Uncle Plats

by Aqua Allsopp

  *****

  “Sergeant Greene!” Yelled First Sergeant Roberts, as he walked into the supply room. He took a deep breath, inhaling the smells of the Army—diesel fumes trapped in old canvas, the remnants of soil from every continent they’ve served on, trapped in the nooks and crannies of aluminum and steel equipment, and the medicinal smell of medical and dental first aid supplies.

  “Yes, First Sergeant?” Sergeant Greene yelled in reply, his head stuck between two crates, as he scanned a barcode.

  “You finished with that inventory yet? I need it on my desk by 0-six hundred hours, tomorrow,” Roberts said with a stern expression on his face.

  Staff Sergeant (SSG) Greene’s head immediately popped up to make eye contact with him.

  “Seriously First Sergeant? I’m not even halfway done yet. It looks like I’ll be here all night to finish up,” Greene said with a dejected look on his face. He had big plans with Sheridan tonight.

  “No Sergeant, I’m just yanking your chain. I heard you’re proposing to that green-eyed beauty of yours today.”

  “Yes sir, First Sergeant, and I hope she says yes because I spent a lot of money on that ring. Do you want to see it?”

  “Sure!” SSG Greene reached into the lower right pocket of his digital patterned shirt and pulled out a burgundy, velvet ring box, opening it to reveal a one-carat, white gold, pear-shaped engagement ring, with 13 surrounding diamonds.

  “It’s a beauty, I’m sure she’ll say yes so let me be the first to say congratulations,” Daryl’s First Sergeant said with a big grin and a vigorous handshake.

  “Thank you, First Sergeant,” replied Daryl, with his own broad smile.

  “Now go on and get out of here and have a good time tonight.” With that, Daryl hustled off to change and pick up Sheridan from work.

  Walking through the elementary school parking lot, Daryl remembered how he met Sheridan in this very spot. He was doing a favor for a buddy by picking up his son from school. His friend was running late with his wife at her chemotherapy appointment so Daryl helped out. He looked lost so Sheridan offered to help him find his way to the boy’s classroom. Daryl came back the next day with a dozen yellow roses to thank Sheridan. He asked her out for coffee and they’ve been together going on two-years now.

  “Hi babe.” Daryl said to Sheridan, offering her a kiss as she exited the school. “I have a surprise for you.” he said.

  “You do?” Sheridan asked, not knowing what the surprise could be, but suspecting that it was some sort of prank that Daryl intended to play on her because he’s just that sort of guy. Being a good sport and enjoying a laugh, Sheridan played along without asking too many questions.

  When Daryl pulled into the Fort Bragg horse stables parking lot he said, “Surprise!” Daryl was all smiles and excitement. He went on to say, “It’s such a beautiful evening that I thought we’d do a hay ride and have hot cider before we go to dinner.”

  “Well I’m not really dressed to be out in the cold for very long Daryl,” Sheridan said as she tugged at the hem of her black mini-skirt, wishing that her boots were thigh-high instead of ending at just her calf.

  “You have your winter coat, I’ve got this mink blanket for you and there’s hot cider on the ride,” Daryl said in a sweet and pleading voice as he handed Sheridan a faux-mink-blanket from his back seat.

  Not wanting to disappoint Daryl and appreciating the effort that he made to be romantic, she agreed to go on the hay ride. The wagon was covered with garland and red roses. Sheridan, along with the other guests, thought it was just decorated for the upcoming holidays, but shortly after the wagon began to move Daryl dropped to one knee, held Sheridan’s hand and said, “Sheridan, would you do me the honor of becoming my wife?” That’s when they all knew that the old wagon was decorated especially for Sheridan.

  Sheridan let out a little squeak of a scream that sounded like someone stepping on a mouse, then she whispered, yes, amid her tears of joy. Everyone on the wagon ride erupted in applause and congratulations for the happy couple.

  At the end of the evening Sheridan couldn’t wait to tell us the news. “Mom, Dad! Where are you?” Sheridan said as she tore through the house when she returned home from her date.

