by Ash Harlow
She nodded. Yes, she could relax, soon, once she’d found her footing, because this was disarming, this different person who stood before her. “Hi, Vince.”
“Thank you for coming.”
She smiled, and he seemed to drink it in, a sip to test before gulping, as if quenching a massive thirst. He grabbed her bags and suggested they walk to the cabin.
“Where’s Calliope?” she asked.
“Right here.”
And she was there beside Vince, somehow not such a big presence at his side, as if the dog in a sense became an extension of him, moving through their world in gentle peace. Both, it seemed, had eased up the hyper-vigilance.
Vince walked her to a cabin at the end of a small group of buildings. “We’re all housed down here,” he said, holding the door for her. “You and I are sharing; I hope that’s okay for you. There are two bedrooms.”
“That’s great, Vince.” The cabins were dotted around the lake, and to be honest, it seemed more like a resort than a retreat.
“I swim in the lake each morning.”
“You’re kidding! It must be freezing.”
“Yeah, well, you know how much I like cold water.”
Only too well.
“Are you okay? You’re so quiet. I’ve never known you this quiet.”
“I’m a bit disoriented. You look well, Vince. How are you?”
“I’m good. Do you want to walk? We can talk about what happens here. We’re free until dinner in a couple of hours.”
They took the path around the lake. Other veterans were with their families and partners. Some parents, some wives and girlfriends. Vince reached for her hand in a warm, comforting grasp, so different from other times when his hold contained a desperation that mirrored the way he tried to hold himself together.
“I feel as if I’m healing at last, Lulah. It’s a revelation to know that being a warrior is a good thing instead of something inside myself to despise, something I thought of as some destructive beast the war awakened in me. The beast wasn’t the warrior, not in the mythic sense; the beast was the warrior unbalanced.
“That’s hard for me to understand.”
“I know. It was hard for me, too, at first, but as we’ve worked through various programs so that we understand and identify with the warrior spirit, well, we can start to love ourselves again.”
His hand gripped hers tighter now, the desperation of him needing her to understand what he said was in the firm pressure of each finger, the circle completed by his thumb so that she became captured, physically and emotionally, by all the hope contained in that grasp. Her own anguish grew as she understood that she hadn’t stayed there for him those times when he’d felt she’d seen his soul. But she couldn’t do that. She couldn’t be his healer; he needed to do it himself.
“I couldn’t help you, Vince.”
“You’re helping me now.” The grip of his hand eased, and he nudged her with his elbow. “Sorry for the bone-crusher moment.”
“I imagine there will be more.”
“Yeah, me, too.”
“I said I’d be honored to hear your story, Vince. I still feel that way, and I mean it from my heart. To understand what broke you is a privilege.”
“It’s a risk, Lulah. You may be disgusted by what I’ve done or hate me.”
“No. I want to understand. You’re so different, now. Even physically.”
“Does that mean I’ve lost my UHT Guy status?”
She stopped him on the track, and with a fingertip to his chest to indicate he should stay still, she made a slow, appraising circle of him. “It’s enhanced, dude. Seeing you now, I hadn’t realized how much of the pain you carried was evident on your face. Your eyes, Vince, they’re so different. You don’t look haunted anymore.”
“I think that washed away with all the tears I’ve shed over the past weeks.”
As they caught up to another couple, Vince steered Lulah along a side path into a more forested area. She had so many questions. “I don’t know where to start, Vince.”
“You’ve started already by coming here. But the truth is, you started a long time ago when you accepted me as I was each time I walked through the gates at the Sanctuary. You probably never realized the importance that a single area of my life existed where people would allow me to be me, without pressures or expectations.”
Lulah nudged his arm. “We were all scared of you, that’s why.”
“I don’t blame you. I was scared of myself.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
They entered the meeting room after breakfast the following morning. It looked so different now, filled with wives, siblings, parents, and friends who came to join them. The professionals and counselors were here along with members of the wider local community who regularly came to participate in these ceremonies. Voices were a low murmur, and the expectations, in contrast, were high.
Eric, the spiritual leader, guided the veterans in meditation, the way he had so many times through the past weeks. Initially Vince struggled with it, as surely every other vet who came here.
This setting aside of the carefully positioned barriers to find a place of calm within himself initially set off every alarm and warning system he’d built over the years. Now, though, he found he could reach that place quickly without experiencing any anxiety, and he sought it with relish.
He knew what would happen; they’d had it explained the night before, but when the veterans were asked to step to one side of the room, to remove themselves from their civilian friends and families, from the small community they had become within the building, he had to fight to keep the calm he’d found.
Stepping away, in a sense, mirrored their deployment, and he went to the far wall with the other veterans. They’d done this sort of thing before, but having Lulah here as a representative of all those he loved gave him a sense of loss and longing, different though just as intense as what he felt for Gable.
His fear rose, feeding the monster, giving it strength, and he fought an emerging need to reach for Lulah, to touch her and feel her goodness and warmth. God, he was going back months, back to the time before he’d arrived at the retreat. What a mistake. He’d wanted so badly for it to work that he’d foolishly put his blind faith into rituals and myth.
