Soul Survivor (29 page)

There was no trace of him in the Pennsylvania white pages. There were 250 Robert Hustons in the United States—too many to
start a cold-call campaign, even for someone as tireless as Andrea.

Back to the basics. James McCready Huston’s occupation was listed as newspaper writer. A newspaper writer would, by definition,
leave a paper trail. Trolling through the Internet, she found a couple of articles about him. One was in the Brownsville Time
Capsule from Brownsville, Pennsylvania. It was a review of a novel he had written, which was being published by the Bobbs-Merrill
Company. It was called
The King of Spain’s Daughter
and enjoyed a modest success. The book review mentioned that Huston had been the editor of the South Bend, Indiana,
News-Times.
There was another article mentioning a column he had written for the
Brownsville Telegraph,
called “And That Was Brownsville.”

The McCready family had roots in Brownsville.

The Pennsylvania connection seemed strongest, so Andrea called the
Brownsville Telegraph
and asked if anyone remembered James McCready Huston or the son, James M. Huston Jr.

It was one of those random tries—a thin little line cast out into the dark without much hope of success. As luck would have
it, the
Brownsville Telegraph
was one of those intimate little newspapers where everyone knows everyone else—or at least knows where to find out about
them.

Andrea was directed to a former secretary who had worked at the paper for many years. Yes, she remembered the Huston family.
One of Huston’s cousins still lived in the area. It was one of Smith Huston’s daughters, Jean. The old secretary got out the
phone book and looked up the number and wished Andrea luck.

“Hello, my name is Andrea Leininger, and my husband, Bruce, and I are working on a book…”

Jean was happy to hear from Andrea. She knew all about James M. Huston Jr. and his heroic service in World War II. His older
sister, Ruth, had been a society editor for the
Brownsville Telegraph.
But she had died.

By this time, Andrea had learned to cope with the flutters of hope and plunge of disappointment that come with the wind. People
die or vanish or forget. However, Jean had a blockbuster bulletin: James’s other sister, Anne, was still alive. She was living
in California. Jean didn’t have the contact information, didn’t know how to find her, but she was certain that her sister,
June, did. So Andrea got June’s number and gave her a call.

June was a talker. She spent an hour telling Andrea about, well, everything—her son’s flat feet, what she was making for dinner—and
in the background Andrea could hear the pots rattling, the water splashing, the doors banging. June was living her life with
the phone cradled on her shoulder and filling in her new friend about the background of the Huston clan. Finally, Andrea pried
out Anne’s married name and number and got off the phone. The name was Anne Huston Barron, and she was eighty-four years old
now.

A soft, sweet voice answered the phone in Los Gatos, California. “Hello?”

Andrea explained again who she was and why she was calling. And then that breathless, terrifying question: “Are you the sister
of a pilot, James M. Huston, who was killed in World War II?”

And the soft, sweet voice answered, “Yes.”

Andrea’s heart was beating like a rabbit’s as she sat down at the kitchen table with a pad and pencil and the telephone. She
explained the complicated journey of finding Anne, how she had tracked down Jean.

“Jean could talk a bug off a vine,” said Andrea.

“Oh, yes,” replied Anne. “Usually after half an hour on the phone with her I suddenly have to answer the door.”

She talked about her parents. They had moved out to California after they retired. They died within a few months of each other.

Andrea wanted to talk about James, her brother.

“We called him Jimmy.”

“Could you tell me about him?”

“Oh, he was average height and build. Blond hair and blue eyes. A nice-looking boy. He loved flying. Ever since he was a young
boy, he used to make balsa-wood models. When he got older he went flying in the old biplanes. Every chance he got. Oh, and
he had a good singing voice. He even sang on the radio in a choir. He loved ‘Red Sails in the Sunset.’”

“Do you remember anything about his death?”

“On the day he was killed, I was fixing up my house in California. For his return. We were going to have a reunion. Our parents
were coming from Bryn Mawr in Pennsylvania, where they were living at the time.

“As I was cleaning, I had this very sudden feeling that Jimmy was in the room. His presence was so strong that I actually
started talking to him. I remembered a few days later when Dad called to tell me the news. I remembered that it was on March
third.

“Mom and Dad never talked about Jimmy’s death, but Dad went to several reunions to see if he could get any details. He never
could.”

