Landslide

by Jenn Cooksey

  As a nurse I already know that TBI stands for traumatic brain injury, so if it wasn’t for that, I would’ve totally smacked him in the head hard when he told me what he did work-wise in the military by somewhat hesitantly pointing out a third tattoo that I hadn’t seen when I was slyly checking him out earlier, being that it’s round and tucked kind of higher up on the inside of his bicep. It’s the EOD badge encircled by their motto that states, ‘Initial Success or Total Failure,’ and in getting a look at it, I learn that EOD is shorthand for Explosive Ordnance Disposal.

  Yes, that’s right, turns out my darling best friend decided to voluntarily go down one of the most dangerous career paths available by becoming a member of what is essentially the military bomb squad, and subsequently, he got himself blown up.

  Really, about the only response I have to the whole of that is, “So basically you’re telling me you chose to play with bombs for a living. Actual, real life bombs. Voluntarily.” He nods and tries to not chuckle or laugh in any visible way. “You’re an asshole. No wonder they booted you out.”

  His rebuttal is an arrogant laugh and contemplating his crystal wine glass as he plainly says, “Yeah, they might’ve sent me packing, but now I’m a twenty-seven-year-old medically retired veteran who gets paid just for waking up in the morning because my career as being an exceptional asshole was cut short through no fault of my own, so…”

  I have no comeback for that.

  By the time we’re pretty well caught up and are acting more like the people we used to know one another as, the second bottle of wine is long gone, we’ve drained the only other one that was in the wine refrigerator—an appliance that Cole complained Payton talked him into buying—and we’ve just moved onto our first round of mixed drinks. Even knowing better, I still decide a dip in the hot tub is a good idea.

  “I think a couple of the guys’ wives left their suits here after something called a Pampered Chef party? I don’t remember what it was called, but they pestered and cajoled me into hosting one here a few weeks ago in lieu of a house warming party, which I wasn’t planning on having either,” he stops to sigh and shake his head in resignation, “I swear to God, Erica, those women…there wasn’t even a stick of furniture in this house and I had to work double time to get the gas turned on and the oven installed for what was supposedly my own party, although I really think it was just an excuse for them to get out of their houses for the night. I guess I shouldn’t complain too much, though…the food was good and now my kitchen has every gadget a middle-aged woman or mid-twenties gay man could ever wish for. Anyway, getting back on track, want me to go check if I have a suit you can wear?” Cole offers as I kick my shoes off and simultaneously use my index finger to stir the drinks I just made for us.

  Handing him an overly full glass, I think about wearing another woman’s bathing suit for all of two seconds. “I’ll pass.”

  “Okey doke. Suit yourself. Or, not.”

  “Ha ha. I see you’re still punny as ever,” I tell him, hopping on one foot as I strip my jeans off.

  He shrugs and chuckles at me, and as I pull my sweater over my head, the glass almost at his lips drops a few inches when he gives me a meaningful look, prompting me to ask, “What’s that look for?”

  He shakes his head again and almost impishly grins when he replies, “You just reminded me of Jimmy Meyer’s birthday party and the closet under the stairs, that’s all.”

  “God, that was forever ago. It still irks me though that Rachel called me Prissy Pants, the hat stealing tramp. Almost makes me angry enough in fact to just get altogether nude right now and post pictures of us on her Facebook wall,” I say and sit to remove my socks and earrings.

  “Jesus, I’ve missed you.”

  “Ditto,” I say, smiling up at him, “And I’m kinda serious…are you Facebook friends with her?”

  He laughs. “I honestly don’t remember if I was…I haven’t been on that account since I created a new one when I was discharged. My friends list now mainly consists of people I met in the service and folks up here. But if you wanna get naked and take pictures, I’m down. Probably will need another drink or several before I let you post ‘em on social media though,” he tells me with a wink.

  “Well, drink up then and hand me my phone,” I demand, beginning my descent into the bubbling hot water, “I’m gonna friend request her just in case we decide to implement my genius plan of photo revenge.”

  Cole chuckles at me again but complies with my wishes, and just as he’s about to join me and tosses his towel to the side, revealing that he’s wearing swim trunks and hasn’t been quite as naked as I’d thought, his phone rings. Unease casts a sober shadow upon his features as he looks at the caller ID. “Uh, do you mind?” he asks, first gesturing to his phone and then pointing his thumb over his shoulder to tell me he’s going in the other room.

  “Of course not…take your time,” I say, mostly to his departing back.

  “Sorry…I need to take this.” The apology for possibly appearing rude to his guest is spoken hastily and as a matter of rote; nothing at all like the warmly exuberant greeting he issues to the individual on the other end of the call.

  A momentary frown brings forth concerned creases in my forehead in contemplating his curious behavior, although in truth, I don’t give it much thought, as my preoccupation in finding my junior high nemesis on Facebook takes precedence on my tipsy priority list once again.

  Holy shit! Over 1000 results for Rachel Davis?! This is gonna take all damned night!

  33

  “So Far Away”

  —Cole—

  “No, don’t do that.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah, I’m sure,” I pause to swallow a disappointed sigh, “We’ll talk tomorrow.”

