Listen ...Circles in the Water

CIRCLES IN THE WATER
by Robert Hays
Available in Print and All Ebook Formats

Pleasure is oft a visitant; but pain

Clings cruelly to us.

--John Keats

Chapter One

The line where the wall and ceiling met was indistinct, the two planes appearing to brush together haphazardly and merge into a geometric illusion that tilted first one way and then another, so that the room seemed to rock and sway like the deck of a ship on the open sea. Broder tried hard to get his bearings. He strained to focus his eyes on a point up and out, through the medical paraphernalia that hung over his bed like a tangle of gleaming metal and plastic vines, searching for some familiar sight.

Powerful effigies hammered at his brain and demanded recognition. He struggled to block them, to push them aside and throw up a protective barrier against further intrusion, but they were too strong. In his mind's eye he saw Donnie Shand and Ray-Gene and Colletta, and he felt a confusing mix of euphoria and remorse. Donnie Shand and Ray-Gene were the only close friends he'd ever had. He wanted to hate them for what they did to Colletta, but how could he, when he was the one most at fault? Ray-Gene was gone now and he never expected to see Donnie Shand again, but Colletta had come back into his life, as if by magic, and things could never be the same.

She had materialized from nowhere: "Hey, Jimmie. I heard you had a hard landing. How ya' doin'?"

The pure and sweet Carolina accent, the soft, almost timid whisper. Even in his languid, drug-induced stupor he'd known it was her. Suddenly he was fifteen again and in love, stretched serenely in the grass under the delicate canopy of a chinaberry tree in Colletta's back yard on a balmy spring night in Conway. Overhead, a pale-shining moon seemed adrift in an endless starlit sky. Donnie Shand and Ray-Gene surely must be somewhere nearby.

But this was all wrong. He was supposed to be on his way to Iraq. That was the mission he'd trained hard for, readying himself to jump from an airplane in the black of night and join in a swift strike against the enemy. Any enemy. Broder was a good soldier who didn't ask questions, he just followed orders. Orders were what made the Army a safe haven—no decisions to make, always somebody to tell you what to do and when to do it, just don't screw up too big or too often and you've got it made. Life as a paratrooper suited him well. Life as a paratrooper was the only life he wanted.

And then the once-in-a-thousand-jumps training accident spoiled everything. A sudden wind shift that turned his chute upside down a hundred feet above the ground, the oppressive weight of full combat gear, the thudding impact that left him battered and broken. It was a minor incident by Airborne standards, they said. Sure it was. His right leg was splintered almost beyond repair.

How long had he been here? Two days …two weeks? He'd had too many surgeries and too much morphine, living in a shadow world, in and out of consciousness, barely aware of his surroundings.

What he slowly came to recognize as a human voice intruded on the silence, emanating from an invisible-faced image at the foot of his bed, a silhouette backlit by the dim glow of a fixture on the wall: "Are you Broder?"

"Yes. I'm Broder."

"I'm Lieutenant Colonel Hewlett," the image said. "How are we tonight, Sergeant Broder?"

"I'm doing okay, sir." He would take the image at its word; if the image said it was a colonel, he would speak to it as a colonel.

"Do you know what day it is?" the image was asking.

"Maybe Wednesday, sir?"

"It's Sunday. Do you know what year it is?"

"Yes, sir. It's 2003."

"Do you know where you are?"

"Sir, I think I'm in the hospital."

"Do you know which hospital?"

"I guess I'm still at Fort Bragg, sir. I don't remember being moved."

"Yes, you're still at Fort Bragg. You've not been moved. Do you recall what got you here?"

"Sir, I had a bad jump."

"That's what I'm here to talk to you about, sergeant. That bad jump. How much of it do you remember?"

"I think it just went wrong all at once, at the last second. There was nothing I could do. Am I in trouble, sir?"

The silhouette had taken more complete form. Broder could make out the likeness of a face, but it was unfamiliar, a face he didn't recall having seen before. The face spoke with authority, the way a colonel would speak. "Of course not," the face said. "Accidents happen. Nobody's blaming you. We always investigate training injuries."

"I understand," Broder told the face, "but I don't know how much I can help. I don't think I handled it very well, sir."

"There will be time enough to sort all that out, sergeant. I'll come back in a couple of days, after you've had time to get your head cleared up a little. And you'll be talking to Captain Oates, the safety officer. Meanwhile, get some sleep. You got a nasty break in that leg and that's all you need to worry about for now."

"Sir . . ."

"Yes, sergeant?"

"When will I be able to jump again?"

"All in good time, sergeant. For now let's just worry about getting you back on your feet. Okay?"

"Okay, sir."

The image disappeared and Broder sank back into his hazy dream world. His mind conjured the exquisite pleasures of the jump. He imagined the familiar sensations spawned by the torturous velocity of a fall through empty space and the buoyancy of floating above the earth, and granted his senses free reign to revel uninhibited in the breathtaking rush of cold air and the paradoxical noise of the wind and silence of nothingness. This was the world in which he found peace. It was a calming world, solitary, inhabited by no strange-faced images who talked like colonels and free of disturbing effigies from his past.

When he woke the next day, Broder would not remember speaking with Colonel Hewlett, but he would remember that Colletta had been there and that memory would bring pain.