Gone Wild (2019 Reissue)

by E Cleveland

  “Yup.” He gulps down the sugary breakfast like a hungry seagull, practically swallowing it whole.

  “Then, let’s do this.” Mandy points at him and Frank shoulders his camera and flicks on a bright spotlight attached to the top. Her face is washed in soft white light that makes the highlighter on her cheeks sparkle and her hair look glossy. She looks really pretty, but it doesn’t register in my brain at all. I notice in the same way that I notice bananas are yellow. My thoughts are all zeroed in on one thing, actually on one person: Farrah.

  “We’re goin’ live in three…” Frank holds up two fingers and then only one. He points at Mandy and she’s all wide eyes and pearly teeth as she does her introduction to the segment.

  “Today I’ve got a special treat for the viewers at home. In support of our amazing troops, we are spending this morning with Sergeant Clifton. He returned from deployment less than twelve hours ago, is that right?” She holds the microphone in my face.

  “That’s right, I think it’s been about eight hours now, actually. I’m a little scrambled with the time change.” I blink under the bright lights.

  “I can imagine!” She doesn’t smile at me. Instead, she looks like a prized thoroughbred showing off her teeth to the judges as she talks to me while staring into the camera. “And, is it true that you still haven’t even been home yet? Does your girlfriend even know you’re back in the United States?” She perma-grins at the unblinking eye in Frank’s steady hand.

  “No, she has no idea. I have a special surprise for her, one that I’ve been planning for a while now, but that I really wanted to save until we could be face-to-face again.”

  “Ohhh! We’re so excited for you,” Mandy squeals. “Are you going to propose?”

  “That’s the plan.”

  “So, when we heard that you were coming back and planned to propose, we asked Sergeant Clifton if we could tag along. What is your lovely lady’s name?”

  “Farrah.”

  “Aww,” she coos like I showed her a picture of a cute baby. “Well, it’s six thirty-five,” she looks down at her watch, “hopefully we can catch Farrah before she heads off to work. Let’s head down the road here to your house and watch as Sergeant Clifton surprises Farrah with his return from duty and as he pops the big question.”

  Mandy, Frank, and I all make our way down my darkened road. Past the similar split-entry style houses that were all built up on this street around the same time to the house Farrah and I have shared for over a year.

  I turn up the driveway and Mandy peers into the camera again. “This is it,” she whispers.

  Farrah’s car is in the driveway, so it looks like we timed this well. I was kind of sweating the idea that she might have to leave early or something like that. I’d hate to knock on the door and find out that she’s not there for some reason. I’d have real egg on my face then. I take the porch stairs two at a time and take a deep breath before knocking on the door. Mandy stays on the sidewalk leading to the steps with Frank. His camera is still rolling, and he points it directly at me.

  Inside the house I can hear the scurry of Farrah’s feet. My heart pounds in my chest and the first genuine smile that camera has seen all morning nearly splits my face in two as the front door slides open, finally revealing Farrah’s long auburn locks, her blue eyes are wide with surprise and her skin is absolutely radiating. My eyes slide down her body to her swollen abdomen. Her belly rounds out her flowing shirt in a way that can only mean one thing.

  “You’re pregnant?” I stare at the unmistakable swell and stare back at her, mirroring the same shock frozen on her face.

  Behind me, down on the sidewalk, Mandy squeals. Farrah surprising me with a baby when I was about to surprise her with a ring must make good morning television.

  “Sawyer? I thought you weren’t home for another couple weeks.” Farrah looks at the camera and Mandy and then at me. Her pregnancy glow fades out and she looks like she might faint.

  “I wanted to surprise you, but it looks like you beat me to the punch.” I throw my arms around her, but she’s too shocked to hug me back. “This is amazing, babe. You’re so big, I mean, sorry. I don’t mean you’re big. I mean you’re beautiful. Why didn’t you tell me? No,” I hold up my hand as her mouth gapes open, “it’s okay, I get it.” I smile. I can’t stop smiling. How can I? She’s having my baby. This went from awesome to perfect. Nothing could top this. Not even the ring in my pocket.

