“Hildene. ’Cept she goes by Dene.” He quickly added, “If you’re going to write her, you better ask first if you can call her that. And if you put any racy shit in your letters, I’ll drown your freckled ass in a dugout. You hip to what I’m telling you?” Jake nodded and put his hand over his heart. Jake passed the picture to Stone who nodded and wolf whistled to Freeman’s consternation. Sterling said she was a real blackout girl, and Pearl agreed. He handed the picture back to Jake, who reluctantly held it out to Freeman to put back in his wallet. He shook his head and said, “Yeah, I guess you can keep it for a while. I mean if you’re gonna get married and all.”
“Thanks, Rod.” Jake put the picture in his breast pocket, above his heart. He looked around. “Where’s Jim? I want to show him too.”
The men looked down into the grass and stopped laughing about the girls back home. Sterling stood, put his helmet on, and excused himself. The others pocketed their photographs and one by one wandered off to clean their rifles or report for watch or try to find a card game. And when Jake was left alone with his only thoughts and the mosquitoes for company, he pulled Dene’s picture out of his pocket, and went to scrounge up a pencil and some paper to write her a letter.
Jake stood with his hat in hand as people filed past, mumbling their condolences. He did his best to say “thank you” to each of them for coming, but he didn’t feel gratitude. He didn’t feel much of anything. Except longing. He longed for the hand on his chest every time he had a nightmare and the soft voice whispering in his ear that he was not in danger. Her sweet breath pulling him out of the jungle into their bedroom, into their bed and her arms and the world he wanted to live in, not that other one. And not this one. He longed for the space in between then and now, when he had someone to see him through those early morning moments where he didn’t know who or where he was. But all he had left were the nightmares and an empty bed and the goddamned breeze through the gaps in the windows.
His Pop stepped in front of him with a face full of sadness and said, “I’m sorry, my son.” For the first time in knowing him thirty years, Jake saw his father cry. The old man was overwhelmed and dropped his face so his boy, taller than he and sturdier too, wouldn’t see him weep, wouldn’t see what he was reduced to. His mother took Pop by the shoulders and tried to lead him off so Jake could be alone in his grief, but the man refused and stood fast. Jake reached out a hand to shake. Pop took a halting step forward and embraced him instead. Jake wrapped his arms around his father and held him while the elder man cried. His mother put one hand on her husband’s back, and with her other grasped her son’s wrist. They stood like that for a long time while the bright daylight sun shone on Dene’s coffin, mocking it, and her inside. Telling Jake so clearly what he already knew: the sun would shine on all their graves and make the grass grow green to hide their remains. Only the stones preserved their names. And not forever. He looked aside to one of the ancient headstones a few yards away, worn by time and the weather until it couldn’t be read. No one came to lay flowers on that grave. No one knelt at it and whispered their sorrowful longing. It stood alone, remembered only as a place where someone once had been lowered to the sound of tears and shovels of dirt raining down.
His mother finally pulled the old man away, and Jake said, “Thanks, Pop.” His parents walked off, leaving him the last man standing at the grave except the mortician and the preacher. Jake thanked the mortician for everything he’d done for Dene. He said nothing to the preacher. That man hadn’t done jack shit in all his life and he knew it. Jake stared hotly at him until the funeral director offered to take him back to the hearse that had brought them. Jake refused, telling him not to wait. He’d be along in his own time. The funeral director led the preacher off instead and Jake stayed behind to watch the workmen lower his bride into the ground under the noonday sun.
He pulled the envelope with his last letter to Dene out of his breast pocket, dropped it in the hole after her pine box, turned, and walked home alone to fix himself lunch in an empty house. The mortician stood by the side of the car watching him go. He didn’t need the ride home; he was used to long walks in all kinds of weather.
