Promises to Keep

by Sex, Nikki

  The rockets are usually homemade or leftovers from Saddam's army. The bastards have gotten clever, though—I have to give them that. They've got this system they figured out. It's a way to fire off rockets at our base after they're long gone.

  What they do is put the rocket in a firing tube, like a long pipe. At the far end of the pipe is a firing pin so that when the rocket drops down the tube, the tail end hits that pin and it ignites the engine and off it goes. It's pretty simple, but the clever bit is that they put the rocket just inside the mouth of the pipe and then put the mouth of the tube with the rocket right there at the end into a bowl of water that they freeze.

  At night, they sneak off into the brush outside of camp and put up the rocket tubes with the rocket frozen to the opening, point them at our base and then skedaddle. When the sun comes up, the ice melts and whoosh, off goes the rocket while the bad guy is back home, safe in his bed.

  I can't tell you just how glad I am to be getting out of this shit hole. They say whenever you go to a new assignment in the military, your favorite person in the world is your replacement. Well, he's here now. I'm breaking him in and in a few days, I'm on that freedom bird.

  This may be improper and I sincerely hope that you don't mind—but I want to drop in on you when I get to the States. I won't have time to hear back from you since I'll be gone before your response could reach me. I hope to see you sometime soon.

  I'd like to spend a little time looking around the east coast since they'll be dropping me off at Camp Lejeune. The Marines tell me it's only about a half hour from where you live.

  I won't take up much of your time and it would be nice to put a face to the name.

  Laura frantically scanned the top of the page. It was dated several weeks ago. As usual, the mail took forever to get to her from over there. Jack could be walking up the front steps right at that very moment for all she knew.

  Could he?

  She jumped up and ran to the door, flinging it open, half expecting him to be just standing there.

  Nothing. No one.

  Feeling sheepish and rather silly, she went back inside. Of course, he wouldn't be on her doorstep just as she was reading his letter. Crap like that only happened in tearjerker movies with beautiful background music.

  Laura sat down and carefully read the rest of Jack's letter.

  I’m coming home.

  As she read the last line over and over again, she wondered. What were the chances? Surely, Jack would be going to California to see his family first—he didn’t live here. Nevertheless, maybe…just maybe, he'd really come to see her.

  I won't take up much of your time and it would be nice to put a face to the name.

  Her front door fascinated her, drawing her eyes. With shallow breaths, Laura listened for a knock. It was so stupid.

  Breathless with anticipation, she felt like a little kid on Christmas Eve, waiting for her chance to see Santa Claus.

  But Jack didn’t come.

  Chapter 22.

  Sunroof open and windows down, with wind blowing in on his face, Jack cruised up highway 17 at a brisk 65 miles an hour—in a blissful trance of pleasure.

  This was heaven.

  Hell, even compared to LA, it was a joy. Jack was used to the bumper-to-bumper traffic that often crawled along 405 in a gigantic worm that twisted from Signal Hill to the Fernando Valley.

  Driving a Hoopty had been nothing like this, either. No dust or sand, no relentless heat, no bombs, fire or snipers to fear—no death at every turn.

  He’d remembered his promise to his medic, but the war had continued in its inexorable way. Jack had sometimes wondered if Wynn ever existed at all—or anything else outside of Iraq, for that matter.

  Luckily, all things end, thank God.

  I’m home.

  Jack had never been to North Carolina before. He'd signed up to go overseas with the Marines and had shipped out, never getting a chance to look around. Straight from Camp Pendleton, he’d gone from California to Fallujah.

  He'd volunteered to join a unit already out in the field. When all was said and done, he chose not to return to California, but to come back with the Marine’s to their home base, Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.

  Now that he'd returned to the States, Jack finally had the opportunity to spend some vacation time, exploring and enjoying himself. He was beyond thrilled.

  ‘On the Fly’ surgery, firefights, and the seemingly endless stream of hurt and frightened young men and women that went on forever—for Jack, all of that shit was gone.

