Page 34 of You're So Vine
“Okay…” Cam exhales, and then rolls his shoulders, like he’s preparing to step in and break up a bar fight.
“Okay,” he says, again, and then the next words come out in a rush. “So, you know I was in Afghanistan and … shit happened, and I got invalided out and came home in a bad way, not just physically but, you know, in the head. I mean, not like that makes me special. Everyone there who wasn’t a complete psychopath got scarred, so … shit…”
He’s hit a wall. Should I help him over?
“Thing is, when you’re back home, you can’t talk about it.”
He’s made it. Only just, though. His breathing is really rapid and shallow.
“You can’t talk about it because you freak people out. People want to believe that if their country ever has to enter another major war, that their army will know what to do. Their soldiers will be highly trained and organized, and the leaders will have a plan. They don’t want to hear about chaotic skirmishes and collateral damage and kids who…”
His chest stops moving, like he can’t breathe. This is hard enough for me to sit and watch. What must it be like for him, reliving that time?
“People only want to hear about success and heroics because anything else is too terrifying for them,” he says quietly. “So, you never talk about what really happened. And that … has a cost.”
Wow. And here I am believing I know what it’s like to not feel safe to tell the truth. This puts my petty little fears in the shade. But now’s not the time. This moment, I’m focused on Cam.
“When I got my discharge,” he goes on, “I went home to see my parents in Wyoming. But I only lasted a couple of days there. Don’t get me wrong, my parents are great, but I couldn’t handle how worried they were about me and how they tiptoed around me, not wanting to upset me. So I went to Oregon, to my sister, Blair. That was better. Blair’s the nurturing kind but she also doesn’t take any shit. She made me get out and do farm chores, look after the goats. Tried to teach me to ride…”
For the first time, I see the hint of a smile. I realize I’ve not been breathing properly either and I quietly let out the air I’ve been holding.
“Does she have any video footage?” I ask.
“Pretty sure I deleted it all.”
He pauses again because we both know what comes next. Or, rather, who.
“Blair and her husband, Jake, were happy for me to stay as long as I wanted,” he says. “But I couldn’t. Their life wasn’t perfect by any means, but it still highlighted for me everything I didn’t have … everything I thought I didn’t deserve to have.”
This time, the small smile is rueful.
“I have Lee to thank for that last part.”
Here we go. I could legitimately ask for a toilet break but the sooner this is over, the better.
“I left Blair’s with no plan. It was getting into winter, so I decided to go west. Started off hitchhiking but, amazingly, not too many people want to stop for a big, scruffy guy with a thousand-yard stare. So, I caught buses, the odd train. Slept rough most nights. Ended up in Santa Rosa. Saw that it was only twenty miles to the beach, and I hadn’t seen the sea in years. So I stuck out my thumb. And Billy Armstrong picked me up.”
“Shelby’s dad.”
“Lee’s husband.”
Got to admit, I don’t like the way he emphasized that.
“Billy was a special kind of man,” Cam tells me. “He believed that everyone wanted to do good. Just that some had never learned how … or had forgotten. Billy wasn’t a rescuer, though. He was a connector. He wanted to connect—or re-connect—people with the good inside them, so they could do good.”
Cam shakes his head, smiling. “He was aterribledriver, but a really great man.”
“I feel sad I didn’t get to meet him,” I say.
Cam turns his head and plants a kiss on my temple. “He’d have loved you.”
“Sounds like he loved everyone,” I say, then regret it as petulant. And needy, let’s not forget that.
“True. But Billy still sawyou,if you know what I mean. He saw me that day he picked me up. He saw the damage and he saw the need. Said he had a place for me to stay, and some work if I wanted it. Brought me here.”
Cam gestures around. His place. His home now.
“Back in the day, it’d been used as a woodshop for carpentry and joinery, and there were still some ancient woodworking tools hanging on the walls. Billy had equipped it with some basic power tools—electric saw, planer—but most times he found it quicker to go to the hardware store. Don’t know why Billy thought I might be interested in working with wood—it was his superpower, I guess, seeing what you can’t. But I wasn’t ready for that. Billy gave me a camp bed and blankets, and directions to their house and said I was welcome to join them for dinner. Said he and his wife, Lee, had four kids but only two were still living at home. That was Shelby and her little sister, Frankie.”
