The Long Hall

A short story about true heroes.

The Long Haul

         “6:44pm on a Tuesday seems as good a time as any to die,” thought Ellen Cuitter.

            She rose slowly from her office chair invested with the full catalogue of Tempurpedic add-ons, rubbing her arthritic fingers with an air of defeated normalcy. Despite what the doctors kept saying, the long haul to recover was now ending. She would be sure of that. The glint of the jewelry cases hardly caught her deflated gaze as she closed their pristine faces for the final time.

            “Goodnight,” she muttered to a nearby ruby. Its red glint seemed to offer up its sympathy. She clicked the lights off and exited the building.

***

            Out of the urban darkness arose the markings of the railroad crossing- her own personal gates of Hades. Unblinking, she shuffled out onto the rails. The electric taunting of the line buzzed in her skull like a hangover. When some people commit suicide (or so she had been told), they experience a final rush of endorphins, one final scream from the sinews of the heart before life is extinguished. Ellen felt no such rush. Abandoned even by her own body, Ellen stood alone.

            “Hey, what are you doing?” shouted a silhouette from the darkness. His curly hair glowed in the beam of his car headlights. “Get back! Don’t you know a train is coming?”

            She made no move. A stone devoid of feeling, she would sink into death and be forgotten.

            “What, are you crazy?” His frantic hands flew through his hair, tussling it and shaking its lights in mosaic patterns. “Please,” He begged. His deep voice cracked with emotion and distress.

            But she didn’t hear his voice. All she heard was the low whistle of the train calling her home.

            “Goodnight,” She muttered to the moon.

 

***

            Reid sat unmoving in the back of the parked ambulance, a blanket clinging weakly to his scrawny shoulders like a wet newspaper. The mug of generic tea given to him by the attending paramedic lounged from his clammy hands like a Hawaiian tourist while a tiny droplet of herbal sweat removed itself from the ceramic rim and plopped itself on his large leather shoe. Is this what shock felt like? He could not focus his mind enough to even ask the question. The medic had told him that he was in shock. Shock, shock, shock…. Is that even English? He could not be certain. His brain stuttered and sputtered in fragments of incomprehension, the final image of the woman on the tracks smiling back at the grill of the oncoming train.

            “Sir, do you have any friends or family we could call to come pick you up?” the paramedic asked, her no-nonsense tone tinged with just a hint of trained bedside manners.

            His glacier blue eyes seemed saturated with depression in the throb of the blue and red lights. He blinked and shook his curly hair like an ally cat after a nap. “Hmm, no. No, there’s no one. I’ll walk. Do me good. Fresh air. Do me good.”

            He arose, the blanket slumping to the ground like a swatted fly. He was five blocks away before he noticed the mug still in his hands, its contents long ago spilled out on the pavement. He stumbled to a bench, its icy metal fingers curling around his skinny legs. He felt sick. Reaching his trembling fingers into the worn pocket of his jacket, he grasped something cold and hard. He knew what it was. He had always been a planner, and he had planned it all so perfectly. He had thought through every detail, considered every opposition. He withdrew his hands, allowing the bright moonlight to glint off a loaded 9x19 mm semi-automatic. He checked his watch. 7:31. 6:57 would have been a good time to die, he thought. And he cried.

            “Woudn’tcha mind keepin’t down, son? Summa us tryin’ to sleep o’re here.”

            He looked up mid-sniffle, scanning through the pre-dawn gray before resting on a pair of eyes nestled between a mound of dirty clothes and dirty hair.

            “Ohhhhh, you’re unna those, hmmmm. Hold’em your horses un moment, hmmmm imma commin’.”  He glided out from his hovel with the air of experience, stopping just long enough to brush his clothes off with his dirty hands. He waddled over to the bench, a slight limp betraying itself as a certain tightness in his hip. “M’names Glenn.” Glenn extended a crusty gloved hand.

            “Reid. Reid Canon.” was the reply. He did not offer his hand.

            Glenn’s dark eyes melted like chocolate, and he scratched his balding head to cover the indignity. He turned to look Reid in the eye. “You wanna tell me ‘bout it, son?”

            Reid gnawed his nails.

            “C’mon, son. I ain’t tellin’ nobody. That’s the thing ‘bout us gent’men of dem streets: we be safe secret keepers ‘cause we ain’t got nobody who’d listen to usn e’en if we knew’n the pres’dent wert a German or sumthin’.” He chuckled good-naturedly to himself, glancing down at his weather stained clothing for just a moment before resuming his easy dialogue. “It ain’t fun being invis’ble, hmmm? Makes ya feel like ‘why e’en bother if there ain’t no’one who’sa gunna notice?” Reid glanced up from his chewing, the intensity of his eyes making the red veins stand out starkly.