He ran with abandon, like a child gripping a kite string, trying to make a diamond of color lift and fly behind him like a paper soul at the end of fate’s string. He skidded in the mud to the left to avoid another explosion, though the destruction was wrought and over before he even saw it flower. He gripped the ammunition belts over his shoulders tighter and scrambled for the fortification where his friends held on to hope that this was not the hole in which they’d die. The mud pulled at his feet, slowing him. He worked to stay upright and find the earthen pit in which there was safety from the flying bullets. He ran furiously and unhindered by impediments of vanity or inhibition. Though he knew fear. He knew it better than he knew himself, because it was always with him. Except when it stepped behind its siblings, fury and grief, for a rest.
A root jutted up from the earth and reached for his foot, uncoiling and whipping at him, trying to pull him down into the mud. Lightning lit up the night and thunder followed immediately upon it. A tree splintered and he couldn’t tell if it was the bolt or a bomb that did it. The world clawed at his clothes and screamed at him to slow down and stop. Give in to inertia and give up. Lie down. Let go of the string and let the kite fall. Jake sprinted on, counting time only in pounding footsteps and heartbeats. He refused the false comforts of stillness and rest, staggered and pushed himself ahead. He ran because not running meant to die. And Jake would be damned if he would die without ever meeting the woman who’d agreed to marry him. The woman he only knew in her letters and his dreams. He’d be damned and tear down Hell before he’d stop for anything or anyone but her.
A flash of yellow and red in the dark erupted in front of him, cascading up with embers and down with rain. And the hole toward which he’d propelled himself was black and quiet as it smoked. Jake stopped, staring into it with wide eyes and a gaping mouth. The fortified position lay torn open in smoldering ruin. Sterling, Pearl, and Stone were all inside it, a tangle of terrible familiarity. Bodies broken and rent in ways he’d seen often, but never with this kind of intimacy. Rain pummeled his friends’ bodies, mingling their blood with earth and washing them clean as headstones. Silence descended on him. The kite drooped.
A hand gripped the back of his shirt and pulled. “Blackmun! Move!” He turned and the dark giant pulled again, shouting his name and raising an arm to point the way, away from this death, toward a different hole in the earth. Toward one that barked gunfire and shouts of defiance. He followed and they fled toward a different gun position—a different band of men trying to survive the night and fire. A flash of light and he saw Jim from Georgia leading him to a new grave. He leaped in. Throwing the belt ammunition at the gunner, and turned back to pull Jim in after him.
Only, he was gone.
Of course, Jim was weeks dead and but a dream. Jake told himself it had to be someone else. Hart or Pluck. They too were big men like Jim; it was one of them who saved him. He looked around and found them steady in their own positions on the line.
And then the rain fell harder. He looked up and watched the sparkling sky falling around him.
He toweled off his wet hair. The southern hemisphere sun had turned it bright red as it tanned his skin a golden brown he’d never enjoyed before. He looked in the mirror and felt transformed from who he’d been when he left home more than two years ago. Deprivation had made his face gaunt and hardship toned his thin muscles. The boy his mother had been desperate to preserve was long gone. Though he still couldn’t grow a beard.
“He’s not decent; you can’t go back there,” he heard his auntie shout from the front room. Jake wrapped the towel around his head and peeked out of the bathroom. The woman strode down the hall toward him, her face aglow. He recognized her from the picture she’d sent so he could give the other one back to Rod. He’d stared long and hard at the image of her sitting on the wooden
rail fence, leaning back on her arms with a knee cocked up like a nosecone pin-up painting—a pose just for Jake—wondering what it would be like to see her in the real world, full and flesh and alive. And here she was. She skipped to him with a smile like a lightning strike and almost jumped into his arms. They were the same height and she might’ve outweighed him, but he caught her and held her and they kissed like they were already married, though they weren’t headed to see the Justice of the Peace for another few hours yet.
The towel fell from his head and she leaned back in his arms to get a good look at him. “Saaaay!” she cried. “You said you were bald.” Her eyes narrowed and she added, “It’s so . . . so red.”