  “Alright. Well, I love you.”

  “Love you too.”

  The call ends with a click that somehow flips on the memory switch in my brain, taking me to the moment I walked out of my commanding officer’s presence and went straight back to my bunk to pull out Holden’s computer. I’d kept it with me through everything; the legacy he’d left me with impacting my life more than what I ever thought possible. With it open and hoping for enough signal strength to send the message, I started typing an email that would eventually pour a new foundation in the relationship I have with my father…

  Sir, I have never asked you for help or for a single thing in my life, but I have to do it now. I wouldn’t ask if it weren’t of the utmost importance, I think you know that, and I have no other choice. I need your help. And I need you to read this without condemning me until I’m done explaining why I have to come to you now after all this time in the first place.

  “Was that Payton?” Erica’s voice startles me from the past, the innocent question snapping me back to the present with a jolt, but simultaneously replacing the tiny fragment of that email still lingering in my memory with the stability and peace of mind its outcome has produced in my life.

  “No, it was, uh…my dad. He calls every night to check in.”

  “Your dad? As in, your father?” she asks, incredulous.

  I nod in response without making eye contact and sink myself into the jacuzzi up to my shoulders. From there I begin semi-wishing I could light up a calming smoke in my house like I used to way back when. Instead I heave a sigh and rest my head on the rim of the hot tub to stare up through the skylights above us. All are efforts in fervently trying to ignore her wet and almost naked body’s proximity to mine, and my agitation with how badly I want to touch her in some way. Any way.

  “Lemme get this straight, you just said I love you too to the man you used to call Sir and who never uttered a single word of affection towards you?”

  I’m not surprised by her shock. I just don’t really know how to go about explaining the changes that have taken place without also explaining all the mitigating factors behind those changes. For instance, my motivation for enlisting. I joined the military and underwent training
to be an EOD specialist as something of an escape and a means of giving my life some kind of direction. Although looking back on it, I can now admit I was really on more of a suicide mission.

  “Yeah, I know. Hard to believe, huh? People can change though,” I mutter to the stars high in the night, “Or, not change really, but…they become better understood is the best way to say it I guess.”

  “So, you’re saying you understand your father better now so you’re cool with him being an asshole to you for most of your life?”

  My head falls to the side on a quiet huff of laughter and I meet her doubtful and somewhat confused expression. “It’s called forgiveness, sugar. I don’t agree with how he raised me and I still have a tough time with the way he handled certain things, but, when I came home, we had our first honest to God heart to heart. He explained a lot of stuff and it really helped me understand where he was coming from and why he was the way he was, which incidentally, he’s not that bad anymore…he’s softened quite a bit over the last few years. He’s even in love, if you can believe it. They’re in Florida together for a few weeks visiting some of her family, doing Disney, and all the tourist stuff.”

  “Well, good for him. He charged you room and board, though, Cole. He hit you. And he threw you out of his house for having sex when you were twenty years old for Christ’s sake, and you didn’t even do what he kicked you out for. How does a heart to heart make any of that okay? How do you justify any of those things?”

  I nod slowly, knowing how all of that must still look from an outsider’s point of view. However, now that I know everything I do, it doesn’t upset me the way it did back when I was an outsider too. “I know, and I don’t mean that our conversation served as justification, only that I understand and have forgiven him because of it. He never really hit me, Erica. It was the back of his hand and I was mouthing off. In a big way. I was doing exactly what your grandma told me not to do when we set off on our trip…I was looking for trouble. Actively.”

  “Yeah, but sti—”

  “Lemme finish. I know a parent should never hit their child in anger, I do, and that’s one of the things I have a more difficult time reconciling, but I do forgive him for giving in to his rage. However, I’ve also accepted responsibility for being very successful at coaxing him into having it in the first place. And he didn’t throw me out for having sex in the general sense. It was you and all of the extenuating circumstances surrounding what he thought happened.”

  “That’s very big of you. I don’t know that I could forgive him if it were me, even if I were able to accept some of the responsibility. I mean, there wasn’t anything you ever did to explain why you should’ve had to pay your way through your adolescence, I mean other than being born his son, which wasn’t your choice. And I don’t want to sound, I don’t know, unsupportive, because I’m honestly very happy for you if your relationship with him has been mended, and it sounds like it has, but…I truly always thought that was just such a callous way for a parent to treat his child.”

  “Yeah, I get how it seems like that and it was pretty awful but, I think had I known what he was trying to do, it wouldn’t have been so bad. Because honestly, sweetheart, he did me a favor raising me the way he did. I appreciate every single thing I have ever had my entire life and still do, because I worked for it. I earned it. On my own with very little if any help from anyone,” I stop and look around, indicating my whole house with my arms stretched wide, “And, the money he collected from me helped build my dream house…my home.”

  “Wait. Your dad helped you pay for all this?”

  “Nope. He took every penny I ever paid him and invested it for me and my future. He just never told me he was doing it and he didn’t until he felt I could be trusted to not go out and waste it all on hookers and blow.”

