Lemonade Down the Road

Heat lifted off the concrete engulfing me, in a serape of dry air. Rays of light came down from directly above, blindingly illuminating the arid wasteland. It sat on either side of the cracked road. Listlessly, one step after the next, my legs moved asynchronously, the right seemingly more motivated than the left. Dogtags swayed left and right, and boots scraped the road below; If you were to ask me how long the journey had been I would tell you it didn’t matter. In war, you learn to understand the true uncertainty regarding duration. Although I was no longer marching through a jungle, believing that I was pushed me forward, toward something meaningful and final. A destination of destinations, where I would sit down and fan myself off in between sips of a cold beverage. I was hoping it would be lemonade, not from a can or in a carton but the type of lemonade that my mother would make when I was still a child. The type of lemonade I would sip on as I imagined what I would be when I grew up. Thoughts of playing under the night lights, running the ball up the field as everyone shouted my name. I wouldn’t hear them, I would only hear the blood pumping in my ears. Maybe a businessman, vague to me still but back then, as I sipped on my lemonade, it meant dressing nice and a beautiful home with an even more gorgeous wife. I imagined holding a clipboard as I wore a white sleek coat, preparing to give a family of five the best news they had ever heard. I dreamt of flying high above the clouds, maybe delivering something or someone, maybe not, soaring all the same. Hardly ever would thoughts of life as a footsoldier cross my mind.

“I’d have to agree with that one brother.” Looking to my left I squinted past the harsh light to see a hot red 76’ Porsche 924. The passenger window was rolled down as the driver came to a crawl beside me. Lt. Colton peered over the rim of his gold-tinted shades locking eyes with mine. I continued walking as he matched my pace. 

“Son of a bitch… You really did get a Porsche? Congratulations sir,” Colton chuckled to himself as he looked back toward the road. My words resonated with him the same way they did when his friends back home found out he would be a father.

“The misses wanted something more reliable, a goddamned mini-van,” That would have been a sight to see, Lt. Colton hauling around a group of kids. “Well, this is what I said,” his hands left the steering wheel and moved in motion one would make when presenting something special, maybe even with a ‘ta-da!’ “What about both? She looked at me like I had two heads on my shoulders. Well, Mom and Dad were getting rid of their van around the time I bought this beauty here. It all worked out.” I smiled, he deserved it. Maybe not in the grand scheme of things. I mean in a karmic sense of the world perhaps he didn’t deserve a thing back home, neither did any of us. But, from my perspective and our individual experiences together, he deserved it. 

“Should’ve followed your lead. Would be a helluva lot better than walking, sir.” Ready to apologize I looked toward him with wide eyes, hoping that my words hadn’t come across as disrespectful. He didn’t think it was disrespectful; he found it quite funny. His laughter filled the air for quite some time before tapering off.

“You’re right about that, Private, thing is, we’ve all gone at our own pace. Issue isn’t about pace in your case though brother, it’s direction.” His words cut through the heat, and a chill climbed from the base of my spine to the top of my scalp. “Go home brother, want to go home. Turn around, brother.” Before I could open my mouth to ask what his words meant, I was looking at a bright red bumper and a generic New Jersey license plate. As though I were in pursuit of his Porsche with my ankles tied together, I began shuffling forward hoping he would slow down again and look at me with a smile on his face. 

I hoped he would park the car next to me and get out, open the passenger door, and help me in before getting back on the road. I hoped we would drive down the road to wherever we were going. I hoped we would talk about the most mundane things that we rarely had the luxury of talking about when we were able to talk about anything at all. I’d ask him how his two kids were, his son and daughter, who were born the same day before his deployment. About his wife, his high school sweetheart. Although I knew he wouldn’t say much about her, at least he would pull out that one picture he always kept in his chest pocket of the two of them at the beach. He would pull it out, crimson-stained, and say what he always said: “Brother, how can I worry when I’ve got her with me?” Lt. Colton didn’t slow down or stop, he barreled down the road until his dream car was a red blur and then nonexistent. 

We fought a lot at first, Lt. Colton and I, arguments residing purely in my imagination. I maintained my respect for the chain of command but I hated him. I hated how easy the war came to him, and how he seemingly managed to maintain what made him who he was before being sent to war. We all lost ourselves, some more than others, but he seemed intact as we marched, as we shot, as we killed. He kept himself, and I hated him for that. Until a conversation I had with him as we moved through the dark. A conversation that could only happen after the alignments of the planets, the moment in time when Lt. Colton allowed his guise of impenetrable resolve to drop and level with you. A conversation where he told me about the faces he would see when sleeping, some of ours and some of theirs. A conversation during the night where the canopy blocked out the moon, where I could feel his tears building up in the corner of his eyes, but never quite falling. After that conversation, I stopped hating him and started to hate the war. Even more than I had when I received my letter of prearranged death, either mine or theirs. 

