9
Wyatt
2010
The sun is high in the sky when I get off the train. It’s been a long and exhausting trip. I doze in and out of sleep, allowing the movement to lull me. I feel numb; the last few days were a blur. All I want is to get home, and now that my feet hit the ground, I’m not so sure how I’m supposed to handle the days and weeks ahead. I’ve been given two months. So much can happen in that time.
I limp over to the car rental counter and look through the brochure of cars. I don’t really care what I drive. I need something economical, a pickup truck, and automatic transmission so I won’t struggle with my leg. The doctors say I’ll heal up eventually, but it’s a process, and I have to be patient.
Patient is the one thing I’m not. Another battle scar in the line of mementos I have collected from the battlefield.
I pay the salesman, a tall, gangly man with thick-rimmed glasses that cover most of his face. He has a sales look about him. It’s an odd thing to think about, but it beats thinking about why I’m home in the first place.
I make the hour drive home in silence. The hot summer air is making my T-shirt stick to my body. I roll up my windows andswitch on the air. I don’t turn on the radio. The sound of music grates on my nerves. I never used to be that way. I remember summer days listening to my father’s old albums. The kids these days wouldn’t even know what those are. The sound of the ‘90s pop and rock filled my house. I used to have my mother banging down my door to get me to turn it off.
Noise pollution is seriously harmful to you. She’d frown.
But when you spend most of your life in chaos, silence becomes golden.
It soothes the nerves and gives me perspective on things.
I remember readingthe familiar handwriting and opening the letter with a sick feeling deep in my gut. Letters from home were scarce of late. I wonder if it is because my own letters have dwindled so much. I try to call home when I am not out in the field, but those conversations are brief and filled with pleasantries. My mother tells me how much she misses me and wants me home, and my father grunts out a few replies, asking about my latest mission and whether I’ve stopped getting shot.
My mother’s cursive spreads across the pages, beckoning me.
It was terrible news, just as I feared. It was always bad news. When would someone write to me to tell me they’ve won the fucking lottery?
My father was critically ill, and the doctors aren’t hopeful. They predict he has weeks, a month if he is lucky.
Us Barnes men were definitely not lucky. But weeks! I read the words and gritted my teeth.
How could my father have weeks to live? That is not the Wayne Barnes I know. He’s one of the most energetic people I know. I cannot remember him having a cold when I was growing up, and the thought of him in intensive care right now is unnerving.
My father is a bull. The giant man served twenty years in the army. He exudes strength and power. He once told me he wanted me to join the military because it builds character, something I obviously lacked. He didn’t have a pretty start, the way I did, he’d tell me, but he sure as hell wanted to make sure I had a right end. It had changed him. Molded him into the man he was. His words, not mine.
It was during one of those long, drawn and awkward father-son conversations we’d had before I left for the service.
What I’d give to have one of those now.
I don’t regret enlisting in the army, and I hope I get a chance to tell him it changed me too. Just not in the way I expected it to. I was no longer the rebel that left this town in a hurry. I didn’t quite know who I was anymore.
I grip my hand on the steering wheel. It angers me, the thought of losing him. We had our fair share of disagreements, but he was a decent father, and I could always trust that he did what was best for my mother and me.
I pull into the driveway of my childhood home and sit parked outside for a few minutes just taking deep breaths. The neighborhood is quiet this time of the night. It was still, and even odd shapes made me tense. I’m startled by a cat leaping over the hood of my car, and I suck in a breath. I’m not usually edgy, but my nerves are shot at the moment.
I look at my neighbor’s house and feel the familiar tug in my chest. Redmond hasn’t changed, especially that second-floor bedroom window I spent my teenage years gazing at, hoping to get a glimpse of the most beautiful girl I’ve ever known. A girl I never had the balls to claim. And now? Now it’s too late.
The lights in the house are off, and I wonder whether she still lives at home, or if she is elsewhere lying in the arms of someone who is not me. Maybe she’s traveling the world the way she always wanted to. I rub my hands over my face. I have no right thinking about her. I jump out of my car and stagger to the trunk to get my bag out. I am beyond exhausted.
