Page 131 of Red Rooster

“Who else would like to share?” the man asked.

“I will,” said a familiar voice, and Rooster lifted his head to find Jake walking to the front.

“Hi, I’m Jake,” he said when he was situated.

“Hi, Jake.”

“Retired Army Major,” he continued. His mouth twisted. “Medical discharge. My convoy was ambushed. I was in the lead vehicle, but I wasn’t supposed to be. I should’ve – but we had a Humvee break down, and we got a call about an incoming air strike, and – I wasn’t supposed to be in the front. The two vehicles behind me…nobody survived. I got thrown. Massive head trauma.” He tapped the side of his skull with his knuckles. “The docs didn’t think I’d ever be able to see again.” The last he said with a bitter little smile, a soldier’s private joke:Look at me, able to see, unable to protect my men.

“I’ve had…a lot of frustration,” Jake said, blowing out a deep breath. “I wanted to spend my whole career in the Army. And now I…” He made a helpless gesture, and there were murmurs of understanding from the crowd. “I, uh, don’t quite know what to think about it all, still. My boys…it shoulda been me instead of them. And that’s…that’s hard.” He looked like he meant to say something else, but got stuck, staring into the middle distance, poised at the edge of admission.

Rooster knew the feeling. People had said – everyone from the nurses in Germany to well-meaning civilians who’d seen him limping through drug stores – that it would help to talk about it. But they didn’t know the weight of those words on the tongue. The way they tasted of bile, and rot, jagged as a mouthful of broken glass. It was too painful to prepare them; putting them out in the world was unthinkable.

They gathered at the back of his throat now, as he watched Jake struggle with his own admissions. The sound of his own helmeted head ricocheting off the floor. The taste of blood, and gunpowder, and the stink of his own piss. That awful, awful relief of knowing that he would die, and being glad about it.

“Anyway,” Jake said, “that’s me.” He’d strode up to the podium before, but melted away from it now, sliding back down into his seat like someone only taped together at the seams.

~*~

Rooster didn’t ever go up to talk, but many of the others did. Some were still fresh from combat, and others, the older ones, mostly, offered perspective and acceptance. It was…

Well, it wasn’t as terrible as he’d thought.

And yet it was twice as much so.

He didn’t know.

When the iron-haired man – someone called him Dan – announced that they would be done for the evening, Rooster stood up and went to fix himself coffee just to have something to do with his trembling hands.

Jack appeared beside him. “Pretty terrifying stuff, huh?” he asked, without a trace of mockery.

“Yeah,” Rooster admitted.

“It’ll get better.” Rooster looked over at him, and he added, “And I mean that. Not just talking a buncha therapy bullshit.”

Rooster smiled. It was weak, and it hurt his face, but he could feel that it came from a true place inside himself. A raw, broken-open, vulnerable place that frightened the hell out of him. But still.

Jake pulled up on Jack’s other side, face lined with tiredness in a way Rooster hadn’t seen previously.

Jack turned to him. “You did good, kid.”

Jake shrugged and reached for a Styrofoam cup. “I dunno.”

“No, you did,” Jack insisted. “Starting’s the first step. The rest will come.” He reached over and clapped Rooster on the shoulder. “Maybe in another few weeks we can get this one up there.”

Rooster cringed. There it was again: that assumption that they would stay.

Which…wasn’t so crazy anymore, if he was honest with himself. All he had to do, he realized, was stop resisting, and he and Red would slowly be absorbed into the town, sheltered, befriended, and made residents here. He thought he might even want that.

“Don’t rush the man, Jack,” Jake said, and sent Rooster a commiserating glance. “Basic was less brutal than standing up there.”

Rooster felt another timid smile touch his face.

“Alright, alright,” Jack said. “You boys ready to walk up for milkshakes?”

“Yeah.” Jake pulled out his phone and typed a message. “Sure.”

Rooster set down his untouched coffee gladly. He hadn’t been this far from Red in…well, ever. And he itched to get back to her, look her over, make sure she was safe and whole.