by Rachel Lee
The wind was knocking at the windows again. Curious, he flipped the small flat-screen TV on and hunted for a weather station. Soon he learned that this storm wasn’t likely to blow out before midday tomorrow. Warnings of deadly cold and wind chills ran along the foot of the screen and popped frequently out of the reporter’s mouth. The guy was totally intent on his mission to communicate.
Gil turned the volume down, leaving the TV as a distraction, but his thoughts refused to be distracted. Instead of returning to war, however, they returned to past girlfriends. LeeAnn, for example. He’d been seriously thinking about proposing to her until the day he’d found out that she was a sham.
Well, maybe that was unfair, but she’d put a bright face on a whole lot until the day he was stuffing his duffel once again and she flat-out told him she’d had enough of his disappearing act, enough of not knowing where he was going or for how long, or even where he’d been. She was tired of living with fear, most of all. She wanted a man who’d be home every night, not taking off on forty-eight hours’ notice for undisclosed locations. Not one she could never be sure would come home in one piece.
Well, he could sure understand that. He was just glad they hadn’t tied the knot and maybe had a kid before she realized she couldn’t stand it.
One of his buddies hadn’t been very sympathetic. “You need to find yourself an army brat,” he’d said. “Someone with realistic expectations.”
Maybe so, but Gil had never clicked with one, not for long, anyway. He saw some of the other guys making it just fine in marriages, and after he’d blown a few relationships, he came down to one ultimate conclusion. The problem wasn’t the women, the problem was him.
He hadn’t been exactly certain what he was doing wrong, but he hadn’t given it a lot of thought, either. His job was always first on his mind, and everything else seemed a distant second.
Until Miri had described him as resembling granite poured into a uniform.
When she’d spoken those words, he’d immediately put them aside. It was good he’d struck her that way. Serving as the noncommissioned officer in charge of Al’s funeral had been one of his most painful responsibilities. He’d needed to be granite, because he had to ensure that everything was properly carried out. His last service for his best friend.
But now he wondered. Was he like that all the time? To some extent, he supposed he was. He’d parked himself inside some very high walls to keep the pain and ugliness out. He simply couldn’t afford to let things get to him. Period. It would have interfered with his duty, his responsibilities to his men. He had to stay cool as much as possible. In fact, the only time he didn’t was when he could justifiably become enraged. That could be useful.
But if he’d truly become what Miri saw, or if that was all that others saw in him, he could understand why women decamped, or made his life miserable enough that he marched away.
So, he was granite. Maybe even deadened inside for self-protection. Except that lately, without the demands of duty to divert him and keep him in line, he was discovering some painful truths.
The first one was that he evidently felt he was in imminent danger all the time. Other than men in his unit, he must feel that no one had his back. That he was out here alone and at risk. He wasn’t inclined to trust anyone.
That by itself was bad. He was home now, as reasonably safe as anyone else walking the streets. Safer than he’d ever been in most of the places he’d gone.
But those walls stood between him and the rest of life. A life he hadn’t had much time for until now. Did he want to continue this way?
He could remember Al so clearly, talking frequently on long, isolated nights about the future he envisioned for himself when he retired and returned to the family ranch. It wouldn’t have been an easy life, but if Al had wanted easy he’d never have volunteered for special forces. And yet the ranch offered promises that couldn’t be kept anywhere else: open spaces and plenty of animals to tend. Even horses.
Al had had a special fondness for horses, and some skill with them, as he’d proved more than once during dangerous missions in the middle of nowhere. He’d sometimes found abandoned horses, usually half out of their minds with terror because of whatever had happened in the area. The men couldn’t know what had passed, but the horses had made it clear that fright had been stamped in their hearts.
And Al had soothed them and brought them along and then mounted them. Once he was sure they’d settled, the guys would take turns riding them, when it was safe. A perk, Al called it.
It was more than a perk. Those horses had pleased them all. Then there had been the goats, wandering wild... Well, Al had gathered them up, taught the men how to herd them and had made them lifelong friends in the next town they approached simply by giving the goats away.
Al should have lived.
The corollary to that was that Gil should have died. He was convinced that he didn’t have as much to offer, not by a long shot, as Al had. But it was Al who was gone.
Gil supposed a shrink would have had a field day with that. Survivor guilt to the max.
But when a man who believed he had no future thought of a man who had been looking forward to one, how else was he supposed to feel?
He wasn’t sure exactly when he realized he was no longer alone. He’d been standing in the middle of the room, generally facing the TV, trying to avoid sitting because of how fast he could stiffen, when he felt eyes on him.
Turning, he found Miri standing at the entrance to the room. She was covered by a thick, dark blue robe that zipped up the front, with matching slippers on her dainty feet.
“Can’t sleep?” he asked. Lame question. She was standing in front of him nearly an hour after she’d excused herself to go to bed.
“No,” she answered. Her tone wasn’t sharp, and she didn’t sound annoyed. Just maybe a bit lost.
She shook her head a little. “I need some tea. You?”
“Sure.” He followed her into the kitchen.