He laughed. He’d written in a letter that he was prematurely bald and hoped that when they finally met, his appearance wouldn’t matter. She’d replied that she loved him, so he could look like a troll from under a bridge and she’d still marry him. His lie wasn’t a test as much as a tease, and the look on her face was worth it. “I hope you’re not disappointed. I figured saying I was bald might be less upsetting than telling you I was a carrot top.”
Dene ran her fingers through his hair and giggled. She looked at her future husband and the smile grew wider and she held him tighter. “You are a scoundrel.”
“Tell you what, I’ll buy you breakfast to make up for it.”
“It’s almost lunchtime, Punkinhead.”
He looked at his watch. He’d been indulging himself in the comforts of a home, not a hole, and had lost track of time. “Punkinhead, huh?”
“How ’bout Punkin’ for short?”
His auntie stood at the end of the hallway, arms folded across her chest. While she didn’t condone the two of them, him dressed only in a pair of boxer shorts and an A-shirt, unmarried and holding each other in the hall, she didn’t say anything—only stared disapprovingly. When it was clear they weren’t going to pay her any mind, she turned and disappeared into the living room, stomping along the way as if they needed reminding she was there.
“I s’pose I ought to get spiffy for our date with the J.P.,” he said.
She shook her head and whispered in his ear, “I’m never letting you get dressed.”
“I imagine they might not truck with that at City Hall, but whatever you want. I’ll report for our nuptials in my privies if it makes you happy.”
“You make me happy, mister.”
“Glad to hear it, missus.”
From the living room, his auntie called out, “Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades! You two aren’t mister and missus yet.”
His face clouded at the thought of hand grenades, as if the word came with the concussion of one spitting fire, blood, and sand in his eyes. Dene pressed her palm against his cheek and kissed him once more, lightly, on the mouth. His darkness drained and his head felt light and a little dizzy, like he had been drowning until she pulled him out of the dark water.
“Get dressed, Marine. We’ve got a date to get hitched.”
He stepped back and saluted. “Yes ma’am.”
She started toward the living room, but paused at the end of the hall, looking at him over her shoulder, doing something she couldn’t in a letter or a photo. Jake’s mouth hung open. He thought he could watch her walk away all day long, but he never wanted to see her leave again. She smiled and said, “It’s nice to meet you, Jacob Blackmun.”
“The pleasure’s all mine, Hildene Freeman.”
He started awake with a stab of pain in his back that made him want to call out. A cough cut off his cry, and he tried to sit up to get a breath. A cool hand pressed to his chest and a soft voice in his ear told him, “Relax, it was only a dream.” His throat was dry and he couldn’t get the words out, “No, not the dream. The pain.” Instead, he coughed. The hand retreated from his chest and returned with a small salmon-colored plastic jug with a white straw jutting out. He lifted a thin, pale hand to help guide the straw toward his lips, to wet his mouth and throat and try again to speak. The needle in the back of his hand ached dully when the tube connected to it pulled against the part of his bed it had become hung up on.
The soft voice returned. “Here, let me.” She leaned in, pointing the end of the straw at his lips, and he suckled at it. Cold water filled his mouth. He could only swallow half of what he drew out before another round of coughing made him sputter and spit the rest down his chin. “Oh no. I’m sorry, Mr. Blackmun.” The cup disappeared, replaced by a cloth. She wiped the water from his chin like a mother tending an infant learning how to drink from a cup. “You need to slow down, okay?” He nodded and tried again.
“How are you feeling, Mr. Blackmun?” the nurse asked.
