“Oh, I reckon less than some, more than others,” I replied vaguely.
“Golly, I sure wish I had been old enough to help you fellows send the Krauts packin’!” he sighed wistfully. He looked at me enviously, as though jealous I’d been old enough to participate in the adventure, glamour, and all-around good times of war and he hadn’t. I felt like telling him that the worms were licking clean the sockets of thousands of youthful eyes just like his that had once dreamily romanticized war.
“Young man, we are indebted to you. You truly are a hero,” an elderly woman from across the aisle contributed with a kind smile. The woman in the row ahead of me had her head permanently swiveled to face me. I was quickly growing weary of the attention.
“Oh, I’m no hero, ma’am,” I replied, “but I have helped bury a hell of a lot of them.”
The young mother’s eyes grew wide, and she looked at her daughter as if she wanted to clamp her hands over her ears before my last words reached her. I’d forgotten certain words and phrases soldiers use weren’t proper to use around children and ladies.
“Please excuse the language, ma’am, I’m awfully sorry,” I apologized. She nodded and turned back to face away from me.
“Well, you may not think of yourself as a hero, sir, but you’re a fine patriot,” the lad across the aisle reassured me with an adoring smile. Compared to the foolish youth, I felt as old as Methuselah and as wise as Solomon.
“Do you want to be a patriot, son?” I asked him soberly.
“Oh, yes, sir, I do!” he smiled enthusiastically.
“Good,” I said “Then go love your neighbor.”
The smile fell off his face, and he couldn’t have looked more puzzled if I’d told him to go kill a Kraut with a spool of cotton candy. Others looked at me as though convinced I’d had my screws rattled loose in the war. I didn’t care. At least they were silent.
I leaned up against the window and tried to sleep, but my mind was too restless.
Maybe I should have sent a telegram ahead, I anxiously thought to myself, worried that my plan to surprise Ellen might not have been a good idea. Would the sight of my face shock her? Would we stand in awkward silence, like two strangers?
I pulled out her letters from my pocket and began reading through them, repeating lines like, “I’ll always love you no matter what,” “I’m yours until the end of time,” and “You and I are forever, sweetheart” to myself. My fears diminished, my doubts lifted, and my angst drowned in a flood of anticipation and excitement. “You and I are forever, sweetheart,” I murmured as the train click-clacked its way home.
It was sunny when the train pulled into Gatlinburg. I got off the train, stretched, and took a deep breath. It was already beginning to smell like home.
Slinging my satchel over my shoulder, I set off through the town, taking note of a few things that had changed while I was away. Soon, I was walking on Catfish Road. My footsteps quickened. I was on the road home.
Before too long, I heard a vehicle approaching from behind me. I could hear it slowing down, so I turned to take a look. It was a blue Ford truck. A thin, older fellow wearing a straw hat leaned out the window.
“Where you headed, stranger?” he asked.
“Coon Hollow,” I responded, squinting into the glare of the sun.
“Climb in,” he motioned to the passenger’s side with his head. I heard another vehicle in the distance, so I ran over and hopped in quickly.
“Thank you, sir,” I said as I put my satchel on the floor by my feet.
“Sure,” he said. The truck protested as he let the clutch out slowly.
“You from Coon Hollow?” I inquired. I’d known most everyone there when I’d left.
He shook his head. “Kaplan,” he replied.
“Do you smoke?” I asked him, taking out a pack of cigarettes.
“Yup,” he responded. I lit a cigarette for him, rolled down my window and lit my own.
“Headin’ home?” he asked, without taking his eyes off the road.
“Sure am,” I replied, and waited for him to start quizzing me on the war. But he didn’t.
“I came home in 1919,” was all he said. I understood him. He was telling me, “I know where you’ve been, I know the hell you’ve seen, and I don’t feel like talking about it, either.”
