Love is a Wounded Soldier (35 page)

TWELVE

BECOMING MOSES

Rage and anguish
drove me like demons into the wilderness to torment me. Like a wild man
possessed, I flew down the back roads and up the highway. Each oncoming car
dared me to veer into its path, every roadside drop-off promised instant relief
from my misery with a turn of the wheel.

I pounded the dashboard with my fists. I
tried to cry, but I couldn’t. My stomach turned. My body shook.

Certain I was going to be sick, I stopped
the car on the side of the road and leapt out, running down through the ditch
and into the brush where I couldn’t be seen by passing motorists.

I leaned against a tree, my insides
heaving. My body felt as though it needed to purge itself of a poison, and my
stomach heaved and heaved and heaved again. I couldn’t vomit, so I tried to
cry, but I couldn’t force tears either, so I lay down on the ground and heaved
without vomiting, and sobbed without tears, wracked with a sorrow that hurt
more than pain.

There seemed to be no possibility of
relief, only an unending future of sadness. Ellen was my everything, the only
person to whom I’d ever entrusted my heart without holding back. I’d given her
everything without restriction or reservation. But it had meant nothing! My
love, my faithfulness, my devotion and worship of her had meant nothing! She
had minced my heart as though it were nothing more than beef liver! The very
thought made me writhe in agony the way I’d seen hundreds of fatally wounded
men writhe on the battlefield. I’d taken a mortal hit, and it felt there could
be no cure. Not enough time existed to dull the pain. Even hope, had I had any,
seemed a feeble antidote to so grave an affliction. Like a dying man I wished
to feel death’s cold hand. But death would not be so kind to me.

I lay there until the coolness of the
evening made me shiver. I walked stiffly back to the car, feeling as hollow as
a tin man. A vehicle approached in the distance, forcing me to wait beside the
road for it to pass before climbing into the car.

When I reached Somerset, I pulled into an
old gas station off U.S. Route 27 and purchased a tank of gas and two bottles
of Jim Beam.

After I paid, I got back into the car and
opened a bottle of bourbon. I took a swig, and the whiskey bit me hard. I
caught my breath and bit the bottle back, downing half of it before lowering it
to my lap. As I put the cap back on, I saw the elderly station proprietor and
his wife staring at me through the store window.

“Fuck you!” I yelled at them and flipped
them the finger. They exchanged horrified looks as I fired up the Buick and
took off.

The bourbon began roaring through my veins
as I turned back onto Route 27, toward the Tennessee line. Jim Beam shoved me
out of the driver’s seat as the car picked up speed. I shifted gears. Jim
stomped on the gas. We blew by a half dozen cars, headed for hell in the hammer
lane.

~~~

I woke up the next day to the smell of my
own puke. A couple of flies buzzed around my throbbing head and landed on my
cheek. The sun was high, and the interior of the Buick was cooking. I closed my
bleary eyes, fumbled for the door handle, and pushed the door open. A faint
breeze wafted in through the open door, cooling my sweaty forehead and pounding
temples.

After lying with my eyes closed for a few
minutes, I opened my eyes, groaned, and stumbled out of the car.

I leaned unsteadily on the hot roof of the
car and rested my head on my crossed arms. I felt like shit. Then I remembered
Ellen was pregnant with another man’s baby, and I felt a million times worse. A
parade of bitter thoughts marched through my mind. Why couldn’t I just have
died in France? What exactly had possessed God to allow me, of all men, to
return alive to my shattered life?

Flies still buzzed around me. I pushed
myself away from the car and looked down. The front of my shirt was stained
with dried vomit, and I could feel some stuck to my face, too.

As I rubbed the crusts off my face, I took
a look around for the first time. The car was parked in a clover field. I had
no recollection of how it had gotten there, where the nearest town was, or if I
was in Kentucky or Tennessee. My last memory was passing cars on the highway.

An involuntary moan escaped softly through
my lips. Being alive was a drudgery. I was more weary of life than I’d ever been
before. Oh, I’d been weary of life before. But I’d always had a measure of hope
to cling to, a reason to fight for another breath. This time however, I had no
hope. I had no faith that there were better days ahead, no reason to believe
that I’d ever see the light at the top of the well.

I unbuttoned my shirt, threw it into the
car, and set off in search of someplace to clean up, eat, and buy more whiskey.

