‘He wanted to be a soldier,’ Mr Hobie said. ‘Always. It was his ambition. I approved of it at the time, of course. We were unable to have other children, so Victor was on his own, the light of our lives, and I thought that to be a soldier and to serve his country was a fine ambition for the only son of a patriotic father.’
There was silence again. A cough. A hiss of oxygen. Silence.
‘Did you approve of Vietnam, Major?’ Hobie asked suddenly.
Reacher shrugged.
‘I was too young to have much of an opinion,’ he said. ‘But knowing what I know now, no, I wouldn’t have approved of Vietnam.’
‘Why not?’
‘Wrong place,’ Reacher said. ‘Wrong time, wrong reasons, wrong methods, wrong approach, wrong leadership. No real backing, no real will to win, no coherent strategy.’
‘Would you have gone?’
Reacher nodded.
‘Yes, I would have gone,’ he said. ‘No choice. I was the son of a soldier, too. But I would have been jealous of my father’s generation. Much easier to go to World War Two.’
‘Victor wanted to fly helicopters,’ Hobie said. ‘He was passionate about it. My fault again, I’m afraid. I took him to a county fair, paid two bucks for him to have his first flight in one. It was an old Bell, a crop duster. After that, all he wanted to be was a helicopter pilot. And he decided the Army was the best place to learn how.’
He slid another photograph out of the folder. Passed it across. It showed the same boy, now twice the age, grown tall, still grinning, in new fatigues, standing in front of an Army helicopter. It was an H-23 Hiller, an old training machine.
‘That’s Fort Wolters,’ Hobie said. ‘All the way down in Texas. US Army Primary Helicopter School.’
Reacher nodded. ‘He flew choppers in ‘Nam?’
‘He passed out second in his class,’ Hobie said. ‘That was no surprise to us. He was always an excellent student, all the way through high school. He was especially gifted in math. He understood accbuntancy. I imagined he’d go to college and then come into partnership with me, to do the book work. I looked forward to it. I struggled in school, Major. No reason to be coy about it now. I’m not an educated man. It was a constant delight for me to see Victor doing so well. He was a very smart boy. And a very good boy. Very smart, very kind, a good heart, a perfect son. Our only son.’
The old lady was silent. Not eating the cake, not drinking the coffee.
‘His passing out was at Fort Rucker,’ Hobie said. ‘Down in Alabama. We made the trip to see it.’
He slid across the next photograph. It was a duplicate of one of the framed prints from the mantel. Faded pastel grass and sky, a tall boy in dress uniform, cap down over his eyes, his arm around an older woman in a print dress. The woman was slim and pretty. The photograph was slightly out of focus, the horizon slightly tilted. Taken by a fumbling husband and father, breathless with pride.
‘That’s Victor and Mary,’ the old man said. ‘She hasn’t changed a bit, has she, that day to this?’
‘Not a bit,’ Reacher lied.
‘We loved that boy,’ the old woman said quietly. ‘He was sent overseas two weeks after that photograph was taken.’
‘July of ’68,’ Hobie said. ‘He was twenty years old.’
‘What happened?’ Reacher asked.
‘He served a full tour,’ Hobie said. ‘He was commended twice. He came home with a medal. I
could see right away the idea of keeping the books for a print shop was too small for him. I thought he would serve out his time and get a job flying helicopters for the oil rigs. Down in the Gulf, perhaps. They were paying big money then, for Army pilots. Or Navy, or Air Force, of course.’
‘But he went over there again,’ Mrs Hobie said. ‘To Vietnam again.’
‘He signed on for a second tour,’ Hobie said. ‘He didn’t have to. But he said it was his duty. He said the war was still going on, and it was his duty to be a part of it. He said that’s what patriotism meant.’