Making Faces (41 page)

We were facing each other again, and I could
tell from Bailey's face he was excited. He shot in again, but I was
ready for him this time. I hit an inside trip and Bailey hit the
mat hard. I followed him down and proceeded to try and pin him. He
was squirming and bridging, and I was laughing because the kid was
actually pretty damn good, and I remember thinking, right before
his dad pulled me off him, ‘why doesn't Bailey wrestle?’” Ambrose
swallowed and his eyes shot to the end of the bench where Mike
Sheen sat with tears running down his face. Angie Sheen had her arm
wrapped around his and her head was on his shoulder. She was crying
too.

“I've never seen Coach Sheen look so pissed
and afraid. Not before and not since. Coach started yelling at me,
a high school kid pushed me, and I was scared to death. But Bailey
was just sitting there on the mat breathing hard and smiling.” The
audience burst into laughter then, and the tears that had started
to flow ebbed with the much-needed humor.

“Coach Sheen picked Bailey up off the mat and
was running his hands up and down Bailey's body, I guess making
sure I hadn't done any damage. Bailey just ignored him and looked
at me and said, 'Were you really trying, Ambrose? You didn't just
let me get that takedown, did you?'“ More smiles, more laughter.
But Ambrose seemed to be struggling with emotion, and the crowd
quieted immediately.

“Bailey just wanted to wrestle. He wanted a
chance to prove himself. And that day in the gym, when he took me
down, was a big moment for him. Bailey loved wrestling. Bailey
would have been an amazing wrestler if life had just handed him a
different set of cards. But that's not the way it worked out. But
Bailey wasn't bitter. And he wasn't mean. And he didn't feel sorry
for himself.

“When I got home from Iraq, Coach Sheen and
Bailey came and saw me. I didn't want to see anyone, because I was
bitter, and I was mean, and I felt sorry for myself.” Ambrose wiped
at the tears that were slipping down his cheeks. “Bailey wasn't
born with the things I have taken for granted every day of my life.
I was born with a strong body, free of disease, and more than my
fair share of athletic talent. I was always the strongest and the
biggest. And lots of opportunities have come my way because of it.
But I didn't appreciate it. I felt a lot of pressure and resented
the expectations and high hopes people had for me. I didn't want to
disappoint anyone, but I wanted to prove myself. Three years ago I
left town. I wanted to go my own way . . . even if it was just for
a while. I figured I'd come back, eventually, and I'd probably
wrestle and do what everyone wanted me to do. But that's not the
way it worked out,” Ambrose said again, “is it?”

“Bailey told me I should come to the
wrestling room, that we should start working out. I laughed,
because Bailey couldn't work out, and I couldn't see out of one of
my eyes or hear out of one of my ears, and wrestling was the last
thing I wanted to do. I really just wanted to die, and I thought
because Paulie and Grant and Jesse and Connor were dead, that that
was what I deserved.”

There was a sense of mourning in the audience
that surpassed the grief over Bailey's death. As Ambrose spoke the
names of his four friends there was an anguish that rippled through
the air, an anguish that had not been exorcised, a grief that had
not eased. The town had not been able to grieve for their loss, not
entirely. Nor had they been able to celebrate the return of one of
their own. Ambrose's inability to face what had happened to him and
to his friends made it impossible for anyone else to come to terms
with it, either.

Fern turned her head and found Paul Kimball's
mother in the crowd. She clutched the hand of her daughter, and her
head was bent, bowed with the emotion that permeated the air. Coach
Sheen buried his face in his hands, his love for the four dead
soldiers almost as deep as the love he felt for his son. Fern
longed to turn and find the faces of each loved one, to meet their
eyes and acknowledge their suffering. But maybe that was what
Ambrose was doing. Maybe he recognized that it was time . . . and
that it was up to him.

“Two days after Bailey died, I went to see
Coach Sheen. I thought he would be heartbroken. I thought he would
feel the way I've felt for the past year, missing my friends,
asking God why, angry as hell, basically out of my mind. But he
wasn't.

“Coach Sheen told me that when Bailey was
diagnosed, it was like the whole world stopped turning. Like it was
frozen in place. He said he and Angie didn't know if they would
ever be happy again. I've wondered that same thing over the last
year. But Coach said, looking back, that what felt like the worst
thing that could ever happen to them turned out to be an incredible
gift. He said Bailey taught him to love and to put things in
perspective, to live for the present, to say I love you often and
to mean it. And to be grateful for every day. It taught him
patience and perseverance. It taught him there are things that are
more important than wrestling.”

Coach Sheen smiled through his tears, and he
and Ambrose shared a moment with the whole town looking on.

