The Luckiest Guy Alive.
A short story by Robert Cormack.
“Luck is believing you’re lucky.” Tennessee Williams
There were a lot of old letters in my father’s desk when he died. Most I tossed. One I found interesting. It was dated April,1946, not long after the war. The return address was Bolivia. Who did my father know in Bolivia?
The letter itself was an all-in-one, meaning you wrote on one side, folded it, licked the corners and put on an address. The stamp was included. My father was living in Toronto then. This was before he married my mother.
“It’s nothing but dirt streets, Jimmy,” he wrote. “The food is terrible, the girls have moustaches.”
The sender, a man named Carson, had some news for my father, something I guess he figured my father should know. Only Carson doesn’t get into it right away. He tells my father it’s “hellish” in Boliva. He was in Oruro, on assignment with some big oil company. He was miserable as hell. “It’s nothing but dirt streets, Jimmy,” he wrote. “The food is terrible, the girls have moustaches. I tell you, I’m ready to desert, I swear I am.”
My aunt was helping me with my father’s stuff. She was looking over my shoulder as I read the letter. “Do you remember Dad having a friend named Carson?” I asked. She had to think for a minute. She was much younger than my father. He was already in the army when she was small.
“I don’t remember a Carson,” she said, taking off her glasses. “Unless it was — no, that was Frank. I remember a Frank.”
Frank was killed in the early part of the war. So it wasn’t him. Then she remembered a guy Dad brought home once, a curly-haired character. Maybe that was him. They seemed to be good friends.
I kept scanning the letter, while my aunt started sorting through some old photos
“Jimmy, I’ve decided I’m going to marry her. I should’ve done it before I left. As soon as I get my vacation, Jimmy, I’m coming back to propose. How is she, anyway? You keep in touch? Don’t say anything. I want it to be a surprise.”
Down near the bottom of the letter, Carson wrote, “Jimmy, I’ve decided I’m going to marry her. I should’ve done it before I left. As soon as I get my vacation, I’m going to propose. Don’t say anything. I want it to be a surprise.”
He mentioned her name, of course, although I guess he didn’t need to at that point. It was my mother. That’s who Carson intended to marry.
“Do you remember any of this?” I asked my aunt, after reading the last part of the letter out loud.
“No,” she said. “I remember your folks getting married. They went to city hall, I think. I’m pretty sure there was no ceremony or reception.”
“So, none of the family was at the wedding?” I asked.
“All I recall is them coming through the door, telling everyone they were married,” she said. “I doubt they stuck around more than an hour. We barely had a chance to say our congratulations.”
It all seemed strange in a way, them marrying, Carson still stuck down in Oruro. Did my father write to him? Wouldn’t he have said something?
“I can’t believe my luck,” my father wrote. “I have to be the luckiest guy alive.”
Nothing else showed up. No further correspondence. There was one letter my aunt found written on hotel stationary to my grandparents. My father must’ve written it when they were honeymooning.
“I can’t believe my luck,” my father wrote. “I have to be the luckiest guy alive.” He’d enclosed a picture of them in their bath suits, sitting on some rocks. They had towels over their shoulders.
My mother always tanned dark, but my father was white, skinny, like most men were after the war. He hadn’t actually been in the war. He’d been part of a detachment guarding the Welland Canal. There was concern at the time that German u-boats were coming in through the Great Lakes.
One night, a drunk soldier fell in the canal. My father went to save him. His sergeant told him never to leave his post. Then another drunk soldier fell in the canal. My father went to save him, too.
He was discharged for insubordination the same month.
“I can’t find a single thing from this Carson character,” my aunt said.
“Maybe there wasn’t anything left to say,” I replied.
“Or your father didn’t tell him.”
“You’d think he would.”
“Not necessarily,” my aunt replied.
She shook her head at one point. Then she closed the desk drawer.
“Imagine not telling anyone you’d stolen your best friend’s girl,” she said.
“Maybe he didn’t feel he had,” I said. “Carson and Mom weren’t engaged or anything. He’d gone off to Bolivia.”
“And told your father he was coming back,” she said.
My aunt was right, of course. Did my mother even know about Carson’s letter? Maybe my father figured it didn’t matter. Maybe he’d had his eye on her all along.
Neither of them were smiling. They just stared at the camera.
“Here’s something,” my aunt said. It was a black and white photo with serrated edges. There was a man with curly hair standing next to dark-skinned woman. He was in a rumpled suit, she a floral dress and hat. Neither of them were smiling. They just stared at the camera.
There was a date on the back, 1951, the year my sister was born.
“Is that him, you think?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” my aunt replied. “It was so long ago.”
We were pretty much done for the day. I had to get back to Toronto for work. I told my aunt I’d come the following weekend. Hopefully, we could finish up before the agents listed the house.
Later that night, my aunt called. After I’d left, she continued going through Dad’s files. Another letter showed up. Again, it was from Bolivia, but unlike the first letter, this one simply said, “Bon voyage, Jimmy. Hope you two are happy. Hell, you should be.”
“That’s it?” I asked.
“No, there’s a picture,” she said. “They’re on a gangplank.”
“Carson and that woman?”
“I think so.”
“So he married her?”
“They certainly look married.”
I told her I’d be down on Saturday.
When I arrived, everything was pretty much packed up. My aunt had been busy. The letter and picture were on the kitchen table, between the dishes and the pots and pans.
They looked happier than the first picture, both waving.
The picture was just as my aunt described. Carson and this dark-skinned woman were standing on the gangplank of a ship. They looked happier than the first picture, both waving. Were people seeing them off?
Then she put another photo down in front of me. It showed two men in uniform, one being my father, the other, the same man from the gangplank, only younger. Their arms were around each other’s shoulders.
On the back, it said, “Me and Carson, off to war.”
Turning the picture over again, I saw people in the background. There wa my grandfather, sitting behind them on the porch, shirt and tie, a cigarette in the corner of his mouth. He didn’t look pleased or not pleased.
“Do you think Granddad knew?” I asked.
“About your father stealing Carson’s girlfriend?” she asked. “I very much doubt that. They didn’t get along that well.”
“Why not?”
My aunt had to think about that for a minute. She took off her glasses, looked out the window, then put them on again.
‘The kid was discharged for insubordination, and he still thinks he’s the luckiest man alive?’”
“When your father came home with your mother after the wedding,” she said, “your father kept saying, ‘I’m the luckiest man alive.’ After they left, I remember Dad saying to Mom, ‘Discharged for insubordination, and he still thinks he’s the luckiest man alive?’”
“Like I said,” she shrugged, “they didn’t get along.”
She went back to wrapping dishes, and I went upstairs to get the rest of the boxes. When I came downstairs again, she was putting all the photos in a manila envelope along with the letters.
“You should keep these,” she said, handing them to me.
We finished with the packing. Some stuff went in my car, the rest to a local charity. A truck was coming by the next day.
My father saw the luck, not everything else.
A few weeks later, I realized I’d forgotten the manila envelope. I don’t know whether it slipped my mind, or I didn’t care. It was a story, a bit of a sordid past. Maybe I had the same problem my grandfather did.
My father saw the luck, not everything else. Maybe that’s why he kept the letter and the pictures. It reminded him that he was lucky afterall, even if it was years ago. I guess he realized you hold onto the luck you’ve got.
He certainly did that.
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Robert Cormack is a satirist, blogger and author of “You Can Lead A Horse to Water (But You Can’t Make It Scuba Dive).” You can join him every day by subscribing to robertcormack@medium.com/subscription.
