Letters from War (11 page)

The doorbell rings in the sanctuary of her dreams, a bell choir of children playing “Amazing Grace” as she sits in the empty pew and empty church. It takes a few rings for Beth to open her eyes and realize that it's an actual doorbell.

She sits up in bed, not breathing, eyes wide open and fearful, her body numb.

It is two thirty in the morning.

James.

She knows and she doesn't need to go downstairs to find out. She can see the suit of the man standing there without opening the door. She can hear the words before they are uttered. She can feel the hard, cold floor without having to be there to collapse against it.

Her hands shake.

The doorbell rings again, demanding that she get up, daring her to go downstairs.

The walk from her bed to the doorway is eternal.

I walked these same steps as I went to him as a baby, when he cried the ragged cry of a newborn.

She makes it past his room, then past Emily's room.

She notices the open door and then turns on the light.

Emily isn't there.

She sighs and forces herself not to cry, not yet, not now.

It's about time I know. It's about time I finally hear.

The familiar cracks of the stairs. The glow of the light behind her. The blare of the doorbell never sounding so hellish or hateful.

She doesn't need to turn on the porch light. It's already on.

Guess she won't have to leave it on anymore.

Beth unlocks the door and then opens it.

The same door we brought him through after he was born, the same door we walked through hand in hand after Richard died, the same door I stood at to hug him and kiss him good-bye before he left for the last time.

She opens the door. The man is there and she can barely bring herself to look at him.

Her eyes are already full. Her heart and her soul already empty.

“I am Captain…” He starts to speak, though she
doesn't hear his name or company name or battalion number.

She's already weeping.

“Are you Mrs. Beth Thompson? Are you the mother of Sergeant James Nathaniel Thompson?”

She always thought she would be stronger, but she is a mess as her shaking hands cover her face. She tries to speak, to say something, to respond with dignity and strength, to honor the memory of James.

“Yes,” she says somehow.

“The secretary of the army has asked me to express his deep regret that your son, James, was killed in action in—”

The rest of the sentence isn't uttered, or is mumbled.

“What? How? When?”

“The secretary extends his deepest sympathy to you and your family for your tragic loss.”

She wipes her eyes and moves toward the man in front of her.

“How did he die? When? I want to know answers. Tell me. I've been waiting to hear for two years, so tell me now. I need to know.”

Then she looks and sees his face.

It's Richard.

He looks just as he did when they married.

“Sweetie,” he says, taking her shaking and wet hands.

“No. No no no—this isn't—Richard?”

“It's okay.”

“No. Tell me—what? What is happening?”

Her husband is standing there in jeans and a Tennessee Vols shirt, smiling.

“We didn't live here when James was born,” he tells her. “You're dreaming.”

“I'm what?”

Richard nods, smiling, still holding her hands. “You're dreaming.”

“Then…”

She hears his laugh as she opens her eyes.

It's only 1:14. There is no doorbell ringing.

Beth moves her hand over her heart and can feel it running a marathon. That's what it has felt like, day after day, night after night. Running to believe. Running to let go. Running to find out the truth. Running away from the truth.

“Lord, please hear my cry,” she says. “Please give me an answer. Please, Lord, I beg of You.”

Her memory goes to the day the soldier came knocking to tell her that James was missing. Yet she buries it, knowing that is one of those memories, the kind she needs to keep at bay. They are enemies of hope and they lie deep in the waters waiting to emerge and do battle.

That's the way the enemy fights best.

APRIL 9, 2007

James ran through a desert with the full moon trailing him. He could hear only his breath, the quick haggard breathing from running miles. He had dumped everything he could but still carried thirty or forty pounds of gear on him, in pockets and on his belt and around his neck. His heart burned, his legs throbbed, his mind focused on one thing.

Escape.

They cannot kill me. They won't kill me. I won't let them. I won't do that to my mom.

She filled his mind and he knew he needed to be safe. He didn't want to leave her alone. God wouldn't let that happen to his mom.

He ascended a hill and slowed down a bit.

A gunshot sounded from behind him.

James saw a small light and knew that was where he was supposed to go.

Yet he was slowing down. It was inevitable. All the training in the world couldn't make him invincible.

He turned for a moment. Just a single moment.

Something passed through him. Through his side.

There was no choice but to fall.

No no no, I'm not dying, not over here, not like this.

He shouted but the night wind sucked it in.

“James?”

He could hear footsteps and knew they were coming for him.

The warm oozing of his life flowed all around him.

“James, wake up.”

He knew he was going to die like this, alone in a sea of sand.

“James, wake up. It's Mom.”

Then he felt by his side and could feel the sheet on his bed. The small light came from outside his bedroom. The footsteps had stopped because they belonged to his mother.

His hand touched his bare chest. No wounds. No holes. No gushing.

“It's okay. You're just having a dream.”

He shook his head. “That wasn't a dream.”

“It's okay. You're awake now.”

James let out a sigh and realized it was three in the morning.

He would be leaving for Iraq tomorrow. Or really today.

“I'm all right,” he said.

“You sure?”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

His mother stood over his bed the way she had countless times before. Then she kissed him on the forehead and left the room.

For a long time, he stared at the darkness of the ceiling above him, wondering whether that had been just a nightmare caused by nerves.

Or if that had been a vision of what was to come.

The unfortunate reality about family, those we're not only blessed to love but sometimes also forced to love, is that sometimes what should be a safe haven turns into a three-ring circus of negativity. Yet today, Beth is ready.

She enters the room ready to rumble, as James would say. She wants to make him proud. Not to mention wanting to show off for Richard.

The smell of the pot roast still lingers. It's been a couple of hours since Sunday lunch at her brother's house. It's both a blessing and a curse living close to relatives. Dan is only fifteen minutes away, so birthday get-togethers still happen.

Sometimes it's better if they don't.

Most of the kids are in the basement playing video games. Beth wants to join them. It's the time of the day when the food is settling just like the people in the chairs and the pontificating begins. As usual, everybody
easily assumes their given role: the observer, the cynic, the comic, the instigator.

The latter belongs to a round and wrinkled face barely resembling her. Somewhere underneath the jowls that never stop moving and the eyes that never stop menacing are the genes of family that will never change.

Dan Newman sits at the table talking to whoever will listen to him. Beth sometimes wonders if her brother talks to himself in private, rambling on about whatever opinion he feels everybody else should have. The last dozen times she's been around him, the subject of the war and the army and James have all come up. They've come up but she's retreated each and every time.

So go ahead and have the inevitable fight.

She wants things to be different today. Of course he doesn't know and doesn't care if things are different. But this is a cycle Beth is going to break and she's going to do it today.

“Five more soldiers just died yesterday. Those ragheads did it with another explosion. They don't do anything other than plant them and run away like rats.”

“It's amazing how you talk about it as if you understand what it's like to be in their shoes,” Beth says as she sits down at the dinner table.

Her brother is wearing a golf shirt even though it's probably been ten years since Dan last golfed. “Aw, I'm just saying. It's a shame.”