The Far Away Tomb

It always started the same way. There was that feeling, or rather an awareness of something inside him. It was a little thing, a twinge really, but it would grow into a physical presence, becoming a gripping, wrenching, clawing thing that reached deep into his vitals and grabbed hold. It was fear, a grasping fear that spread out within him until it reached into every extremity. Far from an abstract emotion, this fear was a real, tangible thing. It permeated his whole being, filling every crevice of his soul.

He opened his eyes. A diffuse swirl of earth tones greeted him, moving and shifting before resolving into recognizable shapes. A tree, branches bare and bark singed black, stood immediately in front of him. Its leafless limbs reached out to a dark brooding sky. Water dripped from the tips of the branches. It was raining. He could taste its salty tang on his lips. His eyes moved to the right. There was some sort of concrete structure, about six feet tall, perhaps three feet wide. Strange carvings graced its frame. Distinctive oriental characters were etched on its door. He became aware of sounds, hushed at first, but growing in volume. Thunder! Impossibly loud, continuous thunder! Was it thunder, his mind asked? At the same time, through the fog of his fear, his mind gave the answer--artillery barrage! He looked again at the concrete structure. It was a tomb, one of those strange, aboveground tombs that seemed to be everywhere on this island. Then he knew. He was on Okinawa, on that particular rain soaked April evening, one as saturated by death as the rainwater.

As he stared at the tomb he saw another shape in the doorway. Gradually it focused to that of a man, a soldier, not just any soldier but his sergeant, his leader. He recognized the sharp beak-like nose set against a perpetual three day growth of beard, and the piercing steel blue eyes. The sergeant's mouth was open, apparently yelling something lost in the chaos of the barrage. He looked at the sergeant in a strange, detached way. The man was screaming now, but he still couldn't hear it.. At the same time he saw the sergeant's right arm stretch out, pointing to something or somewhere. His eyes followed the arm, past the tree, onto a hillside of mud, craters and explosions. Among the explosions he could see small groups of green clad men, clawing their way up the hill. Those were his men, his comrades, attacking up the ridge. The meaning of the yelling and the pointing became clear. He was being ordered to join them.

He couldn't move. Moving meant certain death. He tried, or thought about trying, but he couldn't. He remained huddled, his back against a large boulder. He drew himself into a bundle, trying to make his body as small as possible so as to not catch any of the fragments of metal whisking by. The sergeant continued yelling and pointing, and now, occasionally through the roar of the artillery, he could make out a word, then a phrase.

"Move out"

Another phrase was drowned out by a nearby shell. Then in a calm moment, he heard, "Up the hill, soldier!"

He remained motionless. The sergeant continued yelling. Gradually, movement started. His head and neck muscles, obeying their own commands, began flexing. In spite of himself the muscles moved his head, pivoting it from side to side. He was signaling no.

The sergeant's eyes grew wider. His arm dropped to his side. In an instant it rose up again, this time pointing something in his direction. It was the man's sidearm! He was being ordered at gunpoint! His mind raced, his thoughts in a panic. Certainly he wouldn't fire, he thought, not at one of his own. But the gun answered otherwise, its bore directed menacingly at him. He now faced certain death, here in the relative safety of the cemetery. He thought about getting up, his mind trying to order his balky body to the task. Before it could obey, his eyes saw movement to his left. Another soldier rose up, rifle in hand. It was his partner, his buddy. He hadn't thought he had company here in the tomb area, and he was overjoyed at the realization. Automatically he rose up with him. His buddy moved forward, forward up the hill. He followed, walking fast in a somewhat hunkered down position, seeking to make himself as small as possible. He drew up along side. They went ten, perhaps twenty yards before the next shell struck. It wasn't close, but still the concussion waves reignited the fear within. He fell to the ground. His buddy, noticing his fall, stopped and dropped alongside him, going to a prone position, ready to shoot. Suddenly a large bang and whir rang out, much closer than any of the explosions. He saw the rifle explode in his buddy's hands, disintegrating in a small cloud of wood and metal. His eyes went to his buddy's face. He saw a crazed, inhuman expression, eyes popping out, mouth twisted in a hideous smile. For a moment his buddy stared at him, but it wasn't his buddy's eyes. They were replaced by something maniacal, inhuman. The man jumped up, screaming and wailing something unintelligible, then turned and ran down the hill.

As he watched his buddy disappear into the smoke and mist and darkness down the slope, somehow avoiding the exploding shells that still rained down, another shell landed, this one very close to himself. In an instant he felt his body being lifted up. He had a curious floating sensation before he fell back in a heap, landing on his back with a jolt. His eyes looked towards his feet. They were torn and bloody. One boot was shredded, and he could see white bits sticking out. He realized in a detached way that those were bits of his foot. He could also now see the blood, oozing out around the remaining pieces of leather and cloth. He was wounded, but where was the pain?

He awoke with a start. His eyes opened. He was in a bed in a darkened room. He thought he heard a rhythmic breathing beside him, but it wasn't real. Recognition came slowly, that he was home, in bed with his wife, thousands of miles and tens of years away from that place, that island. He looked at his wife but saw only an empty space beside him. That's right, she was gone. Often he thought she was there, but he knew she had died years ago. Sometimes in this half-awake state he would see her, especially after the dream, that familiar nightmare that filled his nights for the last fifty years. He got out of bed. He knew sleep would not come back easily, perhaps not until the next night, when, exhausted, he could sleep unburdened. He reached for the bathrobe hanging from the bedpost and shuffled out of the room, still careful not to wake his wife, even though she would never awake. He made his way through the house to the living room, navigating by the dim light of the street lamps outside which reached through the partially shaded windows. He sat down in his favorite chair and reached for a cigarette. There was none. Of course, he no longer smoked. He had quit years before. He settled back in the chair, almost tasting the nonexistent cigarette. His body responded as if the cigarette was real. He felt calmer.

