End of the Road Read online

  “Read me the part about the flowers.” Theodore didn't have a wife of his own. He was old enough, not a child like the drummers or even a young swain looking for romance. A few gray hairs edged his beard, though he laughed and said they popped out after the first battle.

  John cleared his throat, “You would like the daisies, peeping shyly out from mama's hedge. Whenever I see them I think about the evening we walked through Mama’s garden, and the moment you first said you loved me. It seems so long ago now.”

  Theodore crossed his arms, “Bet it seems longer to you, huh?”

  John nodded. An eternity. Forever since he'd held Rebecca's hand under the stars the night after they were married and declared his love for the rest of his days. He folded the letter.

  “You always stop there. Why don't you keep reading?”

  “It's personal.”

  John waited until Theodore wandered away to bother some other poor fellow reading a letter from home. Then he settled onto his make-shift chair in the mist to think about the rest of the letter.

  John stared into the darkness. He had to find that letter. After a long wait in the cold dark, Ralph made the first move, taking point with a quick step, step, crouch and search. He stepped with a smooth efficiency that John envied. His men shared the same skill. John had slithered and crawled through the woods taking an hour to cover as much ground as Ralph did in five minutes. He slowly lifted himself from the ground. There was something wrong with trusting the air. He wanted to sink back into the mud but if the lieutenant was willing to help, John could at least keep up.

  By the time John crawled his way through the trees, Ralph was hunkered at the far side of the tent, scanning the camp and listening to the sounds of the night. John was lucky his tent was still in the part of camp being fought over. Across the clearing, the enemy waited to pick off anyone coming out of the tents. In the darkness it seemed a great distance, but it wasn't really, not if they moved forward.

  While Ralph kept watch, John snuck along the side of the canvas wishing for a sharper knife. It would have been easier to cut a hole in the back. Ralph's men started their diversion with a sudden volley that had everyone looking away from the tent where Rebecca's letter waited.

  John swept into the tent and wiping his hands on his sleeve, picked up the letter and tucked it back where it belonged with the thin paper photograph of his wife, a carte de vista purchased for a nickel before he shipped out.

  “Hold.”

  From outside the tent, Ralph's voice gave the command that told John to stay put. A sudden volley across the field and the sound of horses startled John. Even with his pants soaked through and the chill midnight air, he felt sweat bead along his forehead. He itched to pull the flap back and take his chances with the whooping and hollering men pouring into camp. He heard the laughter across the field and the sound of objects thrown. The looting had already begun. John didn't dare call for Ralph, but what if he'd been shot? How would John know to leave?

  He lay on his stomach at the flap and with the tiniest flick of a finger, lifted the canvas to look outside. In the dark he could see nothing, only the remnants of a fire and a pot turned on its side. No movement struck his attention, but then from that angle, his line of vision wasn't the greatest.

  “Now, John, hurry.”

  Ralph's voice called to him, a beacon in that dismal hell. Pushing himself up, John bolted through the flaps and sprinted sideways, crashing into the trees. Gunfire exploded behind and Ralph called for the retreat. The pine he ducked beside exploded, splinters driving into the arm he had thrown over his face, into his neck and chest. Stumbling, his foot caught on a root and he fell hard on one knee.

  Before he could straighten, he felt a hand at his arm pulling him up. “We'd best run for it now.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Such paltry words for a feeling of gratitude he could never express.

  He and the lieutenant, along with a dozen other men fled the camp, leaving food and clothing behind. As they crashed through the trees with shouts and shots behind them, John felt a twinge of guilt that so many men had stayed just so that he could sneak out Rebecca's letter. Never again would he sleep until it was in his pocket safely tucked away.

  Ralph led the men along the river as the sky brightened and the day warmed. Stragglers joined the group and slowly the regiment regrouped. The new day dawned miserably on most of the men to whom the loss of food and shelter was a dark blow, but to John, he felt the loss somewhat less. He bore his luck close to his heart, lost and regained in a night.

  They stopped mid-morning to regroup. Half the regiment was lost in the woods and the rest were tired and sore, a few wounded. John's arms itched and stung, although he'd pulled out as many of the slivers as he could find while they walked.

