Dwelling (5 page)

CHAPTER 6

LEARNING TO WALK

Johnathan

The hardest trick with walking on a prosthetic was learning how to balance. The day the VA doc strapped Johnny-Boy in one of those nice Genium poly-silicon legs, he’d struggled like some dopey eyed toddler desperately yearning toward mama’s open arms. It had been nearly seven months since he had to relearn how to
walk
, starting out in slow painful limps braced against balancing beams gymnasts used. His above-knee prosthetic pinched the hell out of his skin, the gnarled paint-by-number flesh. And it had also been nearly a year since the attack that put him in the prosthetic, a year since the rocket-propelled-grenade and the crater sized hole through his Humvee and the chunk of leg of which the docs at the Green Zone eventually had to amputate.

But at least he lived. Ricky had not been so lucky. And as Johnathan hobbled into the kitchen to join his bride and step daughter for a late morning breakfast, thoughts of his lost friend were not far from mind.

Bright sunbeams bore in between the blinds of the kitchen window. Johnathan slumped down in one of the oak chairs directly across from Tabitha, Karen’s little girl, now his little girl too. His new family. Johnathan and Karen had gotten hitched before his enlistment in a fast and furious wedding ceremony which consisted of her, him, and Tabitha, and the Justice of the Peace.

God bless her.
She had stuck with him through the hell of basic, assignment, and the eventual deployment. She stuck through it all, even rehab and recovery. She stayed, despite her own sister’s loss. Tabitha was not his own. She was the product of a previous relationship, which ended just as fast as you can say
wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am,
or as fast as Karen told the scum-bag, “I’m pregnant.” Karen had gotten knocked-up shortly after finishing high school.

Johnathan never asked about the other guy, but had gathered from what little she did say, that she, or rather he, wanted nothing to do with the baby. Johnathan didn’t care about any of that. He loved Karen. And he loved his little eight-year-old piggy-tailed girl, with her glow-in-the-dark, rainbow t-shirts and strangely-boyish bug books.

This morning Tabitha was already dressed, hidden behind a looming box of Cap’n Crunch cereal. Her spoon glinted in the morning sun that came through the blinds. Milk dribbled on her small delicate chin, which she smeared with her forearm, continuing to read whatever maze or riddle was on the back of the cartooned pirate box.

Karen was in front of the stove, scrambling eggs. Johnathan could hear the mechanical pop of the toaster as two near-burnt pieces of toast sprung from the contraption. Dark roasted smoke wafted from the black coffee pot on the counter. Steam came off it in shoots. The red Folgers can sat beside it, the lid precariously left unsealed.
Going to lose its freshness
.

Johnathan considered getting up and closing the lid, but decided against it. He rubbed his thigh instead. The nerves still danced from last night’s terrible dream and the memory of his dead friend. He sat quietly instead, for some time, watching Tabitha eat blindly while reading the back of her cereal box. He glanced at his wife, who was finishing off the eggs.
I’m one lucky guy
. The lump in his heart seemed to abate with happy thoughts and thanksgiving for the family he had been blessed with.
Blessed? Strange word. Sounds like something Jake would say.

Randall would call it blind, stupid, dumb luck.
Johnathan pictured his,
what could you call him? Life coach? No. Sounds too yuppie. Counselor? Not great either, but better than ‘life coach!’
He pictured Randall in his mind. An older, grizzly looking man well into his sixties. A Vietnam veteran missing both legs. Randall Hampton had been in the Twenty-Sixth Marine Regiment at the Battle of Khe Sanh. He was wounded when a massive artillery bombardment came down on his garrison near the Laotian boarder. Randall often said it was the bloodiest battle he had the pleasure of seeing, the last one he would see, spanning some seventy-seven days.
“It was a beautiful place,”
Randall sometimes said.
“Tall mountain peaks coated with lush green palms. Lots of sun. I watched this dragon-looking white-tailed butterfly one afternoon. It was gorgeous, Johnny-Boy, it really was. The way it floated like some damn angelic humming bird dancing just above a lotus. Wonderful. But then the mortars and the screams, ‘incoming,’ and the flares and AK-47’s rattled and we’d remember this was a war. When the sun came back up on that first morning we saw the corpses. Jesus…Some were tangled together like cruel, rotting blue and purple jigsaws. Others had been thrown about like burnt straw. The smell was…well, I rather not say, Johnny-Boy. I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. About five hundred Marines died on that hellish mountain, some of whom were my dearest friends.”

