Josiah, Emergent

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Malraux
Malraux
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He contacted the local Officer Selection Officer, and the month after he graduated, he reported to Quantico. In eleven weeks, he was commissioned Second Lieutenant Josiah Langer, USMCR. No old friend, no family attended the ceremony. Aunt Dotty didn't know he joined. He listed a charity for his next of kin.

He had friends then in the Corps. It's hard to get through Officer Candidates School without building friendships. But when he told them he was an orphan with no ties, they were surprised. "Hell," his friend Brian said, "you made a mistake. You musta thought this was the French Foreign Legion. Is Langer really your name?"

Josiah laughed but thought that made some sense. He was using the Corps to get a start in the world—there was nothing unusual in that. It was a home, of sorts, once he found some success. He was assigned to schools. He felt competent, and the war made every Marine lesson significant. He chose the infantry.

He even went out with a few girls. He dated Brian's sister once when his family visited for one long weekend. Melanie was pretty and funny and didn't want to start a relationship with a guy she'd only see for a few days. Home for them was in New Mexico. Another time, he met Captain Wilson's wife's sister while watching a ballgame. They sat together, and he found someone he liked. She went back to Michigan to finish college, promising to write. They exchanged a few letters, her last one about a classmate whom she thought would be the love of her life.

He now regretted his restraint. He should have done more, should have been more determined or aggressive. He should at least have dated more determinedly. The girls his age had lives still, they went on, but he had so few memories, and those unsatisfactory. His sex life was an anguish, a strikeout.

He was a virgin plus one. Since the war, he assumed there would be no more for him.

CHAPTER 4: A Misanthrope

A 7.62 round pulverized both his knees and ended his career. Now he lived a few miles away from his old home, in a refuge called Sky Grey.

He had an orthopedist and physical therapy at Merciful Lord Hospital (paid by the VA), he had a pension from the disability, church was close if he ever chose to attend, and shopping was limited but not far. He had a car with modified controls (bought with a grant from a charity) and so could get to the mall some. That was his present and future, and good enough.

His hair was longer, so no one quickly associated him with the service. If people showed interest in him, he demurred. He sought no attention, and he felt he was succeeding until he sang in the mall. No one could find him. He doubted anyone would search. Perhaps one person would consider it.

Sky Grey was off the beaten path, and Josiah took solace in the idea that he was just a wreck by the side of it.

He liked being anonymous in the midst of crowds, as if he could hold others at arm's length but still be part of the group. People noticed his legs, and kids occasionally stared, but usually he could look around at the shoppers or worshipers without notice. He visited Merciful God church for 11 o'clock Mass some Sundays. He was sure civilians could not understand a wounded serviceman. He liked to be with them, but not one of them.

An incident after Mass one Sunday made him pause for thought. A little girl started it by looking at his legs.

"What's the matter with your legs?" she asked very matter-of-factly.

The question from such an innocent shouldn't have jarred him, but it put him into a stupor for an uncomfortable few seconds. He stared at her, not wanting to answer, not wanting to say, I'm shot and the world sucks. He was panicked and his mind was blank. The child looked frightened. Her mother whisked her into her arms, as if he was a threat. The child hid her eyes against her mother's neck. There were lots of people around watching, some within an arm's length. Josiah felt his face burning.

The young mother looked at him and said with asperity, "I expect you've had it rough, but she just wanted to understand."

Her words struck Josiah like a fist. She was right.

Josiah said, "I'm sorry, ma'am, I couldn't think how to answer." He looked at the child in her mother's arms. "I was hurt a few years ago and my knees don't work. So I have to use crutches."

"Was that so tough?" the mother said, sarcastically.

Josiah recognized something accusatory in her tone. "I didn't want to give her the details, ma'am."

"You had no cause to threaten her," the woman said, obviously exaggerating the incident. "You're a menace."

"Hey!" he heard some guy say, thinking the woman had now exaggerated the incident.

Josiah regarded the woman with new eyes. The panic he'd felt a moment before evaporated. He nodded and said, "A mother should protect her child. But I'm not going to apologize twice for the same indiscretion. I meant and did no harm."

At that, the woman turned away with an audible huff, unmollified, and turned her attention to filing out of church. The little girl kept her eyes against her mother's neck for a few seconds, and then Josiah saw her look up. He nodded, and she looked back, without animosity, he thought. The crowd moved on, one or two shaking a head. Josiah released some tension with a sigh and swung himself forward. There came a tug on his arm.

