Chapter 10 - The Horizon at the Gap
On the second of January, I drove my mother’s old nineteen-eighty-five station wagon—which had been parked in the back of the machine shed for seven years and revived with a new alternator, four new tires, and twelve hours of my father’s patient wrenching—up to the crest of the gap on Route 50.
The morning was brilliant, sharp, and clear as ground lens glass.
Below me, the Shenandoah Valley lay under its white winter blanket, the river tracing a dark, winding ribbon of steel through the fields, the smoke from fifty woodstoves rising in straight, vertical plumes into the cloudless blue sky.
Three miles away, on the second bench of the ridge, I could see the red tin roof of our barn, small and bright as a dropped berry in the snow.
The orchard trees stood in their immaculate, pruned ranks—clean, open to the light, their gray branches holding the frost like white lace.
A dark blue sedan was parked at the scenic overlook thirty yards ahead of me.
Commander Nathan Hale was leaning against the front fender, wearing his winter service dress blues, his overcoat unbuttoned against the crisp mountain draft, a pair of aviator sunglasses hiding his eyes against the snow glare.
I parked the wagon, killed the engine, and stepped out onto the packed snow of the pull-off.
The cold air hit my lungs like a drink of well water—sweet, sharp, and smelling of high spruce and clean distance.
I walked over to where he stood.
"You're thirty minutes ahead of your march table, Lieutenant," Hale said, not turning his head, his gaze fixed on the valley below.
"I took the bypass," I said, leaning my hips against the fender beside him. "Road was clear through Front Royal."
He looked at me.
The bruise on my cheek was completely gone; the skin was clear, pale, and firm over the bone. My hair was pulled back into that regulation, immaculate knot at the base of my skull; my officer’s overcoat was buttoned double-breasted to the throat, the gold rank stripes on the shoulder boards catching the morning sun with the hard, clean luster of real bullion.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small velvet box.
"This came from the Bureau yesterday afternoon," Hale said, handing it to me. "They usually send these through the postal clerk at the Pentagon, but I thought you might want to have it before you crossed the river."
I opened the box.
Resting on the black satin were two silver oak leaves—the rank insignia of a Lieutenant Commander in the United States Navy.
"The Senate confirmed the list on Friday," Hale said. "Effective the first of the month. Your appointment was backdated to the day after the Mason incident."
I stared at the silver metal.
Six years of midwatch logs. Six years of salt spray, diesel exhaust, skin grafts, and small-town lies. All of it distilled down into two ounces of hallmarked silver that weighed no more than an apple blossom in May.
"Nathan," I said, my voice catching slightly in my throat.
"Don't start getting soft on me now, Bennett," Hale said, his mouth curving into that rare, brilliant smile that transformed his stern aviator’s face. "You have twenty-four senior civilian engineers reporting to your office at zero-eight hundred on Monday morning. Half of them think they know more about marine distribution panels than the fleet does. You’re going to need every ounce of that Bennett grit to keep them from wasting the taxpayers' money."
I closed the box with a soft, velvet snap.
I looked back down the mountain one last time.
The valley was peaceful. The church spire at Saint Jude’s was visible through the bare poplars, small and harmless under the vast blue bowl of the sky. The diner was serving its morning coffee; the hardware store was opening its doors; and out on the ridge, an old lineman in an engineman’s jacket was walking down through the rows of pruned trees, checking the buds that would open into staymans and winesaps when the April rains came back.
The town had its story now.
Not the story whispered over decaf at the auxiliary tables. Not the story traded at the gas pumps between the farm trucks.
The real story.
The story written in the burnt paint of a destroyer's engine room, in the blue ink of an official citation, and in the clean, unyielding lines of an orchard that refused to be paved.
I turned back to the road that ran east toward Washington.
"Commander Hale," I said, pulling my black leather gloves over my scarred fingers, smoothing the wrists down tight against my watch.
"Yes, Lieutenant Commander?"
"I’m ready to take the watch."
May you like
"Then let's get underway," he said.
He opened the door of the blue sedan, I walked back to my mother’s old wagon, and together we dropped down off the mountain into the long, clean light of the eastern sky.
