The Iron Veterans Motorcycle Club rode in formation on Highway 14 south toward Bakersfield. Hank led the column on the matte-black Heritage Softail with the dent on the left side of the fuel tank that had never been fixed because June said it gave the bike character. He had not ridden in a column in 9 years. He had forgotten how it felt. The sense of mass and momentum that comes from a group of motorcycles moving together, the sound of it, the way the engines combine into something larger than any individual bike.
He had ridden in formation for 22 years at events and funerals and charity rides. He knew what it felt like. He had forgotten how much it felt like belonging. The VA office in Bakersfield opened at 8. They arrived at 8:40 after stopping once for fuel.
The intake waiting room had plastic chairs and fluorescent lighting and a wall-mounted television playing a morning news program with the sound off. There were three other people already waiting when they came through the door. Then eight veterans in leather vests came through the door behind Hank with Archer Garrison in a button-down shirt and Colt walking between his father and the old "Sergeant Major. " The woman at the intake desk had been working at the Bakersfield VA for 23 years. She had seen many things come through that door.
She had not seen this particular configuration before. "My son needs to speak with someone today," Archer Garrison said. "He is here voluntarily, and he is ready to talk. " The woman nodded. She pulled a form across the desk.
Colt sat with the counselor for 2 hours and 17 minutes. Hank waited in the lobby with the others. He drank the bad coffee from the machine in the corner without complaint. He sat next to Curtis Whitmore and they talked quietly about Kuwait and about the years after and about the particular challenge of being a man in his late 60s who had spent his whole adult life defined by a structure that no longer existed and was required to figure out who he was without it. Curtis Whitmore said, "The mistake I made was thinking that who I was in the core was something that got left behind when I took the uniform off.
" He paused. "It goes with you. Everything you are goes with you. The question is just what you do with it when there is no one issuing orders anymore. " Hank looked at the chain at his neck.
"I have been asking the wrong question for 9 years," he said. "What question have you been asking? Whether I did more harm than good? " Curtis Whitmore was quiet for a moment. Then he said, "And what question should you have been asking?
" Hank looked at his hands, the hands that had set bones in the field and tied splints and held rifles and carried men through fire. And many years before any of that held a small woman in a yellow sundress on a dance floor in San Bernardino, and understood with the certainty of something that does not require analysis that he had found the center of his life. Whether I am done, he said. In the lobby, not far from where Hank and Curtis sat, Wyatt Decker had found a chair in the corner. He sat with his elbows on his knees and his hands folded watching the room.
At one point, about an hour into the wait, Hank got up and walked to the coffee machine and then walked back and stopped in front of Wyatt's chair. He held out the second cup. Wyatt looked up. "You are Wyatt Decker," Hank said. "Roy told me about you.
I am "Hank Briggs. "" Wyatt took the cup. He wrapped both hands around it. "I know who you are, sir," he said. The whole halfway house knew by last night.
Hank sat down in the chair beside him. "Roy told me you served at Camp Lejeune. " "Yes, sir. " "What happened when you came back? " Wyatt was quiet for a moment.
Then he said the same thing that happens to most of them. I think I came back and the structure was gone and I did not know what I was without it. And then I made some choices that confirmed my worst opinion of myself. He looked at his coffee. I have been trying to find a reason to keep making the next choice for about 2 years now.
He said, ""Some mornings are easier than others. "" Hank looked at the young man beside him. "Are you here because Roy asked you to be, or are you here because you want to be? " Wyatt thought about it seriously, which Hank appreciated. He did not give the easy answer.
I am here because this morning when Mr. Boon knocked on my door and told me to get my jacket, I thought about not answering. I sat on the edge of my cot, I thought about it for about 30 seconds. And then I decided that a man who drove to a halfway house before sunrise to pick me up probably deserved to have the door opened. He paused.
So I guess I am here because of him. But I walked in under my own feet. "That is something, maybe. " "That is something," Hank said. He was quiet for a moment.
When we leave here today, I am going to give you a phone number. It is the number of the Iron Veterans Club. You call that number anytime, day or night. Someone answers. "Do you understand what I am telling you?
" Wyatt looked at him. "Yes, sir. " He said. When Cole came out of the counselor's office, his eyes were puffy and his shoulders were straighter. He had been admitted to an outpatient program, twice weekly group sessions and individual counseling, a phone number available any hour, a follow-up appointment the following Tuesday.