An older woman stood beside him, heavyset and grey-haired, smiling.

"Hi. I'm Mary Sackston, the parish secretary. I noticed you in the last pew a few times and wondered if you'd like to register in the parish office?"

Josiah shook his head. "I think I just alienated one of your parishioners, and now you want me to join?"

"She's my niece, and you get along with her better than anyone in our family does," she said, shaking her head.

"She was right about my staring, but I... I have trouble talking about my injury. It was uncomfortable."

"My niece has the clarity of self-righteousness," she said. He saw something in her eyes: Approval? Pity? "I hope you like it here at Merciful God," she said.

He joined the parish, disclosing information to Mary that he'd hoped to keep private. Father Phil made a point of speaking to him after Mass thereafter, and he found Josiah didn't want to talk about his time in the military. If Josiah missed Mass, Phil or Mary would call Sunday afternoon. It was annoying, but it reminded Josiah of his Aunt Dotty's calls during his college years.

*

"That was rash. What were you doing?" he said aloud as he drove home. Joining Merciful God and singing in a mall: he was a poor recluse. He wondered why he'd been unable to answer Lacy. "Sometimes I'm not sure what I'm doing," he thought. "My decisions don't match my purposes."

He decided he preferred loneliness. He called it independence, despite physical therapy and government disability checks and charity car controls. He made peace with his situation by ignoring the contradictions.

Insomnia plagued him more than the pain of his knees. It left him tired everyday, and it always reminded him of Iraq. "Just another part of depression," he thought. His nut doctor had told him about depression.

Dreaming was mostly repeating the same dream, with variations. "How many times will I have that dream?" he wondered, only to have it that night again.

He was in a Humvee on a bridge. He checked his watch, having a deadline to meet. They were supposed to enter the village at 1015 hours, just six minutes from then. Refugees were streaming past their slowly moving vehicles on the bridge, escaping the burning town on the other side. He noticed two, a woman and small boy, walking together. She was noticeably uncomfortable, walking oddly. Langer realized why.

"Stop the vehicle! Halt halt halt!" he yelled, grabbing for the door handle before Ramsey could skid it to a halt. "Save the kid! It's the mom!"

"Who? Which one?" his guys were yelling. There were dozens of women in grey and black burkas, and maybe a hundred people walking toward them over the bridge. Many women were with children.

"The one with the kid!" and he was out the door, knocking someone down, leaping over the old guy, dodging people, slinging his weapon onto his back. He ran to a woman and boy near the bridge railing. They didn't see him, he was close and then he watched as... A surge of anguish passed through him as he slept.

No. That wouldn't do. He willed the memory to change, willed the dream to be different. He changed it. Josiah saw a shark falling toward the river, and then it blew up. He felt better. He even smiled in his sleep.

Something hit his knees hard; he thought it might be a bowling ball. Damn that was weird. He slumped immediately as his knees no longer supported him. He held himself up with his arms over the bridge rail. He heard his guys yelling, "Lieutenant's hit! Lieutenant down!"

He thought, "Me? I'm hit?"

He lowered himself to the pavement as rounds were zinging and pinging every which way, people were screaming and running or dropped to the pavement. Some crawled. He knew his guys were setting a perimeter, looking for the shooters, and engaging by fire. He heard the big fifty cal open up from the top of the Humvee. He sat with his back against the concrete rail and awkwardly swivelled his M4 around. He glimpsed his knees, which were a mix of bone and muscle and tendons in blood. "Those will never work again," he said aloud. A sloppy fog filled his mind. He prepared to return fire, but he was so low that he couldn't see much and might hit some civilians.

Hospital corpsman Wilfred Jones was suddenly yelling in his face, Josiah felt his spittle; he was so concerned, so demanding, so sure Josiah needed him. He jabbed something in his leg and pulled out a bandage. Josiah smiled.

"I'm out," Josiah said. "Don't worry about me." It was a good war, warm and dreamy. He thought of Erin in his arms, of dancing with her against him. "I'm shot, Erin," he thought within his dream. "This is a good dream," he thought.

He was thinking clearly now, and he knew he was awake. Lacy's mom did not seem so bad. A mother should protect her child.

