Casualties of Adventure (Part of Novel in progress)

Hess, War is a mess, like we were. But it's a mess that makes sense, you see. Not like we did. We were a mess for the opposite reason. We were both okay a little bit. The mess in us was human, that's it. The destruction happened only when our little messes collided into one, and grew larger than we had room for. But there's a lot of room on a battlefield for war to expand. So it does. And it makes sense. You take one mess and in your ill intended pursuit for spring cleaning you make an even bigger mess, and everyone and everything involved gets messier, too, and it's a mess that is the epitome of a mess. Messes don't make sense. War doesn't, not at all. So it does. I've made camp for myself on a hilltop. It's a war with very many soldiers, but each soldier fights his own battles, so we don't let our little messes befriend each other and mate. Our own destruction is enough. People keep dying, Hessie. That's what wars do. I died a long time ago, and so did you, and we had to watch each other while it happened. That is what war is. And because you are you I think you know what this war feels like. There's a little girl here. The battlefield is no place for a little girl. I know that, and she knows that, but she doesn't know how to say it. This is all she knows. The battlefield is no place for a little girl. I don't know who brought her here, if anyone. I don't know why she is here. Why she is still okay. Why she is fighting and who. But the battlefield is no place for anyone, not just little girls. We all get bloodied. Everyone keeps dying, Hessie. I watch it happen to the little girl, every day. There are a lot of people and a lot of stories and a lot of worlds inside her. And one by one, one by one, one by one, they disappear. I can see it. And so can she, but again, she doesn't know the words to say it out loud. But she can feel it, like chopsticks poking and prodding at her and pulling bits and pieces of her out until eventually there's nothing left. Hess, you stole your own sight. Something else stole mine. And it was when the little girl used every word she knew to explain to me the color of her red hair that I knew I hated the part of you that envied me. You had the chance to see her hair. I never will. You took that for granted when you decided you'd make your messes bigger. I hope one day we both find ways to clean up the casualties we've left in the ruins of cities we crushed without touching first. Maybe if we hadn't made those mistakes maybe if we'd toured each others streets before climbing into bulldozers maybe maybe well. Every soldier asks maybe. It just makes the mess bigger. Despite this, I've cleared enough bodies out of the way to have the room to still love you. I hope you can do the same, Messy. -Charlie. Hess, she has a book, the little girl with the red hair you could see if you wanted to. It is big, and the pages rustle. It must be as big as her. No, let me rephrase. It is the exact size of her. It is her. It is everything she has but that is going away faster than she can run, so she has preserved it all, selfishly. It's not like me and you, letting things die and refusing to clean things up after wards, living in the carnage. It's refusing to let things go because you care too much about what comes later, and that scares you. So I'm going to tell you about the little girl and her book. “Please come with me.” She said one morning. There is a lot of sadness in the way she talks, but there's also confusion. Like she doesn't know why she's sad but she doesn't know how to be anything else. “Where are we going?” “On an adventure.” “A fun adventure?” “Maybe a little fun. Maybe a little scary.” “Maybe both?” “Probably both.” She had her book in her arms, I could hear the wind between the pages, her hair slapping the leather cover. We walked down the hilltop, and she said the sun played hide and seek behind the “mountain.” She said “ready or not” twelve times quietly. She was playing, too. We all are. Even you. “This is where the adventure starts.” She opened the book and sat it it in my lap, tilted my eyes towards the page. And colors came. Her red hair came. The pages came. Green grass came. The sun risking a peak out over the hilltop came and I saw it all. “That's a very special book.” I said to her. I saw that she had very bright green eyes, and just like her voice, they hid a lot of sadness. And I knew that there must have been a time when her eyes were brighter, but one by one , one by one, one by one, things kept running away, and she could only save so much before it was too late. Oh Hess. She showed me the universe. I wish you could have seen it, too. You could have if you wanted. When she walked her hair swayed, and she looked at everything she passed with a wonder even my virgin eyes could not match. The planet is drug. To us, harmful. To her, medicine. She breathed in the energy of every something she passed until it became “everything.” “We have a lot to do, and not much time to do it.” She said seriously. “First, the dragon.” “The dragon?” “Don't pretend you've never seen a dragon.” And I understood that what I called messes and casualties and soldiers and battles she called dragons and their slayers. Same mess, different clean up. Same war, different tactics. It was all too simple for her, yet built of our own familiar and impossible complexities. “So how do we go about fighting this dragon?” “We have to let it out of its cage.” “Won't that be dangerous?” “Absolutely. But it's the only way.” She flipped to the very front of the book. Let me tell you what was printed on the pages: Page one: A picture. It was of a women with dark hair and freckles spilled across very white skin. She was young, no longer a teenager, but not yet an adult. She was smiling, and the smile was real. The little girl looked at the picture for a