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The war fades into something distant.
On the good days it feels no more real than a bad dream he once had, and on the bad days he's ankle deep in fetid mud and inhaling the rotten scent of dead marines. On the bad days he can never get enough water. He drinks until the dry air of Peleliu turns liquid, and he drowns in the torrents of Okinawa rain.
On the really bad days the mud and blood and gunshots echoing through his brain are more real than the cigarette yellowed walls around him. On the really bad days the hungry meowing of the orange tabby sounds like the incessant wailing of a baby, bloodied and alone amidst its parent's mortar torn bodies.
On the bad days, the wooden floors are coral hardened ground, too impenetrable to dig through, impossible to bury the dead in, so the bodies lay out stinking and rotting in the burning sun. On the bad days he crawls out of bed and into a foxhole, and he lays there, afraid to make a noise lest the japs hear him, but no amount of frantic groping reveals the man who’s supposed to be in the foxhole with him, so he calls out, quietly, voice hoarse.
“Sledgehammer? Eugene. Gene?”
No reply ever comes.
On the bad days he wonders how much a train ticket from New Orleans to Mobile costs, but then he tells himself to stop being stupid and puts the thought out of his mind.
Besides, no one there would want to see him, anyway. He knows that, knows it by the rolling feeling of guilt that fills his stomach whenever he dwells too long on what happened the last time he climbed off a train; whenever he thinks about auburn hair, about how peaceful sleep had looked upon that boy’s face.
Some part of him wishes he’d said goodbye. He tries not to think about it, tries to put it out of his mind. Does no good to dwell on it, after all.
But now, dwelling on it is all he’s got.
He never buys a ticket. He doesn’t even bother finding out the price. Feels too much like temptation, if he knew the cost. The slick, sick feeling of guilt might get to be too much, might convince him to do something he shouldn’t do in a moment of drunken weakness
When stray change turns into stray dollars he buys cigarettes instead.
On rainy days, weekends, and his few days off, he opens a window and sits on the ledge, feet drawn up with an arm wrapped around his bony knees. He smokes, and the tabby cat meows loudly, furry body slinking close as it demands attention. He pets it until it bites him and scurries away, and then he stays there until he finishes his cigarette.
On good days he goes out and walks around the city, sometimes. There is always something new, always something different. People flood the streets, tourists and locals alike, and getting lost in the crowd is second nature. On good days, the air carries the distant scent of salt and the heavy, humid warmth of the bayou. Whiffs of cinnamon and coffee float through his apartment when he leaves the window open; baked bread in the morning, warm cigars in the evening.
On good days he forgets the way bodies smell when left out too long to bake in the sun or grow slick and soft and rot in the rain. He forgets the smell of coconuts (which still makes him gag, pathetic and weak kneed until whatever meagre meal he’s eaten comes sloshing back up). He forgets the scent of dry baked earth, of corpse filled mud, or blood drenched earth.
On good days, he tells himself that he likes this life that he now lives; as empty and haunted as it feels when he wakes at 3 am, head pounding with remembered screams and unable to fall back asleep.
On good days he almost doesn’t miss the war.