~~~

The summer of 1945 was the beginning of a
very dark time in my life. It felt as though a black cloud had descended to
oppress me, and there was no reprieve from its darkness.

It was the unanswered questions that drove
me over the cliff and left me to wallow in the quicksand of despair and
depression. My restless mind searched relentlessly for answers to questions I
knew I really didn’t want to know the answers to. Who? When? Where? Why?

I spent hours thinking about who it was
that had seen the nakedness of my bride. Was it someone I knew? I sorted
through the dozens of possibilities. Had she invited him into our bed? Had she
conceived by another man between the very same sheets she and I had shared our
passionate love-making? Had it been a one-time fling, or had she found so much
pleasure in him that they’d met over and over and over again?

There were times I’d try to distract myself
by thinking about things that had happened during the war. As horrific as the
war had been, I still felt better thinking about death, killing, and chaos,
than about Ellen’s betrayal.

I told myself to get over it. I told myself
to move on. But moving on is a hard thing to do, so the best I could do was
move. And so I moved from one forgettable town to another, one forgettable bar
to another, one forgettable woman to another. But no matter how quickly I
moved, I couldn’t shake the past. Every time I turned around it was there, like
some stray dog that just won’t go home no matter how sternly you yell or shake
a stick at it.

As I moved, I picked up an odd job here or
there. Nothing steady, just enough to keep a little grub in my belly and my
mind soaked in liquor. Alcohol was my escape. It seemed to be the only thing
that could offer any sort of relief, at least temporarily. I became an addict
to alcohol and, as strange as it sounds, depression. Like that stray dog you
just can’t get rid of, my depressed state of mind became a part of me,
something of a pet. It was a convenient excuse to drink, and as much as I
loathed myself for it, I became quite attached to the idea of having it around.
Those were days when only sad songs made me happy.

By winter of 1945-1946, my spirit had
withered away like the grass. My heart was a field of scorched earth, and it
seemed seeds of hope had no chance of ever sprouting in such cold and polluted
soil. A numbness took over my body and mind. I cared for, and about, nothing.

