March 3, 1985 – Detroit, Michigan
"How is it that you've come to have grandchildren while my kids are still in school?" Kinch asked, bouncing the baby on his knee and listening to it giggle.
"Things, you know, happen," Tommy answered vaguely. They both knew why Kinch's children were half a generation behind the children of the others. They hadn't lived in a prison camp for almost the entire war. They had been free to meet their wives and marry them and start families while Kinch was still behind the barbed wire.
"So I see," Kinch laughed, mussing the blond curls of the laughing child. The boy leaned his head back and blew a spit bubble at Kinch. "What does Danielle think about being a grandma?"
Tommy laughed again. "She's not ready to admit that we're old enough to be grandparents. She's grateful that James is still at West Point because she knows that you're the same age as I am and she's younger than the both of us."
"Sounds like a typical woman," Kinch agreed.
"I heard that, Ivan James Kinchloe," his wife called out from the kitchen where she was visiting with Danielle.
"I'd be disappointed if you didn't, Sarah," Kinch retorted. "Would mean that we're both getting old."
The two women came to the door, peering in at their men and the baby. "You are old, Ivan," Sarah told him. "But that doesn't mean that I am."
Danielle laughed, tossing back her graying hair. The four of them all had gray hair now. It was hard to believe that they were all nearly sixty-five. "You've got that right," she told Sarah, linking their arms together. "Now let's leave the old men to their reminiscing and you'll have to finish telling me about your visit to Susan's." The two wandered back to the kitchen, arm in arm.
"You never did tell me how Billy and Susan are doing," Tommy said. "They haven't made it up here in ages."
"Billy's got his hands full with the farm," Kinch explained. "And Susie… Well, she's just Susie. She always has been, and always will be."
"You'd think that after all of this time, you'd stop calling her that. We all know full well that she hates it."
"Why? We still call you Tommy, not Tom or Thomas. And Billy is still Billy, not Bill or William." Kinch shrugged. "And as for her hating it, I'm her brother. I'm not supposed to do things that she likes."
"Point taken," Tommy answered. "You're just lucky that Ivan James is such a hard name to shorten otherwise you'd be stuck with a nickname too."
"That wasn't any of my doing. That was completely my parents." Kinch reached down to tug at one of the baby's ears, eliciting another gurgling laugh. "Where'd this little guy pick up his name, anyway?"
"I would have thought the James part was fairly obvious."
Kinch rolled his eyes. "I had figured that part out. I wanted to know about his first name. How on earth did he wind up with a name like Merrell?"
Tommy sighed. "He was my platoon commander during the war. He died a week or two before our last reunion, about a month before this guy was born," he said sadly. "My daughter knew how much he had meant to me. She thought this was one way of keeping a hero alive."
"It's a good name, Tommy." Kinch said, his voice a little husky. "It's a strong name."
"Yeah, it is. But it's like you told all our kids, heroes aren't born, they're made."
"We'll just have to let this one make himself then," Kinch answered, "just like we let all our other kids make themselves heroes in their own ways."
"You know," Tommy started after a pause, "I never could figure out exactly where you got that from. I mean, you're deep and all but…"
"Are you implying that I'm not smart enough to come up with that?" Kinch asked sharply, eyebrows rising in his forehead.
It was Tommy's turn to roll his eyes. "You know that you were always the brains behind our operations. It just doesn't sound like something that you'd come up with."
"Probably because I didn't come up with it," Kinch answered honestly. "I mean, I'm deep and all but…" He stopped for a second, thinking of the man who had said it. "Colonel Hogan used to say it. I guess I just picked it up." He sighed, running a hand over his close-cropped curls.
"Your group was tight, tighter even than our platoon," Tommy said. "How come you guys didn't keep in touch?"
"We tried for a while," Kinch replied thoughtfully. "But we were scattered all across the world, not just all across the country. LeBeau ran his own restaurant; Newkirk ran his pub. Colonel Hogan was wherever the military wanted to send him. Carter was in Muncie, running his pharmacy. It was hard for us all to get together."
Tommy sat silently. It had been hard for their platoon to get together too, but they had managed it. They managed it somehow every five years. Kinch noted the silence and continued, "We all came from different backgrounds, different experiences. We were tossed together and we volunteered to stay together. But we didn't want to remember all of the hard times. And things got harder after the war for a while, instead of easier."
Kinch sighed, bouncing Merrell again a little. "I think we just all wanted to get back to our lives and forget all of the horrible things that men will do to one another. And being together brought back too many of those memories. Maybe if we would have stayed in touch longer, things would have been different."
"Maybe it's not too late," Tommy said. "Try to get in touch with them. No matter what the girls say, we're not that old yet. And you were one of the oldest in your group. Maybe they're still around, regretting that they lost touch, just like you."
"'The time is always right to do what is right,'" Kinch quoted, "and all that?"
Tommy nodded. "Give them a call."
"I think that I will," Kinch said firmly.
"Now," Tommy started, "I know that you're deep and all…"
Kinch started laughing. "Martin Luther King," he answered between laughs.