Leon Carmichael drank too much.
It wasn’t his fault. At least, no one in Bryson seemed to think so. Poor Leon had a hard life. He lost his parents in the flood, then his older brother in Korea. After that, he’d been raised by an uncle who would whip him as soon as look at him. When he became an adult, he was drafted and sent to fight the Viet Cong in the name of a system that had already failed him.
He came back missing a leg and part of his soul. The Veterans Administration in Carver City gave him a prosthetic leg and some pills. But neither got him back to where he had been, and there wasn’t much use for a one-legged man at the sawmill. So Leon slept in the alley behind Johnson’s store and spent his disability checks on booze. A few people tried to help him, but every time he took a step in the right direction he’d relapse. After awhile, the town wrote him off as a failure.
By the time he was forty, he looked like he was sixty. Twenty years of sleeping in the elements had worn him down. That’s aside from the damage the liquor was doing. Every six months one of the preachers would drive him over to Carver City. There, a VA doctor would poke and prod him, tell him to stop drinking, and refill his “happy pills,” as he called his psych meds.
He should have been dead ten years ago. But somehow Leon kept chugging on, getting by on whiskey, cigarettes, and the scraps he found in garbage cans. Most of the townfolk saw him as a sort of mascot. As long as he didn’t step out of line and stuck to his routine, he was tolerated. Leon seemed fine with that arrangement.
–
One fine August afternoon, a stranger wandered into Johnson’s store. It was busy that day, but Jack Johnson noticed the man wearing a finer suit than his store would ever carry.
“Help ya?” he asked, walking up to the man.
“I’m looking for an old friend, from back in the war.”
Johnson looked him up and down. “Well, you’re a little young for Korea, so I’d guess you’d be wanting one of the Vietnam boys.”
The man nodded. “That’s right. I made three tours as a Marine. Last tour, my squad got ambushed. It was bad, the docs pulled eight rounds out of my body, along with a kidney and part of my liver. But I’d have never made it to the operating table if it wasn’t for an Army medic. He patched me up and got me on the chopper, but before he could jump aboard a grenade blew his leg off. I didn’t know who he was, but he saved my life.”
“And you say he lives here in Bryson?”
“According to the VA he does. I figured he died, bled out in the jungle like so many others. But I found another medic who was there that night, and he told me about a fellow who got his leg blown off by a grenade. He got put on another chopper, and the medic thought he made it. The medic remembered the guy’s name, Carmichael, and I was able to track him down through a friend of mine in the VA.”
“Carmichael?” Johnson asked, feeling his stomach sink. “Leon Carmichael?”
“You know him?” The stranger asked.
“We all know Leon,” Johnson assured him. “I just want to tell you now, he’s not going to be the same man you remember from Vietnam. Life ain’t been kind to him.”
“Still, I’d like to meet him. I owe him my life.”
Johnson sighed. “Follow me.” He led the stranger through the stockroom and out the back door. Walking a short distance down the alley, he reached Leon’s cardboard shelter. “Leon!” he called. “Got a man here wants to meet you.”
As the stranger watched, a man appeared from under the cardboard. His dark skin made his white hair seem even brighter. The bottle in his hand was already half-empty, even though he still had most of the day to go. His clothes hung off his body, making his small frame seem even smaller.
“You yelled, Jack?” he wheezed, putting the bottle to his lips and taking a drink.
“Leon, put that bottle away for a minute. This man came a long way to meet you.”
Leon looked at the stranger, then took another drink. “Beg yer pardon, sir, but it’s mighty hot today. A good drink helps keep the heat down.”
A tear came to the stranger’s eye. “Leon, what happened to you?”
“I know you, sir?”
“You saved my life, Leon. Over in Vietnam.”
“Did a lot of things in Vietnam. Left my leg there, even. The happy pills help me forget most of the things I done.”
The stranger shook his head. “Leon, you saved my life. You patched me up and got me on a chopper. Do you remember that?”
“Put a lot of folks on choppers, yes sir. I remember some of them. Remember the one I loaded just before I lost my leg. Ain’t no way that boy made it, he was shot all to pieces. I lost my damn leg getting a still-breathing cadaver back to base.”
“That was me, Leon,” he whispered. “I made it.”
Leon looked up and blinked. “Hot damn. I reckon you did, or the liquor’s playing tricks on me. But Jack’s here, and he’s a Christian gentleman, so he ain’t involved in no tricks.”
“Leon, why are you living like this?”