The question was so cruel. How could she ask it? Once, he’d been a strong man—a Marine, tall and imposing. A man who fought with intention. Who laughed and loved with abandon. Looking now at his diminished legs under the thin white blankets, he was no longer that man, except in dreams. If he tried to laugh, he coughed. If he tried to stand, he fell. He was lost. Confined in a home of weakened flesh and brittle bone. His body hurt so much they had to pump him full of painkillers, when all he wanted was to run and jump and kiss and fuck and laugh and tell stories and drink whiskey and be alive. And most of all, he wanted to be with her and not here, alone in this place, unable to get out of bed. And if he couldn’t do any of that, then he wanted to dream.
If he couldn’t dream, what remained?
Underneath the astringent antiseptic scent that filled the room, he could smell the unpleasant odor of his body. He smelled like a man who hadn’t had a shower in an age. While the nurses washed him with sponges and changed his gown and bedclothes regularly, he could still smell himself. Despite their efforts, he smelled like a man dying in bed.
She leaned close to look into his eyes, searching for the spark of lucidity that would tell her he was fully present and his pain wasn’t overwhelming. That he wasn’t delirious with the cancer that had been eating him from the prostate up since he first ignored his symptoms. Toughing it out. The nurse was beautiful and young and undoubtedly made someone very happy. A lover, husband, parent or child who couldn’t imagine the world without her in it, and sought every conscious moment near her shine. And she, he hoped, knew that feeling too. But then, she was here with him and not that person. She was here and Dene was twenty years gone, and this was his first waking moment in he didn’t know how long. Jake knew he only had so many moments left in his life, and while she was lovely, she wasn’t his and he wasn’t hers, and he didn’t want to spend this time awake, no matter how caring and kind and beautiful she was. He wanted to dream. Even if, half the time, he was in a hell of fighting and pain. Because the rest of the time, he was there with her, and a dream felt like a present moment while you were in it. Awake, he had only his memories and the room where no more memories worth preserving were made. Every moment he lived, his memories fell farther behind him. He could think of Dene—remember her hazel eyes and chestnut hair and her breath that smelled like the menthols that took her from him. But none of it was here, now. It was all so long ago.
He blinked at the nurse and opened his mouth as if to say sure, you bet he was feeling all right, but instead, he winced and let out a wheezing, whining sigh that it shamed him to make. Still, it earned him the response he wanted. Her forehead wrinkled with concern, and she made a noise that sounded like pity. She put her cool hand on his chest again and said, “It’s early, Mr. Blackmun, but I’ll see if the doctor will let me give you something.”
She left the room. He exhaled a shuddering breath and let his head drop back on his pillow. The pain in his spine was terrible and he could barely breathe. But it was discomfort he could endure. He’d known so much already. He could take a little more, if it meant she came back with the bottle in her pocket and the sleep inside it. But the ache in his back grew and spread. It became a cramp in his guts and a feeling like his brain was pushing against the inside of his skull, and he wasn’t sure how much more he could ta
ke. He tried to push back. He tried to stay on top of it. That’s what they said when they spoke about him like he wasn’t even there: “Stay on top of it.” If they gave him the drugs on schedule, they could stay on top of his pain and he would sleep peacefully . . . and dream. But if they let it get too bad, then they’d have to give him more and more and he knew he wouldn’t sleep as much as he would be sedated, and then he’d go down deeper, to where there was nothing. When he was first diagnosed and they tried surgery, they’d sent him down that hole. A doctor told him to count backward from a hundred and put a mask over his face. Next thing he knew he was waking up in recovery with no memory of hours of surgery—and no dreams. Just the blank oblivion of heavy sedation. He’d happily deal with a measure of suffering and nightmares to have his dreams. Anyone would. Good dreams were worth the pain. Good dreams were all he had now that everything else was gone.
His breath hitched and the pain in his back and stomach spread into his chest. He attempted a deep breath and began to cough again. He couldn’t call out. He couldn’t breathe. It hurt. Behind his head, he heard an alarm begin to sound. An insistent beeping that kept pace with his accelerating fear. He took tiny breaths trying to feel a fullness of air, but his lungs wouldn’t cooperate. He chest was so heavy, like someone standing on him.
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