James and Anna: A love Story.

                                   Chapter 1


      He threw his backpack that had everything that mattered to him   into the back of this old pickup. He was heading out, he didn't care where he was going. He had made the decision just that morning to leave. The only thing about leaving this town behind was that he would be leaving her behind. Sitting behind the wheel he thought about her. They had broken up 6 months before and she was never far from his mind and heart. He was running away from her. Since they were no longer together he just seemed to be getting by. He was living, but just barely. Yes, his heart beat but without her love it was a hollow beat.
   He found himself pulling up in front of the bakery she worked at. He didn't know if she still worked there or if this was her day off. He didn't plan on stopping there, but since he was here he figured he would just go in and tell her goodbye, that he was heading for parts unknown. When he got out of his truck he left it running so that it would be a quick goodbye.
    He walked into the bakery and there she was, the sight of her took his breath away. He stood at the counter and said "Hi Bonnie, would you run away with Clyde?" She looked up at him and smiled. Before he knew it, she grabbed her bag from under the counter and the cash from the tip jar. She hurried around the counter and grabbed his hand. She shouted her goodbye. They ran out and jumped into his pickup. As he backed out they were laughing.
    She asked him to stop by her room so she could grab some clothes and a few of the things she just couldn't leave behind. A picture of them, the beaded feather he made for her and their favorite CD. She wrote a note that read "Free Stuff" and taped it to the door. She dropped the key in the office mail slot. When she got back into the truck she said "Ready!". They were off. Too where? To where ever they wanted. They were together again and that was all that mattered to both of them.
       They got a cheap room on Hwy 101. They didn't talk much during the eight hour drive. She knew that the talking would come later. He dropped the bags on the floor. They sat down on the bed and reached for each other, shy at first then with the growing desire that they both had been denied, by being apart.
    She laid her head upon his chest.
"James," she said softly. " I love you."
He feigned sleep, but she knew he wasn't sleeping. She laid there thinking back to that morning when James spoke to her. She knew what was missing from her life, it was him. His voice broke down the wall she put around her heart to keep the pain away that she felt without James . When she looked up at him and into those blue eyes it was like the clouds parted and let the sun shine down on her, to warm her heart. She didn't think twice when he said, "Hi Bonnie,would you run away with Clyde?"
She knew the answer, it was always yes. Everyday for the past six months Anna wanted to call him, to say she wanted to be with him. She loved him. It was a consuming love. She didn't know why and when they were together it was like fire, the way they loved each other.
She didn't know James before he went to war. She met him after he got out of the VA hospital for PTSD. A friend fixed them up. They went to dinner. They talked, they laughed. He did something she would never let any one else do, he asked her how her steak was, then he took a bite of it off her plate. She was a little shocked but not mad about it. She was amused by it. Why with him? Because her heart knew, that he was her love, her consuming fire. She fell asleep thinking about her love for him.

He waited till he had heard her soft snore, it always sounded to him like Anna was purring. He opened his eyes. He stared off into the darkness. He loved the sound of her snore and the feel of her head upon his chest. They never lived together, Anna just spent every weekend at his house. She would get there Friday and leave Monday morning. She never left anything behind, not even her toothbrush. He would walk her to her car and kiss her goodbye and stand there in the driveway till he could no longer see her car. Sometimes he went to his part time job, stocking shelves at an auto parts store. He worked in the back away from the people who came in. He didn't deal well with the customers, he was best in the back. He had a Military pension so he didn't need full time work. He didn't think he could make it through an eight hour work day. He drank too much to make it through an eight hour or even a six hour work day. He worked four hours, three days a week. He would just call and say he wasn't coming in that day and he would be in the next. His father's best friend owned the store so he knew why. He knew the story.
   Anna rolled over onto her side. He gently got out of bed and pulled his jeans on and stepped outside to have a smoke. He loved that woman who was sleeping in that bed. It was hard to say the words to her, he didn't know why. He sometimes told Anna he loved her, but she was always asleep. The one time Anna asked him if he loved her, he said "Sure." And that would have to do. The six months they were apart nearly killed him. If he could not deal well without her, then why couldn't he say, "I love you, Anna"?
    He had no plans on what to do next, where to go. Just continue to drive up the coast. Maybe Washington would be a place to live, maybe they could find a pace out in the woods, but then again he always wanted to go to Montana. He wanted to be away from people to be able to work on himself. To just be with Anna. She understood him. She knew how to help him by just being there to hold him, or to rub his back till he fell back to sleep after he had awoken from one of his bad dreams. Anna never asked him a lot of questions about what he dreamt about, she never said, "It's all right. It's over now." She knew that it wasn't completely over for him yet. He still thought about what he did over there to protect his troops and how sometimes he just couldn't get rid of the guilt of those he left behind. So he drank to forget. Anna knew those bad nights and she left him to his drinking. He always felt safe with her there. She watched out for him. Oh how he loved Anna.
   He went back inside and slipped back into bed. He curled up next to her back and whispered into her hair, "I love you, Anna."
                             
