Walking Wounded

by Lauren Gilley

  walking wounded

  a novel

  Lauren Gilley

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and events are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblances to persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Names and characters are the property of the author and may not be duplicated.

  Instances of historical inaccuracy are the author’s fault. Blame her.

  WALKING WOUNDED

  ISBN -13: 978-1540701916

  Copyright © 2016 by Lauren Gilley

  HP Press®

  Atlanta, GA

  All rights reserved.

  Preface

  They call it the Forgotten War. Korea. It occupied less than a page in my high school American History textbook. In a technical sense, it wasn’t a war at all, but a “police action.”

  But to the men who were there, it was very much a war.

  It started at the close of WWII, when the Soviets pushed the Japanese out of Korea. As payment for this service, they wanted a portion of Korea for themselves, and so the nation was split literally in half, along the 38th Parallel, creating a communist North Korea, and a democratic South Korea. That could have been the end of it.

  But it wasn’t. It was just the beginning.

  On June 25, 1950, the North Koreans invaded South Korea, captured the capitol city of Seoul, and set about turning the entire peninsula communist. What followed was a bitter, bloody, badly underestimated engagement. It was a time when the United States had to take a stance on communism; they had to decide whether they would defend democracy away from home, and if they would fight wars in which the United States had no stake. That June, America chose to fight.

  This is not a book about the Korean War. I lack the expertise and the military background to do any such story justice. Rather, this is a book about brave men, then and now, and the wounds they carry.

  But I would encourage my readers to seek out the stories of that war. To hear it in the words of the men who served there. Learn about the horrors of the Chosin Reservoir, and the triumph of pushing past the Pusan Perimeter.

  I want to acknowledge my grandfather and his brother, my great uncle, because they were so kind and generous in sharing their experiences with me. And I want to thank them for their service in that war. I love you both, and I’m so grateful you shared your war stories with me.

  And thank you, also, to the United States Marine Corps, for all that you’ve done, and all that you will do in service to our nation.

  walking wounded

  Luke and Hal

  In a middle school classroom, in a nothing-special Virginia town, the Korean War is a day’s lesson on the Social Studies syllabus. A page of history, a phantom cold, a memory of dead men. And outside that classroom sit two boys with scraped knees, crooked glasses, and superhero lunch boxes.

  “I’ve got cold pizza,” Hal announces as he slings his bag onto the bench and thumps down beside it. He’s caught in that awkward stage between scrawny boy and massive man, all knees and elbows, unwieldy hands and overlarge feet. The misting rain beads along the hood and shoulders of his navy raincoat, sliding down his arms, clinging in silvery drops to his hairline.

  Luke juggles his umbrella handle against his cheek and unrolls the top of his brown paper bag. “Turkey sandwich,” he says, making a face. He is a small child, with slender feet and hands, and the delicate complexion of a scholar. He dreams. He likes to think up stories that aren’t real, and project himself into the role of hero; but he knows he isn’t made for great things, not the way that Hal is. Hal could be someone’s real hero.

  “Cookies?”

  “Oreos.”

  Most of the students choose to sit indoors, in the crowded, too-hot cafeteria that smells like fryer oil and broccoli – which is to say, bad. But Luke and Hal always claim this bench, with a view of the brickwork side of the gym, and the flower beds, all tucked away for winter, leafless cherry limbs arching overhead.

  The boys divvy up their lunch between the two of them, splitting desserts and extra Cokes, and dividing the granola bar in exactly half, carefully measured by the length of their fingers.

  Neither of them know where life will soon take them; neither can predict the catastrophes, the heartaches, or the second chances. For now, they know all that anyone really needs to know about life.

  They know love, and they know happiness.

  They know they are the best of friends, and they don’t think that will ever change.

  1

  “Fuck.”

  “Sir,” a voice says above him.

  Luke jerks and nearly slops cold coffee across the screen of his tablet.

