Homecoming

Stiff in starched green, Daniel returns home alone on blistered feet. Stately elms line the lonely road, their twisted arms reaching up to the pink sky in silent salute of his unexpected return.

His left ear rings. The doc says it might go away, or it might not. He knows it won’t. He’ll hear the ringing until the end. Just like the screams. Just like the whistles that foretell flying limbs, flinging mud, a piercing headache, and oozing floods of blood.

He limps up the dirt drive without fanfare, his polished boots kicking up parched puffs of dust that will soon melt to mud in the winter rain. Mud that squelches with every sodden step. Mud that splashes with every fallen body—a cold stew of spilled insides, whimpered words and skewered dreams.  

At the foot of the gentle hill, he rests a gnarled hand on their neglected gate. The dogs bound down the lawn, barking with joy, but they stop a few feet away to lower their tails anxiously and lift their noses curiously. Paws a little slower, muzzles a little greyer, they circle his legs uncertainly as he latches the gate behind him. He smells different now, drenched in the stench of crimson crimes.

He crouches down. “It’s alright boys, it’s just me.”

They perk up at his gravelly voice and pounce on him with enthusiastic wriggles, yips of delight, and slobbering kisses.

Up at the house, the white porch door swings open on a screech of springs, and there she is. Maria’s dark hair curls back behind her ears. A white apron hugs the hips of her rosy dress. Splashes of white flour dust her flushed cheeks.

It’s the most beautiful sight he’s seen in all his life, but still his stomach churns.

She shades her eyes against the morning sun with a delicate hand, calling after the dogs and squinting to see the stranger they’ve run to greet.

He rises.

She freezes.

Then she’s sprinting down the steps and under the clothesline, flinging aside billowing sheets dotted in tiny roses. He drops his rucksack as she stumbles the last few steps with a strangled cry, her arms curling around his neck. Just like Stu’s arms had done in the trench. She sobs into his chest, relief soaking the lapels of his coat. Just like Stu had sobbed, his spit and tears and gaping wounds staining Daniel’s lap as his life leeched away amidst the chaos.

He asks about her brother. He asks about the neighbor. He asks about his friends. She shakes her head and cups his cheeks. He’s it. The only one left to see it’s all still here. The only one left to hear the ringing and the screams and the whistles, even across the ocean.

“I didn’t think you would come home either,” she confesses, and he buries his face in her hair, clutching her close. He’s not sure how much of him did.

He picks up his bag, and they trudge to the house together, arms entwined, with the dogs trailing eagerly behind.

She sits him at the kitchen table where she had been kneading a ball of now-forgotten dough. Under the flutters of her fussing, it’s quiet. Except for the clock. It ticks. Too loud. Louder than the soundtrack of sacrificial slaughter that plays on a loop in his ear.

She puts the kettle on for tea. That’s what you do, he thinks, when you have a guest in your home.

When it whistles, he jumps to his feet and kicks his chair back against the wall. Maria, returning from the sitting room balancing delicate treasures from their collection of wedding china, drops the teacups in shock. They shatter across the floor as he grabs the kettle and tosses it out the window, straight through the screen, boiling water and all.

After a heartbeat of silence, he drops to his knees to help sweep up the broken bits, apologizing profusely. Her hands tremble, but she offers him reassurance that it’s fine, it doesn’t matter, and it’s too hot for tea anyways.

“You didn’t need to get the nice china out for me,” he mumbles.

“If not for you, then who?” she responds.

When he settles back into his seat, she mixes a jug of tart lemonade that she’s able to serve without incident. Eventually she buys a new kettle but only uses it once he’s gone.

They make love that night, but it’s not like before. She’s cautious; he’s distant. A vast chasm that neither of them understands has rent the space between their hearts.   

When Maria drifts away, Daniel props himself up on his elbow and drinks in her every feature, recommitting her curves and lines to memory—the lashes that brush her cheeks, the new worried crease between her brows, the thin lips that loose sleepy sighs. He runs his ugly fingers up and down her unblemished arm, batting away visions of broken bones and bandaged stumps until he finally succumbs to exhaustion.

It’s still dark when she is suddenly shot from her dreams by his screams. In the throes of his thrashing, he catches her eye, but she ignores the stinging trickle of pain. When she finally shakes him awake, he sees that she’s gushing red tears from panicked eyes down blooming cheeks. It’s his nightmare bled into reality, and he rolls away to avoid looking at her ruined face. She reaches out tentatively, but he brusquely brushes her hand away.

They lie without speaking and without sleeping for the rest of the night. She stares at the moonbeams hanging on the ceiling; he gazes into the beckoning black abyss.

In the morning, bands of blazing red and gold pour across their bed, and he clasps her hand in apology.

“What did you see over there?” she asks.

He strokes her thumb.

“What do you see at night?” she presses.

He closes his eyes and shakes his head, afraid to give the memories a voice.  

She never asks again, and the screams haunt the rest of his nights and the rest of her life.