                             
                                    Chapter 2

   Anna felt James in her arms, the warmth of his body. Her heart swelled with happiness. They were together again.
 She opened her eyes and found herself staring at the Lone Wolf tattoo he had on his back. The tattoo of war, of guilt, of pain. The tattoo of the men in his unit that didn't come home. He carried all of that on his back, a daily reminder of the Hell he walked through for two and a half years. The units were the wolves who walked among the people to try and protect them from their own kind. She knew all of this because she held him in the middle of the night when his mind went back there and his body was here in her arms holding him, trying to keep him here, to keep him together. Maybe trying to love him back to being whole again. It was hard some nights, she felt ashamed of how she was the one who wanted to run away, the one to cry, the one to scream for him, to be mad. Anna never showed him any of this. How could any of it help him? So she held him and whispered to him that she was here.
      And she was, she was here with him again. Her heart swelled, she felt her whole body fill with the love for him. She started to get out of bed and James rolled over and reached out to her. She went back into his arms. His arms were strong and his body warm. Anna fell back into the easy grace that was them.
      James fell back to sleep after their love making. Anna moved slowly and gently out of bed. She walked into the bathroom and turned on the shower, waiting for the water to get hot. She looked into the mirror and saw the love for him glowing from her eyes. After the shower Anna got dressed and decided to go get coffee for them.
   
     James opened his eyes just in time to see her slipping out the door. He felt a panic rise in him, then he saw her stuff and knew that she would be back. He needed her. He got up and jumped into the shower, thoughts of where the day would take them. Just keep driving up north. He knew the place to stop, the place to settle. James knew that Washington state had a VA hospital. Where ever they went there had to be a VA around. When all the memories got to be too much he went there, there were others who went through what he did. That walked in his boots. It helped James to be near them, another kind of family for him. These were men who understood how hard it was to rejoin this life where he woke up sweating, still fighting. Then it would come to him that he wasn't there anymore. He was here fighting to fit back into the life. Why did he feel so uncomfortable in his own skin in this world?
    He drank at night to the point of passing out, he drank to keep the demons away. Sometimes it worked. Now that Anna was back she would hold him and she would keep the darkness at bay.
       They took their time driving up the coast to Washington. Stopping and walking along the beach. Talking, laughing and making love. Bonnie and Clyde back together again.
                       

                                  Chapter 3

      James went over to the VA hospital just to check things out while Anna was at a job interview. He met a young man there who trained therapy dogs for Pets For Vets. They got to talking and James told him that they were living in a camp ground right now because at the moment they didn't have money to get a place. The guy told James he had a room above the garage that they could move into. It had a bath, a kitchenette and a living room/bedroom combo. James said they would take it.
     Anna found a job working at a cafe she could walk to. James told her to take his truck he would feel better knowing she wouldn't be walking in the rain or in the dark on the nights she closed the cafe. They were so happy.
         Anna loved James but she knew his night terrors were happening a little more often. He was drinking more. One night she came home to find he hadn't even gotten dressed or ate anything. There was a pile of beer cans surrounding the bed. She woke him and gave him a piece of pizza that she had brought home. He stayed awake long enough to eat it and to ask, "How was your day?" Then was out again before he could hear her answer him. That night there was no night terrors, no tossing and turning, he was so far into oblivion from the drinking. Anna didn't sleep that much that night, she was worried about James. She felt the change in him coming.
         More and more she would come home and find him completely and totally drunk or passed out from a day of drinking. She loved him so much that sometimes she felt it consume her. They lived like this for two months.
       Then one warm afternoon she walked home from work. Anna hoped that James was back home. She had hope in her heart this day because James told her that he was going to go to the VA to talk to someone about getting help. Maybe, just maybe, they could go out to dinner and a movie. She knew that James didn't like going out among people, his eyes were always darting about looking for the "Evil" that he knew was out there in this world. Loud noises could have him reaching for a rifle he no longer carried. Anna would take his hand and lead him back home to the safety of their four walls.
   His truck wasn't there so she knew he wasn't back yet. Looking up at their home she knew it was empty, not just empty because no one was inside it, but because something else wasn't inside that room above the garage. Happiness was missing from that room. She knew it had slipped away a while ago with every beer can. With every empty whiskey bottle she picked up. She didn't mind being the only one working and she didn't mind James staying home all day. What she minded was watching him lose himself in beer and whiskey. It hurt not being able help him more. He needed more then she could give him. As she climbed the stairs to the room, she knew it was happening again to them. His war was coming between them. She was fighting to keep him sane and he was fighting the war of his yesterdays. She stepped into the room and she knew right away that his war had won.