long time. Her eyes would get a little happier and then sadder, and sadder, and sadder before they got happier again. Finally she turned the page. Page two: A check. Three hundred and fifty dollars. Written hurriedly, almost illegibly. To Mary Henley. Signed by Nicholas Monroe. His name was written much clearer. “This is how much I am worth a month.” She said to me. She stared at the names in the scribbled ink. Mary with a certain familiarity and understanding, and Nicholas with a confusion and a wonder and a sadness that doubled all of those things as expressed in her every time before. Like this name on this check was the reason she was all that she was in the first place. More than I could know, she blamed this name of eight letters for everything. And yet she forgave it, all the same. We should all learn to love like little girls do instinctively. Page three: A Letter. One page. Written on purple lined stationary in runny black ink. It had been countless years since I'd read words on paper. I'd grown out of practice. Words like “your daughter” and “sorry” and “Sophia Rachel” and “ help me” jumped off the page and I caught them before they could run away like everything else. Sophia read the letter in her head three times, and I watched her eyes carefully touch each syllable, pausing at “sincerely, Mary Henley” before sauntering back up to “Dear Nick.” That page was hard for her to turn. Page four: Another picture. Mary. Older. Her smile was not real this time, and her skin was even paler. Her hair did not look as soft. Her eyes betrayed her smile. Her hands rested awkwardly across a growing stomach that the little girl must have been inside, as though she knew she was supposed to touch it, but didn't know how, and didn't really want to. A man with tan skin and dark hair and thick eye brows who I imagined was Nicholas Monroe sat next to her, his arm stiff around her neck. They wore wedding rings. His smile said that the picture must be taken quickly because he was running out of time faster than the rest of us were and we were holding him back. It was not a happy picture, and the little girl didn't look at it for very long. Page five: A third picture. A Polaroid with white border. A young and handsome man with lighter skin and strawberry blond hair sleeping shirtless atop rumpled white sheets, the sun between the blinds casting shadows across his sharp features. And even in sleep, it was obvious that this was not a sad picture, at least when it was taken. He was happy. He slept soundly. And it was also unavoidable the way the contour of his face matched that of the little girl before me, staring at the picture solemnly. And the source of sadness, confusion, and loss, that name, Nicholas Monroe, the way she looked at that name on that check, that's the way she looked at this picture and its caption: nick the night it happened. Page six: another letter. Different than the other. Crisp white paper. Times New Roman, 12. Marriage Annulment Request: Mr. David Moretti and Miss Mary Henley. “This is because of me.” said the little girl. “This is the dragon we have to slay.” She said, shuffling the six pages of the life she did not ask for and could not have controlled, either way. “What are yours?” But my dragon was too big and fierce for me to even begin illustrating. “It's a big one.” “Does it breathe fire?” “Lots of fire.” “Mine too. But we have swords.” “That's right.” I told her. “We have swords.” So we picked up our swords and our shields and we walked and I could not tell her that swords were just metal or that shields weren't impenetrable because, Hess, you showed me their vulnerabilities, and I knew how much the knowledge of our own weaknesses hurt, and I did not want to hurt her anymore. I did not want her to be another casualty in the war we waged. She was not done with adventure, and neither was I, and neither were you, and it's about time we understood that we do not always need to cut short the things that are meant to be long and beautiful. Let the dragons be our only casualties. Not us, too. We've fought too much. Everything keeps dying, Hessie. And I'm tired of it, and so is the little girl, and so are you, I know it. That's why I didn't tell her that our swords were weak. That's why I went with her. It's time to find a victor to this war that's lasted too long. So we walked for a very long time, and I saw the sunset over our hilltop for the first time. The little girl stopped finally, lie down in the grass and gazed at that peek-a-booing yellow star behind our mountain. “Are you sleepy?” I asked her. “You can't sleep on an adventure.” “Oh, I don't know about that.” “Then who'd slay the dragon?” “No one, I suppose.” “And we need to slay the dragon before we can continue the adventure.” “But there's time.” I told her. And for the first time in my life I believed it. So I sat down next to her. “We don't need to rush. We can slay the dragon anytime we want.” “But we can't let it get bigger.” “No, no we can't. But I think we've already halted it.” “Do you promise?” “Yes. I promise.” But the little girl was already asleep, her arms folded behind her head, the setting sun casting shadows between the tree branches and making her look undoubtedly reminiscent of Nicholas Monroe. I let her sleep. I carried her back to the hilltop, the book in my knapsack. “We will slay the dragons in the morning.” I whispered to her as my eye sight started fading back to black as her magic left me. “Every last one of them.” Hess, there was a time when you were my sword and shield. And I don't know why sometimes life turns pages in the wrong order and our swords end up being our dragons. But we cannot deny that it happened. We have to clean our messes, darling, and we have to do it before they get bigger. We've made a lot of messes. And I don't want to lose you in them. I love you. But we have to clean up now. -Charlie