Guam, 1988

by Kathleen Toomey Jabs

Lieutenant Lucy Chapman strode into the ready room and began flight preparations. As the helicopter aircraft commander, HAC for short, she had ultimate responsibility for the day’s evolution. She called the local weather forecaster. A storm was brewing two hundred miles to the north in the middle of the Philippine Sea. The first of the season’s typhoons was predicted to hit Saipan by late Saturday.

She found Lieutenant Swanson and the crew chief and briefed the flight. Delivery of mail and a replacement turbine blade to a pre-positioned ammunition ship. “You good on this, Swanny?” She asked, and got an aye, ma’am in response.

Swanny followed her to maintenance control and reviewed the logbook while she signed for the aircraft. Her signature, her decisions, the entire flight her responsibility. Together, they walked to the field. Vapors from the recent fueling were visible in the warm press of tropical air. The sun was naked and white in an unbroken blue sky. The helicopter seemed to shimmer and shift in the distance.

Swanny swung his helmet by its strap and took long, jerky strides each time it sailed forward so that he stayed a half a step in the lead. He had wanted jets. Now he tried too hard to adopt the swagger and surety of fighter pilots and made jokes about his plight as a rotor head and helo-bubba. Lucy hated to see his disappointment, but she found his complaints draining. Love it or leave it, she thought; she’d worked too hard and sacrificed too much to be dragged down by Swanny.      

She carried her helmet under her left arm and hoisted the mailbag over her right shoulder. It occurred to her she’d forgotten to remove David’s letter from her flight suit pocket. The hard lump of paper pressed against her left breast. Lucy, I’ve tried calling several times. She had the opening line memorized. All the lines really. Why had she read the letter before flying? So dumb. Commander Harris had noticed and told her, “Never open personal mail until the evening. It should be the last thing you do every day. The very last.” Lucy had slit open the envelope that morning during squadron training, expecting to be cheered by David’s words, buoyed by his old-fashioned twists of phrase. She missed him. Thought he missed her just as much. I hope you understand why I wrote a letter. I didn’t want to leave a message. Reading the lines, Lucy felt a damp chill, her breath had come short and shallow. Now she felt the shock rising up again, the same strange grip in her chest. It was a distraction she couldn’t afford. Not now. She shook her head and lifted her boots to match Swanny’s pace. The tarmac was gluey and her boots sank slightly into the pitch. With each step the odor of petroleum and melting tar grew stronger. 

On the flight line, she directed Swanny to complete the final safety check. The flag on the ops building made a brisk, clapping sound. Winds were coming out of the north, five or ten knots. The morning’s clouds had thinned to shreds of white and the sky was as clear and sharp as the blue edge of a flame.

She handed the mailbag to the crew chief and climbed in on the starboard side. They had bird five, her favorite. She traced the slit in the seat with her finger and pulled out her checklist, confirmed the circuit breakers and switches were positioned correctly, tested the safety lights, then lit off the auxiliary power unit. 

She turned to Swanny. “Do you have your qual book?” 

Swanny pulled the book out of a pocket on the leg of his flight suit and passed it to her. She flipped through it. “What’s left?”

“If I do the replenishment, I’m almost done.”

“It’s yours,” she said. “Don’t say I never gave you anything.” She watched with satisfaction at the smile he tried to bite back as he pulled on his gloves. She took out the fuel log, made a notation on the level, then called, “Chief, all good?” to the crewman in the backseat.

The crew chief gave a thumbs up. “Roger, ma’am, good to go.”

Swanny started the engine, dropped the rotor brake, and the helicopter began to pulse and shake. A whirring, sputtering noise echoed in the cockpit. He got clearance from the air traffic controller, lifted the collective, and guided them upwards.

Lucy felt the throb in her seat as the rotors began to beat the air. She breathed in the moist, faintly sweet breeze and waited for the familiar surge of power and sheer wonder of flight to overtake her. That moment of sublime concentration and fierce focus had hooked her from the start. Especially in the CH-46 Sea Knight helicopter, an aircraft that defied physics, a mass of metal that shouldn’t fly but still somehow did. You love to fly, Lucy, I know that. I wouldn’t want to be the one to stand in the way of that. David knew her. He’d said he understood. What had changed? 

She watched as Swanny steered them west over barren red-brown hills where only a year earlier a Japanese soldier had been discovered and, believing the world still at war, surrendered. In a matter of minutes, the helicopter soared over groves of palm trees, a spine of sand. Then land disappeared, and they approached the vastness of the coral-studded seas, the island just a hint of pink amidst the endless blue domain. 

