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Or anybody, for that matter.
Since leaving the military, I’ve found my own company sufficient enough, the steady routine of waking up, working out, reading, working out some more, and then collapsing exhausted into bed only to do it all again the next day.
“You’re drifting,” Uncle Johnny told me on Skype a few days ago. “I don’t like to see that, Markus, not from a man who usually has so much purpose. It’s not good for a wolf not to have a goal.”
“I’m not a wolf,” I’d said. “I’m a sheepdog.”
That was what we called ourselves in the SEALs, the sheepdogs who kept the wolves of this world at bay, protecting the sheep.
“You’re not a SEAL anymore, son,” he said.
“I’ll never stop being a SEAL.”
“I know.” He’d sighed, running a hand over his bald head. Johnny is still fit for a man of sixty-five years, and he looked it sitting there in his tight shirt, leaning over toward the camera. “I didn’t mean that. But goddamn it, when are you going to settle down and find a woman?”
“I know you got married when you were still in the Army,” I said. “But family life isn’t for everybody.”
I looked at the man who’d raised me after my dad left and then my mom ran out, abandoning her kid to her big brother, disappearing into the ether.
I later found out what happened to both of them, and it stills stings to think about.
“I know you only want the best for me,” I’d told him, “but I’m fine, really.”
He knew better than to push it after that.
The same can’t be said for the woman in the yoga gear, however.
She flinches for a moment but then quickly plasters a wide smile on her face, smearing it from cheek to cheek.
“Well aren’t you just a big grump?” she says. “You know, I might be able to relax you—”
“I doubt it,” I cut her off, turning and striding out of the gym.
I walk across the parking lot, letting the sea breeze whip coldly against my sweat-soaked skin. I approach my Chevy Impala, night-black, perhaps the closest thing I’ve got to a companion these days. I’ve got brothers in the SEALs – I always will – but I rarely have cause to speak to them anymore.
They live in a different world to me.
I bring the engine to life and start guiding the car through the lancing snowfall, along the harbor where the wind whips with a vengeance. The drive takes me away from the sea and through a short stretch of peaceful pine forest, the trees swaying as though trying to catch the snowflakes.
No part of me wants to go back to the gym and take that woman up on her way-too-forward offer. The truth is it sickens me. The truth is I’m an old fashioned bastard, maybe, and the idea of shacking up with a woman just for the hell of it does nothing to stir me, to awaken me.
It does nothing, full-stop.
Then find a woman who means something to you, a voice whispers inside of me. Settle down. Start a family. Forty-one this year. You’re not getting any younger.
I laugh grimly at the thought.
The only way I could even consider that is if a woman came into my life who punched me directly in the soul, who I couldn’t ignore, who I couldn’t even think about ignoring.
I slam on the brakes when the dog darts from the shadowy forest.
The road is icy, but my wheels are up to the task and I’ve got experience driving in worse conditions than this.
I bring the car to a shaky stop, taming the beast and quickly shifting down a gear, not panicking like other men might. I don’t mess with the handbrake, knowing that that’d only cause me to jackknife on the ice-slick road.
I guide the car to the edge of the road, out of the flow of possible traffic, and climb out.
The dog – a Golden Retriever, dirt smeared all over its golden coat – has stopped a few feet away from the car, whimpering quietly with its head tilted.
I climb out of the car, muttering a curse.
“Where’s your owner, little guy?” I call, inching closer, talking in my most soothing tone with my hand extended in a show of peace. “It’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you. Come here, boy. It’s okay.”
I kneel down, not caring when the snow casts a cold haze over my bare knee. I remember kneeling on the sun scorched sand in countless gunfights, ears ringing with the immediacy of what we were doing.
I turn away from the memory and focus on the dog instead.
It stands up slowly – he’s definitely a boy, I see – and tilts his head at me. Another gut-punching whimper comes from the back of its throat.
I see that he’s wearing a collar and a tag, and already I’m thinking about exchanging a few choice words with the owner for letting such a beautiful beast out in the cold like this.
