“Blood Will Tell”
By Jan and Penny
The Black Hawk helicopter pilot’s mixed heritage showed in his blue-gray eyes and olive complexion. Thick sable hair buzzed short, wide forehead. His short, straight nose and puckish grin offset high cheekbones and sharp jaw angles. Slapping his lucky ball-cap on backward, he smiled. The corners of his mouth deepened into dimples.
Shifting his long legs to reposition the laptop on his knees, he hit REPLY and wiggled broad shoulders against crates at his back. He chewed a corner of his lip before stocky fingers touched the keyboard again.
Hey, Jenny, we
Scots-Irish-German-Mexican-Arizonan-Canadian-New Yorkers are tough, but
I miss you and the kids so much and some days, I’m not sure how I feel about the war, but I’m always sure how I feel about serving my country. It’s a way for me to stand for something more. Understand? I don’t like the killing, but there’s always a “them” and some of us are meant to guard the gates, to stop them from filling our graveyards with us.
It’s something in the marrow, Jen. I’m from a long line of fighting men, not bank tellers. Soldiering isn’t our first choice of career, but when it needs doing, we do it. Like Dad says, we’re guard-dogs, not lap-dogs. Designing pretty spaces for people to live and work in is nice, but when I’m flying, med-evac or troop carry, I’m riding on eagle’s wings.
I never spent much time in the desert. Dad hated it when I was a kid, and since college, life got in the way. The sun scalds your brains, sandstorms kick your butt, you measure water in ounces because it’s more precious than diamonds. But when I wake up and see a million miles of sand, I like it.
Half the time
this place looks like a John Wayne western or L’Amour
novel. I expect to see Tyrel Sackett
charging out of a gully, six-shooter blazing, the
whole clan behind him. No strip malls, no glorified corporate conglomerate box
stores, no Burger Mother or Taco Hell, and the land can kill you quicker than Osama’s
buckos, but I watch the sun rise over the dunes and feel my bones sending down
roots. Dad and Mom can have their condo in
I’ve been
writing Aunt Barb and they’d like us to visit.
We could stay, if you wanted.
There’s enough culture in
I know Dad says Aunt Barb toasted her brains back in the 60’s, and he laughs about that mystic old actor-dude she hangs with. But I’ve been in the desert with her. There’s power in the sand and rocks, the bleak mountains and wide open sky. Years drop away and you feel things, like you’re touching time a hundred or more years ago. When I was little, Barbara used to say I was “the living embodiment of a dream that wouldn’t die”. No wonder she’s my favorite aunt.
Anyway, it’s no surprise she recognized everyone in your dream, Jen. She talks to them every day. It’s not odd to her that you smelled horses and dust when you woke up, because she believes dreams are trips to other dimensions. Chill, okay? She might know what she’s talking about. Once she pointed to a kingsnake, said time isn’t linear and we all follow Oroborous, the snake who swallows his tail. Who knows? Maybe in your dream, you walked the path of Oroborous.
Don’t call a divorce lawyer and I’m not bucking for a Section 8, but when things get hairy, there’s a presence with me. Believe me, babe, this one’s not God. Maybe it’s my guardian angel, if my guardian angel is a messy old cowboy with a flabby gut and whisky-breath. There’s a snake rattle on his crappy old black hat and he slaps my back a lot and calls me ay-meego or nef-foo (that’s amigo and nephew for the literate among us. The dude mispronounces everything.) In other words, he’s nothing like the chick on the stupid show Mom watches, but we’ve gotten through some stuff together, so it’s okay by me if his English sucks. And since I’ve got the best, prettiest, sexiest woman in the world at home, I don’t care what my guardian angel looks like, As long as he gets us back safely, it don’t matter for beans.
Babe, I love you, and it’s just five months more. I….
“Hey, Bluejay, saddle up.” A young voice called to him from the darkness.
Duty bellows, Irish Jenny. Tell the kids Daddy loves them. Sweet dreams, Sweetheart.
He hit SEND, slapped the computer shut and sprang to his feet, grabbing his flight bag and marching toward the helipad, boots scraping sand. Humming a wordless tune from childhood, he covered the tattered Toronto Blue Jays cap with regulation cammo, tipping the brim as he swung outside for preflight check. Finished and receiving clearance, men loaded, he lifted off. The loud whapping of blades in the dead of the desert night sounded like hoofbeats.
Feeling weight on his shoulder, he glimpsed a black glove, smelled whiskey, old sweat, and cattle. Penetrating headgear and the din of the aircraft, a gravely voice drawled in his ear, “We’s too all-fired mean for a bunch ‘a comancheros to kill, Bluejay Boy.”
Smiling, Manolo John Cannon – ex-ballplayer, architect, husband, father, son, brother, nephew – flew high above stark Iraqui desert, singing harmony to ‘Buffalo Gals’.
2005 Jan Lucas and
Penny McQueen
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