Short Story / His Story- Part ? (Analysis)

It was approximately 0200, I knew this because I lay awake watching the blazing blue numbers on the digital alarm clock tick by. It wasn’t unusual for me to be awake watching the alarm clock or staring at the shifting shadows on the stark white ceiling. It is hard for someone who is accustomed to a certain way of life to adapt to a different one, especially when that way of life is what makes them who they are. They called it transition and said, “Its normal and it will pass”. I had my doubts as to whether it would ever pass and was seriously considering dragging a blanket out into the back yard, but I stayed where I was and continued to watch the number tick by as if waiting for some enigmatic event to suddenly send me spiraling to untroubled sleep. Of course, God didn’t appear nor some soothing apparition, only the abrupt sound of my favorite Staind song indicating my phone was ringing; apparently someone else couldn’t sleep either.

I was normally quickly to reach for my cell and answer it, a side effect of having had to respond immediately when a voice came over the radio citing my designation. This time, however, I remained where I was like a corpse without the ability so much as hit the ignore button. Eventually the song ended and I was once again left in silence, watching my pet clock. I didn’t give much thought to who had called, assuming it was either someone wanting me to down a gallon of beer and partake of some “after the club ass” or one of the girls I kept around to warm the sheets. I was worthless when it came to emotional attachment and the girls seemed more like paper than people to me at that point in my life.

Alone in the empty darkness of my tomb, still watching pet clock, when my phone alerted me I had a voicemail. I wasn’t inclined to check that either, but I felt compelled to seek the recorded voice hiding some where in my phone. My movements to grab the phone were awkward as I groped at the night stand for it, eventually palming the small clamshell and flipping it open. I held the key that would lead me to my voice mail box and waited for the prompt. “Please enter your password”, the voice was pleasant enough and I wondered if she was a real person or just some digital voice created for this sole purpose. The thought faded quickly as I keyed the password in on the lighted number pad and pressed the phone to my ear. What came next shook my very existence to its foundations.

In the nearly two and a half years I was in country I had never lost a man. I had made it my goal to always be the first through the door on a breech, the first down the rope, and always on point. I saw it as my responsibility to take the first round, if a round was to be taken. The men I served with, my men, were the most important thing in my world then and I would not have been able to live with myself if I let even one of them go home wrapped in the flag. Men in combat form a bond that many people write about and attempt to describe in words, but the reality is that there are no words to express that love and devotion. There is no way to describe the way souls meld and become intertwined, at least none that I have read or attempted to put to paper. I can tell you now, however, that there is no stronger bond or more deep love.

A distraught voice tore through me like the knife of a surgeon and brought me to my feet so swiftly I was nearly sucked underneath the bed by the momentum. I knew the voice, had sat across the table from the owner at Thanksgiving last year, had made a promise I was no longer able to keep. She was crying, babbling, and something forever tore inside me when she uttered the words, “He’s gone Josh, he’s gone”. There was silence followed again by the pleasant voice. I cannot be sure what followed in those next seconds, but I remember hearing what in my mind sounded like an animal cry out into the dead of night and found myself with no phone in my hand nearly half way across the room.

I moved like a mad man, stumbling in the darkness, groping on the bare floor for the phone that had disappeared from my grasp. My eyes were stinging, my face was wet, and I found myself annoyed and spending more time attempting to wipe the sting out of them than teetering through the darkness to find the phone. It didn’t immediately register that I was crying. I broke across the room for the light switch and the brilliance of the light caused my night tempered eyes to shrink behind their fleshy shrouds. I turned in circles, scouring the room for the phone, I need the fucking phone.

“Fucking pull it together, pull it together”

In my mind it sounded commanding, but my voice was weak and shaking. I couldn’t find the phone and the pain swiftly morphed into a blind rage. My first strike at the wall send my fist slamming through the feeble material into the void between the studs; my second strike snapped me back into focus as pain tore through me like electricity. Snarling, my gaze dropped to my right hand and I found it peculiar that I was missing a knuckle right in the middle of my fist, but I didn’t not immediately recognize the cause of this. The physical pain was welcomed and for a moment filled the emptiness in the center of me that vied to consume me. I remember closing my eyes and just breathing, breathing for hours in the dusk behind my eyes lids, but it was actually only seconds. I opened my eyes to find myself filled with the same piss and vinegar that drug me through nearly two and a half years of small arms fire; I found myself devoid of any emotion what so ever. I have the ability, inherent or learned, to turn my emotions off as easily as one flicks a light switch and finds themselves in darkness.