  “Sheridan, is everything alright?” Charlie said as he sat concerned, in his recliner.

  “Everything is just fine daddy, Daryl proposed,” she shrieked as she waved a sparkling ring in front of our faces. Charles and I stood up and jumped for joy right along with her. We loved Daryl and thought that he would make a good husband. We were about as happy as parents could be for their only child.

  *****

  “Introducing Staff Sergeant Daryl Greene, 82nd Airborne paratrooper and Army Ranger, and Mrs. Sheridan Greene”, the emcee said as Sheridan and Daryl exited the church, with all of their family, friends, and coworkers looking on.

  Daryl and Sheridan had a beautiful military wedding ceremony at the post chapel that our family attended for years, replete with the expected military fanfare. Her father and I were both brought to tears as they walked beneath the arch of sabers held by Daryl’s brothers-in-arms, dressed in their finest military dress blue uniforms. The last soldier that Sheridan passed in the line swatted her on the backside with the side of his sword and said, “Welcome to the Army ma’am.”

  Daryl and Sheridan settled into a comfortable routine of brief deployments, month-long training exercises, and secret missions of undetermined amounts of time.

  Before the war, Daryl, Sheridan, our three-year-old granddaughter Bailey, and eight-year-old grandson Justin laughed and played like four children, enjoying all that life had to offer. Sheridan loved the outdoors and grew up hiking in Germany, skiing in Italy, and even trekking to Paris for her high school prom night. She shared her sense of adventure and her love for nature with her husband and children.

  As soon as Daryl returned from a military assignment, the family would embark on some great excursion. They seemed to be the perfect family and they really were about as near to perfect as any family could be, and then the Iraq war started.

  Operation Phantom Fury was the name of the pivotal mission that would change Daryl and Sheridan’s life forever.

  “Hello, babe? It’s me Daryl, can you hear me?” “Oh my God, I’ve been so worried about you. We’ve been watching the news. Are you in this operation Daryl, this second Fallujah?” a frantic Sheridan asked.

  “Yeah, honey, but I’m alright really. How are you and the kids? Man, it’s good to hear your voice. Everything is crazy here babe. I feel like I’m on another planet, but I’m good, I’m good. How are the kids?” Daryl repeated.

  “We’re fine here Daryl. How are you doing? Are you hurt? They’re saying this second Fallujah is the worst combat since the Vietnam War and you’re smack in the middle of it Daryl. I’m so scared for you.”

  “The angels are walking with me honey, I don’t have a scratch on me, I promise.”

  “Oh, thank God, I pray for you every day and the kids and my parents pray, too. We love you and miss you Daryl. We made you a big box of cookies and brownies. They might me hard as bricks by the time you get them, but just know that we’re thinking about you and all of the guys over there. Do you need anything?”

  “No honey, like I said I’m good. I didn’t get so much as a scratch,” Daryl said with a fake smile plastered on his face, with the hope of sounding convincing when he said that he was fine.

  What he didn’t tell Sheridan was that he was the only man in his squad who walked away with barely a bruise on that horrible day in Iraq’s Al-Anbar Province, where he witnessed most of his comrades being viciously wounded or killed.

  Daryl also observed the bloated and decomposing bodies of other American military and Iraqi civilians alike, floating in the Euphrates river; the festering carnage of the escaping insurgent’s terror.

  “One hundred eighty days and a wakeup baby and I’ll be back home to you.”

  “I know Daryl,” Sheridan managed to sm
ile in the hope that it would make her voice sound cheerful enough to convince Daryl that she was alright. “The kids and I mark off the calendar each day to count the days until you come home.”

  “That’s really sweet honey. I love you. Kiss the kids for me and I’ll call again as soon as I can.” Daryl hung up the phone and looked down at his trembling hands, willing them to stop shaking. He grabbed the stock of his rifle and unslung it from across his back. He needed something to hold on to and his rifle would do for now.

  Charlie and I were thrilled when Daryl left the Army at the end of his tour in Iraq, but he couldn’t seem to leave the war behind. It followed him like a hungry ghost, gobbling up every ounce of happiness, and each morsel of joy that dared to creep into his life.