We rode in almost complete silence the rest of the way. Each familiar landmark I saw quickened my pulse. We drove past the spot Ellen and I had turned off to spend our honeymoon. I couldn’t help but smile to myself as I thought about it. It was such a sweet memory. We would visit that very place soon, I promised myself. Maybe as soon as I got home, we’d pack up a few things and spend a week down by the river together. I wanted so badly to have her, hold her, kiss her, and just be near to her. I just couldn’t wait for her love to refresh my parched soul. She would be able to make me forget the horror that the last year of my life had been. Of that I was certain.
“You live in town?” the old guy asked as we approached Coon Hollow.
“No, a few miles south of Cherokee Crossing,” I said. “You can just drop me off there and I’ll find my way home already.”
He didn’t say anything. I looked around and found Coon Hollow much like I remembered it. Little had changed that couldn’t be attributed to entropy. We approached Cherokee Crossing, and I prepared to get out as he slowed down, but he didn’t stop, he just turned right, and continued driving south, down Tobacco Road.
“Thank you sir, but you really don’t have to do this,” I expressed my gratitude. My game leg hadn’t been looking forward to the walk home.
“You walked your share,” was all he said. It was hard for me to argue with that.
I settled back in my seat and watched the countryside roll by. A tangled blend of early summer scents rushed into my open window, and I sniffed them happily like a dog, trying to sort them out. Each farmyard I saw reminded me of some person or story from the past, every dip and hill we passed prompted recollection of some childhood memory. We drove past the church, the school, and Ellen’s folks’ place, and I could have stopped and spent the rest of the day recounting the happenings of days gone by. The nostalgia only heightened my sense of excitement.
“It’s just up ahead there, by that mailbox,” I pointed up ahead where I could see the end of our lane. The exuberance I felt in my chest swelled. A cocktail of emotions stirred up inside of me. I could scarcely believe it—I was home!
“Just turn around on the lane, I can walk from here,” I told him. The house wasn’t visible from the road, and I wanted to surprise Ellen.
He pulled into the drive and stopped. I already had my satchel on my lap, and I fairly leapt out of the truck.
“Thank you so much!” I said fervently to the old guy, leaning back into the window. He looked at me with a gentle smile, and I could see emotion tugging at his wrinkled old face.
“Welcome home, son,” he said. I tossed a full pack of cigarettes onto the seat of the truck as it began rolling backward. He waved as he eased slowly back onto the road, and I waved back at him.
Then, I started trotting up the hill toward the tabletop that our farm was situated on. The peak of the barn roof came into view, then the peak of the house, the roof, and finally the whole thing lay before me.
My pace quickened and my heart galloped as I reached the top of the hill.
A movement in the garden caught my eye. Ellen! My beautiful Ellen! She was bent over, facing away from me. Her loose-fitting, canary-colored sundress billowed in the breeze. She straightened and stretched, pushing the small of her back with one hand. The sun glinted off of her long blonde hair.
“Ellen!” I called excitedly, breaking into a run. She stopped, as though wondering if her ears were playing tricks on her.
“Ellen!” I cried out again, my voice breaking with emotion as I charged toward her. She turned and covered her mouth with her hand. I expected her to run to meet me, but she stood as though stunned.
As I neared her, the
feeling that something was wrong yanked at my soaring heart. I wondered if she could see my scars. As I approached, she turned away from me, as though ashamed, and when she did, it was obvious what the matter was. She was pregnant.
There was a moment, one brief, irrational, delirious moment, before reality splintered the pillars of my world with the impossibility of the thought, that I believed she carried the answer to my prayers: my son. For one split-second, I thought, yes! And after that, all I could think was, no, no, no, no, NO! It simply couldn’t be mine!
The realization staggered my mind and body. I flailed to a stop, in a way not dissimilar from the way Frankie De Luca had in a field in Normandy. I wanted to die, but unlike Frankie, I didn’t. The pain just kept coming, but there would be no sweet relief.
Ellen looked at me through red, swollen eyes and a tangled mat of hair. She’d aged more than four years.
“I’m sorry, Robbie!” she whispered through her tears. “I—I didn’t know how to tell you!” She stood and looked fearfully at me, waiting for my reaction.