  The paradise of living in his own free, prosperous and safe country made his life during the war feel like some half-forgotten dream. Right now, it was as if he'd always been home, and he'd always be home.

  Jack still carried Wynn's ring as part of his dog tags. It was a commitment he’d made to his corpsman, and he was determined to follow it through before he could even think about returning to California.

  That promise had become a burden. The ring couldn't weigh much more than a quarter of an ounce, yet at times, to Jack it felt like an anvil that pulled him down and bent his back under its weight.

  In sweet, poignant moments however, it only reminded him of Laura.

  Those times Jack loved that damn ring. It was his pathetic excuse to finally meet her. He longed to do so for months. Man, he was dying to see her.

  It wasn't as if he wanted to get rid of the ring. He’d made a vow and somehow that had taken on as much significance, as a knight’s pursuit of the Holy Grail.

  It was as if some deeply old-fashioned sense of duty had awakened somewhere inside of him.

  His friends back home—especially the guys he’d surfed with as a teenager—would laugh at him. Back then, they thought of nothing more than surfing and the occasional piece of tail.

  Sucker. Moron. Why don't you pawn that thing and get us a case of Anchor Steam. That'd be righteous.

  Righteous, he thought. What a stupid way to use a potentially powerful word.

  Jack felt anything but 'righteous.'

  He’d outgrown that phase of his life once he went to college. He realized that he couldn't surf his way into medical school and being a doctor was his life's dream. He'd thought he'd matured into a serious medical student and an even more serious doctor, but his time in Iraq showed him exactly what serious was.

  Now, here he was, northbound on 17 from Lejeune to New Bern, North Carolina.

  Laura Wynn’s address was punched into the GPS perched on the dash of his brand new, cherry red Jeep Cherokee. He was on his way to meet a woman that he’d never seen, someone he now considered more than a friend.

  Laura haunted his thoughts. He believed that she helped him keep his sanity while he’d been trapped in Hell. She breathed life into a world where he was surrounded by death. Laura gave him something to look forward to—something to smile about and hope for.

  Thoughts of her swimming in the ocean, or walking along a summer beach filled his mind.

  Her address was easy to get, it was on the upper left hand corner of every letter he'd received. All of those letters were treasured memories, carefully packed away in his duffel bag. They meant the world to him.

  She meant the world to him.

  Her husband, Bob, had beat him home—he'd beat them all home by six months. He'd been in the ground for a while now.

  The tears had been shed, the family had come and gone, the folded flag handed over, and the flowers long faded, wilted and picked up by some underpaid groundskeeper.

  Jack and his little mission seemed like an afterthought in the grand scheme of things. He was the one loud guy who sings along with the choir and doesn't realize when the song's over. In the end, he lets out one final note after everybody stops and it hangs there in the air—awkwardly.

  Like musical chairs, the music hadn’t stopped yet. It would soon. Very soon.

  Then I’ll finally see her.

  His pulse kicked up at the thought.

  Jack's GPS beeped an
d told him to get off at the next exit in a flat, mechanical voice. Just for shits and giggles, he'd once selected "German" on the language program and drove around trying to make sense of the gutturally pronounced directions. In the end he got lost, so he’d turned it back to regular American English.

  Right then, it sounded flat. It reminded him of the emotionless "from a grateful nation," the casualty officer always said at funerals, as he handed the flag over to the widow, parent or the kids.

  He'd been to more than one military funeral in the last few weeks, but he was truly glad that he'd missed Wynn's, thank God. He just—well, it was all said and done anyway—so why dwell on it?

  The highway raised up and the ground underneath fell away. The GPS readout told Jack that he was crossing the Neuse River and the exit was just up ahead.

  He was surprised at how wide and blue the river was.

  In California, any muddy trickle that had water for any part of the year was called a river. The Neuse had to be miles across. Jack could smell fresh salt air as it poured in through his open window. The breeze caressed his face and whipped his short, brown hair back and forth.

