Free Unburying Hope by Mary Wallace Page B

Scrub that night with one clean
shot through his head, long distance execution style.”
    She reached out her hands across the table and
he looked at her, his eyes heavy with sadness.   He pulled his hands slowly to the tabletop and touched hers
cautiously.
    “We were the walking wounded for a while.   Scrub was the only thing that resembled
home, America, to each of us, no matter where we’d come from.   He was the only normal thing in our
day.   Our medical officer rationed
out some anti-D’s after that, anti-depressants.   Most guys needed something to get over the hump of that
loss.   We buried him, then poured
concrete over his grave so the Taliban couldn’t mess with our minds by
desecrating his body.   We were
pretty crazy by then.   We were
thinking about things we knew we’d never touch again: our bed pillows at home,
the soft fur on the head of that damned hero dog that stole our hearts.”
    The food came and they ate quietly.   She held his right hand with her left,
until he pulled himself back into the present moment.  
    “Let’s go back to my place, after dinner,” she
said.   “We can hang out?”
    “It’s not that damn emotional,” he said,
waving his hand.   “Seeing that
service dog just brought up a wish that Scrub could be an old dog too.”
    His protestations were weak, she could sense a
deeper truth in the connection between the loss of the puppy and some bit of
brokenness in him.

Chapter
Eleven

 
    She hadn’t intended to let down her guard so
quickly, it wasn’t her way.   Or was
it?   She had been single for as
long as she could remember, like her mother.    Was that a choice, she wondered?   Or fear.   She made it through her days, her weeks, her months by
staying closed, keeping an invisible wall between herself and the world.   Except for Frank, she’d been pretty
successful.   Until tonight.
    He quickly regained his composure in the
diner.   She had wondered if he’d
have money for the meal and she’d put two twenties into her pocket just in case
she could help pay.   Turns out, he
had some cash, told her he was spacey about paying bills, it wasn’t that he
didn’t have money.  
    When you look for someone to date, she
thought, someone to give a part of yourself to, you look for someone who can
see or feel things on a deep level.   Not someone pandering to you or someone so drunk that you know they find
you beautiful now with their hazy eyes but you also know that they will cringe
when they look at you later in the daylight.   You’re not ugly, but they were drunk.   All the dreams they brought to that
moment with you had nothing to do with you.   They were in a hormonal rush, or they had thought up a whole
story about you that was in their head, that you couldn’t possibly know or
fulfill.   She’d learned that the
hard way once or twice, took it personally.   She’d become a hermit for many nights afterwards.
    Was she only attracted to his brokenness?   It was as much a part of him as his
eyes, or his muscular torso, or the dent in his head, which she hadn’t noticed
in hours.   Funny, how our most
vivid wounds become invisible when we show our true selves, she thought.
    They were again sitting on her sofa, but
closer this time.  
    He was quiet, present.
    The moment unfolded.   First, she saw him look into her eyes.   There was pain in his expression.   Something in him was questioning his
own ability to contribute.   It made
her smile with sadness.   It’s like
they each had different sides of the same wound, though she didn’t know how to
breach the gap.
    There was no fumbling, as there had been with
other men.   Just his eyes, his
past, the things he couldn’t tell her and the things she might never know about
him.   She’d been on her own so long
that she understood how you stockpile parts of yourself, your feelings, unsure
that you’ll ever be able to share them, afraid that they might topple under
their own weight before