With the longest stretch of my three-part trip back home over, I sit down with my camouflage pattern duffle bag and wait for the bus to take me to Marysville.
A woman and her daughter sit down on the bench next to me. The mother is carrying an impressive number of bags of food and luggage.
She sets the bags of food down on the bench beside us and stands the luggage up at her feet. My stomach instinctively growls once the enticing bouquet of fried chicken hits my nostrils.
“Hungry, huh?” the mother laughs.
I place my hand on my stomach and pat it lightly, as if I were asking a pet to calm down.
“It’s been a while since I’ve had fried chicken. Since two Christmases ago, if I remember correctly. And I haven’t had anything to eat in fourteen or so hours,” I admit.
“Fourteen hours, my goodness. What are you, fasting or something?”
The woman’s laughter dies down when she notices my sizable luggage and its design.
“Oh, you’re a soldier?” she asks.
“Veteran, I think is the operative word now. Though, I guess I’ll always be a soldier.”
“Oh, oh! Oh, my goodness, are you just coming home from—”
“Yes, ma’am. I did my time overseas and now I’m back home in the land I was born in.”
The woman sets down her various bags of fast food fried chicken and picks one of the lighter looking bags to place next to me.
“Here’s a proper thanks for your service,” she says with a smile.
I do a double take unintentionally derivative of The Three Stooges, amazed that this woman would just give me some of the food she paid for only because I served in the military.
“Ma’am, I can’t possibly take this,” I insist.
“Please. You’re hungry and we have too much food here. My sister called me saying she and her kids can’t make it to our little family get-together right after I walked out of the restaurant. And if they’re anything like any other restaurant, I’m sure they’re not going to accept returns,” she tells me, with a chuckle.
Even her daughter nods her head enthusiastically, “And— and— now we have more biscuits for us. My cousins always eat all the biscuits first and never leaves me any.”
“Are you sure you want me to take some biscuits?” I ask the girl.
“Well,” she says, blushing, “you should just take one.”
Her mother laughs and playfully scolds her daughter. “Jenny! Please, sir, take as many biscuits as you want.”
“One is fine,” I tell her. “I’m not terribly fond of biscuits anyway, but one would go great with the chicken.”
“One, it is then,” she agrees.
The generous lady grabs two disposable plates from the largest bag and in it places one biscuit, two legs, a wing, and a breast, and a sloppy handful of seasoned fries on one of the plates. She removes three safety pins from her purse and pins the second plate on top of the first. “Please take it.”
Without another hesitant word, I take her kind offering and place it on my lap.
“Thank you, ma’am. I appreciate it more than you can imagine.”
“Jenny and I appreciate what you’ve done for our country. I bet your family is super excited to see you,” she says.
They’ll definitely be happy to see me, but excited wouldn’t be the word I’d use. Surprised would be more apt.
The three of us board the bus once it arrives and sit close to each other. Once the bus gets going, I unpin the plates and start chowing down. The lady and Jenny watch me with the most heartwarming and heart-warmed expressions on their faces.
Jenny looks as though she’s watching Santa chowing down on some cookies and milk she left out for him. Her mother doesn’t look much different.
Since the bus isn’t too populated, Jenny and her mother, whose name she tells me is Veronica, get to chat a bit more, although Jenny falls asleep shortly after I finish eating.
They’re on their way to a place that’s a few towns past Marysville. Veronica is moving in with her sister after she split with her abusive husband.
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
She waves her hand dismissively. “Don’t be. I’m happy to have had the courage to leave and I’m lucky that Jenny is… safe. She’s not even upset that we’re moving away from her dad.”
“Why’s that, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“She was unfortunately a witness to how horribly he treated me. He even… hit her a few times. I’m sure she’s hiding a lot of her true feelings, but she’s been great so far. Sorry. This is a lot to dump on a stranger,” she says, wiping away some tears that haven’t yet spilled over her eyelids.
“No, no, no, please don’t apologize. You and I are in a very similar boat. We’re both starting new lives after spending more time than we wanted in a sort of hell.”
Veronica nods her head and swallows some sadness.
“I’ve got my sister and a whole lot of family waiting for me. What’s waiting in Marysville for you?”
I shrug my shoulders.
“My folks. I haven’t seen them in a decade. I mean, I’ve Skyped with them and I was able to visit them a few years back for the holidays but… that visit was so short I felt like I wasn’t even really there.”
“Anybody else? Anyone you’ve been dying to see in your old town?”
“My dog, Plato. My old stomping grounds. And… I have to see… someone important.”
“A girlfriend?” Veronica asks with a curious smile.
I let out a short laugh. “I wish. No. Just someone I promised I’d see once I came back.”
“So, you wish she was your girlfriend?”
Seems as though Veronica is quite the sleuth. She’s backed me into a corner here.
Without giving her a straightforward answer, I shrug and share a very telling smile. Veronica smiles and taps my knee a few times.
“Good luck then, Soldier. Maybe you can make some magic happen. There’s very little that’s more attractive than a military man. I’m sure you can win her over,” she says.
“She’s another person I’ve only seen through a screen for the past 10 years. Aside from what she looks like, and a few tidbits she’s shared during our sporadic chats over the years, I don’t know anything about her life anymore. She could be dating someone. I’m not going to hold my breath,” I admit.
Veronica cackles but catches herself from being too loud when Jenny fusses. “Oh, boy, look at your face. You are head over heels for this mystery girl. You better try to get with her, for your own sake. If she can make you smile just by looking at her, imagine how happy you’d be if she was by your side every day.”
It’s a nice thought. But there are a few things keeping us apart. It used to just be the many miles between us but now it’s… a lot more complicated.
“We’ll see what happens, I suppose.”
Veronica leans over to me and extends her pinky out to me.
“Let’s make a deal, Soldier. I’ll keep my Jenny safe from creeps like her father for as long as I live, and you make a real attempt to be with— what’s her name?”
“Sommer.”
“Sommer, then. Do we have a deal?”
We lock pinkies.
“Good thing. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have kept Jenny safe,” Veronica jokes.
This gets a good laugh out of me— a loud guffaw that wakes up Jenny.
Groggily, she looks up at us and asks what we’re laughing at.
“Nothing important, honey,” her mother tells her. “Just a joke. Now go back to sleep.”
She brushes her hair with her hand in a very nurturing manner that makes me smile and feel nostalgic for my own youth, when I had parents keeping me safe, and only woke up to sounds of laughter rather than gunfire.
The bus stops at Marysville to drop some passengers off. I stand up from my seat and thank Veronica for her company.
“No problem, uh… Wow. This whole time, I didn’t get your name.”
“Rhett. Sergeant Rhett Atkins. But just call me Rhett.”
I turn away to hop off the bus, but Veronica grabs me by my shoulder and hands me a crumpled-up piece of paper.
“I expect an update on the Sommer situation, Mr. Sergeant.”
I open the paper and see her phone number.
“You got it, Veronica. Bye-bye, Jenny!”
The child smiles at me from her mother’s lap. She’s now already halfway back to sleep.
The surly bus driver lets out a frustrated sigh once I hop off the bus and take a long, hard look at the town I left behind so long ago.