corner when I heard the bomb go off. A part of me died that day alongside that woman and child. I didn’t know them at all, but that didn’t matter. Something connected us, and I couldn’t understand what had reached out and touched me so deeply. I’d seen terrible tragedies over and over, and you get to a point where you’ve seen so much that your threshold for tolerating suffering is higher. But that day I felt her terror.” I palm my chest, where I keep it locked away. “My threshold vanished. She and the little boy, they were just human beings with a basic instinct to survive. I wanted them to survive, and I couldn’t make that happen. I feel guilty, but also I’m disgusted. Let down.” Around the table, each man listens closely. More than a few have tears in their eyes. “I got out after that, and I haven’t been able to adjust. I don’t find joy in very many things. Life’s shine has worn off. I see their faces, and I think, what was the point of it all?” Moisture hits my hand, and I realize it’s my own tears, sliding off my cheeks.
The men are quiet, and then Walt speaks. “I don’t know the point of most of life. My wife was the nicest, sweetest person who ever put two feet on this earth, and she passed away from cancer. Why?” He shrugs. “God only knows. But Wes, I was a lot like you for a long time. Angry and resentful, confused and embittered. Not only was it hard for me to find happiness, but I made sure I pushed it away if I did find it. It was a terrible way to live, and I regret it. I was in Vietnam, and I saw some things a person should never see. Here’s what I figured out. My real problem was not what happened, but how I felt about what happened.”
Walt’s words sink in, finding a home in the jumble of emotions. Each man has something to say, but Walt’s words are the ones that have grown claws and dug in.
When the meeting is over, Bill brings out coffee and store-bought cookies.
The coffee isn’t good, but for some reason that makes me like it. No attempt has been made to impress, and I like that. Taking a sip, I ask, “So, you guys meet every week, even though you all know one another’s stories?”
Creighton takes a bite of his cookie. “It’s nice to be around each other. I can’t speak for everyone, but sometimes I feel a restlessness and I need to break away from my family. Finding this group saved my marriage.”
Malcom claps his hand on Creighton’s back, which makes him cough because he’s chewing, and everyone laughs.
When I leave, I shake hands with everyone and tell them I’ll be back. And I will. Come hell or high-water, I’ll be here. This may just be what saves me.
And I have one person to thank for putting the idea in my head.
Dakota created a little bit of space in my chest, and it was a breath of oxygen for a drowning man. That lungful of air was enough to make me want more, but I can’t get it unless I make more space on my own.
I pull out of the parking lot of the VFW feeling like I just hit the jackpot.
30
Dakota
“You know you don’t have to be here all day long?” Scott leans against one of the poles of the tent I set up earlier today. After being here day after day without a place to sit other than my car, or shade over my head (also from my car), I bought the kind of tent well-suited for the sidelines at a kid’s soccer game. The gray tent is five by five, and the shade shifts with the movement of the sun (which is technically the Earth’s movement because the sun doesn’t move but details). Today is my first day using it and I’ve moved my chair and table every hour to capitalize on the shade. And it appears, by the barely concealed irritation and taut jaw muscles, that Scott would prefer I pack up my new tent and leave.
Too damn bad.
My dad trusted me with this job and I don’t plan to make him regret it. Besides, what should I do, stay in my hotel room and work from afar? No. My place is here, with my shoes (boots, for toe protection) digging