Lucy studied the control panel and adjusted her helmet. The sudden crackle of static reminded her of an international phone connection. The mental fogginess of working through a ten-hour difference, Lucy and David talking across different days divided by the date line and so many miles. All the repeated words and phrases, the echoes and talking over each other until even “I love you!” sounded almost like an accusation. It struck her that David must have met someone else. That’s what he wouldn’t admit. He hadn’t fallen out of love with her so much as he’d fallen in love with someone new. That was why the letter sounded so antiseptic and formal. She started to unzip the pocket to remove the letter. Don’t do it, she chided herself. Stay in the box.  

Ahead of her, the sky was cloudless and the sea immense, flat, and calm. The blades beat the air. She had to focus on what was happening now. The demarcations of shallow and deep water were clear, surprisingly straight lines, no gradation or subtlety, just a shift from aquamarine to turquoise then to midnight blue. 

An hour into the flight, she spotted the ship, a black dot against the expanse of deep blue. As Swanny began the descent, she studied the roiling slope of the sea. The ship, which had seemed to bob lightly from high above, was plunging back and forth at sharp angles. Waves smacked the hull. The flight deck crew struggled to stand erect, their jerseys rippled with wind. It looked too risky for the helicopter to land. If Swanny could hold position, she thought, it would be safer to lower the cargo out the main cabin door using the internal winch.

She called the ship on the radio. Swanny eased the helicopter down towards the gray hull and held it steady in a hover. The crew chief repacked the turbine blade and the mail in an orange mesh bag, hooked it to the hoist and lowered it out of the helicopter. Hot air rushed in, rocking them. She felt the sway of the machinery, how easy the wind batted them around. Swanny braced himself, clutched the collective. She monitored it all. Especially their distance from the ship.  

The sailors unbuckled the bag and released the net. As the mailbag collapsed onto the deck of the ship, the white glint of the envelopes caught her eye. She wished suddenly that she could take the letters back. The crew’s connections to home and a whole other world lay inside the bag. To survive the six-month deployments, you had to steel yourself for heartbreak and keep all your emotions in check. Compartmentalize. She wondered if that hardened your heart over time. Had the process started for her? She felt brittle with the strain.

The ship’s captain saluted from the conning tower. Lucy returned the salute and requested clearance to depart. The words echoed strangely in her ears. Clearance to depart. That was what David wanted, she thought.           

The signalman approved their take-off. Just then, an updraft of wind caught the helicopter and jolted it sharply right, jerking Lucy towards the door. Her right arm banged off the side. Without thinking, she grabbed for the collective and pulled for power to get away from the ship. The helicopter banked steeply towards starboard. She was going in the wrong direction, she realized, overcompensating. They could go into an uncontrolled spin. Wind thrummed against the doors. Her body tensed and she watched in terror as they tilted sideways. 

“Hey,” Swanny yelled. “Ease off. I’ve got the controls.”

His voice broke through her consciousness. She released her grip. Swanny maneuvered the helicopter back to port and straightened them on course. In less than five seconds, they were righted and back in sight of the ship.

“Is everyone okay?” she asked. Her voice shook.

“You haven’t killed me yet,” the crew chief called from the back.

Swanny nodded but didn’t speak. His hand was wrapped tight on the collective. He was breathing hard, chest heaving.

“Wind’s picking up,” she said to Swanny. “Good recovery.” The rush of relief at being saved did not calm her. Instead, she felt a knot of insecurity. She had always trusted in her ability to fly. She’d put in hours on the simulator, signed up for extra flights. The internal coordination had become instinctual: hand, eye, foot, ears. She’d learned to get in the zone and stay there. Mission only. Mission first. Now, she’d slipped. Her fractured concentration, the wandering thoughts of David and her own bruised heart, could’ve caused them to crash into the hull of the ship or drop into the tumult of the sea. She chewed her lip. 

“I…” she started. “Sorry about that.”  

“No problem,” Swanny said. His gaze was fixed on the horizon.  

She couldn’t tell what he was thinking. She let him fly the whole way back. He touched down softly at the field. She signed his qual card and started to fill out the flight report. She hesitated over how much to say. Technically, nothing had happened, but that was only due to luck and Swanny’s quick reaction. Nothing had happened, but something had changed. 

Swanny had something on her.

“Do you have any concerns about the flight?” she asked.

“Wind shift,” he said. He shrugged his shoulders. “Rogue waves. Rogue wind. Who knows? I’m not going to say anything.”

She nodded. “I owe you one.”  