  “Daryl why won’t you talk to me?” Sheridan begged. “You walk around here saying that you just want to be left alone, barking at me and yelling at the kids, we can’t live like this. What is the matter with you? Please talk to me,” Sheridan demanded day after day. But Daryl never shared his feelings of survivor’s remorse with Sheridan, or anyone outside of the psychiatrist and psychologist that debriefed him post-deployment.

  After leaving the combat zone, Daryl found himself taking 16-prescribed medications a day for depression, anxiety, high blood pressure and chronic pain.

  However, after having seen the worst of what one human being is capable of doing to another human being, Daryl was a shell of his old self, after returning from the war. His unwillingness to seek help, to talk about his feelings, and a growing problem with handling the challenges of life began to overwhelm and destroy first Daryl and then the entire family. Daryl was withdrawn from everyone when he returned home, and he became almost a hermit inside his house. After leaving the Army, he literally turned the home office into a cave by blacking out the windows and forbidding even his own family to enter the room. This was where he retreated to on a daily basis so that he could be left alone with his demons. Helping out around the house, looking for work or even taking his medication on schedule seemed to be impossible tasks for him. Sheridan felt like a single parent, and on top of that, she was walking on eggshells trying to keep Daryl calm and protecting herself and the children from his violent rages.

  One day, after leaving the children home alone with their father while she went to the grocery store, Sheridan came home to find Bailey crying and shaking under the dining room table. Her eyes were wide and she began screaming, “Mommy don’t leave, the monster will get you.”

  “What, what monster Bailey, there are no monsters,” Sheridan said as she lifted Bailey out from under the table. She could hear Daryl yelling incoherently, then suddenly she began running towards the voice in the backyard.

  It was a sweltering summer day and Daryl was barking commands at Justin, who was running up and down the backyard with a loaded rifle, steps from collapsing from heat exhaustion. Daryl ran alongside his eight-year-old son yelling about how not following orders gets people killed. Sheridan later learned that all of this was brought on by Justin’s failing a spelling test at school that day.

  When Sheridan took the rifle from Bailey and told him to run inside and call his grandpa, Daryl grabbed the rifle and hit Sheridan with the rifle-stock, causing her to fall unconscious. A neighbor who was watching from the window had already called the police, who had just arrived.

  After a three-hour standoff, Daryl finally released his family from their backyard prison, and found himself in police custody, followed by an extended stay in the psychiatric ward.

  Sheridan had had enough! After five years of his moody, distant, and agitated behavior while he was still on active duty, followed by an 18-month struggle for him to adjust to civilian life, and then having the lives of her children as well as her own in danger, she separated from Daryl.

  Sheridan wasn’t ready to call it quits on her marriage, but she knew that Daryl needed more than just three weeks of medication and cognitive behavioral therapy to be safe to rejoin his family.

  Through his lawyer, because of the restraining order that she had in place, she notified Daryl that she and the children were moving in with us.

  She went on to say that she was willing to work on the marriage and would attend the Veterans Administration (VA) sponsored couples counseling to try to work things out. As long as he stayed on his medication, continued weekly therapy, and showed that he was getting better she would hang in there with him.

  She reassured him that she loved him deeply, but felt that she and the children were not safe with him until he got better.

  “This is crazy Mike. Sheridan knows I would never hurt her, or the kids, I love my family, man.”

  “I know Daryl, but you did hold your family at gunpoint. You’re under a lot of pressure with this court case. I think your wife moving in with her parents is a good thing. Let’s you and I focus on a good legal defense. You’ll continue your therapy. Put this behind you, and you and your family will move on with your lives as one big happy family again.

  “As your lawyer I’m telling you to give it some time. Stay calm and stay away from your wife, you can’t afford to get into another run-in with the police right now.”

  “Okay Mike, I hear you man. I’ll do what I have to do to get my family back. I just don’t want those VA doctors getting inside her head telling her to leave me.”

  “Sheridan’s a level headed woman. She’ll do what’s best for the family. You go home and take it easy.”

