by Weston Ochse
She lurched out of the cab and around the truck until she found some shade near the rear bumper. She edged away from the tailpipe and squatted. Squinting against the painful light, she doodled, her ringless wedding hand drawing a figure eight in the sand.
She gazed at bumper stickers detailing a litany of family vacations. From Ruby Falls to Wall Drug to Disney World, the truck had seen it all. What the bumper stickers didn’t show was the nature of these vacations. The bumper stickers might reveal a destination, but they didn’t even begin to divine the journey.
Emily had met Jim ten years ago when she was nineteen. She’d been between her freshmen and sophomore years of college. Instead of returning home, she’d spent the summer working at a Casino off the coast of Biloxi, Mississippi. The lure of easy money, azure waters, white sand beaches, and her roommate’s promise of upscale, handsome young men had done the trick. Then, right after the 4th of July rush, Jimbo Cooley had strode through the casino doors. His dress uniform fit snug over the contours of his muscular frame. His ribbons and airborne medals were only outshone by the confidence of his smile. When his twinkling blue eyes found her as she stood changing quarters for the old woman from Upstate New York, Emily fell immediately and impossibly in love.
They were married a week later.
Emily gasped as a scorpion scuttled past her. She staggered to her feet, and checked the gauges. The needles were once again within the safe range. She toggled the heater off and cranked down the windows before she slid back into the hellish cab.
The heat was incredible as she resumed her journey.
Her parents had been incensed that she’d eloped. At the time, Emily had been too enthralled to care. She’d been overwhelmed by Hurricane Cooley and had been swept up and twirled about until she’d been dizzy with the excitement that young love promised. It wasn’t until she’d been firmly ensconced in an above-garage, roach-infested, studio apartment in Columbus, Georgia that she’d remembered that she’d once had a future of her own.
Emily traveled maybe a quarter of a mile when a car filled with soldiers on weekend pass slid from the mirage-rippling horizon into reality. Their Toyota Celica quickly closed the distance between them. She was reminded of the Arabian Nights, the tales read to her during the frigid winter months of her Great Plains childhood. The soldiers could be djinns riding a cloud of sand, able to grant wishes if one only knew what to ask. As they neared, Emily was forced to swerve. Her truck skidded to a stop, barely missing a mile marker already bent into unreadability.
The car barreled past. The soldiers leered wickedly, brains still savage from the Army’s re-education and weeks of practiced mayhem on the killing fields of the National Training Center at Fort Irwin. She managed to remember that they were someone’s sons. They were loved and remembered for their compassion. These were America’s young who had been temporarily freed so that they could pretend that they were normal human children who didn’t breathe death and eat destruction.
Emily shook her head as she pulled back onto the road. No. That wasn’t fair. They weren’t that bad. She glanced in the rearview mirror, but the soldiers had already become obscured by their own dusty shroud. They weren’t bad, they’d merely been instilled with a sense of purpose and a belief in themselves. Like Jim, they sought to make a difference. They wanted to save the world.
Jim and Emily had spent their first year together in Georgia. Jim was a newly frocked ranger assigned to the 75th Ranger Regiment. Although Jim had been gone more often than he was around, she hadn’t felt alone. She’d thrown herself into her part as wife and homemaker, channeling the accumulated knowledge of her mother, her grandmother and generations of plains women who had carved lives out of a seemingly barren land. On the occasions when Jim wasn’t deployed, he lavished her with compliments and love. She’d felt that nothing would ever be better than that first year.
She was right.
Jim’s next assignment was Fort Lewis, Washington, and amid the cold and rain and yelling, her life slipped away from her.
He’d been promoted to sergeant. The promotion meant more responsibility, which Jim had hardly minded at all. Like an enemy drop zone, Jim jumped into his new duties with both feet and a lust for blood. He was given a squad of soldiers and one command: make them ready to kill.
