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Distant Thunder

By Ann Gaylia O'Barr

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How many American bodies had he sent home in the course of his career? Neal Hudson had not kept count, but he figured it must be close to fifty.
On rare visits to the States, strangers he’d meet in a hotel or a car rental would ask him what he did for living. He’d fumble around, trying to explain. “I’m a consular officer.”
Raised eyebrows. “Oh?” “A Foreign Service officer.” “In the military, you mean?”
He would shake his head. “No. The State Department. I work in U.S. embassies overseas. Right now I’m at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut.” He added “Lebanon” and sometimes “in the Middle East” to help them in case they had difficulty identifying any country beyond Canada or Mexico.
He hated to tell them he was a diplomat, though that word was a more familiar term than Foreign Service officer. Only thing was, they seemed to think a diplomat was either a CIA agent or a cookie pusher who spent his time attending receptions with bigwigs.
He tried to explain. “For example, when a plane crashes in some remote corner of the world, somebody like me has to travel to the site and identify any American casualties. Call the families back home. Arrange for the bodies to be sent back to the States. My most important job is to help Americans overseas.” Not that overseas Americans didn’t have plenty of other problems, but the death cases were among the hardest to deal with.
Ma’am, I’m so sorry. I’m afraid your husband was in an automobile accident and didn’t make it. Yes, ma’am . Is there someone you can call to be with you?
The families always wanted details. He tried to break it to them gently if the relative had been drinking or on drugs or suffered a particularly violent death. Of course, they would find out how the person died when they got the death certificate and the autopsy report.
Sir, I have very bad news. It’s about your daughter. I’m sorry to have to tell you that she died. She was murdered. I know you need time to deal with this. Could I call you back later? You can think of questions, and I’ll try to
answer, I promise.
Sometimes they wanted to know how much the loved one had hurt before they died.
He was alive at the hospital, ma’am, but he was under sedation. They got him to the hospital very quickly.
He never lied, though. For one thing, the story sometimes came out in the news. Mainly, though, he did better telling the truth. He was pretty sure they would know if he tried to gloss over disturbing facts.
His superiors praised Neal’s empathetic handling of the death cases when they wrote his evaluation reports.
That last one, the kidnaping and brutal murder of the Lebanese -American man just outside Beirut, had threatened to become a nightmare for the Department. The Washington Post got hold of it; a senator for the man’s wife became involved. Neal defused it by calming the wife and grieving with her in the awful death of her young husband.
Though he hid it from his colleagues, the vulnerability of these people touched him. Whatever status his job gave him, he forgot it when he had to call the States and tell somebody a loved one had died or been killed. He broke down the first time he did it, as a junior officer, telling a father his son had died of a drug overdose in Morocco. Only that one time. You had to control your emotions because it made it harder on them if you cried while telling them.
There was the little boy, hit by a delivery truck as he rode his bike in the normally placid streets of Saudia City. That was the hardest one. Until now.
Because none of them prepared Neal for this one, when they told him his wife was killed.
It would not end like the others, when he handed the relative, or sent by mail, the legal document issued by the U.S. government certifying that a U.S. citizen had died abroad.
No, this time he had to return to the States with the body. And attend the funeral. And try to think how to live the rest of his life.
Neal stared out the plane window into darkness. No lights pricked the dead velvet below them. They were probably over the Mediterranean or some barren stretch of the Balkans. He wished the overhead showed the map, but dinner was over and the movie begun; he had no idea what movie.
Somewhere below him in the baggage compartment of this plane was the body of the woman he’d once made love to.
He relived that night in Beirut in Embassy housing, in bed but not asleep. He jerked up and grabbed his robe when the bell rang, hoping it was Fran. It wasn’t. His junior consular officer, Gloria, fidgeted on the doorstep, eyes wide, but she looked in better shape than his friend Doug. Doug looked so white his face almost glowed.
It was about Fran, of course. Otherwise Gloria wouldn’t have brought Doug, his good friend since they began the Foreign Service together. Hadn’t he broken such news to countless people before and knew the signs?
“I’m sorry, Neal, so sorry,” Gloria said. He was glad she used his name. Doug said, “Sorry, pal” and looked down at his feet. Neal stepped back for them to enter.
He could feel the raw hurt in Gloria’s throat. “Fran was in a wreck. An hour ago. The Foreign Ministry called us. A truck lost a steering mechanism. Veered into her lane. Nothing anyone could do.”
Neal’s consular training kept getting in the way. Tell the person the worst right away. Don’t stretch it out. Tell them.
He said it. “Dead.” A statement, not a question, but Gloria nodded. Neal didn’t collapse, but Doug looked like he was close to it.
They gave him more time in the bedroom than he needed for dressing. Probably they expected him to weep, but he didn’t, just tore at the shock. He compressed it inside himself until it was manageable, although the most amazing revelation almost undid him.
He loved Fran after all.
God.
God?
Why God?
A terrible t ruth crawled through the shock, a truth emblazoned in the lives of those he’d worked with in the crisis of a loved one’s dying. No middle ground, because tragedy causes some to deny faith, others to embrace it.
He did not want to embrace it, not after all these years. He stepped out and joined the other two, pacing in the living room. Light from the one lamp glanced off a picture of him and Fran on a beach in the Seychelles and other mementoes: tapestries, a curved scimitar, and an Arabic -numbered clock.
The typical “bongs and gongs” most Foreign Service officers collected from far flung posts.
Fran’s body must be identified, of course. Nobody had to tell him that. Hadn’t he stood often enough with a deceased’s family member or colleague as they identified a friend or loved one? From the beginning of his career he instinctively knew when to hover for assistance and when to stand aside respectfully while the person wrestled with thoughts and emotions.
This time Neal led the others and climbed in the back of Gloria’s Jeep Wrangler for the trip to the morgue before Gloria or Doug could direct him.
He thought he wanted to be alone in the back, but he was mistaken. After Gloria picked up Habib, the section’s senior local staffer who always assisted in the death cases, Habib’s presence beside him comforted. So did his simple words. “Dear Boss, I’m sorry. So sorry.”
His arm on Neal’s shoulder kept him sane as Neal studied Fran’s face at the morgue, identifiable despite the livid gash on her forehead and across one eye. He nodded and turned away, jaw clenched but dry-eyed.
As they climbed back in the Wrangler and drove away, Habib’s cheeks glistened. Neal had never seen Habib, stalwart as a Lebanese cedar, show emotion. Perhaps he had cried it all out when members of his family had died in Lebanon’s bloody civil war. His tears oozed now, and they meant more to Neal than Doug’s blurted remarks.
Doug kept telling him that nobody could have done anything, nothing could have prevented it, as though that were the most important thing about Fran’s death.
He knew he could have prevented it: that argument he, in hurting frustration, had begun. That last argument.

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