Seen this episode too many times before.
He fired his weapon up at the rooftops again in a detached way, not really feeling any longer like he was part of what was going on around him. He wondered what Pam was doing. What time was it there, anyway? Was Claire up?
Pop pop pop from his rifle.
Would Pam remember any of their time together? Their time as Jack and Pam? Or had that never really even happened? Maybe she was already standing at the grave of her husband, the grave of Sergeant Casey Stillman, Killed in Action, Fallujah, Iraq.
Jack’s body sagged and his rifle fell to his side, his trigger finger limp. It was over, right?
Time to die.
“Sar’n! …CASEY!!” Bennet’s voice reached him through the smoke. That didn’t seem right somehow. Why was that wrong? Jack felt confusion spread over him and cocked his head to the side, puppylike. “Casey, help me…Simmons’ leg is tore up but he’s okay…” A burst of M16 fire. Must have been from Bennet. “Sar’n, you there? I NEED HELP.”
Wait a goddamn minute! Simmons was alive? How could that be? He had died before for sure, had come to him dead at school and at his house and…and he never had a fucked-up leg! His face was blown off but his skinny little legs had been fine. And anyway, he had never seen Simmons hit last time. He had already been shot himself, right? He was lying in the dirt clinging to life and fighting to breathe when they had laid his friend beside him in the dirt. And Bennet should have been dead already, his throat torn out by a bullet and the RPG burying him beside that wall.
He sure as hell sounded okay to Jack.
“Bennet, hold on!” Jack screamed through the blinding smoke, snapped back to life and heart pounding with fresh hope. He could still do it. Maybe? “I’m coming!”
“I’m coming, Bennet!” McIver’s voice.
“NO!” He screamed as he pulled his weapon up and scanned over the sight. He moved into the street, hoping the smoke would give him some cover, blinding the bad guys to his position. “McIver! Ballard! Stay right where you are. Give me covering fire! I’m coming!” Jack started to run.
“Roger that, Sar’n!” Jack heard a burst of rifle fire from the far corner as McIver and Ballard tried to keep the bad guys down.
Jack tore across the street, crouched awkwardly and painfully, trying to stay small. His weapon was up, but he could see nothing through the smoke and dust. He squeezed the trigger in the general direction of the rooftops anyway, hoping to keep the insurgents’ heads down. He heard almost continuous single‐shot fire from his two Marines at the corner. His legs burned. In his panic he covered the distance much more quickly than he thought and tripped over the hunched figure of Bennet, up on one knee in the street, firing up at the rooftops. Losing his balance, Jack skidded through the dusty street painfully on both knees and his outstretched left hand, an awkward slide into second base. His right hand managed to keep his weapon up at his shoulder somehow, though he still could see nothing through the smoke and dust cloud that surrounded them. A low moan beside him pulled Jack’s gaze away from the impenetrable cloud and down to the street.
He wasn’t prepared for what he saw. Bennet had said Rich’s leg was torn up, but that didn’t cover it. The boy lay on his back, his eyes open and staring upward. His body shook, his arms quivered at his sides, and his hands opened and closed around nothing. Simmons’ entire left side was drenched in blood, which had mixed with the fine, dusty Iraqi sand to form a brownish-grey mud. Below the knee his leg was twisted around in an impossible direction. The booted ankle faced the wrong way and the skin was shredded away with his pants, revealing reddish meat through which a stark, white finger of bone pointed at him. A small arcing spray of blood pulsed like a little fountain out of the mess that had been the boy’s leg. Jack pulled a desert camouflage‐printed bandana from his cargo pocket and balled it up, then pressed it firmly over the source of the little fountain. The contact made Simmons moan louder and he mumbled something that Jack didn’t understand. The shredded muscles under Jack’s hand began to spasm and he tasted bile in the back of his throat. He was barely aware of the gunfire around him and the acrid smoke that burned his eyes and throat. For a moment his whole world was his hand pressing ever harder into the wet flesh of his friend’s leg as he tried to slow the steady dark stream of Rich’s life from running out into the street.
