26 and Change

by Deacon Rie

  "But Sarah, these companies are looking to hire an employee, not a contractor."

  "They say they are, but how many times have they told you the position you applied for was being removed? It's likely they still need the work to get done, but they just have to reduce their overhead costs. Maybe they're just scared to make a long term commitment. Contractors are a lot cheaper to the bottom line than employees."

  Stephen started to grasp where she was going, "Contractors don't get benefits and when the work is over they don't have to continue paying a salary."

  "Exactly! It might still be better than unemployment benefits." Sarah continued talking while placing frozen foods into the freezer.

  "You've got a point there."

  "With all the time you've spent selling yourself and looking for a job, you can shift that and instead spend that time selling your services to companies you already know."

  "Self-employment?"

  "Better than no-employment?" Sarah lifted a bottle of red wine out of a brown paper bag.

  "What's that?"

  "Just a little something to go along with dinner."

  "Sounds to me like I have a new job and probably need to spend some time working." Stephen was a bit shocked at how excited he was at this new prospect.

  "Well then. I suppose you'll have a working dinner tonight." With a fingertip Sarah tapped the maroon bottle, "We'll just call this little bottle of Merlot an investment in your creative thinking."

  Stephen's mind sifted beyond his previous expectations and he took off down the hallway. Rebecca and Tom reentered the house, dropped off some more bags and swiftly exited through the back door. Rebecca gently lifted her husband's sore legs to a comfortable position on the back patio recliner. Tom had always enjoyed sitting outside to enjoying the beauty of his surroundings. Rebecca came back inside and connected with Sarah, "I'm going to head out in about ten to fifteen minutes to get Hailey from school. Dad's just going to sit out back and enjoy this nice day."

  Sarah came around the kitchen counter and hugged Rebecca, "Thank you for everything today. I can't tell you how much I appreciate you."

  "You're doing great, my dear. Now, when I get back, we'll start searing those steaks like we were talking about earlier."

  The phone rang and Stephen called out, "Sarah. Darling? Would you mind getting that? I'm in a bit of a position right now."

  Sarah glanced down the hallway and saw the attic ladder with the lower half of a man extending somewhat frantically out of the ceiling.

  "Hon… what are you doing?"

  Stephen's voice echoed through the hallway, "I'm trying to find that gray box with the fancy writing on it. I'm looking to find those nice wine glasses your old boss gave us at our wedding."

  "Sure, I'll get the phone." Sarah turned from the hallway and back into the kitchen, winking at Rebecca as she passed by and whispering, "Wine glasses from our wedding." Rebecca responded with a sneaky smile and an encouraging thumbs up.

  Sarah gleaned a seductive smile towards the dangling legs in the hallway as she answered the phone, "Hello. This is Mrs. Lantz."

  Mile 17

  Rules exist for a reason. Stephen knew this as an undeniable truth. Rules maintained order and order guided progress. In business, Stephen knew there were rules. Typically these rules were clear cut and straightforward. Whether it was for a single company or an entire economy, rules existed to keep things orderly and to guide industry's progress. In war, Stephen had rules of engagement he was under and he understood why they existed. His enemy might not conform to those rules but he still had to follow them. In their own vile way, Stephen could see the enemy had built their own version of order and progress, even if it was simply to disrupt these very orders of progress his rules were designed to preserve. So too, in marriage there were rules. They may be more complex than in industry or war, but Stephen felt confident it was still about order and progress being maintained.

  Cancer was an exception. Cancer was a ruthless bastard which cared nothing for rules or for order; its core purpose was deterioration. Regardless of who it struck, cancer was always crude and inhumane with complexities so far off the charts it was impossible to understand. There was no order. There was no progress. No overall redeeming objective for cancer.

  Despite the constant warnings over the past three years, anytime the word remission came into discussion it inevitably created a false hope for every member of the Lantz family. Stephen and Sarah had seen the monster recoil and seemingly leave their daughter, forever in their hopeful hearts. Initially, the days following Hailey's checkups were an anxious time spent waiting for results. After several encouraging reports, the checkups became routine and eventually, particularly as they had became less frequent over the past several months, the Lantz family began to see her periodic checkups as just a routine formality.

  During Hailey's last checkup only two weeks prior, Sarah had been entirely convinced that the beast had been defeated, and the thought of its return was something she would not even allow to enter her mind. Even when the doctor became a bit concerned at a reading he took and asked her to bring Hailey back the following week to draw some samples, she wasn't overly concerned. Sarah absolutely expected the tests to come back negative; she just knew they would.

  When the phone call from the oncologist was over, instead of hanging up the phone, Sarah drew her hands to her chest and tried to breathe, failing to take in a full breath. Stephen had arrived halfway through the phone call, placed a faded gray box on the counter's edge and stood next to his wife. With one arm on her shoulder, he gently placed his other hand on the phone and gradually pulled it from her grasp. Unfeeling of his own physical movements, he calmly and steadily replaced it onto the charging station.

