Coming Home

It had been five years since Jason had last stood in front of his home. At that time war was brewing, and Jason’s group of friends decided to join the Army because it sounded like fun. “Fun” was far from his view of it, Jason had long thought of the military and its servicemen as arrogant punks who just liked killing things. He saw no glory or honor in it, why defend a country that was so oppressive anyway? However, jobs were scarce, and with no real vocational ambitions or desires to further his education after high school, he joined up with the four of them. He had stood in front of his California home, his clean-shaven face still stinging from the resentful removal of his scraggly beard, hugged his parents and bid them a last goodbye before heading to the processing station where he would be shipped off to Basic Training.

Even in Basic, his disdain bled profusely through his behavior. He talked back to the cadre regularly, and often refused to do the tasks assigned to his platoon while giving some indifferent and simple excuse such as, “I don’t wanna.” Of course, according to the team-building regimen of the Army, this meant punishment not just for him, but the entire unit. This created such resentment toward Jason amongst his peers that one day, after a particularly harsh physical training session courtesy of Jason’s attitude, three of his fellow soldiers attempted to ambush him in the barracks bathroom. Only the words of his childhood friends managed to prevent a brawl. After that, the four other young men put in extra effort to coax the minimal levels of cooperation out of Jason, at least until they could complete the training.

“Johanson, Duncan, you two are up for patrol,” gruff Lieutenant Judkins said quickly, breaking Jason Johanson from his reverie.

“Yes sir!” Both of them replied as they got to their feet, donned their plate carriers and Kevlar helmets, grabbed their rifles and exited the tent. The bright California sun beat down upon them, making the humid air feel oppressively hot and stifling. The two walked in silence along the empty neighborhood streets. Burned out hulks of cars dotted the landscape, fitting in with long abandoned houses which were all in a state of decline, often missing large portions of their structures.

“It’s so strange, being here, don’t you think?” Scott Duncan said with awe.

“Yeah,” Jason said flatly. He and Scott were the only two of their friends left alive from when the five of them joined up so many years ago. Now, they walked down the war-torn streets of their past- different men.

“Dude, check it out.” Scott pointed towards their old elementary school. The old building stood in stark wholeness compared to the surrounding neighborhood. Only broken windows and occasional bullet holes stood out from the familiar, yet ugly, pitted red brick. Two of the diminutive chairs uses by the students lay broken beneath the shattered windows. Jason could see pieces of paper lying uselessly on the floor of an empty hall just inside an open door.

“Of course,” Jason said, “not even a war could tear that thing down.”

Scott stared wistfully at the decrepit building, “Yeah, those were the good old days.”

“Maybe for you,” Jason turned his back on the emblem of academic challenge, “C’mon, let’s keep moving.”

“I know it wasn’t the best time for you,” Scott said as he followed his friend, “But this was where we all met! We had some good times together. There’s got to be something about those days you liked.”

Jason was silent for a moment before speaking, “I suppose I liked how comfortable it felt in our little group. I didn’t feel like I had to try to gain your guys’ approval or anything.”

As he spoke Jason ran his thumb along the worn and fraying edges of a dirty and frayed patch on the front of his plate carrier. Time and dust had turned the green patch a dark shade of brown. Its faded picture depicted a squat wizard in a pointed hat. His hand was outstretched, casting a beam of magic from his palm. His friends had chosen the patch as their unofficial emblem, representing the game they had all bonded over as children.

They continued their patrol down the street, reaching a particular intersection which Jason felt driven towards. He stopped and looked down the street before turning to his friend. He realized Scott had been watching him studiously as they had approached the intersection. “Hey, let’s turn here.”

Scott looked at the still standing street sign, then back at his friend, “You sure? That’s deviating from the patrol route.”

“Yes,” Jason said quickly before he could change his mind.

“You might not like what you find there J.J.”

Without another word, Jason turned down the street, his companion in tow. He felt apprehension and fear as he moved along the street. In truth, he did not want to go this way, but he felt he needed too. Silence hung in the air between them, interrupted only by the sound of their boots on the asphalt. Finally, Jason stopped in front of the cratered remains of a pale-yellow house, sadness, anger, and anxiety welling up inside him like the slight drizzle and faint wind ahead of an approaching storm.

