Only the Rain by Randall Silvis
Hey Spence.
It’s been a long time, brother. Not that I haven’t thought about you since leaving you back there in the sandbox with the camel spiders and sand vipers. A couple days ago I read an article that said Iraq is the most dangerous place in the world, and not just because of its animals. I guess we can attest to that, huh?
Those days are never far from my thoughts, which means you aren’t either. Doing what we did over there, living the way we lived, it’s always going to be a part of me, like it or not.
More and more lately, as a matter of fact. For a long time now I’ve been waking up in the middle of the night, seems like it’s always between 0200 and 0300, and I’ll go sit at the kitchen table or on the couch in front of the TV, and I’ll be telling myself I ought to sit down at the computer and send you an e-mail like I used to. Stupid, huh? An exercise in futility, as you used to say.
Thing is, there’s just too much I have to tell somebody, and nobody else I can tell it to. So here I am at the computer tonight instead of staring at the TV or the back of my eyelids. 0249. I’m finally doing it. Cindy and the girls are sleeping like the angels they are, the house is quiet as a tomb, and it feels good to think we’re maybe connecting up again.
Question is, where to start. Cause it’s hard jumping right into the story, you know? Just coming right out with it, saying I met this woman and I did this, I did that, and it was maybe the stupidest thing I’ve ever done, and now I’m terrified about what’s going to happen next.
Back in the sandbox I would have walked up to you and said, “Can I talk to you a minute, Spence?” and gotten straight to the point. But we were together every day back then, living the same life. Never knew if we’d see another morning or not. I think I’m still pretty much the same guy I was over there, but the details are different. Different routines, different obligations, different people to answer to. Context, you know? That’s what you always used to say. Context is everything.
For one thing, I was just a kid over there. Over here I have a pregnant wife and two of the sweetest little girls anybody could imagine. The third one’s still an unknown, so new to us that Cindy’s old jeans still fit, though she has to keep the top unsnapped now, and only wears them when she goes into town for something other than work. Around the house she mostly wears sweatpants with an elastic top. Even so, another baby on the way has to be factored into all of our plans. I’m the guy responsible for everybody.
Anyway, I guess I’ll start by telling you about tonight’s dream. I’ve had it a couple times before, and I wish like hell it would stop. I have this thing that happened to me here, and not very long ago. But somehow in my head it’s getting all messed up now with that night we got grabbed out of the rack and had to collect those three bodies in an alleyway, you remember? Three guys laying there in pieces with their rifles stacked in a corner. The one guy was in so many pieces it was hard to tell which parts were his and which belonged to that girl he’d been on top of. And how we were told to leave her where she was, not to bother with her, like we weren’t even supposed to see her or know what had been going on there before they all bought the farm.
When I dream about that, I dream it’s me on top of her when the IED goes off. In the dream I hear the bag or whatever it was being thrown into the alley and hitting the dirt, and then the boom and all the air gets sucked out of me, and right away I know what it is and that I’m dead as shit, and I have these few moments before waking up when I’m pissed as hell at the people who would do something like that. I mean killing us soldiers is one thing, but what kind of people wouldn’t come to help a girl being raped but would sacrifice her like that just to kill some Americans? And I wake up feeling so helpless and guilty and I don’t know what all.
Jesus, it was fucked over there, wasn’t it?
Anyway, the girl in the dream. It isn’t that haji girl I see with me on top of her, both of us about to be blown to pieces, but this other girl I met over here a little while back. To say met isn’t quite right though, because I didn’t even get her name until a week or more later, and by then I wanted to forget all about her and the stupid thing I did. You’re probably thinking sex, right? But no, it was way more stupid than that. And way more dangerous.
Thing is, that’s all still playing out. It’s like I’m waiting for the other shoe to fall. It might be a slipper, or it might be an IED. Worst part is, I can’t tell Cindy or the girls or anybody else about it, which is why I’m sitting here at the computer at three in the morning. I asked myself who can I tell and still keep the whole thing a secret, and it was either you or God. I figure God already knows, and that’s probably why I can’t shake this need to try to get myself clean again.
I just don’t know how to get into it without taking you back to what all led up to it. But then I think, am I just trying to rationalize what I did? Blame the circumstances instead of taking the blame like a man? I often wonder about those three soldiers. If they had been caught and arrested and not scooped up into body bags, would they have tried to weasel out of it somehow, or would they have manned up and said, “I did it. I’m guilty as hell”?
Because I feel like I need to say that, Spence. I did it. I’m guilty as hell. And now I can’t seem to get over this feeling that I—
Gotta go, Spence. Emma’s crying, having a bad dream, I guess, just like her old man. Next time.
You remember those times I talked about Pops and Gee, the grandparents who raised me after my mother died? Well, Gee passed a little over a year ago. Pops shuffled around on his own for several months after that, but sank lower and lower, it seemed to me, until one day I took him to check out this independent living place called Brookside Country Manor about six miles from Cindy’s and my new house. It took another four months before he surprised me by admitting he’d been visiting it from time to time ever since.
“I booked myself a room in that no-tell motel you took me to,” he said.
“What do you mean you booked yourself a room?”