*

The typhoon warning had been upgraded and the wetting down party was well underway by the time she appeared at the officer’s club. The bar was filled with bodies and shouting. Kenny Loggins yelled about the danger zone over the sound system. Swanny called out to her and brought her a glass of punch. “For the lady who taught me everything I know,” he said. He smiled at her with what seemed like conspiracy. He wore cowboy boots. His eyes were almost level with hers.

“Thanks,” she said. Her hair hung loose on her shoulders. She wore jeans, flat sport sandals, a yellow, collared shirt. On her face, a hint of powder, pale lipstick. 

“I appreciate you letting me fly all afternoon,” Swanny said. “Hear that wind, now?”

“We ran into the outer edges of the storm.”

“We ran into something.” He started to gesture with his hands. He rocked on his heels to demonstrate the shear of the wind and brought his hands together at a sharp angle. 

She smiled, surprised at his enthusiasm. He might make a convert to transport missions after all. He’d certainly reacted well today. He’d saved them. She didn’t know if she would’ve pulled out in time or not. She couldn’t dwell on that now. It was show time. She had a part to play—untouchable, unflappable, able to hold her own. She excused herself.

Deeter called her over to the game table. A group was playing Scrabble, the board half-full, the word crazy stretched across the middle. “Cover for me,” Deeter said as he dumped lettered chips in her hands. 

She studied the board and when it was her turn, she arranged her letters vertically and announced with a mixture of bravado and rum, “Put the ‘k’ in Lucy and you get Lucky.” The crowd around the table laughed. She pushed her advantage. “You know what they say: Better lucky than good.” 

“Lucky, huh?” Harris asked. “Sounds like a call sign.” He kept his dark eyebrows raised, his lips seam-straight, so that she couldn’t tell if he was challenging her or encouraging her. Every conversation was a new test. 

“I’ll take it,” she said. 

“Go ahead, pretend you have a choice,” Harris countered.

Badger sidled over and flung his long arm around her shoulder. “I feel Lucky,” he said.

“Your Luck-y’s running out,” she replied, lifting his arm off of her like a soiled engine rag and letting it drop. The group hooted and laughed. Badger scowled and moved off. 

“Nothing personal, Badger,” she said. “No one’s getting lucky tonight.”  

Before Badger could escape, Deeter returned, holding a tray laden with drinks and lime jello shots. He balanced the tray on the couch. “I can’t drink to no one getting lucky,” he said. “Although, that fiancée of yours might want us to.”

She bit the inside of her cheek so hard she tasted blood. The entire squadron knew that her wedding was set for December, the next time she had leave. She wasn’t ready to share the news. She tucked her left hand in her pocket. “You never know with you men,” she said. “He might not.” She forced a laugh.

Harris leaned back and studied her. He had to know, she thought. She did her best not to flinch. Deeter handed her a beer. She drank a long swallow. When she finished, Harris was busy lighting a cigarette. 

“Damn men,” Deeter said. He slapped his thigh and his chipped tooth sparkled. He retrieved the tray. “You’re right about us. You never do know.” He winked and began to distribute jello cups. 

“One, two, three,” Deeter said. They all squeezed the jello into their mouths.

Lucy wandered towards the pool table. The air conditioner was programmed so cold, the window glass beaded with condensation. Next to her, the guys were talking football odds. College bowl games. Coaches and players she’d never heard of. Some rock group screamed through the speakers, the lyrics inaudible. She glanced at the clock. Another hour and she could retreat. We have always been apart more than together. There was a romance to that, the meetings, the splendid holidays. There were just so few. So many weeks and nights I’ve wondered where you are, and I’ve had no way of knowing. 

She was filled with longing for David. For quiet, honest conversation. She had trusted David with her doubts, shared her secrets. He reminded her there were other ways to live that were true and fierce and didn’t require a constant state of watchfulness. She was suddenly weary.     
Forgive me Lucy. I think it’s best to call off the engagement. In your heart you must know it’s for the best. Again, I’m sorry for the letter. With love always, David.      

About midnight, Deeter waved his right arm in a circle, spinning a red rag and calling out, “Who’s up for Tumon? Let’s go downtown and do some shooting,” Tumon Bay was a crescent of beach catering primarily to Japanese businessmen. The streets were lined with all-night t-shirt stores, restaurants selling imported beef, shooting galleries, and exotic dance halls.  

Deeter flicked the rag at her. “Want to go?” he asked.

“Am I really invited?” The guys always sidestepped her when going to Tumon. She’d assumed that was because she was female, and they would have to limit what establishments they chose. Now she wondered if it had been David, her status as “off-limits.”

“Of course.” He slapped her on the back. “You’re one of the best shots we have.”

“You’re going to a shooting gallery? Ha!” She rolled her eyes. “I know where you’re going.”

