John recalled thinking—not so long ago—that life was supposed to return to the way it had once been when it was just him and Alice. Though they’d each lost a little bounce in their step, he was looking forward to showing them down at the Grange Hall that they still had it. We might even sneak a roll in the hay when we get back to the house, he hoped. It never happened that way, though. Her body was tired and the gears in her mind had slipped into reverse. Life had hardly returned to the way it had once been. Instead, it had become more a matter of surviving each day than living them.
Though John normally didn’t come up for air until his plate was clean, he fiddled with his fork while Alice continued to audition for no one. In her common gibberish of late, her lips twitched and out of the babble a complete sentence finally arose. “I know. I know. Churn the butter, churn the butter, then feed the wood stove. Churn the butter, churn the butter, then feed the wood stove. I know. I know. But I ain’t takin’ a bath…not until Pa says I have to and Pa ain’t been around for quite a spell now.”
In between episodes of belly laughter and cries of things that go bump in the night, Elle continued to feed Alice—as she was sure to bathe her, brush out her hair and even clean her bottom when Mother Nature called. And all of it would be done with love, patience and dignity. It was clear that Elle would keep her vigil and watch over Alice until her final hour. John wondered again, What did my bitter son ever do to deserve this amazin’ woman?
Excusing himself from the table, John hugged both women; Elle because he was grateful and Alice because of all of the memories she had given him. Elle returned the embrace. But Alice just sat there like a lifeless doll, acting surprised that this stranger would touch her so personally.
John grabbed his promise to Three-Speed. “I need to head out for one last check on the animals,” he told Elle.
She nodded her approval. “Take your time, Pa.”
~~~
No matter what the reason, Three Speed couldn’t have been happier for the old man’s unusual lack of appetite. As for John, well, he was just happy that Elle was looking after Alice, giving him some more time to sort out each path that led to this shaky present.
After completing his final chores, John flipped up the collar on his jacket. There was a wolves’ bite in the air. Looking down, he noticed that Three Speed was matching his every step back to the house. “It’s gettin’ some nippy ol’ boy,” he whispered, a billow of smoke rising slowly into the night. “If you can keep it to yourself, you can catch your shut-eye in the mudroom tonight.”
The dog yawned and hurried on ahead to the door where he stood, waiting.
The moon was full and lit up the earth with a soft light. John stopped. It’s been a long trip, but the nicest trip any man could ever hope for. He smiled at the truth of it. As he reached the porch, he turned to see the lights burning at Hank and Elle’s place across the creek bridge.
Gooseberry Island
Although it took me nine months to pen Gooseberry Island, it’s been a novel in the making for better than twenty years. Again, I served in Operation Desert Storm and have both experienced and witnessed the terrible suffering that accompanies combat service. More times than not, the wounds that are invisible prove much more painful than those that can be seen.
On the heels of Pressed Pennies, we decided to create another love story. In Gooseberry Island, David and Lindsey fall deeply in love, but quickly face a monstrous obstacle—the aftereffects of war.
Gooseberry Island is a tribute to all who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as those who stayed behind and suffered every moment until their loved one’s return.
This excerpt depicts David during his first few days of returning home from combat in Afghanistan. He is suffering terribly from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and must decide whether to continue seeing Lindsey, the woman who helped him survive the twelve months of hell. My life is in complete chaos, but maybe if I tried talking to Lindsey? David thought, shaking his head. No…it wouldn’t be fair.
David had been home for six weeks when he pulled into the market, preparing to locate everything on his mother’s grocery list. As he approached the store, he spotted a young teenage boy walking out; he was holding a brown bag. An older man approached the boy and reached out his hand. David gasped and his dizzy mind immediately raced back.
~~~
There was movement three hundred yards out, on the street below. Unusual, David thought. It was a teenage boy, maybe fourteen, carrying a burlap bag and quickly making his way home before dark. Never seen him before, David thought, and smiled. Back home, he’d be looking forward to getting his driver’s permit and dreaming about his first date.
In a flash, a man—a Taliban fighter—jumped out of the shadows and grabbed the boy’s arm, pulling him to the street and spilling the contents of his sack. As the teenager yelled for help, another Taliban soldier emerged from the darkness. The boy screamed louder, but not a single soul came to his aide.
David watched as both Taliban fighters began interrogating the boy. They might be looking for us, David thought. The teenage boy shook his head a few times. Loud yells quickly turned to open hand slaps. The boy fell to the street, where both fighters pounced on him to inflict a vicious, inhumane beating.
While listening to the thud of boots on the boy’s skull, David took a deep breath to control his anger while using his thumb to take his rifle off safe. He placed his finger into the trigger guard, sighted in the first aggressor’s head and broke radio silence. “Papa Bear,” he whispered, pressing the microphone into his neck. “This is Gray Ghost. I’ve got a young boy at my ten o’clock being beaten to death by two Taliban. I’ve got the shot. Requesting green light. Over.”
The boy’s shrills were ear-piercing. Still, no one on the ground came to his aide.
I’ll take the first one out, David thought, and by the time the second animal watches his buddy hit the deck, he’ll be on his way to Allah, too…right behind him.
