Tell me a story...

CODY’S WAR

Carol plopped down in the patio chair and looked out across the deserted swimming pool. The three-story apartment building wrapped around on all four sides, forming a large courtyard with the pool as its centerpiece. The sun was rising to her left over the east wing of the building and the sky was clear and blue above. It would be a sunny summer day in the North Bay, maybe low eighties with a little luck. On the small table next to her was a steaming cup of coffee, a plate holding a toasted bagel and a sliced golden nectarine, its sweet juice collecting in little pools. It was Sunday and Carol Crane had the perfect morning planned. The most effort she intended to expend was to remove the rubber band from the Times-Herald and get caught up on the news of the day. A grueling workweek that extended through Saturday was behind her and she’d earned the right to do nothing at all.

The morning air was cool, but Carol felt comfortable in her jeans and the navy blue sweatshirt with “Cal” scrawled across the front in gold script. She took a sip from her coffee mug and was about to pick up the bagel when she heard a knock at the front door. She wondered who it could be. She wasn’t expecting anyone. Maybe it was the maintenance guy needing to check on something. She padded across the apartment in her stocking feet and peered through the peephole. Carol flinched slightly and then looked again. Standing in the hall outside her door was a man with wild, dirty black hair and a full Walt Whitman beard. The small patch of his face that was visible through all that hair was burned a dark brown by the sun. He looked as though he’d been living on the street for months, if not years.

“Who is it? What do you want?” She wondered how he’d gotten into the building, but she knew the answer: someone was always propping open one of the doors, bringing in groceries or moving furniture in or out. Security was a joke.

“Carol? Is that you? It’s me… Cody.”

“Oh my God!” She looked again and this time she recognized the eyes. She unhooked the safety chain and opened the door. “Cody? Oh my God. Is it really you?” She started to lunge for him, to wrap her arms around his neck.

“Whoa, hold on girl! I’m a little gamey.” He backed away slightly. “I don’t think you want a hug right now.” And then he laughed that all-too-familiar laugh and she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was Cody.

“Get in here, you dope.” She grabbed the sleeve of his shirt and pulled him into the apartment where he dropped a large duffle and a sleeping bag. As this was happening, it all started to come back to her. How long had it been? Five years? Longer? She had to stop and think. If not for the sporadic cards that would arrive out of the blue at Christmas or on her birthday, she would have long since given him up for dead. She thought about how badly it had ended and for a fleeting moment, she could feel all the old pain boil up inside. But he was here and he was alive, and for now, that was all that mattered.

“Come on out to the patio with me. You can share my breakfast. Can I get you a cup of coffee?” Thank God for the patio and the fresh air. The odor that clung to him was overwhelming.

“I’d love some coffee.” He moved toward the patio. “Nice place, Carol! How long have you been here?”

“Oh, couple of years.” She didn’t have to ask how he’d found her. She’d always been listed in the phone book.

She handed him a mug of coffee and took the chair across from him. For all the years of separation, the conversation came easily, punctuated by bursts of laughter. Cody could always make her laugh; make that almost always. They devoured the bagel and the nectarine as they brought each other up to date on the progress of their lives. She asked him where he’d been and he launched into a recitation of his travels, from Minneapolis, to Miami Beach, back to Minnesota, and then a long westward journey that took him through Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming, Colorado, Nevada, and finally back home to Vallejo.

While she listened intently to his story, she thought of the day they met, when she’d taken her car to a local mechanic to find out why it was overheating. When she returned to hear the bad news, there was Cody Barrett in his coveralls, wiping the grease from his hands and fixing her with the most beautiful smile. The details, the estimated cost, everything about the poor overheated car went straight over her head. Luckily, it was all written down so she could read it later. When he finished, he smiled at her again and patted his chest with his right hand.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “I hope you won’t mind my saying this, but you are… the most… beautiful girl I’ve ever seen. Would you be offended if I asked you out… for coffee… or something?”

All the while his face was turning a bright crimson color. It was irresistible. Carol said no, she didn’t mind, and yes, coffee – or something – would be nice. From that day on, she believed in love at first sight.

Cody continued with his story and she asked how were things in Minneapolis and Miami and all those other places. It turned out that Minneapolis was too cold, and Miami was too muggy, Iowa too corny, and so on across the country.

“And how were you in those places?” She had to ask.

“Not good in most of them… in all of them, actually. But I’m better now, Carol. Swear to God, I’ve been dry for nearly a year.”

This was good to hear, even if it was hard to accept immediately. She’d been thinking about the bottles of liquor sitting on the upper shelf of the cabinet in her kitchen and wondering if she should hide them, or maybe pour them down the drain. She’d worry about that later, when the time was right.