  On the other end of the Skype connection, Linda makes a suspicious sound that’s a giggle, ten-to-one.

  The flight attendant, her face more rictus than polite smile, says, firmly, “It’s time to shut off all electronic devices. We’re preparing to descend.” Her eyes dart across his flopped-down tray, the detritus of a snack, his scrabbled attempts at in-flight assignment research. “Tray tables in the upright position,” she says, a clear order, and moves on to reprimand someone else.

  “I’ll let you get your shit together, then,” Linda says, rolling her eyes on the screen. “God, you’re a mess, Lucas.”

  “This is why I don’t miss you when I go out on assignment.”

  “Uh-huh. Keep telling yourself that. Call me when you’re settled in for the night.”

  “Sure.”

  “Oh, hey, what was all that ‘fucking’ about before?”

  He shows her the deep papercut on the pad of his index finger. “An owie.”

  “Wuss,” she accuses, grinning.

  “Ahem!” the woman in the window seat says, scandalized. “This is not your bedroom, young man!”

  Whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean. She looks – not that Luke would know with any certainty – like the sort of formidable tank of a woman who could be the dowager countess of somewhere snotty and historic.

  “You’re in trouble,” Linda says, aiming a pen at him. Well, at the webcam on her laptop, actually. “Ma’am,” she calls, raising her voice, “I’m so sorry. Allow me to apologize for my employee. He can’t help it. He has Tourette’s.” She blows a kiss. “Call me, gorgeous.” The screen goes black.

  Luke glances over at his neighbor. “I don’t have Tourrette’s.”

  She harrumphs. He has no idea anyone outside of a Victorian romance novel actually harrumphs, but this woman does it for sure. There’s no other word for it.

  Okay.

  Oh, right, his disorganized mess all over the place.

  He shuts down his tablet, gathers his pen, notebook – why does he still have pens and notebooks when his tablet is perfectly capable of handling all the memos he could ever make? Because he’s an old fashioned sort of guy, he thinks, and there’s something about the smell of paper, and ink, and the ugly smudges on the ends of his fingers.

  Everything goes into his carry-on, a canvas messenger bag that’s seen better days. At least, it’s supposed to go there. Somehow, he manages to spill a whole sheaf of loose paper onto the floor, pens scattering as he fumbles for it.

  “Shit!”

  “Excuse me,” the woman says.

  “Sorry…ah, damn it.” He smacks his head on his not-upright-positioned tray table. “Just…” Oh, screw this lady. “Fuck. Fuck me.”

  “I never…” she starts.

  “Yeah, me either, grandma.”

  She berates the hell out of him as he finally gets the tray stowed and manages to gather most of his crap and shove it deep into his bag. He stabs his palm on an uncapped pen and swallows another curse. Finally, the messenger bag goes under his seat with a swi
ft kick, and the seatbelt light comes on with a ding.

  “…respect for someone else,” the woman finishes up. “This generation is deplorable.”

  “Yes, ma’am, I couldn’t agree more.”

  The plane banks to the left, a slight shift, just enough to throw off his equilibrium. This is it. Begin the descent.

  Hand clenched around his seat belt, Luke allows himself a moment of doubt. Of wonder. What will it be like? This story? The assignment?

  Meeting Hal at the airport?

  His stomach clenches and he tells himself it’s because of the drastically changing elevation.

  ~*~

  It started with a feature story on the primetime news lineup. Luke was in the office, working on some last-minutes edits for a piece someone enviably higher-up than him had penned and passed off for proofreading. An op-ed about a professor holding a hunger strike on the lawn of an Ivy League campus, accompanied by photos of the woman handcuffed to a stop sign that had been rather creatively embellished into a protest poster. He pushed his glasses up, rubbed at his gritty eyes, and wondered how the hell he’d ended up here, proofing political drivel, when he’d entered college as a naïve, hopeful poet.

  “You’re too cynical to be a poet anyway,” Hal had joked.

  True.