Spring plowed winter aside, and still my
spirit felt paralyzed. Then one day, in one of my darkest hours, something
happened that, even when I think about it now, I have trouble believing it even
happened. Maybe it was coincidence, maybe it was fate, maybe it was God, I
really don’t know for sure. What I do know for sure, is that it was as close to
a miracle as anything I’ve seen.

~~~

I woke one morning in the town of Buxley,
Tennessee. Spears of light jabbed at my eyelids through the cracks in the
shades. I rolled over, away from the light, and tried to fall back asleep.
There was no way I wanted to face the day. My life was so unbearable I wanted
nothing but to sleep until it ended.

The sound of snoring kept me awake, and I
remembered that once again, I’d woken up in a cheap motel, beside a cheap woman
that I wouldn’t be able to pick out of a police lineup by the next day. I hated
myself. All my efforts to simulate pleasure or happiness in my life had fallen
flat. Joy and peace were no longer things I even thought about striving for. It
was enough for me to have my mind preoccupied with something other than the
past.

I rolled out of bed and trudged to the
bathroom.

After sitting on the toilet for 10 minutes
with my head in my hands, I got up and shuffled over to the sink to wash my
hands and face. The reflection in the mirror almost startled me. Bloodshot eyes
looked back at me beneath a disheveled tangle of overgrown hair. The stubble
I’d neglected was becoming a bird’s nest beard that added a half dozen years to
my face. It was hard to believe the face was mine. There was something foreign
about the bleary-eyed reflection that looked back at me with dead man’s eyes.
Something about it that wasn’t me, or at least wasn’t what I remembered myself
to be. Yet, there was an unsettling familiarity about it as well.

I washed the sleep out of my eyes and dried
my face with a towel. Grasping the edge of the sink, I leaned forward and
stared closely at the face in the mirror. It wasn’t my face that stared back at
me. It was the face of Moses.

Every boy wants to be like his old man as
badly as the young man he turns into does not. I suppose I wasn’t the only man
to set out in life determined to become anything but his father. They say an
apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, but I doubt there were many men that were
as committed as I was to falling as far from the tree as I possibly could.

There had been times I’d made decisions by
asking myself, “What would Moses do?” After I had figured out what path Moses
would take, I’d make damn sure I hightailed it down the road in the opposite
direction. There’s just something in a young man that can’t stomach the thought
of stepping in the same footsteps as his old man, so he decides he’ll follow
his own path.

But, life’s trails aren’t straight, and
there are switchbacks, intersections, and forks in the road. Before a fellow
knows it, that damn son of a bitch is looking back at you in the mirror with a
little smile that says, “I’ve been expecting you. Where the hell you been,
boy?”

The realization that I had become my father
hit me like a punch in the gut. I glared at the face in the mirror with so much
hate it was a wonder the mirror didn’t splinter to pieces. Every line in my
face verified a decision I’d put off too long. The familiar look of defeat in
my eyes confirmed what I’d known for months. There was no denying the obvious
now. My soul was dead, but for some reason my body hadn’t been notified that
its presence was required as well. It was an error I intended to personally
rectify.

I threw my towel into the sink and stormed
out of the bathroom.

“It’s a good day to die!” I muttered to
myself as I pulled on my pants, fished the room key out of the pocket, and
tossed it on the bed stand.

“The key’s by the lamp, Violet—uh, Katie?
Kathy?—whatever the hell your name is,” I addressed the lump that snored under
rumpled sheets, trying different names like a drunk with a ring of keys
attempts to find the one that fits his front door in the dark. She didn’t even
stir.

The late morning sunshine almost blinded me
as I stepped out the door.

“It’s a good day to die!” I repeated as I
unlocked the car.

Committing suicide was something I’d
thought of a lot of times, but I hadn’t given much thought at all as to exactly
how I’d go about it, so I drove around Buxley for a while, thinking about my
options. I finally pulled into a quiet back alley behind a tire shop and
parked. It seemed to be as good a place as any to put a bullet through my head.

I rummaged around in the bag that sat on
the passenger’s seat and found an open bottle of cheap wine and the Luger I’d
taken from Karl Heinz in Normandy. The gun had never been fired or unloaded in
all the years I’d had it. I handled it with moist palms.

After taking several gulps from the wine
bottle, I got down to business.

“This one’s for you, Karl,” I murmured as I
put the muzzle to my temple, took a shaky breath, and prepared to pull the
trigger.

Two boys on bicycles turned into the alley,
so I lowered the Luger and placed it in my lap. They didn’t need to see what I
was about to do. As they passed, they stared at me and waved. I acknowledged
them with a nod, and followed them in my rearview mirror until they
disappeared. They looked so carefree and innocent. I sat for a few minutes and
thought back to a time when I went to bed excited about waking up the next
morning and finding out what experience life would be serving that day.

“Enjoy it while it lasts, kids,” I murmured
as I raised the pistol to my head once more. I started squeezing the trigger
when I remembered I’d forgotten one crucial thing—a suicide note.

I placed the Luger down on the seat beside
me, found a pen and a napkin, and thought about what to write. Or who to write.
There was really no one I could think of that would give a damn about whether I
was dead or alive.

Finally, after thinking about what to write
for a half hour or so, I remembered a little poem I’d scrawled on the back of a
motel receipt several weeks prior. I opened the glove compartment and rifled
through the miscellany until I found it.