A Soldier's Story (9 page)

       His cell buzzed. Kerry! She'd be wondering where he'd got to. As soon as he answered he knew something was wrong. Her voice spoke volumes while saying very little. "You need to come home right away," she said, and abruptly hung up.

       As soon as he stepped inside the door, she handed him a letter. "This was waiting for me when I came home from work," she said.

       Printed in large letters on plain bond, the ugly words leapt out at him. YOUR HUSBAND FUCKS WHORES AND DARREN.

       Good God. The room spun and he groped for a chair to sit down. "This is a total lie," he declared, as soon as he scraped his senses together. He forced himself to look directly at Kerry. "You know that, of course."

       She looked confused, miserable, her eyes red from weeping. "Well I thought I did," she sobbed.

       "Are you saying you believe this…slander?"

       She wrung her hands together and perched on the edge of the couch. "I know you wouldn't have anything to do with another man," she said. "That's just… unthinkable… not believable. Good Lord, I met Darren…danced with him."

       Yet even as she said it, Jay saw the doubt in her eyes.

        "But…you've not been yourself for a while, Jay, drinking heavily, I often wondered if you might be seeing someone…another woman, I mean."

       "Not a chance." He hesitated. "I must admit when I was away for that year in Afghanistan…well it does get lonely. And I can understand how so many guys stray. But I swear I never did. I've never cheated on you."

        Your nose, Jay, just grew so long it could bridge the Atlantic. The little voice could not be expected to let something like that pass.

       "Who could have sent it?" Kerry looked at the offending letter as if it were in itself malignant.

       That lap dancing whore, Cindy. Go on tell her, Jay, how you raped her in public and she tried to knife you, afterwards.

       "I have no idea. There are sick people everywhere. They want to make everyone else as miserable as themselves." He grabbed the letter and tore it to shreds. "But we won't let them."

       Kerry looked unconvinced. "I think we need some time away from each other," she said. Jay looked in the bedroom and was amazed to find her bags already packed.

       "You sure didn't waste any time," he said.

       "It wasn't just the letter," she explained, struggling into her raincoat. "The way you've been drinking and staying out so much, sometimes all night…"

       "But where will you go?" He lit a cigarette, thought he'd go mad. The world as he'd known it was crumbling. Damn that fuckin' Cindy straight to hell.

       Damn yourself, you scumbag! The little voice shot back.

       "I'll be staying at my parent's place, for a while. They're expecting me."

       "Well your mother never did like me." Jay shuddered at the petulance he heard in his own voice. But once started he couldn't stop. "She'll be damned happy about this. I can bet she worked against me behind the scenes and bloody well encouraged it."

       Kerry looked shocked. "You need to stop drinking, Jay. It's making you paranoid."

        After she left, he hunted around in the cupboards until he found a half empty bottle of whiskey and tipped it to his lips. Ah, manna from heaven. It warmed him all the way down to his toes. It also enraged and empowered him. Gave him a sense of direction, a course of action to avenge himself. If that bitch thought she could get away with destroying his marriage, she was in for one helluva rude awakening.

       Cindy didn't destroy your marriage Jay, you did!

       "Shut the fuck up." He drained the bottle. He'd buy another while he was out. A gentle spring rain whispered through the long light evening. Tulips and daffodils swayed in the breeze. Jay started up the vehicle. Reached for his service revolver in the glove box. He was going to fuckin' kill the cunt.

       Razor's looked even sleazier than he remembered it. The reek of cheap sex and stale beer was nauseating. He spotted his quarry over by the bar, long blonde hair, skimpy red bikini, and stiletto heels. Christ, it was like a uniform de ho, what there was of it, a few inches of material, max. Jay smiled at his own joke. He felt tempted to have a drink, but decided against it. He had to keep his wits about him for what lay ahead. He returned to his vehicle, parked by the back entrance, and waited for her. He reflected that once you had killed, as he had done in Afghanistan––heck a soldier was just a hit man for the government, a trained killer in uniform––it came that much easier.