“What the fuck are you guys doing?” McIver’s voice from the corner brought Jack out of the near trance. He had to get Simmons off of this fucking street.
“I’m comin’ to you with Simmons,” he hollered in a raspy voice that was not his. It was tinny and foreign in his ear. He again felt detached from what was going on and struggled to hang on to the hope that he would be at home with his girls soon.
Jack let go of his pressure on the twisted flesh and bone of Simmons’ leg and grabbed the boy by the straps of his load-bearing vest. He struggled to his feet under the dead weight of the wounded Marine and started a half run towards the corner. Jack could see McIver at the corner now, and realized with some panic that the smoke and dust were clearing. In a moment he would be an easy target. For a fleeting second he considered letting go of Simmons and dashing to the corner, the safety of which Jack saw as his portal out of his nightmare and back to his real life. He looked down into Simmons’ face, pale and dirty and only inches from his own. His friend smiled weakly.
“Good to go, Sar’n,” he wheezed.
Jack pushed on, propelling them through the dirty street. Simmons’ nearly severed leg bobbed along behind them, leaving a thick bloody trail in the dirt.
“ROOFTOP!” Bennet screamed from behind them. Then the dirt around them was kicked up by rifle fire. In reply he heard the cracks of M16 fire from the corner ahead of him and the street behind him. He felt like his chest would explode at any second.
Jack fell behind the corner of the wall and quickly pulled Simmons in behind him. He allowed himself a few rasping breaths and a hacking cough, then pulled himself out from under Rich’s limp body and rose to a knee at the corner beside McIver. Holy shit, he had made it! He was alive! He looked at the thin, heaving boy beside him. Simmons was alive too, at least for now.
Jack raised his rifle and peered around the corner over the sight. He doubted that Simmons would live, a horrible realization that competed with the overwhelming sense of relief that he had made it. He felt sad, and guilty, and overjoyed that he would be home any minute.
Jack fired his rifle up at the rooftops and fully expected a cyclone of sand to swirl around him and engulf him any minute, starting him on his short trip home. A part of his mind anxiously waited, fearful that he had not started his trip already. Was something wrong? Why was he still here? He had done it, hadn’t he? He was safely across the street with what was left of his friends. Why the fuck was he still here?
“Come on, man! Get the fuck over here!” McIver hollered beside him.
Bennet.
Jack looked out into the clearing street, an eerie purple-orange hue from the fading sunset surrounding the running figure of Bennet as he dashed towards them. His face was set with determination and without fear. He looked like a Marine, Jack thought. He might have been a poster for a World War II movie about the fighting leathernecks.
And then it all changed. The reality of war erased any Hollywood image as Bennet’s neck and upper chest exploded in a thick red cloud of blood. The high‐velocity bullet spun him around. He fell to the ground, arms and legs splayed out, his momentum plowing him towards them through the dirt like a sled on his back.
Without thinking, Jack was on his feet, rifle raised, set to sprint to his friend’s side.
“Bennet!” he hollered as he stepped out into the street.
Jack kicked off his sprint. Immediately the air around him came alive with whistling rounds and bright tracers. As his second boot hit the sand, a tremendous impact in the center of his chest knocked him backwards off his feet, his helmeted head smacking the corner of the wall hard enough to set off
white explosions of light in his vision. Then he thumped hard on his back in the dirt. Dazed and deaf to the gunfire around him, Jack lifted his head and looked down in horror at the center of his chest where a charred hole smoked eerily in the brown canvas of his body armor. He probed the hole with a shaking left index finger and felt a hot piece of metal burn his fingertip. The round had not penetrated! Hands grabbed at him from the corner and dirt kicked up in his face as the enemy adjusted fire. With a burst of strength from some unknown source he pushed away the hands clawing at his load-bearing vest and pushed himself up to a squat, intent on starting again on his sprint to Bennet’s side. When he made it to a low crouch, he felt a violent burning pain explode low in his throat and he was again driven backwards into the dirt.
