A welcome home party tomorrow, she said.

I don’t know whether to laugh or scream at the absurdity of it.

A welcome home party, for a man who’s not home.

I can’t be home.

Not when my ears still ring with gunfire, not when I see the blood of my dying brothers on my hands as I try to stop the bleeding, not while the smell of gunpowder mixes with the faintest hint of my wife’s perfume.

Strange, that doesn’t belong here. Not on this battlefield. She’s home, she’s safe. She’s raising my baby, without me.

Without me.

Growing up without me because I was a sacrifice, my family the collateral damage. A necessary sacrifice for the greater good, or so I thought, but what good can be found in a field of the dead?

My friends and enemies, all reduced to the same pile of gore in death.

How can I be home when I see them everywhere? When they lay around the plush carpet of a home I no longer belong in?

Wait that isn’t carpet after all. It’s dirt, mud. It’s the field I was last in, on that fateful day.

Screams full of pain and terror and frustration bounce around in my head filling it up, up, up.

I wish they would all shut up, up, up.

A clatter shocks me.

I jump upright, almost straight out of my body.

Oh, what do you know?

I AM out of my body. There I am down there.

I have the childish urge to wave at myself, but I don’t. I don’t do anything but watch. My wife is here with a hand on my arm. How strange. My hand snatches out and grips her wrist.

So much screaming. So much pain reaches me even up here near the ceiling.

I hate them. The ones I’m fighting, the ones who asked me to fight, the ones who need my protection.

Wait, that’s not right. I love them. Those who need my protection.

A whimper catches my attention and I shoot back into my body. My eyes focus on the pale face of my wife.

Pale, not because of her fair complexion,

no, I recognize that specific skin tone. That’s the color of fear.

Why?

I look down and my hand still holds her white knuckled, I quickly let go.

Embarrassed, angry, scared.

She says something.

Something…

God, why can’t everyone just stop screaming?!

My hands cover my ears and I can’t explain why but I join my friends.

I scream with them.

I think I’m on my knees, yes. The carpet. That’s carpeting between my fingers.

Soft, squishy.

Such a blessed relief from war.

Hard, unyielding.

I lay down basking in the softness.

Another whimper, but I can’t bear to look at my wife.

I can’t bear to explain myself again. So I lay there and close my eyes.

What a mistake to think sleep would save me.

Blood is everywhere, no not blood.

Gore.

The ground is littered with it. Or more aptly, with us.

Jackson, Wells, Miller, Wilson, Moore.

All there if I were to put their body back together like the jigsaw puzzles my mother once loved. I cringe as I think of my mother, immediately regretting bringing her memory to this unholy ground.

A grenade with the force of a nuclear blast hits the ground next to me and I fly in the air. My leg shoots off of me in one direction but that can’t be right.

I look down at my body for confirmation I’m safe but I don’t get it because I don’t have a body. Just a headless man without his horse.

I scream and shoot up from the floor. A blanket tangles me up and I fight it like I would against a hostile. Choking the fabric in my grip while shuddering with rage and fear.

My eyes blink open and I see the material in my death grip.

Oh hell, not again.

I drop the blanket and try to draw in a deep breath but the air is squeezed from my lungs as a child walks towards me.

Not just a child. My child. My Jesse.

“Daddy?” My son asks in such an innocent voice it’s a wonder I don’t howl my misery right then.

“Yes baby. It’s okay.” I reassure him as I hold my hand out. He grabs it tentatively and I pull him towards me. Scooping my baby in my arms and holding onto him as if he was my life raft.

No, not raft. My anchor. Holding me in place during this storm.

“Why you so sad, Daddy?” My baby pleads with me and I’m not sure why he thinks I’m sad until he touches my cheek, wiping away the dampness.

“Sometimes Daddies get sad too.” I answer softly as I squeeze him into me and sniff the top of his head.

Not the smell of gunpowder, but of my baby.

My reason to fight.

A shudder wracks down my spine. My safe baby.

Safe because of me.

I sigh and look at my son regret twisting my heart as I realize just how big he is now.

I missed so many years.

Important fucking years.

A light turns on and my wife stands in the hallway in a white nightgown, a yellow glow behind her making her look celestial.

But her face is not as serene and rage twists her features.

———

Turns out my wife wasn’t as understanding as my little Jesse.

The fight that ensued was the first of many.

The welcome home party was disastrous.

And within the first year of my return I was served with divorce papers.

I’ve been homeless for two years now. And all I can think of as men and women and children pass by me where I’m curled into the wall of a popular fast food restaurant is that I fought for you. My friends died for you.

And this was the thanks I got.