The Farewell Medallion

Chapter 5

“Will, who the hell is Tracey Halberson?”

“Calm down Grant.”  Will Branch, the person on the other end of the phone knew Grant better than any other human being.  They had lived together in the close confines of a Vietnamese prison cell for over four years.  In a job he held previously in Washington he had become acquainted with many people in the community of families of MIAs.

“I know Tracey,” he said, “she can be a bit of a rebel, but when she believes in a cause she accepts no limits.”

Grant shifted the phone back to his right ear, slipping out of the dark green blazer and dropping it on the pale yellow comforter in Jeff Robert’s guestroom.  “Well what does she think gives her the right to go around stirring up false hopes among families of MIA’s.  I mean, Jeez, what right does she have to give their money to some yahoo who claims to know things even government intelligence can’t find out.  She’s obviously in cahoots with this fraud trying to capitalize on the ignorance and hopes of the innocent.”

“Hold on just a minute, Grant.  If you’re going to launch off on a crusade against the woman, at least try to start out with a few facts.  Tracey’s husband Tim Halberson, was one of the last casualties in Vietnam.  He was a marine lieutenant flying a helo into South Vietnam in late April of seventy-five on a sensitive mission to evacuate some people important to the U. S. Government.  When his aircraft was shot down, killing all on board, it was politically incorrect to admit the incident even happened by either government.  It took two years to get an explanation and three more years to get his body recovered and brought back for a respectable burial.  Tracey was only twenty when it happened.  During that time she was pushed aside, talked down to, hounded by the press and lied to by a bunch of low level creeps who were more concerned with their self serving importance than respecting someone who gave his all for his country.

“When I went to the job in SECNAV we finally started to get everybody stomping in the same direction on the issues and get it straightened out about who knew what, without blowing a lot of smoke about what a great job we had been doing.

“I had lunch several times with Tracey then.  She had begun to talk to some of the MIA families.  She was doing some soul searching about where her allegiance and priorities should be.  I can tell you this; she is not one to lie around in complacency.  If she smells a wrong she will root it out and thrash it to death.”

Grant sat down in the oak rocker next to the bed.  “All right, hey, I may have leaned a bit heavy on her case, but you know how I’ve always felt about Art, and now I’m getting very protective about his daughter.”

“I understand.  You’ve certainly had your share of stuff to deal with lately.  Betty’s struggle with cancer had to wear on you and with the funeral just over a month ago . . . Are you okay?”

“Oh yeah.  That’s why I’m taking some time off.  I’m going to San Diego tomorrow to spend some time with Scott.”

“Good.  How’s he doing?”

“Oh fine, he’ll make lieutenant commander this fall and be up for reassignment.  That’s why I need to get this POW rescue scheme put to rest and get on out there.”

“Well, I can’t help you with this guy named Jasper, but I think you should talk to Tracey after you calm down.  It’s been years since I’ve seen her.  I called last year to offer my congratulations on her new book.  I can give you her phone number and her URL.  She’s on the Internet.”

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The Internet was not Grant’s thing.  Sitting for long periods of time in front of a cathode ray tube was not his idea of excitement.  He had dialed the phone number that Will had given him several times getting a busy signal for his effort each time he tried.  Now Jeff was doing his best to explain the wonders of the information explosion and how it would change the way we educate our children.

“Now let me get this straight,” Grant said trying to recap what he thought he heard Jeff explain.  “We’re connected through phone lines to the University of Texas, Arlington and from there information packets go bouncing around the world in a nearly infinite number of possible paths until it happens upon some computer that claims it, captures it and answers back through the same random path system.”

“Well, I’m not sure that’s exactly what I was trying to say, but I think you know enough to find out what you want.  I’m going to leave it with you and catch the late news before turning in.”

“Okay, if I have any trouble I’ll connect a tin can and string to it.  I’ll see you in the morning.  Good night.”

Grant raised his head to squint through the bifocals and typed the URL, HTTP://www.G2.NET/Tracey.HTM, in the address space.

He watched the little globe in the upper right hand corner spin around, wondering if there was any significance to the number of rotations it made before something happened.  The background changed colors to a soft rose.  An upbeat rendition of Coming Home began to play softly on the speakers built into the monitor while a splash of images and text began to appear randomly on the screen.

Welcome to Tracey’s Corner!  Dedicated to America’s prisoners of war – missing in action.

I’m glad you stopped by for a visit.  I hope you will find my little crossroads site helpful as a destination or a jumping off place on your way to one of the locations served by the links below:

Find out what’s new and exciting.
Learn about the plight of MIA’s and how you can become involved.
Read excerpts from my Books and find out how to get them.
Find out some things about me.
Other places that you might find interesting.
Please visit often to stay current; I will continue to update these pages daily.