Jimmy had a friend, Jim Eastman. The day Jimmy was killed, Jim Eastman’s mother said she had a dream in which Jimmy came to
her and said, “I just wanted to say good-bye.” It made her hair stand on end.

I still had hope that all this talk of spirits was wrong. Huston was shot down in an FM-2 Wildcat fighter plane—not a Corsair.
I had that to cling to. No one at the reunion had ever seen a Corsair taking off from
Natoma Bay.

Meanwhile, I had my consulting business, and that required a lot of attention. And then I got that very excited phone call
on February seventeenth. Dre had found Huston’s sister. I really never thought that she’d do it. I mean, she gave it one full
try before and ran into a blank wall. So I had only a halfhearted belief that she’d be any more successful this time. At least
for James Huston. But Dre is persistent and talented when she gets in front of a computer, and in a couple of days she tracked
Anne down.

She was an eighty-four-year-old lady living in Los Gatos, California, and I called her—I called her a few times—and we became
friends. She said that she would send me some photos of James taken during his military service. For research.

When she asked me why I was so interested, I lied to her as I lied to Leo Pyatt. Again, I had no choice. I just said that
I was curious and wanted to do a book. No one really knew why I was so intent on finding out. I told her the details about
James’s death, how he’d gone down in Chichi-Jima. She asked about the spot, and I said it was in a harbor, very beautiful.
She seemed pleased with that.

I read her the after-action reports. I told her we would send her the military records, including a picture of the harbor
at Chichi-Jima, and she was very grateful.

Anne’s package arrived on February twenty-fourth. I was not prepared. I was totally unprepared.

There was a letter:

Thank you so very much for all the data you have sent me. I have been busy mulling it over. It is much more personal than
anything I have. The picture of the Bay is beautiful and so peaceful. A lovely resting place. As most of us who live alone,
I have my little routine. My morning coffee and the newspaper. After the news it is the crossword puzzle. In our paper the
horoscope is printed above the puzzle. I seldom read it because it usually says a lost article will be found, or a great romance
is in the future (at 84 that is good news). At any rate, I glanced at yesterday’s horoscope, and this is it:

“Scorpio (Oct. 23–Nov. 21) Emphasis on the long-ago and far-away. You may be contemplating a journey, a reunion with one who
played an important role in your past…”

Then there were the enclosed pictures. The first few pictures were shots of James M. Huston Jr. Bruce and Andrea had seen
him in the group pictures and squadron pictures, so they knew what he looked like.

It was the fourth picture that stopped them both. It was a squadron picture—the usual kind of cluster of smiling young men
at the peak of their health and good spirits. That wasn’t what froze them. It was something in the background. For behind
this particular squadron was a Corsair.

“Are you sure?” asked Andrea.

“The cowling,” replied Bruce. “The engine cowling of a Corsair is unmistakable. It’s a Corsair.”

The next picture was even more startling. It was just James Huston, and he was standing in front of a Corsair. No mistake.
The fuselage, the gull wings, the high cockpit. A Corsair.

B
RUCE HAD STAGED a fighting retreat from the wild conjectures over the meaning of his son’s nightmares. He had dug in and insisted
that whatever they were, they were not proof of a past life. Yet, he had lost the battle over the name
Natoma Bay
—it was an American ship, not Japanese. Jack Larsen turned out to be a real person who flew off
Natoma Bay.
The knowledge that Bruce’s son had of airplanes and flying was uncanny; the battles in the Pacific were real, and the veterans
vouched for the details. Finally, he had to accept that James Huston Jr. was the pilot who was killed in his son’s horrific
nightmares.

Still, he had held out over the fact that James insisted that he flew a Corsair in the war and no Corsairs were reported on
Natoma Bay.
And now that last bunker had fallen. He had the picture of James Huston Jr. standing in front of a Corsair.

He was starting to believe in something beyond reason.

I was baptized and raised as a Methodist. I grew up going to church every Sunday with my mother and sister. My father had
very little to do with church when I was a child. Church is a place that makes me feel comfortable, safe, welcome.

When I was younger, I went to church with friends of different denominations, to see what they were like. I went to Buddhist
temples, Catholic cathedrals, Lutheran, Pentacostal, Episcopalian… most of the other Protestant churches. I even went to synagogues.

But as I matured, I became connected to the Evangelical Christian movement, eventually finding myself involved with a Full
Gospel Christian Businessman’s Fellowship.