“He also told me Bailey wanted me to speak at
his funeral.” Ambrose grimaced and the audience laughed at his
expression. He waited for them to grow quiet before he continued.
“You know I love wrestling. Wrestling taught me how to work hard,
to take counsel, to take my lumps like a man and win like one too.
Wrestling made me a better soldier. But like Coach Sheen, I've
learned there are things more important than wrestling. Being a
hero on the mat isn't nearly as important as being a hero off the
mat, and Bailey Sheen was a hero to many. He was a hero to me, and
he was a hero to everybody on the wrestling team.

“Shakespeare said, ‘the robbed that smiles
steals something from the thief.’” Ambrose's eyes shot to Fern's
and he smiled softly at the girl that had him quoting Shakespeare
once again. “Bailey is proof of this. He was always smiling, and in
so many ways he had life beat, not the other way around. We can't
always control what happens to us. Whether it's a crippled body or
a scarred face. Whether it's the loss of people we love and don't
want to live without,” Ambrose choked out.

“We were robbed. We were robbed of Bailey's
light, Paulie's sweetness, Grant's integrity, Jesse's passion and
Bean's love of life. We were robbed. But I've decided to smile,
like Bailey did, and steal something from the thief.” Ambrose
looked out across the mourners, most whom he had known his whole
life, and cried openly. But his voice was clear as he closed his
remarks.

“I'm proud of my service in Iraq, but I'm not
proud of the way I left or the way I came home. In a lot of ways, I
let my friends down . . . and I don't know if I'll ever forgive
myself completely for their loss. I owe them something, and I owe
you something. So I'll do my best to represent you and them well
wrestling for Penn State.”

Gasps ricocheted around the room, but Ambrose
continued over the excited response. “Bailey believed I could do
it, and I'm going to damn well do my best to prove him right.”

1995

“
How many stitches did you get?” Fern
wished Bailey would pull off the gauze taped to his chin so she
could see for herself. She'd run straight over when she’d heard the
news.

“
Twenty. It was pretty deep. I saw my jaw
bone.” Bailey seemed excited about the seriousness of his wound,
but his face fell almost immediately. He had a book on his lap, as
usual, but he wasn't reading. He was propped up in his bed, his
wheelchair pushed to the side, temporarily abandoned. Bailey's
parents had purchased the bed from a medical supply store a few
months before. It had bars along the side and buttons that would
raise your upper body so you could read or your feet so you could
pretend you were in a rocket ship shooting into space. Fern had
Bailey had ridden on it a few times until Angie had firmly told
them it wasn't a toy and she never wanted to catch them playing
spaceship on it, ever again.

“
Does it hurt?” Fern asked. Maybe that was
why Bailey was so glum.

“
Nah. It's still numb from the shot.”
Bailey poked at it to show her.

“
So what's wrong, buddy?” Fern hopped up
onto the bed, wiggling her little body next to his and pushing the
book aside to make more space.

“
I'm not going to walk again, Fern,”
Bailey said, his chin wobbling, making the gauze pad shimmy up and
down.

“
You can still walk a little though,
right?”

“
No. I can't. I tried today and I fell
down. Smacked my chin really hard on the ground.” The bandage on
Bailey's chin wobbled again, evidence to his claim.

For a while, Bailey had only used his
wheelchair when he got home from school, saving his strength so he
could leave it at home during the day. Then the school day got to
be too much, so Angie and Mike changed tactics, sending him to
school in his chair and letting him up in the evenings when his
strength would allow. But slowly, incrementally, his evening
freedom became more and more limited and his time in the chair
increased. Apparently now, he wasn't walking at all.

“
Do you remember your last step?” Fern
asked softly, not savvy enough at eleven to avoid direct questions
that might be painful to answer.

“
No. I don't. I would write it in my
journal if I did. But I don't know.”

“
I bet your mom wishes she could put it in
your baby book. She wrote down your first step, didn't she? She
probably wishes she could write down your last.”

“
She probably thought there would be
more.” Bailey gulped and Fern could tell he was trying not to cry.
“I thought there would be more. But I guess I used them all
up.”

“
I would give you some of my steps if I
could,” Fern offered, her chin starting to wobble too. They cried
together for a minute, two forlorn little figures on a hospital
bed, surrounded by blue walls and Bailey's things.

“
Maybe I can't take steps, but I can still
roll,” Bailey wiped at his nose, and he shrugged, abandoning his
self-pity, his optimism rising to the surface the way it always
did.

Fern nodded, glancing at his wheelchair with
a flood of gratitude. He could still roll. And then she
grinned.

“
You can't walk and roll, but you can rock
and roll,” Fern squealed and jumped off the bed to turn on some
music.

“
I can definitely rock and roll.” Bailey
laughed. And he did, singing at the top of his lungs while Fern
walked and rolled and boogied and leaped enough for both of
them.