“Yeah, I knows,” Glenn continued, tapping a calloused finger against his bulbous nose. “I knows whatcha feelin’. I’va been there myself.” Glenn eased into an easy posture on the bench, as natural as if he’d been chatting about the change of the seasons or the outcomes of the racetrack. “I was in the mil’tary, if’un you can believe it.” He chucked again, a warm resonating sound that seemed to rumble forth from his toes. “A medic. I thought Id’a s‘posed I’d save some lives. Be a hero, ya know. Like dem Superman o’ James Bond o  th’ Lone Ranger o summ’in.” He winked at this, a kind, self-depreciating wink that made Reid feel more at ease. “Two tours I served, yes sir. I traipsed through dem jungles and camped in dem swamps. I was dirtier den I am now, boy I tell ya!” He pointed to a mustard stain on his collar and grimaced good-humouredly.

Glenns thin lips drew together, a hard line of recollection. “There was dis one moment where’n I thought, ‘Glenn, my boy. Dis is the moment to be ‘un of dem heroes.’ One of the soldiers had a fallen in a siege ‘gainst a major fort. The air sirens was a blazin’ and I knewd he only got bout ‘nother five min’tes or so ‘fore dem bombs dropped from the sky and ended his agony.” His eyebrows pinched together. “I was ‘hind the lines and watchin’ his blood spill out on the ground. And I thought, ‘Sucha waste of sucha precious thing. Blood, that is. And life.’ He turned his gaze onto Reid. “So I ran onta the field to grab his body, idunno, I thought ma’be I coulda dragged it back to the bunker. But I was wrong. I made it ‘bout two feet ‘fore I stomped on onea dem damn landmines.” He coughed. “Woke up two weeks later with a hellofa headache and a severe case of no leg.” Here he rolled back his tattered pants, revealing a hunk of flesh that melded into metal where a kneecap should have been. “When I shudda bin a hero, I was a’sleepin’ like a damn Sleepin’ Beauty. I got pretty low after that.” His voice dropped to a low rumble, like a train pulling into the station a mile down the road. “See, Idda built up in my mind tha’ my whole life had led up ta this partic’lar moment…. But then when I weren’t the hero I’d ‘magined, I thought, ‘thassit. I miss’d my shot.’ But turns out my timing was off. See, I’ve sav’d mor’ people sleepin’ under tha’ bush than I eva did in my years of service as a medic. Lifesa funny thing. When I was the hero medic, I dint do nuthin’. Now imma nobody, an’ I gets ta talk to people like ya. People who be like the soldier I couldn’t save so long ago. People who be a bleedin’ out, in agony jus’ awaitin’ ta die.” His brown eyes locked onto Reid’s like a bear trap, an icy intensity that sizzled with earnestly. “Son, life is damn warfare sometimes. But you don’ always git ta be the hero. Sometimes you’re gonna be that solier bleedin’ on the ground, and sometimes you gonna be that medic that gets stuck in the crossfire, jist as bloody as the guy you was awanting to help.” He looked down at his boot, unconsciously wriggling the toe of his sock through the gap in the toe. “An’ sometimes ya get to be the dog that licks the wounds of others, a dog that ev’rybody kicks out the way. But maybe that dog is th’ real hero after all. Ma’be the dog that sleeps in the streets but loves on anyone who’ll take half a second to listen is th’ kinda hero dem fairytales have forgotten. Ma’be we should stop glorifyin’ the hero of th’ moment and start glorifyin’ the hero tha’s there for a lifetime.”

***

Where is he? Ruth Cannon thought to herself as her two nephews raced through the kitchen once more, knocking over a chair and eliciting another fit of barking from the agitated Doberman. She tapped a flustered rhythm and closed her eyes to pray.

A slow knock came at the door, creating a rich dissonance with the tap of her foot. Ruth jerked the door open.

“Hello, Ruth,” came Reid’s quiet voice, his eyes soft with an unuttered apology.

“Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!” came the cry of his two kids as they broke off their game and raced into his arms. They were too young to understand that now everything would change. But right now, that’s exactly what he needed.

“Reid, I’m so sorry,” Stuttered Ruth. “She was such a fighter.” She ducked her eyes in acknowledgement of the things that must be left unsaid.

Reid’s large eyes fixed on some point in the distance, a relaxed calm filled with dignity and purpose. He hugged his children’s’ grubby faces close. An image of his wife wafted before his mind, young and strong and steady as she absorbed the news of her sickness. You fought so long. Now it’s my turn.

Reviews

[B-poet]

A nice theme to moral of the story. Heroic deeds are greatly appreciated by your loved ones that love you the most. Nice work. A memorable read. :)