“Not right away,” Deeter said.

“Nothing good happens after midnight.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Go on,” she said. “Maybe next time.” She watched them file out ahead of her then escaped to the bathroom. When she emerged, the room was quiet and dark except for the flashing gold and white beer sign. She sat down on the couch and shut her eyes. Finally, peace. The vinyl felt cool and smooth to her cheek. The room spun slightly. She shouldn’t have drunk the tequila. Base security was posting roadblocks. Her red jeep would be an easy target. 

“You’re still here,” a voice said. She heard the tap-squeak of boot on wet tile. Swanny appeared from the shadows. “Need a ride?” he asked. “I’ll take you home. Partners are supposed to do that, you know.”

“I’ll be okay.” The wind had subsided, and the rain no longer pinged on the windows. 

“Nothing to fear, Lucy-Lucky. The sky isn’t going to fall.”

“You’re okay to drive?”

“Aren’t I always?”

“You were this afternoon.”

“I am now, too,” he said. He opened the door and a wet breeze floated in, carrying the scent of jet fuel and salt. 

She stepped outside and Swanny followed. “Must be the eye of the storm,” she said. The night seemed full of whispers.

“That’s Guam for you. You ever wonder what the hell we’re doing out here in the middle of nowhere?”

“I try not to,” she said. “You start wondering about those types of things and you might never stop. All the what ifs.”

“I can think of a few,” he said.

“We all have them.” 

On the road outside the gate, Swanny veered off towards the left. “Do you mind? I want to show you something,” he said. He turned down the tourist road and headed for Punta dos Amantes. “You know the story, right?”

She nodded. The legend was that two Chamorran lovers had jumped from the famous cliff so that the girl wouldn’t be forced to wed a Spaniard.

“Have you ever been here at night?” he asked.

“Nope.”

He parked, opened her car door, and led her to the overhang. The water below twinkled green and white as if sparks from falling fireworks were scattered upon it. “Phosphorescence,” he said. “Sit here for a second.” He patted a spot on the cliff.

She peered over the edge. “It’s beautiful.” She was mesmerized. How had she missed this? She realized how little she knew of Guam outside of the base and the flights over it. She turned to lie on her stomach and hung her head over the edge. “It’s like the stars are in the ocean.”

“It’s bioluminescent phytoplankton. Thousands of microscopic sea creatures emitting cold light. No heat. A chemical reaction.”

“I didn’t take you for a science geek.”

“Nobody does.” He turned to roll on his stomach as well. “None of us know anything about each other, do we?”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Lucy said.

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

Lucy rested her head on her hands and turned her face back to the water. “I’m not engaged anymore.” The words sounded strange to her ears. It was the first time she had said them out loud and she was struck by the permanence. 

“The letter?” he asked.

“Yes.” 

“You knew before we flew, didn’t you?”

Lucy pushed herself up to a seated position. She felt vulnerable but tired of pretending. “Wait till you get home to open personal mail. There’s a reason for that rule.”

“Maybe. Maybe not.” Swanny pushed back and propped his head on his hand. He took out a flask, swallowed and passed it to her. “Sorry about the break-up.”

Lucy wiped the mouthpiece and took a long drink. “Your turn. Tell me something I don’t know.”

“I like helicopters. I think I’m going to stay.”

She laughed. “That was a big risk. Sharing that. You can go deeper, science guy. What’s next?”

Swanny took another swallow from the flask and passed it to her. “You made me like them today.” His voice was thick sounding, heavy with alcohol and something akin to longing. Lucy kept her head down. The sudden intimacy unnerved her at the same time it made her feel strangely curious to know more. 

“Up there today in the cockpit. It’s the first time I actually had a sense of danger.”

Lucy forced a laugh. “Yeah. Sorry about that.” 

“I’m not sorry.” Swanny reached across and touched her cheek and tucked a stray hair behind her ear.

Lucy scrambled to her feet and backed away from the edge.

“I don’t mean to scare you,” Swanny said. He walked towards her. “I think you know how I feel. I just… Can I touch your hair?”

Her cheek tingled where his fingers had brushed it. How long since anyone had touched her? Her last visit to David was four months ago. “This isn’t a good idea.”

Swanny held the flask towards her. “I promise I won’t pull your hair,” he said and gave her a crooked smile. “It’s always so tight in the braid.”

She took a long swallow. “Fine,” she said.

Swanny approached slowly and raised his hands. He rested them on top of her head with light pressure and slid them back cupping her scalp and gliding his fingers along her skull until his palms rested at the back of her neck with his fingers wrapped in her hair. His eyes were closed. Lucy had the sensation she was being anointed. When Swanny opened his eyes, they were moist and pleading.

