Damn crutches!
Just when he thought that he'd seen the last of them his doctor ordered him to stay on them for a little while longer. It frustrated him because he wasn't an old man who couldn't walk without help; he was a healthy twenty-three year old who wanted to walk on his own. But it seemed that the United States Air Force wanted his two feet planted firmly on the ground for the duration and Danny was beginning to wonder when he would get his chance to fly again, although he had also begun to wonder if he wanted to.
He still had his pilot's wings for all the good they did him and not for the first time since he'd come home from his grandparents wondered if maybe it wasn't a sign. Danny McCawley had never been the type of guy who believed in signs but they seemed to be all around him when he was in Shelby and he was beginning to see them at home as well.
His life seemed to slowly be moving away from flying and he wasn't sure how he felt about it. Flying was all he ever thought about as a kid and it was all he ever wanted to do, as his father had. But he'd had a hell of a lot of time to think after he'd been shot down and even more when he was recuperating in the hospital. And the two things he knew that were most important to him were his family and Ann.
The constant thought that dogged him while he tried to survive in North Vietnam was that he didn't want to go home in a box. He didn't want his family to get a visit from the base chaplain and his squadron commander explaining how he died and he didn't want Ann to go through the rest of her life wondering, "What if?"
And now he had to deal with crutches because his doctor felt that his leg still needed some support. He should have stayed on the damn things more when they were in Tennessee but he felt that he could do without them.
Hank and their squadron were gone when Danny returned so he didn't have his best friend to hash it all out with. He could talk to Dad but he didn't know exactly what it was that he wanted to say. With Hank, he could just say what would come to his mind and Hank would help him sort it all out in a way that it made sense.
He could talk to Ann but she was having problems of her own and he didn't want to add to them. School was not going well for her and all she would tell him was that she couldn't keep her mind on her studies because none of her classes seemed very interesting. Danny remembered that feeling and tried to encourage her to keep at it, but something told him that he might be fighting a losing battle on that front.
After a lot of deliberation, Danny drove to his parent's house so he could talk to his mother. She was a good sounding board, as Dad was but she had a way of turning his words back on him when he wasn't thinking clearly and could usually get him to do just that.
At least he was able to drive again. Even with the restriction of crutches, he now had the freedom of his own car to get around him and it helped to make things a little more bearable. Would a jet be far behind?
He knew that Sarah was at work and Joe was in school when he stopped by. He also knew that Dad wouldn't be home for another hour or so and hopefully they wouldn't have any interruptions. He hobbled up to the front porch and his mother was there, as he knew she would probably be with her afternoon cup of coffee. "Why the frown Danny?" She asked as he stepped up on the porch and sat next to her on the swing. He propped the crutches up against the house and sighed.
"Those are two of the reasons."
"I know you think that the doctor is being overly cautious but I have to agree with what he's doing." She stated. "Considering how badly damaged your leg was I consider it a small miracle that you didn't lose it. And if staying on them for a little longer gives him the reassurance he needs to clear you for flying again then you need to stop sulking like a child and do what he tells you."
"I'm not sulking."
"You most certainly are." Mama laughed and took one of his hands in hers. "Which is odd because you never sulked when you were little. You would get frustrated because you couldn't do something that you wanted to do, but you never sulked. You just kept working at what ever it was until you did it. And yet here you are hampered, and temporarily I might add by the very things that have helped your leg heal and you can't seem to appreciate it."
"I do appreciate it Mama, I do."
"Then what is it? You've seemed so restless and unhappy for the longest time and Dad and I were chalking it up to the fact that your recovery was taking longer than any of us expected it to. We also couldn't help but notice that Ann was keeping her distance and we didn't know why. But then we got back to your grandparents and you seemed to light up like a Christmas tree."
Danny never told his parents what happened between he and Ann the afternoon that they were alone together and thought maybe now he should. He knew he would catch hell for it, but it was time they knew. "I gave her cause to keep her distance."
"And why was that?" She asked him and Danny could sense that she was bracing herself for something that she didn't want to hear.
