Fruits of Insanity

We band of brothers

Thirty-eight years later, Smith still wakes in a cold sweat beside his wife, the taste of sand at the back of his throat. She murmurs and turns over, no longer troubled enough to wake with his nightmare, but he rolls out of bed, feeling creaks and groans that come with an aging body, and heads to the shower. He works at an office, now, not on a helicopter, rescuing the almost dead. It’s only forty-five minutes until the alarm would have sounded.

There should be no surprises in his day—that’s what he strives for. Each minute can be counted, from the seven point two minutes to brew coffee to the forty-eight point nine that it takes to buy and eat a pastrami on rye at the corner deli and return to his desk. He feeds the computer numbers, it returns predictable, verifiable results.

At fifteen hundred hours, there’s a knock at the door. He freezes, smelling desert winds, and then turns. An older man, solidly built with blue eyes and scars down the left side of his face that are almost familiar—surely it can’t be—“Rogers?”

“Smith!” The two men come together in the almost embrace of brothers long apart and unsure. “What’s it been?”

They both pause, lost in the memory of heat and dust.

Smith shakes it off first. “Are you in town for long?”

“I work here—just started today.”

“Small world.” There’s a pause that cuts like shrapnel. “How’s—Laurie was it?”

Rogers makes a gesture of dismissal. “Water under the bridge. Footloose and fancy free”

“Ah.” Smith wonders what the sticking point had been. The job or the scars—or even something else. The aphorisms. “You should come to dinner tonight. Meet the family.”

“Couldn’t”

“I insist.”

When the two men walk the door, they’re greeted by the smell of meatloaf and potatoes, and Smith is glad he gave her the heads up about his guest. Little Johnny, whose almost ten, is doing his homework in the living room with the tv on to some show Smith refuses to be a party to. The picture of domestic bliss makes Smith feel uneasy.

Dinner conversation is in fits and starts as the two men edit their memories for public consumption. Little Johnny is quiet in the presence of this scarred man, staring out of the corner of his eye. Finally, unable to bear it any more, he asks, “What happened to your face.”

Smith freezes, the memory of sand burning his knees, the sound of gunfire, blood burning his hands as he tried to piece his friend back together.

Rogers just smiles at the boy. “That happened on the day your daddy saved my life.”

Johnny looks from Rogers to his father and back, trying to reconcile his daddy who is quiet and sometimes whimpers in his sleep and man this man remembers. Smith looks down, not sure what to say.

“Your daddy’s a hero.”

And for a moment, Johnny looks at his father and sees the young medic racing into the line of fire to pull his friend to safety.

Prompt 17
the week of November 22

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