness of the day.  “I was,” he finished quietly.

“You?” Sam asked turning in Al’s direction and sitting up a little straighter in the chair.  “What do you mean you were dreaming?”  The last thing Sam had expected was for Al to confess that it was his own dreams that had brought him to Sam’s room in the dead of night.

“Yeah.  I’ve been having a dream almost every night now since you got out of the hospital.”  Al didn’t alter his posture.  Somehow, it was easy to tell Sam what he’d been dreaming if he didn’t have to look at him.  He decided to just stick with the facts.  They could figure out the why of it all later.  “You die in it.  That car hits you and you die but you come back to life and you blame me.  I had to make sure you were ok last night, that you were alive.”  Al gave Sam a quick glance as he made the admission of his fears.

“You were making sure I was alive?”  Al’s remarks were obviously confusing to Sam and he was reaching out trying to make sense of whatever he could.  “I just have a really bad cold and an ear infection.  It’s not going to kill me.”

“I know it’s not going to kill you,” Al replied in irritation.  “It’s just that I keep dreaming about you lying dead in that street and bleeding and then blaming me – telling me that I killed you.  When that happens, I need to see for myself that you’re still breathing – to feel that you’re still warm and living.”

Sam’s eyes narrowed as he added Al’s explanation to seeing him sleeping in his room the other night.  “That’s why you were in my room the other night.  You were making sure I was…alive?”  He half stated it, half-questioned it.

Al nodded his agreement.  “In here I knew it,” he said pointing at his head before moving his hand down to cover his heart.  “In here, I had to see it and it’s been like that since you were released from the hospital.  Almost every night I either have the dream and then check on you or I just stay awake as long as I can watching you sleep…watching you breathe.”

“No wonder you’ve been looking so tired lately.  You haven’t been sleeping in the last two weeks.”  Sam’s face suddenly looked thoughtful.  As Al had thought he would, Sam was trying to figure out what the root cause of Al’s dream and sleepless nights were.  “You feel responsible for me.  That’s what’s causing it.  You feel like it’s your fault that I got hit.  Al, I thought we cleared the air on that.  There’s nothing you could have done.  It was no one’s fault but the driver of the car.”

Al quickly got to his feet pacing the area of the deck in front of Sam  “Hell yeah, I feel responsible for that car hitting you.  More than that I feel responsible that I won’t be able to stop something like that from happening again and next time you will be dead.”

Sam also got up and stepped into Al’s path stopping his pacing.  “What makes you think this is going to happen again?  It was a fluke, that’s all.  Just because I got hit by a car crossing the street doesn’t mean it’s going to happen next time I cross the street.  It was an accident, Al.  Just a stupid, dumb accident.  Maybe I could have prevented if I’d been looking when I crossed.  I don’t remember much of what happened but I do know I had my head down.  Maybe if I’d looked it wouldn’t have happened.”

“You don’t understand, Sam.  Maybe it wasn’t an accident this time just like it wasn’t the last time.”  Al realized too late what he’d said and turned from Sam to lean on the railing around the deck looking back out at the ocean.

Sam joined Al in leaning against the rail.  “What do mean the last time?  Nothing like this has ever happened before?” he asked perplexed by the Al’s odd statement.

Al pinched the bridge of his nose regretting having said anything at all.  He wished he could go back and change what he’d said.  “In for a penny, in for a pound,” he murmured almost too softly to hear.  “Sit down, Sam.”  When Sam didn’t immediately comply with his request, Al repeated it gesturing to the chairs they’d been sitting in earlier.  When the younger man finally complied, although he sat tensely at the edge, Al followed suit.

“You remember that plane crash a few years ago?”

Sam snorted softly.  “How could I not remember it?”

“Yeah, well, I don’t think it was an accident.  I think…I think someone may have been trying to kill you.”

Sam blinked rapidly at Al’s words trying to process what he’d heard and come up with something that made some kind of sense.  It didn’t work.  “You think someone was trying to kill me?  Why would you say something like that?”

