God. No God. Love & Liquor.
Presented here, two of my favorite short chapters of Die By Wire that show how two intelligent people — Mira Longbow and Jackson Day — can fall in love over an obscure Dutch liquor and an argument about the existence (or not) of God.
Mira, for reasons described previously, has lost her faith in God. She’s firmly agnostic. She’s not ready to take the leap of faith back toward believing in God but not over the chasm to believing there is no God.
Day believes in God, despite the bitter lot he’s been dealt. Mira finds that hard to … believe
And, yes, the MREs described are totally authentic. If you ever get a chance, NEVER, EVER turn down the clam chowder.
CHAPTER FIFTY SIX
Amsterdam
The bank of LCDs lit the Achtersluisstraat operations room like sunshine dancing through leaves. Shadows shifted constantly rearranged by incoming data re-drawing the lines and multicolored squares on the displays.
Jackson Day sat in a folding chair at one end of a folding table and watched Mira ransack a large cardboard box while he finished the last bite of stuffing from a grilled chicken breast and cornbread stuffing MRE. He washed it down with a sip of Vouvray from a plastic glass. Only Qalila would pair appropriate wines to bulletproof military-issue food.
And only Mira, he realized, could so thoroughly unhinge him with a word, a glance, a casual brush of fingertips; a laugh, a pout, a sensual combing of graceful fingers through unaccustomedly short hair.
Following his earlier inarticulate stammering they’d ripped open two pouches of his favorite MREs — menu five — and went for the bread and jalapeno cheese spread, while the water-activated chemical heaters warmed the entrees.
An awkward silence settled between them. Day searched for something, anything at all, to break the ice.
Growing up on a ranch in the sparsely populated rangeland and mountains of the eastern Sierras had never offered him an opportunity to develop smooth pick-up lines and the sort of glib gab that lubricated a conversation with the opposite sex.
Banalities served them pretty well until they washed the last of the cheese and bread down with the MRE’s iced tea.
Day finally worked up his nerve.
“Helluva blog you’ve got.”
Lame!
He stumbled on. “I never knew evil was so … had so much depth.”
Lamer! You screwed the pooch, pal.
Then Mira smiled.
“Thank you.” Gracious, accepting.
Encouraged, Day cleared his throat.
“How did you … the evil thing? What got you started?”
To his amazement, Mira told him. Unrestrained and mostly unprompted through the main course. She spoke easily, touching some bases lightly, others in detail and some — like Al-Kut, the court martial and her family tragedies — in such a cursory manner that he knew they held the sorts of unfathomed depths that would not countenance unsolicited questions.
Over French vanilla cappuccino, reconstituted from the MRE’s inventory, Mira turned the questions on him.
She stopped him every time he tried to stick to a Cliff Notes summary of the pain, rehab, battles with the bureaucracy
Al Kut. MedeVac Blackhawk. Ramstein. Walter Reed. Transcendental pain.
He told her about the eyes of his men that no longer saw. The lips that no longer spoke. The great spreading gouts of blood darkening in the Al-Kut heat.
His disgrace.
“And then I met the man on the mountain.” He said.
“What did he have to offer that the rest of the military couldn’t?”
Mira offered him a look of such complete acceptance that he told her what he had never said before, never actually allowed himself to face.
“Redemption,” Day said.
“Redemption?”
“I … when I — ”
Day wiped at his face, pulled at his jaw, stretched his mouth.
Words stumbled off his lips, falling flat even to his own ears, challenging the life-changing decision that had shaped the previous years of his life.
“If I had gotten my way in the regular Army, then one day I’d be back outside the wire again with men trusting me to make the right decision.” He shook his head. “I know now that I’m not good enough.”
Mira watched his emotional struggle shift the taut angles of his face and work the hardened facets of the well-defined muscles.
“The man on the mountain gave me the chance to redeem myself — to finish the unfinished business — without risking any life but my own.”
She compared his face to what she remembered from Al-Kut. Fundamentally the same rugged visage that had so thoroughly captivated her then. But now, the features were leaner, the sharp bones of his cheeks and square jaw closer to the surface, the network of wrinkles at the corners of his eyes deeper and the grit, set and determination lines around his lips stood in stark carved relief.
The cocky young warrior of Al-Kut had grown into a brave man born of painful experience.
You are good enough.
Day waved his hands, helpless in the face of errant thoughts that would not connect to the words and the words that would not find his lips.
With a nod and the most gentle of accepting glances, Mira encouraged him to continue.
“It’s my mission,” Day finally managed.
“Your ultimate mission,” Mira’s said.
“Don’t laugh,” he hedged. “But I think that this is what God wants me to do.”