Grant clicked on me and the music changed to a soft Bali Hai.

Hi!  Briefly I was born an Army brat at the Presidio in San Francisco in 1955.  I grew up living in exciting places like: Frankfurt, Germany; Fort Bragg, North Carolina; Honolulu, Hawaii; and Okinawa.  My writing career was launched from the University of Alabama School of Journalism.  Although I’m still a southern girl at heart, I am now working as a freelance writer out of Laguna Beach, California.  I’m passionate about saving the environment, total accounting of POW/MIAs, and cross-country cycling.

Life is short.  Commitment is long.  My goal is to let the meaning of life emerge as it will through my search for ways that I can make a difference.

“A man is not dead until he is forgotten”

After reading the short biography Grant leaned back waiting for the photographs on the screen to completely fill in.  One was an ocean sunset looking from across a redwood deck with a lone female figure silhouetted in the foreground.  In the other a helmeted rider leaned against hard-over handlebars on a dirt bike that was grabbing some air at the peak of a steep winding trail.

The lady is certainly a study in contrast, he thought.  She seems sincere enough.  Maybe I’m the one who just doesn’t get it.  He went back to Tracey’s home page and began surfing through the other links finding an ever-expanding number of places to go.  Then returning and branching out again to interesting pages that didn’t yield any answers to the questions he was looking for.  The mesmerizing notion that the very next click would be the one that provided that all-important bit of information kept him going much longer than he had intended.  It had been a long day.  He pushed back, shut down the computer and picked up the phone for one more try.

This time the call went through and rang four times before the recorder answered with a message from a rather soft southern female voice.  “Hi!  You’ve reached 234-4789.  I’ll be away from my phone for the rest of the evening.  Please leave a message after the beep.  For Craig, We have all the money for Jaz except forty from Sacramento, We need to get it to him before his plane leaves tomorrow for Hong Kong.  If you need me to do anything let me know.”

“Damn!”  Grant slammed the receiver down.  “What does that mean?”

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“No, I’ve changed my flight again.  I’m sorry.  Don’t try to meet me.  I’ll be flying into the Los Angeles Airport.  I can just get a car, spend the night and drive down Sunday morning.”

Grant sat in the overstuffed club chair on the sun porch with the phone in one hand and his third cup of coffee in the other, watching the patterns of early morning sun play across the quarry tile floor.

“Okay Scott, I know this sounds complicated, but I just need to catch up with this Halberson lady and make sure she has Lorna’s best interest in check.  The only problem is that I haven’t talked to her yet.  I can’t wait around here for that, so I’ll just keep trying on the way.”

He paused to take a sip of coffee and nodded as if to acknowledge what was being said on the other end.

“I know.  I still feel bad about the delay.  I’ll call you this evening and let you know how things are going.”

Grant was finishing his call when Jeff struggled in carrying the gray Samsonite suitcase with the broken handle.

“Whew!  I didn’t realize there was so much junk in that basement, the accumulation of twenty-five years.  This was buried under a twenty year stash of old tax receipts.”

“Thanks Jeff, sorry you had to go to so much trouble.  There’s probably nothing in there of any value.  Betty must have forgotten that it was here.”

“I mentioned it to her a few times but I think she was trying to forget that period of her life.  She stayed with us about three months.  Just moped around.  We were all excited you were coming home.  She seemed kind of pensive, almost agitated.  I know things were a little strained for a while after you came home.  Does it bother you to talk about it?”

“No, I guess it was no secret.  There were many types of casualties from the war.  Well, let’s see what we have.”

Jeff took the dirty coffee cups to the kitchen leaving Grant going through what was mostly old clothes, two Spiegel’s Catalogs, four stacks of canceled checks, several paper-back books and a handful of pens and pencils.  These he would discard.  The two items that remained in the suitcase he would keep and take with him.

The first was a small red jewelry case.  When he first opened it, he didn’t recognize what it was that he saw.  He picked up the shapeless lump of gold and turned it over and over in his hand.  He looked closely until he was sure.  The medallion that had been Betty’s was smashed as if it had been beaten with a hammer many times.  He put it back in the case and closed it tightly.

At the bottom of the suitcase was a packet of letters about three inches thick, bound together by two wide rubber bands.  He would look at each one later.  The letter on the top of the stack was in a plain business size envelope.  It was different because it opened at the end and had no address.  He raised the flap and removed the three pages, torn from a legal pad, written in Betty’s swirling style of handwriting.  The letter, if it could be called that, rambled incessantly about the inequities of Betty’s life without making much sense to Grant.

When he turned over the last sheet there was a wallet sized photograph stuck face down on the paper.  Written on the back of the photograph were the words, “Why didn’t you come home.”

Grant pulled the picture away from the paper and turned it over.  It was a photograph of Art.