Read Online Walking on Water: A Novel by Richard Paul Evans - Free Book Online
Authors: Richard Paul Evans
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the Vail Truck Line. His new profession provided a steady income, though it took him all across the country. He was home only three weekends a month.
I remember my mother as a lonely but dutiful wife and mother who devoted most of her time to raising me. On theweekends that Peter was home he drank heavily, and Mom waited on him hand and foot, eager to please him.
I never really knew my father. It seemed he had little interest in me. I learned, at a young age, that if I asked him about the war, he was eager to talk, so I would think up questions to ask him.
Though my father was often harsh and aloof, he was not abusive. The only time he ever struck me I likely deserved it, as I was a teenager and I had taken some money from his wallet without asking.
The money he made driving was sufficient for our needs, and I never felt deprived like some of the other children in our neighborhood did. During the summer of my fourteenth birthday, we moved to a better neighborhood in the suburban area of Lakewood. I attended Lakewood High School, where I played forward on the school’s varsity basketball team. My senior year I played on the team that placed third in state, the farthest our school had ever progressed in the tournament.
I had always been a little shy around the opposite sex, but, beginning in my sophomore year of high school, I dated several girls. My first real girlfriend was Jodi Reynolds. She was a pretty blond girl and was the first attendant at the sophomore “sock hop” prom. Then, halfway through my junior year, I fell in love with a girl named Kate Mitchell, a beautiful brunette who looked a little like a combination of a young Audrey Hepburn and Annette Funicello. We got along well, and my heart was broken that summer when her father took a job in Phoenix and she moved out of state with her family. We wrote for a few months, but once September came we both found ourselves swept into life at school and eventually met others.
During these years, it was important to my father thatI work. I had a job at a hot dog stand called Der Wienerschnitzel, and then at Peck & Shaw, a used car dealership where I detailed cars before they went on the lot to be sold. It was a volatile time in the world, a time of social unrest and protests, much of it over the war in Vietnam. In 1969, during my junior year, the first draft lottery since World War II was initiated. A year later, four students were killed in a protest at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio. My father was a vocal critic of “the hippies,” and the back window of our station wagon bore a decal that read:
AMERICA.
----
LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT.
I suppose that was why I offered no resistance when my draft notice arrived a week after my high school graduation in June 1971. While some of my high school friends were burning their draft cards or relocating to Canada, I reported to basic training in Fort Lewis, just south of the Seattle-Tacoma area of Washington, not far from where my grandfather had lived during the Depression.
The transformation from civilian to soldier is a fascinating, if not painful process. On the first day everyone arrives with the accoutrements of their own class and social caste. The military is the great equalizer. At the end of the day, we all had the same haircut, our clothing was the same, and our status was equally lowly. Our pay matched our status: we were paid seventy-five dollars a month to risk our lives. For some it was the most money they had ever seen.
During my sixth week in basic training I was called in by my sergeant and told that my father had died. I was in shock. I was told that I could take a hardship leave, but it would have meant starting all over againwith a different group. At that moment I realized that I had, in part, gone into the war to win my father’s approval. Now he was gone. I called my mother, and she agreed I should stay.
After eight weeks we were given our MOS—military occupational specialty. This is when
I remember my mother as a lonely but dutiful wife and mother who devoted most of her time to raising me. On theweekends that Peter was home he drank heavily, and Mom waited on him hand and foot, eager to please him.
I never really knew my father. It seemed he had little interest in me. I learned, at a young age, that if I asked him about the war, he was eager to talk, so I would think up questions to ask him.
Though my father was often harsh and aloof, he was not abusive. The only time he ever struck me I likely deserved it, as I was a teenager and I had taken some money from his wallet without asking.
The money he made driving was sufficient for our needs, and I never felt deprived like some of the other children in our neighborhood did. During the summer of my fourteenth birthday, we moved to a better neighborhood in the suburban area of Lakewood. I attended Lakewood High School, where I played forward on the school’s varsity basketball team. My senior year I played on the team that placed third in state, the farthest our school had ever progressed in the tournament.
I had always been a little shy around the opposite sex, but, beginning in my sophomore year of high school, I dated several girls. My first real girlfriend was Jodi Reynolds. She was a pretty blond girl and was the first attendant at the sophomore “sock hop” prom. Then, halfway through my junior year, I fell in love with a girl named Kate Mitchell, a beautiful brunette who looked a little like a combination of a young Audrey Hepburn and Annette Funicello. We got along well, and my heart was broken that summer when her father took a job in Phoenix and she moved out of state with her family. We wrote for a few months, but once September came we both found ourselves swept into life at school and eventually met others.
During these years, it was important to my father thatI work. I had a job at a hot dog stand called Der Wienerschnitzel, and then at Peck & Shaw, a used car dealership where I detailed cars before they went on the lot to be sold. It was a volatile time in the world, a time of social unrest and protests, much of it over the war in Vietnam. In 1969, during my junior year, the first draft lottery since World War II was initiated. A year later, four students were killed in a protest at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio. My father was a vocal critic of “the hippies,” and the back window of our station wagon bore a decal that read:
AMERICA.
----
LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT.
I suppose that was why I offered no resistance when my draft notice arrived a week after my high school graduation in June 1971. While some of my high school friends were burning their draft cards or relocating to Canada, I reported to basic training in Fort Lewis, just south of the Seattle-Tacoma area of Washington, not far from where my grandfather had lived during the Depression.
The transformation from civilian to soldier is a fascinating, if not painful process. On the first day everyone arrives with the accoutrements of their own class and social caste. The military is the great equalizer. At the end of the day, we all had the same haircut, our clothing was the same, and our status was equally lowly. Our pay matched our status: we were paid seventy-five dollars a month to risk our lives. For some it was the most money they had ever seen.
During my sixth week in basic training I was called in by my sergeant and told that my father had died. I was in shock. I was told that I could take a hardship leave, but it would have meant starting all over againwith a different group. At that moment I realized that I had, in part, gone into the war to win my father’s approval. Now he was gone. I called my mother, and she agreed I should stay.
After eight weeks we were given our MOS—military occupational specialty. This is when
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