The English language was inadequate to express to her what I felt. A stack of dictionaries could not have furnished words numerous or potent enough to describe the emotions that roiled inside me at that moment. I could only stand and tremble.
“Oh, Robbie, your face!” she gasped. There was a tiredness in her bloodshot eyes, a haunted, hunted look that only seemed to intensify as she stared at the scars on my face. She moved forward like she wanted to reach out and touch them, reach out and comfort me. I recoiled as though her movement were the strike of a viper.
That was it. I had to leave. If I didn’t, there was no telling what I would do. I wheeled and walked toward where the Buick sat parked in front of the house.
“I’m so sorry, Robbie!” Ellen followed me, sobbing.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” she became hysterical. I ignored her and opened the door to the Buick.
“Talk to me! Please! Please talk to me!” she screamed as I threw my bag inside and got in. She grabbed my shirtsleeve and tugged on it.
“Don’t touch me, you whore!” I snarled, swinging my hand wildly and smacking the side of her face. She reeled back from my blow. I slammed the door shut and started the engine. She pounded on my window, tears streaming down her face.
“Please talk to me! I’ll explain everything! Please!” she shouted through the glass.
I threw the car into reverse and backed up. Ellen stumbled backwards. The tires spat up dirt, stones and tufts of grass as I put it in gear and mashed the gas pedal. I made it a hundred feet before I slammed on the brakes. Ellen came running over hopefully as I rolled down my window.
“Where’s Charlie?” I yelled above the sound of the idling motor. She stopped and looked like she was disappointed that I’d stopped only to ask about a dog.
“He died last winter!” she managed through her tears. She was crying so hard she couldn’t wipe the tears away before they trickled down to her neck.
“You could have fuckin’ told me!” I screamed, and kicked the accelerator. I didn’t look back.
Table of Contents
TWELVE
BECOMING MOSES
Rage and anguish drove me like demons into the wilderness to torment me. Like a wild man possessed, I flew down the back roads and up the highway. Each oncoming car dared me to veer into its path, every roadside drop-off promised instant relief from my misery with a turn of the wheel.
I pounded the dashboard with my fists. I tried to cry, but I couldn’t. My stomach turned. My body shook.
Certain I was going to be sick, I stopped the car on the side of the road and leapt out, running down through the ditch and into the brush where I couldn’t be seen by passing motorists.
I leaned against a tree, my insides heaving. My body felt as though it needed to purge itself of a poison, and my stomach heaved and heaved and heaved again. I couldn’t vomit, so I tried to cry, but I couldn’t force tears either, so I lay down on the ground and heaved without vomiting, and sobbed without tears, wracked with a sorrow that hurt more than pain.
There seemed to be no possibility of relief, only an unending future of sadness. Ellen was my everything, the only person to whom I’d ever entrusted my heart without holding back. I’d given her everything without restriction or reservation. But it had meant nothing! My love, my faithfulness, my devotion and worship of her had meant nothing! She had minced my heart as though it were nothing more than beef liver! The very thought made me writhe in agony the way I’d seen hundreds of fatally wounded men writhe on the battlefield. I’d taken a mortal hit, and it felt there could be no cure. Not enough time existed to dull the pain. Even hope, had I had any, seemed a feeble antidote to so grave an affliction. Like a dying man I wished to feel death’s cold hand. But death would not be so kind to me.
I lay there until the coolness of the evening made me shiver. I walked stiffly back to the car, feeling as hollow as a tin man. A vehicle approached in the distance, forcing me to wait beside the road for it to pass before climbing into the car.
When I reached Somerset, I pulled into an old gas station off U.S. Route 27 and purchased a tank of gas and two bottles of Jim Beam.
After I paid, I got back into the car and opened a bottle of bourbon. I took a swig, and the whiskey bit me hard. I caught my breath and bit the bottle back, downing half of it before lowering it to my lap. As I put the cap back on, I saw the elderly station proprietor and his wife staring at me through the store window.
