The Return(4)

Glancing up, I saw the girl. She’d doubled back and was standing a few yards away, clearly keeping her distance, but close enough for me to notice a spray of light freckles on cheeks that were so pale as to seem almost translucent. On her arms I noted a couple of bruises, like she’d bumped into something. She wasn’t particularly pretty and there was something unfinished about her, which made me think again that she was a teenager. Her wary gaze suggested that she was prepared to run if I made the smallest move toward her.

“I do now,” I said, offering a smile. “But I don’t know how long I’ll be staying.”

“The old man died. The one who used to live here. His name was Carl.”

“I know. He was my grandfather.”

“Oh.” She slipped a hand into her back pocket. “He gave me honey.”

“That sounds like something he’d do.” I wasn’t sure if that was true, but it struck me as the right thing to say.

“He used to eat at the Trading Post,” she said. “He was always nice.”

Slow Jim’s Trading Post was one of those ramshackle stores so ubiquitous in the South and had been around longer than I’d been alive. My grandfather used to bring me there whenever I visited. It was the size of a three-car garage with a covered porch out front, and it sold everything from gas to milk and eggs, to fishing equipment, live bait, and auto parts. There were old-fashioned gas pumps out front—no credit or debit accepted—and a grill that served hot food. Once, I remember finding a bag of plastic toy soldiers wedged between a bag of marshmallows and a box of fishing hooks. There was little rhyme or reason to the offerings on the shelves or displayed on the walls, but I always thought it was one of the coolest stores ever.

“Do you work there?”

She nodded before pointing at the box in my hand. “Why are you putting mothballs around the house?”

I stared at the box in my hand, realizing that I’d forgotten I was holding it.

“There was a snake on my porch this morning. I’ve heard that mothballs will keep them away.”

She pursed her lips before taking a step backward. “Okay, then. I just wanted to know if you were living here now.”

“I’m Trevor Benson, by the way.”

At the sound of my name, she stared at me. Working up the courage to ask the obvious.

“What happened to your face?”

I knew she was referring to the thin scar that ran from my hairline to my jaw, which reinforced the impression of her youth. Adults usually wouldn’t bring it up. Instead, they’d pretend they hadn’t noticed. “Mortar round in Afghanistan. A few years back.”

“Oh.” She rubbed her nose with the back of her hand. “Did it hurt?”

“Yes.”

“Oh,” she said again. “I guess I’ll get going now.”

“All right,” I said.

She started back toward the road before suddenly turning around again. “It won’t work,” she called out.

“What won’t work?”

“The mothballs. Snakes don’t give a lick about mothballs.”

“You know that for sure?”

“Everyone knows it.”

Tell that to my grandfather, I thought. “Then what should I do? If I don’t want snakes on my porch?”

She seemed to consider her answer. “Maybe you should live in a place where there aren’t any snakes.”

I laughed. She was an odd one, for sure, but I realized that it was the first time I’d laughed since I’d moved here, maybe my first laugh in months.

“Nice meeting you.”

I watched her go, surprised when she slowly pirouetted. “I’m Callie,” she called out.

“Nice to meet you, Callie.”

When she finally vanished from view, blocked by the azaleas, I debated whether to continue putting out mothballs. I had no idea whether she was right or wrong, but in the end, I chose to call it a day. I was in the mood for some lemonade and wanted to sit on the back porch and relax, if only because my psychiatrist recommended that I take time to relax while I still had time.

He said it would help me keep The Darkness away.

*



My psychiatrist sometimes used flowery language like The Darkness to describe PTSD, also known as post-traumatic stress disorder. When I asked him why, he explained that every patient was different and that part of his job was to find words that accurately reflected the mood and feelings of the patient in a way that would lead the patient along the slow path toward recovery. Since he’d been working with me, he’d referred to my PTSD as turmoil, issues, struggle, the butterfly effect, emotion dysregulation, trigger sensitivity, and of course, The Darkness. It kept our sessions interesting, and I had to admit that darkness was about as accurate a description of the way I’d been feeling as any of them. For a long time after the explosion, my mood was dark, as black as the night sky without stars or a moon, even if I didn’t fully realize why. Early on, I was stubbornly in denial about PTSD, but then again, I’d always been stubborn.

In all candor, my anger, depression, and insomnia made perfect sense to me at the time. Whenever I glanced in the mirror, I was reminded of what had happened at Kandahar Airfield on September 9, 2011, when a rocket aimed at the hospital where I was working impacted near the entrance, only seconds after I’d exited the building. There is a bit of irony in my choice of words, since glancing in the mirror isn’t the same as it once was. I was blinded in my right eye, which means I have no depth perception. Staring at a reflection of myself feels a little like watching swimming fish on an old computer screen saver—almost real, but not quite—and even if I were able to get past that, my other wounds are as obvious as a lone flag planted atop Mount Everest. I’ve already mentioned the scar on my face, but shrapnel left my torso pockmarked like the moon. The pinkie and ring finger on my left hand were blown off—particularly unfortunate since I’m a lefty—and I lost my left ear as well. Believe it or not, that was the wound that bothered me the most about my appearance. A human head doesn’t look natural without an ear. I looked strangely lopsided and it wasn’t until that moment that I’d ever really appreciated my ear at all. In the rare times I thought about my ears, it was always in the context of hearing things. But try wearing sunglasses with just one ear and you’ll understand why I felt the loss acutely.