Chapter 4: The Miracle

Two days later my brother flew home on a Rask jet.

Rask Marine staged his return at the company yard on Lake Union, under a banner that said WELCOME HOME, KIT.

There were six camera trucks.

There was a wheelchair at the foot of the jet stairs, and a blanket over a thin figure, and my brother's right hand wrapped in white gauze.

I stood behind the barricade with a hundred strangers.

Somebody had spotted me by the second row. A woman spat on the pavement at my feet.

"Coward," she said.

I let it stand.

My mother reached Kit first. She dropped to her knees beside the wheelchair and wrapped both arms around him, and the cameras loved it.

My father came down the stairs in a dark suit, one hand lifted to the crowd.

He stopped at the microphones.

"Thank you for coming," he said. "My son was given back to us by the grace of God and the courage of the Meridian's crew."

Quist stood two steps behind him with his folder.

"Kit's been through something no man should survive," my father went on. "He'll say a few words. Then he needs to rest."

He wheeled the chair up himself.

Kit looked terrible.

His face had gone gray. A bruise ran under one eye. His sandy hair had been cut, and it made him look younger than twenty-seven.

He looked at the microphones, and not once at the crowd.

"I called for help," Kit said.

His voice was flat and thin.

"I called the one man who could reach me. He hung up."

The crowd made a low sound.

My mother pressed her face into his shoulder.

"I don't know why," Kit said. "I don't want to know. I'm just glad to be alive."

It was a good speech.

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