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You went off to war, you were carried away by the excitement of it, especially if you’d been raised on stories of bravery and battles and warriors.
He sure as hell had.
Their mother was dead, gone when Travis was six, Caleb four, Jake two. Housekeepers, nannies and a stepmother, who’d only stayed long enough to bear three daughters, had raised them.
The
General, the rare times he was home, regaled them with stories about their ancestors, a hodgepodge of men who’d marched on Gaul with Caesar, raided the British Isles from longboats, crossed the Atlantic in sailing ships and then conquered a vast new continent from the Dakota plains to the Mexican border.
The stories had thrilled him.
Now, he knew they were nonsense.
Not the part about the warriors. He’d been one himself these last years, fighting alongside honorable, brave men, serving a nation he loved.
But his father had left things unsaid. The politicians. The lies. The cover-ups.
Jake stood on the brakes. The Thunderbird skidded, slewed sideways across the dirt road and came to a hard stop. He crossed his hands on the steering wheel, wrist over wrist.
He could hear his heart thumping.
He was heading straight back into that dark place he’d sworn he wouldn’t visit again.
He waited. Let his heartbeat slow. Then he opened the door and stepped from the car.
Something brushed against his face. A moth.
Good. Moths were real. They were things a man could understand.
He took a long gulp of cool night air. Tucked his hands into his trouser pockets. Looked up as clouds hid the stars, as cold and distant as the polar ice caps.
Minutes passed. The stars came out from behind the clouds, along with the moon. He got back into the ‘Bird and drove on until, finally, he could see the outline of the house, standing on a rise maybe an eighth of a mile away.
Light streamed from its windows.
Panic twisted in his gut.
He pulled onto the grass, stopped the car again and got out.
There was a stand of old oaks to his left, and a footpath that led through them.
Jake set out along the path. A breeze carrying the gurgling sound of Coyote Creek winding, unseen, alongside, accompanied him. Dry leaves crunched under the soles of the cowboy boots he’d never given up wearing.
There’d been a time he’d loved nights like these. The crystalline air. The distant glitter of the stars.
Back then, he’d look up at the sky as he just had and wonder at the impossibility of standing on a planet spinning through space.
His hand went to his eye socket. The taut skin below it.
Now, the only thing a night like this meant was that the cold made his bones, his jaw, the empty space that had once been an eye, ache.
Why would the eye hurt when it didn’t exist anymore?
He’d asked the doctors and physical therapists the question half a dozen times and always got the same answer.
His brain thought the eye was still there.
Yeah. Right.