  “It’s twins.” She doesn’t blink. Her hands round the curve of her belly but her voice doesn’t sound quite right. It must be the shock of the whole thing.

  “Twins?” Now I might faint. “Wow.” I look over my shoulder, beaming with pride as I look down at Mandy and Frank. “You must be about to burst.” I laugh, but she doesn’t laugh with me. She doesn’t even smile. She’s practically catatonic.

  “Babe, this is the best news I could imagine. I love you so much. So much that I…” my leg slides back until I’m crouched on one knee and I pull the velvet box I’ve been toying with all morning out of my pocket, lifting the lid. Somewhere in what feels like another world, Mandy makes more noise, but I don’t care about her or the camera anymore. All I care about is the woman I love and my babies she’s carrying.

  “No,” she whispers, her face twisting up in pain. “Sawyer, stand up. Please, turn that off.” She looks over my shoulder as tears line her eyes. “I’m only five months,” she whispers.

  Kneeling on the front step, with a diamond perched on my palm and my pregnant girlfriend standing in front of me, the words coming out her mouth don’t register.

  “But I’ve been gone for six…”

  That’s when I see it. I see the man-sized shoes that I’ve never worn in my front hall. My eyes ping-pong from Farrah’s belly to the jackets I’ve never worn hanging in the closet.

  “Honey, who’s at the door?” Farrah cringes as some dude saunters on up behind her, buttoning up his shirt and tucking it in. He takes one look at me and blanches. “Shit.”

  “What the hell…?” It takes longer than it should for the ring to fall from my hand. Instead of popping up and popping this guy in the face, I hunch over on the step. A kick to the gut wouldn’t hurt this bad.

  “Sawyer, I’m so sorry,” Farrah cries. At least the tears are real I guess. Too bad they don’t mean fuck all.

  “Sorry?” I finally find my feet and get back on them. Disgust twists my face into a knot. My eyes become slits as I look over at the man living in my house. Sleeping in my damn bed. Fucking my girlfriend. “Who the fuck are you?” My fists ball up and every muscle in my body tenses with rage.

  “Dude, I’ve been begging her to tell you since before you left, but she wanted to wait until you were done with your deployment. She thought you might get shot or some shit if you were distracted with this,” the freshly shaved asshole starts explaining.

  “Since before I left?” I look back at Farrah. “Seriously?”

  “I’m so sorry.” She holds her belly, tears streaking down her face.

  “Sorry!” I almost choke on the word. “Sorry? Fuck you, Farrah.” I turn and run down the steps. Down past Mandy and Frank who, of course, is still recording every second of this drama.

  “Sawyer, please! Let’s talk about this,” Farrah yells, but I don’t want to talk. I stomp to the end of the driveway and punch the mailbox, sending it flying across the yard. My fist splits open and blood gushes from my knuckles, but the rage doesn’t subside.

  “Sergeant Clifton, come back,” Mandy calls out, probably hoping she can turn this into some kind of scoop that will take her career to the next level.

  I don’t stop though. Instead, my feet hit the pavement harder. My blood pumps loudly as I run down the street away from the bright camera light, away from Farrah and her belly full of some other man’s twins. I run from the scene, from the humiliation, from the pain.

  I just keep running.

  3

  Sawyer

  I pound back another ru
m in one of those flimsy cardboard cups that come with the room and grimace. It’s been less than forty-eight hours since my life imploded. I know I’m not the first guy to come back from a deployment to a cheating girlfriend. Hell, there’s even been tons of guys who’ve dealt with returning to a bun in the oven that wasn’t his. Still, I think I might have dibs on being the first to find out live on a cable news show along with all the viewers at home.

  The video has been on YouTube for a little more than a day and it’s already got over a million views. It was picked up on the viral video segment on the national news and it kept spreading. I don’t know why I keep checking on the uptick in views every few minutes. I know better than to read the comments section, but here I am reading the worst insights humanity has to offer.

  am I seeing things or is he crying? thought he was a soldier, not a lil’ bitch

  omg! When you find out the taliban has more heart than your wife, lol!

