old man who drove the truck said something about it being like the statue in the town only larger. Looking around at the eleven other swimmers, he wondered which one would die this day. He knew it could be him, but the whole thing didn't seem real.
What had she said?
"I did it three times. I wanted to die the first two and was pissed when the boat came to take me away. After all, why was I still alive? Why was I the one to carry on the memory of the living? I didn't want it. I didn't deserve it."
"But you went back? Why'd you do that?"
"The third time was soothing. I didn't care at that point. I'd met twenty men and been fucked eleven times. I'd written letters to my mother that I'd never mail. I'd even made a video on my cell phone that was my last will, testament and fuck you to the world. I think I survived because I wanted to die."
She'd seen his face which had puckered in surprise and had caressed it as she straddled him once more. She took him in and moved, her eyes seeking a land between reminiscence and heaven. "No. That's not really true. I think I survived because I finally understood that I didn't have to pay for it."
"Pay for what?"
"Living," she sighed as yet another orgasm shook her. “Living other people’s lives.”
After a time when she'd cleaned up and they lay together in the bed, he'd thought about what she’d said and about what she'd gone through and what he hadn't and couldn't help but voice the words on his mind. "It’s easy to forget the living have their own weight to carry.”
She nodded in a way that reminded him of John Wayne in They Were Expendable, as if the knowledge had its own weight and brought his head low so he couldn’t look someone directly in the eye. The image was helped by her imitation of the actor as he said in his patented slow drawl, "Don't discount dumb luck. We've all seen assholes walking around that should have been killed at birth."
He tried to smile at the remark, but found it difficult, wary that she might have been talking about him.
Seeing her mistake she smiled sheepishly and retracted some of what she'd said. "I mean that those who should have died are alive and vice versa. Not everyone is meant to live."
"So you don't believe in a higher power?"
"When it comes to living, maybe, but not when it comes to dying. I saw too many friends die." Then she'd told him the story of Jill and her other friends and the IED and how her best friend's foot had landed in her lap.
Looking towards the shore, he tried to spot the Black Dolphin where he'd sat just three days ago when he'd first seen the swimmers. He polled his thoughts. Was it all because of her? He'd been drifting in Mexico for months, looking for what he did not know. Yet look he did, moving and flitting like an ash caught on the winds. Was it she he'd been looking for? Or perhaps was it a reason for it all to be.
The shirt she'd worn that first day had drawn him to her more than her looks. He'd come to find out that she'd spent the previous two years off and on in various suburbs of Baghdad, trying to quell dissident factions and stay alive as a sergeant in the U.S. Army. On her last trip home to Spartanburg, she'd decided she wasn't going back to the war and had fled to Mexico. That had been nine months ago, six of which she'd spent in Puerto Peñasco.
After they'd seen the statue in the square, they'd found a coffee shop. She’d apologized for saying what she’d said, then had grabbed his hand and held it. Neither of them wanted to end the evening, so the warmth of the strong Mexican coffee was the perfect defense against the cold onshore breeze and the sleep that waited to ensnare them.
"Why is it you didn't go back?" he’d asked after she'd told him the story.
June shrugged, pausing only to blow on the surface of her coffee and push a few strands of her straw-colored hair behind her ear.
The next question was a minefield, so instead of asking, he spun it into a truism. "I know I'd be scared if I went back. There's so much death. So much random death.