Dwelling by Thomas S. Flowers Read Free Book Online Page A

deployment. She stuck through it all, even rehab and recovery. She stayed, despite her own sister’s loss. Tabitha was not his own. She was the product of a previous relationship, which ended just as fast as you can say wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am, or as fast as Karen told the scum-bag, “I’m pregnant.” Karen had gotten knocked-up shortly after finishing high school.
    Johnathan never asked about the other guy, but had gathered from what little she did say, that she, or rather he, wanted nothing to do with the baby. Johnathan didn’t care about any of that. He loved Karen. And he loved his little eight-year-old piggy-tailed girl, with her glow-in-the-dark, rainbow t-shirts and strangely-boyish bug books.
    This morning Tabitha was already dressed, hidden behind a looming box of Cap’n Crunch cereal. Her spoon glinted in the morning sun that came through the blinds. Milk dribbled on her small delicate chin, which she smeared with her forearm, continuing to read whatever maze or riddle was on the back of the cartooned pirate box.
    Karen was in front of the stove, scrambling eggs. Johnathan could hear the mechanical pop of the toaster as two near-burnt pieces of toast sprung from the contraption. Dark roasted smoke wafted from the black coffee pot on the counter. Steam came off it in shoots. The red Folgers can sat beside it, the lid precariously left unsealed. Going to lose its freshness .
    Johnathan considered getting up and closing the lid, but decided against it. He rubbed his thigh instead. The nerves still danced from last night’s terrible dream and the memory of his dead friend. He sat quietly instead, for some time, watching Tabitha eat blindly while reading the back of her cereal box. He glanced at his wife, who was finishing off the eggs. I’m one lucky guy . The lump in his heart seemed to abate with happy thoughts and thanksgiving for the family he had been blessed with. Blessed? Strange word. Sounds like something Jake would say.
    Randall would call it blind, stupid, dumb luck. Johnathan pictured his, what could you call him? Life coach? No. Sounds too yuppie. Counselor? Not great either, but better than ‘life coach!’ He pictured Randall in his mind. An older, grizzly looking man well into his sixties. A Vietnam veteran missing both legs. Randall Hampton had been in the Twenty-Sixth Marine Regiment at the Battle of Khe Sanh. He was wounded when a massive artillery bombardment came down on his garrison near the Laotian boarder. Randall often said it was the bloodiest battle he had the pleasure of seeing, the last one he would see, spanning some seventy-seven days. “It was a beautiful place,” Randall sometimes said. “Tall mountain peaks coated with lush green palms. Lots of sun. I watched this dragon-looking white-tailed butterfly one afternoon. It was gorgeous, Johnny-Boy, it really was. The way it floated like some damn angelic humming bird dancing just above a lotus. Wonderful. But then the mortars and the screams, ‘incoming,’ and the flares and AK-47’s rattled and we’d remember this was a war. When the sun came back up on that first morning we saw the corpses. Jesus…Some were tangled together like cruel, rotting blue and purple jigsaws. Others had been thrown about like burnt straw. The smell was…well, I rather not say, Johnny-Boy. I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. About five hundred Marines died on that hellish mountain, some of whom were my dearest friends.”
    Randall talked about the war distantly, as if he wasn’t really telling Johnathan his story about himself, but rather reminding himself of what had happened, as if remembering the truth was too frightening to hold on to; it had to be dug up from time to time and reburied just as quick.
    Johnathan understood Randall in a way few could. He always found it strange how open the old man was with it all. The friends he’d lost. What he lost. His self-medicating haze through the ’80s. “Booze and whores; whores and