After Basic Training, the group was shipped off to AIT where they were to learn the particulars of their specific jobs in the Army. For Jason and his friends, this meant extensive infantry training. Two weeks in they learned of the declaration of war. Most of the troops and cadre carried a more enthusiastic energy in their day-to-day conversation and activities after that, but Jason’s desire to be there only soured further. However, due to years of economic, domestic, political, and military atrophy, the United States were ill prepared for the fight. Two months into AIT, word came of enemy forces landing on the beaches of the West Coast. Three days later Jason received a letter from a neighbor- his family had not survived the invasion and his home was gone. His attitude did a one-eighty, as resentful as he had been before he was filled with rage and eager to fight from then on.

“You okay man?” Scott’s words made Jason jump a little. He realized he had been standing still and staring for quite a while.

“Huh? Oh, yeah, I-I’m okay,” His reply was unconvincing. Jason stepped off the street and onto the park strip of dead grass, passing the snapped mailbox post. The top half of the mailbox was caved in from the back and rusting on the other side of the street. He stepped over small pieces of rock, broken glass, rotten wood, and tarnished brass shell casings which crowded the walk to the front of the house.

Jason examined the front door. He remembered as a young kid how excited he was to walk through it after a day of school. He had hated school, and all through grade school never understood why he needed to learn so many things he wasn’t going to use. He also didn’t like the other kids and fought them regularly. To his teachers he was hopeless, and to his peers he was a dunce. That door represented freedom from the responsibilities of school he hadn’t asked for. Now, it was tiny splinters all across the porch and lawn. The two sides of the doorframe still stood, though now they ended in jagged points as the top of the frame was also gone.

Jason stepped through the doorway and looked into the living room to his right. In his mind’s eye, he could see a younger, skinnier version of himself pacing back in forth in front of the bay window, arguing with his parents over many years as they forced him to finish high school and failed to persuade him to go to college. Now, all the glass and curtains were gone from the window, and a small crater in the center of the room revealed the cement and rebar of the foundation. Rusting brass shell casings littered what was left of the carpeted floor, and the couch at the back of the room looked moldy but was still surprisingly leaking cotton from some of its many wounds. Dark stains on the ground, particularly under the sill of the bay window, indicated things had not gone well for whoever had been in the room during the firefight.

Turning, Jason proceeded straight from the doorway into the open dining room and kitchen. As he looked to the kitchen on the right, he again found the younger ghost of himself. Feeling a desire for purpose in life, young Jason was discovering his activist side. His unconscious desire to be a part of something bigger than himself, combined with the peer pressure of the “popular” thing to do, he threw his heart and soul into protesting against the establishment. Now, he admitted to himself that this had just been an excuse, a supportable reason to hate all the organizations in his life attempting to give him responsibility and make him grow and change. In the present, the kitchen was the only place in the house with most of the walls and roof still intact. He was strangely relieved to see it untouched besides the weathering of exposure to the elements.

On his left, Jason did not find his young phantom. No memories of youthful naiveté or self-imposed misery graced his mind. No images of family welcomed him. All Jason saw was the massive, yawning hole in the ground which had swallowed anything left of the house which its creation had not violently expelled. The pile of shattered wood was dotted with bits and pieces of random objects capable of surviving years of natural exposure. He slid down the side of the crater and began sifting through the remains of the front-left half of the house. The morbid thought came to his mind that this was like digging through the open grave of his childhood, which no one had bothered to fill in.

Just as he dismissed this thought, Jason saw something that made his blood run cold. A skinny, bleached-white object was jutting from the dirt beneath him. Reaching down, he found it did not extend as far into the dirt as he first supposed. It was broken just under the surface of the soil but, as he held it up, there was no denying what it was. It was a bone. As the realization sank in, his building emotions unleashed their full fury. He quietly sobbed. Tears ran down his grizzled cheeks as he lamented the loss of innocence, the regret of ingratitude, and the love he failed to show. What wouldn’t he give to turn back the clock?

He had left this house blinded from what he had and returned to find its deathly echo. They say life isn’t fair, that it is tough, but as tough as it was, war was worse. War was unapologetic, had no kid gloves, left no room for imperfection or immaturity, and demanded the sacrifice of innocence. It stripped away all defenses of comforting, self-proclaimed truth. And as the earth-shaking, cloudless thunder reminded him: War was always hungry.