The thumb of my left hand pressed into the swelling tissue of my right, probing for the knuckle I knew was some where in the growing mass of purple. Bingo, pain ripped through my entire arm as my thumb struck against the knuckle and without a moments hesitation I jerked it back into place. The knuckle of my right hand is still a bit larger than it should be and is cocked slightly to the left, though you’d probably never notice unless I showed you.

The hunt for the magical phone resumed and find it I did, just beneath a large knick in the wall. It was resting peacefully on the floor and when I drew it up close enough I could see through my slightly blurred vision I found that the front display was shattered. I had thrown it against the wall when I heard the message and now it probably would never work again. I found myself remarkably impressed with Samsung when I flipped it open and the inner display lit up as it should. I hastily punched in the numbers I knew by heart and pressed the phone into my ear before pacing like a junkie, back and forth across the carpet.

A youthful, but shattered voice greeted me on the other end of the line. I knew this voice as well, this voice had been my companion on a night I had wished would never end, a night full of passion that had brought peace to my warring soul.

“Jessica…”

I didn’t know what else to say, what could I say? What ever composure she had was lost and she began to sob. My heart must have stopped briefly and caused my legs to give because I found myself down on a knee with my forehead pressed against the palm of a battered hand. I said nothing and listened helplessly as she cried. I wanted to say something comforting, something to bring that life and vibrance back to her, but I found myself as empty and cold as the recesses of space.

“Why? Why him?”

My mind reeled and scrambled for words, but I could find nothing of substance, space is a vacuum afterall.

“I’m so sorry”

I expected her to blame me, needed her to blame me, I needed something to refocus on. I am exceptionally good at punishing myself and bearing the weight of the world and I longed for that feeling then, craved it like a fiene craves their next fix. She did not respond in that manner and I felt myself losing control again.

“It’s not your fault, there’s nothing you could have done.”

My mind broke then and screamed. It was my fault, all my fault, no one could take this from me. If I had not been so week I would have been there and this would not have happened. He was my responsibility and I failed my primary objective. We all go home or no one goes home you smoldering piece of shit, you worthless son of a bitch! How could you let this happen, you fucking promised them you would look after him and you failed mother fucker, you failed and now he’s gone.

Both knees were pressed into the carped and tears poured down the heated flesh of my face, dripping slowly across my bare chest. I couldn’t restrain them any more and gave into the pain once again. I did not feel the tell tale heat of an out-burst of unbridled rage, but a frigid cold and helplessness I had never known.

“Josh, don’t blame yourself for this. He loved what he did, he loved you, and I know you would have done everything you could. Its not your fault, please talk to me.”

She was trying to comfort me when it was my place to comfort her, she had suffered the loss. I’ve always placed myself at the back of the line when it comes to grief that affects others, I feel its my responsibility to be strong and protect them as much as I can from the pain they are experiencing. I clenched my jaw and with the back of my right hand, wiped the tears from my face. This, of course, sent another wave of electricity up my arm. I had what I needed to refocus on, to find that calm and composure that people knew me as having. I clenched my fist tightly, let the pain roll through me like a comforting wave of electric heat.

“I’m here, everything’s fine. How are your parents?

My voice wasn’t shaking nor did it bear any sign of distress. Steady as a rock and sure as cruise missile. I heard her exhale on the other end of the line and wanted nothing more than to curl into her, to feel her warmth against me again. I yearned for the comfort of her smell, the feel of her finger tips caressing my flesh. I wasn’t worthy anymore, I had failed and I’d never know those things again.

“You know mom, she’s a mess and dad hasn’t said much. Are you coming up?”

I hesitated and wondered if they even wanted me there. Why would they ever want to see my face again, I had allowed their son, her brother, to die. I had done nothing to stop it, I was nothing more than a failure. Self pity is very unbecoming of me and while I’ll make no excuse for it, I was lost in that chunk of time, a vessel drifting aimlessly on a merciless sea.

“ Josh, I really need you to be here now.”

The hesitation was gone and I rose to my feet before heading towards the desk where my laptop was sleeping.

“ I’ll be a plane first thing”

I dropped into the swiveling chair , but didn’t make a move to wake the machine from its slumber. I sat there in silence and listened to her breath. I closed my eyes and pictured his face in my mind, but my eye lids snapped open as the image that come through was bloody and distorted. It was then that some form of denial set in. This couldn’t be happening and was all some horrible joke, how cruel. I find myself wanting to interrogate her, wanting to ask her questions only a family who had lost a loved one in the military would know. I couldn’t bring myself to do this, I knew here, knew that whole family and there was no way they would do something like this. I dismissed the thought and chalked it up to a momentary lapse of sanity before rolling the mouse around that caused the screen to come alive with brilliant color.

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