Dave and Susan sitting in a tree k-i-s-s-i-n-g. I love you.
Dave watched Susan sitting there as if he had pulled her plug or pulled out her batteries. Emotionless, she was comatose. When most women would love to hear that, he say the wrong thing by telling her that he loved her. Happy one minute and sad the next, he wondered if she was a manic depressive. What just happened? He didn't know. He had no idea. So full of life before, all that it took to turn her off was for him to say three words that meant so much to him and obviously so little to her, 'I love you.'
She acted as if he had said I hate you instead of I love you. She acted as if he wanted to break up with her, not that they were ever together. She acted as if she wasn't interested in taking whatever the fuck they had to the next level, which he wanted to do. What did they have anyway? Obviously, they didn't have anything. Obviously, even though he thought they were, they weren't a couple.
When it comes to women, he wondered if Simone, Lucy, and/or Carmen were available to give him some much needed advice if not some comfort. He wondered what they'd say and how they'd react if he told one of them that he loved them. No doubt, being that they were prostitutes and with their Johns telling them that all the time, they'd probably laugh in his face.
A bag lady and a Marine having only met several hours ago, he was as much of a stranger to her as she was an enigma to him. Apparently, according to her immediate negative reaction and foul response, in the way that she recoiled from him and rejected him, they didn't have anything in common to maintain a boyfriend/girlfriend relationship, never mind love. What is love anyway? It's just a feeling. He had feelings for her but she didn't have feelings for him. When most men never want to commit, he was ready to ride off in the sunset with her, only there was a hitch and a fly in the ointment.
'Houston there's a problem. May Day! May Day! Negative to love. It's a no go. Abort the mission and scrub the relationship.'
She sat there with the look of a woman who had been badly beaten before being brutalized emotionally, physically, and sexually. As if she were a human turtle hiding in her self-protective shell, not willing to show her emotions for fear, no doubt, that she'd be hurt again, she had the look of a woman who had disappeared inside of herself and withdrawn from life. Obviously, an understatement, she wasn't ready for love or any kind of a relationship for that matter. Not the best looking man, especially after having his face reconditioned with the stress of combat and with one too many blows to the head, maybe she was ready for love but not with him.
After his ears stopped ringing and after the last cloud of black, putrid smoke cleared, always there was smoke after the fire and not before, she had the look that he had after he survived another bloody battle. Always as if a crescendo to their mission, the air was filled with the stench of fuel, oil, and burning rubber. He wonder how many deadly, cancerous carcinogens he inhaled. He wondered how many years being a Marine fighting wars took off of his life. She had that same dazed and empty look that he had when looking around to survey the damage and to take inventory of the dead and the wounded. Only her combat mission was living and his combat mission was dying, kill or be killed.
'Don't move! Show me your hands! Show me your hands! Get down on the ground! Get down on the ground! Don't move!'
Those words echoed through his brain in seven languages. Yet too many only understood a bullet to the head. They hated Americans. They hated America. He never met so many people who were willing to die rather than to surrender to an American serviceman.
Yet every year we support Pakistan with billions of dollars, money wasted over there that could be used to house the homeless and feed the hungry over here. For Pakistanis to hide terrorists while burning our flag, those two facts don't bode well when Congress approves more money going to Pakistan. If he were President and Commander in Chief of the military, he'd fired a couple of smart bombs one earmarked Pakistan and one airmailed to Afghanistan. 'Boom!' In an instant, the war would be over. Hamid Karzai, our puppet president in Afghanistan, in bed with the CIA from day one, holds no loyalty to the United States.
If he had the chance to take Karzai out when he was there, he would have but he was protected, not so much by the Afghan military but by United States private contractors, mercenaries, men who were once just like him. Only, if he had assassinated their president, Secretary Clinton, the President, and the top generals and admirals from the pentagon would have been all over his ass. No doubt, they would have blamed him for destabilizing the area. They would have blamed him for making things much worse when there was no way things could get any better over there, which is why the Russians left years ago to end their war with Afghanistan. Yet, we're still there. Why?
He could have worked for one of those private contractors. He could have worked for the CIA or any secret agency that did dirty deeds behind the scenes. He was qualified. He had the skills to kill, something that is still in high demand. They would have paid him buckets of money to work for them. Only, he saw how they worked and how they operated. Different from the Marines, he couldn't work with someone and for someone who wasn't watching his back and who was more concerned with their own.
Only, with all of war and foreign policy out of his control, all he could do was to retire from the Marines and go on with his life. He couldn't do his job anymore. The patience he once had was gone with suicide bombers. Now he fired first and asked questions later. Shoot to kill or be blown to bits was always his standing orders.
* * * * *
'I love you.'
The words echoed in his head in the way of a bad dream. The words that lifted his spirit to say before made him sad now. She didn't have to say she didn't love him. She saw the shocked look in her eyes. A nanosecond glimpse in her soul, a trained assassin, he was skilled at detecting a liar. He could walk in a room cold and know which one to shoot first. Never was he wrong. Always was he right. Otherwise, he wouldn't be standing here as a retired Marine. He would have been a dead Marine years ago.
With death always all around him, the stench of rotting corpses and the acrid smell of burning flesh is something he'll never forget. To this day, he can't enjoy a barbeque, raw meat burnt beyond recognition. How many of his buddies did he had to identify. If it wasn't for their dog tags, they'd be buried in an unmarked grave with so many other soldiers and marines who didn't have enough left of them to identify.
Burning alive again in his nightmares, he still relives the horror, hears their screams, and sees the faces of all those buddies he couldn't save. Taking his gun and shooting them instead of watching them die a horrible death, acts of war never reported on the nightly news, he's done that more than once. If the military allowed the press to report everything that they witnessed and that happened instead of classifying their dirty laundry as top secret, there'd be a Congressional investigation where some Major, Captain, and Sergeant would be offered up as sacrificial lambs, when the army rotten from the head down.
How many generals return home fatter and richer than when they arrived? There's a lot of retired generals who retired after going over to Iraq to pillage and Afghanistan to plunder. After a while, after seeing so many killed in combat, other than to fan the area with a blanket of machine gun fire, dead bodies no longer evoked a response in him. After a while, instead of killing the lowly enemy, men who were as brainwashed as he was, he wished he could kill the ones responsible for the deaths of so many of his buddies. Only, they'd court marshal and execute him if he started killing those powerful generals who knew the real story of why they were at war. Twisted enough by war and politics, it was time for him to retire and he did.