“Can I hold you?” he asked.

She shifted her weight. His hands had left a trail of lingering warmth. “I guess so.” She shouldn’t have told him about David. Having a fiancée had shielded her, freed her from worry and lessened the threat from and to her. 

Swanny pulled her in close while she kept her body stiff. “Hold me back,” he said. He rubbed his hands along her shoulders and her arms then started to cup her buttocks. 

“No,” she said. He tightened his grip and leaned in to kiss her and she struggled to free her hands. Then she locked her leg behind his and pushed him back and he fell to the ground, pulling her with him. Her legs landed tangled around him. One elbow struck rock. She kneed him and rolled free, then stopped suddenly and froze. She was inches from the edge.

“Dammit,” Swanny moaned. He curled on his side and clutched his ankle.

She waited until she saw he wasn’t going to move, then she eased back carefully from the edge and stood over him. “What the fuck was that all about?”

Swanny rolled onto his back. “I’m sorry. I don’t know. Too many shots. Too many stars.”

“We’re supposed to be partners.”

“It won’t happen again.”

“You’re right about that.” She felt strangely triumphant, as if she had just scored a winning point.

“You’re not going to say anything, are you?”

She glanced at the shimmering waves below. “Nothing happened. Rogue move. Two in one day. We’re even. Give me your keys.” 

“What?”

“When I get out of the park, I’ll call you a cab.”

She headed down the path. The wind had picked up and it buffeted her. She walked quickly. She knew what awaited her: the silent apartment, her finger empty of a ring and its attention, a further closing off from her squadron mates. She’d have to be more careful, even more on guard. She would get over David, it would take a while, but eventually time and distance would work. She wanted to believe that. She needed something to hold onto. In the meantime, she and Swanny each had something on the other: a bond more durable than love. She looked back towards the empty trail then up at the sky. Clouds were sweeping in from the northeast, brushing thickly over the moon, eclipsing the stars. She climbed into Swanny’s car and headed off into the night. 

---

“During my years living in Japan and Hawaii, I had the opportunity to stay on Guam multiple times and was hosted by a Navy helicopter squadron for one particularly memorable visit. In ‘Guam, 1988’, I wanted to tell a story that captured the atmosphere of the island, the sacrifices and strain of trying to maintain a long-distance relationship, and the challenges of performing a wartime mission that demands total focus.” —Kathleen Toomey Jabs

Kathleen Toomey Jabs graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in one of the first classes to include women, earning a Bachelor of Science in English with minors in Russian and Engineering. She completed six years of active duty, then transferred to the Navy Reserve where she commanded three units before retiring in 2017. Her military career spans a variety of active duty and reserve positions, with service in Japan, Hawaii, Panama, the Pentagon, and military installations along the East Coast. From 2019-2022, Kathleen served as the Acting Secretary and Deputy Secretary of Veterans and Defense Affairs for the Commonwealth of Virginia where she worked to coordinate state and federal resources to support Virginia’s veteran community and liaison with federal defense facilities.

Concurrent with her Navy work, Kathleen earned a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from George Mason University. Several of her short stories have won awards and appeared in literary and national publications, including Good Housekeeping, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Other Voices, The Baltimore Review, Proud to Be: Writing by American Warriors; and other journals. Her story, “Safekeeping,” was selected for the Random House Operation Homecoming anthology and the NPR Selected Shorts program.

Safe

by Nathan Perrin

Khalil put the rest of his dinner plates in the dishwasher, started it, and made his way out the door to the backyard.

His neighbor’s son, Sam, was playing in the yard next to him.

Khalil waved and opened up a hatch on the ground.

“Where are you going?” asked Sam.

“Going to check a few things out,” said Khalil. 

“What’s that?”

“It’s a bomb shelter,” he said. 

“That’s neat!” Sam shouted. “I wonder if we have one.”

“Maybe.” Khalil laughed nervously. “Well, have a good night, friend.”

As he climbed the ladder down, he said a silent thankful prayer for his real estate agent. The only way Kahlil felt safe was if his new house had a shelter. After months of searching, he finally found his home. 

When he moved in that summer, the first thing he did was go to the grocery store and buy canned goods to line the shelter’s shelves. 

*

The bombs rattled the dust off the walls.

Khalil held tightly to his mother, only looking at her crucifix necklace.

With each loud explosion, he held her tighter. 

Why was Iran bombing them? They did nothing. Saddam promised liberation to them too.

“Are we safe?” Khalil whispered.

“Yes,” his mother brushed his hair back. “We are safe.”

