The Whisky Blot
Journal of Literature, Poetry, and Haiku
A loud bang jolted him awake. He looked around the room and was reminded of his reality: a nursing home, widowed since March, friends all dead, children and grandchildren all out of state, no visitors. But it was the thought of his stepdaughter, Jennifer, that really stung. She lived in town but cut him off after her mother died. I raised her, was a father to her, packed her lunch and walked her to school, took her camping in the Upper Peninsula, paid for her college, treated her as one of my own, he told himself again. I’m not blood, but still – how could she? Now, with her mother gone, Jennifer wanted nothing to do with him and his accumulating medical bills. He replayed their last conversation: “But you’ve known me almost your entire life,” he told her. “I loved your mother. I cared for her until the end.” “You know what I think? I think mom got Alzheimer’s from dealing with you, from dealing with all your drinking and flashbacks or whatever those bizarre episodes were,” Jennifer replied. “And I think it’s for the best that you stay there for Christmas. Don’t call me again, Richard.” He returned to the present and succumbed to another wave of fatigue, let his eyes close. Images soon took shape in the darkness: scattered bodies in the snow, frozen stiff. Then the roar of the flamethrowers, the screams, sounds of death. He realized he was dreaming again and fought his way out of it, shook himself awake. The nightmares never went away. The flashbacks eventually did, a long time ago now, but not the nightmares, even after 70 years. Korea, 1950, the Chosin Reservoir. They were deep beyond the 38th parallel. The battle, still vivid in his mind, felt like last week and a lifetime ago. Guns, blood plasma, morphine syrettes, corpses, water, earth: all frozen. When everything slowed down, death sped up, he learned. And there was the possibility that one of his bullets struck true and killed a man. Over the years the thought grew into dread, and started to haunt him as his own death encroached. We were all kids. We all deserved a future. He could only pray that he had missed. His mind returned to his three children. So far away now – California, Texas, Minnesota. He felt as cut off now as he did then, when his division was surrounded by 120,000 PVA soldiers. But Jennifer was the gut punch. You conned me for 37 years. You betrayed me for what? Greed. He looked around the room: a nurse typing away on a computer, another nurse dispensing medications down the hall, two more immersed in a phone, giggling together at some picture or something. He could still tell his story. It wasn’t too late. He could still remember everything. But none of these people cared to know, cared to know anything about him, cared to know about the Chosin Reservoir and the miraculous escape that occurred there. They didn’t forget about us – they just never knew about us, he realized. This is how my generation dies. Weariness and sorrow again overtook him, so he let himself fall back into a dream. When not grinding away at his day job as a psychologist, David can be found spending time with his wife and son and indulging in creative writing. He has published short fiction and poetry in various literary magazines over the years. Comments are closed.
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