quintessence. (12 page)

I looked back into the box. I didn’t want to, but he needed to see me look at it. He needed to know that I didn’t judge him.

My grandpa was a veteran. I understood that soldiers come back with part of themselves missing and a new part hanging on tight. There was one night I found my grandpa crying in my grandma’s arms and hearing him say,
“Part of me still forgets that I’m here.”

I didn’t want Karl to feel that way, but I knew there was no way for me to be the one to flip the switch and do that. There was no switch to flip with this. Some memories can’t be turned off. But Karl discovered how to make this memory bearable, by acknowledging it, then tucking it away in the corner of his little house.

I took a deep breath and opened the box.

Inside was a scene painted of a dark night. The scene lay out through the site on a rifle. A green, night vision hue covered the entire painting. There was debris across the ground and a family stood through the site.  The family had their hands up and stared at the gun pointed at them. Targets covered their chests. In the center of the family a little girl stood. Tears streaked down her face. At the bottom of the scene, words were painted in the same scrawled hand I read on my card the other day.

If fear is the first reaction, we all lose
.

My lips curled in and a silent tear fell as I looked at the painting. I didn’t want to believe it, but I had to believe it for him.

“I tried to tell myself they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. We had just found insurgents nearby, and this family came through. They stepped out, and I shot her. They didn’t have their hands up like that. But they might as well have. If they did, maybe I wouldn’t have shot. But, they shouldn’t have been there. But, even more so, I shouldn’t have just reacted. I’ve learned to think through everything. Fear is the killer, not us, not them, but fear. I reacted in fear and a little girl died because of it. But afterward, her family understood my reaction. They didn’t hate me for it. They didn’t want to kill me for it. That forgiveness hurt more than pulling the trigger. Her father told me that day,
“We understand—we’re all afraid.”
I hadn’t realized I reacted in fear until he said those words. He was right. Everyone is so
afraid
in this world. They’re afraid to look at each other, talk to each other. I didn’t care about what was going on with other people. I was in my own personal space, believing that was living. So, there is no healing with this memory. That one is a combination of wound and healing—and through them both came understanding. I’ve never been the same since. Events that are bad can show us some of the true good in the world.”

“But Karl, your bad is so much more than anything I’ve experienced or even my future possibilities. Your growth from this is inspiring. I can’t believe you carry this memory around with you. I feel like my circumstances pale in comparison,” I said.

“We can’t compare them, Margaret. We can’t. Everyone goes through shit in varying levels. That’s the one thing I’ve learned with my boxes. It doesn’t matter who you are, or where you’re from, life will beat you up at some point. But, we get through it as a species. We have to.

“Yes, my story and experience is awful. I’ve accepted it. I admit I had concern about showing it to you. I didn’t want you to think different of me or run away. But, you needed to know about me. But, you know what I want most?” he asked, and I dropped my eyes from the box, shut it slowly and looked at him.

I shook my head and gave him my full attention.

“I would love to hear more people listen. I would love for more to say they know we are returning home messed up—no matter what our job was. We aren’t all okay. We aren’t looking for a thank you; we don’t need someone to throw a party or concert. But, just listen. Listen and acknowledge that what is going on is not some Hollywood spectacle. This is our lives and their lives,” he said as he waved his hand in a direction that was out there, outside our personal spaces.

Then it clicked.

I breathed a sharp breath and pulled my lip in as I thought of it.

“This time two years ago, I was more than likely out shopping. I treated my life like a Hollywood spectacle, just like you said. I believed it. I clothed myself in the things I thought were important. I didn’t think about the fact that someone was halfway across the world fighting. Hell, I was an intern at a job that sold to everyone what we wanted them to believe was important. You’d think I’d have been smarter to realize the lie. It’s based on everything I held in here, in my personal space,” I said as I circled around myself, to show the outside of me. “Your appearances can’t get past the personal space. What can reach past that is what’s on the inside—what we do for other people. We take the best parts of us and share them with others. Then the chosen few get to see the worst parts and decide what to do with it. I just got it. I just figured out that part of my homework.” I said with a calm excitement. It came from being sure of something for once in the last several months.

