“I’m not a fool,” James smiled weakly.
Brucius nodded to the door behind them. “It’s time to go,” he said.
James moved around the table. He too was tired, that was obvious from the stiff and gingerly way he moved his legs.
Brucius put his arm around his shoulders. “You don’t have to do this,” he said a final time.
James scowled. “Don’t insult me, friend.”
“Trust no one. Don’t expect any of them to trust you. Always expect they will be watching. Everything you do, every word you say, every glance of your eyes and inflection of your voice will be noted. If they could read your mind, they would do it. Plan on the worst case and go from there.”
James raised an impatient eyebrow. “I got it.”
Brucius took his hand and shook it. “I just want you to come back to us.”
James grunted and took his coat. “I want to come back too.”
Chapter Two
Four Miles West of Chatfield
Twenty-One Miles Southwest of Memphis, Tennessee
The army officer stood on the back porch of the white-paneled house, his dark hair blown back across his neck. His name was Joseph, but even here at home he still thought of himself as Bono, the nickname so deeply ingrained that everyone considered it his name. His skin looked especially tan in the dying light, his eyes alert, his demeanor calm, his shoulders slacking. The same cold wind that just a few nights before had passed over the frigid waters of Lake Michigan to gust at Sara Brighton and her family atop the old railroad building in East Chicago had rushed down from the north and mixed with the moist air sucked up from the Gulf of Mexico to form a cold and constant drizzle over most of the Tennessee River Valley. The soldier looked up at the clouds passing over the trees and open fields, estimating the ceiling at just a couple of hundred feet. The dark clouds rushed past him, billowing layers that were driven eastward by a powerful force.
He watched a moment, then stepped down from the porch and walked across the grass, his head up, his eyes on the rushing skies. The gentle rain wet his face, but he didn’t seem to notice, and he never wiped the falling drops away. As he stared toward the heavens, he sensed an unseen power. Something up there. Something moving. Something alive and full of evil energy—watching, listening, looking, waiting. Yes, that was it. Something waiting. Just like he was. Just like they all were. He was up there waiting, watching and hoping, the dark spirits that surrounded him filling his ears with their constant cries, their boiling agitation driving them to froth.
The young soldier kept looking up, his heart beating rapidly. As he sensed the presence of the evil, a sudden realization rested upon him: Lucifer hated the thought of passing time. Far more than the mortals, the Dark One felt old and used and tired. He felt wrinkled and bent and hopeless, for he knew his time would pass! There was no hope for his future, nothing to look forward to at all. So he didn’t want the final battle to ever end. He feared it. He dreaded it. He knew that he would lose, and when he did, the outcome would lead to his destruction. He would be cast out, expelled from the empire he had worked so hard to lead, thrust out from the kingdom he had built upon this earth.
The Last Days were just the beginning for the righteous, but they were the final days for him.
As Bono thought, the rain and mist gathered deeper all around. He took one last look at the skies, then slowly bowed his head.
He didn’t hear her slip out of the house or walk across the wooden porch, the padding of her bare feet lost in the sound of the blowing wind. She stood quietly watching him, the rain dribbling from the roof before her face.
And though he didn’t see her leaning against the white pillar on the porch behind him, he sensed her spirit and knew that she was near.
* * *
Caelyn watched him a long moment. He was so beautiful. So strong. So sure. So gentle and concerned. He wasn’t perfect, not by any means—his smile was a bit crooked, he was far too arrogant, and she hated the way he wore his hair, more like a Bedouin warrior than a U.S. Army Special Forces officer—but she saw none of these imperfections as she looked upon him now. She had never loved him more. No man had ever made her feel the way he did. From the first time she had seen him—and she remembered that sunny afternoon back on the campus at UCLA very well—she had never even considered another. That night, for some reason she didn’t understand, she had closed her eyes to pray. And the voice that had come to her was as real as the yellow square of moonlight that had spread across her bed. “You will marry him,” the voice had said.
She had opened her eyes and looked up at the darkness. “I will what!” she had demanded.
“The life you will share together will be difficult, but I will also make it sweet.”
Looking back, she realized that time had proven the premonition true.
Caelyn shivered and drew her arms around her chest. Bono turned and looked at her, then extended his hand. She left the porch, her feet getting soaked as she walked across the wet grass. She lifted his arm, twirled underneath it, turned her back to him, and leaned against his chest. Together they studied the weeping sky, their faces growing wet.
Bono pressed his nose against her neck, the fragrance of her hair lifting in the wind. “I love you, Caelyn,” he whispered to her.
She leaned against his shoulder and closed her eyes.
“I love you more than anything.” His voice was hardly more than a breath.
She smiled, but there was a sadness in her posture that her husband couldn’t see. She tilted her head against his chin. “You love me, babe. I know that. But there are other things that you love, too?” Her voice was half teasing, half true.
He nuzzled against her neck but didn’t answer.
“You love your country. You love our freedom.”
She felt him move against her arms.
“I love you more than anything,” he told her.
She stared out blankly at the growing darkness, holding herself motionless as he grew tense.