Emily hardly saw Jim that first year in Fort Lewis and when she did, she tried not to complain. She understood how hard he worked. She knew that all he wanted at the end of the day was to come home, relax, and maybe drink a beer while he shined his boots for the next day. He’d made that perfectly clear to her in their second month when he’d backed her into a corner, snarling like a mad stranger. No longer husband and wife, she’d become recruit to his drill sergeant. He’d made her feel little and empty. He’d made her feel stupid. When he went away for weeks at a time to learn better ways to kill, she’d feel better. Sometimes she even forgot what he’d become. Sometimes she didn’t feel stupid.
But when Jim came back she’d remember again. She’d ask him to be human and see the rage sweep through him. He’d break things and stick his fist through the walls. What kept her around was that look in his eyes every time he did it. Amidst the insanity of his anger, she’d see the crystal blue sparkle of that soldier who’d walked into the casino that day he’d won her heart. So instead of returning to the I told you so’s of her father, she held firm, confident that she’d change or he’d change or something would change.
And it did. On the eve of her birthday, right after he’d returned from the debacle of Somalia, Sergeant Jim Cooley had hit her. His fist had come from nowhere, arcing around his wedding day pledge to honor and protect and love her until it connected irrevocably with her chest. The air shot from her in a convulsive whoompf, both from surprise and an immutable understanding that their lives had transformed into something raw and bleak and scary. She’d flown into the wall, a picture of them holding hands staring at a Smokey Mountain vista fell to the floor, the glass shattering.
When she was eight years old, she’d watched the Wizard of Oz in horror. She’d been terrified she’d end up like Dorothy. The Munchkins, the Tin Man, the Scarecrow, the Flying Monkeys all scared her. The only character that made her feel safe was the Cowardly Lion.
“Daddy? Will you take care of me?” she’d asked after watching the movie.
“Of course, Pumpkin,” he’d said, reading the baseball scores.
“What if the Flying Monkeys come and take me away? What if the Wicked Witch gets me?” she’d asked, her eight year old mind attempting to apply logic to fiction.
“Then I’d just have to come and save you.”
“Won’t you be afraid?”
At that point her daddy glanced up from his newspaper. What he said next had surprised her at first. It took her years before she really understood. “Of course I’ll be afraid, Pumpkin. But it’s okay to be afraid.”
Emily remembered staring at her daddy as he returned to his newspaper, she as a little girl trying to figure out why it was okay to be afraid. As she hit the floor, she found the answer. Being afraid meant that you had something worthwhile to lose – in this case, her marriage, her self-worth and her sanity. Suddenly, she was very afraid.
Even as Jim’s enraged glare shifted to surprise, she still felt afraid. She’d covered her face with her hands.
“Oh, baby. I’m sorry,” he’d said.
“Are you okay?” he’d asked.
“I’ll never do that again,” he’d promised.
Through the haze of her pain, Jim reminded her of a Flying Monkey with a Tin Man head. She’d stared at him until he’d gone away and it was a long time before she trusted him again.
In the distance, she spied a mound of rocks rising towards the sky. Although she’d never been there, she knew that it was her destination – Painted Rock – a place where visiting Army units had left their gaudy marks in the shape of brightly colored uni
t patches.
She’d thought about calling her daddy after Jim hit her, but once again she’d decided to handle the situation on her own. After all, she still loved her husband. He still loved her. He just needed help. She and Jim had gone to see the chaplain. They’d talked about trust. They’d talked about communication. It was then that Jim had broken down and cried about what he’d seen in Somalia. About what he’d done in Somalia. About having to fire into a crowd of rioters and the starving falling like the grain sacks they’d never have.
She and Jim survived a month’s marriage counseling before he was deployed again.
When Jim returned four months later from a stint in Thailand, he couldn’t help but notice that she was pregnant. Although he was gone for most of the next year, he’d found a way to be present for the birth of their son, Michael Scott Cooley. And the birth seemed to civilize Jim for a time.