“We have to share the parts of that personal space we are scared to share. It isn’t always so much about keeping others out, but locking ourselves firmly inside it. I have to get the hell out of it. Fear, again. Fear of what others might see and what might happen if we connect with another human being,” I said.

He smiled.

I put my hand out to him. “Will you sit back up here with me?” I asked.

He stood and then looked out the window. I wondered what he was looking for.

“I think we should go outside first,” he said and his smile grew.

He took the box from me and put it back on the shelf and pushed it behind the others again. He lined them up in his organized manner.

“I want to see more of these sometime,” I said, waving my hand along the shelf. He grabbed his coat, passing it to me.

“You will sometime. You should wear that; it’s colder out.”

“I can’t take your coat,” I said, handing it back to him.

“You know you were cold on the way up here. I saw you shivering. Wear the coat. I will just layer several shirts.”

He turned his back and pulled another Henley on over his shirt, then two flannels.

The layers made him look soft, which I knew was an illusion. He was not soft. He was kind. He was caring. He was sympathetic—empathetic even. But he was not soft. Life wouldn’t allow it for him after what he’d been through. He wouldn’t allow it. But with the other positives he had, he was experiencing life by helping others and not drowning in his wounds.

I know he felt something for me, or he wouldn’t have brought me here. He wouldn’t have said what he said. He wouldn’t have shared. But I couldn’t help but wonder if I was just another means for him to make amends to life and the universe and to balance out the bad.

“Okay, let’s go,” he said with a smile and put his arm toward me.

Smiling, I took it from him and tried to pretend that I wasn’t just his balancer. I didn’t know how I’d survive that one. I was in the most trying place I’d ever been in—in my life—and he helped wake me up from it. He awakened me last year with our first conversation before I became ill. He planted the seed that whispered
wake up
when I never knew I was asleep.

I boarded the bus and took my seat. I didn’t want to talk to anyone just yet, but I knew whoever sat by me would want to talk. They always did.

I pulled my book from my bag and put ear buds in my ears. They didn’t plug into anything. I just stuck the end in my pocket. I learned that if you are reading a book, people will try to talk to you no matter what. But, if you had ear buds in, they wouldn’t—usually. There were still those that thought they could speak louder and get you to listen to them. But, most just smiled with a nod and did their thing.

If I wore the ear buds, I attracted the latter type of person to sit next to me. That’s what I wanted. I didn’t want to answer questions about where I came from or where I was going. I was going home, where I hadn’t been in almost three years. Any time off I had, I went anywhere but there.

I didn’t want to see my mom or my sister. But, I had no other option.

The ride would take four hours, and then I would be picked up by my family at the final stop.

My family had changed since joining the military. My family was no longer my sister and mother, but the guys I left back on base. Guilt filled me for that—for my weakness in not being able to be there anymore.

A man sat in the seat next to me. He was older, and he looked like he would be the age of my dad or even my grandpa.

He nodded and pulled a book out of his bag. He sat in silence, thumbing through the book he held.

Twenty minutes into our ride, he turned and pointed at my ear. “I know those things aren’t on. I’ve got great hearing, always have, and I haven’t heard a single sound coming from them. I also know you’re not reading that book. You haven’t turned the page once.”

I laughed to myself, pulled the ear bud out, and turned to him. “You caught me.”

“I knew it.”

“But, I caught you too. You never turned your page either,” I said.

“That you did. So you going to talk first, or should I?” the man asked.

“You can go ahead. What’s your name?” I asked.

“My name isn’t important. Is yours?” he asked. I shook my head. “I didn’t think so. You can call me Uncle if you need to call me anything.”

“Okay, Uncle,” I said with a chuckle. “What’s the story you want to tell?”

“Well, there once was this man who wasn’t really a man. But he looked like one to everyone else. He walked his own path until he met a woman. There’s always a woman, isn’t there?” he asked me with a crook of his brow.

“I suppose so,” I said with a shrug.

“There is, you’re still young. I’m sure you will understand soon enough. Anyway,” he said as he set his book in his lap and turned toward me. “This guy meets this woman, and he realizes,
I need to do something with my life. I need to make something of myself.
The draft was going on then, and instead of waiting to be picked, he rose up and said he’d do it. Worst mistake of his life and he did it for some tail. Can you believe that?” he asked.

I laughed a bitter laugh, knowing what my own story involved. “Yep, I suppose I understand that.”