Randall talked about the war distantly, as if he wasn’t really telling Johnathan his story about himself, but rather reminding himself of what had happened, as if remembering the truth was too frightening to hold on to; it had to be dug up from time to time and reburied just as quick.

Johnathan understood Randall in a way few could. He always found it strange how open the old man was with it all. The friends he’d lost. What he lost. His self-medicating haze through the ’80s.
“Booze and whores; whores and booze, Johnny-Boy,”
Randall would say with an unabashed smile. Johnathan wished he could be more like Randall, more open about everything, but his own scars were still fresh, and it would take time to heal. Or so Randall Hampton, the crusty old Vietnam veteran from the VA hospital, would always tell him.
“Give yourself time, Johnny-Boy.”

“Hey babe, how’d you sleep?” called Karen from the kitchen, working on a new batch of eggs. Her question seemed automatic, something normally asked when people first wake up and stumble around like some undead creature from one of those Romero flicks…
How’d you sleep? Like the dead, sweetie, like the dead.

“Not bad,” Johnathan replied. “Felt like an idiot rolling out of bed last night, but other than that, just peachy.”

Karen seemed to not have heard, humming something tranquil, calming. Johnathan loved when Karen sang or even when she just hummed.
She always had a beautiful voice
. He recalled a certain middle school talent show. Karen had just transitioned from grade school. Fresh meat on the big-kid campus. He remembered sitting in the auditorium, having just giggled himself into a stroke after a seventh grader with long black bangs recited a gloom and doom poem about death and sacrifice.

What was his name?
Whatever his name had been, Johnathan would never forget the image of the young boy, decked out in black garments and dark ringed makeup silhouetted against his pale moon skin. The boys of
Suicide Squad
sat together, snickering, struggling to hold in the
chucks
. Bobby was damn near out of his seat with a bad case of the
chucks
. Ricky had his hand held firmly to his mouth. Johnathan had whispered, “
Oh sweet baby Jesus, is this kid talking about his mommy or what?”
Another burst of muffled laughter. The emo boy eventually finished,
thank God
, and out walked Maggie’s little sister, Karen.

She was so frail looking back then. Not anymore though
. Johnathan snuck a glance at his wife, admiring the curve on her hips. When Karen had walked on stage, this small seemingly mousy little girl, the girl they had voted not to allow in the club, Maggie had turned and given them
the eye
, the silent warning each and every one of them knew by heart. Her glare said,
“You better not laugh, or so help me God!”
They promised, of course, but didn’t need to. Once Karen started singing
…my God…
The entire auditorium fell into an ecstatic hush.

Johnathan had always had a crush on Mags. She’d been the only girl he’d ever really talked to, despite knowing somehow that she would never really feel the same way about him. But he couldn’t help it. Maggie was a member of
Suicide Squad
, he saw her almost every day of the year. However, when Karen took the stage, everything changed.
Her voice was a siren’s song
.
My heart bled upon her jagged rocks, and never returned
.

“Here, drink this, soldier.” Karen sat a steaming mug of coffee in front of Johnathan, jolting him from his thoughts. His chair rocked dangerously back. Tabitha giggled behind her box of cereal.

“Where’d you go?” Karen asked bemused.

“Just remembering something,” Johnathan said coyly.

“What?” Karen sounded curious now.

“A certain middle school talent show is all.” Johnathan winked.

Karen thought for a moment. “Our middle school? At St. Francis? What made you think of that?” She stood there, one hand on her hip. Eyebrow poised in anticipation.

