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He Would Have Agreed
"Sure wasn't what he used to be," one brother remarked to the other as they watched their father gaze at
the ranch's 100 acres from the porch of their lifelong home.
If he could have, Big Ben Wheeler would have agreed.
Specifically, he would have agreed he wasn't the man:
Who, at 18, had joined the Marines and boxed his way to the regimental championship before going to war in Korea.
Who'd come home, having traded his left hand for the Silver Star, to rescue this ranch from his father's bankruptcy.
Who'd spent thousands of days under the big Montana sky working the land and tending his herd.
Who'd lain with his wife on the soft, green, backyard grass turned silver by the light of the great Milky Way
making sweet love that, three times, quickened her with child.
Who'd buried his mother and father, and then his wife and their stillborn daughter, in the just-as-green
family plot between the house and the river.
Who'd taught his two sons how to walk, run, catch, throw, box, ride, drive a tractor, brand a herd,
and do the thousand chores a ranch requires.
Who knew that such teaching, and the toughening of men, often necessitated a cuff at an ear or a boot up the ass.
And he certainly would have agreed he wasn't the man who'd fought and beaten cancer twice; or even
the man who'd learned it wanted a rematch.
He would have agreed, but he couldn't; not to anything. The drugs they'd given him to help with
the chemo-the ones that made him twitch and leak and go limp and not care about anything-were too
deep inside him. That was why his sons, his court-appointed guardians, had been the ones to sign
the papers selling these 100 acres to a developer. Now, although Ben didn't know it, his boys
were both $500,000.00 richer; and anxious to return to Las Vegas.
The bulldozer stood ready to knock down the house. A back hoe was already chewing at that oh-so-green grass
to unearth the coffins.
For safety's sake, the hook that had replaced Big Ben's left hand was gone; and, like a tear, a single drop
of mucus hung from the end of his nose.
Had Big Ben Wheeler been the man he once was, he would have gripped the Silver Star-slapped into his right
hand by one of his sons-with such a fury that blood would have spilled onto the ground. But he wasn't. And so,
as his sons led his leaking, trembling body back to the car to return it to the VA hospital-its new and permanent
home-his arm went limp, his hand opened, and the pointed star tumbled to the ground where it lay, soon to be
covered by dust, and then forevermore forgotten.
William de Rham Born and raised in New York City, William de Rham is a graduate of
Georgetown University and the University of California, Hastings College of the Law. A former
trial lawyer and the author of Smuggler’s Bluff (a novel being offered for publication),
he resides in Maine where he is at work on a second novel and a variety of short stories.
His work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in the on-line magazines Pulse and New Works Review,
and in the print journals RiverSedge and Broken Bridge Review.
Email: William de Rham
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