Cemetery Street, John Zunski [read any book TXT] 📗

unstable explosive in a volatile environment – the slightest provocation capable of setting me off.
With a cry, I exploded, releasing years of built up passion. Shannie’s hips bucked against me, holding me tight. We stayed like this for untold moments. When we relaxed, I fell onto the sheets next to her.
Shannie’s eyes explored my face as we lay with our arms wrapped around each other. “That was fast,” Shannie said, half-jokingly, brushing my hair from my face.
Blushing in the darkness, I laid in silent humiliation. “You’re so passionate,” Shannie told me, kissing my forehead. You’re so diplomatic, I thought. Squeezing her, I buried my head on Shannie’s shoulder. My lips explored her neck. Soon, we were making love again. Afterwards, we fell asleep in each other’s arms.
At some point during the night, I woke. Shannie laid on her back next to me, sound asleep. For the longest time, I watched her perky breasts rise and fall in unison. I touched her left breast, a finger tracing soft circles around her nipple, stopping when the corner of her mouth twitched, resuming when I thought it safe. I did this repeatedly, staring in wonder at her body; stopping when she made the slightest movement. It was during one of these interludes that I noticed a single hair, fine as it was curling up from her upper arm, just below her shoulder. I stared at it in wonder, amazed as often as I’ve seen her bare shoulders that I had never noticed.
I moved my mouth close to her ear and breathed “I love you Shannie.” I held my breath, wondering what I would say if her emerald eyes flew open. I hadn’t a clue. She didn’t stir. When I felt safe, positive she wouldn’t hear me, I whispered “I love you,” into her ear. Her rhythmic breathing briefly stopped, then returned to its steady pace. Smiling, I rested my head on the pillow next to her. As I began to fade, I once again whispered, “I really love you,” before curling up tight against her and drifting off into a deep, dreamless sleep.

The room was awash with sunlight when I stirred. I reached my arm around Shannie, but she wasn’t there. The warm feeling in my heart vanished. The vacant burning sensation, which greets me every morning, pressed my chest down into the mattress. Getting out of bed is always an ordeal. The thought that last night was a dream consumed me. A groan escaped me.
“Good morning,” Shannie’s voice called from somewhere in the room. Sitting up, I noticed Shannie sitting at the table in front of the window, her notepad on the table in front of her.
“Morning,” I mumbled as images of last night raced in my mind. I watched Shannie cap her pen and stow her notepad in her backpack. It didn’t really happen? I needed to look no further than my pillow for an answer. A curly, flaxen strand of hair glistened in the sunlight. I breathed a sigh of relieve.
“Checkout is in ten minutes,” Shannie said sitting on the bed next to me. She put her arms around me and whispered into my ear. Her breath tickled me. “I’m sorry Just James. I’m sorry for everything.”
“Huh,” I asked hugging her back. I had my ideas, and I was about to get a good dose of what she was talking about, but it wouldn’t be until seven and a half years later that I’d know exactly what Shannie was sorry about.