  “Okay Mike, you’re right. Sheridan loves me. I just scared her and the kids, that’s all. I’ll get myself together, get a job, and get refocused again.”

  “That’s it Daryl, that sounds like a good plan. You focus on yourself and let the situation cool down for a bit.”

  “I can do that,” Daryl stood up, shook Mike’s hand, and left the lawyer’s office feeling optimistic about the future.

  *****

  Daryl resigned himself to working hard on recovering from post-traumatic stress (PTS) and on winning his family back. He was attending individual, group, and couple’s therapy every week. Then suddenly the train went off the rails!

  Daryl made his weekly trip to the grocery store and saw a young, happy family that could have been a mirror image of his own and snapped.

  “What’s that guy got in his pocket? Man, it sure is noisy in here. What was that? I saw something out of the corner of my eye, but now it’s gone. Those damn sneaky Hajis, (a euphemism that military people used for a Muslim insurgent during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars) one minute they’re there the next minute they’re gone. Where are the exits in case something pops off in here?” Daryl said to himself as he processed all of the usual sights, sounds, and activities of a regular day at the grocery store, through the distorted, hypervigilant filter of a PTS trigger.

  Suddenly, in his mind, seeing the family that looks like his made him agitated. Unable to quell the frustration inside, his body responds with anxiety, triggering a convergence of the fog of war from his past, with his present environment. Daryl is pushed beyond his ability to deal with his rising panic and unable to employ the coping skills that he’s learned. In his mind, the only way to stop the fear and anxiety is to get his family back.

  In that moment, Daryl became hell-bent on having Sheridan and the children come home now!

  “Sheridan, I need you to call me back now. If you don’t I’m going to make you pay for what you’re doing to me. Call me!” Daryl yelled into his cell phone from the grocery store parking lot.

  Daryl called Sheridan no less than thirty-seven times. Sheridan had no idea about what was going on. Her cell phone was on vibrate in her desk while she was teaching class. It wasn’t until over an hour after Daryl’s first call that she answered the thirty-seventh call and listened patiently to Daryl’s demand.

  “Sheridan, you had better bring my children home now and come home where you belong, or I’ll make you wish you had! I’m going to kill that VA doctor for twisting your mind against me.”

&n
bsp; This sent a chill down Sheridan’s spine, but she remained calm and tried to calm Daryl down also. It didn’t work.

  “Sheridan if you don’t come home, you’ll never see those kids again!” Daryl yelled into the phone.

  “Daryl you know I can’t do that honey, I’m at work, but I’ll be home at 5 o’clock okay?”

  “Don’t lie to me Sheridan, you bring my kids home right now!”

  “Okay, okay, I’m coming home baby, I’m coming home right now. Just let me go pick up the kids,” Sheridan said, making eye contact with the alarmed coworker who has been eavesdropping on her conversation, with alarm.

  “You’re lying Sheridan”.

  “No, I’m not, I’m leaving right now,” Sheridan said, as she grabbed her purse and headed for the door. As she exited the building the hot summer sun blinded her. She began to run toward the parking lot in the direction of her car when Daryl’s red pickup truck screeched to a stop in front of her.

  In one hand, Daryl held his cell phone. In the other was the unmistakable outline of a 9mm handgun. Daryl aimed it at her face. Sheridan felt the burning sensation of fear induced bile, releasing into her gut. The surge of adrenaline made her brain begin to process information at warp speed. Within seconds, she thought that the police were surely on the way, alerted to the emergency by her coworker. She thought of the children and found comfort in knowing that her parents would take care of them if she didn’t survive today’s ordeal. She even felt relieved that they were safely away from the potentially lethal situation until she saw Bailey’s little hand pressed against the window of the cab.

  Opening the front door, she attempted to smile at Daryl. “Hi babe, you didn’t tell me that you picked up the children,” she said casually, slowly stepping into the truck as if everything was perfectly normal.

  Bailey and Justin began to cry, but they seemed lethargic. She turned to them and softly said, “Shh, mommy’s here”, and touched each of their little hands. “Daryl what did you give them?”