Chapter 1
Chapter 1
Spring, 1953
Fort Lewis, Washington
The Nisqually Basin was a gun bunny’s paradise.
Beyond salt marshes where great rivers empty into the Sound, young men boogied in the mud on Hayes Hill to the stuttering rhythm of sergeants’ calls. Howitzers barked a cadence of artificial thunder as canon-cockers waltzed in peculiar choreography, dodging hot metal to the beat, sending round after round on tenuous passage. Echoes of their performance drifted through the foothills for miles.
Lee clenched against the artillery in the distance as much as the shrink’s questions, letting himself drift away in misty recollections of spent shell casings and friends he loved. Men lost along ridgelines and valleys too far away from home.
“Lee, what are you going to do after the army?”
His quandary lingered in the air, reverberating off black checkered linoleum floors buffed to a shine by medics pulling the swing shift. It’s not that he hadn’t thought about it. He’d been hiding away, letting the world spin on without him instead of suffocating in a reality he wasn’t ready for. It was almost all he’d been thinking about these days. He simply didn’t know the answer.
Lee looked to the major sitting at his bedside, then beyond the man’s pale face to the six-pane window behind. Washington’s winter was fading into spring. All the outside world was overcast and forty-three degrees regardless of the time of day. He savored the quiet hours, content to watch cedar canopies through the window, waiting for the sun to break through watercolor skies.
“Lee, did you hear me?” Major Brent tapped his pen on Lee’s file, but his look was one of concern. He wore his hair slicked back, accompanied by a pencil-thin mustache that didn’t fit the expression.
“Yeah, I heard you.” Lee replied.
The tapping echoed across the room. It felt like someone was hammering shelter stakes through the back of his head.
“Hey sir, can you stop with the pen?” Lee’s voiced cracked. He was stalling, and he made damn sure the major knew it.
Major Brent had been sitting in the room for twenty minutes, refusing to let Lee off the hook. “Take your time, corporal.”
“Well, I need to find my daughter. I guess that’s the first thing.”
“Lucy?”
“Yeah, Lucy. I need to find out where my wife took her.” Lee simmered, his anger summoning a wave of nausea. He swallowed hard against it. “Why are you asking me all these questions?”
Major Brent lowered his eyes, staring down at the open chart in his lap. Lee knew the expression all too well. Pity that comes from those whose job it is to care, but lack the understanding to help. It painted the halls of this place.
“Lee, the army wants to make sure you have a plan for your future. What you went through, what you survived was…well, it was horrible. But you’ve been here for almost six months. You’re healing just fine. You’re eating. I know you’re walking without the cane. I even saw you at the pool last week. Corporal, I want you to understand that I’m trying my damnedest to keep you out of the VA hospital. You’ve got to give me something to work with here.”
Lee didn’t budge. He knew what Brent was getting at—the nightmares, the screaming, three roommates in three months.
“You know what they do with guys like you, right? You’re a smart fella. Christ, you dropped out of college to go to Korea! You’re the last guy I want to see with a hole drilled in his head.”
“I didn’t drop out, sir. My unit was called up.” Lee whispered back.
The thin, well-oiled pencil broke at an odd angle across the major’s lip. “Look, you can do what you want with your life. It’s my job to make sure that you can handle it when you walk out of here. Let me help you, Lee. Why don’t you let your family visit? They live close by, right?”
“I don’t really want to see anyone.” Lee looked down at his wrists, still covered in white gauze. The neatly tied bows seemed oddly out of place, like most things in his world these days. “Doc, I get it. I know I’m a liability. You don’t want me selling secrets to the commies, or offing myself in a way that comes back on the government. The truth is, I don’t know what I’m doing when I get out of here. How do I pick up the pieces when I don’t even know where to find them?”
Weariness crested, flooding the chambers of his heart. Lee let the major’s face blend into the background, bringing the window into focus. A ray of sun tiptoed through the trees beyond. Lee let out a sigh and closed his eyes.
“All I know is I need to find my daughter.”