They’d moved to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and immediately into government housing. The three bedroom two-story apartment was only slightly better than the best a big city ghetto had to offer. Packed into long buildings, each postage-sized yard held bikes, big wheels and an assortment of cast-off toys, all partially hidden by overgrown weeds. Dogs barked and children howled. Wives gossiped over the backyard fences.
For Emily, who’d grown-up in the wide-open spaces of South Dakota, this was a peculiar hell. The Army promoted Jim to staff sergeant and put him behind a desk. He took some college classes. She took care of Michael. They took vacations to the Outer Banks and began to learn about each other. One thing Emily had never considered before they married was that she really didn’t know much about Jim. She’d loved him, therefore she’d thought they’d get along. The problem was that what satisfied her heart wasn’t the same as what she needed to stimulate her head.
The truck began to overheat again. She pulled it to the side of the road and once again turned up the heat as it idled. The great mound of rocks was only a few miles away. She was so close now. Just a few more miles and a journey she’d begun a dozen years ago would be over.
So it was when they were alone and away from the Army that they began to learn about each other. Some things surprised her. Some things came as no surprise. Like the way his mother had treated him as a child. Emily had never believed that a mother could twist a son so badly that he’d end up mistrusting all women.
Emily covered her mouth with her hand to keep from choking on the dust as a bus filled with new recruits rumbled past her towards Painted Rock. The faces of the new soldiers were unlined and eager. They hadn’t had to kill yet. They hadn’t been forced to live with themselves. The wind stirred the dust into enraged devils and she was forced to look away.
Jim began drinking when they promoted him to sergeant first class. Every weekend was a barbeque where alcohol was emphasized more than the food. The men sat and talked about the women. The women sat and talked about the men. Although Jim never hit her again, he’d begun sniping her with remarks.
“Not as thin as you used to be, are you, Em.”
“Are you sure you aren’t full?”
“Maybe we should buy you some new clothes, huh?”
Every chance he’d had, Jim would comment on her weight or her looks. Each remark hurt as much as a slap. Each comment was a reminder that she was trying to come to terms with herself and failing. Each time she’d felt ready to return to her daddy and the Land of I Told You So’s, Jim would do something to redeem himself and she’d decide to stay.
Love could be poison.
Love could obscure as much as the sand of Death Valley.
She checked the gauges and saw that they’d lowered enough for her to turn off the heater. She only had a little farther to drive. She could almost walk there. She checked once more to make sure that Jim was securely fastened beneath the seatbelt, and then began accelerating towards journey’s end.
Near the final stages, their relationship had exhibited a Sargasso-like quality. Like an old ship in the great seaweed ocean, they were captured and propelled along on the lazy impetus. Because neither of them had the energy to escape, they allowed it to continue.
Then on September 11, 2001, the World Trade Centers hit the earth. Her husband, Sergeant First Class Jimbo Cooley was part of America’s Retaliation and had been dropped into Afghanistan with enough anger to fuel a two-thousand pound bomb. He’d found another war and had been sent as a self-motivated missile to destroy the Al-Qaida. During the Tora Bora campaign, he’d distinguished himself by saving a squad of soldiers. He’d given his life so that seven others could live.
He was a hero.
He was her husband.
He was dead.
Emily pulled the pick-up into the wide dusty parking lot in front of Painted Rock. Several cars were parked there along with the bus that had passed her earlier. Forty soldiers stood in formation as their sergeant commanded their attention. Even in the super-heated air of the Mojave, the soldiers stood pinion true.
She’d heard once that this place used to be called Pain Rock. Some book she’d read had told of the settlers and how they’d come here seeking shade and respite from the insufferable desert only to die on the snake-infested rocks. For years, locals new and respected the place. Then the Army had come around and tried to cover the pain with their painted crests and patches. As the soldiers were released from formation to scamper amidst the history of the units who’d trained here, she couldn’t help but recognized that the difference between pain and painted was miniscule.
