“No,” I rush to assure him. “I’m always fighting for you, Oak. I need you to stop fighting against me. I need you to lay your weapons down, shed your armor and bare yourself to me.”
“I don’t know if I’m ready for that, Grace-” I give him a pointed look and he sighs heavily. “Gracie Mae. I don’t know if I can bare myself like that again.” There’s a pain in his eyes that I just want to heal but I know that I can’t do that. The healing process has to begin with him. He has to choose that.
“She did this to you, the woman you loved. She hurt you. Found someone else who she could love better than you. I’m not her, Oak.”
“I know you’re not.”
“And I know something happened to you overseas,” I begin and his jaw tightens with tension. “I know you lost people.” My eyes go to his right arm which is a full sleeve tattoo filled with skulls and names next to each one. “But you can’t remain there, Oak. A life stuck in the past isn’t a life at all.”
“I’m trying, I’m trying so fucking hard.”
“I know you are and you don’t know how proud I am of you. But I need you to figure out what you really want, Oak. A life in the past or a life with me.”
Oak
“You didn’t have to come down today, Oak. What I wanted to discuss could’ve been handled on the phone,” Jerry tells me as we stand on the outside of what used to be Hell’s Gates. He has his crew here and so far they have teared up the inside and have already begun putting in the specs.
I glance over at Jerry, the veteran who I aspire to be, the one who seems to have his shit figured out and doesn’t let his time overseas affect every aspect of his life.
My response is nonchalant. “I wanted to see the progress.”
He stares at me with eyes that see right through mine. “Could’ve sent pictures and video.” I shrug at that. “What you running from, son?”
My defenses come up. “Who says I’m running? I just wanted to see things for myself.”
Jerry hums but his eyes face is doubtful. “How long has it been since you’ve been home?”
I grit my teeth and narrow my eyes at him. “How is this relevant?”
He chokes on a laugh and shakes his head. “Because it is. Respect an older and wiser veteran than you and answer the question.”
My finger twitches on the outside of my thigh as I stare ahead unblinking. Through terse lips I answer, “Nine years.”
From the corner of my eye I see him nod his head. “Nine years sounds like a long time but it also feels like just yesterday.”
“Yes, sir.” My voice comes out rough but I can’t hide how uncomfortable this conversation is making me feel.
“Home still isn’t home is it?” For anyone else that question would be intrusive but coming from Jerry it’s anything but. He asks because he’s felt it. He knows what it feels like to come back to a place that was once home but when you return for it to feel like foreign land.
“No, sir.” And that bomb of a truth that I have never uttered out loud detonates and with it destroys walls I’ve built.
“Bed is too soft,” he begins with a whisper of a smile on his face, “the air too crisp. Even the rich taste of food is too much to stand. Can you believe that? A medium rare prime steak tasted fucking disgusting when I first came home. Thought I’d never see the day.” He then let’s out a small chuckle. “Point is kid, nothing was right and wasn’t for a long time.” I then turn my head to finally look at him, and in his eyes I see the pain that I hold everyday. The kind that can’t be healed. The kind you learn to live with because you have to accept it. “There were days I couldn’t look at my own hands. I couldn’t even stand to touch my wife because I knew what these hands of mine have done.” He holds out his hands in front of him and I imagine him seeing them stained red. God knows how many times I look down at mine and see the fucking same. Forever stained hands and a tainted soul. “How could hands that have taken a life cherish the body of another?” He asks rhetorically.
My lungs begin to burn with the familiar ache as my heart constricts inside my chest to the point where it hurts.
“And then there was the way of integrating myself back to civilian life. I was a sniper for more than fifteen years and there’s this saying that we learned in sniper school that became our way of life, suffer patiently, patiently suffer. You learn to endure but I’ll tell you this and this is fact, you can’t endure the war wagering on inside your head. That shit kills you slowly from the inside.”
I try to breathe but it fucking burns. There’s a tightness in my chest and I fear that it might snap. I try to swallow but I can’t force my saliva down my throat. My finger twitches rapidly by my side.
I can feel myself being sucked into the void.
And it’s the most fucking terrifying feeling.
In the far away distance I can hear their screams. And I remember how fucking piercing they were. I can see each of their faces. And the images of their faces stricken with fear and blood haunt me. I can smell the gunpowder, taste the death on my tongue.
The worst part of all is I can feel the hard ground beneath me, feel the blood pooling from my wound and creating a barrier around me, and not being able to save any one of them.
I’m almost there, almost lost to the void until a firm hand lays heavy on my shoulder. I look down at Jerry with wide eyes as I take in a lungful of air.