She wanted to believe it. Most of her believed it. But there was another part of her, a part deep inside the feminine emotions of her soul, that couldn’t quite fit the pieces into place. He would do anything for her, she knew that. He’d make any sacrifice. But he wouldn’t leave the military. That he would not do. And it wasn’t so much that he wouldn’t, but he couldn’t. She might as well ask him to sell his soul to the devil as to ask him to quit serving his country right now.
Funny thing was, if the country had been at peace, if the battle wasn’t raging now around them, he would have resigned his commission without her even asking him to. It wasn’t just the service to his country that attracted him, it was serving during a time of war. At first, that hadn’t made any sense to Caelyn. It was as strange as if he had said he wanted to start eating grass and living outside with the cows. However, over time, after being around him and his friends, she had begun to understand at least a little of why the soldiers felt so compelled to serve. It was something deep inside them, something she couldn’t ever really feel in exactly the same way as they did.
Why would a man throw himself into battle, cast his life into the wind while rushing forward against a hail of metal and fire and smoke and death, feeling the splatter of the dying all around him? Why would men choose to leave their homes, their wives, their families, clean showers, flushing toilets, microwave ovens, and soft beds, to live on the razor’s edge? Enduring 120 degrees of summer heat while dressed in full combat gear. Surviving bitter winters in the mountains. Through it all, they would grumble and complain, yet when it came time for another tour of duty, all of them went back. None of them were forced to. There certainly was no draft.
“We knew what we were getting into,” she remembered her husband saying. “We go outside the wire, we see cut-off heads and tortured children, and we do our best to fight it. And when it’s over, we’ll know we did something that really matters. How many people can ever say that about their lives?”
&nb
sp; Now Caelyn finally understood. “Who more than self their country loved, and mercy more than life.” It really was that simple. At the end of all her pondering, it pretty much all came down to that.
And when she really thought about it, she realized that she was just like them.
She too loved her country. She too felt the sacred obligation of doing something meaningful in this world. Deep in her heart, she knew, just like her husband, that the Spirit of God was the spirit of freedom, and that it was worth the heavy price. Yes, family members sacrificed in different ways from their husbands, but their willingness to lay it out there was the same.
Her mind drifted back to a conversation she and Bono had had a couple of years before. Early in the morning. A spring day. He had called her on his unit’s satellite telephone from Afghanistan.
“Peter Zembeic went AWOL from the field hospital down in Kandahar,” he told her, his voice scratching through the military phone.
Caelyn had to hold her finger in her other ear to understand him. “Say it again,” she said.
“Peter Zembeic went AWOL from the field hospital down in Kandahar.”
“You’re kidding. He went AWOL? I don’t believe it! No way Peter takes off on you guys!”
Bono started laughing. “Listen to me, this is funny. He went AWOL from the field hospital, okay? Not from our unit. He got shot in the leg a couple weeks ago. Took out a pretty good hunk of flesh. He tried to dress it himself and keep it quiet, but it started to get infected, and the boss sent him down to Kandy to the field hospital. They told him they were going to keep him there a couple weeks and then send him home. He’d have none of that. He tried to check himself out of the hospital. They wouldn’t let him. So he packed up his gear and took off. Got a ride with a couple Navy Seal pukes heading north and showed up back here at our unit. The guys down at the hospital thought he’d flipped out and headed home. Put out a huge search party. The boss finally had to call them and tell them we had their guy up here. We all thought it was so funny . . .” Her husband started laughing. “He’s the only guy I know who went AWOL to get back to his unit!”
Caelyn laughed too, but inside her mind was racing. “Why did he do that, babe?” she finally asked when he quit laughing. “He had a ticket out. No shame in being wounded. He could have come home.”
Bono hesitated, uncomfortable with the sudden change in the tone of her voice. “He said Lieutenant Horace owed him from the poker game the night before. Said he had to come back to get his money.”
Bono tried to laugh again, but Caelyn’s voice was serious. “I don’t get it,” she repeated. “He could have come home.”
After a long moment of silence, Bono said, “I don’t know, babe. Guess someone’s got to do it.” He hesitated again. Both of them knew they weren’t talking about Peter Zembeic any more. “Someone’s got to do it,” he repeated. “And they probably won’t do it as good as me. I’ve got my brothers back here, Caelyn. None of us went looking for this fight . . .”
“Every one of you is a volunteer.”
“Yeah, but what I said is true. None of us asked for this. All of us would just as soon be home. But the situation is what it is, and since it is, we might as well try to do a little good. And as long as my guys are here, I’ve got to be here too. If something goes wrong—and it will—no one else can take care of them like I can. I want to be beside them. There’s not much more I can say. If I don’t stick with them, what will they think of me? What would you think of me?” He paused to swallow. “What would I think of myself?”
Caelyn had thought about that conversation many times through the years. Somehow, it made it easier.