He hung his head, “I reckon it’s the shame of it. Other boys in town didn’t understand what I went through. They were on base, or flying airplanes, or on ships out at sea. But I was in the jungle. I saw it all, but I couldn’t tell anyone about it when I got home. I reckon I left part of my soul in that jungle. Some folks tried to help, but it wasn’t what I needed. Living on my own like this is how I make it through the day. It ain’t a good life, but it works.”
The stranger smiled. “Leon, I can save your life! I can repay you for saving mine!”
He shook his head. “Mister, I appreciate what you want to do, but after being out here so long, I can’t adjust to nothing else. Besides, I won’t be out here much longer. My drinking finally got me. Doc said I got the cancer, two months to live, maybe less. I appreciate you stopping by, but I cain’t take no charity this late in life. It’d kill me quicker than the Cancer.” Picking up his bottle, he turned and went back into his shelter.
The stranger looked at Johnson, who was shaking his head. “At least he was making sense today,” Jack said. “A lot of the time he just rambles and doesn’t make any sense.”
“Is there anything I can do for him?”
Johnson shook his head. “We didn’t even know he was dying. I guess I knew it would happen eventually, I’d come out one day and he’d be dead.”
“But did you know he was a hero?”
“Buddy, today is the most he spoke about the war since he got back. I didn’t know anything until you turned up.”
The stranger turned back to look at Leon’s shelter, then shook his head. “How do you treat a hero like that? That man lost everything fighting for his country, and then he came back to his home to live in an alley. It isn’t right.”
“It ain’t, sir, but it’s the way he chose to live. We tried to help him, but he didn’t want the help.” Johnson shrugged. “You can’t make a man, even a hero, do something he doesn’t want to do.”
–
The stranger spent the night at the motel, then went back to the alley the next day. Leon wouldn’t even come out to talk to him. He asked around, going to the barber shop, the police station, even the local library, and was told the same thing. Leon lived the way he did, and he always had lived that way. Nothing would change that.
–
The next morning, he went back to the alley and found Leon sitting outside.
“Morning, Leon,” the stranger greeted him.
“Morning, sir.” Leon seemed happy. “Mornings are always nice, ‘specially in the summer.”
“They are.”
Leon sat there, watching the stranger as he stood, looking around the alley. “I know you want to help,” Leon finally said. “But it ain’t something you can do for me. I gotta help myself.”
“But you’re a hero Leon.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a beat up jewelry case. “Is that what this means? Ain’t been able to make sense of it.” He tossed the case to the stranger, who opened it.
“Leon, this is a Silver Star.”
“That’s what the Army said it was. Never had much use for it. Soon as they gave it to me they sent me home. Said I was Gallant and Brave, but they didn’t have no use for a one-legged man. Ain’t no one got a use for a one-legged man, even if he does have a pretty medal. So I just live here alone, getting by the best I can. It’s the only life I know. If you had a lick of sense you’d go back where you came from and forget about ol’ Leon here in the alley.”
The stranger sighed, looked down at his feet, then looked back up at Leon. “I’ll leave, but I won’t forget. You can’t forget someone who saved your life.”
“Reckon that’s true. I wouldn’t know. I don’t know who saved my life, but I ain’t sure they did me a favor.”
–
Six weeks later, Jack Johnson called the stranger to let him know Leon had passed away. Two days later, the stranger and Jack were the only mourners as Leon was laid to rest in the city cemetery. At the stranger’s request the military sent a detail to render honors. Before they lowered the casket into the grave, the stranger asked to open the casket for a moment. Reaching into his pocket, he took the case he had found in Leon’s cardboard hut. Removing the medal, he put it around Leon’s neck.
The sergeant of the detail had approached him, and when he saw the medal, he came to attention. “Sir, we were not aware of the medal.”
“That’s how he wanted it, Sergeant,” the stranger said. “He never understood why he was a hero. Burying him with it is an honor he may not understand. But it is better than this town learning the man they ignored for years was a better man than most of them.”
The sergeant nodded. “Yes sir.” He saluted the casket and turned to walk away. The stranger took a last look at Leon, then closed the lid. He nodded to the undertaker, then started to walk away. Stopping, he turned and walked back to the casket. Coming to attention, he saluted the casket and whispered.
“Thank you, Leon.”
Jack put his arm around him. “Thank you, sir. You showed us more of Leon in a day than we’d learned in twenty years.”
“I wish I’d found him sooner, but I’m glad I got to see him before he passed,” he wiped a tear from his eye. “Excuse me, I have to get home.”
“Business, sir?”
He smiled, “No, Jack. My wife had a baby last week. Our first son, Leon.”
All Rights Reserved
For forgotten heroes
Joe Stout Writing 