“You regret serving your country son?” Faint footsteps were heard slightly behind me to my right, almost unperceivable had it not been as quiet as it had been. An older bald man, whose voice I recognized with ease, walked with his hands behind his erect back, at a painfully slow rate. Step after step, but much slower than mine. 

“You shouldn’t be out here Mr. Wilson, you could get heat stro-”

“You think I’m some kind of pansy?”

“No, Mr. Wilson.”

“Too weak to walk in the sun?”

“Not at all Mr. Wilson, I was just saying that-”

“If you can do it, I sure as hell can.”

“I can’t argue with that.” I really couldn't. I crossed through the jungle and came home, he did the same except he crossed the beach.

“How’re you feeling?” I asked genuinely, as I always had, concerned about his health, concerned about how many more chats we would get to have.

“I’m a fighter, son, I might not look it on the outside” Although he did, in better physical shape than most “I feel it on the inside, winning wars is what I do.” Inspiration spilled from his words like a faucet, such was the case with most of our conversations. A man of carefully selected words and a treasury full of experiences that only he could do justice to when recounting the stories. 

“What are you doing way out here?”

“To figure out why you’re here. See the road from your perspective maybe, To try and figure it out if there’s anything to figure out at all.” Why? Who knows? We all have our journeys right? I’m just trying to get there. “Maybe that’s true.”

“What is?”

“You figuring it out yourself, trying to get there one step at a time.” Annoyance began to fill my chest like molten metal. Maybe it was the heat or the fatigue amassed from the countless steps. If he had a point to make why didn’t he just make it? What was different about this time? “Everything son, you’ve got to fight one more time. Not in the way you did before. Not under direct orders or below the rain of fire. This time you are the chain of command.”  

“If that’s true why don’t I know what I am doing!” I shouted, loud and hard. My vocal cords shook and rattled as I roared the words. For the first time, I stopped walking, not for repose, but to look Mr. Wilson in the eyes and find whatever answers he encrypted within the lines of his own words. My eyes met the sand, and then the sky as well as the space in between. Looking around from my right shoulder in a three-hundred-and-sixty-five degree manner I saw the back of his pressed suit. A mile or so away, another mile with every blink. In that moment I wish I had said more, or had more to say. As I hoped with Lt. Colton I hoped the same for Mr. Wilson: that he would stop and let me catch up, even if it took me a length of time that words would do no justice to describe.

My journey had paused, and for the first time, I was met with the realization of my autonomy. The road ahead became multidimensional, the sand to the right and left seemed just as viable. Behind me, the progress I made looked as though it went in a direction undiscovered by myself. A direction in which whispers flowed from, whispers that I could hear for the first time. Voices from names that I could not remember. Some pleading, some encouraging, some sad, and some frustrated. Some asked why, some talked to others, and some asked God for strength. I recognized every voice, but not who or when. Some words overlapped and some existed within a pocket of time set aside for those words and those words alone. Some words fused, multiple voices sharing the same sentiment. I wanted to call back out, but my throat stiffened and my tongue was dry. My lips cracked and my eyes squeezed shut as though waiting for tears but none would come.

Why? I was tired, beat down, hot, thirsty, and dried out but still, I could go where I please. So why? To meet Lt. Colton and Mr. Wilson and see what conversations would unfold between the two. To meet my mom who would surely have her lemonade ready for me, so I could sit down next to her sipping from the glass as she held me. To meet Pvt. Jones, a kid who also had his journey, took one step too far to the right of the path behind us as we marched. A step that prompted Lt. Colton to lower his guard on that night in the jungle. To meet those children I wished I could pull from the burning homes, knowing I would be met with fear and words of protest that I wouldn’t know, but would understand. To meet the girl I met in the library before I boarded the bus to be shipped off to become part of the war. To meet her parents, and watch films with them on a warm summer night, as her little brothers ran around the kitchen table in the other room. To meet those on the board who wrote my name down, to send me to a place that they could only assume I would come back from. To meet the man who forced my hand after showing his, if I didn’t he would have. To meet whoever it was that would greet me when I reached the end of the road