* * *
The rain slowed to a heavy mist. Both of them were wet now, their clothes, their skin, their hair. Caelyn felt the warm heat of his body and pressed against his arms. “I’m so glad you’re here with me,” she whispered. “I needed you right now.” He only held her tighter, and she turned around to face him. “If you die, I’m going to kill you.” She punched him on the arm. “I mean that, Lieutenant! If you die, I’m going to kill you. Don’t you leave me here alone! I don’t care what you have to do, you stay here in this world. You stay here with me and Ellie. Even if you’re never home, as long as I know that you’re out there somewhere, I can handle it. As long as I have the hope that you’ll come back to me, I know I’ll be okay.
“And remember, we deserve you as much as anyone does. Ellie needs her daddy. I need my husband. My life would remain forever bleak and empty if I couldn’t know that you were somewhere in this world. I have to know that when I look up at the night sky, you are out there too. So I want you to promise me again. I want to hear you say the words.”
Bono looked down at her. She felt him breathe in deeply; then he leaned over and whispered in her ear, “I swear to you with everything inside me, with every fiber of my soul, with every authority I have been given, I will find a way to come back home.”
He reached down and took her hands, holding them tight. She looked up at him, staring into his eyes, their faces only shadows in the darkness. Then she felt a single teardrop fall from his cheek and rest upon her eyelid. She brushed away its warm, wet sting.
It was the thousandth time that she believed him.
* * *
Later that night they lay beside each other in their bed. Ellie was sleeping with a bunch of blankets on the floor, unwilling to be separated from her father. Neither of them was sleeping, and Caelyn turned to him. “What are you thinking about?” she whispered so that Ellie wouldn’t wake.
He looked up at the darkness, the outline of his face barely visible in the moonlight.
“What are you thinking about?” she whispered once again.
“Seventy-three,” he answered.
“What’s that? The number of medals you’re going to win?” she teased.
His expression didn’t change, and she laid her head upon his chest.
“What is it, babe?” she pressed him.
He cleared his throat and touched her hair. “How many hours before I have to leave.”
Chapter Three
Four Miles West of Chatfield
Twenty-One Miles Southwest of Memphis, Tennessee
Caelyn awoke and rolled over, felt the empty bed, opened her eyes and looked at the rumpled sheets and covers, then extended her hand. The side of the bed had grown cold, and she turned to look at the floor. Ellie’s blankets had been rolled up and pushed aside. She heard quiet footsteps in the hall, whispers, then a giggle, then two sets of bare feet moving down the stairs. She rolled over to the window. The sun was up and shining brightly through the eastern pane, two full fists above the horizon. Later than she thought—it had been a long time since she had slept in. She rolled to her side, fluffed the pillow, watched the sun stream through the window, then fell back into a warm and peaceful sleep.
* * *
Ellie followed her dad out the back door and onto the porch. Bono stood for a moment looking across the empty fields. The rain had cleared and the morning was calm and peaceful—a little cold, with light mist along the lower fields, but the air was still and smelled of wet grass and hay and rich, dark earth. He took a breath and held it, sucking the smell into his lungs. Beautiful. Full and fragrant. He smiled and let the air out with a satisfied sigh. There was something about the earth, the ground, the rain on the harvested fields that surrounded him; he longed for them in a manner that he couldn’t quite explain. It wasn’t like he was an old farm boy—quite the opposite, he’d grown up in a stucco-and-brick house set among the San Fernando mountains—but there was something about the land, the open sky around him, the trees, and the rolling, green terrain that beckoned him in a way that
was . . . ? He didn’t know. He couldn’t explain it. Was it old? Permanent? Something from the premortal world?
He remembered talking about his feelings with a fellow soldier in Afghanistan. The colonel had been raised on a cattle ranch in Oklahoma and it seemed all he ever talked ab
out was the BarZ ranch back home. Most guys carried pictures of their kids. He carried pictures of his prize bull and his dog. They had just finished a short sacrament meeting in a camouflage tent with dark bread and bottled water when they had a few minutes to talk. Bono explained some of his feelings, saying he was jealous of the colonel and how much he loved the land.
“I think if we understood how well we knew this earth before we came here, we might be surprised,” the colonel had said.
Bono had thought a lot about that and decided it was true.
Either way, it didn’t matter. He loved the farm. He loved the earth. “Caelyn, one day, you and I are going to live on a place like this,” he remembered having promised his wife. “We’re going to raise our family in the country. That will be our reward for what we’re giving up right now, a gentle place where we can be together and get a little rest. We’ll build a little house, a little . . .”
He caught himself in the memory. Did the things he used to dream about even matter anymore? Was such an ambition even possible, given what had happened in the world?
He didn’t know. He liked to hope. It wasn’t as if all life was over. Who knew what lay in store?
Ellie came up behind him and slipped her hand into his. He looked down at her and smiled. “Ready for our walk?” he asked.
“Roger that, Daddy!” she answered. Bono laughed. Something about Roger and Daddy in the same sentence just didn’t seem to work.
“You gonna be a soldier?” he asked her.
“Hurrah, Daddy!” she laughed back.
Hurrah and Daddy. Same thing. It didn’t work.
They started walking, Bono glancing guiltily back toward the house. “Shhh, don’t let your mother hear you say that,” he whispered conspiratorially.
Ellie watched his eyes. “It’s okay, Daddy. Mommy knows I want to be a soldier,” she said with confidence.
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