Page 94 of A Hero Comes Home

Jake nodded, and wished he’d been in the car with the pirate, after all.

But now, there was a signal for the convertibles to begin entering the parade. Not all at once, just a few at a time, to be interspersed with other parade events.

Jake found the whole experience uncomfortable. He didn’t like calling attention to himself in this way. But it wasn’t awful. Mostly, he just smiled and tossed individually wrapped hard candies to spectators who lined the streets, especially the kids. Everywhere along the route, they saw handheld flags being waved.

Until they turned a corner where a dozen protestors, presumably from that hateful Westboro Baptist Church, carried placards that said “Thank God for Dead Soldiers” and “Thank God for 9/11” and the usual anti-gay ones.

“Oh, shit! Them wackos again!” the colonel said.

Jake blinked behind his sunglasses, and saw red behind his closed eyelids, even the bad eye. Apparently the red tide of rage was not dead. It was rising and rising and rising. He was about to launch himself out of the slowly moving vehicle to knock a few heads together, or worse, bad leg or no bad leg.

The colonel put his hand on Jake’s arm and cautioned, “Don’t do anything stupid. That’s what the idiots want. Besides, the sheriff is about to put their sorry asses in jail. Don’t do anything to land yourself there, too, son.”

Jake did the “just breathe” exercises for a few moments, even as their car passed the protestors. He heard a flurry of activity behind them as the law did in fact arrive, and he relaxed somewhat, knowing he was not going to go psycho with rage.

Not this time anyhow. But it was a wake-up call to Jake, knowing that the rage condition had been only dormant, not dead. What would be the trigger next time? And who might he attack when in a rage?

“Pick your battles, my boy,” the colonel advised, like he was reading his mind. “As a soldier you already know that. Those kind of protestors are like flies on a manure pile. In the end they’re just full of shit. If you give yourself time to think, you’ll realize they aren’t worth the effort.”

“Yeah, but in the moment I don’t think, that’s the problem,” Jake admitted.

The colonel shrugged. “I can’t promise it will ever go away, completely, that you’ll ever forget, completely. But it should get better. Don’t let the bastards win by giving in to it. I did, and I lost everything.”

Jake was saved from having to comment on that because they were approaching the bakery where Sally, her parents, his father, and Old Mike stood in front of a six-deep crowd. Cheers and waves greeted him, and Sally threw him a kiss which he threw back. Most disconcerting was that all five of them appeared to have tears in their eyes. He lowered his sunglasses to midnose to peer over at them.

Yep! Tears. That is just great. He raised his shades again, and they moved on.

When they got to the end of the route, he shook hands with the colonel and they exchanged phone numbers and email addresses. Soon the colonel was overrun with autograph seekers and old veterans wanting to exchange war stories. Jake caught up to Izzie and they went together to find the boys. When they found them, they all hopped onto a jitney bus, one of a number that the town council had hired for the occasion. It took them directly to the Conti mansion, where the talent show would be held. The rest of his family would be meeting them there.

In the meantime, they walked up the steps to the impressive mansion built by the Conti brothers more than a hundred years ago when they founded Bell Forge. The white-shingled mansion, named Chimes, sat on a man-made bluff overlooking the Atlantic Ocean on the one side, and a view of Bell Sound in the distance on the other side.

The main ballroom had been set up with a makeshift stage and at least a hundred folding chairs for the audience. While they waited for Sally and the others to show up, they walked through the side rooms, which had once been a massive glass-walled garden solarium. An author sat at a table in one room signing copies of a book he had written about shipwrecks, including the Falcon, which was the one recently discovered by the town’s new salvaging/treasure-hunting company. The town council had set up a table with brochures for tourists, highlighting all the events to be held in Bell Cove throughout the year, as well as the Outer Banks in general. In another room, they saw the big honkin’, totally garish trophies that would be awarded to the winners of the first ever Lollypalooza talent contest in various categories. The local bookstore, The Book Den, was selling books in another space, ones dealing with Bell Cove or Outer Banks history, and also related to shipwrecks, treasure hunting, heroes, and pirates. Quite a mix! Jake bought the kids a book called Talk Like a Pirate, and for a long time afterward they heard lots of “Aaarr’s!” and “Ahoy, mateys!” and “Shiver me timbers!” and their favorite, “Thar she blows!”

When it came time for the talent show, Jake found himself in the center of the fifth row with Sally and the boys, her parents, Joe, and Old Mike on one side and Izzie, his parents, Abe, and Rachel Bernstein on the other. Jake had tried to plant himself on the aisle chair but Sally had insisted he move over, probably because she suspected he might try to slip out midshow. Which might have been a possibility, though he wouldn’t admit to that.

Finally, the show was about to get underway. He took off his sunglasses and put on the eye patch so that he could see better. Then, he linked his left hand with her right one, laying their doubled fist on his thigh. He winked at her with a promise of better things to come, later.

The senior citizen yodeler that Sally had mentioned started off the show, and she was as bad as Jake could have imagined. Then Binky Jones stumbled through his dog Sparkie’s tricks, but you had to give the kid credit for having the nerve to get up on stage. He couldn’t imagine his kids ever doing that, or himself at that age, for that matter. After that, a pianist played a classic piece that was probably really good, but Jake felt himself dozing off. It had been a long day.

Sally nudged him awake, and he got to see a ventriloquist do a pretty funny routine with his dummy named Bad Luck Chuck. Then a lady from Nags Head carrying an umbrella and an outfit that looked a little Mary Poppins–esque did a tap dance to “Singin’ in the Rain.” After that, it was Irish folk dancing by a local group. He was whispering to Izzie, “Not one of them is giving Michael Flatley any competition,” when he noticed Sally and the boys were getting up.

“What? Are we leaving?” he asked hopefully.

“Shhh,” she said. A barbershop quartet had just started singing. “Stay put. We’ll be back.”

He assumed the boys needed to visit the head. Jake could swear they had bladders the size of peas.

“Any clue how we can escape from this nuthouse?” he asked Izzie.

“Chill, my friend. I’m trying to impress Laura with how well-behaved I can be.”

Jake glanced over to the side where Laura was indeed checking Izzie out. “She looks like a cross between Betsy Ross and a Playboy centerfold in that outfit,” Jake observed.

“I’ve always had a thing for Betsy Ross.”

“Be careful. You may find yourself landlocked in Bell Cove again.”

“Like you?”