“No reason,” Johnathan smiled, taking a sip from his mug.

Karen returned the smile with bewilderment and went back to the kitchen. He watched her beautiful form with a sudden awareness of how damn lucky he really was to have her, to be a part of this family and have a daughter. Sure, she was a step-daughter, not his own flesh and blood, but Tabitha had accepted him without condition. He often wondered, though, would she have been as accepting were she older? Maybe. Maybe not. That mattered little. What really mattered was the here and now. Karen loved him and so did Tabitha. Not many of his comrades could say the same thing, those who lived, that is.

“I love you,” Johnathan said, and though the phrase seemed to spring from him without much thought, he meant every single word.

“I love you too,” said Karen, beaming at him from across the kitchen island.

“Don’t make me barf,” said Tabitha, her small delicate voice came off as both disgusted and equally amused. Johnathan could feel her smiling from behind the cartooned pirate. Underneath the facade, he knew the little girl loved seeing her mama happy. Karen winked at her, coming to the table, placing a plate full of eggs, bacon, and burnt toast in front of Johnathan. She stooped and tenderly kissed him. He eagerly returned the gesture.

“Oh! Gross, you two!” Tabitha protested, mocking lurching motions.

“Hush. It’s perfectly normal for a mom and dad to kiss each other.” Karen went to sit, teasing her daughter with kiss-fish face. “One day, you’ll have someone special you’ll want to give a smooch.”

“Not on my watch,” interjected Johnathan, doing his best to sound stern, yet smiling underneath.

“Yuck! As if, Mom,” said Tabitha, returning to whatever was so interesting behind that cereal box. Johnathan said a silent prayer of thanks that it would be a long time until talk of boys. Secretly he wished it never would. She was his step-daughter, but she felt more kin than the most of his biological family. He watched her for a moment; strong profound love came on him almost overwhelmingly. Johnathan spooned a mouth full of eggs to avoid an emotional outburst. Tears were inching dangerously close. If he wasn’t careful, he could get carried away and start sobbing at the table. Karen would worry. And he would feel ashamed. He struggled. Too often his positive thoughts would intermingle with his negatives ones of friends lost, parts of him lost forever, and not just his leg.

“When’s your flight, hun?” asked Karen, tending to her own plate of eggs and toast. She didn’t seem to notice the moisture building on the surface of his eyes.

He had nearly forgotten about his trip. “2:00 p.m. I’ll need to leave by noon. I’m flying out of George Bush. Security normally takes longer there, nowadays at least.” Johnathan took a deep chug of hot coffee, grateful for the burning warmth pouring into his belly and for the calming effects of caffeine and for the distraction.
Maybe I’ll get something stronger at the hotel, later tonight
.

“When will you land in D.C.?”

“Itinerary says 5:30 p.m., but we’ll see I guess. I’ll call once I get to the hotel.”

“Please do.”

“I will.”

There was a momentary silence. The only sounds were the clanking of forks and plates and the suckling of milk from behind the Cap’n Crunch cereal box. Johnathan surveyed his trip. Tomorrow he would play the part as guest speaker for the Wounded Warriors Project at the Washington D.C. VA Medical Center.

Randall was supposed to go, but something came up.
Or the old geezer wanted me to get my feet wet and decided to purposely sit this one out. God, am I ready for this? Can I really give this talk in front of a crowd of veterans? I can sell this positive attitude bullshit to a crowd of civilians, but wounded veterans? Civilians are easy. Veterans can smell dishonesty.
How can I feed them hope when I’m not even sure what that is?

Johnathan tore a chunk of golden-brown toast and began to munch. He reached for the mug to wash down the dry scratch at the back of his throat. Just below the surface of the rippling dark roast, he could see old faces. He saw the dark face of Private Mooney, the gunner from Charlie team who always watched those old ’70s
Blaxploitation
flicks, or at least the bootlegged DVD’s he’d somehow find at the
Haji
-Mart back on Victory.
God, what was that one movie he was always watching? Blacula, was it? It was either that one or Blackenstein
.