  “Wow. I don’t even know what to say…I was gonna ask before why you chose to build your house just down the road from his, but—wait. Did you say hookers and blow?”

  I wink and give her a toothy grin. “Took you long enough to catch that.”

  She laughs and under the water, she shoves me in the thigh with one of her feet. “God, I really have missed you.”

  “Ditto,” I say, grabbing her foot to keep it from kicking me again. Of course I immediately have to nab the other to stop her from tickling me with her toes.

  “So, I kinda see why you’re able to get along with him now, but why did you choose to live right next to his vacation place?”

  “Oh, that. Well, he lives here full-time now. We didn’t wanna live together again in the house I grew up in…we needed a fresh start. So, he took early retirement and we moved up here.”

  “Why? I mean…why did you need to live with him and not someone else, like Payton?”

  “Alright see, this was the situation, Payton was still serving…he only got out a couple months ago…and I did my time in a combat hospital, but when I got discharged and was finally sent home, I was still pretty banged up.”

  Erica shakes one of her feet free and uses its big toe to tap the almost perfectly round scar just under my clavicle and to the right of my left shoulder.

  “You didn’t only get blown up, did you? You got shot.”

  I don’t need to give her an answer. She already knows I did. Instead I move her feet and hold them on the center of my chest, dipping my head to inspect her chipped toenail polish. It’s my excuse to not look at her. I don’t want to tell her how I “earned” my Purple Heart and the Bronze Star. That Payton almost lost his life and in turn, I received a medal. That knowing with certainty the man you consider to be blood is going to die and because in that moment, you believe in your soul that his life is worth more than yours, getting shot and returning fire while you do everything you can possibly think of to keep him alive…and that somehow, it makes you a hero. There’s nothing heroic or courageous though in knowing that if you don’t keep breathing life into him no matter the cost, he’ll die and you’ll live the life of a coward because you weren’t willing to pay the price required of you.

  And there certainly isn’t anything to be proud of in making a choice between him and another soul. I know there wasn’t anything I could do or that anyone else could because he was almost already gone but… In a split second, I still weighed two lives against one another. And I hate myself for that. I find some small consolation though in knowing that I at least got him to the chopper after I felt sure Payton was in the very capable hands of the Pararescuemen who’d jumped in hot and did what they do best, and to this very day, I thank God for them. In my mind, they are by far the most inherently hardcore and selfless group of soldiers in the Armed Forces, the PJs motto being “These things I do, that others may live,” and after that experience, I can understand and fully appreciate why there’s only about three hundred of those elite men world wide.

  “Yeah, well,” I have to stop and clear my throat, “There were some…um, things I wasn’t able to take care of by myself yet and I needed someone to be there ‘round the clock, and to make sure I did my PT at home and did it the way I was supposed to.”

  “And he did all that for you, no questions asked.”

  “Yeah. So, you see, beautiful, I know he loves me and he always did. He just wasn’t a nurturer and didn’t know how to express himself. He and I wasted so much time butting heads and not communicating, and now, we’re sort of trying to make up for that.”

  “Does that have anything to do with your tattoo?” she asks, needlessly pointing to the back of her own shoulder to indicate the one on me she means, because I already explained the one heralding me as an EOD specialist and I don’t think she’s been able to see much of the other one, and she’s not going to if I can help it. Not for a while anyway, and not until I can safely explain that part of it is about her.

  I didn’t exactly lie to Erica, but I’ve been blown up twice; the second time was the one that got me permanently retired. My brain got pretty rattled in the explosion, so one good, well-placed conk on a certa
in part of my head could have devastating repercussions for me now, which is sort of another reason my dad sticks close by and calls every day when he’s not home. The first time though, it was sort of like being in a nasty car accident, and, it was an eye-opening experience. Anyhow, Payton and I got hammered shortly after that while we had our first deep conversation. Mostly, we talked about the people we would’ve left behind, being Erica and his family back home. So of course in drunkenly appreciating life and contemplating our mortality and all that crap, we decided to get tattoos.

  It was my first clue that he might not be as straight as the arrow he was pretending to be. I got a phoenix because they’re badass and sick looking, and there’s that whole thing about rebirth, and in a small way, I felt like I had just been given a second chance at life. Well, I also happened to throw in the phrase, ‘love is friendship caught on fire,’ because I was drunk and it’s the only way I can describe how it happened and what it feels like for me to be in love with Erica. I had the artist put it inside a flaming heart that’s clutched in the talons of my badass phoenix. Because I was drunk. Except, being the then closeted, yet true homosexual that he is, Payton poured forth an abundant display of sentiment and enthusiasm calling the phoenix romantic. No one says a phoenix is romantic unless they’re a chick or gay. So from then on, I started paying attention. Now though, seeing her again and possibly getting another shot, I can maybe agree that he was a little right about my second tattoo, but I got it for me and only me so at least I had the presence of mind even while intoxicated to put it somewhere not everyone is able to see it. The heart part of it anyway; it’s pretty far down on my hip—well below the waistband of any clothing—so whoever sees the heart is able to see a whole lot more of me, and I don’t exactly strut around with my pants down. Basically, it’s been for my eyes only.