What he thought had been the rediscovery of his soul had been his monster playing a cruel trick, pretending to back down when faced with the goodness and love of these people, while all the time it rested, gathering strength to come back and claim him when his defenses were finally lowered.
He was hot, way too hot; the room was suddenly airless. Calliope stood on his foot, nudging him. He needed to escape from the building, and he could use her, say his dog needed a break. He’d encourage her to act up, and the pair of them could get the hell away. Perspiration soaked his shirt, and it clung to his back. Eric spoke, his words a rumble of sound, and, fuck it…
He eyed the door. Two men stood beside it, like sentries, but he could break past them easily. They wouldn’t expect him to make a run for it. He reached slowly for Calliope’s leash, and Lulah caught his eye. As they made contact, he saw her frown, and right there, her disappointment flooded through him.
Letting her down again.
Now the monster was euphoric, inhaling her dismay like a huffer with a bag and solvent. They were supposed to circle the civilians as a symbol of their protection of them and their way of life while they fought their battles. He would aim to situate himself near the door so that when the circle completed, he could duck out.
The other veterans moved to create the circle but try as he might, Vince couldn’t shift. Something else inside of him, his soul maybe, tried to beat down the monster, and that whole battle needed fighting again.
Calliope nudged him harder, and her leash that he held broke the peace when it clattered to the floor. Everyone turned at the sound, and the small safe world he’d created with these men in the past few weeks crumbled away.
He’d fooled hi
mself, thinking he was improving. The exit and the woods beyond were the only things that made sense now, but when he turned for it, something caught his sleeve. He reached to swipe it away and heard Adoette’s smooth voice.
“Settle, Vince; don’t let it beat you. Don’t fight the love and forgiveness in this room.”
Was she insane? He’d started shaking.
“It’s a panic attack, nothing more than that. You must believe in yourself. There’s nothing inside you trying to take over, to make you fail. It’s too much stress.”
“I can’t do this. Look at me! The others, they’re making progress because they’re good men. But I have something evil inside me that won’t let me go.”
“No, you haven’t. You only have goodness inside. It’s because you feel so deeply that this affects you so.”
He tried to pull away, but Adoette slipped her hand into his, and at the same time, one of the other vets took his free arm. “Come on,” he said gently, “we need you to complete the circle.”
Vince searched the faces of those around him, expecting recriminations, anger that he’d broken the calm to ruin a moment of healing for them all. Instead, all that was truly there was acceptance and concern.
He sought Lulah and stayed with her eyes as she drew him towards her, to finish the circle, and at that moment, he found another piece of the jigsaw in the strength that came with the love of the person left at home.
One-by-one, the veterans shared their stories. Many they had told already, among themselves, through the past weeks they’d been together, but this sharing with civilians was, for some, bringing new stories to the fore. More tears came as the civilians vowed to hold their stories in their heart and help carry the burden, because it was everyone’s load to share.
Now it was Vince’s turn, and he stayed focused completely on Lulah, as it was her strength and her forgiveness that he needed to keep him going. He told her of the fight one day when they were doing house searches because they believed someone in the village had planted the IED that killed his four friends.
He shouldn’t have been on patrol, but his need to avenge the deaths swamped him. Word arrived that on the far side of the village were two men who were responsible for burying the IED held up in a house.
Six of them ran for the house, calling for the occupants to come out. When there was no response, they kicked in the door, and somebody opened up and fired. He remembered the cauldron of noise, dust, the stink of fear in every nightmare and flashback he had. When the shooting finally stopped, he saw dead and injured, hard to tell how many.
Later, he’d been amazed by the intensity of his anger towards these people, and that total loss of self-control haunted him. But in the immediate moment, something else took over when, among the carnage, he heard screams from a child and shouting from an older woman, constrained.
The child lay on the floor near two dead men, a young girl under five years. Blood seeped from a wound to her stomach, and the pale dress she wore rapidly turned crimson. Vince ran for her, scooped her up, and left the hut, shouting for a medic.
Screams from the woman, the young girl’s mother he guessed, followed him outside, but he knew that the girl would have a better chance of survival if she was seen by one of their medics. Across a small yard, a Corpsman tended another’s wounds, and Vince made for that group.
“I clutched her to me, begging her to hold on, keep breathing, and even though I hated the sound, I begged her to keep whimpering. When I reached the Corpsman, the young girl sort of convulsed in my arms and sighed. She’d died. I sat on the ground cradling her, and in the distance, I could hear the approach, the desperate wail of the woman who was her mother. It seemed as if she knew her child had died well before she reached us.
“When I looked at the young girl again, all I could see was my own daughter’s face, bloodied and smeared with dirt. This time something snapped inside me. Not apart, but snapped closed, as if my soul had had enough, seen too much. It couldn’t take any more.