Emily went around to the passenger door, opened it, and removed the box containing the remains of her husband. She closed the door and held the box to her chest. She turned and searched amid the unit crests and insignia for the 75th Ranger Regiment. She spied it about halfway towards the pinnacle. Lowering her head, she trudged towards it.
The night before Jim had left for war, they’d had an awful fight. He’d tried to explain to her something that he’d said had been bothering him for some time. He’d cried as he apologized for his lack of understanding and love. He realized that he’d failed as a husband. He realized that he didn’t know how to love. He’d apologized on his knees, crying into her lap as he’d tried to make her understand that his internal battle sometimes spilled forth.
“I didn’t want this, Em. I want what we had in the beginning.”
She’d smoothed his hair as he lay on her lap sobbing.
“I wanted to love you forever. I wanted to be loved.”
She couldn’t help it as her tears burned through her defenses.
“But they taught me to fight. They taught me to hurt. They taught me to react.”
She’d closed her eyes to stave off her tears. It hadn’t worked.
“Please, understand, Em. Please forgive me, Em.”
She’d kissed him on the neck.
“I’m sorry,” he’d said.
Those were the last words she’d ever heard from him. They’d held each other until they fallen asleep. The next morning he was gone.
As she struggled up the incline, she thought about Jim’s last night and what he’d said. It had taken her awhile, but she’d realized that he’d been scared. Jim was a Ranger so he wasn’t scared of the enemy, but he was scared of dying alone. Sometimes she wondered if he’d allowed himself to die.
And in the dark of the night when she was trussed within the claustrophobic memories of the bad times, she was happy that he’d died. She remembered being simultaneously angry at herself for feeling that way and angry at him for making her feel that way. When she’d been a little girl dreaming of being married, she’d never dreamed it like the way it had turned out. Then again, she’d never dreamed that she’d marry a hero, either.
Emily climbed to a point just above an imposing boulder with the ranger regimental scroll. Her fingers shook as she removed the tape that secured the top of the box. Finally, she managed to open it. Atop
a pile of ashes gleamed her husband’s Silver Star. She removed the award from the pile and placed it into her pocket for Michael. She’d give it to him when he was older to remind him of the hero his father had once been.
As a dozen new soldiers stared uncomprehendingly at her, she upended the box of her husband’s remains. The wind caught the powder. A small dust devil danced across the top of the rock emblazoned with the symbol of the 75th Ranger Regiment, and she imagined Sergeant Jimbo Cooley’s soul finally marching free.
* * *
Notes from the Author: I wrote this story about ten years ago but never published it. Military spouses are as much in the military as their husbands and wives. A good chunk of their lives are spent waiting. If they’re lucky, their spouses don’t bring the war home. If they’re lucky, their spouses treat them with the love and respect they deserve. But too often what happened to Emily Cooley is the norm. Rereading the story, I noted that I gave Jim a reason for his actions, because realistically, he had one. But there is no reason or excuse to hit, abuse, or demean a spouse. Period. I included this in this collection of war stories to point out that spouses have war stories as well and not all of them have happy endings.
Hiroshima Falling
With Hiroshima eyes I weep
for a world self-destructing,
never learning lessons from
the atomic apocalypse of skies falling.
From Atomic Skies Falling by Carah Ong
August 6, 1945
ITORO’S EYES SNAPPED open.
He felt the press of people pushing against him from all sides, especially against his back, making him lean into the man in front of him. His legs were wedged fast. Hot stale air sizzled across his skin. His body hummed with interlocked agonies. He tried to lift his head and gasped at the immediate pain the simple move had caused. Using his hands, he felt his face, which had melted to the back of the man’s head in front of him, the torturous motion of looking around ripping skin from his cheek. He could only see the hairs on the back of the man’s head in front of him and the ransacked face of the man next in line who must have turned to see the explosion before the fire had swept through them, leaving his eyes smoking holes of melted tissue.