” The clerk does not respond. There is no form for that. Walter Hoyt waits. 1 second, 2, 3. He picks up his Manila folder. He puts on his brown felt hat. He turns toward the door. John Wayne watches him go. Engagement break. Where are you watching from tonight? Drop your state in the comments.
I want to see how far this story reaches. Pin a flag for Walter Hoyt while you’re at it. And engagement break. Wayne sits a moment longer. He looks at the empty seat where Walter Hoyt sat. He looks at the door swinging closed behind him. Then he stands. >> >> He walks to the counter. The clerk looks up and her hand goes flat against the stack of forms.
Some clerks recognize him and some do not. This one does. “Ma’am,” Wayne says, >> >> “Sergeant Daniel Hoyt, 7th Cavalry.” Chip Young Lee, 51. “Sir, I cannot release another man’s file to file number.” She finds it. She reads it to him. “Officer who approved the Purple Heart in ’53, name.” She finds that, too.
>> >> “Battalion commander on the citation.” Lieutenant Colonel Earl Reese, deceased 1958. “Office of the Adjutant General, current name.” She looks at her index card. “Major General Walter D. Cleveland, sir.” Wayne writes none of it down. He nods once. He turns and walks out of the lobby.
He does not visit his Marine friend on the surgical ward today. That visit will keep. He finds Walter Hoyt in the parking lot, sitting in a faded green 1953 Ford pickup truck with the door open. The truck has a Sallisaw, Oklahoma license plate. Walter is folding the Manila folder closed across his knees. He is not crying.
He is not anything. He is a man at the end of a thing he has done nine times. Wayne walks up. He does not introduce himself. The old man knows. Most older men in Oklahoma know. “Mr. Hoyt, sir, I need an address.” Walter Hoyt looks up. “Sir, you don’t” “An address where the package should go.
” Walter looks at him a long moment. Then he gives him an address. Sallisaw, Oklahoma. Route 4, mailbox 11. The mailbox is a tin one his son helped him put up in the summer of 1948, the year before Daniel left for Korea. Wayne nods. He walks to his own car, a dark sedan rented out of Tulsa. >> >> He gets in.
He drives toward downtown Muskogee. Walter Hoyt sits in his pickup for a long time before he starts the engine. The folder is on the seat beside him. The folder is empty of new paper. It always is. The Severs Hotel sits on Broadway in downtown Muskogee. It is a six-story brick building from 1912. Wayne parks the rented Tulsa sedan on the street, walks past the brass-trimmed doors, and signs the guest register under his given name.
The desk clerk looks at the signature twice. Wayne asks for a room on the third floor. He asks for hotel stationery and a hotel envelope brought up. Room 307 has a brass bed, a small wooden writing desk by a tall sash window, and a print of a Charles Russell painting over the dresser. Wayne hangs his blazer on the back of the chair.
He rolls his sleeves to the elbow. He sits down. He takes the cap off a fountain pen. He could have walked away. He could have gone to the surgical ward and visited his friend and driven back to Tulsa and flown home to California. He could have left it where the army left it. He could have left it where the clerk left it.
He could have given Walter Hoyt a hundred-dollar bill and a handshake and a story to tell at the VFW. Those were the easy versions, but instead he writes a letter. The letter is one page. It is addressed to Major General Walter D. Cleveland, Office of the Adjutant General, Department of the Army, The Pentagon, Washington, D.C. Wayne and Cleveland served on the same Pacific bond tour in 1944.
Cleveland was a colonel then. He owed Wayne for nothing, except that Wayne had once driven him to a field hospital outside Manila when his Jeep broke down on a flooded road at night, and Cleveland had never forgotten it. The letter begins, “Walter, there is a Gold Star father in eastern Oklahoma named Walter Hoyt.
” It gives the file number. It gives the date of action. It gives Lieutenant Colonel Earl Reese’s name and the date of his death. It gives Chip Young Lee, the 7th Cavalry, February 14th, 1951. The letter ends, “I am asking you to find that medal and put it in his hand. The boy carried a wounded man out under fire in 8° below zero and went down beside him.
His father has waited 14 years and buried his wife in the waiting. He has earned that piece of metal twice over by waiting for it. Yours, Duke.” Wayne reads the letter through one time. He does not change a word. He folds it into thirds. He puts it in a hotel envelope. He addresses the envelope by hand, by name, no rank, no title.
He licks the flap and seals it. He walks down the stairs to the lobby and gives the envelope to the desk clerk along with a $5 bill. “Airmail,” he says, “same day if you can.” The clerk says, “Yes, sir.” Wayne goes back upstairs. He picks up his blazer. He drives back to the VA hospital. He visits the Marine Staff Sergeant on the surgical ward for 40 minutes.
He does not mention Walter Hoyt to the Marine. He does not mention the letter to anyone for the rest of his life. Mid engagement. Have you ever been the one waiting on a thing that should have come and a thing that nobody else seemed to remember was missing? Have you ever waited so long for someone to listen that you forgot you had a voice? End mid-engagement. Six weeks pass.
The dogwoods bloom along Highway 64 outside Sallisaw. The wheat begins to come up green in the fields east of town. Walter Hoyt walks the 83 steps from his porch to the mailbox every weekday morning at 10:00. 83 steps in 1960. 83 steps in 1961. 83 steps in 1962, the year Margaret died. On the third Thursday in April 1965, he walks 83 steps and opens the mailbox.
Inside the mailbox is a Western Union telegram. Inside the mailbox is the electric bill. Inside the mailbox is a small flat package wrapped in brown paper and tied with white twine. There is no return address. The postmark is Washington, D.C. He carries the package back to the porch.
He sits in the cane-bottom chair where he has sat for 31 years. He cuts the twine with his pocketknife. He folds back the brown paper. His hands are very steady. Inside is a velvet jeweler’s box, dark blue. Inside the box is a bronze star medal with a V device for valor. Underneath the medal is a citation on heavy ivory paper signed by the Secretary of the Army dated April 19th, 1965.
