The Son of Every Man

Chapter 9.5

Eddie's dark brown irises fixated on a blank spot in the night sky. They stayed frozen even as Gabe hovered in panicked motions directly overhead.

"Eddie," he pleaded. "Just hold on, we've got help coming. They'll be here any minute—I think I can hear them already."

Eddie spat up a mouthful of blood. It ran thick down his chin and neck. "I'm going," he choked. "My time."

"You can't go. Eddie, you're the only reason I'm here. I never told you that I know what you did—how you saved her."

Eddie turned his head slightly toward Gabe, but his eyes remained bizarrely trained on that invisible point in the sky.

"She never forgot what you did for her, Eddie. Never. She remembered it every day of her life. She loved you so much. She saw you as the kind of person she always wanted to be, and Eddie—that's the way I feel about you too. Oh, Eddie, please don't leave me—" He could no longer speak. His own cries interrupted him.

Out from nowhere came a source of dim cold light. Gabe thought Miguel had switched on the exterior lamp, but it hung dark against the cinderblock wall.

Eddie's head slowly re-centered. Gabe felt a pang of false hope as the man's arm lifted two inches above the asphalt. His index finger uncurled. His voice bubbled up in a faint whisper. "The moon."

Gabe looked up and there it was: full and bright.

"They sent it for me," said Eddie. "I'm going back now."

"Don't go," Gabe sobbed. "Eddie, please. I love you. I need you to stay."

A stillness spread through the man beneath him. Eddie was leaving. His body slackened, relaxed upon the hard ground. Gabe sank into the blood-soaked clothing and skin of the man who had been his friend. He clenched his teeth and wailed into the night. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to follow the man through the brilliant flashes, tried to share another moment with Eddie's departed soul. He cried Eddie's name over and over in a mad search for something he already knew was beyond reach.

The broad metal overhead door screeched open and a flickering warmth of new flames mingled with the steady cold light of the moon. He felt the heat from the rapidly growing fire.

A hand fell on his shoulder. He pulled himself away from the empty body. He stood slowly, drenched in blood that was not his own.

Miguel looked him up and down, eyes communicating a mix of horror and sorrow. He reached out with both arms and Gabe fell into them. They cried together as the sirens drew near. The fire grew hotter and brighter.

Miguel's voice grazed his ear: "Should we run?"

"No," said Gabe. "I think we should stay right here."

;-;

Monday, September 18th, 2006

I don't believe talking about his troubled past was ever cathartic for Eddie. He rarely did so, and I rarely pushed him toward it. Because of this, I never fully understood the nature of his connection with Bonnie until Gabe presented me with her diaries. Upon reading them, it became clear.

Very few moments in my life have felt so unfiltered as absorbing all those words through her jutting scrawl. I was a child again, learning to skate on a north-Idaho lake with my stern father. I was a young bride, taking that first breath of thick Vietnam air with Eddie at my side, during our honeymoon in the city he still insisted then I call Saigon.

Bonnie's English was crude at first, as Gabe had warned me it would be, but its rate of improvement astonished me. Simple words turned beautiful. They told it all. I ached; I wanted to explode because I could do nothing, help no one. Maybe Bonnie put it best near the end of her writing, which became so gradually smaller, smaller, until it was crammed into the final pages of that third book: