Heroes

Who by Fire: Chapter 43 (Audio and prose)

Note: Update: Robert confronts heroism…

You can start reading here or anywhere, then go back. See Table of Contents. Come in the middle? Robert is the narrator who discovers after his wife Lena has died that she had a lover, Isaac. Evan is Isaac’s wife. Robert is on a search for how he lost Lena: He’s creating the story through memory, invention and a search for the truth and his role in what happened—and by stalking Isaac.

Heroes

It has been a year since Lena died. It has been a year since Evan said, “There are no heroes.” It has been a year in the writing of the story, the story that I own.

My father talks too much of the caper during the second World War when he flew repaired planes to see if they were safe. He and his buddies would fly their single-seated planes, by definition, alone.

They were pilots who could fly larger planes and did: Planes filled with officers they took down from Kastl, Germany, where he was stationed, to the French Riviera to give the heroes R&R.

He and his buddies didn’t get that R&R but they did get time off and the P-51s were theirs. That’s how he thought of the Gloria, the one he named for my mother though there was no glory in his story—except for the caper. He resents the glory not won in medals.

He talks of the caper. Here’s what he and a buddy did on a whim. Each got into his P-51 and flew to Paris with the glory of the Eiffel Tower in their heads: Its arch, its height, its span and the span of their wings and their own foolhardiness. They flew to the arch of the tower that looked smaller and smaller as they approached, when there was no turning back, when through it they would go or die. Only those on the ground who saw would ever know. Those on the ground and I who have heard the story told over and over and over again.

I saw tears in his eyes: When I took him here to The Smithsonian’s outpost of the Air and Space Museum way out by Dulles airport, not where the Apollo 11 command module sits, not where the Wright Brothers’ 1903 Flyer hangs or the Spirit of St. Louis, not where the McDonnell FH-1 Phantom holds court inside the museum that sits on the National Mall. His P-51 requires a long drive out to Chantilly, Virginia, where he stood and saw his Gloria.

I keep a list of heroes. I review the list again and again. The fires, the breaks in ice, the water beneath, the broken glass. I keep a list of ordinary folk, not trained when confronted with the extraordinary. They chose, they risked, they saved.

My father saved. He risked. Every pilot who flew and shot and saved and won Congressional medals and Purple Hearts owes him. The second big war that was won in part with some five hundred enemy aircraft shot down by P-51s, the lives that were saved, the lives that were lost owe him.

I keep a list of heroes: a 41-year-old man from Coos Bay, Oregon, rescued a 30-year-old man who jumped from a bridge into a river; a 52-year-old man from Kewanna, Indiana, rescued a state trooper from his burning cruiser after it crashed; a 52-year-old man from Honolulu died trying to save his family from a fire that engulfed their house—his wife and daughter survived, but six other family members died.

The ordinary and the extraordinary collide in my list and in me who’s lived through no fire, who’s saved no one.

This is the question I now ask: If the interminable journey of longing has led to forgiveness, can it lead to discovery?▵

Table of Contents

Coming next: Chapter 44: “Who by Fire” (the final chapter)

Only Connect, all sections, and this serial novel come from my heart and soul—and ten years of research. I know the saying ‘time is money’: I couldn’t help but pursue this story. If you have already gone paid, my heart goes out to you with my thanks.

Love,