  They built a make-shift camp, hunted for squirrel and pooled the food from the packs rescued in the melee. Without a fire, the camp was cold. John sat in a small group, his back to the tree, still picking bits of wood out of his skin.

  “So what's in that letter worth your life?” Smith, the gruff fellow who held the forward position with Ralph, found a patch of moss and sat down.

  Unfolding the letter, John skipped to the part that he thought could somehow justify his actions, the small section that might make sense to five men who risked themselves for his damn romantic notions. The part he'd never read aloud before. He swallowed and found the words he'd kept to himself for so long.

  With a rough voice, he read Rebecca's letter. “You are going to be a father, and I pray this letter finds you safe and bears you home to us. Every night I pretend you are holding my hand and we are discussing names for our child, and every morning I think I am one day closer to seeing you again. When I feel the seed of our love blossoming within...” John blushed and stopped reading. He skipped that part and read from the end. “I pray you come home soon. All my love, Rebecca.”

  The men were too rough and had seen too much to do anything maudlin with the words. They clapped his shoulder, wished him luck with the baby, and joked about whether he'd be putting the letter in his boot for safe-keeping.

  John returned the laughter. “I'll be sure to keep it close from now on. Next time I go rushing back into a fight, it'll be for some beef.”

  With the afternoon sun warming the thicket, he pulled his cap over his eyes and pretended to sleep.

  In his thoughts he returned to his last day with Rebecca before joining his regiment. He thought they'd made the babe during his last night home with her, a frantic coupling when the two shared equal parts of pain and love, wondering when they would see one another again and worrying that this night would be their last. Not that they spoke the words out loud. Words had power.

  A week later and John was back in his regiment running up a hillock once more into a horrific slaughter. By the end of the day with blood flowing in the fields, his lungs full of smoke, and his ears ringing, John found himself exhausted. A sharp crack pierced the air and John threw himself into a ditch, finding himself next to Ralph.

  It wasn't a smile really. One didn't smile when the whole world was shaking loose, but John felt deep relief at seeing Ralph unharmed. He gripped Ralph's shoulder and the two men nodded to one another with solemn camaraderie. They shared the ditch and looked out together on the field. The Confederates were mixed up with the Federals and John worried more than once that he might be shooting a friend.

  He and Ralph sat side by side taking turns packing down powder and reloading. When the volleys finally stopped, John’s head ached and his ears hurt. They were signaling to one another by hand and fighting in tandem. They waited for several minutes, listening for the sound of the drum and the fife above the random crackle of the shots taken. The confederacy was in retreat. Feeling stiff and exhausted, John lifted his head like a cautious turtle to see a strange field of men, most of them stretched out like so many fallen branches, some long cold, some still screaming for help. He scanned the horizon and when it seemed safe, slowly lifted his
head over the ditch.

  Battle had taught John not to stand tall. He always felt naked that first moment up, with an itch on the back of his neck, the feeling that at any moment he would lose his head or an arm or leg, and it made him hunch a bit and feel shaky. It was just too easy to die on a battlefield.

  Ralph followed him out of the ditch. Across the field, other men were slowly coming out, shocked that after hours of battle, the confederates had retreated. Weary to his soul, John closed his eyes. He sought a memory of Rebecca, the moment in the church when they first kissed before God and man and the stray butterfly that meandered across the chapel floor when he pulled away. He felt the sun on his face but the smell of sulfur intruded.

  A shout and John felt himself flying through the air, pushed by the lieutenant as a shot crackled in the air. He fell hard. Ralph was lying heavily on John. John pushed back, rolling him away. Ralph gurgled blood with a shot in the lung, a shot meant for John, and Ralph was breathing in a high-pitched whistle. Three more shots rang out as men from Ralph's regiment executed the shooter. But it was too late for Ralph.

  John knelt beside the lieutenant. “Ralph? We'll get you to the field station.”

  Coughing blood and his voice thick with fluid, Ralph stared at the blue sky. “I want to see my Mama.”

