Limbs Akimbo, Chapter 3
“I miss that smile,” Mom said, and wiped a little foam from her lip where the beer had back-splashed on her. “I know there hasn’t been much reason to see it lately … but I miss it.”
Charlie sighed. He missed a lot of things too, but his willingness to smile was way the fuck down on the list just lately. He took a long, deep pull of his own beer and tried not to stare down at his stumps … then realized he was staring at them anyway.
“Goddamn it,” he muttered. He guzzled down the rest of the beer. Then he hurled the empty bottle out the door, to join the keys in the driveway. It clinked and clattered on the gravel, but didn’t shatter. Sunlight heliographed off the brown glass as the bottle came to rest.
Norma frowned at him. “That was a childish thing to do.”
“I’m regressing,” he snapped back at her. “Next I’ll be holding my breath till I turn blue. Then I start wetting the bed.”
“I hope to hell not, I just changed the sheets.”
Charlie snorted a laugh, realized he was staring down at where his legs used to be again—and forced his eyes away and onto Mom’s face.
He saw concern there. It mingled with love, weariness, and a returning hint of the old steely resolve. It was a countenance he’d seen ever since he was a little boy. He remembered it most vividly after he’d skinned his knees playing in the driveway, or after the scream-awake terror of a six-year-old’s nightmares, when he’d run to her, crying, desperate for comfort. She had been loving and sympathetic but still distant. She’d insisted that he straighten his spine and go back to sleep, to play, or to whatever. He’d never broken a bone in his body or suffered a major injury until Iraq, but it had been a running joke in the family that if he had fallen out of the tree in the back yard and broken his neck, Mom would have told him to get his ass back up in those branches and do it right this time.
And here they were, and when he needed that firm resolve the most, it was failing him. Or to be more accurate, it was running up against his own stubbornness. The apple had fallen too close to the tree, and now when she pushed him he was likely to push back. Especially now, in fact—now, when he was angry and tired and depressed. When he awoke in the night, not crying but in a cold nightmare sweat, certain he was still in Tikrit, echoes of old gunfire dancing between his ears. When the phantom pain and itch from his vanished legs returned with a vengeance and there was nothing he could do to make it stop, and he just wanted to sit in his chair and goddamn fucking scream until the world went away for a while. And he couldn’t. He didn’t dare. Because if he started he might not stop, and he would go away. And he didn’t want to lose himself.
Worst of all Charlie feared it might be too late—that he was already losing himself. And he needed his mom, right now more than ever, to swat him on the ass and point him back towards himself, his dreams, his life … and it was horrifying to suspect that she might not be able to do it. Because she didn’t know about the guilt that devoured him from the inside, the voice that whispered in his mind and told him he was getting what he deserved. Or that he he was past the point where he’d started to believe it. She didn’t know. He didn’t know how to tell her about it. Charlie was afraid of what she would think of him if he ever managed to find the words.
“The man from the VA office called again,” Mom said. Her tone was pretend-casual, but her eyes gave her away. “He left a message for you. He’d really like you to reconsider coming back down for a chat.”
Charlie didn’t reply. But at least it hadn’t been Lorraine who’d called again. He had nothing more to say to her. All the phone calls in the world wouldn’t change that. She said she still loved him but all he could see when she looked at him was pity and horror. And he didn’t want her staying with him because she felt sorry for him.
“I spoke to your father, and we both think it would be a good idea. Dad will even drive you down and pick you up.”
“No.” He levered himself out of the car, which had become even more oppressively hot, and into his wheelchair. Norma reached out and held the chair steady. The sweat on his brow began to evaporate, cooling his skin. Not his heart. Everybody wanted to help him. Everybody wanted to feel sorry for him. Everybody could go fuck themselves.
“Charlie—”
“I said no, goddammit,” he growled.
He spun the wheelchair around and started to shove himself away from her, barely giving her time to let go of the handlebars. She watched him go for a moment, then called after him to stop. He ignored her. He was tired of being told what to do, told what was good for him, told he was a hero when he knew only too goddamned well he was not, told that a chat would help him when it wouldn’t. It never would. Not all the chats or medals or “help” in the world would bring him back his legs, or let him sleep at night, or take away the voice, the whispering voice that told him this was what he deserved, this was his punishment, his time in hell …
“Charlie!”
All the talk in the world wouldn’t bring Zack back from the grave Charlie had shoved him into …
“Charlie!”
He heard the rattle of his tires in the gravel driveway. It sounded like gunfire. Tikrit rose up again in his mind, a ghost in bloody tatters. Charlie bore down harder on the wheels, trying to move faster. His eyes shifted quickly, back and forth—snipers could be anywhere.
First rule of urban warfare: rooftops and trees are your enemy. They hide the enemy.
Avoid overpasses. Stick to doorways.
Never get caught in the open.
As he was in the open now.
Charlie’s chest tightened. His breath started to come in gasps. His pulse jackhammered at his temples. There was a roaring in his ears. He pushed harder on the wheels of his portable prison—then shouted in surprise when the chair lurched to a halt and spilled him forward. The moment shocked him out of his flashback. Only by grabbing hard onto the armrest did he stay in the seat. Norma called his name again, and started running towards him. He ignored her, and looked down at the wheels to see what had happened.
The gravel had happened, of course. The fucking gravel. He’d borne down too hard, and now he was stuck there. Sunk to the spokes in his parents’ driveway, where as a boy he’d skinned his knees and run crying to his loving but stern mother. And now his knees were gone, blown to nothing by an insurgent’s grenade. And his mother barely knew how to talk to him, much less look at him. And everything in the world had been uprooted. And nothing was safe.
And the god damn voice would not shut up …
Charlie pounded the armrests of his wheelchair and raised his red-faced, terrified gaze to the sky. He wanted to scream … but all he could do was weep. He felt the hot salt tears stream down his cheeks, onto his lips.
They tasted like blood.
