BLACK PRESIDENT, Chapter 36. Rudy adjusts to a life as Vietnam vet with one leg. Sarah splits up with Leon when he professes love for Mary Brown.
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CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
January 27, 1970
Even with the crutches, Rudy was finding it pretty tough to get around with half a leg gone. And his good leg, bloated and weak from taking all the weight, was problematic. Beyond that, the metal plate that held his skull together worried him. How could the nurses keep calling him “The lucky one,” he wondered. Just because he had had the misfortune to wake up again, into the world of bright lights and shiny metal basins? That was luck? Most of the others...all the rest of the guys except for Ruffy...were either missing, presumed dead, or just plain zipped in a bag. Ruffy had made it through with a side wound and his right arm torn off by an incoming, and had ended up in the Oakland hospital as well. He filled Rudy in on the firefight and what happened to the rest of the guys that deadly afternoon.
“We found you in that hooch and pulled your butt out..messy tho. Your foot was over near the wall...all fucked up, but we still packed it out wit you. Shadow bought it around the time you got hit...not much to clean up. Frank and Dandy-D, ambushed, a few days later. So just you and me, ole buddy. And I’m heading to Chi-town, so this gonna be my big goodbye. Yessir. I’m tire’ of the coast. Gonna live wit ma granny on the South Side. So you let me know if ever you need a rough-riding black dude, riding shotgun in yo life, OK?”
“You know. I...,” began Rudy, wondering to himself if he was still motivated. “You know I...I have to go there myself...Chicago. Yeah. When I get all this hardware off...”
Rudy strained to get his bandaged leg more comfortably positioned on the bed. “Yeah. When I get the hell outta here...got some unfinished business. So...I’ll run into you for sure.”
Ruffy handed Rudy a piece of paper with his Chicago address on it and brought up his hand in a gun shape. “Pop! Pow!” he said, aiming it at the large mirrored light above Rudy’s bed. The sounds served as a kind of weird salute; both men knew they’d been through the same shit-storm. They smiled and nodded to each other, knowing that they were done with it all now.
After Ruffy left, the hospital became quickly silent again. Chicago. Seattle. Oakland, Tangiers. Rudy didn’t give a fuck where he lived anymore. He just wondered about one thing. That Kennedy woman – Sarah.
***
Sarah sensed the change in Leon after a few months of his Raleigh job, but didn’t connect any significance to the perfume fumes that emanated from his shirts as she stuck them in the washing machine. As he explained, repeatedly, he sold perfume, and gave samples away every day, so why shouldn’t some of it rub off on his clothes? That made sense, didn’t it? Leon didn’t bother to tell his wife that he had fallen in love on Kimbark Street.
Sarah noticed he was more aggressive during their recent lovemaking than ever before, and she took that as a good sign. After the fall from the roof back in Seattle, there had been months of false starts, where Leon just couldn’t maintain an erection. Now, he seemed to have almost endless staying power. It seemed clear he had mostly recovered from whatever psychological problems the accident had caused. She didn’t realize that in her husband’s mind he was making love to another woman. Mary Brown found herself also deeply in love, and it was becoming difficult for her. She told Leon he had to make a choice.
“Her or me,” said Mary after an afternoon of sex while her father was at the church. “I can’t keep loving you this’a way. It’s not right.” The tears and desperate hugs before Leon left kept tearing at him, but he continued to try to maintain both his worlds. Up until Mary told him she was pregnant.
“You cheap-ass bastard. You’re moving out...right now!” exclaimed Dee when she learned about the affair. “You came back into Sarah’s life to hurt her and you’ve done it. Now get!”
Leon stayed at Johnny’s boarding house for a month before making the move to Atlanta. On a wind-blown Monday morning in March, he and Mary took the bus out of Chicago, heading south toward his old stomping grounds. He would miss the twins, certainly grieve about leaving them behind, but what choice did he have? Divorced men had to move on.
Sarah grabbed her journal, started the rocker rocking and tried to write away the pain.
March 4, 1970
Dear Sons,
Today your Daddy moved away from us, gone to live in another town far away. He still loves you, but because he found another woman to love he can’t stay here with me and Dee anymore. Sometimes love can haunt a person, make them invisible and that’s what Leon became around here. He wasn’t really living with us. His spirit was with another person. We saw him happy, but it wasn’t cause of us that he was smiling. He was smiling at thinking about her. So we had to let him go to her and be happy for real. Don’t need no lie in my life and I know you don’t want lies either. He’s going to still be your Daddy, but just not here with us in our house.
For your own sakes please try to forgive him when you become big men. When you get yourselves all grown up you may someday love two people at the same time and know how he feels. I hope you don’t, but maybe you will. Then you can think of how much he hurt himself inside. Remember he was always a good loving man to me and you kids. Try to remember that. He’ll always love you. And no one can ever take that love away.
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