“I can do that, but you’ll be at your bungalow. Won’t that crimp your style with your platonic friend?”
I touched Hudson’s hand, and he grabbed hold of mine, interlacing our fingers. “I want you to visit me at my bungalow. I want you to help me move in, and I want you to come see me. Come often. I’ll give you a key, so if I lock myself out, you can let me in again. You have to keep me on top of my game, make me eat disgusting food, and chastise me for failing every time I put something in my mouth.”
“That sounds good.”
“So, you approve of my bungalow?”
“I have to see it first, see you in it, and make sure you’re all right. Will platonic Joe have a key?” he asked and crammed another Twinkie into his mouth.
It was time to change the subject.
“Where are you going tomorrow?” I asked.
“I could tell you, but I’d have to kill you.”
“Sounds exotic.”
He laughed. “Well, I can tell you that it’s not a five-star hotel with room service and fresh towels every morning.”
“Do you like the Marines?”
He picked up his cup, again and took a long drink from it. “It’s everything I know. Everything I wanted to be. I wanted to make a difference.”
“That sounds wonderful. I’ve never made a difference.”
“That’s not true.”
“Yes, it is,” I insisted.
“I know from personal experience that you’ve made a difference. You’re a special person.”
“Isspeciala nice word for crazy or stupid?”
“I’m not some kind of hero, Eliza. I joined the Marines because I was offered a choice,” Hudson said. “I could join the Marines, or I could go to prison. A judge offered me that choice.”
“So, you chose the Marines.”
Hudson shook his head. “No. I didn’t like authority, so the military was out, as far as I was concerned. So, I chose prison. I had just turned eighteen, and I was only sentenced to two years, so I thought it would be an easy way to spend two years. Three hots and a cot and all of that nonsense.”
“Holy crap, you were in prison for two years?”
“I was in prison for fifteen minutes,” he said, laughing. “I went there, freaked out, and changed my mind. I begged them to call the judge for me, and the next thing I knew, I was on a bus to Camp Pendleton.”
I put my cup down and picked up a package of Twinkies. “I don’t blame you. I would hate prison. The mattresses, the toilets, the criminals. I’m not sure I would like the Marines much more, though.”
“In prison, you acquire enemies who want you dead. In the Marines, you get a family who will die for you. In prison, you’re stuck inside and you don’t advance in life until you’re released. In the Marines, you travel the world, advance every day, accomplish more than you think you’re capable of. The only similarity is the food and the yelling. Rotten food and lots of yelling.”
“But you loved it. I can tell you loved it,” I said.
“I came up through the system since I was four years old. No one ever told me I was good at anything, so that’s what I believed. That I wasn’t good at anything.”
“But you were good at the Marines,” I guessed.
He nodded. “I was good at leading. Good until…”
Hudson drifted off. I knew there was something more to tell. Something that happened in his beloved Marines, and it left him with a darkness that refused to leave. I also believed deeply that the reason he reached out to me that night at the grocery store and decided to save me had something to do with the darkness that haunted him.
“You’re a good man,” I told him because I didn’t know what else to say. Sometimes that’s all someone needs to hear, that they’re good, that they’re deserving.
