“Danny,” I said. “In eleven years that’s the first thing that’s made the leg feel like a fair trade.”
“Come to Asheville,” he said. “Please. Bring Lily. I want my son to meet the man he’s named after. I want Ethan to meet Ethan.”
So we did.
PART 5 — FINAL
Here is what grew out of an airplane aisle.
We went to Asheville.
A thirty-year-old man I had last seen on fire opened his front door and looked at me and could not speak, and then hugged me so hard my cane fell, and neither of us cared.
His son, Ethan Shaw, eleven years old, shook my hand with the terrifying solemnity of a boy who has been told his whole life that he is named after a hero, and said, “I’ve been you for my whole life. It’s weird to meet you.”
And I said, “It’s weird to be met,” and he grinned, and that was that, we were friends.