"Your car's waiting, sir."

       Darren nodded and handed the corporal a couple of suitcases. "I'll be down in a minute."

       Now that the moment was at hand, he wondered if he'd done the right thing? He tipped the contents of the medicine cabinet into a bag. Was running away ever the answer? Still, in his case, it had been a matter of preserving sanity. Jay was like a madness in the blood.

       He recalled the moment he had first seen him, standing beside an armoured vehicle against the backdrop of desert and the Afghan mountains. Stunning. He'd wanted to do him on the spot. But he sensed that Jay had never done the backdoor boogie before. That he was straight as a die. Time proved him right.

       Being so close to him and yet so far had been torment. Frustrated desire escalated to such a crescendo that he'd waited for him that night by the supply closet. So desperate for consummation and release, he even contemplated knocking on his door. He'd been just that sure that the interest was now mutual. Oh Jay tried to fight and hide it, as he knew he would. After all it isn't every day your average respectable officer, with a wife at home, wants to bonk the bejesus out of his corporal. Darren smiled. He took a last look around the apartment he'd called home for the last few months, grabbed his bags, and left.

       Cherry trees spilled blossoms onto the road. They're a carpet for the fairies, his mother used to say. That was before his father deserted them, she turned into a hopeless drunk, and he ended up in care. He grimaced. It was while in one of a string of foster homes he'd been initiated into the joys of Sodom, by a much older youth. Would he have ended up gay, if that hadn't happened? Probably. Yet he often wondered. Life would be so much simpler, straight.

       The corporal opened the car door for him, took his bags and stowed them in the trunk. "We'll be sorry to see you leave, sir," he said.

       Jay's start in life had been privileged as compared to his own, the best schools then university, marriage to a childhood sweetheart. He'd lived the so-called American dream. Darren settled back and stared out the car window. Sunshine filtered through the early morning mist. The army was just a career to Jay, for him it was the family he never had, his whole life…his security…his salvation. He'd be on skid road now, or dead, without it.

       Yet he would have left it gladly to be with Jay––he stood head and shoulders above his previous lovers––it was too bad he was so conflicted and in denial about his sexuality, totally ashamed of it. He'd demonstrated that by refusing to play the female in their relationship. He'd have loved it up the ass, but was too damned repressed to admit it.

       "Did you watch the news last night, sir?" The corporal switched lanes and drove faster. "It was a rehash about the missing patrol." He slowed down as the traffic stopped ahead. "You were on that one, weren't you?"

       "Yes," Darren nodded. "And I can assure you that although we were on a wild goose chase looking for Bin Laden, we didn't find him." He smiled.

       He remembered how uncomfortable he'd felt when Jay grilled him about the incident. He hated to have to lie. Yet he didn't want to implicate him by sharing what really happened. And the truth would have diminished him in Jay's eyes.

       All that crap about looking for Bin Laden. Darren shook his head. Just a red herring to conceal a drug deal gone wrong. He leaned his head against the seat and closed his eyes.

       The opium trade was huge in Afghanistan and got even bigger when the Taliban left power. Hell, half the base had been involved at some time or other, or at least, knew what was going on. And that included Beaumont, the CO. But he went along with the Bin Laden myth because it was less damaging to the army's reputation. "You're supposed to be soldiers, not friggin' drug runners and pushers," he had raged.

       Jay would not have understood the profit motivation behind it. His family were wealthy. He'd never had to do without. But for most, like himself, it meant the difference between scraping by on army pay, or having a comfortable nest egg to fall back on. And there were very few risks involved. Even when the worst happened…as befell the missing patrol, nobody got caught. Nobody was charged. Nobody did time. In fact, some of them had made a million peddling the Bin Laden caught and then released bullshit, to an immoral media and gullible public.

       "It must have been terrible trapped in those caves for days," the corporal looked at Darren through the rear-view mirror. "I have claustrophobia. I'd have freaked out."