  The map showed that the river ran into the sound. By the smell of it, there had to be just as much seawater as fresh in the Neuse.

  God, I love that smell.

  The exit was right in the middle of the bridge. Jack had to slam on the breaks to make it. He downshifted as he pulled the tight spiral turn that looped around and into town.

  New Bern was a cluster of historical looking buildings perched right in the middle of a peninsula formed by two rivers. A small drawbridge lined with art deco streetlights took him over the second river, a smaller one. The sign on the drawbridge keeper's house read, "Trent River Bridge."

  At the first light, Jack checked his GPS again. Straight up Front Street then turn left.

  For a long while, he’d been thinking about what Laura would look like. Blonde? Brunette? Long hair or short? What about her figure? What would her voice sound like? Slow and mellow he bet, with a soft southern lilt.

  Those details didn’t really matter. He’d fallen for who she was beneath the surface—her mind, her heart and soul. Still, he’d spent a lot of time imagining her face… and her figure.

  Laura was the widow of a young man he had sent off to his death, and Jack couldn’t get her out of his mind. It was wrong on so many levels. It was seriously fucked up.

  He had no idea of what he'd say to her—not in person, anyway. They'd written but never talked. Jack wondered briefly why he'd never tried to call her on one of the satellite phones over in the morale tent, but deep inside he knew why.

  Guilt was what kept him from calling her.

  Sure, many times he'd started the long walk across the firebase to the phones. The dust that poured over his feet and swirled up in his face reminded him of the day that Bob died. Then that awful, stomach-churning feeling of failed responsibility grew inside of him and got heavier and heavier with every step.

  In the winter, when it rained in Fallujah, that ubiquitous powdery dust became the stickiest mud he'd ever seen. It had the consistency of paper Mache. It built up on his boots as he walked through it, until it felt like he had cinder blocks strapped to his feet.

  His guilt was like that.

  With every step he took towards the phone tent, the uncomfortable feelings got heavier and heavier until he couldn't take another step.

  Jack never made it anywhere near halfway. He'd stop, stand for a minute or two looking at the night sky and then he'd slowly turn and make the long walk back to his tent.

  Letters were easier for him to deal with. They gave Jack some distance. He could think about what he was saying—he was very careful, lest he stupidly say something that might be inappropriate or upsetting to her.

  On the phone, especially with the static of the jury-rigged lines and connections in Iraq, it would be just too easy to mess things up or cause a serious misunderstanding. She meant way too much to him to risk losing her and her letters which had become so vital to his sanity.

  Over the months Laura had been in his life—some of the toughest time he'd ever faced—he realized that he needed her.

  Nope, he decided that it was letters only until he had a chance to talk to her face-to-face and in person. He wanted to see how she reacted to what he said.

  He had feelings for her from her letters, but he still had his promise to Bob to keep. He fully intended to keep his promise with as much diplomacy and gentleness as he could muster.

  The nagging electronic voice of the GPS told him that he was, "arriving, destination on right."

  Jack pulled over to the curb and turned off the engine.

  He sat there for a minute and gathered his courage before opening the door. The ring was in his pocket, the afternoon sun was still bright and the sky was California blue.

  I’m finally here.

  Chapter 23.

  Jack jumped out of his Jeep, closed the door behind him, and walked up the sidewalk to Laura's apartment building.

  There was a buzzer box next to the front door with every apartment number neatly written besides a white button. He quickly found her apartment number—after all, he'd written it on more than a dozen or so envelopes—and pushed it.

  He was rewarded with the Pavlovian sound of the electronic buzz that alerted the tenant. However, there was no voice in reply. The speaker on the box looked intact so, after a minute, Jack buzzed again. Still nothing.

  Tentatively, Jack tried the door. It opened smoothly.

  Well, that isn't very secure, he thought.

  He walked into the entryway. Jack wasn't too surprised that the front door lock was broken, the place wasn't exactly the Waldorf Astoria. The carpet was ancient and threadbare, the paint on the walls was worn and peeling in spots. The apartment building wasn't a slum—it was clean—just old.