*

Khalil woke up, turned on the lantern, and made his way up the bunker’s ladder.

It was a bright fall morning. Clear skies. He smiled and made his way into the house to get ready for the day.

“Thank you, God, for this day,” he said.

It was another calm day in Paramus.

*

On his way to the office, Khalil stopped at his usual corner shop for a cup of coffee. He had quickly adopted the American sweet tooth, and now preferred his coffee “light and sweet.” Besides, no shop coffee ever tasted as good and filling as his mother’s. Only a small cup was needed of the syrupy coffee. Anything more, and Khalil’s heart pounded with caffeine and he sweated uncontrollably. Here, in the corner shop, he wove his way through the small crowd to the counter. 

Everyone in the cafe was quiet and still, nearly all of them looking up at a TV. The guys behind the counter weren’t even taking orders. 

“Excuse me,” Khalil smiled at the man behind the register.

“Aren’t you seeing what’s happening on the TV?” The man pointed above him.

Khalil looked up at a cable news station to see the Twin Towers up in smoke.

“My God,” someone whispered behind him. 

He turned around and walked away, heart beating faster and faster with each step. It was happening here too. 

*

Khalil covered his eyes in the corner of the shelter as his mother relieved herself across the room behind him.

“Are we going to be okay?” Khalil asked.

“Yes,” his mother said. “As long as we stay in here, we will be okay.”

Khalil sighed. “I can’t wait to get outside.”

“When you grow up, promise me you will change everything,” his mother said. “Promise me you’ll do good.”

“I promise,” Khalil smiled.

“You can open your eyes now.”

*

Khalil walked around a nearby park and tried to do the breathing exercises his trauma therapist taught him. 

“It’ll be okay, it’ll be okay,” he whispered over and over to himself.

People around him were either catatonic or crying. 

Just like in Iraq. 

“It’ll be okay, it'll be okay…”

Nearby, a woman got on her knees and started cursing out loud.

Khalil’s steps quickened. Things like this weren’t supposed to happen again. America was supposed to be safe. That’s why he came. He made certain his whole life was safe, figured out. Memories of explosions, of quaking earth, faint air raid sirens hovering beneath quiet conversations, once fading and unobtrusive, crashed through his head and into the front of his brain. His eyes throbbed with remembered concussive blasts. He curled over his body to protect his vital organs from shrapnel. His breaths short, convulsive, brought no oxygen and his vision contracted. He knew the bombing sounds following him weren’t real, but his body didn’t know the difference.

“This isn’t Iraq, this isn’t Iraq, this isn’t Iraq…”

“Why?” cried a voice behind him.

Khalil rocked back and forth on the sidewalk in the fetal position.

He could hear footsteps around him walking in different directions.

In his mind’s eye, he was a child all over again, clinging dearly to his mother’s side.

“There's blood all over him!” Khalil shouted as he saw his neighbor try to wake up a dead man.

“Just keep walking!” his mother gripped him harder.

He lay down on the dusty, smoke-smelling New York sidewalk and cried, gripping for anything. 

The sirens blared.

Khalil shouted out his mother’s name when a bright flash of light blinded him.

A thundering explosion pushed him across the street.

“Khalil!” his mother shouted.

He felt her hands on his face.

“Khalil!” 

His vision cleared and he stared into her eyes.

“We need to get out!” 

“We need to get out!” Khalil yelled.

His eyes darted back and forth to see he was still lying on the sidewalk. 

“Count backwards from a hundred,” he breathed. “Just like you were taught.”

“One hundred, ninety-nine, thamaniya wa tis’un, sabʿa wa tis’un…”

Memories of bombs dropping next to his house repeated themselves in his head. The only comforting thought was his mother holding his face in her hands when his vision returned. 

“Just get home, just get home, just get home…” he whispered in Arabic.

Somehow he found his car. Exactly where he parked it, but he couldn’t be sure how he got there from the sidewalk. He gripped the steering wheel and prayed for safety. 

“We need to get out!” 

*

“Why do people hate?” asked Khalil.

“Because people don’t understand that we need each other,” his mother answered.

They ate canned food next to the lantern light.

“We need each other?” Khalil raised an eyebrow.

“Yes, habibi,” she said lovingly. “The world is so used to looking at each other with hateful eyes that we forget we need each other to be safe. We need each other to be loved.”

“The world out there doesn’t seem so safe.” Khalil cuddled his mother.

“Promise me wherever you will go, you will never lose trust in people or humanity,” his mother whispered.

“I promise,” Khalil answered, hugging her tighter.

“Do you really?”

“Yeah.”

His mother kissed his forehead.