  Sighing, inexplicably depressed with his whole life at the moment, Luke stood and reached for his coffee mug. He might as well refuel if he had to read any more about post-menopausal profs “making statements with their bodies” or whatever the hell it was.

  On the way to the break room, he passed Linda’s office, and she hissed at him. Like a cat. Then she snapped her fingers. “Luke, get in here, have you seen this?” she rattled off in a hurry. “Come sit down.”

  By the time his butt hit one of her guest chairs, she’d turned up the volume on the massive flat screen that took up one wall of her office.

  He watched the story unfold, and felt his mouth gape open. “For real?” He glanced over at his editor.

  She nodded, eyes wild with excitement. “For real.”

  Senator Matthew Maddox, voted into his first term one year ago, had caused a bit of a stir on Capitol Hill. From unremarkable working class roots, a self-proclaimed Washington outsider, he’d won by a landslide, and had thrown his considerable weight (the man was big as a house in a should-have-been-a-footballer, all-muscle way) toward cutting wasteful spending and political cronyism. The Washington fat cats hated him. The people loved him.

  And his father had just been arrested for assault.

  “How does someone that old assault anyone?” Luke asked, incredulous.

  Linda muted the TV, folded her hands over the remote on her desk, fixing him with one of her laser-guided stares. “I don’t know. But you’re going to find out.”

  His heart lurched. “You mean…An assignment? For me?”

  “Yes. You.” She smiled at him, and it did amazing things for her high cheekbones and harsh, vivid eyes. She was fine-featured, beautiful, even, but somewhere between the diamond stud earrings, the just-above-the-shoulders bobbed sleek hair, and the perfect tailoring of her suit jacket, beautiful became terrifying.

  “But…a political piece?” he asked, nose already wrinkling at the idea.

  “No. A personal one. A human story. Candid is starting to become too…clinical,” she said, her own nose wrinkling. “I don’t like it. That’s not us. There’s going to be eighty-seven news outlets vying for an exclusive on this story, and they’re all going to talk about the political ramifications. I want the nitty-gritty human version of events.”

  “Did you just say nitty-gritty?”

  “Shut up. Listen.” She leaned toward him, smiling again. “I already made a phone call. I explained who we are–”

  “A failing social rag.”

  “–to Maddox’s people, told them my angle, and threw the offer out there. And they said yes.”

  “They what now?”

  “They said yes, loser. They’re giving us an in. They loved the idea of making it a human piece.”

  His heart thumped hard behind his sternum. It had been so long since he felt anything like excitement, he didn’t know what to make of it. “You actually want me to go and interview Maddox?”

  She shook her head, bob flaring. “No. I want you to interview his father.”

  “His…wait.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Everybody’s clamoring for Maddox. But his dad – that’s the real story. That’s the story we’re gonna get.”

  “But…”

  “Doesn’t your bestie work for Maddox anyway? There’s your in. He can vouch for you. What’s his name? Hank?”

  “Hal,” Luke said, feeling numb.

  “There you go. Hal. Old Man Maddox doesn’t want to talk to anyone, so get Hal to put in a good word on your behalf.”

  “Are you sure…”

  “Yes. Now go pack a bag.”

  Which was how Luke ended up on his third official assignment.

  And which was why he was sure it would be a total flop.

  ~*~

  As luck would have it, he ends up at baggage claim beside the battleax with a thing for harrumphing. He tries to hang behind her, staying out of notice, but of course she turns and gives him the stink-eye. He knuckles up his glasses and gives it back. Bite me, he thinks.

  Because traveling makes him surly as a baby with a wet diaper.

  But not because of nerves. Nope. No nerves. Why would he be nervous?

  A shout rings out behind him. “Luke!” And his eyes flutter shut briefly.

  It’s a deep voice. Achingly familiar. He hasn’t heard it in person in three years, only the muffled over-the-phone version. It sounds happy, he thinks. Yes, for sure. Happy. His best friend is happy to see him. Maybe the old shit is finally, really, truly old shit, and behind them for good.

