One Day in Philadelphia by Johnson R. David;

Author:Johnson, R. David;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
Published: 2019-04-12T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Five

The rest of the trip was uneventful. One of the legs had been switched from a flight to a shuttle bus, because the airline was having some difficulty and because of the weather in DC, but I still made my connection to Charleston in time.

Upon arrival, I slung my backpack over my shoulder. Now with my parka unzipped, I walked out into the warm air. Sitting there in front was an older model Ford station wagon, I recognized the driver as my mother’s husband. I had seen him when my older brother was in the hospital.

He never got out of the car. He directed me to put my things in the back seat and to get up front. He told me to put my seatbelt on. It’s got to be the first time in my life anyone had ever told me to do so.

I did as he instructed. He did not speak much on the drive. I had asked him a question or two, and he always responded with uneasy one-word responses. I opted for silence as well after a time.

After what seemed about an hour, we arrived at MenRiv. It was the naval housing complex next to the Polaris Missile Facility in Goose Creek.

“Do you work there?” I asked, pointing to the missile facility.

’No," he said. “I’m on the Hunley. It’s a sub tender stationed farther down this road.”

“What’s a sub tender?”

“It’s a repair ship,” he said. “We service the submarines. I’m a Hull Technician, HT1.” That was the most conversation I had had with him on the entire ride.

As we entered the housing complex, we went past a movie theatre and the commissary. Then, it gave way to a neighborhood full of single-story brick houses. Duplexes, with a single carport on either side. Every house looked exactly the same. And all of the streets had patriotic names, like Tecumseh Road or Theodore Roosevelt Circle.

We drove back to Henry Street. I imagined it was named for Patrick Henry, considering all of the other street names. Number seven was the driveway he pulled into. He drove all the way into the carport, stopping just in front of a Honda motorcycle that was parked sideways against the wall in the back.

My mother came out of the house first, followed by three small boys, and then my older brother. She grabbed me and hugged me. She leaned back and looked at me.

“Gee, I hope the swelling goes down on that,” she said as she lightly tapped my nose. “You used to have such a cute little nose.”

“The swelling has gone down,” I said. “This is me now.”

“Oh, wow!” she exclaimed. “I hope we can do something about that down the road.”

“I don’t care,” I responded. “It’s kind of grown on me.”

“Boy, I’ll say,” my older brother chimed in, which brought a hearty chuckle from the stepdad. My mother introduced me to my younger brothers, calling them by name; two blondes and a redhead in the middle with curly red hair. He reminded me instantly of Jody from ‘The Family Affair’.

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