"I asked her to help me with a sponge bath one afternoon and things started to get out of hand."
She was quiet for the longest time and he wondered what she was thinking. And when she finally did speak it was with a frown and an exasperated sigh. "Daniel McCawley, what on earth possessed you to put her in such a position?"
"You're not going to like the answer." He was honest with her.
"I probably won't, but you need to tell me anyway." She pressed.
"I wanted her and it didn't matter that I had a broken leg at the time." Danny cringed at the way it sounded because he felt like a jerk and sounded like a man who only wanted one thing.
"Should I ask if this is the first time you've been in a situation you shouldn't have been in?"
It was Danny's turn to sigh. "It wasn't the first time."
Mama looked at him and her frown deepened. "I am more disappointed in you Danny than I have ever been. I know that you love Ann but part of loving her is respecting her and respecting boundaries. And those boundaries do not include taking marital liberties with her."
He wanted to assure her that it hadn't gone that far even though it easily could have. "It never went past the point of no return."
"You may think that I'm the last person to be lecturing you on acceptable behavior." She admitted with a look that was troubled. "But it's because of what happened between your dad and me that we are so adamant that our children not repeat what we did. There is a time and a place for those things and as frustrated, as I know it can get, it's not time for that yet."
Danny nodded and held his mother's hand in a firm grasp. "If it makes you feel any better, we talked about all of that when we were back there. Things between Annie and me were moving too fast and it seemed that all we could do was feel things instead of thinking them through. When she was here that afternoon it shook us both up pretty badly because we finally realized that we had to start thinking."
"She's grown up so much in the last year and I think that she's a good match for you."
"So do I Mama." He couldn't help but smile.
"So if you and Ann have settled things there's only one other reason I can think of that would be keeping that frown on your face." She searched his face for an answer.
"I feel like I want to get back in the air. I'm still not as strong as I need to be, but that's because the doctor is limiting the time I can run and he won't let me off these crutches."
"Do you think that he's doing it deliberately?"
Danny shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know. It feels like it sometimes though."
"Then I think you need to talk to him and ask him to explain his reasons for not letting you put much weight on your leg." She squeezed his hand in reassurance. "You may not feel it, but he might have found something in your last x-ray that is prompting him to proceed with more caution than you would like."
That didn't make any sense because his doctor was always straightforward with him and he told his mother the same thing. "He's never held anything back when we've talked about my leg, why would he do it now?"
"Maybe he's doing it because he feels that you're not ready yet." She said quietly. "You went through an ordeal that your father can't really understand. You were alone, badly injured and had a lot of time to think. And it seems to me that you're still thinking; maybe your doctor sees it too."
"It's amazing how much thinking a man can do when he has the time." Danny admitted to her. "And you're right; I have been doing a lot of thinking."
"Do you want to tell me?"
He shook his head. "This is something I need to talk to Ann about first and I'm still not ready to do that."
"Fair enough." She nodded and she let go of his hand before she started to stand.
"Mama, did you ever think that you would end up being an Air Force wife? Or did you think that we would stay in Tennessee after the war was over?"
She settled back in the swing and put down her coffee cup that she'd picked up off the side table. "I always had the feeling that we would come back here if it were humanly possible. Your Dad would never admit it but he was unhappy from the moment we left Oahu. Flying was his whole life and being a part of the military is something that still gives him a great sense of pride. When he gave that up, I don't think he realized how much of himself that he would be giving up as well. You also need to remember that all of you were born here and that was something that was important to him too."
"Do you think you'll stay here when he retires?"
"That's our plan honey. We've been saving for a house since we came back and we figure that we'll be able to find a nice little place near here when the time comes. In the meantime, however we're not going anywhere." Mama had a look of barely concealed curiosity.
"I always thought that this would be where I would always live." He said to no one in particular.
"I know that's what you want Danny, but it's not up to you where you end up. If the Air Force needs you some place other than Wheeler then that's where they'll send you."
