Rearview

I’ve been Randy’s sponsor for months. Every Tuesday’s the same. I drive us to the meeting at the VFW hall. He sits silent, folding down the visor every ten minutes, checking the backseat with the mirror for ghosts unseen.

Tonight’s different. In the darkness, over the hum of the road, he whispers, “Been having dreams I can’t shake. I’m picking up my little girl and she’s coming apart at the seams.”

Six months sober ain’t the same for everyone. We both did tours in Iraq, but Randy’s was harder. I’ve heard his worst truth a dozen times. He manned a checkpoint in the Greenzone. A local’s dusty car approached with four men and an unconscious girl in the backseat. A man held her tightly. Sobbing. Driver said she’d been shot and needed a hospital. When the sniffer dogs barked, the driver punched the gas. Randy leveled his weapon and killed everyone inside.

“I’m struggling.” His voice hollow.

“Best way to fight the urge is talking,” I say. 

Hands on the wheel, I let my silence coax him forward with the road rolling beneath us.

“Never told you this,” he chokes. “The girl’d been dead for hours. They tore her open, removed her organs. They packed her cavity with Semtex. Sewed her back up.”

Silence engulfs us.

“Dad’s tongue was cut out. Hands bound. He was still holding her, man.”

The VFW’s lights break the darkness.

“All horrors need remembering.” I breathe, glancing in the rearview mirror. 

“Witnessing them is our burden.”