  The first door to one side read, "One A." That meant that Laura lived one floor up, or one "deck" up, as they say in the Navy.

  Buzzed with nerves, excitement and adrenaline, he literally bounded up the stairs.

  In front of Laura's apartment, Jack paused again. He took a deep breath and thought about what he's say.

  Hi, I'm jack.

  Too forward?

  Hello, Mrs. Wynn. I am Lieutenant Commander Jack Curren. We have been corresponding as of late.

  Way too formal. Christ, it was so formal it almost sounded British.

  Jack hadn't a clue as to what she'd look like or what she'd do when she figured out who he was. He hoped she'd be glad to see him. He was certain that they’d become good friends as well as pen pals over the months, but, you never know.

  He'd written to Laura about coming to see her but he’d left Iraq before she’s had time to respond. He could only pray that she had gotten the letter and was okay with his visit. Without confirmation or approval, he felt a little uneasy.

  Laura didn't know about the ring or Jack’s promise. She didn't know many things about him, including his responsibility over her husband’s death.

  With a shrug, Jack decided to wing it and knocked on the door. No answer. Trying to be polite, he patiently waited a few minutes before knocking again. He looked for a doorbell, but there wasn't one.

  Jack knocked again. Still nothing.

  "What the Hell do you want?" a man's voice called out harshly.

  Startled, Jack looked down the hall. "Excuse me?"

  "I said; what the Hell do you want? Been too many men sniffing around here lately. Can't you people just leave the poor girl alone?"

  The speaker was an older black gentleman with very dark and weathered skin that contrasted with his white hair that topped his head like a dandelion tuft. Jack wasn't sure what he was going on about at all. He was certainly not happy to hear what the man said.

  Too many men?

  "I'm sorry, sir," Jack said respectively. He'd learned a long time ago it was smart to address older men as "sir." Besides, the gentleman looked as if he'd be
accustomed to it. Jack recognized an old warhorse when he saw one.

  "You men come sniffing around here. Don't you have no decency? The girl's a widow, for Christ's sake. The last fool I caught was causin' some trouble and I nearly had to shoot his dumb ass."

  The man gestured to his waistband, where he was apparently hiding a gun. A tendril of fear crept into Jack’s spine.

  "You want some o' that, too?"

  Jack backed up with his hands open, palms out in a typical gesture of surrender.

  "No sir, I don't want any part of what you've got there. My name is Jack Curren. I was a friend of her husband. We served in Iraq together—I was with him when he died. I just got back to the States and I came to pay my respect, that's all."

  "You were?" he asked suspiciously. "Where was he at?"

  "Fallujah."

  "What is the Marine Corps mascot?"

  "The bulldog—Chesty—named after General Chesty Puller."

  The man visibly relaxed. "OK, I believe you. My name's Ron Phillips. I live down the hall."

  "Pleased to meet you." Jack slowly walked forward and put his hand out.

  Ron looked at it suspiciously and then shook it. "I'm sorry to give you a hard time, but that girl, sweet as she is, seems to attract the wrong element."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Some junkie was here a while ago, giving her a hard time. Scared her half to death by the look of it—was roughing her up a bit. If I hadn't been here, who knows what he would've done." Ron shook his head. "In my day all the kids did was a little pot and some beer. Nowadays, the damned fools are into heroin and pills and God only knows what. It's shameful, really shameful."

  "I know what you mean."

  "You look like a nice fella—clean, too. I could tell you were a military man when I first seen you."

  "I try."

  Jack relaxed but still kept on eye on Ron's waistband. Spending close to a year in a place where people were actively trying to kill him night and day, made him understandably gun shy around people he didn't know well, especially armed men. Trust took time. It was a survival instinct as far as he was concerned.

  Taking a deep fortifying breath, Jack said, "I arrived from overseas just a few days ago and got some time off, so I decided to visit Laura—Mrs. Wynn."