Jack could hear nothing, but felt hands again on his vest and arms. He was dragged roughly back behind the corner wall, his terrified eyes staring up at a hazy purple sky. He became aware that the rough hands on his throat were his own, and that they were hot and wet. His view of the sky was suddenly blocked by a dark shape that slowly cleared into the image of his friend’s face. What was his name? McIver?
“Sergeant Stillman! Sergeant Stillman!” The voice was like an old recording playing way too slow in another room. He tried to speak but instead coughed and felt warm stickiness flow down both his cheeks. Then the face was gone for a moment and a tremendously large shadow blocked out the darkening sky. A helicopter?
Jack heard gunfire again, close‐by he thought, but couldn’t make sense of what was going on. He heard a familiar voice hollering very nearby. He should be going home by now. Where was his dusty tornado to take him home? He wasn’t sure what that meant, but it seemed right. He felt the world get dark and he closed his eyes. He saw his wife’s face, and Claire, little feet kicking as she smiled up from her crib at Daddy.
My girls, he thought. I have to get to my girls.
Then everything went black.
Chapter
29
His back ached and he felt a vague heartburn like discomfort in his throat. His mouth was dry, with a hangover‐type dryness that made it impossible to focus on anything but a tall glass of water. He felt himself waking but kept his eyes closed and shifted his position, with some difficulty, to ease the pain in his back. Jack heard the farting noise that had embarrassed him a few days (or was it a thousand years?) before, and realized where he was. Still he kept his eyes closed, knowing he was afraid, but unable to remember why.
“How are you feeling?”
The soft but strong voice of Dr. Lewellyn was familiar but not really comforting. Jack could almost see him, even though his eyes were closed, sitting in his comfortable chair, legs crossed at the knees with his little notebook full of Jack’s mind open in his lap. Jack cleared his dry throat with more than a little pain and remembered that feeling from his childhood—the burning pain of strep throat when you were so afraid to swallow that it made you cry, which hurt even more.
“I’m good, now, I think,” he answered, his voice raspy.
His eyes were still closed and he realized with some surprise that he was still afraid to open them. He couldn’t remember what it was he thought he might see, but chose to trust his instincts and kept them closed anyway.
“I hope so,” Lewellyn answered softly. There was a sadness in his voice. “You’re a good man. I mean that. Is there any last thing you want to talk about?”
“Is this our last session?” Jack asked. His voice trembled and he thought he was starting to remember why now, why this might be more of a goodbye than a therapy session.
“I think you know it is,” Lewellyn answered. His voice held that now familiar patience that Jack thought he might have come to love a little.
He sighed deeply, held his breath a moment, then let out a trembling exhale. Any last thing he wanted to talk about?
“Who the hell am I?” he asked. His voice quivered and he felt warm tears flow down over his hot cheeks. There was a long pause and he waited, crying softly.
“I think maybe we’re all just whoever we choose to be,” Lewellyn said softly. “It is more about what in life we use to define ourselves, I think. How do you define who you are?”
“I’m Pam’s husband,” Jack answered without thinking. “And Claire’s daddy,” he added, his voice cracking. Jack wiped away his tears with the back of one dirty hand. Then he opened his eyes.
The ceiling above was green and dirty. The light was harsh, coming from a single bulb hanging from its yellow cord above. Jack shielded his eyes with a hand that he saw, without much surprise, was filthy and caked with dry blood. He raised his head and looked down at his filthy desert cammies, out of place against the clean brown leather of the couch. With some pain, Jack turned his head on a stiff neck and the burning in his throat throbbed for attention.
Lewellyn sat in a clean leather chair, as always. The chair was the only other piece of furniture in the small tent whose flaps were rustling softly in a dusty breeze. Lewellyn had his notebook in his lap, but his hands were folded neatly on top of it. Nothing more to write, Jack realized. Lewellyn wore his own brown cammies and dirty desert boots. A brown leather shoulder holster held his Marine Corps issue nine-millimeter Beretta under his left arm. The rank insignia on his collar announced that he was a captain.
