Inside that box was a cigar box, and inside the cigar box was a Purple Heart. The ribbon had gone pale, but the medal was clean like somebody had wiped it down every time they looked at it. Under it was a folded telegram from the Army and a black and white photo of two young men in uniform, arms around each other, grinning in front of a jeep.
I climbed down off that roof and brought it straight to the couple. Kayla and Ben had bought the place from a bank. Nobody on the street knew much about the old owner except that his name was Earl and he kept to himself.
The telegram explained part of it. It was dated 1969. It told a mother in West Virginia that her son, Private Thomas Hale, was killed in action in Vietnam. That was not Earl. That was the other boy in the picture.
On the back of the photo, in pencil, Earl had written one line. He said the medal belonged to Tommy, and he did not deserve to wear it.
My own daddy served in Korea, and he never talked about it either. I knew exactly what I was looking at. That was a man who carried guilt for fifty years and hid it in his roof so he would not have to look at it and could not bear to throw it away.
Ben drove it down to the VFW in New Martinsville that same evening. The post commander, a man named Gary, sat at the bar and read that telegram twice. Then he made some calls.
It took them nine days. Tommy Hale had a younger sister named Carol still living in Sistersville, just up the river. She was eighty one. She had spent her whole life wondering who was with her brother when he died.
Earl was. And as it turned out, Earl had been hit in the same ambush carrying Tommy back to the line. That is where his Purple Heart came from. He got it trying to save his friend.
The VFW set up a little ceremony on Memorial Day. Kayla and Ben came. I came in my good shirt. Carol sat in the front row holding that photo, and when Gary read out what Earl had done, she cried, and then she laughed, because Tommy in that picture looked exactly like her grandson.
Afterward she asked what should happen to the medal. Everybody looked at each other. Then Carol said it should go right where it belonged, with the man who earned it. The post found Earl buried in the county cemetery with just a plain marker. They got him a proper veteran headstone, and the Purple Heart now sits in a case at the post with both their pictures beside it.
Earl hid that medal because he thought he did not deserve it. Turned out he was the only one who ever thought so.
Twenty one years I have been on roofs. I have found wasps, squirrels, and a whole lot of rot. I never found anything that mattered more than that.