“Because when I checked the engine it had been tampered with, that’s why.  Someone wanted us to go down and I think they were after you.”

Sam jumped back to his feet when he heard Al’s news and this time it was his turn to pace awkwardly in front of Al.  “Wait a minute, you think the engine was tampered with and you’re just now telling me this 2 ½ years later.  What!?  You didn’t think someone trying to kill us…kill me… might be something I needed to know back then?”

Sam’s frantic and awkward pacing worried Al, especially when he started to stumble and he got up and grabbed Sam by the elbow with the intention of leading him back to his chair.  “Sam, calm down and sit down before you fall.”

Sam pulled himself from Al’s grasp stepping back from him until he bumped into the railing.  He reached back to grasp it in both hands, his knuckles turning white with the strain.  “Answer me.  Why are you just telling me this now?”

Seeing that he wasn’t going to get Sam to sit back down but relieved that he’d stop the pacing, Al sank back to his chair.  “I didn’t want to tell you when we were on the mountain because I saw no reason to give you one more thing to worry about.  You were hurt – hurt bad and you didn’t need that stress.”

“So why didn’t you tell me afterwards?”

Now was where Sam either trusted him enough to believe him or he’d think he was completely nuts.  “Because the evidence that the plane had been tampered with disappeared.”

“Disappeared?  How does something like that disappear?”

Al sighed.  He knew what he was saying sounded bizarre and unbelievable even if he did know he was telling the truth.  “When they were investigating the accident the engine was fine.  It was in perfect condition.  I saw it myself, Sam.  All the damage I’d seen before, the tampering, it was all gone.”

“How, Al?  How could that engine be in perfect condition?  I might not have seen it but I heard that noise, whatever it was, before we went down.”

“I wish to God I knew.  That’s why I never told you about it, Sam.  Hell, the investigator thought I’d imagined it all.  For a while, I started to think maybe I had.  Anyway, without any evidence there to back me up I didn’t think there was any need to tell you about it and just get you worried.  Then this happened.”

Sam sat back down next to Al.  He was honestly perplexed.  “Why would anyone want to kill me?  I haven’t done anything worth killing for and why wait 2 ½ years?

Al raised his hands helplessly.  “I don’t know, Sam.  I just don’t know.  I can’t shake the feeling that someone’s out for you, though.”

Sam leaned forward, his elbows braced on his knees.  He leaned his forehead against his interlocked hands and thought.  “Ok,” he said straightening up.  “Let’s say someone is trying to kill me for reasons none of us can figure out.  That doesn’t mean you’re solely responsible for me.  Now that I know, maybe I can be a little more careful.  Al, you can’t do this anymore.  You need to…you need to,” he threw his hands in the air in a helpless gesture.  “I don’t know, forgive yourself for not being able to control something that’s outside of your control.”

“You’re right and I know that here,” Al said pointing to his head before laying his hand over his heart.  “Now I need to convince myself here.”

“You need to, Al,” Sam fiercely said.  “If you don’t you’re going to worry yourself sick or dead and I won’t let you do that.  I won’t”

Al reached over to lay his hand on Sam’s forearm and felt the tenseness of the muscles beneath the skin.  “I’ll try, Kid.  Who knows.  Maybe talking to you about it will help.”

Sam looked searchingly at Al until he was sure the older man wasn’t just trying to reassure him with empty words.  “Maybe.  Talking about your dreams is supposed to help – or at least that’s what they say.”

Al sat back in his chair and looked out to the horizon again before looking back over to Sam.  It was the opening he’d been hoping for.  “They do say that.  Maybe you want to give it a try.”

Sam snapped his head around to stare at Al.  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said quickly before getting up and leaning against the railing again.  He kept his back to Al.

“Don’t kid a kidder, Sam,” Al told him as he got up to stand beside him.  “Something’s going on with you.  It’s been going on since you saw Jamie Walters.  I’ve got a feeling it’s been going on even longer than that.”