Their timing had been atrocious all those years ago. When they first started to talk about getting married, Cody wanted to wait until he could establish himself, maybe start a repair shop of his own, one that people could count on for honest estimates and quality work. Then he learned that his draft lottery number was moving toward the top of the list. He chose to enlist rather than be drafted and he was sure the Army would take advantage of his skills as a mechanic, maybe enhance his career with experience on heavy vehicles. The Army, in its wisdom, assigned him to a combat battalion and before he knew what hit him, he was on his way to a place called Da Nang. That was 1968, right after the Tet offensive, and the Army needed boots on the ground. Nearly a year later, he was within days of the end of his tour in Vietnam when he was hit by a sniper’s bullet while on patrol. The bullet entered his left side just below his ribs and exited without hitting any vital organs, leaving him with a very interesting scar. You could say that he was lucky. Or not.

It was only the beginning of Cody Barrett’s war. He came home broken and none of the doctors who saw him in the VA hospitals could fix him. For starters, he couldn’t sleep. The truth was he was afraid to sleep. When he let himself sleep, the nightmares came. Nightmare is such a feeble word. It doesn’t come close to describing the flashbacks and the sheer terror that would cause him to jump up in bed screaming, the bed sheets soaked in his sweat.

He couldn’t talk to anyone, not the VA doctors, not even Carol. She remembered only one comment from Cody about the war. That was when William Calley went on trial for the massacre at My Lai. “Sure,” he said, “let’s heap it all on Calley’s shoulders and crucify him for our sins.” And that was it, other than the screaming testimony that came in the middle of the night.

Cody found a way to make it though the night, or at least most of it. It was called vodka. He’d buy the cheapest, foulest brand available, quantity over quality, knowing that the more he drank, the longer the night terrors would stay away.

And so their life together spiraled down into the darkest pit imaginable. He drank and couldn’t hold a job. He drank and they fought. He hid bottles everywhere, drank on the sly, and fooled no one. He drank and could not function as a lover. Carol fought for him and tried to love him, but she was only human with only so much capacity for pain. Finally, she gave him an ultimatum: get help, give up the bottle, or get out.

Cody left a note that said he loved her, more than life itself, but he couldn’t put her through any more of his personal hell. He had to leave and try to find himself somewhere else. He didn’t promise to come back. He knew his promises would be worthless.

And now, here he was, looking and smelling like a wild man, sitting on her patio on a bright summer morning. Carol hoped with all her heart that he was in recovery. But that same heart had been locked away for so long, safe from all emotional exposure, that she knew it would take more than a few promising words to convince her.

“Okay, Cody, here’s what we’re gonna do. You’re gonna take a hot shower and maybe a long soak in the tub. In the meantime, I’ll hit the laundry room and get your clothes washed. Do you have any clean clothes to put on?”

“Don’t think so,” he said, with an embarrassed grin.

She remembered a box out in her storage locker by the carport. After he’d been gone for several months, she’d packed his things and stored them away, out of sight. She was sure there were some clean clothes for him there. “I’ve got some of your old stuff. I’ll get it while you’re in the shower.”

Carol went to the locker and found the box. She removed the lid and saw some of Cody’s jazz albums on top of the clothes and a small leather case off to one side. She unzipped the case and opened it to see the familiar barber kit she’d purchased years ago. There were scissors, a couple of combs, and an electric trimmer with several attachments. She had been Cody’s personal barber when they lived together. She turned the clippers in her hand and smiled at the thought of cutting his hair. Then she closed the case and zipped it quickly, put the lid on the box and hurried back to her apartment. There she opened the box again to pull out clean underwear, a pair of jeans, and a t-shirt.

She opened his duffle bag to sort his clothes for the wash. On the very top was a thick book. The title proclaimed Tanakh – The Holy Scriptures. A Jewish bible! What was he doing with this? She’d never known Cody to practice any sort of religion. Well, she thought, whatever works.

Cody poked his head out of the bathroom door, steam billowing out around him. “Did you find anything?”

“Yeah, try these.” She handed him the clothes she’d found.

“Do you have a razor I can borrow?”

“Better than that.” She handed him the leather case with the barber tools. “And there’s a razor and blades in the upper right-hand drawer. Help yourself.” She finished sorting his clothes and as she headed off for the laundry room, she heard the clippers buzzing steadily in the bathroom.
_____


Cody emerged from his shower a nearly-new man, holding his dirty clothes gingerly. “What should I do with these?”

“Toss ‘em on the patio. We’ll burn ‘em later.” That made him laugh, but he knew she was only half kidding.

She looked at him across the room and smiled. The Whitman beard was gone and he was clean-shaven. The sunburn around his eyes and nose looked like a funny little mask, but that would fade in few days. He looked thin and he tugged at his old jeans to hike them up on his waist. His dark hair was long and shaggy and he’d combed it straight back revealing his face. He was older, the lines in his face a little deeper now, but it was her Cody standing there.

Carol had pulled a chair into the center of her small kitchen. There was a tablecloth and a clothespin resting on the counter. “Bring the leather case and the clippers,” she said. She was going to fix that shaggy hair. Cutting someone’s hair can be an intimate, sensual thing, and she loved doing it when they were together. Cody sat up straight in the chair. She fastened the tablecloth around him and went to work, taking her time, trimming carefully, the dark hair falling in little tufts on the kitchen floor.

