Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 64419 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 322(@200wpm)___ 258(@250wpm)___ 215(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 64419 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 322(@200wpm)___ 258(@250wpm)___ 215(@300wpm)
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw movement in the kitchen. I brought my weapon up, but the attack came from the stairwell. I wasn’t prepared. By the time I swung around, three bullets had buried themselves in my thigh. I didn’t feel the pain then. I was just focused on saving my own life and the lives of my unit.
The Afghan women screamed and ducked into the kitchen. Two of our people followed, making sure they weren’t arming themselves. The kids were bawling, and there was gunfire everywhere. Luckily no one on our team died. We killed one insurgent and arrested another. By the time the smoke cleared, I realized I was bleeding, and I couldn’t put any weight on the leg.
I was transferred to the VA, who announced I was no longer fit for combat. I suffered through months of physical therapy, and when I was finally released, I had to use a cane. Twenty-seven years old and I was walking around like an old man.
“You’re lucky you can walk,” the doctor told me. “They missed the bone, which would have shattered your leg beyond reconstruction.”
I had nowhere else to go, but I was damned if I was going to move back in with my father. I snooped around for a place and found one in town. It was a basement apartment in an old lady’s home. She was retired and renting out half of her home to make money to pay the bills. She taught piano. I didn’t know her exactly, but I had seen her when I was a kid and around the town. She said the place was fully furnished, and she would even throw in a couple homecooked meals if I would eat with her. I guessed her family didn’t want anything to do with her, and that was fine by me. I didn’t want anything to do with my family either, so that matched up.
I didn’t want to ask anybody for help or send up smoke signals that I was back in town. I didn’t have a lot of money either, so I took a Greyhound bus from the VA in Atlanta all the way across state lines. At the bus station in Nashville, I transferred to a local line that took me to the post office in Singer’s Ridge. From there, it was a ten-minute walk to Mrs. Washington’s house.
Even though I was in America, in the same town where I had spent my entire childhood, I kept watching the windows, looking for enemy combatants. I wasn’t armed, and that was making me nervous. There weren’t any women wearing burqas or men wearing robes. It was summer in Tennessee. People were dressed in shorts and T-shirts, and some of the women wore skirts or jumpers.
I eyed each person that I passed with suspicion. I recognized Danny Something from the grocery store and Mary Beth that had been one grade above me in high school. They were walking hand in hand down Main Street, headed somewhere innocent. They stopped to stare as I walked past, leaning on my cane.
Mary Beth seemed about to say something, but I didn’t pause. I wasn’t looking for a warm welcome. I hadn’t chosen to come back. It had just seemed like the only option. I passed the library and the hardware store. The hair salon had a new name, but nothing else had changed.
Turning on Main Street, I navigated the neighborhoods until I reached my destination. I had my rucksack slung over my shoulder and my injured leg was aching. Despite all the physical therapy, I wasn’t used to walking half a mile with a pack on. The leg was getting better. There wasn’t so much pain anymore. It just got tired easily.
I stepped up the stairs to the porch and knocked on the door. A plump old lady answered, her kind face wrinkling up into a smile. I was instantly relieved to see her. She didn’t resemble any of the people I had been in contact with over the past eight years. She wasn’t a soldier, and she wasn’t an Afghan civilian. She was as American as they came, and damned if she didn’t invite me in for some apple pie. She also wasn’t family and didn’t know me well enough to be disappointed.
“I’m so glad you’re here.” She ushered me in. “Would you like some pie, or would you like to see the apartment?”
“Pie sounds nice,” I answered, gratefully sliding into a seat at her kitchen table.
She laid a slice of homemade apple pie in front of me, the kind with sugar crumbles on top, and I dug right in. After eight years of MREs and industrial foods, the dessert was heaven on my lips. It was so sweet and crispy, warm from the oven, and probably baked just for me. There were no good memories of home, but sitting in a strange woman’s kitchen, eating the quintessential American dish, I felt my reservations leak away. Maybe it wouldn’t be all bad. Maybe I could make it through the next couple months and figure out what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.