  It felt strange hearing those words from a man so brave. And when John heard Ralph speak, all he could think of was Rebecca and that she was going to be a mother, and please God, don't ever let his child die on a battlefield calling for his Mama. As the light faded from Ralph's eyes, John felt cold, a bitter coldness that somehow covered any fear or anger or loneliness he should have felt. He knelt at Ralph's side for an eternity too empty and numb to think clearly. And soon Ralph was gone, to his own eternity leaving all else behind.

  John sat by Ralph's side in a daze until Jarvis found him and helped him stand. He didn't write again for nearly three days and when he did, he was exhausted to the point of illness. But it felt important. He might not have another chance to say what needed to be said.

  He wrote, “My dearest Rebecca, I look forward with great longing to see you. I hope this letter finds you well. I fear that the babe will come before I see home again. There is a man here to whom I owe my life. If our child is a son, I'd like to name him Ralph in his honor. Please go into the garden for me and spend a few minutes looking at the daisies, and maybe at the same time, I will be imagining you there.”

  John stopped writing. It wouldn't be enough, the naming of a son. But what more could he do? Ralph was already gone, and it would be a long road home.

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  Copyright March, 2013 Jeanette Raleigh

  Jeanette Raleigh is an author and artist who lives in the Seattle area. Some of the characters in “The Long Road Home” can be found in the novel The Zombie-Cowboy Two-Step slated for release later this year.

  Chapter 13

  Joint Venture

  By L. S. Burton

  Let there be light.

  Every forty-five minutes the Earth was reborn. With a hint of azure blue — a curved crack in the perfect black of space — splashing across a mystery continent, a brilliant flare wrapped white arms of light around the egg of the Earth and gently coaxed it out of shadow.

  Specialist Riley’s stomach flip-flopped. One moment he was floating peacefully in the black cradle of space, the next his legs suddenly felt heavy and he was teetering two hundred miles up in the air with nothing beneath his feet. The ISA hadn’t simulated that sensation for him during his sessions in the water tank — that practical dread screaming from his hindbrain to flail! Grasp something!

  Gripping his toolbox tighter he put one hand to the side of the station to steady himself, a bulge forming in his throat, sweat melting onto his forehead as the sun raised the temperature against his suit by nearly four hundred degrees.

  “Don’t look at it too long,” said his fellow astronaut, Yuri, with his nearly-perfect English, not looking away from the open panel of the shuttle. “You don’t want to be throwing up in your suit. We have yet two more wires to replace, and I need you. No good to be the first man to drown in space, no?

  Riley heard Yuri chuckle over the com but Riley was busy focusing on the lines on the back of his gloves and didn’t find the idea funny. This was his first EVA, and absolutely everyone, everyone, had told him it would be spectacular — to the extent that he’d mentally start a countdown after a handshake — but words could barely begin to describe the majesty and the panic of actually being there.

  Nicolas, the other Russian on their rotation, had tapped him with a grin inside the station while he was going through his pre-breathe routine to say, “You’ll be the monkey hanging from the tallest tree.” Nobody back in Florida had put it quite that way, but, as it turned out, that was a pretty good way to put it.

  But again … not funny.

  Riley swallowed hard. He’d waited his whole life for this moment, and even though he wanted to enjoy the bauble of the Earth slipping by at five miles a second beneath him, it wasn’t a good idea, and he focused on the side of Yuri’s helmet instead.

  Yuri was quiet for the moment. Doing delicate work inside a suit was difficult. The fingers of the gloves were thick and spring-loaded. Simply clenching your fists a few times would make your tendons ache. Little wires were practically impossible to pinch, and you needed to stretch your fingers to rest them every few seconds.

  Luckily, the blown motors that rotated their solar panels weren’t vital to their immediate survival; they had time to address the problem properly. Space was hard on equipment. Too often the shuttle crews were little more than astro-repairmen, and Riley was anxious to get this done and get back to his experiments with tomato growth in zero-g. He wasn’t sure he trusted Nicolas to follow his watering protocols properly while he was out.