“Negative,” Command responded.
“I say again, they’re killing the boy,” he whispered, “Over.”
By this time, the teenager had been beaten so badly he’d quit fighting back.
~~~
His eyes filled with enraged tears, David returned to the present and started for the man in a mad rush. He was three steps from the shocked stranger when reality clicked in. It’s the boy’s father, he realized. He’s…he’s okay.
David’s body convulsed. He’d forgotten he was home, and the reality of it slapped him hard in the face.
The man pulled the teenage boy close to him; both of them frightened by David’s sudden charge toward them.
“Sorry,” David said, though it sounded more like “Sigh.” Trying unsuccessfully to smile at them, he turned on his heels and hurried back to the Mustang.
~~~
For the next hour, David sat alone in his car, trying to calm the physical effects of his anxiety. Once he’d reined that in, he spent another two hours beating back the depression that always followed in anxiety’s wake.
His wasn’t sure whether the abyss existed within his heart or mind, but he knew that he was now filled with a great void; nothingness. There was no light there, only darkness. There was no hope, only despair. In time, he’d learned to embrace the silence, as the screams and whimpers of faceless victims became echoes that returned again and again, pushing the line of madness. Yet, the solitude was relentless, enveloping, merciless. It would have been better had I never existed, he thought, fearing another moment more than cashing in and leaving it all behind. No love, he thought, no peace. His memories were slanted in such thick negativity that his entire past would have been better off erased. And no one knows I’m dying inside, he thought, inviting another wave of panic attacks to crash onto the shore of his weary mind.
He closed his eyes tight and tried to calm the short labored gasps. Just ride the wave, he told himself. Just ride the wave.
But in another room in
his mind, he knew that even if he rode that wave—and didn’t crack his skull on all the rocks beneath him—he’d have to take the ride again and again. It didn’t take long before the jagged rocks seemed like the more merciful option.
~~~
David was staring out his kitchen window. My life is in complete chaos, but maybe if I tried talking to Lindsey? He shook his head. No, he thought, it wouldn’t be fair.
He heard the front door slam close, but never bothered to look up. Again, he could smell Lindsey’s perfume wafting through the stale air. His eyes immediately filled.
“Don’t you dare play the coward with me,” she said before even reaching the room.
His head snapped up and he watched her enter the kitchen. “Don’t you ever call me that word…ever!”
She stared at him for a few long moments before her face softened. “Then go ahead, tell me that you don’t want to see me anymore and I’ll leave you alone forever.”
He looked at her with such torment in his heart. As long as I don’t lie, how can I go wrong? he thought. I mean, how can she blame me for telling the truth?
“But you can’t, can you?” she said.
“It’s not you,” he vowed, “It’s me. I’m just not…”
“Don’t you dare feed me that tired line! I spent a year praying for you…writing letters and wishing for us to…” She stopped, trying in vain to contain her emotions.
His mind spiraled out of control to gather the right words. He didn’t know what to say. I don’t have the words, he thought, panicked.
“After the first time I came here, I thought for sure you’d chase after me,” she said. “I’m not stupid, David, I realize something happened over there that has you all twisted up. But I also thought that once you saw my face, you’d…” She stopped again and began to cry.
David instinctively placed his hand on hers. She started to pull away, but he stopped her, intertwining their fingers. “Lindsey, please…please don’t say anything until I finish. Just hear me out. Okay?”
“Okay,” she said, her tears threatening to flood her face.
He took a few deep breaths. “I’ve given this a lot of thought, and I want you to know that I’ve never lied to you…and I don’t plan to now.” He shook his head. “I’m so messed up right now, Lindsey, I can’t even explain it.” He tried to hold eye contact with her; it wasn’t easy. “I really hope we can be together someday…more than you can ever imagine. But I’m just not ready yet. I…I need to heal,” he stuttered.
As if she’d just received the death sentence, she gasped. Nothing could have ever prepared her for a break up.
“Torn isn’t even the word for what I’m feeling over this,” he babbled on. “The last thing I want to do is hurt either of us.”
“I don’t think we have to say goodbye, though,” she said, her voice desperate. “Don’t you remember the night we shared on that bench?”
A dream from a long-forgotten time, he thought, nodding kindly. But he was unknowingly self-absorbed, his eyes growing even more distant. “I really wish things were different,” he said, “that life didn’t have to be so difficult.” He shrugged. “Time will tell, I guess.”
“You guess?” She returned his shrug to him, perturbed with the nonchalant gesture.
“Lindsey, I don’t know what the future holds, but I do know that I don’t want to destroy any chance we might have at it …just because I might not be ready for it yet.” He shrugged again. “I need time to find myself, okay?”
Lindsey, the child of a PTSD victim, shook her head. “You don’t have to find yourself, David. You just have to remember who you are…who you’ve always been.”
He nodded, tears streaming down his face.
Lindsey took a deep breath. “David, I’ve told you the way that I feel for you and what I want for us. That’s all I can do. The rest is in your hands.” She peered into his dull eyes. “I can only hope that you’ll think of me every day, as I will you. I hope a lot of things, David.” She paused to collect herself. “Most of all, I hope the day will come when Afghanistan is behind you and we can fall in love all over again and catch up on all the things we’ve missed.” Mimicking him, she shrugged. “Maybe you’re right? I guess time will tell.” She pulled her hand away from his. “Until then, you’ll be in my thoughts.”
