by C. B. Stagg
“Oh, Princess. You’d be surprised what the human body can be trained to do, to compensate for a devastating loss.”
I left Bennett with acid bubbling in my stomach. A melancholy surrounded us like a dense fog as we said our goodbyes and I scurried to my car. I couldn’t even listen to the radio on my way home; my mind was so absorbed in all that had taken place and how the tone of the evening had shifted so rapidly and without warning. What had I done? Maybe I’d said something wrong? But he’d been offended, of that there was no doubt. And I was responsible for it.
As if I’d sprinted the entire way home, I was exhausted and spent when I reached the condo. Unlocking the door, I threw my keys on the table in the foyer and contemplated going straight up to bed, if for no other reason than to be done with this day already. But the blinking red light on the answering machine would have haunted my dreams.
“Jillian, darling, this is your mother. Just making sure we’re all set for Thanksgiving next week. Gareth will be flying into Austin-Bergstrom Wednesday evening and your father and I think it best for you to be the one to greet him. I wouldn’t be surprised if members of the media were there, too. Call back today dear. Goodbye.”
I hit erase and headed for the shower, ignoring her request. I was getting so damn sick of what my father and she thought was best. I was an adult, and yet, they still controlled everything. They controlled the direction of my life, they held the compass. They’d predetermined years ago the world in which I’d be a part of, but at what cost to me? As I lifted the sweatshirt off my body, I was overwhelmed with the piney scent my mind connected to the hunky soldier I’d spent the evening with. And for the first time, I started to question the decisions made for me over the last decade. My parents had my life all mapped out, but maybe it was the wrong map. Maybe I needed to take control of my journey.
Chapter 15
Bennett
AT THE BEGINNING of the semester, I’d been given the name of a grad student named Paul. Part of his dissertation included behavioral therapy, specializing in the emotional health of combat veterans. And I guess because of my work in Germany (which I’d spoken of a time or two in class), my psych professor put us in contact. I agreed to be a case study. What I was really agreeing to was a series of interviews over the course of the semester.
Paul was a rather drab fellow: a tall, thin stick of a man, dressed in neatly pressed grey slacks, a starched white button-down shirt, and a navy blue sweater-vest. His vest hid all but the top of a maroon tie, modeling a perfect Windsor knot. His thin, black leather belt matched his wing tips to perfection. I’d concocted an image of what a psychology PhD student would look like and my imagination did not disappoint. I assumed our first meeting would be of the basic get to know you variety. So on that day, I hadn’t prepared myself to spill it all just yet.
“Sergeant Hanson, it’s a pleasure to meet you. I greatly appreciate your willingness to participate in this study and I thank you for your service.” While I’d been expecting the young Mr. Rogers look, I had not been expecting the British accent. I took his hand and loosened my grasp when I saw him wince. He was a lacy Brit from the looks of it.
“Why are you thanking me? My service was for my country, not yours.” ‘Thank you for your service’ carried no weight. It was a filler that really said, ‘I have no idea what to say to someone who literally killed people, while I was taking warm showers and eating real meat.’ From my limited experience with civvies since coming back, I’ve learned that people have no idea how to talk to a newly returned soldier. And I understood completely. When I returned, I felt like an outcast, isolated even. I’d suddenly become inconsequential and talking to noncombatants was awkward and laborious. The deficit in life experience was just too great. There was no common ground to be had, so why force it?
“No. Clearly, I wasn’t born here. I’m from Wales, but I married a Texan and by default, doesn’t that make me one too?” I laughed and shook my head, because no. That wasn’t how it worked.
“Being from Wales, you should understand Texans better than anyone. Like y’all, we believe Texas is our own country and far superior to the rest of the people that pledge allegiance to the red, white, and blue. Show me someone with the Indiana flag tattooed on their arm, for example, and I may consider your argument.” I raised the sleeve of my T-shirt to show him the Republic of Texas flag on the bicep of my right arm. There was a matching American flag on the left, but the Texas flag was bigger. Because everything was bigger in Texas.
“Duly noted.”
“Why don’t we talk about you first?” I sat back. I was a beast at turning the tables. I was famous for getting my teachers off track in high school. A legend.
“I’m from Wales, as you know. Studied at Oxford before coming to the States to get my master’s degree at NYU. In New York, I met a pretty little tourist on holiday with her parents and the rest is history. I came to Texas and married that girl before she realized she was loads above my station and we landed here. She’s in grad school. Dairy science.” I blanched and so did he. Apparently we both felt the same way about her particular choice of study. But hey, to each his own. “Anyway, I’m specializing in cognitive behavioral therapy and eventually plan to help people work through grief, post-traumatic stress disorder, and the like.”
“So, Sergeant, why is it when I chose the psychological well-being of postwar soldiers as my topic of study, Dr. Dean mentioned your name first and without hesitation?”
“Well, I’m a postwar soldier so… “ I raised my eyebrows. I was being an ass and I was fully aware of it. But, bullets and bombs were a picnic in the park compared to the invisible shit that attacked my mind. As a kid, I was never scared of monsters under the bed. As an adult, I learned they aren’t under the bed. They’re inside of me.