  Yuri leaned back from the panel, shook his head, then leaned in again. Riley readied to pass him whatever tool he’d need, but a minute later Yuri leaned back and twisted his shoulders violently, which caused his whole body to pivot.

  “Riley,” said Yuri over the com. “Grab my helmet.”

  Riley hesitated, unsure if this were another of Yuri’s little jokes. If it were, it would be rather unprofessional. Of all the deadpan Russian scientists Riley had met over the years, he had to land a rotation with the only two comedians….

  “Riley, my helmet, please,” Yuri repeated.

  Nicolas’ voice then sounded over the com. “What’s the problem, Yuri?”

  “Just do it, Riley. It is making me crazy.”

  Riley was sure Nicolas was holding back laughter. “Having difficulties, Comrade Golgin?”

  Yuri rattled off a string of excited Russian. Riley’s command of the language was rather good but he couldn’t catch half of what Yuri was saying; almost certainly most of it was swears, in particular at Nicolas’ use of “comrade.”

  Carefully, Riley let the tethered toolbox float next to him on its umbilical and grabbed Yuri by the helmet. It felt weird to be doing, almost taboo. Yuri’s head jerked briefly, then a sigh of relief fuzzed the com with static. “Oh, that’s better. Thank you, Riley.”

  “What the heck was that all about?”

  On the com it sounded like Nicolas was breaking himself apart with laughter.

  “Nicolas,” said Yuri, “he’s done this twice before. He moved the nose scratcher piece inside my helmet just a few centimeters … just out of reach. That durak. The worst part, once I realize, that’s when the itch is like fire.”

  ~*~

  Thirty minutes later the Earth slimmed down to a sliver, then a line in space, then blip, it vanished into the deepest black imaginable. Without dust or the moon to reflect light, Riley’s arm ended at the elbow in the shadow of the toolkit he was carrying; every so often he’d wiggle his fingers inside the gloves to make sure they were still there.

  Forty five minute’s rotation later, with a flash of light the Earth returned, crashing through space beneath him. Oh
God don’t look down. Riley resisted pulling his feet up higher, and another forty-five minutes saw the light zipped up and peace returned. They floated in the womb of the universe again.

  Closing the second of three panels, feeling tired, they swapped out each other’s carbon dioxide scrubbers for another five hours of air, and moved on to the final repairs.

  “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” said Yuri, opening the panel. “I try not to look, but it slaps you in the face, no?”

  Riley couldn’t think of any better way to put it.

  “From up here,” said Yuri, “it’s not simply pieces of land. This land, that land, your land, my land, it’s more than that … it’s the sweet mamochka, the mother of us all. Every time she comes round I give her a big kiss on her wide cheeks and wish to never leave home again.”

  Riley smiled at the thought. It was only after a few moments had passed that he realized he hadn’t spoken. “Wide cheeks is right,” he said.

  Though his part of the EVA was mostly to float next to Yuri for a few hours, his muscles ached and he was feeling the limpness of dehydration fatigue. The suit was hot, and hard on a body. He felt like he’d just swam across the English channel.

  Except that would be cold. How about … swam across the English channel if it were hot like a cup of tea. Everybody seemed to have these wonderful comparisons. That would be his.

  But the more he thought about it, the more he saw it wasn’t actually very good.

  “You know,” said Yuri, cutting into his reverie. “I’ve been thinking of coming to your piece of our mamochka. I hear you have many very beautiful places.”

  “That’s right,” said Riley, spooling up the inner tour guide, “we have the Grand Canyon, we have … um—”

  “No, no,” said Yuri calmly, still focused on the task at hand, “I don’t want to see your biggest hole in the ground. I want to see the interesting things. I want to see the world’s biggest ball of hair in your Indiana. I want to see the biggest bird feeder in Maine. New Jersey has the world’s biggest tooth. Have you been to the biggest bottle of hair tonic in Tulsa? It is huge, the size of a rocket. I have always wondered: is Tulsa near Indiana? Near the biggest ball of hair? Is that why they have the biggest ball of hair, because of the biggest bottle of tonic?”