We sat on my parents’ porch till the lights went out inside the nite before he deployed.
He put his forehead to mine.Don’t let me turn into a depressing tale you recount in your later years.”Then return.”I’ll do it.
Thomas’s mother called me six months later and invited me to visit. In the living room, two officers were seated.
During a mission, his aircraft vanished. They had neither a body nor a definite crash location. In action, his status was missing.
I questioned if he might be incarcerated.One officer stated, “We can’t rule that out.”
Those words were enough to keep me waiting for years.
The next year, Thomas’s parents relocated out of state. By 1973, we had lost contact despite exchanging a few letters.
I looked through every list in our local newspaper when American inmates started coming home that year. I didn’t see Thomas’s name.
