Pieces of You by J F Elferdink Read Free Book Online

to respond? Fall on my knees and beg forgiveness for doing my job?”
    “In your military training, you exchanged your civilian role for that of a killing machine. You were programmed to attack and destroy whoever and whatever was branded as the enemy of the American people. Am I right, Mark?”
    “You bet you’re right! All our training exercises started and ended with the refrain: ‘Kill or be killed, kill or be killed’.”
    “Please do not think you’re being vilified. This could be your liberation. Guilt has been wreaking havoc within your body ever since you killed your first Vietnamese.
    “ After all, you were taught the commandment ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ when your parents took you to Sunday school.”
    “That’s not fair! That c ommandment is about murder, not self-defense or defending a legitimate cause. Don’t you know I was shot, too?”
    “God heard you when you pleaded for relief from the horror of what you had been through , but you have not let it go. Corpses still roam freely through your nightmares most nights.”
    “Stop it! How can you possibly know what’s in my dreams?”
    “Mark, shall I disclose what you’ve been repeating to yourself for years? It goes something like this:
     
    ‘I didn’t enjoy serving in Vietnam, crawling through the jungle, parched ; having dysentery, being lonely, getting shot up and nearly dying.
    ‘ I was only defending my country and my men. I tried to protect even civilian Vietnamese although it was always a challenge to separate the innocent from the Vietcong’.
    “It seems you can read minds as easily as I read books, Zachri. Yes, that’s what I told myself, almost daily, during the first few years after I came home.”
    With Mark’s admission, an image of a family gathering came back to him in vivid detail. His family had thrown a party to welcome him home. His mom and dad had even talked him into wearing his uniform and the Silver Star he had been awarded for his part in rescuing captured soldiers. When he arrived at the hall, his cousins, who had already been drinking, had started in on him immediately:
    “Thank you for keeping America safe but did it require killing babies?”
    The shock of discovering that his own flesh and blood could show such disrespect for his sacrifice had enraged him. He frantically wanted to shut them up, but without a weapon his only option had been retreat.
    Running the three miles home, almost out of his mind with the horror of his own reaction, Mark had made two decisions.
    He would lock his Silver Star away and give the key to his mother , and during the rest of his life he would never discuss his navy experiences.
     
    When Mark came out of his reverie, the look on Zachri’s face told him that he’d been followed and his expression made Mark want to disclose other memories too; the stuff of his recurring nightmares.              
    “What would the world have become if Communist rule had swept through all of Southeast Asia and then on into North America? What else could we have done?”
    “I am not your defense attorney, and I won’t answer that. Instead, I am here to listen to whatever you’re ready to share. But first, let me take you to an old friend.”
    Mark and Zachri moved from the site of the burial ceremony to a little hill near where Mark had sustained serious injuries.
    There, they were joined by someone who had often walked or crawled with him during his tour of duty and had been a regular nocturnal presence. Bob hadn’t made it out of Vietnam breathing. Yet here he stood, looking just as Mark remembered him the day they had landed in Vietnam.
     
    Astonishment and fear left Mark speechless. When Bob spoke, Mark recognized his distinctive baritone voice.
    “Mark, it’s me.” He flashed a shy grin and added:
    “I’m delighted to see you.”
    “It can’t be! You’re dead, Bob. I saw you die.”
    “I knew this would be hard for you to believe so I asked C.S. Lewis for help—he