“Dr. Dean has spoken of your bravery.” He just let the statement hang there in the air, like humidity or fog.
“Bravery is strangely subjective, Paul.” Because yeah, sure, I could face death and stare into the eyes of my enemy, but I was powerless against myself. I was starting to appreciate the emotionless safe place the army provided and missed the safety of combat.
“And do you sleep at night, Sergeant Hanson?” I threw my head back and stared at the ceiling. Thirty-six. That’s how many insulated tiles were up there, forming a perfect grid. I counted them three times before I responded.
“Falling asleep is easy.”
“But you don’t stay asleep, do you?” I shook my head. “Have you spoken to anyone about that day, Sergeant?” Another shake of my head.
“No one.” Because the only person I could ever talk to about that had been turned into ash, put in a box, and shipped to New York… leaving me behind in Germany with invisible wounds deeper than any effect the bomb had on my body.
“Maybe that’s where we need to start.”
“About damn time.” I muttered under my breath, taking one last drag on my cig, before stomping it out in the packed sand.
Chance was coming through, yelling “Make a hole!” as the convoy commander followed him like a puppy. I’d been on standby for well over an hour after being voluntold to lead the convoy to Doha. I swear I’d walked around the truck, checking tires at least ten times out of sheer boredom.
“What the shit took so long?”
Chance just shrugged, that big cheesy smile of his making his eyes all but disappear. “Embrace the suck, my friend. Hurry up and wait is the name of the game these days.” He threw me my bucket before putting his on. “Cover your grape, man. You can’t take another hit.” That made me laugh. He was the one with two concussions under his belt since we’d been out here. If anyone couldn’t take a hit, it wasn’t me.
“Here man, you drive.” I tossed the keys and climbed in, riding shotgun. It took a few minutes to gather the troops, but soon we were on the road. Chance and I were providing security for trucks picking up things like mail, water, food, and parts.
It was a nasty ride. I’d woken u
p that morning with this churning in my gut, but I assumed the canned sausages, also known as the ‘five fingers of death,’ I’d eaten before bed had been the culprit. So I popped some Tums and went about my day. It returned in full force when we came upon a concrete Jersey barrier blocking our usual route. Chance stopped and we locked eyes. Nothing about this was right and danger hung in the air right alongside the unasked question—Do we or don’t we? We both nodded at the same time.
Grabbing the radio, I called, “Oscar Mike.” On the move, letting the convoy know we were pushing forward.
“Licky chicky” crackled back. Loud and clear. Chance hooked a left, taking a well-known, but often avoided alternate route. The new path took us through very fine sand, which reduced visibility. I sat up straighter in my seat and became acutely aware of my heart, bounding around in my ribcage.
As we pulled into the small village this unexpected detour ran through, my subconscious screamed at me to turn back. Where were the children that were usually out playing with a tattered ball or sword fighting with sticks in the streets? Where were the women hanging clothes on the line? A dog rambled out from behind a squally outbuilding and I jumped. My senses were functioning in hyper vigilant mode. I felt like Superman: eyes wide open, always watching, smelling, feeling, tasting.
Out here in the desert, the sand settles on everything, casting a warm tone, like looking through a sepia lens. The sun even blew out the sky, letting homesickness settle deep within my soul. I’d give anything for the smell of rain or a sky full of Bob Ross’s happy clouds. I missed the color green.
When we reached the outskirts, safe, we both breathed a collective sigh of relief. Chance grabbed the picture from his shirt pocket over his heart and kissed it. I’m not even sure he knew what he’d done.
“Just expected Ali Baba to come flyin’ in any minute.” I nodded.
The road outside the village kicked up so much dust we were forced to mask our noses and mouths with a bandana. It was fairly ineffective and made it feel ten degrees hotter than hell, but it was something to focus on.
“CP a hundred yards northeast.” Chance scoured the right, while I kept eyes on the left. This checkpoint was new. And anything new in the desert was automatically considered hazardous until we knew otherwise. We were moving into dangerous territory and for a moment, I wondered if I’d wake up tomorrow.
Chance radioed back, but as we rolled up, it was plain to see the CP was devoid of life. Where was everyone? Ten yards ahead was another Jersey barrier. Chance radioed that intel back, but we were ordered to go around. It was a risky move, but one thing you learn early on is to do as you’re told.
They say the number of seconds between thunder and lightning can determine how far away the storm is. The blinding came first, followed by a blast I felt in the roots of my teeth. Then the Humvee launched into the air.
“What happened next?” I was lost in the past, but his words pulled me out. I could have cried, I was that grateful.
“I only remember bits and pieces after that. They come to me in dreams so real I can smell the tinny scent of blood.”
“The human mind has a tendency to blur the lines between dreams and reality.” Really? You think? It took three schools on two continents and probably close to a hundred grand to conceive that little nugget of information? Paul wrote, the scratch of his pencil echoing through the stale room. Make all the notes you want, bud. It won’t make you an expert on me. You weren’t there.
But I told him what I could. Night terrors usually involved my buddy Chance or other members of my squad and usually contained elements of the day our convoy was attacked. They were disturbing, frequent, and often very graphic. And, truly, I was ready to have them gone.
