One September Morning. Rosalind Noonan

      Fort Lewis

       Jim Stanton

      He is going to be late for work.

      Checking for cars, Jim Stanton jogs across the street and onto a path that cuts through a densely treed park bordering the army base.

      You cannot report for duty late in the army without repercussions, and this fact has been so ingrained in Jim in the fifty or so years since he entered West Point that he still feels guilty calling in a bit late now that he has retired and moved over to the civilian side of the armed services.

      “No worries,” Teresa told him when he called in to the office at I-Corps, the elite Army Division here in Fort Lewis where he now taught at the Joint Readiness Training Center. “A retirement job,” Sharice called it, knowing that he’d go stir-crazy if he totally detached from the military after thirty-some years with Uncle Sam.

      “Wait…” Teresa paused, and he heard her shuffling through some papers. “Your classes don’t even meet until this afternoon? Easy does it, Jim. You don’t need to come in this morning if it’s not convenient.”

      He resisted the urge to accuse her of colluding with his doctor and assured her he would be there, his voice tight from lack of sleep. The damned dream was back, and though he spent the night fighting it, the pattern persisted: He would fall asleep, fall victim to the dream, wake up in a panic, then spend the next few hours trying to relax and clear his head. By the time he finally fell asleep, the sun would be rising, a spiteful orange ball bouncing in through the tall round window of the master bedroom.

      The goddamned dream.

      It had returned, a monster scuttling out of hibernation and roaring in the night.

      He lengthens his stride, trying not to favor his left leg as he cuts off to the right on the path that turns into the woods. As he jogs, he is vigilant, his eyes darting quickly from side to side, watching for movement in the trees. The slightest movement of a branch, the smallest jangle of leaves can mean danger.

      The enemy.

      An ambush.

      Well…he does not expect to find those things here but these are things that he teaches his soldiers, survival skills he learned by doing.

      Odd that the same memories that lend credibility to his days now haunt his nights. Sometimes he wonders why the dream has returned after having been gone for so many years. And how did he chase it away after his return from ’Nam? He can’t even remember, though he’s damned sure he didn’t employ the help of a head shrinker. Don’t need those guys to interfere and start telling him what to do.

      A man’s got to make his own decisions.

      Some of it’s obvious, of course: that the dream returned when American soldiers were once again dispatched to combat duty. Not to mention the kick in the butt that came when his own two sons dropped their career paths and enlisted in a Special Forces unit three years ago. If the act of packing up your sons and sending them off to basic training doesn’t send you rewinding back through your military career, nothing will.

      As he jogs, he notices movement in a lone tree standing in a clearing. His eyes dart over to catch a squirrel leaping off a leafy branch and somersaulting to a limb below. Rodent trapeze. Just a squirrel.

      Another lone tree appears in his mind, the last tree standing after B-52s came through the night before and dropped bombs in an attempt to clear the area of Viet Cong. His platoon had been sweeping through in search of the enemy when they came across the single tree. They paused there, curious that the tree had survived the holocaust of fire, and that it was occupied by a monkey who kept scrambling up and down.

      “Very entertaining,” said Riley. “Hey, Amitrano, you got peanuts to go with the show?”

      No one laughed. They didn’t do much laughing on forward patrol.

      “Weird,” Shroeder said, scanning the barren landscape scraped out by last night’s bombs. Eighteen and freckle faced, Shroeder was a kid from Wisconsin who should have been home scooping ice cream and polishing his car for his date at the drive-in with Betty Sue. “How’d that monkey survive?” When no one answered, he added, “You think any of those bombs hit Charlie?”

      “Bombing the jungle at night’s like shooting into a pickle barrel,” Jim said. “The chances of hitting your target are one in a million.”

      “Yeah, but sometimes you get lucky, right?” Shroeder asked.

      Don’t count on it, Jim thought, taking a last look at the eerie tree swaying in the early morning mist. The poor monkey was probably scared out of its gourd, traumatized by the fire-storm of the night before, only to awaken at dawn to find itself islanded in this tree. Isolated. Alone.

      Like the last one on earth.

      Don’t go there, Jim warns himself as he pushes past the pain in his left leg, pushes on, as always. “I see no reason why you can’t do some running, if the pain is tolerable,” the orthopedic surgeon had told him when his physical therapy was ending back in 1970. “Light running—no marathons for you.” Jim had taken a bullet in the upper leg and one in the chest during an ambush outside Lai Ke in 1967. Serious injuries, but he counts himself lucky to be alive. His company lost more than half their ranks in that disaster.

      By the time he rounds the corner and sprints toward home, sweat drips down his back, drenching the collar of his T-shirt. His bad leg throbs, but the pain is tolerable, no more than a persistent reminder of where he’s been. As he closes the distance, his mind races ahead to a quick shower, coffee at 7-Eleven, then a beeline to the office.

      But the person waiting at his front door sounds an alarm in his brain. Jim breaks stride and slows his pace to see that it’s someone in uniform, who is turning away from the doorbell to shoot him a glance.

      “You looking for me?” Jim calls out, checking his watch. “I may be AWOL, but not by that much.” He smiles at the kid, but as he grows closer he’s able to see that the young man does not return his smile.

      In fact, the corporal seems nervous. “Are you James Stanton?” he asks, and realization dawns within Jim, blinding and stark.

      Just then a shot cracks the air.

      Jim Stanton braces himself, eyes closed and fists clenched, knowing it’s the beginning of the onslaught, unaware that the explosion he heard was only in his mind.

      Chapter 4

      Washington

       Suz

      “I hate MapQuest.” Suz Wollenberg leans closer to the steering wheel, as if that will help her read street signs that are not there. “Can I have a street sign? Just one goddamned sign?” She tosses the printout of her directions onto the floor and grips the steering wheel with her fists. “Dear Lord, please give me a sign!” she moans dramatically.

      How’s a person supposed to get around without signs? Maybe the city of Greendale can’t afford them. Or they were stolen by a bunch of kids. She’s seen movies where they make it a fraternity prank to steal them, then use them to decorate the frat house, bringing new meaning to signs like DEAD END and DAN-GEROUS CURVES and SLIPPERY WHEN WET. You betcha.

      Oh…her sick mind. Like she’s ever going to have a chance to have sex again in this millennium. Scott took care of that by dying. Sometimes she gets so pissed off at him for getting killed and leaving Sofia and her alone. But that’s when she’s not aching for him and wondering if there is some sort of afterlife and gaping at this whole big world where she’s supposed to find a place for herself and her baby to live beyond the safety net of an army base.

      Which, so far, has not been as easy as it might seem.

      Bottom line, she’s never going to find this apartment complex if she can’t locate NW Walnut, and even though the rent on this one is a little beyond her comfort zone, she doesn’t want to piss off the apartment manager by making an appointment, then not showing up. She can’t afford