She put the kettle on the flame on her stove, shoved her hands into the slit pockets of her robe and leaned back against the edge of the counter. “Warm milk,” she said, evidently following her own train of thought. But she didn’t move or explain herself.
Then she said forlornly, “I can’t stop thinking about Al. I thought the worst was over finally, but now the grief is back almost as fresh as ever. It hurts!” She pulled a hand out of her pocket and wiped her eyes on her sleeve.
Gil stood there feeling supremely useless. What was he supposed to do? What comfort could he offer? Eventually he murmured, “Me, too.” A useless but true statement. “Maybe I’m making it harder on you. Tomorrow—”
“Oh, stop,” she begged. “You’re not causing this. It’s just happening. Are you going to tell me it doesn’t happen to you, too?”
He couldn’t. It had been happening to him this very evening, with the feeling that he should be in the ground, not Al. “I can’t.”
“I thought not.” Her voice wobbled and then she crossed the small distance between them, walking straight into his embrace. He still was leaning on his cane, and right now he didn’t dare let go of it. He wrapped his free arm around her, trying to tell her she was welcome. He wasn’t at all sure how else to say it.
Her arms closed around his waist, clearly clinging. “Why?” she asked brokenly. “Why?”
“No comforting answers. There aren’t any. You want to know the worst part?”
“What?”
“It’s all random. Every damn bit of it. Wrong place, wrong time. Your number’s up. However you want to phrase it. And that holds for civilians, too. God knows, plenty of them wind up casualties. I won’t even talk about kids who get cancer. Random.”
She rested against him, her arms tight around him. After a few minutes he could feel that his shirt was growing damp. She must be weeping, but she didn’t make a sound.
Damn it all to hell! He wished he could dry those tears, but he believed she was entitled to shed every single one of them. Al’s death had ripped a huge hole in her life, too. A man in his prime had been yanked away from everyone who cared about him.
War did that. Life did that. Crossing a street could do that. Part of what he found so awful about it all was that there was never a good reason. Argue all you wanted that Al had chosen a dangerous life, but that didn’t change the essential thing: his death had still been random. He alone of the unit had been killed. The worst that had happened to anyone else was a bullet graze.
Or take himself. Gil had survived injuries that should have killed him. Why? There were no answers.
So he held a weeping woman and accepted that there wasn’t a thing he could do to make her feel better. Maybe he’d even made it worse by coming here and stirring things up. Al was buried and he wasn’t. Why should anyone feel good about that?
* * *
The teakettle began to whistle. Miri had reached the point of drooping against Gil, the wave of grief having left her weak. She had to summon what was left of her energy to ease back, mumbling, “Sorry,” as she went to start making the tea.
“Just sit down,” Gil said almost abruptly. “I think I can make the tea for us.”
She didn’t argue, instead sagging into her usual kitchen chair, resting her elbows on the table and putting her face in her hands. As the flood of grief began to ebb, she realized she wasn’t being fair to Gil. She’d lost a cousin, but he’d lost his best friend. Worse, he’d been there when it happened. She didn’t want to imagine the horrors that stalked his dreams.
She listened to him open the cupboard, heard the can strike the table gently, followed by the duller sound of two mugs and saucers. Forcing herself to lift her head, she reached for a napkin from the basket she kept on the far end of the table and began to wipe her face. The tears were drying rapidly, leaving her skin feeling sticky and ready to crack.
Soon they were each making a mug of green tea, both very focused on the simple action of dunking a bag and then allowing the leaves to steep. Banal. Ordinary stuff. Making a cup of tea.
After the wrenching emotions that had just washed through her, it seemed almost ridiculous, yet contradictorily soothing.
“What about you, Gil?” she asked quietly. “You’ve said little about your injuries.”
“Little enough to say. Shot five times. Bullet near my spine still remains. My hip and pelvis shattered. They’re putting it all back together a little at a time, waiting for each new step to heal. I’m short a spleen, but they saved everything else. One more surgery, maybe. I hope that’s all. Each one feels like starting from ground zero again.”
Her heart squeezed. “The bullet near your spine?”
“They’re hemming and hawing about whether they want to try to remove it. Basically, if it stays put, they’ll probably leave it alone. If not, they’ve got to take the chance and yank it.”
“Chance?” She didn’t like the sound of that. Not one bit. “You could be paralyzed? Is that what you mean?”
“Yeah. That’s what I mean. It’s a chance. That random thing again. I could be perfectly lucky.”
“Seems like you could use some luck.” She realized she hadn’t given a whole lot of consideration to what he must be facing or experiencing. She knew he’d been wounded, that he was in pain, that he needed to stretch scar tissue, but...he could still become paralyzed? It was like the wounding that would never end. The thought appalled her. He’d been wounded worse than she imagined, and it had taken her this long to ask about it.
“What else?” she asked, determined to face it all.
“Nothing but scars from being wounded, from burns. I have to work at keeping it all loose, but I told you that.”
Burns, too. Her stomach felt as if it were on a fast elevator to the subbasement. He shouldn’t be suffering from survivor’s guilt. He should be suffering from survivor’s envy.
“Hey, I’m pretty much in one piece,” he said. “It might look a bit like a puzzle, but everything necessary is still there.”