  I wud fuck him

  hahaha! When barbie cheats on gi-Joe with ken

  Poor guy, you should all be ashamed of yourself. This man is a hero!

  -watch him go from hero to zero at 9:23

  -i’m going to hell for laughing ^

  -fuck that guy, he’ll be swimming in pity pussy

  -i make $8539 a week from home and you can too! Check out my link…

  -guy is ugly. She probably didn’t want ugly babies

  And on it goes. And on I read. Why? I have no fucking clue. Maybe I’m a masochist or maybe there’s just something inside us that makes it next to impossible to look away, even when we know no good can come of what we’re doing. I used to wonder why, when you hear about kids being bullied until they kill themselves, they didn’t shut their computers off and ignore it. There’s no way it could be as bad as when we were kids, right? Back when you couldn’t simply unplug from harassment. Back when we said stupid, meaningless rhymes about sticks and stones breaking bones but names not hurting.

  My hand shakes a bit as I pour myself another drink. Yeah, we were wrong. I was wrong.

  As I sit in this dingy motel, glued to the seat, unblinkingly staring at my computer screen and reading every armchair expert weigh in on my public humiliation it’s pretty clear that there’s something inside of us that can’t resist looking. Can’t resist reading or watching, even when it hurts, especially when it’s about us.

  I click back to the other open tab on my laptop and refresh the Google search of my name. Some new blog posts pop up. I almost click on the one titled “I married a military man and cheated. Here’s why we shouldn’t judge Farrah.”

  My finger hovers over the mouse, I’m about to click down when a picture I haven’t seen in a long time catches my eye. Farther in the searches there’s a thumbnail of me fresh out of recruit training. I’m in full gear, camo and carrying my gun as I climb rugged terrain. It’s a badass shot and the best part of it is, I wasn’t posing. This wasn’t some kind of soldier selfie I had taken for likes. It was a day in the life that was captured by a recruiter.

  I click the image and it grows on my screen into a full-sized picture. One of those memes that people share on Facebook and Reddit. The top is my picture. Someone wrote: When you think you’re strong. Underneath is a still shot taken from the video. I’m hunched over on the step in front of Farrah’s big belly bursting with another man’s children. The pain etched into my face forces bile to rise up my throat. It’s too real. Too raw. It’s like whoever put this together found the exact moment my heart broke and went with it. Under that pic, the one I can barely look at, they wrote: But you’re really a lame duck.

  In the comments section someone oh-so-cleverly improved on the message: “more like a lame cuck.”

  Sure enough, when I Google “lame cuck” a hundred of those images appear with the revision edited in. There are other versions of it too. Things like: “How I think I look at the gym vs. How I actually look” and a bunch of other variations that have nothing to do with me. And yet, they do, because that is me. That is my face, my photo, my life that they’ve turned into a joke.

  I’m a fucking joke.

  Rap-rap-rap!

  I jump up, looking through the peephole before opening the door to Cole’s concerned face. “Hey, man.”

  “How did you know I was here?” My speech slurs slightly and I wobble a bit as I fight to act like the rum hasn’t hit me.

  “I didn’t.” He pushes past me into the room and I shrug, closing the door. “I’ve been checking in at every hotel and motel in the city.” Cole crosses his arms and wrinkles his nose at my room. “Dude, this place fucking reeks. You know you could’ve crashed at my place, right? What are you doing here?”

  “For one, it’s your parent’s house, not yours. There’s no way I’m crashing in your parents living room or whatever. I know how close you and your family are, I’m guessing your little sister is bouncing off the walls to have you back. I wasn’t going to crash the party.”

  “Yeah, she’s stoked.” He can’t help but smile. Cole’s never settled down or even taken most of the big boy steps we all take as adults like moving out, finding a woman, all that shit. He always says he’s not home long enough to bother with any of that stuff and that family is all he needs.

