About Face
Halfway across the yard, there is sweat on the nape of his neck.
“Just so you know, I’m no equinophobe.” His old joke, tried and trusted.
“When did you look that up?” Her cushioned retort.
The soldier’s smile falters, but holds. She resists the urge to reach out and touch him.
“There’s always tomorrow, if you’d prefer.”
He measures this.
“See, there’s the problem right there.” It’s a snappy comeback, but not the right one. “Guess I shouldn’t.” That’s better.
As if on cue, one of the horses sticks its head over the stable door and nickers. At this angle, it can only sense their presence.
If there’s a difference between being stationary and standing motionless, the soldier has just proven it.
In her consulting room, the soldier’s natural-born reticence forms a toughened rind around the bitter pulp of experience. Penetration is impossible, as both of them know well. Thus confronted, she imagines the unspeakable.
“Hot over there. Touched the fifties at one point, believe that? Cotton in the helmet, that’s how we kept our eyes clear.” But ringing out sweat meant removing the helmet.
“We seldom got off a shot. Not an accurate one, anyway. Bullet comes out of nowhere” — he puts a finger between his eyes — “and that’s it. Curtains.” Before the second act.
“I didn’t go there with hate in my heart. When I returned — I told you this, right? — the first thing I did was look in the mirror.” Right back at you.
“No one is unchanged. I accept that. I do. Really.” There is a lengthy pause. “But,” — here it comes — “what if I can’t stop being what I became?” A prey animal would know, either way.
“They’ll read your scent. You’re a friend, remember?”
“At this distance,” he agrees. “Still, they might unfriend me up close.”
The horse’s eye, largest of all the land mammals. Undeniable.
“Come.”
He swallows hard.
In the event, it’s the feed bucket which holds the horses’ attention: succulent, attention-grabbing windfalls.
Deep-toned jaw crunches work their way into his nerves. Soothing sounds. Before he knows it, a greedy mouth has snatched the rotten one he’d forgotten he was holding.
“Sorry, lieutenant,” she says, her demeanor slipping for the briefest second. “You’re demoted from serpent first class to husband without class.”
“Okaaaaay. Back where I began, then?”
“Unless you’ve got somewhere better to be.”
“Nowhere better. Nowhere. At. All.”
He runs his palm along the horse’s neck, and then, in an instant, eye contact takes place: the horse’s to his and back again. She catches the connection, sees too the soldier’s face holding the look and then, after an immeasurable length of time, breaking away with a single blink.
“Huh,” he says, glancing up with one of his lop-sided smiles. “That’s a relief. Thought I spied a corneal ulcer there.”
A likely story.
She won’t push him. Instead, she rests a hand on his shoulder, inviting him to grasp it. As he does so, she hears him exhale, a welcome release to both of them. It’s enough. For the time being, it’s more than enough. She reminds herself that she’d stayed patient throughout his deployment and that she can stay patient now. Later on, he’ll take the next step.