  Stephen gripped the kitchen counter and stared into the blankness of the off-white sink. He couldn't decide whether to be angry or crushed. The only thing preventing him from screaming was the overwhelming urge to sob. Instead, he stood with his fingers nearly penetrating the solid counter top. Had the counter been made of a softer laminate he would have crushed through the grain and ripped out the sink. This would have been followed by him hurling the sink through the roof, punching out each double-pane window and smashing his foot through every piece of drywall in the house. Much to his disappointment, the Corian counter top held firm in its place.

  Shifting between speaking way too fast and then stopping for long pauses to breath, cough, and cry, Sarah did her best to recount the conversation to Stephen. He stood, patience stretched beyond parameters of reason, trying to collect as much information as he could. Through her tears he latched on to key phrases like, "needs to be admitted to the hospital" and "will have to consider surgery." He wasn't sure how much was missed between his wife's struggling report and the clouding of his own mind before Sarah dragged herself to the dining room and found a chair to collapse into.

  Stephen looked to the dining room where his wife continued to cry. Rebecca had returned and blanketed both arms around Sarah. He saw the tears flowing from her eyes as well. He watched as Rebecca wiped her own cheeks before clenching Sarah's hands into her own. They both bowed their heads and Rebecca began to pray out loud. "Dear heavenly father. We come before you…"

  Stephen turned away. He still couldn't process the news. They had beaten this monster. How could it have come back? Each of their doctors had warned them of these risks but those were caveats, something they had to say. How could this be happening again? Why was it that after everything they had gone through, everything Hailey had gone through, their family still couldn't catch a break? Stephen closed his eyes and tried listening to his mother's words for something, anything that could give him a breath of hope.

  Rebecca continued, "We humble ourselves before you, Lord. We confess before you, Father. We throw ourselves at your mercy, oh God. We…"

  Enough! He couldn't listen to another word. Stephen opened his eyes and turned away in disgust. His mother's god was obviously asleep at the whee
l. If he wasn't, and his mother's comments about God being in control of all things was true, then it was even worse. Then he could take the blame for the return of Hailey's cancer.

  It would be nice to have someone to blame. Someone to be mad at. Something to hate for all of this.

  But he couldn't. As angry and upset as Stephen was, he didn't have the energy in his heart for hate. Devastated, numb and mentally exhausted, he looked down and gripped the edges to test the counter top's resistance once again.

  "You will not quit! You will not stop! You will finish this race!"

  The familiar abruptness of the tone yanked his attention from the difficult memory. He knew the style but it was completely out of context.

  "You have worked for this. You have trained for this. And now, you will execute your mission." The man's voice barked each word at each passing runner.

  Stephen turned to see through the thinning crowd and observed the most militant race motivator he could have imagined. The man had the freshly cut ridge of a flat top haircut with closely shaved sides that drew a faint line between skin and hairline. His eyes were aged but sharp and intentional. His body, which Stephen noticed was at rigidly tense definition of rest, appeared to be fit but worn from decades of service. The man’s morning t-shirt was a faded brown and the hip-tight gray shorts could only be military issue from a time before people walked around with cameras in their pockets. He stood atop an immaculately cut lawn. What stood out was not the perfectly unspeckled sea of green blades. Instead, what caught Stephen's attention was the perfectly cut right angles of grass on the edge of the curb. A feat which could have only been accomplished by someone who was enough of a perfectionist to take the time to raise one side of the lawn mower's wheels along the curb so as to achieve the exact right angle for each blade of grass located between the yard's edge and the curb. The man had all the characteristics of the stereotypical Marine drill sergeant and from the sound of his rhetoric, he clearly believed he was still instructing basic training recruits. How Stephen appreciated these men. A smile formed as he knew he could never forget looking up at that fresh face of that young Marine who dragged him from that Iraqi building where certain death awaited him.

  This particularly energized Marine, not so young and certainly not fresh, stood apart from the other well-wishers and their heartfelt encouragements. While Stephen felt a comradery, the abrupt revision of the crowd's motivational tactic by this man was too much for many of runners. It was like trying to put a toddler to sleep and quietly swapping Mozart with Metallica. Whether the Marine meant to or not, his gruff and blunt voice cascaded intimidation upon the passing runners. As they hurried by, their heads remained locked in an uneasy forward direction as if they knew that a single instant of eye contact would invite this man's wrath. And when it came to wrath, the man clearly had reserves. The spectacle distracted Stephen because it reminded him of teenagers scrambling off an enlistment bus and meeting their new drill instructors. It was that point where the first real wave of fear overtook them. Like those recruits, the runners were scared. But the desired result ensued as any thoughts of quitting had been harshly put down.

  The Marine continued, "You know what pain is. You have seen it before. Pain is not stronger than you. You are stronger than pain. You will not quite! You will not stop! You will finish…"

  Stephen quickened his pace and found himself relieved and disappointed as the man's voice trailed off; becoming aware that the Marine's anti-motivational speech was not just loud and out of place, but on repeat mode.

  Like all soldiers, Stephen had spent his time under the indignant care of a temperamental drill sergeant. While their delivery was legendary; though perhaps infamous was a more appropriate description, the reason they were effective in producing efficient warfighters was because they spoke truth. Nobody wanted to believed it while the growling voice of what sounded like a homicidal maniac rained down atop them; raining down not necessarily being a metaphor because like llamas, drill sergeants had a tendency to be unconcerned with useless courtesies like not spitting at the person they were speaking to. But when a drill sergeant told someone they were being hard on them because they wanted to save lives, it was actually very true.