“Tell me about the bible,” she said. “Where did that come from?”

“A friend in Miami gave it to me. I’ve carried it around ever since. I read a little almost every night. Somehow it makes me feel… what’s the right word?.. peaceful.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Especially the Psalms. The language is beautiful. The best of them are like… beautiful, perfect short stories. Peaceful… that the right word.”

“Why Minneapolis, Cody? Why Miami? What made you choose those places?”

“I knew guys there, from the Army, guys that I could talk to. They’re the only ones, Carol, the only ones that understand. Everyone else tries as hard as they can, but they don’t know. They can’t know. Even the doctors wind up looking at you like you’re crazy, like you’re a strange little specimen under a microscope. You need to talk to someone who understands.”

She knew he was right. She was one of those who tried hard but could never really get it, no matter how hard she tried or how much she loved him.

“So, what’s next? Where to from here?” Carol continued to comb and cut with the scissors, her barber skills coming back quickly.

“I’ve got a job lined up in Richmond. I have to be there on Monday. An Army friend of mine has a shop there. It’s a service station with three repair bays and he needs a mechanic. He’s a good guy, Carol. I think it’s gonna work out – this time.”

She was nearly finished now. She turned on the clippers and trimmed carefully around his ears, then the curly little hairs that sprouted on his neck. Now she stepped back and surveyed her work. He’d never again be the boy she fell in love with, but some of the young Cody had emerged from under the unruly mop. Time now to sweep up the hair and check on the laundry.
_____


Carol dropped the bedding on the couch – a pillow, a couple of sheets and a blanket. “There you go, big guy. It’s all yours.”

“Thanks for letting me stay, Carol. It beats the hell out of where I’ve been lately.”

They’d spent the rest of that summer Sunday shopping for things he’d need in Richmond, browsing through the sales racks in the discount stores, looking for bargains. Carol was happy with the purchases, sure that they’d saved every penny possible. Cody’s resources were limited, at least until his first paycheck came through.

It had been a long day and they were both tired now. But Carol was more than tired. She couldn’t help but think of their last nights together, five years ago. She wasn’t sure what to expect, or how she would handle it if it got bad. They’d talked about many things, but not about what his nights were like now. Finally, she said good night, closed her bedroom door and crawled into bed. It wasn’t long before she fell into a fitful sleep, waking several times and then dozing off again.

Carol’s eyes snapped open. What was that sound? She glanced at the clock on the bedside table. It was just after 2:00 AM. She could see a light under the bedroom door and knew it was from the kitchen. Cody must be up, unable to sleep, maybe looking for a snack or something. What if he was looking in the cupboard where the bottles of liquor were stored? She tried to put that out of her mind. He said he hadn’t had a drink in a year and she had to take him at his word. But what if he was reaching for the vodka? Could she just lie there and let him fall off the wagon? She heard the clink of a glass. Oh God, what was going on? She threw back the covers and sat up on the side of the bed, listening. Another clink. That was it – she headed for the door and opened it quickly. There was Cody, a glass of milk sitting on the kitchen counter, quietly placing the carton back in the fridge.

“Hey, sorry, did I wake you?” He gave her a sheepish grin.

“No, I…” What could she say? I thought you were into the vodka and I was coming to slap it out of your hand.

“You don’t have any cookies, do you?”

So that was it: milk and cookies. In that moment, she wanted to wipe the milk off his upper lip and bake a batch of cookies just for him, standing there in his T-shirt and boxers, looking like a hopeful little boy.

“What?” he said. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Come here, dummy,” she said, holding out her hand.

She knew this was stupid, that it wouldn’t fix anything, that it wouldn’t bring back the lost years, but for now, she didn’t care. The bedroom had always been a special place for them, before Cody went off to the war. It was as if he had the magic key to unlock every nerve ending in her body, some secret code that had been conveyed only to him. The bedroom had been magical for them – then. She took his hand and led him there now to make the magic live again.
_____


Carol heard the front door close with a metallic click. She opened her eyes and looked at the clock. It was 5:00 AM on Monday morning and Cody had insisted that he’d take a cab to the bus depot so that she could sleep. She dozed off and on until the alarm went off at 6:30. The coffee maker would start automatically. She waited a few minutes, wide-awake now, and then headed for the kitchen.

She found her favorite mug and turned to place it on the counter. There was Cody’s bible, a folded paper napkin closed between the pages. Carol opened it and found that the napkin marked Psalm 103; the following passage was highlighted:

The days of man are as grass;
he flourishes as a flower in the field.

The wind passes over it and it is gone,
and no one can recognize where it grew.

What was he telling her? That he was gone? Gone with the wind? She read the psalm from the beginning and was moved by the passages that spoke of God’s compassion and His love. Whatever Cody had seen, whatever he had done, surely God forgave him.

She closed the book and clutched it to her chest with both hands. This was his prized possession and he’d left it with her for safekeeping. It told her that he’d be back, that his war was finally ending. Cody Barrett was coming home.
_____