  Luke turns, and there’s Hal walking toward him, long strides eating up the distance, looking like he’s put on another twenty pounds of muscle.

  He looks good.

  He’s wearing grownup clothes now, slim jeans, and casual brown boots, and a button down shirt with a canvas jacket over it. Casual, but mature, like someone with a well-paying job, like someone with a wife and a baby at home (which he doesn’t have…yet). He’s got a hint of a five o’clock shadow, but his hair is neatly styled. He has his sunglasses hooked in the collar of his shirt, and that makes Luke’s palms clammy, for some reason.

  “Dude,” Hal exclaims, reaches him in one last big stride, and catches him in a crushing man-hug.

  It’s a warm, strong, smothering hug. Hal smells like outside and fancy shaving cream.

  Luke claps him on the back in kind and says, “Man, I can’t breathe.”

  “Oh, shit. Sorry.” Hal steps back, his large hands still on Luke’s shoulders.

  “Don’t say ‘shit,’” Luke advises. “Lady Pumpernickel over there will have your ass.” He jerks a thumb over his shoulder.

  Hal snorts and grins, but he also shoots a look to the once-again-enraged dowager countess and says, “I’m sorry, ma’am.” Because Hal isn’t just huge and bone-pulverizingly strong, but a total suck-up too.

  Luke rolls his eyes.

  And Hal’s eyes come back to him, still the color of moss, as if that might have changed in the intervening three years. “Look at you,” he says, clapping both Luke’s shoulders. “You look…” His smile tweaks. “Well, kinda like somebody who lives off coffee and smokes.”

  “You know me well.”

  “All that writing’s gonna kill you, you know.”

  “Quicker than you think.”

  “Where’s your bag?” Hal steps around him, the places he’s touched on Luke still warm from the contact. “I’ll grab it.”

  “You don’t need to carry my luggage.”

  “Nah, it’s cool. You look one cigarette away from death, anyway. I got it.” He shoots Luke a grin.

  “I don’t still smoke.”

  “Yeah you do.”


  “Yeah.” He sighs. “I do.”

  “Which bag is yours?”

  The old bat is finally, blessedly gone, and Luke steps up beside his friend at the carousel. “I’m not your bitch, Rycroft,” he says. “I can carry my own goddamn suitcase.” But he says it without malice. This feels like the old days, suddenly, elbow-to-elbow in the cafeteria, smell of burned tater tots, giving each other shit as they wait for an inedible lunch.

  Or before that, diapered butts planted in the sand, shovels and pails in their hands, as their mothers gabbed at a bench just behind them.

  A kaleidoscope of old images wheels through Luke’s mind. The story of a lifelong friendship. Best friends.

  And then The Incident that happened three years ago that almost ruined it all.

  Hal bumps him in the ribs, snatching him back to the moment at hand. “That it?”

  “What? Oh, yeah. With the red tag.”

  Hal laughs. “You’ve still got that thing?”

  Luke thinks he might have toted the ancient American Tourister – belted around the middle in case of latch failure – to a slumber party at some point in the distant past. His face warms. “Hey, duck it or fuck it, right? No sense throwing it out ‘til it stops working.”

  Hal laughs again, shakes his head, leans forward to snag the handle of the suitcase. He makes it look effortless, the lifting, though Luke was sweating a little by the time he’d had it checked at LaGuardia.

  “Come on.” Hal turns and shoves him between the shoulder blades. “I’ve got enough duct tape at home for you to build a whole new shaving kit.”

  “Haha, asshole.”

  Dulles International Airport shimmers with sunset light, all pinks and golds and brilliant sienna streaks glinting along the handrails of the escalators, starting fires in the ghostly reflections in windows. The people who bustle around them, dragging fancy wheeled suitcases paygrades above Luke’s, speak a variety of languages into cellphones. The air smells of ethnic food from one restaurant, and burgers from another.