The bombs started falling again, but at least they were there holding each other.

*

Khalil flung open the shelter hatch, threw off his suit jacket, and started to climb down the ladder.

“Mr. Masih?” asked a familiar voice.

Khalil crawled back up and saw Sam.

“Yes?” he asked.

“My dad’s at the towers,” Sam sniffled.

Khalil climbed out. “Are you okay?”

Sam cleared his throat, “I’m scared.”

“Is your mom home?”

“I don't know where she is.”

As Khalil stood still, he realized that his body and memories were telling him not to help Sam. The world was just as cruel as he remembered. Even in the United States, buildings exploded for no reason. 

“Do you want to come in with me?” asked Khalil.

“Yeah,” said Sam.

As they both climbed down, Khalil turned on the lights.

Sam sat down on one bed and picked up a nearby book.

Khalil closed the hatch door and sat down across from Sam.

He noticed Sam wearing a cross necklace.

“Are we safe here, Mr. Masih?” Sam cried. He hid his face from Khalil, even now on this day ashamed to show such distress. 

“Yes,” Khalil replied. “We are safe.”

---

Nathan Perrin is an emerging writer and Anabaptist pastor in Chicagoland. He holds an MA in Quaker Studies from Barclay College, and is a doctoral student studying Christian Community Development at Northern Seminary.

His story, “Safe”, is inspired by his experiences with Community Peacemaker Teams and the local Assyrian community. His Master’s capstone also partially dealt with the ways Syrian Christians responded to war and conflict, so this story is a natural outpouring of that passion. His other work has been published in the Dillydoun Review, Bangalore Review, and Esoterica Magazine. He is also a screenwriter for an unannounced indie comedy series. For more information, visit nathanperrin.weebly.com.

Glimpses of a Girl’s Life

by Krista Puttler

Haley’s Comet passes Earth once every seventy-five years. It appears often enough for us to remember the dinner table arguments over whether it is named after a boy or a girl, but rare enough for us to wonder if it ever visited at all.

On a grey autumn day, when the wind whipped between the bare maple tree branches, an Army Chaplain knocked on a young woman’s front door. She answered wearing a grey cardigan buttoned tightly around her swollen belly. The Chaplain held his hands in front of his chest, just long enough for the woman to recognize the patch on his left shoulder: two letter As configured to look like a jousting helmet. He pressed a single dog tag into her palm, and grief transferred from body to body, up her arm, down her chest, and into her womb, soaking in like rain on a parched ground. 

Later that night, the delivery nurse checked the woman’s empty, yet still swollen belly, nodded, then walked over to the bassinet in the corner. Kirsten had wiggled out of her blanket. She was crying. She had never felt cold or alone before. The nurse expertly swaddled Kirsten, lifted her out of the bassinet, walked over to the moonlit window, and swayed the baby to sleep. Kirsten’s mother lay on the bed, too sore to shift position, and gripped the dog tag until it cut into her palm.  

At three years old, Kirsten found a mouse shivering in the long grass beside their house. She crouched down, folded her body together, chin on knees, and stared at the mouse. It had eyes as dark as the sky just before a storm. They did not blink. Kirsten slowly moved her arm away from her knee and out to the mouse, one finger extended. She touched the mouse’s rough fur, a snarl of hair against her fingertip. The mouse closed its eyes and buried its nose beneath a blade of grass.

Kirsten’s stomach pains started later that evening. Kirsten’s mother found her rocking behind the bedroom curtain, hair tinted gold in the moonlight, rubbing the words stamped into her father’s dog tag. Her mother lifted Kirsten’s trembling body, removed her sweat-soaked pajamas, and placed her into the bath. As Kirsten’s mother scooped water into her hands and up and over Kirsten’s shoulders, she whispered the words written on the little disc of metal. 

That night, Kirsten lay propped on pillows in her mother’s bed, her body aflame like the sky right before the dawn, each inhaled breath a shard of blinding light to her abdomen. 

By morning Kirsten was vomiting, unable to drink the water her mother offered. 

By noon, she was bundled onto a gurney, the dog tag passed from child to nurse to mother. They whisked Kirsten away, down a bright sterile corridor and through a swinging pair of operating room doors. 

Her appendix has ruptured. 

The inflammation is everywhere. Even her pelvic organs are involved. 

She may never be able to have children. 

At five years old, with a thin metal chain around her neck and the dog tag safely tucked beneath her blouse, Kirsten went off to school just like any other girl. She played house with her dolls, played Mama to her teddy bear family, and turned ordinary tap water into dragon-berry tea. But sometimes at night, when a sliver of moonlight appeared beneath her bedroom curtain, the scar on Kirsten’s belly would burn like a match. If she removed the chain from around her neck and pressed the disc of metal into her scar, the fire beneath the ridge of sutured flesh would ease, and Kirsten could return to counting the stars again. 