Sam shrugged off the hand that Al had rested on his shoulder.  “There’s nothing going on.  I don’t know what you’re talking about.”  He wouldn’t meet Al’s gaze.

“Sa-am,” Al said warningly.  “Don’t give me that line of crap.  I saw you the other night after you had that nightmare.  If that’s nothing….”

“The blood,” Sam whispered.

“Yeah, the blood.  What was that all about?”

Sam looked down and pounded his fist gently against the railing.  “I want to go for a walk on the beach,” he said unexpectedly.

“Nuh uh, you’re not going to change the subject.”

“I won’t, Al.”  He sat down heavily in his chair and pulled off his shoes and socks.  “I’ll tell you.  Let’s just walk, ok?”

Reluctantly, Al agreed.  “It’s not going to be easy walking through the loose sand,” Al pointed out as they stepped off the deck.

Sam shrugged at Al’s warning but started across the sand anyway.  The two walked in silence until they reached the sand along the water’s edge that was hard-packed and proved easier for Sam to walk on.  He stared straight ahead and started to talk in a low voice void of inflection.

“Jamie and Tom were really close in high school.  When they graduated, Tom went off to Annapolis and Jamie went to ISU but they still kept in touch…at least for a couple of years.  Jamie started to get involved with anti-war protests and Tom lost touch with him after that.  They didn’t exactly see eye to eye anymore since Tom was going into the military.

“That first Thanksgiving after Tom died I came home from MIT.  That’s when Dad told us we were going to lose the farm.  Jamie came over the next day.  He was already in med-school and it was the first time he’d been home since Tom had died.  He’d spent the summer backpacking or something.  Anyway, he came over the day after Thanksgiving to give his condolences to Mom and Dad.  He came out to the barn and I was alone out there.”

As soon as Sam mentioned being alone in the barn until Jamie came in Al stiffened remembering when Thelma had been telling him about that Thanksgiving the other night.  He didn’t say anything not wanting to stop Sam from telling him what had happened.

“I was cleaning out the stalls and I thought it was Dad coming it, but it wasn’t.  It was Jamie.  At first, it was fine.  He told me how sorry he was that Tom had died.  I was angry, though.  I was angry that Tom had died and Jamie was still there and I lashed out at him.  I told him that maybe if he’d gone into the military instead of protesting then maybe Tom would still be alive.  As irrational as it was, at that moment I blamed Jamie for Tom’s death.”  Sam let out a humorless chuckle.  “He didn’t take too well to my accusation.  He punched me in the face and I lost my balance.  I hit the other side of my face against the wall of the stall.  It stunned me and all I could do was lay there.  He started yelling at me then.  I didn’t understand what he was saying at first.  Finally, my head cleared enough that his words started to make sense.  He said it was my fault that Tom had been killed because I’d supported Tom’s decision to go to Annapolis and I didn’t do anything to try to stop the war.”  Sam stopped walking but he still didn’t look at Al.  “He said Tom’s blood was on my hands then he walked out.”

Sam finally turned to look at Al and Al saw in his eyes a pain and guilt that was 20 years old.  “He’s right, Al.  I didn’t do anything to stop Tom from going to Vietnam.  Maybe if I had he wouldn’t have been killed.  Maybe he’d still be alive.  Why didn’t I try, Al?”

Silent tears began to course down Sam’s face.  Al grabbed him by both shoulders and shook him slightly.  “You were 16 years old, Sam.  You were just a kid.  What could you have done?  It’s not your fault that Tom died and you’ve got to stop blaming yourself for that.  That bastard should have never said that to you.  If he were in front of me right now I’d…I’d…I don’t know what I’d do but I know he’d regret what he did to you.”

Sam mutely shook his head at Al, the tears coming more freely.  “I didn’t try, Al,” he finally burst out.

Al tightened his hold and pulled Sam into an embrace.  “Aw, Sam.  It wasn’t your fault.  You gotta believe that, Kid.  It was never your fault.”

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