Of course. Captain Lewellyn, his company commander. Lewellyn smiled sadly back at him. Jack closed his eyes again and laid his head back down, exhausted.
“What else?” the patient voice asked.
“A Marine,” Jack answered simply.
“No argument there.” Jack could hear the smile in his voice. “Some would say a hero as well, Sar’n.”
Jack felt his throat tighten.
“I’m sure as hell not that,” he said with a cracking voice. “I had two chances at it, and still lost a lot of men.” Jack’s eyes squeezed tightly as he fought to control his emotions.
“Let’s let the historians decide that kind of shit,” Lewellyn said. Now he sounded like a Marine captain, Jack thought.
“Let’s let Rich Simmons decide,” he answered.
“Yes,” Lewellyn agreed. “Let’s do that. We’ll let Simmons decide.” There was an odd smile in his words. Jack realized he was too tired to care.
“So what does this all mean?” Jack asked.
“I really don’t know, Casey,” Lewellyn answered. “I think maybe we all deal with death in our own way. Your love for your girls bound you so tightly here.” The officer sighed heavily, a deep sadness in the sound. “I know what I believe.”
“What’s that?”
“Well,” Lewellyn shifted in his seat and Jack could picture him leaning forward, elbows on his knees, taking care of one of his men, as he always did. “I believe that death isn’t an ending. I believe that for sure. I think it’s just a transition for us. For you it was harder because of your fear for those you’re leaving behind.”
The tears ran down Jack’s face in warm rivers now; his chest heaved painfully.
“You aren’t losing anything, Casey,” Lewellyn concluded softly. “You will live forever in the hearts of those two girls.”
“Thank you,” Jack said. He felt so weak, so tired.
“I hope I helped you, Sar’n.”
“You did.”
Jack felt a hot wind wrap around him like a dusty blanket. Slowly he felt himself rise above the couch, spinning gently this time. The wind caressed him almost soothingly and he felt, through closed eyes, that the light was fading.
* * *
Jack inhaled deeply of the scent of his girls. The bed was warm and soft, and he knew it wasn’t real. He also knew he didn’t care. He kept his eyes closed and explored Pam’s face by feel, gently caressing her cheek lightly with his fingers. She mumbled something soft, incomprehensible, and perfect. Between them Claire stirred, and Jack felt her little hand on his chin. He dropped his face and kissed her ever so gently on her fingertips. She cooed softly beside him, still sleeping.
“I love you both so much,” he said.
The exhaustion overcame him and he drifted off, arms around his whole world.
* * *
He woke from a short sleep, but long enough that his neck felt stiff again. There was a burning in his throat, and for a moment he thought maybe he was getting the flu.
Then he remembered.
There was a droning noise that irritated him. He lifted his head from where it lay atop his folded hands on the table. He felt an ache on his forehead and realized that if he had a mirror, he would see a little red crescent on his face where he had slept with his forehead on his wedding ring. The droning noise took shape in his mind and solidified into a woman’s voice.
“…for the Town of Al Fallujah. The fierce fighting continued yesterday, but not without casualties on both sides. Marines have met stiff resistance from the terrorist insurgents, but have inflicted casualties numbering perhaps as high as 50 killed and hundreds wounded or captured, according to several military sources. Coalition forces suffered yesterday as well, with three Marines reportedly killed and another seriously wounded during a brutal firefight in the city’s war-ravaged streets. The names of the killed and injured Marines were not released, pending notification of families here at home. Although military authorities report that coalition forces now control nearly half of the city, they caution that the violence there is far from over.”
Jack opened his eyes. He sat at an empty table in the faculty lunch room, his tray with Sheila’s cold double cheeseburger pushed to the middle. In his right hand was a balled up paper napkin.
Fade to Black - Proof Page 24
