Soldier On
He would be in the grocery store, trying to find some milk to last him the week while replacing the baloney that had gone rank in his refrigerator within the last week because he hadn’t been eating properly. Or he would be in the guard office in the prison, flipping through a magazine and keeping an eye on the TV screens with black-and-white images of the jail cells and the prisoners in them. Or he would be at home, in his little one-room flat, watching the telly and eating an apple and wondering why he had ever come back to Westfield.
He would be any of these situations, doing whatever it was he did, when he would hear something – tins falling in another aisle, fellow guards calling back and forth to each other from other sides of the room, an explosion on the telly from a made-for-TV movie – and he would be back in Afghanistan.
He had been walking home from his therapy, leaning heavily on his cane and grumbling about his lack of progress, when he heard a child’s play-filled shriek and was suddenly thrown from the cold Michigan air into the hateful heat of the desert.
The sky was bright, painful blue – not a cloud in the sky – and the buildings around them were war-torn and crumbling into ruins. Dustin stood crouched behind a flipped-over tank, smelling death and decay from the bodies within the vehicle.
But his eyes were on the little girl with dark skin in front of him.
She was small, and looked like she could’ve used a good meal or five, but she was not starved. Wearing a dulled blue dress, with a white head cloth wrapped around her dark hair – he couldn’t remember for the life of him what they were called now, but he used to know it by heart – her wide brown eyes were what kept his attention.
Her eyes, and the mine that she was standing on.
“What’s yer name?” he asked softly, adjusting his rifle on his shoulder and holding up his free hand to show he wasn’t going to hurt her. She kept her eyes on his face, taking in pale features, blond hair, blue eyes, big nose. He wanted to wipe the look of terror off of her face, but he thought that perhaps making a funny face would be a bit off colour.
“A-Amal,” she whispered, looking at him with glassed-over eyes. Near tears, he’d bet anything and who could blame her? She was standing in the worst spot on the planet and Dustin didn’t know what to do to help her.
“Can y'do something for me, Amal?” He spoke calmly, casually, as if he were just asking a favour from her. It was a liar’s tone, and he knew it – and she knew it, yet neither of them made comment on it. The fact that he was lying to her hurt the most, almost, but he knew he had to. He didn’t know why he had to, but he knew he did. That was the important part.
“What?” Her English was so clear, as if she had been taught it by her parents in case they ever went to America or Canada or even England. How old was she; how did she know to speak so clearly? Did she go to school? So many questions and no answers…
“Stay right there.”
She nodded, her hands held out to balance her, feet bare and caked in dirt and mud. Dustin looked around to see if he could find anyone – anyone at all to help the civilian make it out of this safely.
And that was when he heard the popping of bullets.
And that was when he heard Amal gasp and the unmistakable sound of stumbling.
He lost consciousness due to the heat of the explosion—
Gasping, Dustin shook himself out of the flashback, Amal’s screams still echoing in his head, and he stared down the alley where he saw the children playing some game of tag. His hands were shaking, and his leg was aching, and suddenly he just wanted to collapse and sob because he still hadn’t allowed himself the moment to do so.
Yet still he wouldn’t, and instead of breaking down as he wished to Dustin moved forward, marching home and pushing back all emotions to the back of his mind.
He didn’t have the time to deal with them right now. Now, or ever.