  Stephen had to admit that while the old Marine's ways may have been foreign to the environment, the man was still saying what needed to be said. Every runner at this stage had to be feeling some pain by now and more than a few were probably considering whether or not they were up to the task. The early miles had been filled with cheering and the hope of great expectations for successful outlooks upon the day. Perhaps for many people, this stage of the race required less exhilaration and instead, a crude dose of reality. Maybe what was needed was the direct, pointed approach. Something with a more influential tone, a dose of harsh truth. While the Marine's commands were abrasive, they were nothing if they were not true. His fatigued mind began to meander.

  Truth. That guy's got some truth, alright. At least, true enough for him. But he's not the one with another nine miles to go. Well then, you old jarhead, you keep a good grip on your truth there. But then, what was truth. Hold on. Wait. Isn't that a line from the Bible somewhere?

  With curiosity piqued by the wandering of his mind's restlessness, he remembered that Sarah now had a Bible. He could look that whole truth thing up later when he got home. If he ever made it home, because at this point nine more miles might as well be ninety. But then, how long would that take him to find one sentence within the entire Bible? Since delegating was a gentler path than labor, he considered an easier alternative. His buddy Ray would know where in the Bible that whole speech about truth was. He'd ask him the next time he saw him.

  Yeah, I've got quite a long list of things to talk to Ray about. For starters, like why the hell am I running this thing!

  "I understand that you were told you should come by and see me. But Stephen, what I want to know is, do you feel you need to be here?"

  Stephen continued to look around the small office for some hint of who this man was supposed to be and why he had been pushed so hard to sit down and spend an hour with him. It was the first time Stephen had been back on a military base since leaving the Army. He had thought arriving as a civilian would be uncomfortable to him, like not knowing if he was still welcomed or if he even belonged in an environment once so familiar to him. Those concerns left the moment he drove into the chute of the base checkpoint and flashed the retiree ID card he had received as a medically retired service member. Anxiety departed and Stephen felt comforted to once again be under the controlled and purposeful surroundings of the base. He liked that the Army didn't waste space with distracting aesthetics. It gave him an opportunity to see the real estate for what it was and what it was worth. Let the Air Force spend money on decorating barracks with the latest in spring foliage. He was content to have drab buildings if it meant having more money for ammunition.

  "A man can never have too much red wine, too many books, or too much ammunition." It was a Rudyard Kipling quote. One of many that Stephen had learned from Hilton. Kipling, of course, being another of Hilton's English poets. Nevertheless, after that day in Fallujah, Stephen had a grand appreciation for the Brit's abiding wisdom. Driving around the base, Stephen felt safe, he felt content, he felt at home.

  The office of his designated appointment however, was another matter. Discomfort stabbed at him from all directions as awkward silence rested in the air; only periodically interrupted by the creaking of the black metal-framed chair that was resisting his lounge.

  "Do you feel you need to be here?" the voice pressed.

  Raham "Ray" Thimba, or Counselor Ray as he asked Stephen to call him, sat motionless in a gray and padded swivel back chair. The bald, black man had a firm and fit look. Thin, rimless glasses rested on tight cheekbones that suggested his body fat was close to the single digit range. The man's stare possessed the confidence and intensity to penetrate bone and tissue and peer directly into one's soul, yet do so with such a calming rea
ssurance that it would not cause an eyelash to flicker.

  His office was surrounded by family photos of what looked to be Ray's grown children chasing toddlers from scene to scene. Stephen suspected Ray might also be an advocate of Kipling's philosophies because the close perimeters of his office were covered by bookshelves that showed the wear of having been through more than one garage sale. He saw books on psychology, religion, philosophy, business, and leadership. There were self-help books, text books and an entire row of large, generic white binders. Behind the crowded stacks of literary gumbo surrounding the office, he could see a calming stillwater-blue painted wall which inspired a tranquil impression of floating on an ocean or staring up at cloudless sky. Ray's office was quite the contrast from the flat white walls the rest of the Army Social Services building but the calming ambiance did not help Stephen relax. Against the wall and behind a couple other family frames, Stephen could see a subtle picture of Ray crossing a large yellow and blue ground banner marked 'FINISH'. It looked significant to Stephen, like it was an important race but its lack of prominence among the other pictures which made a clear display of the man's priorities.

  Briefly meeting Ray's stare, Stephen responded, "I told you, I have to be here." His eyes immediately returned to an inspection of the room. "Shouldn't there be a couch in here?"

  "I'm a counselor, not a shrink. And besides, when do you think it was that this man's Army got so concerned about our comfort that they would allocate financial resources for a couch?"

  "Right, good point." Stephen thought about how vulnerable a couch would have been. He preferred the metal frame chair that desperately needed to be lubricated.

  "You didn't come here for a couch though." His countenance carried an unassuming confidence to it, like he knew something everyone else was still trying to figure out. Stephen felt as if the man was completely content with his world and unshakable by anything which Stephen might say to him.