Windward Review Volume 19 (2021): Empathy and Entropy

I had to get home. “Red from shipping and receiving” wouldn’t stop himself,
and Margret was just confused. She missed me terribly, I knew that even if she didn’t
say it anymore. If I could just get there, just survive another day, I could show her.
Of course, I wouldn’t be the same since I had left, but that was okay. We could find a
way to work it out, and I could be the father that James needed. I just needed to get
there to make it happen, and I’d be god damned before some punk Lieutenant like
Milani was going to stop me.
THE NEXT DAY
I was sitting on an ammo crate when the Colonel came over to me, smoking
a cigarette I had traded one of the supply folks for. The last day’s action had been
unreal. Fifteen more men, three of which were French militia, had died by my hands
since I… did what had to be done with Milani. The show had been mine after that,
and I had led the ragtag troopers to something like “glory,” if that even existed in the
organized massacre of war.
“Sergeant Sanderson,” The Colonel said from behind me.
“Sir!” I barked, rising to my feet.
“At ease, son, at ease,” he said with his “I want to be your surrogate daddy”
voice.
I sat down again and said, “What can I do for you, sir?”
“I want to talk about yesterday, on the beach.”
My blood chilled, “Hell of a mess, sir.”
“No doubt,” he said, “what was that Lieutenant that helped get you guys up?”
“Milani, sir.”
“Damn good man, wasn’t he? Always heard he had a good head on his shoulders.”
“Yes, sir,” I lied, “Army will be less without him.”
“Absolutely, but I’ve got some interesting reports from some of the men that
were with you two.”
“What’s that, sir?” I asked, bracing for impact.
“They said you did a damned good job! In fact, I want to give you a silver
star! How does that sound?”
It wasn’t really a question, so I answered the only way I knew how, “Sounds
good to me, sir.”
“I’ll get the paperwork started then. Stay here, Sanderson. Take a rest. You
earned it.”
“Yes, sir,” I said while he wandered away to continue accosting the men who
did the real work with pointless frivolities.
A pent-up exhale of air exploded from me when the Colonel left. There it
was. I killed a man. In cold blood, no less. Now I was about to get the second highest
combat decoration under the Medal of Honor for it. Jesus, what a fucked-up world. In
the last twenty-four hours I hadn’t traveled far from the bunker, but I felt farther from
home than I ever had before. Most of all, I just felt tired.
I couldn’t suppress an ugly laugh while I thought about my son, despite the
tears running from my eyes. I did what “Red from shipping and receiving” would have
done in that moment: anything necessary to get by. Strangely, I felt close to the man
who was having his way with my wife in the same house my son lived in. We had both
crossed a line, of sorts, and both of us had to determine what life would look like after
that in our own way.
Windward Review: Vol. 19
54