One afternoon, at eight years old, and after a day of rain, Kirsten walked out of her house and down the sidewalk, the cement panels as slick as mirrors. The rainwater flowed along in the gutter next to her, pooling around a pile of fallen leaves, then disappeared down the gurgling drain. 

The sidewalk ended at an empty lot overgrown with dandelions and clover. Kirsten stopped at the cement edge, her toes just touching the grass. The wind blew all around, rustling the clover, confusing her search for the four-leafed one she knew would be there. She closed her eyes, waited for the wind to quiet, and then opened her eyes again. 

A single yellow leaf lay on the ground in front of her feet. She picked it up by its stem; it was unlike any leaf she had ever seen before. The stem had many tiny lines all packed together along its length. Then as the stem flattened into its leaf, the lines, its veins, remained straight, without a single branch, just like a dainty fan. Kirsten stood up and shaded her eyes with her hand. A ginkgo tree stood at the far end of the empty lot, its leaves a sunburst yellow, its branches pulsed with a golden light. She looked back down at the leaf and twirled it between her fingers. Somehow, when all the other trees were making leaves with branching veins, the gingko had remained, steadfast, unchanged. 

One morning in the shower, at twelve years old, Kirsten looked down between her legs, and for the first time saw the red splatters on the porcelain between her feet. She crossed her legs, but the red kept falling. She screamed to her mother that she was dying. Her mother rushed through the bathroom door and drew back the curtain. She looked down at the splatters of blood mixed with water, crumpled to the bathroom floor, and wept. 

At eighteen, while her mother was still asleep, Kirsten removed the chain from around her neck and placed it on the kitchen table. The words on the dog tag were rubbed smooth, the ridges just a faint impression in the dulled metal. She took out a yellow ginkgo leaf from the inside pocket of her jacket and tucked the stem underneath the metal disc. Then she walked out of the door and went to school. She learned about the beginning of things, about where moons and comets came from, about mouse diseases, and human anatomy, and why the ginkgo leaf’s veins stubbornly refused to branch, a botany miracle when miracles were not supposed to happen. 

One afternoon, many autumns later, the ginkgo tree was bulldozed to the ground. The little fan-like leaves scattered across the field of clover in flashes of golden light. 

Years passed. 

Everyone forgot about the comet that was only halfway around its orbit. 

One winter morning, when the shifting winds bring the first green smells of spring, a wailing ambulance pulled up in front of the sidewalk by an old woman’s home. Two men carried a gurney up the stairs and into the house. Minutes later, they returned carrying the woman wrapped in bloodied sheets. They placed her into the ambulance and drove down the empty street. 

Don’t call her. I’m already dead. 

And then the ulcer deep inside her started to bleed again, like a pile of leaves flushed from the end of a drainage pipe, and the doctor pounded on her chest, but could do nothing to save her. 

Later that day, Kirsten and a small child were led into the empty resuscitation room. The body was covered with a grey sheet, the monitors silent. Discarded clothing lay in a pile on the ground. Kirsten picked up the top garment. It was half of a grey cardigan cut through with bandage shears up one pocket and just to the side of the buttons still fastened in their place. Kirsten reached into the remaining intact pocket and pulled out a slender cardboard box held together by a piece of string. She untied the string and lifted the top off the box. Resting on a square of pilled cotton sat a brown gingko leaf, the edges curled like tiny parchment scrolls. 

Mother, what is that?

A miracle.

Kirsten presented the leaf to the child, whose fingers, clumsy with delight, grasped the fan instead of the stem. 

As Kirsten crouched down to comfort her child, staring into the swirl of tears and space, the brown flakes floated down like dust in the afternoon sun and gently came to rest upon the ground. 

---

“There is a gingko tree at the corner of my daughters’ school, and every autumn the leaves turn from dark green to a bright yellow, seemingly overnight. The first time I saw the glowing, golden heap of leaves at the base of the tree, my inner monologue of worries and to-do lists stopped, and all I saw was this blinding, radiant light.” —Krista Puttler

Krista Puttler studied fiction writing at Northwestern University, then went to the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences for medical school. She was an active duty general surgeon in the US Navy and is currently working on her first book, a memoir of her last duty assignment as the Ship’s Surgeon on a deployed aircraft carrier. She lives and surfs in Norfolk, VA with her husband, three daughters, and two rescue pups. She can be reached at kmp152doc@gmail.com.