A Summertime Journey

Vietnam jungle, sticky, sweltering heat, mosquitos kamikaze-ing our heads and arms, the jungle canopy providing our only cover from the moon, stars, and our enemies. We’re lying in our sniper positions, getting ready to sacrifice our lives for love of Country.
“Enemy nine o’clock, ready grenades!” We all pretend to pull our pins, still in the prone position. “Ready! Aim! FIRE!” Ryan yells, his voice cracking—we all pretend we didn’t hear it. We thrust ourselves into the ready position, imitating the little green Army men we played with as children, right arms cocked back, left arms straight out in front of us to aim, and our legs spread for balance. For a brief second, the lights from the cars below silhouette our bodies, and reality does not match our imagination. We look nothing like the plastic green Army men.
I quickly glance at my three buddies. When I lock eyes with Joey, I feel a chill go down my spine and explode through my feet. Joey’s eyes for a brief nanosecond don’t belong to him. The eyes I’m staring into are soulless and black, not light brown with speckles. I quickly glance away toward the street and look back up at Joey. Although it’s dark, I can see the life in his eyes, Joey’s eyes. Did I imagine that? I had to have imagined it, I think, and don’t give it another thought. We hurl four baseball-sized rocks down toward the street at a passing vehicle, not considering what they might do—damage a car, cause an accident, or kill someone. At that moment in our stoned-out state, we only know we have a mission that must not fail. We can’t see the rocks; it’s too dark down below. But we sure do hear the BANG and screeching of tires. We quickly drop onto the gravelly roof, ducking, arguing about whose stupid rock hit the car. It dawns on us that maybe this wasn’t a good idea. We hear a car door loudly slam shut, and we peek over the ledge. We can only see the car and its driver when other vehicles pass by and illuminate them with their headlights.
The car is a four-door Galaxie 500, and it looks like it’s packed full of kids and a nervous woman, probably the mom. We can see the spider web cracks the rock made where it impacted the windshield. The man is hard to miss. He must be six feet tall, thick, wearing a blue and white button-up cowboy shirt and a large white cowboy hat, and he is pissed. “Ariana! I said, stay in the car and keep them damn kids quiet. I’m going to find who did this and beat them soms a beetches senseless,” the cowboy says to his wife, seeming to accentuate his accent for our benefit.
He walks around to the trunk, opens it, and retrieves a wooden baseball bat, loudly cursing to himself. By this time, all of our hearts are beating out of our chests. A feeling of fear and helplessness washes over me. I visualize that man up here beating all four of us until we’re nothing but bloody clumps of broken bone and flesh. The cowboy is at the lumber piles, saying, “You little heifers show yourselves. I’m only going to break your legs, not kill you.” He is walking, slow and confident, taking practice swings with his bat at the lumber piles. He must have heard us and knows that we are just a couple of kids. He moves to the side of the building, and we can’t see him anymore, but we can still hear him cussing and calling us out. The bat slams against the CAT dozer, and we know he is close to finding the door now. Did we shut it? Who was the last one in the building? Was it me? Thoughts are streaking through my head at an accelerated pace now. Jeremy must have been thinking the same thing because suddenly, he yells, “Every man for himself!” as he simultaneously leaps to his feet and runs toward the stairs. Almost instantaneously, the rest of us follow. We breach the back door and slam into each other.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
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WE CRASH INTO EACH other like the Three Stooges and end up in a tangled mess of arms and legs, lying on the ground. As I look up, the sun blinds me, and I blink over and over again as I try to make sense of how we went from night-to-day. My first thought is someone has a floodlight fixed on us, maybe the cops? But that’s not it, that’s not it at all. Believe me, I want that to be the explanation. It’s an explanation that’s reasonable, sensible. As my mind is racing to rationalize what is happening, I hear another voice, a soothing, calm, female voice say, “Don’t fear, I am here.” It’s my ‘guardian’ again. Did I really hear a voice? I dismiss it as my mental hysteria caused by our current situation.
I've been looking at the sky, cause it’s gettin’ me high
forget the hearse’ cause I never die
I got nine lives
cat’s eyes
The voice next to me is singing in a gravelly tone that would sound good if not for the current circumstance. I glance over, and sitting on an overturned white bucket is an oddly dressed man. Not any man. This man is in his mid-forties, I guess, and dressed like someone out of the 1960s. He looks ridiculous wearing green corduroy slacks, a red-and-white mock turtleneck with a solid red V-line insert, and covering it all is a black leather biker jacket, faded and browned at the collar, elbows, and wrists. The silver zipper is zipped halfway, and the coat looks about two sizes too small for him. He has long, dark, asphalt-colored hair contouring his chiseled cheekbones and dimpled chin. His eyes are brown—or they could be black. When I look into them, I can’t tell. What I do know is I can sense, more