“Will you ever be out of pain?”
“I’m not counting on it.” He dropped his tea bag onto the saucer and tasted the brew. “You have to tell me where you get this. I’ve always liked green tea better than black and this one is really great.”
“It’s my vice,” she admitted. “Special ordered from a place on the West Coast.”
“Can you put me in touch?”
“Easily. They’re on the web.” More banality. It was almost as if they were using it like a rope to pull themselves out of the pit they’d dived into. Talk about the easy things, because the alternative was...what? Hell? Most likely.
“Gil?”
He lifted his head, gray eyes almost flinty, but she didn’t feel that was directed at her. “Yeah?”
“Do you have any idea about what you might want to do if you can’t go back to active duty? Simple things?”
“Like what?” he asked almost sharply. “Making paper dolls? Whittling with my KA-BAR?”
She dropped her gaze instantly as her heart began to tap nervously. What had made her ask such a question? She’d already gathered that he wasn’t looking down the road of the future. Not yet. He still faced a whole lot before he would really know what he’d be capable of. “I’m sorry. I must be tired, not thinking clearly.”
His voice gentled a bit. “No, I’m sorry. It was a reasonable question. So far, no answers. I guess being caught twixt and tween is trying my temper. I can’t be sure I won’t be cleared for some kind of duty. If I’m not, that’s a whole other can of worms. I don’t really feel I can plan yet.”
“It hasn’t been that long yet, anyway,” she said quietly. “My world is so different. I can look ahead and see myself teaching until I retire. I can’t imagine not being able to do that.” Cautiously, she glanced at him again and found one corner of his mouth tipped upward.
“I hear you,” he answered. “I used to see it all laid out ahead of me, too. Funny how plans go awry.”
There was a good point in what he said. She nodded. “I guess we all tend to think that everything will go on the way it always has. Then something happens.”
“Exactly. Something happens. But we get by because we assume we can predict. Guess not.”
“Guess not,” she agreed. Al had planned a future at his family’s ranch, probably had thought he’d settle down with someone local and raise the next generation of Bakers. Gil hadn’t looked that far ahead. As for her...maybe she was living in a fantasy world. Miriam Baker, music teacher, surrounded by a tight-knit group of friends and family. Heck, she’d even stopped dreaming of the white wedding that had seemed so important to her back in high school. She rather liked her life now. If something came along to change it all...well, she wasn’t so sure she’d be any quicker than Gil at figuring out a different future.
“Random,” she said, repeating the word he’d used a little while ago. “It’s all so random, but we keep on making plans. Why?”
“Maybe because we like the illusion of control.”
She stared at him. “Illusion? Isn’t that an odd choice of word for a guy like you? So much must depend on planning.”
“We plan, all right. But there’s a saying I really like that kind of encapsulates it. ‘Every battle happens in the dark, in the rain, at the corner of four map sections.’”
Map sections? It took her a minute to imagine piecing a big map together and the corners of those four sections meeting...and being difficult to read. Maybe not even a perfect match. “Wow,” she said.
“So you plan, and to some extent you’re still walking blind.” He shrugged one shoulder. “Life is a bunch of contingencies, and no plan survives first contact.”
“Why plan, then?”
“Because some of it will always com
e in useful.” His smile widened a bit. “Is it driving you crazy that I’m at loose ends?”
“I’m not so sure you are,” she admitted frankly. “We all have to roll with the punches. Like when my dad died. Nobody planned that. Nobody planned my mother following him so soon, either.”
Gil’s smile faded. “I’m really sorry, Miri. That must have been a terrible time for you.”
“It was. It was hell. After Dad was killed, the entire family pitched in to save the crops, but then...well, anyway.”
“Did you sell the farm?”
“It was always Baker property. Al probably would have worked it along with a cousin or two until he took over the entire operation.”
Gil finished his tea. “So the Bakers have a lot of property?”
“Enough. My dad raised the fodder and the herd was fair-sized. So the family made it through even when times got tough, which happens frequently enough on a ranch.”
“And what about you? You aren’t a part of the family ranch?”
She almost smiled. “Peripherally. The land has never been split up. In a good year, I may receive a small share of proceeds, but I don’t count on it. I’m not doing the work. I don’t actually deserve anything, and it was more than enough that my dad was able to send me to college. That’s a better start than most people receive.”
“You’re doing well enough for yourself.”
“Exactly.” She tilted her head a bit. “You know how you said Al always wanted you to become a part of the operation and you weren’t especially interested? That’s how I am. If I wanted a part in it, they’d make a place for me. Just like Al would have for you. I just know it isn’t my cup of tea. I grew up as part of it, and all I could think about was music. I got what I wanted and that makes me very lucky.”
“The family seems close-knit.”
“We are. Not many would have made it for over a hundred years without splitting the land or having some squabbles over it. They never did. We never did. Which is not to say everyone’s perfect.”
His smile had returned and she was relieved to see it. Her breakdown had been normal, but she couldn’t help being a little embarrassed by it. Al was gone, he’d left a big hole in a lot of hearts, but this man was here and now, and he had some pretty big problems of his own.