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“Only with you.” I winked and picked up the list of food I needed for tonight’s dinner. “Let me grab that for you.” I raced around the side of the truck to help her out onto the icy sidewalk. Since our night at the lake a few months back, I’d mostly started thinking ahead instead of backward. There were a few times the guys or I would slip up for a moment or two and let our heads go dark, but we worked together as a team and fought our way out of it.
If I was told before I’d left for Nam that I’d be where I was today, I would have laughed. Who would have ever thought I’d be helping to build a safehouse on Larry’s land? Yet here I was, doing just that. The big difference was we trained to fight a different kind of war now. One I never would have imagined. One I planned to fight, but this time with the world’s most wonderful woman next to me.
I took Sue’s hand, and we headed into the store together. I was proud to show she was mine.
“That’s a pretty long list.” Sue studied the list I held up. “Why don’t we start here and just weave up and down each aisle?”
“Lead the way.”
“I see you need a lot of apples. Have you tried Pete’s?”
“Pete’s?” I looked at the giant rows of apples from local suppliers.
“Pete has one of the best orchards in Glen Haven. It’s about an hour from here.”
“Was he the guy who bought Cliff’s old farm?”
“Yeah, about six years ago he sold to Pete, and now he’s got the best produce for miles. Story is he built up the soil with a concoction of nutrients. It’s a big secret, and everyone’s dying to figure it out. He’s not tellin’ either. I know he’s lovin’ the whole thing.” She chuckled as she rubbed an apple on her jeans to shine it up then handed it to me. “Try it.” I took a bite and let the taste burst over my tongue. “See, much better than those ones.”
“I’m sold.” I handed her the bag of apples I’d picked up, and she put it back, then we loaded up on Pete’s. “Here.” I handed her the list. “You seem to know the best local stuff.”
“All right.” She pulled the list from my fingers and began to show me the ropes. That was one of the many things I loved about Sue. She always managed to amaze me even in the smallest ways. Truth be told, the best part of walking shoulder to shoulder, plucking items off the shelves, was it felt so normal, like we were a real couple doing real couple things. I made sure to take a moment to soak it up.
“What?” She’d just carefully selected some corn and put in the cart. Her expression told me she seen me watching her.
“It’s just nice.”
“What is?”
“Being here with you.”
She leaned on the front of the cart as she thought about what I said.
“We could do more things like this since you seem to enjoy it.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Mhm.” Her eyes lit up. “I need to order some firewood for Dad this afternoon. Maybe you can help me with that.”
“If that means more time with you, then I’m all for it. “
With a cart full of food, enough to feed an army, she laughed at me as I pushed it toward the truck. Then we came to a dead stop.
“Oh, my God!” Her hands went to her mouth, and I saw the windshield of my truck had been smashed and the words “child killer” were spray painted along the side of the door. I cursed ever putting the Army sticker on my truck. I knew it was a target on my back.
I heard the footsteps as they raced up behind us, and I instinctively slipped into Army mode and shoved Sue aside as I whirled around. I thought I was going to meet a punch, but instead I got a bucket full of pig’s blood splashed over my chest and down my front.
Three teenagers ran toward a yellow Volkswagen van. It had a huge peace sign painted on the side of it withmake love not warcrudely written under it. One of the two guys still held a pail that dripped red. The girl, dressed in some sort of long dress with fringes on it, screamed something over her shoulder as she ran. I couldn’t make it out. Her brightly colored beads bounced around as she urged the boys to run faster. It was obvious they weren’t from around here. At a safe distance, close to their van, they stopped and turned around. The girl jumped up and down in her excitement.
“Go back to Nam, baby killer!” the boy with a military jacket that had been ruined with black marker yelled with his hands up to his mouth like a megaphone.
“You should be ashamed of yourself,” the girl wildly screamed at me as she twirled and danced like some sort of crazy doll.
“You’re a disgrace to our country.” The military jacket guy suddenly came at me in a full run. Sue screamed for help. “To our flag!” he yelled. And just like that, the past sucked me backward and I could see that little boy’s terrified eyes and his urine-soaked pants. How many times had that vision come to me and woken me sweaty and panting from a dead sleep as it raced to the surface of my memory?
“You’re wrong,” I said through clenched teeth as I easily blocked the two-handed shove he threw at me. I held back. I sure didn’t want Sue to hear anything about some of the dark moments I’d had there. “You have no idea what it was like over there!” I glared at him.
“Dan, are you okay?” Sue quickly handed me something to wipe my face clean of the disgusting blood that had already started to dry.
