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 [music] 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. >> [music] >> 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 [music] 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 [music] 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 [music] 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 [music] 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 [music] 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 [music] 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 [music] 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 [music] 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.
The citation names Sergeant Daniel Hoyt by serial number. The citation reads the action at Chip Yong-ni in full. The half-mile carry, the wounded sergeant, the 8° below zero, the second mortar that ended both their lives. The citation ends with the words, “Awarded for gallantry, 14 years overdue with the apology of a grateful nation.
” Tucked behind the citation is a single sheet of folded paper, hotel stationery from the Severs Hotel in Muskogee. Walter takes it out. He unfolds it halfway. He sees handwriting in dark ink, a man’s hand, square and unhurried. He sees the opening word, “Walter.” He stops there. He folds it back exactly the way it was folded.
He tucks it behind the citation. He closes the velvet box. >> [music] >> He sits on the porch with the closed box in his lap for a long time. 14 years, 168 months, nine visits to Muskogee. 47 letters of his own that he had written and signed and stamped and sent and that had never been answered. One letter from a stranger fixed it in 6 weeks.
[music] Walter Hoyt does not know who wrote the letter. He has a guess. He never asks. Walter Hoyt lives another 18 years. He wears the bronze star on the left breast pocket of his brown wool coat at every Memorial Day parade in Sallisaw, Oklahoma from 1965 until 1982. He nods at the high school marching band.
He shakes hands with the post commander from Muskogee VFW Post 1747. He sets a small American flag in the dirt of his son’s empty plot at the Sallisaw cemetery on the second row south side. There is nobody in the plot. Sergeant Daniel Hoyt’s body was never recovered from the frozen ridge outside Chipyong-ni. There is only a granite stone and a name and a date and now a coat of arms etched beneath them.
