I Was Waiting

         It wasn’t cold outside yet not particularly warm either, just a regular North Carolina September.  The air was moist from the afternoon’s rain that the heat had lifted up out of the ground.  A damp feeling was felt through the night, as though the night had a particular ora.  Sitting in a yellow lawn chair on the back patio area I was chain smoking a pack of Marlboro Lights.  The taste was horrific; I had begun smoking two packs a day.  The stench that rose from the cherry got trapped inside my nostrils and cloths.  Like the smell of week old garbage.  I had no shoes on, and the concrete was warm on the bottom of my toes.  My head was in-between my hands, and my eyes were fixated on a small but growing puddle of liquid on the ground.  A tear swelled in my left eye and I followed it down to the tip of my nose. It fell perfectly in the middle of the liquid, that small but growing puddle.  A sound came out of the night.  Like a distant wind, this is what I have been waiting for.  Headlights came around the curve on the road behind my house.  My heart raced as I looked up to see the model of the vehicle.  It wasn’t the one I was hoping for, and again my head went down to stare at that ever so growing puddle of liquid.  Every night for four months I had been doing this.  Anticipating the next vehicle to be the one I was waiting for.  Three or more passed by with the same result.  I rose to my feet took a deep breath and walked inside.  Asking myself the same question I did every night.” What are you doing?” The fact was I was waiting.

         I closed the door and grabbed the bottle of liquor on the cabinet and took one more last taste of the brand that was now my nightly friend.  I usually drank about a fifth a night, just so I could quite thinking about things long enough to go to sleep.  Down the hallway with white painted walls, I walked in slow with almost pasty like movements.  Now the floor was cold on my feet, but the alcohol made it feel numb.  I stopped and looked at the painting in the hallway.           One I did along time ago, Sherry loved this painting and even wanted it for her self.  I left the painting to be on its own for the night and climbed up the stairs. The floor was carpet now and felt like heavy grit sandpaper on my heels.  Before I went into my room I turned and went into my daughter's ,Lydia, room.  The darkness scattered as if it were afraid of the light from the switch.  There she was my angel, my one and only true love. 
Her love would never fade, there would never be another man for her to call her new daddy.  Like her mother Sherry had found another man to call her new love.  It would always be me, only me.  I forced a smile and covered her back up.  She likes to sleep in such an uncomfortable position it seems.  I left the room letting the darkness over take it once again. Going into my room I turned on the fan and crawled into bed.  I lay there for about thirty minutes before I passed out from the liquor.  Its funny how you drift into the past while you are asleep. It is almost as if it was waiting.

         There I was again sitting in my childhood room when I was about eighteen years old.  Sitting in front of a letter from the girl I loved.  Sherry had been sent away to an orphanage many hours away and I wasn’t allowed to see her or talk to her.  We had written many letters and they all made me cry.  She had this scent, a wonderful aroma of cotton candy.  All her letters were drenched in that smell.  I was sitting there with these beautiful mementos of her, and yet I was in a terrible state of mind.  I rocked back and forth in an almost mechanical fashion.  I was writing a letter to her from me.  It was drenched in the tears from a boy in love.  In the back ground a nineties style grunge band called Helmet played loud angry notes of music.  Around me were a towel, some letters, and an old razor blade. I began to scream “ I can’t take this, God why are you doing this to me what did I do to you, I hate you, I only want her to be with me, just me and her, give her back to me and I will do what ever you want, God I love her, PLEASE! PLEASE! PLEASE!” and in a rush of childish feelings I reach over and grab the blade.  I was frantically slashing at my ankle.  Where no one would notice what I was doing to myself.  The blood gathered up on the surface the rolled down on the letter I was writing. The last words were “I am always waiting.”

         Then in a sudden rush I was no longer there.  I was a little older, actually twenty three.  I was huddled up behind a large machine gun trying to stay as warm as I could.  The air rushed into the cabin at horrible speeds.  I was looking out the window down to the ground, and it seemed so far away.  Over the loud whiz of the helicopters rotor blades and the loud roar of the two engines the pilot cued in “You guys o.k. back there.”  I glanced at the crew chief and he acknowledged my nod.
         
“Sir, we are just fine back here.”
         
“Alright, just let me know if you get uncomfortable fellas.”
         
“Roger”
         
Scanning the ground below a flash catches my eyes.
         
“Sir, there was just a large flash at your eight o’clock.”
         
“You see anything”
         
“No sir, nothing”
         
“Just keep your eyes pealed gentlemen.”
   
  “Will do” the crew chief acknowledges.
         
In the cold, and hungry, the ever present feeling of possible danger had become routine. Sitting there gave me time to think.  Why was I here, I had done this all for her, joined the Marine Corps.. This wasn’t who I was. I liked paintings, poetry, and other forms of art.  Not the distant smell of gun powder.  I loved her to ends the Earth had never seen.  But I did what I had to, I thought, to create a life for us.  It was frigid and I was lonely.  But there I was on Christmas night.  Counting down the days till I could Sherry and my precious Lydia again.  I was waiting.

         The sick feeling in my stomach is what woke me up.  I sat up and ran hurriedly to my upstairs bathroom, but the contents of my stomach up heaved before I could make it.  I broke down on the carpet and it grinded into my hands and knees.  Gasping for air, that air of life I had seemed to have lost.  The darkness of the upstairs hallway half hid the sight of the warm vomit on my off white floor. But it couldn’t hide the smell the smell of liquor, and cigarettes, a smell of bile and death.  It brought tears to my eyes, not those of sadness.  The kind you get from a fresh cut onion.  I looked up towards my angel’s room as I heard Lydia start to cry. No! Not this, she can’t see me like this.  Like a broken statue, one that was so strong and unwavering in the strongest winds.  Still I run into her room, scaring the darkness away once more.  Lifting her from her white toddler bed she looks at me with the sweetest face.  While I held her, I was still compelled to go to the window.  Go to the window and look out.  I wanted to see that car I have been waiting for.  Like a flood it rushed through my veins, Sherry is never coming back, and I will not wait for her anymore.  My one and only true love,Lydia, needs me.  She needs me more than I have been able to truly be there for her, and I will not wait for her anymore.  All this time I have been waiting.  I will wait no more.

DRAVEN