       "I don't remember too much about it, actually. After the first twenty-four hours or so, I drifted in and out of consciousness. We all did." But the initial terror when he found himself buried alive would never leave him. It was like something out of an Edgar Allen Poe story, the only sound the frantic beating of his petrified heart. He had clawed at the rubble until his hands were in bloodied tatters, but all in vain…It was dark, no air, no water, how long could they last…yet wasn't it a blessing that they wouldn't? If it hadn't been for Jay…God bless him he had saved his life…saved them all. It had all started out so routinely, too.

       The Hirabad Caves were where the drug deals went down. If it hadn't been for Porter––their new lieutenant––who got greedy, everything would have been fine.

       "We're taking all the risks, we want more of the profits," he said. The Afghans who headed the drug cartel disagreed. A fight ensued. Darren recalled grappling with a burly dude in a kaftan. He heard gunshots, followed by an explosion, then the ceiling and walls caved in.

       The gunfire must have detonated a bomb left by the terrorists. They had booby-trapped the caves before leaving. He had no idea whether the Afghans had managed to escape––some of them must have, their vehicle was gone––or been buried in the rubble. After Jay's team found all the missing squad members, they hadn't dug any deeper. No reason to. At least that's what they had thought.

       "Is your new posting in Ottawa, sir?" The corporal stopped the car outside the airport terminal.

       Darren nodded. "A desk job, I'm afraid. No excitement." But he'd had enough of the latter to last him a very long time.

       His flight wasn't in yet. The waiting area crowded. He stood by a window and drank coffee out of a paper cup. Recalled how Jay had bragged about his encounters with the Cypress whores and the local lap dancer, and went into graphic details. Darren winced. It had cut him to the quick. Would he have done the same with Kerry? Well of course not. Then why lay such a cruel trip on him? He cared about him just as much as she did, perhaps even more. She'd come across as a sheltered, privileged little mouse, at the regimental dance. Not much imagination or depth.

       He drained the cup and tossed it in a garbage bin. Jay could be damned insensitive and inconsiderate at times. Took him for granted. Thought he'd be right there waiting when, or if, he decided to leave Kerry and make a commitment to him. It made him feel used and resentful. Kerry was placed on a pedestal, while he was relegated to the toilet.

       He'd felt thoroughly pissed at both of them. That's why he'd sent the letter, to give Kerry a taste of the real world, and if it caused enough trouble in the marriage, Jay might leave and fall right into his lap.

       He'd regretted it almost immediately. It had been a shitty thing to do, but it was already in the mail. He wondered what kind of repercussions it had caused?

       Jay packed the last of the boxes and stacked it with the rest. He wouldn't be sorry to leave the apartment he'd called home since his marriage broke up. It had been a bitch of a year, but at least he was sober. Thank heavens for AA. He lit a cigarette and sat on the patio to smoke it. All through the travails, he had missed Darren like sin. But he didn't want to resume their relationship, until he'd straightened himself out. He had sent him a brief email, more like a telegram, really. Getting a divorce. On the wagon. Need some time alone. Sorry for all the grief. Love, Jay xxx.

       Now he finally felt ready to take up where they'd left of––at least, in a sense. One could never "go back."

       "I didn't want you to think I'd just fallen back on you, because Kerry is now out of the picture," he explained, when Darren phoned him at Christmas. "You're far too special to me for that."

       He watched the moving van pull up. "Everything here for storage?" the driver asked.

       Jay nodded. He'd get around to a more permanent solution later. He didn't much like Ottawa, all government, and the winters were brutal. Still, he'd be happier in a cardboard shack with Darren than in a mansion without him. At least, he thought he would. They'd never actually lived together.

       He would miss Vancouver––his home town––and the base, but looked forward to his new posting in Ontario. He was anxious to get away from the scene of so much unhappiness and start afresh elsewhere. That this would be with Darren made the choice that much easier.

       He'd been pretty shocked when Darren phoned and told him the truth about the missing patrol. Disillusioned too, that he would be involved in something illegal like drugs. "I just needed you to know before burning your bridges and moving over here," he had said.