The Wolf Hayden

Just the beginning to what I hope will be at least a novella if I can find the time/desire to continue. It's hard to tell where it is going but it revolves around alienation, disillusionment, disenchantment, and spiritual devolution.

 

             Finally, the ship pulled into the harbor shortly after eight in the morning. It had been such a long and arduous journey that just to smell the city from our vessel as we approached was a welcome reproach from the smells we'd left behind in Europe and that seemed to follow us on our voyage home. 

            This day was one I could never forget. The Sun was fixed low in the sky as it had only risen several hours before, and by the standards of my home folk, the air was quite cool, but all I felt was heat for it was still hotter than all the days behind us combined. The sound of the gulls screaming their Siren's song was never as inviting as I was brimming with the anticipation of setting my feet, once more, upon the land that I held most dear. "To be home, to be safe" was like a mantra to me in the times of my most excruciating agony and now here I was in heroic stance on deck as my dear country was coming home to me.

            The voyage back from France was one I shall never forget. Such extremes of jubilation and despair a man was never meant to experience in a lifetime, let alone such a relatively short amount of time as a journey home. I felt it safe to presume that anything was better than the hell we'd left back in the trenches, but it was a miserable voyage. So many nights I spent on deck, alone, lost in a gaze up at the limitlessness of the creator’s most brilliant designs and losing myself in this gazing I felt as if the constellations were now in possession of the immortal remnant of countless comrades whose blood was spilt by that Hunnish lot back in Alsace. As the days at sea went by I grew envious of the cosmos brilliance, for I missed my brethren deeply.

            The deck at night, however, was but a brief respite from the misery contained below deck. A ship packed full of misery and of heroes is all that it was, all that we were; mutilated, maimed, insane, and the dying accompanied by our pretty young nurses whose pity masked their youthful innocence and attractiveness in its entirety. I was present among the misery and a passenger aboard the S.S. "Poseidon's Lament" because of the leg I left in France when a German shell landed in our trench killing most of my comrades present and taking a most precious quarter of my body into oblivion. Some say it was a fair trade; to guarantee passage home for the perils of the “Great War” are anything but “Great” and at least I return home with some vitality, be it diminished and without much use other than allowing me to breathe of course.

            As the ship comes to a stop what is left of the remnants of four dozen and seven men rise from the bowels of the ship onto the deck like zombies; shadows of once great, proud, eager young boys now dreary, old, pathetic men, or at least remains of such, stagger to the rails to await the homage due heroes such as us. We were plucked from obscurity when we heeded our countries call. Rather than sit idly for the world to change under our feet we opted to take the reins and plow a new chart for ourselves and our ilk and we, or at least parts of us, were destroyed for it. Ravaged by disease, death, and worse we now feast our eyes upon the landing dock where few have gathered to great us with thanks and praises. And I am angry…so angry I fantasize of slashing my countrymen, sickle in hand and splashing there ungrateful blood upon the walls as I dance naked and painted in their blood like a warrior and scream in the ecstasy one must feel when they have attained what they are rightly owed. I quickly snap myself out of this delusion by realizing that such behavior is now part of the past. Now I am home, and besides it would be irrational and illogical to think I could possibly track down everyone who should have greeted us home this day and did not and I haven’t the time, energy, or the leg for such barbarity.

            As we stagger, stumble, roll, or are carried off the ship the few who have gathered are there clearly for pity’s sake. Using the assistance of my crutches I make my way down the gangway and raise my head in suspicion of the few who have gathered there but I just couldn’t connect my eyes with any of theirs. Part of me is grateful they have come yet part of me is ashamed to be seen like this; my one leg and its useless half-twin supported by these rickety crutches which mean to insult my locomotion with every step, or rather its present equivalent, with there instability. Having an audience seems to do little more than embellish the squirming feeling of helplessness and to exacerbate the oncoming rush of impending uselessness. But I am home at last. I remind myself that today is better than yesterday and with renewed optimism move past the greetings and stares to a bench that sits in the shadow of the “Poseidon’s Lament” and sitting down slowly as to not disturb further my sense of balance, I watch as the rest of my breed makes their way down the gangway. I close my eyes and remind myself aloud that my name is in fact Hayden Peltaire and that once they used to call me “the wolf” and that three quarters of my body and even less of my sanity have returned home and I remind myself that there is some value in that.