Absent Without Leave

By David Kilmer

Twelve concussions, five tours of duty, a few Jack Daniels and one way-too-pretty seatmate. 

His ears are still ringing from the latest near-miss and he can’t hear everything she’s saying, but he likes watching her lips move. He doesn’t fit right in his seat. Too long in the limbs and all these restless twitches. His big body is always at war. She’s got a wedding ring and she smells like everything good. She does not smell like the fucking desert, like kerosene, urine and fear.

When she asks what he does for work, he just says Navy. Coming home. He doesn’t say special ops. He doesn’t say AWOL, that instead of heading back to base in San Diego and his family, he jumped a flight for the wildest place he could find.

She talks about her horses. She flirts like a champ. She likes his southern accent and she calls him a hero. 

All he really wants is sleep. So long without sleep now everything seems underwater. Seeing things out of the corners of his eyes. Squinting, shaking his head. Any light too bright. He spits tobacco into his empty coffee cup. 

“Almost there,” she lays her cool hand on his forearm.

Bright lights in the baggage claim, things blurred at the edges. Headache beyond reason and he slips a few pills. His camo bag is heavy with weaponry, and now the woman’s hand is on his biceps.

“Give you a ride,” she says. 

They lean together into the Wyoming wind chill. At her SUV, she opens the back for his bag. Then with a sort of “what the hell” shrug she pounces on him, a move any wild predator would admire. A swift ambush, and our warrior always so good at vigilance for roadside bombs and booby trapped buildings is caught unaware. Her hands are around his neck, her mouth on his, her fingernails under his shirt. What’s a good soldier to do? This doesn’t feel great, but he is aware that nothing has felt great for a long time now. She shoves him into her back seat and makes these noises in his ear. His body does not respond. All he feels is his headache.

Then her phone rings, and he sees her family portrait flash on the screen, all of them dressed in matching outfits. He pulls away and she gives him a look. 

“Just giving you a nice welcome back, idiot,” she says, pouting a little. She fastens up her clothes. She doesn’t say another word. She drives at high speeds until she spots the sign for the VA clinic.

“You need to get some help,” she says, motioning with her head for him to get out of her

car. 

He shoulders his bag and faces the broken bricks of the clinic.

“Thank you for your service,” she calls, absurdly, then hotfoots her Mercedes away to her pedigreed horses and her color coordinated family. 

Is this how civilization works these days? How would he know? In his adult life, he’s spent more time in foreign lands than in his own supposed nation.

He does not go into the clinic. He goes across the street to the first bar and finds the darkest corner he can. He orders a bottle and a glass and commences to continue self-administering the medicine he knows best. Girls are dancing with upscale cowboy types and all he can see is unburned skin and fragile necks. None of these people have seen bodies swollen in the desert. 

“Want a dance, handsome?”

She’s balancing above him on unfamiliar high heels, standing akimbo, biting at her scarlet lower lip.

He blows out a breath and feels the booze on the inside of his mouth where he must chew his cheek in his sleep.

“I regret to say that I am about danced out.” 

“How about a date then?”

Shakes his head.

“I am not the cowboy you’re looking for.”

“C’mon, one drink.”

He motions wearily across the table and she sits. Another woman brings another glass and ice. She leans over and gives him a wink and a smile. 

“Careful with this one, she’s a pistol,” the older woman says.

The soldier tips the bottle for his date, then for him.

They just look at each other. 

Under the makeup, she looks young. Too young. Maybe the age his daughter would be by now. She takes a sip.

“Woo boy.”

She downs the rest. He realizes he had mistaken her reaction. Instead of disgust, it is distinct enthusiasm for the job at hand.

She pushes the empty glass back at him.

“I guess you like whisky.”

“Grew up on my mama’s not-so-secret stash.” 

She says it with an exaggerated twang.

“You from around here?” he says, sounding ridiculous to himself.

“Ah no way, honey,” she says. “I’m from 22 miles west a here. Middle of goddamn nowhere. This is the big city. Where you from?”

He thinks of all the places he’s ever spent the night. Some better than others. The names and places are all run together and he doesn’t like the way that feels.

“Let me ask you something,” he says.

“Anything you like, handsome.”

“You ever think you’re losing your mind?” he says.

She doesn’t flinch.

“Yep, absolutely, all the time. Every fucking day. Why do you ask?”