On the road, an uneasy silence settled between us. Resting in the passenger seat with my feet on the dash, I satisfied myself with an occasional glimpse of Shannie, her hair tossed about by the rushing wind, an occasional strand sucked through the open sunroof. Shannie looked straight ahead, focusing through her Oakley's on the highway. The radio graced us with Black from Pearl Jam, its lyrics defined Shannie and I. When we emerged from the Baltimore Harbor tunnel Shannie broke our silence. “Do you believe him?”
“Believe who?” I asked.
“Calvin,” Shannie answered.
“Why would he lie?”
“I’m glad to hear you say that,” Shannie averted her gaze long enough to give me a smile. “Wanna go to Atlantic City?”
“Sure, why not. I don’t have anything better to do.”
“That’s the spirit.”
We can finally put this to rest, I thought. My mind jumped to Calvin. “I saw it happen, I saw it all,” his eyes pleaded his point. “And you see, you don’t have to be in combat to get combat fatigue, you know what I’m saying. Lee knew something was up. He told me so. Said he had to keep an eye on Mitchell. Mitchell was a grunt in Lee’s squad who was showing signs of combat fatigue.”
As Calvin spoke, I reminded myself that Lee was his name for Count. As I listened I thought of Shannie’s eulogy; she nailed it.
Calvin continued, “I mean it’s understandable, God himself knows what we was facing could have been the death for the lot of us. I’m telling ya, nothing, I mean nothing was as nerve-racking as those days in the Wadi, not even when we got into combat. No, the Wadi was worse, much worse, we knew we were in the shit, and there wasn’t a goddamn thing we could do about it. Everyone knew if the Iraqi’s came we’d be lucky to get out of there alive. We was all feeling the heat. Mitchell, he just felt it a little hotter. He cracked first.”
“And poor fucking Lee, he did the best he could do. He did too good, you know what I’m saying? Maybe he be still alive if he didn’t to do so good.”
“What do you mean?” Shannie asked.
“If he didn’t care as much as he did, he wouldn’t have done what he did. I mean, he didn’t have to do it. But he told me, he said, Calvin, I’m responsible for my boys, if I can help it, ain’t a goddamn one is getting killed. That’s why he took to keeping an eye on Mitchell. Hell, he told before it all came down that he had an eye on Mitchell. ‘Cept you see, I didn’t pay him all that much attention; I had my mind on more important things, you know what I’m saying? I mean I had my own platoon to worry ‘bouts, like saving my boy’s asses if the Iraqis came down the wadi.”
Calvin paused; a painful smile resided on his face. In the distance a police car’s siren wailed. “And then our bombs started falling. Even though they was miles away, their explosions rolled down the wadi. It was sweet music, like a Buddy Rich on drums, you know what I’m saying? For that minute or so, I never was so relieved. I knew, I felt it in my bones, the Iraqi’s wouldn’t be coming. We was out of the shit.”
Calvin wiped the sweat off his forehead. “Then I heard a shout, and then a loud explosion. You see, when our bombs started falling, Mitchell, snaps, you know what I’m saying? He goes and jumps out of his foxhole and beelines it for the Kuwait border, one-man invasion style. That’s what I hear anyhow. What happened next I know, ‘cause I saw it in my night vision goggles.
Shannie and I waited for this stranger’s account. “You see, Lee took off after Mitchell, he knew Goddamn well that the crazy motherfucker was headed right into a minefield. ‘cept you see, Lee, he was fast for a big white guy, but not fast enough, I used to kid him he wasn’t black enough. He wasn’t black enough to catch Mitchell. So, when Mitchell goes and gets his ass blown apart stepping on that mine, couple of grunts on sentry who be minding a heavy, opened up in the direction of the explosion. Poor Lee probably never knew what hit ‘em. Probably was dead before he hit the dirt, poor bastard. I know he was dead when I got to him, and that was a half-minute later.”
Shannie slid her arm around me, her fingernails digging into my side.
“Yeah, that gunner was just too good. He had to be good and scared, you know what I’m saying? He had to be scared to death. You see rumors spread like crazy over there, and word was going ‘round that the Iraqis were coming; mix that up the air force howling overhead, explosions and moving shadows, he said he saw shadows, he just didn’t figure out the shadows were running away from him not towards him.
“Fuck the gunner,” Shannie said.
“All I’m saying is he’s got to live with it. Till the day he dies, he’s got to live with knowing he killed one of his own, killed one of us, you know what I’m saying? Killed one of us who was trying to save another one of us. He took out a hero; took out a brother, you know what I’m saying? I don’t have any bad feeling for him, he’ll have more bad thoughts ‘bout himself then you, or any of us can ever feel ‘bout him.
“He’s still an asshole,” Shannie snarled.
“Wouldn’t expect you to feel any different,” Calvin answered, exhaling as he studied the Washington Monument awash in light. “You are in the business of hurting, missing your friend, that’s sucks enough, but you ain’t in the business of knowing you pulled the trigger, knowing that you killed one of your own. I can’t begrudge the gunner. He knows he killed one of his own, you gotta know he’s burning in his own personal hell, you know what I’m saying?”
I knew what Calvin Gray was saying, in a convoluted way I felt like I pulled the trigger. My grandfather’s war stories hypnotized Count. I never heard Count mention one word about the army until my grandfather got hold of his ear. Count told me himself, the day before he left for basic training, when we were sitting in the maple tree drinking beers, “…because you moved in I met your Grandfather. If I hadn’t met your Grandfather, I wouldn’t have been interested in the Army. Go figure.”
It was too hard not to beat up on myself, it’s my one true talent. It’s bad enough having a black cloud following one around, but when the cloud starts raining on innocent people, one considers living the life of a hermit.


Chapter 15 Sisters of Fate

An hour after returning home from Washington, Shannie and I were on our way to Atlantic City. Two hours later, as the sun set over the Intracoastal Waterway, I stood behind Shannie admiring her butt as she knocked on Genise Gray’s apartment door.
“Maybe she’s not home.” I looked over each shoulder. Across the narrow street a woman, a white woman, walked a dog. Besides Shannie and myself, she was the only other white person I noticed.
“She’s got to be. She said she would,” Shannie knocked harder.
“If she ain’t home, she ain’t home. Let’s get out of here.”
“Give up this easy? Are you out of your mind?”
I wasn’t out of my mind, I was out of my element. I didn’t like being a minority. We were in a desegregationist's wet dream, every known ethnic group lived in the section of Atlantic City we’d come to know as Lower Chelsea.
“Baxter that best not be you. I told you to stay the fuck away, unless you have my fucking money! You don’t have my money I’m done with yo smelly ass.”
“It’s Shannie Ortolan.”
“Who?” The cagey voice asked.
“Shannie, Shannie Ortolan. I’m looking for Genise Gray. I talked with her on the phone earlier.”
“Oh, you the one.” The catch on the lock slid open. The heavy wooden door opened. I had an idea what the owner