He awoke soaked in perspiration, pushing himself up by an elbow, and looked at the clock. It was uncanny. He woke at the same time every night: 3:09 in Ohio. I'm living a psychic Groundhog Day, he thought, and smirked. He closed his eyes and tried to sleep.

3:09 in Ohio. 10:09 in Iraq.

*

He read a lot, some of it about people like him: sick, hurt, wounded, or alone.

He found Fortunate Son at a used bookstore. "It's very good," the clerk said as he purchased it, "but he killed himself a few years later." Josiah wished he'd not picked it up, but he read it anyway.

Lewis Puller Jr. wanted to see a good side to life. He wrote of the support of his wife and children, overcoming his handicaps, finding a new career. He gruesomely described the moment he lost his legs, an image that stayed with Josiah. The book was a plea for people to see through it. It was an unintended lesson in undependable narration for life. A few years after winning the Pulitzer Prize, Puller ended his suffering with a gunshot. A friend said, "I thought he was winning."

Josiah knew something was wrong and wallowed in it. Vogel was right: depression became a lifestyle. He defended his depression.

"Oh God, love me," he said once, when he convinced himself someone was listening. More quietly, he said, "Forgive me, too." He wondered why he said that.

CHAPTER 5: A Musical Trio

Sing called. "Josiah, this is Sing. From the mall? I have a performance lined up in a few days and I wondered if you'd like to sing. You'll be paid for it."

Sing was prepared for a refusal. It was obvious to him that Josiah was dealing with issues beyond his knees. He'd seen panic in his eyes when he suggested another song, contrasting with the confident performance of the unknown "Of Hope and Love." It was as if Josiah was moving quickly between extremes of confidence and diffidence.

Josiah's voice was easy and substantial, unlike so many amateur voices, and he carried at least one tune well. From that one impromptu performance, Sing was hoping he'd found a performer, and wondered at Josiah's hesitation. It was not stage fright; Sing had felt that himself. It was some other fear, and Sing hoped Josiah could get past it. The performance in the mall had much impressed him.

Josiah liked singing, and he liked the idea of being paid for it, but he wondered if his voice was worthy. He sang for fun. Singing for money was a bit of a challenge, a demand that he be entertaining. Sing and the audience would expect him to be good. It would require effort and an acceptance of responsibility.

Josiah started to decline but stopped. Vogel had said, "You have things to do, Lieutenant. You just don't realize it yet. Get out in the world again. Get a job. Join things. Get to therapy."

"Are you going to do nothing, Josiah?" he wordlessly asked himself. His resolve to become a recluse crumbled quickly when confronted by unsought opportunity. It was only Vogel he avoided. Singing had been fun, and he'd had little fun for years.

"Maybe someone will enjoy it," Josiah said, as if from a distance.

"They will. We can practice at my apartment," Sing said. "It's small, but I have a piano."

Josiah was surprised at Sing's friendly but almost Puritan work ethic. "People deserve the best we can do," he said. "I graduated from the Cincinnati Conservatory. I picked you. I want a good reputation. And you can be very good." He was on Josiah for diction and swooping into notes and lots of little things, even presentation. Josiah wondered if he'd made a mistake agreeing to the job.

"You'd have been a great DI in the Marines," he muttered to Sing once, before he smiled.

Sing laughed at that one. "They're paying us, Josiah," Sing said. "Singing is like any other skill. You can improve it with understanding and effort."

Sing talked to him about audiences and how to interact. "I'll be in charge this time, but eventually you'll have to be since you're singing..."

"Eventually?" Josiah thought.

It proved to be an extravagant bar mitzvah reception in a sumptuous hall at an expensive hotel in Cincinnati. Sing picked Josiah up for the hour trip, and they went over the song list, instructions from the employer, and other things. They arrived well ahead of the guest of honor and most of their audience. People wandered in as the ceremony at the synagogue finished, and they moved to their song list. The first songs were meant to warm them up. Sing would not be unprepared. If the occasion ran long, Sing would add instrumentals that he had practiced for years.

There were young boys and girls all about, wandering in from the ceremony at the Wise Temple that had taken some hours. The young Jew who was confirmed looked relieved and almost giddy, Josiah thought; if the ceremony had not gone well, it was at least gone by. His father was a little guy with wine in his hand and mother a woman a half foot taller than her husband. She was statuesque, and Josiah had to force his eyes away. Her love for her son was tangible.