“Nothing quite seems real,” he says. “I just took an airplane ride that didn’t seem real. I wanted to bust out a door or a window just to make sure.”

She looks straight back at him, not flinching.

“So what’d you do?”

“Nothing,” he said. “I mean, I’m not a menace to society or anything. Hell, I’m supposed to be protecting it, in some kind of way. What I did was go into the toilet and lock that door. I looked into the mirror. Swore at myself like I do. Hated the sight of my face like I do.”

Her gaze softens. She reaches across the table and touches his hand.

“Honey, c’mon… it’s not such a bad face,” she says. “You’re… you’re just kinda blunt at all your edges.”

“I’ve heard worse.”

“So you cussed at the airplane mirror.”

He drains his glass and so does she.

“Truth be told, I did a little more than that,” he says. “I hauled off and hit myself, slapped myself around a little in that little tiny bathroom.”

They stare across the table at each other. The jukebox reloads a slow number. The floor creaks under passing boots. 

“It wasn’t the pain or the sting. Tell the truth I can hardly feel it. It was seeing the red mark on my face. I mean, you couldn’t dream that or whatever, could you? I mean, I actually put that there, right?”

She doesn’t say anything, just gets up and comes around to his side of the table. She lifts his arm and slips underneath it, puts her head on his chest. He smells shampoo, fresh and clean.

“Let me show you something,” she says. She stretches out an arm on the table. It’s thin and pale on the underside and crisscrossed with scars.

“I cut myself,” she says. “I always have.”

“Those look deep,” he says.

“Not so deep. I’m not trying to kill myself or anything.”

He feels the warmth of her body against his, her breath against his jaw. Been a long time.

“If you want to feel something, I’m your girl,” she says. “I’ll make you feel it all.”

You go for months in the mountains and the desert, in the company of men, and now you’ve just landed and this is the second woman of the day who wants to have her way with you. 

He closes his eyes. Imagines the hotel room, somewhere nearby where this will lead. When she takes his clothes off she will see some scars all right. 

The older woman comes back over, seems impatient.

“You two getting along all right?” she gives the girl a meaningful look. “Another bottle?”

“We’re fine,” the man says.

He untangles himself from the girl and looks her straight in the eyes. They are slightly off kilter from one another.

“Are you okay,” he says. “I mean, are you here of your own accord and all?”

She laughs.

“You mean am I trafficked? No mister, I am here of my very own accord. You don’t have to worry about me, Mr Protector of All Things.”

She has put on her professional smile again and the vulnerability they shared is nowhere to be found.

“Whatcha doing in town, anyway, mister?” She says. Back to the standard transactional lines.

“Hunting,” he says.

“Hunting for a girl just like me,” she says but the delivery is off and the line falls flat. 

“Probably should head out. Trying to get up to the Wind River Range before dark.”

“You be careful up there, mister.” This seems genuine enough. “I heard they seen all kind of wooves.” 

The older woman comes back and is a little more direct.

“Alright, Samantha, we got plenty of customers,” she says. The girl gives her a fierce look.

“Your name is Samantha,” the man says. 

“More like Sammy,” she says. 

“Samantha, I’m Benjamin,” he says. “It was really nice to meet you.”

“Thought you liked me. Thought we was having a date,” she says. “You just gonna go off into the mountains with them wooves and all and leave me?”

“Let me ask you something,” he says. “What’s that saying about lust?” he says. No idea why this is what comes into his head.

She bats her false eyelashes, seems to be a bit tired of his shit.

“Lust is craving for salt when you’re dying of thirst,” he says, staring at his dying whisky.

“Well you’re a lot of fun,” she says. “And no, I have absolutely no idea what the hell that means.” 

Puts a hand on his hand. “Change your mind let me know.”

She prances away to the music. He watches her work the place at Happy Hour like a predatory fish working an oncoming tide on the reef.

Then she comes back to his table. “Whatcha so scared of anyway?”

“Good question,” he says and this time looks her straight in her slightly mis-matched eyes. He shrugs his shoulders. 

“Well when you get over THAT shit let me know,” she says and begins to swim back into the currents. 

“Hey.” 

She turns, bright eyed, vibrant.

“What are you doing here anyway?”

She rolls her eyes.

“Yeah, whatever,” she says. 

“No, I mean, what are you working toward?”

She comes back and plunks down. 