  I can’t believe I used to make fun of him for that. He was so right. An ache for the parents I lost so long ago blooms in my chest and builds up into a storm cloud of sadness that I can’t fall back on them. I can’t stumble into their safety net of love and understanding, even when the entire fucking world feels like it’s kicking me like an angry mob stomping someone to death.

  “But tonight isn’t about them. It’s about you, Sawyer. Come on, get some shoes on, go splash some water on your face, I’m taking you out.”

  “No, man, I’m good.” I stare at the blur of nastiness on my computer screen and Cole walks over, taking a look.

  “You think I’m gonna let you do this shit all night? No chance, man. I’m not letting you hole up in this dump, drinking your sorrows away while you read this crap.” He flicks the laptop screen down.

  I shrug. “What else am I supposed to do, huh? Act like it didn’t happen? Act like my entire fucking life isn’t falling apart?”

  “No, I’m not saying that. I’m saying to get your ass out of here and go out to a real bar with me and drown your sorrows properly, like a normal guy.”

  I stare at the dwindling booze on the table and then back at Cole. “Fine,” I give in.

  “Good, let’s go.”

  I don’t bother with the water on my face or trying to make myself look good. I don’t give a fuck about how I smell or look. Cole’s right, some fresh air and a change of scenery is a good idea. We head out into the night and quickly spot a pub about a half block up the road that we duck into.

  “Grab a seat and I’ll get us some beer.” Cole runs interference, protecting me from needing to talk to the bartender. Probably a little bit because I’m already too drunk, but mostly to help me stay off the radar.

  I ease down into a seat and Cole joins me within a minute with two big pints of brew. He doesn’t ramble out some kind of lecture or plunge into a “plenty of fish in the sea,” kind of pep talk, instead he does what only friends you’re most comfortable with can do, he lets the silence surround us. We both sip our beer, there’s no pressure to talk, especially not about what happened.

  “I think I’m gonna move,” I finally speak after downing half my beer.

  “Yeah, that’s a good idea. You should get yourself a bachelor pad downtown, go live the life for a bit, you know? Take some time to get over all that shit. I know there are tons of women who would kill to go on a date with you. Women love to fix a broken heart,” he muses.

  “No, I mean farther away.”

  “How much farther?”

  “Alaska.”

  “Wow, that is far.” He frowns at his diminishing beer. “I mean, I’m not here to shit on your Into the Wild fantasy or whatever, but do you think that might be a bi
t drastic? Why don’t you just re-up with the Army and leave Farrah and her bullshit in the rearview? Keep on keeping on. You don’t need to move way the fuck up to Alaska to get back on your feet, you know?”

  “I can’t get a new contract; you know it’s not that easy. My official release date was today. I’m no longer the property of the United States government. My parents are dead. I’ve got no brothers or sisters and the woman I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with, well, I’m sure you saw the video.”

  Cole empties his glass and nods at the table. “Yeah, it’s pretty bleak. I’ll give you that. But you’ve been through bleak before and come out the other side. Just because you’re no longer in the Army doesn’t mean you don’t have family. I’m your brother. We all are. You know that, man.”

  “I know.” I don’t tell him that it won’t be the same. That with each deployment or training exercise we’ll grow more distant. That I’ll grow more isolated. More bitter that I was wrong, that I should’ve listened to him the whole time.

  “Besides, how are you gonna just up and move to Alaska? You going to go work on those fishing boats?”

  “Nah, I’ve got money.”

  “Oh yeah? So I guess the next round is on you then, huh?” He laughs, but I don’t join him.

  “Yeah, it’s on me.” I pull out my wallet and drop a couple bills on the table.

  “I was joking, man.” He tries to push the twenties back my way but I refuse to take them.

  “I’m not. Not about the money, I got a bunch when my parents died. Plus my savings. And not about moving. I’m going to Alaska. I’ve thought it through. I’m fucking done.”

  “So that’s it? You’re gonna turn tail and run? That’s not the Sawyer I know. This will pass, man. Everything does. Give it some time…”