“Anyway, this guy goes there, he fights, he gets fucked in the head because of what he saw. He doesn’t know what to do with himself, but he knows this woman will wait for him. She said she would. She said she knew what she was getting into with him and what he was sacrificing. She said she knew. But she didn’t. He came back different, changed in a way that made him look at the world through eyes she no longer knew. Once he’d seen those things, he couldn’t un-see them or erase them. No matter how hard he tried.

“That’s why he just put every photo, every letter, and every item from there in a box so when he remembered, he’d take out that box and think about it for a minute—then he went back to doing the things that everyone else did. Except no one else understood why he had to keep doing that—why couldn’t he just get past it? They wanted him to forget it and just be a man—live on, he did his duty. But that couldn’t happen.” Uncle grew quiet and he opened his mouth to speak a few times, but kept it to himself. 

“We’re human before we’re soldiers. No matter what uniform we put on or what side we fight on, we’re still human,” he said and I watched the side of his face. His eyes teared up and I could tell there was something or someone else he was thinking about in that moment.

We rode in silence for several minutes. Then Uncle cleared his throat and turned to me once more.

“You know, when I was over there I thought maybe we were doing something. Then I became disillusioned. It took time to realize why we were there. We were there for each other; that’s what it came down to. We were there for each other. If we had met one another here in the ‘real’ world,” he said real while making air quotes with his fingers. “We wouldn’t have been as understanding of who we were as people. Maybe that’s what I miss most. We wore the same uniform, and we didn’t have to think about anything except who we were at our base level. There wasn’t the added garbage of putting on a show when you’re thinking you might die any minute. There is no place for that there. We just survived and came back with as much of who we were as we could.”

He spoke the rest of the way home, and I said a few words here and there but I never shared my story with him. He knew my story, just as every other veteran did. The logistics of our stories were different, but at the core, we were all the same. We just survived. We got through it. Now we had to figure out how to live.

__________

“So here we are, huh?” Uncle said as we walked from the bus toward the building. He had told me he was waiting for his ex-wife to pick him up. “You know, I didn’t tell you why I was coming here. I’m here because my son didn’t survive. He was here with her and he took his own life last week. His funeral is tomorrow. I didn’t get to see him before he left or to tell him how he could have still survived. It’s hard to survive when a piece of you never comes back. But you can’t let the best parts of you stay there.”

He put his arm on my shoulder and turned me to face him. “I know you’ve seen something; I can see it in your eyes. So, I will tell you what I couldn’t tell my son. You’re home and you have another fight now. This fight is harder than that one was. Your enemy now is yourself, and you have to fight to keep the best parts of you. Don’t let it destroy you. Okay?” I nodded. “Now, what’s your name, son?”

“My name’s Karl Edward Samson, sir.” I put my hand to him to shake.

“Well, Karl Edward Samson, you got a dollar?” he asked.

“Yeah, I do,” I said, and pulled my wallet from my pocket and handed him a dollar.

“Okay, thank you. Wait here a minute, okay?” he said with a nod of his head. He walked inside the building and approached the administration office of the bus company. He spoke to a woman, and he signed a piece of paper and had the woman stamp it and sign it herself.

He came back out and I saw my mom and sister waiting for me inside. They hadn’t seen me yet, and I was glad. I could just watch them from here. I tried to remember the good parts of me, just as Uncle said.

“You know you didn’t give me your name,” I said when he walked back.

He turned with a smile and handed me the piece of paper. “My name is Abe Henley, but I’d prefer if you kept calling me Uncle.” He pointed to the paper he gave me. “That is something I just sold to you. It’s yours and I don’t want you to deny me the gift. I have no other kids. I have no family. I have my name on a bar I haven’t seen in years, and I make a good living from that. I wanted to give what I just gave you to my son, but I failed him. So, I guess I’m trying to make up for that. It’s now yours, though. There’s nothing there for me anymore.”

He looked toward a car that pulled up. “That’s my ex. You go meet your family in there and remember what I said.” He pointed toward my mom and sister.

I hugged him and told him I would do as he asked.

I watched him get in the car and drive away. I unfolded the paper and saw he had put my name on the bottom of it.

At the top of the page it said “Property Deed.”