“Now see, nobody ever axed me that before,” she says. She gets a faraway look. “I’m saving up for a trip.”

“Trip to where?”

“The Pacific Ocean,” she says and her eyes are wide. “I just want to see it and maybe even dip my toe.” 

“It’s cold,” the man says.

“I don’t care. Hell, if I ever get there, I’m jumping all the way in,” the girl says.

She looks directly at him. “See, some of us isn’t afraid to take the plunge.”

They consider each other afresh.

“Give me a hug at least,” the girl says. “Imagine how good we would feel.”

And so he stands, and they do hug, and she stays there in his arms and whispers something sweet but also quite provocative into his ear. The feel of her breath on his ear and just the slightest graze of her lips is more intimate than anything the SUV lady tried to do.

“I’ll miss ya,” the girl says, kisses him on the cheek and vanishes into the school of rhinestone cowboys again.

What is it, then, soldier? Afraid of death? No, we’ve crossed that bridge a long time ago. Actually that bridge was blown up underneath us. Afraid of pain? Got that every single day.

He feels like a fraud in here. He will abandon the place to those who can truly embrace their lust, salted or unsalted, and who will not leave the perfectly good bottle half-empty. 

He scouts for Samantha and comes up empty. Grabs a pen from the bar and writes a little note on a napkin.

“Thanks for spending some time with an old soldier like me. I did need a friend today. Here’s for the date we never had. You have a lovely smile and I like your laugh. I hope you find the ocean.”

Under that he leaves two crisp $500 bills, and anchors it with the bottle. He hopes she finds it before the older lady does.

He heads out the door, into the blinding light and finds himself on a monochromatic street from the early Western movies, the extras hunched against the wind. 

Down the street is a used car lot, and on that lot he sees a rusted Chevy pickup, built the way things used to be. He enters a door, and when the bell attached to it rings he feels it all the way through his skull.

“I’m buying that truck,” he says.

“It’s not for sale,” says the man in the corner.

“It says for sale,” the soldier says. “What’s wrong with this place?”

By now he’s already ready to head back from this to the more familiar absurdities of deployment.

The man shakes his head.

“Well I’m borrowing it then,” the soldier says. “Give me the keys.” 

“You crazy?” the man says, but now there is fear in his eyes. 

“That I am,” the soldier says. “I’m taking a test drive.”

He plunks way too much cash on the counter.

He already has plenty of ammunition in his bags. He’s not hungry and he doesn’t buy any food. He doesn’t know what it takes to get a hunting license here and decides not to care.

Driving toward the mountains feels something faint yet vital return, the forgotten dregs of the eagerness he knew charging onto Louisiana high school football fields, enlisting the day after 9/11, surviving the bleak waters of training. His first jump into uncertainty. The interrogations and some of the kills. Some things are so clear. Others blurred beyond recognition.

Why is there a cowboy hat beside him on the seat? He’s never worn a cowboy hat in his life, and yet he jams it on his head, a nod to his new identity here.

He welcomes the chilly wind through the rolled-down windows, the country music loud on the FM radio. He tosses handfuls of meds out onto the highway. Just once, he needs to feel clearly. There’s this place he knows where the wolves will be. 

He’s AWOL because he can’t head home, not yet. And he’s in Wyoming because of a promise. Whenever things got really bleak, there was this kid in his unit who would whisper stories about hunting the Wind River Range. About the mythical creature the wolf. At the end that kid only talked about wolves, nothing else. Go and find me one, he said. These guys who died raving in the field always had some unfinished business for the living. Usually it was to find their family. Now it was to find a wolf.

It was the only pure thing, the kid always said.

The soldier-turned-hunter salutes himself in the rearview in that unfamiliar hat. He drives up through mud and ruts until he can’t drive any more. As the snow-blasted peaks of the Wind River Range blaze with the last sun, he lays out his gear on the tailgate. Headlamp, sniper rifle and scope, pistol and ammo. 

It’s a steep hike, a long slog, but nothing new for this ole boy, and as soon as he begins walking, everything bad goes away. His big, aching body welcomes the familiar pain of lugging his rucksack uphill, one boot in front of the other. Raw movement, mindless migration. No thought, only breath, bone and muscle. Just what he needs.

As the moon comes up he hears the wolves. Not far, their calls echoing down to his position. He moves as close as he can and hunkers against a pine.

