There was a hush in the church as Ambrose rose and walked to the pulpit. Fern couldn't breath. Ambrose hated being stared at, and here he was the center of attention. So many of the people sitting in the packed church were seeing him for the first time. Light filtered down through the stained glass windows and created patterns around the pulpit, making Ambrose look as if his appearance was marked by a special grace.
Ambrose looked out over the audience, and the silence was so deafening he must have questioned whether his hearing had left him in both ears. He was so handsome, Fern thought. And to her he was. Not in the traditional sense . . . not anymore, but because he stood straight, and his chin was held high. He looked fit and strong in his navy suit, his body a testament to his tenacity and the time he spent with Coach Sheen in the wrestling room. His gaze was steady and his voice was strong as he began to speak.
“When I was eleven years old, Bailey Sheen challenged me to a wrestle off.” Chuckles erupted around the room, but Ambrose didn't smile. “I knew Bailey because we went to school together, obviously, but Bailey was Coach Sheen's kid. The wrestling coach. The coach I hoped to impress. I'd been to every one of Coach Sheen's wrestling camps since I was seven years old. And so had Bailey. But Bailey never wrestled at the camps. He rolled around on the mats and was always in the thick of things, but he never wrestled. I just thought it was because he didn't want to or something. I had no idea he had a disease.
“So when Bailey challenged me to a match, I really didn't know what to think. I had noticed some things, though. I had noticed that he had started walking on his toes and his legs weren't straight and strong. He wobbled and his balance was way off. He would fall down randomly. I thought he was just a spaz.”
More chuckles, this time more tentative.
“Sometimes my friends and I would make jokes about Bailey. We didn't know.” Ambrose's voice was almost a whisper, and he stopped to compose himself.
“So here we were, Bailey Sheen and me. Bailey had cornered me at the end of camp one day and asked me if I'd wrestle him. I knew I could easily beat him. But I wondered if I should . . . maybe it would make Coach Sheen mad, and I was a lot bigger than Bailey. I was a lot bigger than all the kids.” Ambrose smiled a little at that, and the room relaxed with his self-deprecation. “I don't know why I agreed to it. Maybe it was the way he looked at me. He was so hopeful, and he kept glancing over to where his dad was standing, talking with some of the high school kids that were helping with the camp.
“I decided I would just kind of roll around with him, you know, let him shoot a few moves on me the way the biggest high school kids let me do with them. But before I knew it, Bailey had shot in on me, a very sweet single leg, and he attached himself to my leg. It caught me by surprise, but I knew what to do. I sprawled immediately, but he followed me down, spinning around behind me, just like you're supposed to do, riding me. If there had been a ref he would have scored a takedown–two points, Sheen. It embarrassed me a little, and I scrambled out, trying a little harder than I had before.
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.