He nodded and then sighed. "I already knew that when I got into the Academy because we knew there was always the chance that Dad could be transferred from here at a moment's notice and I always thought it was strange that my first assignment out of the Academy was Wheeler. It almost felt as though it was where I was meant to be."
"And where do you think it is that you'll be next?" She asked him gently.
"That's what I'm still trying to figure out." Danny told her and got the feeling that his mother understood what he was after with his questions. "I'm glad that we went back to Shelby for Thanksgiving this year. It gave me the chance to help Gramps and begin to sort things out."
"There is something a little magical about your grandparents place, maybe because the pace there is so much slower than it is here at Wheeler. You certainly seemed to fit in much more than you ever have." She prompted.
"As much as a guy can enjoy hard work, I really did." He laughed.
"It's something that you're used to."
Danny shook his head in disagreement. "The work I did with Gramps and Dad and Major Walker was different because instead of using my mind I really had to use my body. It's such a different feeling to be able to do something that's physically demanding and not always have to think three steps ahead. I knew what needed to be done and I did it. And because I've done it often enough it meant that I could think about other things."
"You really have been doing a lot of thinking and if you don't mind my saying it sounds as though you might be rethinking your Air Force career." She surmised and looked a little deflated when he nodded.
"My commitment to the Air Force will be up in June and it was never an issue about my staying in. It was always a given that I would sign up for another tour and more than likely stay here." He shrugged and realized that he'd all but told his mother what had been whirling through his jumbled mind.
"If you don't re-sign for another tour do you have something in mind?" She asked and Danny felt that she already knew.
"Nothing set in stone yet."
"From the time you were nine years old all you wanted to do was be a pilot like your dad, but he wanted you to go to college. You understood that and to get what you wanted and give him what he wanted you knew the only way to do that was get into the Air Force Academy." Mama let out a deep sigh and took his hand again.
"But in order to do that, you gave up being a little boy and a young man because you had to keep up with your studies in order to keep your grades up. I would never had told you this at the time but Dad and I worried so much about what you were giving up but you kept saying that it was what you wanted. And I sometimes wonder that if you'd just gone into the Air Force as an Airman and learned to fly you wouldn't have had to give up your childhood."
"It was hard sometimes because there never seemed to be enough time to do all the things that I would have liked to do." He conceded. "But I did enjoy my time at the Academy because what I was doing was much more important than just earning a degree. I was lucky enough to make a friend for life and I got to be around other guys who were just as dedicated as I was to being a part of the service."
"Whatever it is that you decide to do, Dad and I will support you."
"Even if you don't agree with it?" He asked.
"We'll cross that bridge Danny if we need to. What you need to do for us though is to continue to think about this. We just want you to be absolutely sure about any decision you make that it's what you really want, no matter what that decision is."
"I appreciate that Mama."
She let go of his hand and stood up, picking up her coffee cup as she did. "You're welcome to stay for dinner if you like."
"Thanks Mama, but I think I'll pass. I wouldn't be very good company and I don't really want to talk about this to anyone else."
"That's all right. Do you have something at home to eat?"
"I'll scrounge up something." He smiled at her.
"Danny." She began to protest as he stood up next to her and grabbed his crutches.
"Don't worry, I will eat something." He promised her as he tucked the crutches under his armpits and hobbled to the edge of the porch. "Say hi to everyone for me."
"I will." She said as she followed him. "Danny, I think you need to talk to your dad about this. I know that you want to talk to Ann, but I think that Dad should know too."
"I'll talk to him." He reassured her.
"Thank you." And she kissed his cheek. "Drive safely now, it's getting dark."
He thumped down to the walk and stopped. "I will Mama." And he continued toward his car.
When he reached the sidewalk and made his way around to the driver's side he stopped and looked around. Mama stood on the porch waving at him and he waved back and watched her walk into the house. He looked out at the ocean and listened to the surf as the waves came in and the setting sun glinted off of the water in reflection. It was a sight he'd missed when he was in Colorado and didn't think that he'd ever want another kind of a view.
But there were similar sounds he'd heard in Tennessee that were much like the sound of the surf and knew that as long as he could here that, Oahu would never be that far away.