“Fuck you!” I yelled at them and flipped them the finger. They exchanged horrified looks as I fired up the Buick and took off.
The bourbon began roaring through my veins as I turned back onto Route 27, toward the Tennessee line. Jim Beam shoved me out of the driver’s seat as the car picked up speed. I shifted gears. Jim stomped on the gas. We blew by a half dozen cars, headed for hell in the hammer lane.
~~~
I woke up the next day to the smell of my own puke. A couple of flies buzzed around my throbbing head and landed on my cheek. The sun was high, and the interior of the Buick was cooking. I closed my bleary eyes, fumbled for the door handle, and pushed the door open. A faint breeze wafted in through the open door, cooling my sweaty forehead and pounding temples.
After lying with my eyes closed for a few minutes, I opened my eyes, groaned, and stumbled out of the car.
I leaned unsteadily on the hot roof of the car and rested my head on my crossed arms. I felt like shit. Then I remembered Ellen was pregnant with another man’s baby, and I felt a million times worse. A parade of bitter thoughts marched through my mind. Why couldn’t I just have died in France? What exactly had possessed God to allow me, of all men, to return alive to my shattered life?
Flies still buzzed around me. I pushed myself away from the car and looked down. The front of my shirt was stained with dried vomit, and I could feel some stuck to my face, too.
As I rubbed the crusts off my face, I took a look around for the first time. The car was parked in a clover field. I had no recollection of how it had gotten there, where the nearest town was, or if I was in Kentucky or Tennessee. My last memory was passing cars on the highway.
An involuntary moan escaped softly through my lips. Being alive was a drudgery. I was more weary of life than I’d ever been before. Oh, I’d been weary of life before. But I’d always had a measure of hope to cling to, a reason to fight for another breath. This time however, I had no hope. I had no faith that there were better days ahead, no reason to believe that I’d ever see the light at the top of the well.
I unbuttoned my shirt, threw it into the car, and set off in search of someplace to clean up, eat, and buy more whiskey.
~~~
The summer of 1945 was the beginning of a very dark time in my life. It felt as though a black cloud had descended to oppress me, and there was no reprieve from its darkness.
It was the unanswered questions that drove me over the cliff and left me to wallow in the quick
sand of despair and depression. My restless mind searched relentlessly for answers to questions I knew I really didn’t want to know the answers to. Who? When? Where? Why?
I spent hours thinking about who it was that had seen the nakedness of my bride. Was it someone I knew? I sorted through the dozens of possibilities. Had she invited him into our bed? Had she conceived by another man between the very same sheets she and I had shared our passionate love-making? Had it been a one-time fling, or had she found so much pleasure in him that they’d met over and over and over again?
There were times I’d try to distract myself by thinking about things that had happened during the war. As horrific as the war had been, I still felt better thinking about death, killing, and chaos, than about Ellen’s betrayal.
I told myself to get over it. I told myself to move on. But moving on is a hard thing to do, so the best I could do was move. And so I moved from one forgettable town to another, one forgettable bar to another, one forgettable woman to another. But no matter how quickly I moved, I couldn’t shake the past. Every time I turned around it was there, like some stray dog that just won’t go home no matter how sternly you yell or shake a stick at it.
As I moved, I picked up an odd job here or there. Nothing steady, just enough to keep a little grub in my belly and my mind soaked in liquor. Alcohol was my escape. It seemed to be the only thing that could offer any sort of relief, at least temporarily. I became an addict to alcohol and, as strange as it sounds, depression. Like that stray dog you just can’t get rid of, my depressed state of mind became a part of me, something of a pet. It was a convenient excuse to drink, and as much as I loathed myself for it, I became quite attached to the idea of having it around. Those were days when only sad songs made me happy.
By winter of 1945-1946, my spirit had withered away like the grass. My heart was a field of scorched earth, and it seemed seeds of hope had no chance of ever sprouting in such cold and polluted soil. A numbness took over my body and mind. I cared for, and about, nothing.
Love is a Wounded Soldier Page 25