It’s a cold night there in the snow. He thinks about his kids. He thinks about his wife. About his service buddies, the ones who are lost, and those like him who are half-lost. Of the girl with the slashes on her arms. Of everything false he seems to have mistaken for the truth. 

He beats himself up that way for a long time, but finally, toward dawn, his thoughts turn more tender. He remembers the very first girl he ever kissed. He thinks about his beloved fishing boat on the Gulf Coast. Then he just listens to the wolves, calling each other from time to time. His throat aches with something not felt in years. 

When there’s enough light to see his target, he does what he came here to do. The mission is always first. He puts the alpha female in his rifle sights. The look of her, magnified, makes him catch his breath. She is beautiful. He is unnerved. For the longest time he just lays there, pinned to his scope, watching her lovely amber eyes at the other end. 

Something pure there, he thinks to himself. Something rare.

Like the way they always made love, back before his deployments. The way his kids would hug him fiercely, back before all of his absences. Like the simple pleasures of an orchard in the afternoon sunlight on a terraced hillside, the trees full with ripe apricots and pears, before it was obliterated by a bomb strike he’d called in.

The wind comes down hard from the mountains. It flattens the fur on the back of the wolf, turns the soldier’s ears and fingertips numb. It had been cold that night the kid had died, on that lonesome hillside, still rattling on about the wolves.

“I’ll get you one, bro,” the soldier says now.

He knows well the sensation of the gun, when fired, will be remarkably easy. No bang, no violence, just letting go.

The wolf might tumble.

Or maybe, a darker thought, he turns the gun around instead. His new hat pulverized, fragments of brain, that fine, tragic brain that has both served and betrayed him so well. After all the drills, the patrols, the unwavering vigilance, his own worst enemy still hiding within.

Looking up at the frozen Wind River Range, he knows it’s all the same. None of it is of consequence up here. 

It does not matter.

Eventually the shot does come. But not from him.

Through his faithful scope, still trained on the female wolf at dawn, he watches her erupt in red like so many targets of his have done before.

There must be another hunter somewhere and he feels the shame of not knowing they were there, because he always knows. Now he sees the glint of gun and hears the shouts of triumph. 

And then he hears the wolves. 

As their leader goes into death throes, the wolves begin to sing. Their voices raise the hair on his neck. The man has heard this sound before in village streets after a bombing raid. The desolate wails from a new widow as her husband’s flag-draped casket comes rolling out of an airplane. And from his young kids whenever he would leave for another deployment.

Their song goes on as the valley floods with early light, and these peaks, so old, so battered, so uncaring, take on a delicate tenderness, seeming to float above it all.

By now the hunters have claimed their prize and departed. But the wolves remain. 

The soldier’s limbs are numb. He feels not quite of this world any more. From somewhere deep within himself, he feels a sound. It begins as a growl. And then he is improbably, wildly, howling himself. 

He tilts back his head and howls, louder yet. He hears his voice return to him from the ice-scoured rocks.

One wolf answers, then another. 

He howls again.

It’s a howl of everything that has been building inside his long, lonely awkward body forever. Now he is crawling around on all fours, the sound coming from deep inside him, vomiting out of him until he is choking on it. Crying so hard he can’t see. 

He crawls in circles until only dry heaves remain. Now the wolves have stopped howling too.

He sits up. He sees the most remarkable thing he has ever witnessed on this earth.

The wolves have moved in around him. They do not growl, simply sit very still and upright. When he looks over his shoulder he sees that he is in the middle of a complete circle of wolves.

In this ancient faraway valley, at the very end of his rope, he finds he is not afraid of these alien kin. He has no more awareness of time, or pain, only this, only wolves looking solidly back at him with those unfathomable eyes. 

The eyes of his wife are a special shade of green. His children’s eyes? It’s been too long.

Slowly, softly, the soldier begins to speak to the wolves.

He starts at the beginning. He tells his lean, silent companions all the things he was always afraid to tell anyone else. And the thing is, they pay attention, like nobody ever has.

The wind is fierce now, right into his bones.

And so the soldier nods to his audience, yanks his new hat brim a little lower. He leans into the wind and bares his teeth in a rare grin. 

“If ya’ll don’t mind, that’s all the stories I’ve got for now,” he says to the wolves. “Then I’m gonna have to say my goodbyes. It’s a long hike back to where I belong.”

THE END