Occasionally, children noticed Josiah's crutches and knees; he made a point of smiling at them and nodding.

As the event went on, Josiah became more comfortable speaking. A few times he sat for a song, and no explanation was necessary. The crowd seemed sympathetic. Perhaps his situation was not so unusual. The singer needed crutches; every family had someone wounded or physically handicapped. The disabled needed to make a living, too.

Perhaps most surprisingly, the audience seemed to enjoy his singing. They clapped after most songs.

"How'd you hurt your legs?" a kid asked from the side, and Josiah looked over. She was in a pink dress, staring at him as he stood with the crutches. She was perhaps eight, Josiah thought.

"I was in a war," he said, and she nodded. Josiah smiled at her.

"I know about war," she said, eyes big. He believed her.

When the celebration broke up, the boy's father thanked and complimented them. His tip was generous. He said, "I'll talk to my friends about you. You were great."

Josiah and Sing felt exhilarated by their reception.

"It was as good as it can be," Sing said. "I've done a lot of parties like that, usually alone, and they are polite and appreciative. But this was different. It's you, Josiah. People like your voice. And you, too."

"I think you're exaggerating," Josiah said, "but they did seem to like it."

"Hey, there's a bar I know. Let's celebrate." Sing pulled into a place just off the circle freeway.

They drank and talked about girls and generally about their lives. Sing said there was not a lot of action for a straight mixed-Asian musician out in the boondocks. Not much, though Sing had hope; he thought one girl was interested. Josiah commiserated and mentioned his own difficulties, and encouraged Sing to pursue his one lead. They flirted mildly with the women who walked by, making eye contact and nodding. Josiah wondered what the other patrons thought of the little Asian and the handicapped guy flirting with women who happened past their table.

Josiah didn't talk about Iraq. No one would believe him, anyway. Sing and he left after some time, and Josiah realized that despite everything, he had a friend.

*

It was only a few days before Sing called to say they'd been engaged for another performance and that he'd asked a flautist to join them. Cora could play several instruments, including clarinet, English horn, and oboe. Sing thought it would make their performances more interesting and varied. Josiah could tell by the tone of his voice that Sing was very encouraged that Cora had joined them.

"Are you dating her?" Josiah asked directly.

"Yeah. She doesn't care that I'm Asian."

Josiah shook his head. "I don't think many people do, frankly."

Sing admitted, "I haven't noticed much open prejudice either, come to think of it. But I want to maintain my place in the victimology hierarchy."

Josiah laughed. "I wonder where white guys with mushy knees rank."

"I should think the handicapped would rate highly," he said. "I mean, you're actually a victim."

Josiah shook his head. "No, not really. It was payback." Josiah wasn't sure what he meant by that. Sometimes he confused himself.

Cora was a fallen-away Catholic who had been dumped by two boyfriends over the years, so she had sworn off boys until Sing came along. A graduate of Carnegie music, she was in her late 20s. She had dark hair, a thin build, was an inch or two taller than Sing, and had dark eyes. She liked to smile and wear sweaters in winter, and she drove a little, dinky car. She and Sing were soon dating frequently, but they kept rehearsals professional. Josiah liked them both; Cora was pretty and nice, but romantically she was only interested in Sing. That was fine with Josiah.

He thought they made a good couple.

*

"I'm looking for Ava Fortner's family," Sing said at a rehearsal. "I know Ava is buried in Springfield, Ohio, and it looks like her dad is buried there, too, a few years later. But after that I lose track of her mom. She doesn't live in Springfield anymore."

"I'd really like to find her," Sing added.

Cora particularly loved "Of Hope and Love."

"It's the lyrics," Cora raved, "so moving! And the tune is a hundred years of emotion in one song. I don't know if Ava was brilliant, but her song is. We could play it softly or quickly, sadly or happily, and it would still be good."

It became a common request that they play "Of Hope and Love" more than once at receptions or parties; people wanted to hear it again, and remarked they'd never heard it before. Josiah would briefly explain the song's story and that they were looking for the writer's family. The trio would perform the song once with lyrics and then either Sing or Cora would play it as an instrumental.

Malraux
Malraux
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