“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.