His mind returned to the island, picking up the story when he had awakened. The pain came later. It came in waves, announcing its coming with needles and pinpricks before the full assault of the dull, deep ache. Its intensity rose and fell, but it was always there. It was there through the evacuation to the field hospital. It was there, although dulled by a morphine, through the flight to the Hawaiian hospital. It was there after the surgeries. It came on even stronger during the recovery, and stronger yet during the recuperation in the Kansas hospital. It was always there, but it wasn't the worst of it.

The worst were the nights, the endless nights of the nightmare. It was always the same. His mind took him back to Okinawa, returning to that island of horror, to that place of all-encompassing, unreasoning fear. It was that fear that defeated him. It was that fear that stopped him on that rain swept night, stopped him from doing his job. It was that fear that caused him to drop down on the hill. It was that fear that led to his buddy nearly being hit by the bullet, the bullet that shattered his gun and snapped his mind. They told him later that his buddy had been evacuated that night as well. He had lost it, 'gone off his rocker' they explained. He knew the truth though. He knew the same bullet that destroyed the rifle also destroyed his buddy. Worse yet, he knew that it only happened because he had stopped, and his buddy had stopped to protect him.

He told no one any of this of course. Instead he lay on his hospital bed, unmoving, uncaring. He lay this way after the operations, the ones intended to repair his mangled foot. They told him he had to get up, or he might never regain the ability to walk. They pushed and prodded, forcing him at times to exercise. But he didn't care. He simply had no interest. He had failed, you see, and nothing could make that better. There might be rehabilitation for his foot, but there was none for him. He knew, at his very core, he was a coward.

He had always known it, or at least suspected it. He was the timid one, the one that hung back. Growing up he had learned to cover it well. He attached himself to his older brother, secure under his protection. When he wasn't around, an accommodating nature took care of most situations, and the few times he was really pressed, he simply gave in. It hurt, of course, but not as much as confronting it would have. He never, ever wanted to be a situation where he would have to confront anything. That is why when the war came, the announcement of Pearl Harbor shattering an ordinary fall Sunday, he didn't follow his friends and enlist. Secure in his family deferment, the draft posed little problem, so he just went on, working in a defense plant, tending to his family. Things went on like this for a few years, and it looked as if he would escape the war. That is, until fate intervened in the form of a spinal meningitis germ, one that took the life of his only child, a daughter. Draft deferment now gone, the army wasted little time in sweeping him into their fold. In less than a year he found himself on Okinawa, facing that hideous situation.

That day on Okinawa was the central fact of his life. He could remember it clearly, as if he was still living it. By comparison, nothing else seemed very real. Still, a portion of his brain realized that over fifty years had passed. He had long since retired from his job at the plant. He remembered, when he forced himself, that he had raised a family. There were two sons, their wives and families, and the grandchildren. But they were living their own lives, seldom visiting. In some ways they didn't seem quite real. There was still a brother and sister as well, but they almost never called. He could call them, of course, but he never did.

He looked out the window. The sky was beginning to lighten. A sliver of lavender shown in the east. He crushed out what was left of his cigarette. It would soon be morning, another day of work at the tractor plant. He sighed. A large order of engine fittings was waiting on his bench to be fabricated. That was good. It was piecework, and he was very good at piecework. He would make a lot of money today.

He shuffled back into the bedroom. His wife stirred but didn't awake as he lay down on top of the covers, still clad in his robe. He looked at her, or rather her form outlined by the sheets and covers tucked tightly around her. Soon this beautiful girl would be waking up to prepare his breakfast. A glimmer of a smile passed his lips. He had achieved his dream, in spite of the war, the horror, his wounding. In a large part it was this girl who had done it, traveling by train to the Kansas military hospital to be with him. She found him in his funk, paralyzed by the overwhelming inertia of believing himself a cripple. She had sprung into action, pushing him, prodding him, finally enlisting his father's aid to kick him in the pants and get him moving again. And it had worked. He started walking, step by pain filled step, until he could move almost as good as he did before the war. With each step forward, the memories, the guilt, and most of all the feelings of the war receded out of his consciousness. He looked ahead to the future once more. He looked forward to the house, the job, and rebuilding of his family. It was all he had ever really wanted. It was all he could ever hope to achieve. He was a working man, a family man.

He reached out for her beside him, but his hand felt only cool bed covers. No, she wasn't there. She had moved on ahead. There would be no breakfast, and no job awaited him. The day that stretched ahead was much like the one yesterday, or maybe not. He had no conscious memory of the day before. He looked around the room, barely visible in the oncoming twilight of dawn. The room wasn't even right, this wasn't their room. Then again, one part of him recognized it. This is the place where they decided he should live, the place for the old, the assisted living facility. They said it would be better for him. People would be there to better care for him. That was true enough, but it wasn't right. She wasn't there. How could it be right? At times he couldn't even remember their home, but he never forgot her. Fatigue overcame him. As he closed his eyes his last thought before sleep was that perhaps she would come for him this day.

The far away tomb awaited him.