                               
                                    Chapter 4
   
      He watched Anna walk out the door after she had kissed him goodbye and wished him a good day. He knew what she was really wishing for, that the VA hospital would have a bed for him. He knew he needed to go and get help with his war demons. His drinking was coming between them. He held Anna in his arms last night. He felt her love flow into him and give him strength. Enough strength that he felt capable enough to say to her that he was going to the VA to get help with his drinking, with his nightmares, with just existing in a life that he wasn't fully living in. James felt strong. He knew that he could make it this time. He loved Anna and with her by his side they could do it this time. He fell asleep to the rhythm of her breathing.
        After Anna had left, he sat on the edge of the bed, the hard metal edge of the bed rail pressing into the back of his thighs. James pressed his legs down harder trying to feel the pain it caused him. Just a little harder he thought, "There." There it was, just the edge of pain seeped into his brain. This was a daily ritual, he needed just enough pain to feel he was still alive . Sometimes it wasn't the bed railing, sometimes he would reach for the knife he kept hidden beside the bed. When he used the knife to poke into the bottoms of his feet, He knew that it would be a bad day of demons and drink and lots of it. He knew that Anna didn't know simply because she never looked at the bottom of his feet.
    James reached for the knife.
   He was up and dressed and was watching the coffee pot. The drip led his mind back to a time when he was always on guard. His brain was always thinking a step ahead of where his feet were standing, his eyes were in constant movement. To a time where there was no down time, no time of no movement. The dripping of the coffee pot blended into the background noise of his mind.
   
 "His mind was thinking, was there enough bullets to get the Wolf Pack out of it this time? Their movement forward stopped, they were down this time. He felt surrounded, he could not go in any direction. Trapped! Well,he would not go down so easy. His men, his family,his Pack were falling,they just kept firing, then it stopped,it was quiet,except for the dripping of the blood of his buddy,dripping onto the stone beside him. He turned his head to ask him if he was okay but there was only a body lying there,he would never hear John's voice again or laugh over a drink. John's head was gone and James opened his mouth to scream,but no sound came out of his mouth,but his mind was screaming."
    
 James was brought back to the here and now by the ringing of his cell phone, he couldn't answer it because his hands were shaking and his mind was ringing with the echoing of his scream. He reached for a coffee cup. Instead of a cup his hand brought back the bottle. He lifted it to his lips and felt the burn of whiskey down his throat and he felt the first drops of "re-life" that he had felt since rising this day.
    Fifteen minutes later he was feeling better, tipping that bottle to his lips till the echoing scream became just a whisper of sound. His phone beeped again letting him know that he had a message. He listened to his message from Anna telling him that she loved him. There was a pause before she said goodbye. He knew what that pause meant. He knew she wanted to say, " Hope it all goes well. Just go to the hospital. I hope that you are already there, please, oh please." All of these were in that pause.
       He lifted the bottle again and again. Before he knew it he had drank all that was left from the night before. He was still on the edge of losing himself, so he reached for a beer, then another and another. He passed out in his chair..... 
He awoke with a start and he bolted upright, he looked at the wall clock, he grabbed his keys and stumbled to his truck. He had to be gone before Anna got home . He had to try, he had to try for her. For the love of his "Bonnie".
     He stopped to get a pack of smokes at the Quick Stop Shop, and he grabbed a 40 ounce beer. He thought this will be the last one he would ever have again, because this time he was going to be okay, this time he would heal his mind and his soul. This Time..... 
His phone rang again as he pulled into the hospital parking lot. It was his father, James didn't answer it, he didn't want to talk to his father. To hear the sadness and the pity in his voice that he had always heard since being back in the states. He remembered the look on his fathers face when he came to pick him up from the hospital after one of his flipping out drunks. He fought people that weren't there, so the cops were called and he was locked up for four days till the hospital had a bed for him. He spent four weeks there. He checked himself out claiming he was well. 
       James started his truck and drove away from the hospital. Anna would help him. All he had to do was let her really help this time. When James became aware of his surroundings he was standing on the edge of a cliff above the ocean, he had a empty bottle in his hand. He heard the crashing of the waves. He smelt the salt of the ocean, he looked across the ocean and saw the horizon. He saw the horror of war, the smell of gun smoke, of blood. He heard the sounds of screams, of bombs, of the rifle shots around him. James just couldn't stand there and let his pack fight without him.
    James stepped forward and felt himself falling back into the war.


     Anna sat in the dark waiting for a man who was never returning home again. She loved him. 

                                                   ~Jerrilyn~

Till my next talk,
Happiness to you.