Solider Home, Solider Gone

Sometimes days like the past few days make you fall apart and internally combust, and then the past several months shake you to your core. I still am pondering what the hell I am going to do with my career, but in the meantime . . .

I get pensive. I get thoughtful. I get humiliated. I write.

I send out short stories. I get rejections. I send out more. One day I'll break in. In the meantime, you can read pieces here. Here's a snip of one I am working on.

Solider Home, Solider Gone

He could still feel her lips on his as he boarded the plane. They had been slightly moist, tinged with coral lip gloss, and tasted like sweet rain. Her eyes . . . filled with tears, not letting him go, and he could feel them as he walked away. He knew then that he wouldn’t see her again, but she didn’t. Even if he did make it back, his heart already told him that she wouldn’t be the same. Her tenderness, her young campy nature, her gentle touch would mean nothing on his return. But, he clung to her memory anyway—not in hopes of changing his mind, but in hopes of getting him through the next twelve months. Twelve months of forced solitude with hundreds of others all clad in shades of brown. They were taking off now, and he closed his eyes, humming her favorite song, and held onto the memory of her kiss for a moment more.

***

Three months before he had received orders, calling him to leave his home and job—saying that his time had come, what he had signed up for was now here, and that his country called. Eight years ago he never thought that this would happen. Hell, most folks of his generation never thought it would happen, but now it was. He joined to pay for college—in a oft repeated statement that he had to because his dad drank away his college fund—but he never “signed up” out of some deep ingrained patriotic desire to serve his country. Nope. He was strictly for the monetary gain and free school ride. Shit, now it was all coming to an end.

Those first three years in the Army hadn’t been that bad. He was young and green, and the imposed discipline wasn’t too unnerving. It gave him a sense of purpose and direction. In the end, that was all he really needed. But then he had gotten out, earned a degree, and found a content and happy life as a computer data programmer for some company on Long Island. The pay wasn’t bad, he lumbered through his days, and once a month went and rejoined his Army days. Not that it mattered much . . . he still did the Guard out of habit and an instilled sense of devotion. But he never dreamed that he’d see and do what he did.

So everyone knows the story . . . two planes took out part of New York City, a plane took out a wing of the Pentagon, and another went down in Pennsylvania. Yeah . . . we all know, and we all know that the US military went into overdrive afterward. Men and boys volunteered, Guard units were called, and the country sang “My Country ‘Tis a Thee” in practical unison. A patriotic fervor broke over the land, uniting one and all, bringing out the “bold and the brave,” and guys like Roy quickly turned into “men.” Roy was never meant to see what he saw, do what he did, or become what he did. He was supposed to be the quiet kind gentile young man that every mother wanted her daughter to bring home for dinner. Instead, a year in Iraq turned him into a rotten son-of-a-bitch, and one that didn’t hang around long enough to hear what anyone had to say about it. Just like when he left he was gone, when he returned he was gone too.

The desert taught him solitude in numbers. It taught him multiplicity in the few. It taught him to loath himself and those around him. His bunk mate, and the guy who kept his back, was from Boston—a real ladies man so to speak.