“I’m so sorry, Lindsey,” he whimpered, his shoulders rocking to his sobs.
“I love you, David.” She grabbed his chin and forced eye contact between them. “Now tell me you don’t want to see me and I’ll leave you alone,” she whispered, hopefully.
He looked at her with such torment in his eyes.
“You can’t, can you?” she said.
His eyes continued to leak down his cheeks. “I don’t want to see you…for now,” he said, and turned his eyes away from hers.
As though someone had just slugged her in the gut, she gasped. “Okay,” she whimpered, and ran out of the house crying harder than she’d ever cried.
For a few moments, David remained catatonic. Then he grabbed a drinking glass off the counter and threw it onto the floor where it broke into a hundred pieces. Enraged, he began smashing everything that he could get his hands on in the kitchen. At the end of the violent outburst, he collapsed to the floor and began to weep. With his head in both hands, he screamed, “I love you, too, Lindsey.”
Day turned into dusk and, like most nights, just beyond the sobs and sniffles the world turned quiet and black.
~~~
After four or five weeks; David wasn’t sure, of self-imposed solitary confinement—a punishment filled with death-defying panic attacks and long, treacherous tunnels of depression—David decided to reach out to the men he had served with. They’re the only ones who can relate, he thought. And I wonder how they’re doing…really doing?
~~~
David’s first quest was to find Max and talk to him. Also living on Gooseberry Island, David figured, It should be easy enough. But visits to his home and multiple telephone messages went unanswered. Max proved to be more elusive than the Taliban.
He’s obviously avoiding me, David thought, and it pissed him off—making him feel strangely abandoned by his friend.
“From what I’ve heard, Max has been drinking pretty hard,” Coley reported.
“What about his son, Max Jr.?” David asked.
“I’m sure he sees him,” Coley said, “but a few guys I know say that Max has been closing the bars every night.”
“If you see him, tell him I’ve been trying to get in touch with him,” David said, disgustedly.
“Sure thing, if I see him.”
David nodded, thinking, I get it. It’s probably too hard for Max to see me and kick up a bunch of bad memories that he’s trying to drink away.
~~~
After tracking Nathan Michaels down on Facebook and getting his cell number, David picked up the telephone and dialed.
“Hey brother, what’s going on?” Nate asked, excited for the call.
“Same, same,” David lied. “I was calling to ask you the same thing.”
“I’m still in,” he said.
“Really? I thought you’d get out with the rest of us when we got back.”
“Where else can I go? Have you tried finding work yet?”
David shook his head. “Not yet. I’m still on break, trying to get my head on straight.”
“Well, good luck with the job search once you get started. There’s nothing out there and here’s a news flash for you…nobody gives a damn that we can navigate mountainous terrain or stop the bleeding on an open abdomen wound.”
“That bad, huh?”
“Everybody I’ve talked to is out of work. And it doesn’t matter how many medals they won over there.” He paused. “You okay, Davey?”
“I’ve been better. You?”
“Same. I still haven’t been able to see my boys.” By their senior year of high school, Nate had gotten his girlfriend, Lois, pregnant and decided to do the right
thing by making her his wife. In a valiant effort to save what was already lost, they had another baby boy. Things quickly went south down misery lane. Nate tried to stick it out, but in the end everyone was suffering. It was a painful exit.
Dillon was now five. Bryan was three. He adored them both, but being powerless with the courts, his visitation had been sporadic at best. Nate suffered terribly from having failed them as a father.
Poor Nate, David thought. He actually cares more about his kids than he does himself. In Afghanistan, he’d watched Nate walk through mental hell for his boys.
“I’d rather spend the rest of my life fighting in Afghanistan than not see my boys on a regular basis,” Nate added, his voice choked with emotion. For him, the separation from his children wasn’t a choice.
“What does your lawyer say?” David asked, forgetting his own hell for the moment.
“He says I shouldn’t push things right now with my boys; instead, I should look at the big picture.” Nate sighed heavily. “The whole thing’s been a nightmare.”
“That sucks,” David said, shaking his head.
“Oh, but it gets better,” Nate said. “Last week, I was walking through Home Depot when I heard a young boy call out for his father. I never even bothered to look up. The boy’s voice called out again. And that’s when I turned to find Dillon standing in front of me, alongside some strange man. The wrongness of it actually took my breath away and nearly dropped me to my knees. The guy caught it and quickly extended his hand, introducing himself as Jack. He told me that he was a friend of my ex-wife’s.” Nate paused. “I don’t remember shaking the guy’s hand, but I guess I did. Talk about feeling so lost…” Nate stopped again to take in the air he needed to finish the story. “There was my son, standing beside a stranger instead of me. After I gave Dillon a kiss, I told him to be a good boy and to listen to Jack.” Nate tried to clear his throat. “My five-year old smiled at me and then walked out of the store with a guy I’ve never even seen before.” He took it another deep breath. “Now tell me that’s not screwed up?”
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