“Mr. Hanson, do you keep a journal?” Paul’s face was quizzical, as if he honestly expected there to be any answer other than, ‘I’m a man, so hell no.’
I cleared my throat and tried to keep a straight face. “Uh, no Paul. No uterus, no journal.” His smile was tight as he wrote my revelation onto his yellow legal pad.
“I’d like you to start. We need to track how frequently these terrors are occurring and see if there’s a pattern. Just make a quick note of your activities each day, bullet points even. And the next morning, note if the night terrors occurred and, if possible, the nature of the dream.”
I nodded, defeated. I could do that.
And I did. For eight weeks, I cataloged my daily happenings and made note of terrors. I was even able to sketch or describe details of the dreams on a handful of occasions. And I’d never admit it, but writing about things helped. It kept me grounded, in the moment, something I sorely needed.
Paul and I met on the third floor of the library, in a study carrel he’d reserved specifically for our interviews. Privacy was of utmost importance to Paul and the man took his job very seriously, which I appreciated. He’d taken the journal a few days prior and we were meeting to discuss it, or something. I couldn’t imagine how wake up, eat breakfast, go to class, eat lunch, go to class, study, study, study, sleep, rinse and repeat was going to tell him anything, but I arrived at the meeting open-minded.
“So, Bennett. How’ve you been?” We shook hands, as per our routine.
“Same ole, same ole. Same as I’ve been telling you for the last few months.” I shrugged as I took a seat in my usual chair.
“Well, not according to this. Your journal indicates the nightmares have eased off. Look at this.” Paul placed a graph in front of me.
“What am I looking at, exactly?” I was a little embarrassed, but the red line, jagged with peaks and valleys, was like reading a foreign language.
“Look here.” He pointed to the left of the page. “When you first started journaling, the terrors came every night, sometimes two or three times if you were ever able to fall asleep again. But after a few weeks of that, they lessened. By a few weeks later, the frequency dropped even more. It looks like now, you’re only having one, maybe two a week.”
As Paul spoke, the crooked line started to gain meaning. The dreams had decreased significantly, and I realized, for the first time in almost two years, I was sleeping at night.
“I found something that may also be of interest to you. Look at this.” It was a bar graph this time, with the days of the week running along the bottom. “In entering the data for my study, I noticed the majority of your terrors come Sunday through Tuesday nights. You almost never have one on a Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday night. And very seldom do we see them occur on a Saturday night.”
“Huh.” I mumbled, staring at the document.
“Yes, so I dug a little deeper.” Paul was almost giddy as he flipped through my journal. “And I noticed a correlation between your volunteer work and the decreased dream activity.” Interesting, indeed.
My brows shot up and I looked up to meet Paul’s eyes. He was staring at me, trying to read my body language, and seemed satisfied at catching me off guard.
He continued to watch carefully as I flipped back and forth between the two documents. When I could no longer take it, I looked up at him. “What?”
“I’m curious as to what happens on Wednesday and Friday nights that gives you such peace.”
I’m thinking it’s not a ‘what,’ but more like a ‘who.’
My thoughts were on a Tilt-A-Whirl, but I just shrugged my shoulders and smiled, checking my watch, thinking how I would be face-to-face with the anonymous topic of our discussion in just a little over an hour.
Leaving the library through the front doors, I was headed to the cafe a little early when I ran into Chance.
“No cafe today, my friend. A water main busted a few blocks over and the water will be cut for the next few hours.”
Relief suffused my soul and I viewed the water main break as a reprieve. A bullet dodged. A stay of execution.
Because, I was in no way prepared for the Pandora’s box that good old Paul may have just accidentally opened and I was in desperate need of time to process it al
l.
Chapter 16
Jillian
THIS WAS IT—the finale. The last dinner before we settled the bet. I figured he’d pull out all the stops for this one. But after the previous three, nothing short of a destitute, homeless orphan could tug on my heartstrings any harder.
“Today’s dinner is going to be a little different.” Bennett met me at the doors of the cafe, both of us having walked from campus, from opposite directions.
“Different good? Or different bad? The last time you used that word, I ended up eating dinner with an amputee army vet.”
“And was that so bad?” His head was tilted, awaiting my reply.
“Not at all. It was actually therapeutic in a way.” And it had been.
“Good to know. Now, follow me.” So I did… through the front doors and right out the back. A basket of food was waiting for us on a picnic table that, had it been a building, would have been condemned years ago. ‘Rustic’ is the term used when something’s old, but people still want to keep it around. So, I guess the old, rickety table was about as rustic as possible.
The wind blew and I was thankful I’d come prepared for the crisp bite in the air, with khaki riding pants, a thick oversized denim button-down, and knee-high leather boots. Fall in Texas could be eighty degrees one day and forty degrees the next.
“Dig in.” We’d both taken a seat and, thank God for small favors, the table held up under our weight.
“No, I’m waiting for our guest.” Poor or not, the person deserved the common courtesy of waiting until he or she arrived. But Bennett shook his head, a knowing grin painted on his face.
“Nope… tonight, I’m your guest.” I looked around, hoping he was joking, but we were alone.