Oh, hell! Please no Jesus freak talk!
Mira wrestled with the bitter distaste of having God injected into a serious conversation.
Not from you. Especially not from you!
Day pressed, skipped from high point to high point. Then he ran out of words. The silence grew.
He had run out of words and Mira could think of nothing. The earnest struggle on his face was clear, the accomplishments monumental, but the religion thing raised the hair on the back of her neck.
“Wow,” she said finally. “I need a drink.”
Day reached for the Vouvray. She gave her head a little shake of dismissal.
“Thanks. But I need a real drink.”
CHAPTER FIFTY SEVEN
Amsterdam
She ransacked one box after another in search of a “real drink.”
“There!”
Mira stood up, victory in her voice. She made her way back to Day, brandishing a bottle of honey-colored liquid.
“Half om half.” Mira set the bottle on the table, broke the seal and poured them each half a glass.
“My favorite.”
Day took a tentative sip.
Sweet, spicy clove, bitter orange bite, warm on the way down and potent spicy heat that took his breath away.
Just like you.
Mira caught the smile on his face. That warmed her deeper than the half om half.
“You like?” She asked.
“Fantastic!”
Mira nodded, took a sip. Closed her eyes. Offered an approving “mmmm.”
They sat in silence for a long moment.
When she finally opened her eyes, her gaze had so totally morphed that it generated the same gut rush he got every time he stepped out of a C-130 at 20,000 feet.
“So, how long are you going to wage this personal jihad until you redeem yourself?”
Ripcord! Where’s my freaking ripcord?
The penetrating focus in her eyes terrified him with a most horrifying epiphany: after living his life on his own terms, answering only to his own life-or-death decisions, needing approval from no one, he suddenly had to have the approval of this woman.
Words escaped him. Day shrugged.
“How will you know?” She persisted.
“I’ll know,” Day said, suddenly without conviction.
Mira pulled a look of disbelief, turned toward the closest LCD while little Muckety boxes morphed around the display.
When she spoke again, her voice carried an edge, a jealousy, a mockery born of affronted sensibilities.
“So.”
She nodded to herself.
“You’re The True Believer with a divine mission to breath Hellfire and damnation on the unbelievers? Shouldn’t you be thumping a Bible on the table or something?”
The pain on his face nailed her heart right to the back of her breastbone.
“I’m sorry,” Mira said. “That was uncalled for. I — ” Bands of guilt cinched her heart tight.
“Don’t be,” Day said, “I know how you feel about God and religion. I’ve read every word you’ve ever published over the years. Everything in print. On the Web. Your YouTube lectures. I read your dissertation. I have DVDs. You’re aggressively up front about that.”
It was Mira’s turn to shrug. “It’s pretty much driven my studies.”
“And that other part of your life,” he said.
“Pardon?”
“White Tights.”
“What about it?”
“That’s your mission. Fight evil.”
“Yes, but — ”
“So, just because I fight evil because I believe it’s God’s will, you think my fight’s not as worthy as yours?”
“It’s — I just don’t understand how you can believe in God with all the evil in the world.”
“And I don’t understand how you can not believe in God,” Day said. “Where did everything come from? Why is there something and not just nothing? I can’t tell you how many nights I’ve stayed awake thinking about you, about how you feel about that. I’ve tried to wear your philosophical shoes, but — ”
“You’ve stayed awake nights thinking about me?”
“Of course I have,” Day said. “And just because I don’t understand how you feel about that, it never stopped me from loving you.”
Day’s words landed a stunning round-house, left-hook punch that turned her thoughts to stone and everything else to disbelief. When words found her again, her voice sounded punch drunk and distant to her own ears.
“What did you say?”
“I said your beliefs never stopped me from loving you.”
Mira drained the rest of her half om half in a single, deep, audible gulp.
“How could you possibly know that?” Mira asked. “You don’t know me well enough, couldn’t — ”
“You put yourself in every letter,” Day said. “You were all there. In every one.”
Against her every good and righteous conviction and the near-supernatural control she exercised over her emotions, Day’s face begin to blur. Mira turned quickly, wiped at the tears and struggled to compose her face.
“But why… didn’t you write me back?”
“I did.”
“You what!”
“I never mailed them. But I answered every one of them and put everything of myself into them just like you did. And I saved every one.”
“Why didn’t you mail them?”
“Because I knew that would be the end of my mission.”
“Oh my God,” Mira whispered to herself.
“For the same reason that no matter how much I’d like to stay with you, after we finish here, I have to return to my mission.”
Mira gazed at him and saw in his eyes a level of determination, longing and… love that matched her own.
“Then hold me while you can,” she said.
And he did.