“In my nightmares and flashbacks, that child morphs into my own daughter, Gable, and the screams, God help me, the screams and the death. It’s no wonder my soul closed off that day. It locked itself away because it couldn’t bear to be with someone as rotten as me… I don’t know how to find it again.
“The woman, her mother beat me with her fists, and I sat there, cradling her dead child, absorbing her pain through her blows, and that’s about the only way I got through it. Somehow everything became confused, the deaths of my battle buddies, the young child, the other children who died because of us. Innocent civilians, so many killed. Who really knew whether those villagers killed were responsible for the IED?”
Lulah wanted to go to him, to gather him in her arms the way you would a hurt child, and make sure he understood that no matter how big his hurt, it wasn’t bigger than the universe. It wasn’t even bigger than him. It was part of his history—her history, too, now that he’d shared it. In the same manner, it became part of the history of every person in the room, and they would all hold his story in their hearts.
On another day, they too would share his story, so that each person who heard it came to hold an edge of it, and all those hands would redistribute the weight in such a way that it became easier to carry with each telling.
When the last story was told, the ceremony ended with prayer, enabling the warriors to call their souls, lost in war, back to service. Next, they shared a meal.
Like the other civilians, Lulah waited on Vince, tending his needs and preparing his food. At first, he was disarmed by this act of servitude, and he gripped her hand when she placed a drink on the table for him. “You don’t have to do this, Lulah.”
“I know, but I want to.”
“It makes me uncomfortable.”
“Stop thinking of yourself all the time and allow me to indulge you and show you some gratitude.” She grinned at him, and he relaxed.
When the meal finished, they said another prayer of thanks, and everyone moved off.
Vince took her hand as they walked along the edge of the lake. The air was damp from earlier rain, deepening the chill. “I’m exhausted, Lulah. Do you mind if we go back to the cabin and rest for a bit?” He smiled. “Of course, you can do anything you wish, but I need to rest.”
“I’ll come back with you.” Tending to his needs at dinner gave her a curious sense of satisfaction, especially having previously invested so much effort, pushing Vince away whenever she felt his growing dependence on her.
The same way Vince had the courage to talk about his darkest secrets, so she, too, had the courage to sample what it would be like to be completely with him, all guards down.
Back at the cabin, Vince appeared drawn, washed out by the intensity of the day’s proceedings. “Take your shirt off,” Lulah suggested. “Hop on the bed, and I’ll give you a massage.”
“You don’t—”
“I know I don’t have to, but I want to.” She followed him to the bedroom and waited while he drew the curtains before suggesting he strip down to his boxers. Naked would be awesome, but Vince was in another head space that needed ministering without the added emotion of making love. Lulah moved the pillow down the bed. “Lie face-down with your chest on the pillow.”
“Wow, bossy Lulah’s back.” He pulled a half-smile and ran a finger down her cheek before settling the long frame of his body along the length of the bed.
“Yup, and you’re going to allow bossy Lulah to take care of you for one night.” In the bathroom, she retrieved her massage oil from her bag and picked a couple of fresh towels from the shelf. She rolled them, placing one under his forehead and one under his feet.
“Much more of this fussing and I’m going to think you’re a professional.”
Lulah poured some oil into her palm, rubbing her hands together, warming it. “Community classes are not only for reading and writing. To reward my fried brain, I enrolled for something enjoyable. I’d learned massage for the dogs, and I tho
ught, what the hell, one day I might find a hot guy with a few knotted muscles. I could capture him with the super-power of my healing hands.” She climbed onto the bed, straddling his hips. “Now, be quiet, relax, and behave yourself.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Lulah spent the first minutes spreading the oil across his back, across his tattoos and scars, using long strokes that never paused or hesitated over any particular indentation or ink. Vince offered intermittent sounds of appreciation. “God, imp, this is heaven.”
“I haven’t begun yet. No more speaking. I want you to close your eyes and try to quiet your mind so that the only thing you know is the feel of my hands.” The day had been so intense, the catharsis so draining, there was no more use for words.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Once his back was slick, gleaming in the soft lamplight, she circled her palms up and down each side of his spine. In time, the tension in his buttocks where she straddled him eased, and by the time she progressed to lifting, freeing his back muscles, Vince noticeably became heavier on the bed. Good, that was exactly what she was after. The addition of ylang ylang in the almond carrier oil she used for the massage was reputed to have a sedating effect on the nervous system.
The scent affected Lulah, too, her mind quietening as she drew her thumbs down either side of his spine, lingering at his hips. He’d stopped making any sound, now, his breathing slow and shallow, suggesting he had drifted into sleep.
She finished with broad strokes, lightening the pressure with each sweep until she stopped, one hand cradling the base of his skull, the other resting on his sacrum, to ground Vince and herself.
He never stirred when she finished, and the soft huff of each exhalation told her he slept. The cabin was warm, and she removed her clothing to lie across him, lowering gently, bringing the quilt with her, so as not to disturb his rest. Turning her head, she rested her cheek against the compass tattoo, the mark on his back that signified an exceptional wound, slow to heal and deeper than any of his scars.