DISCLAIMER: JERICHO is copyright © by Junction Productions and CBS/Paramount productions, 2006-7. All rights to the characters in JERICHO belongs to the above. This is not meant to infringe upon rights held by others than myself. Comments are welcome.
LETTER HOME
Dear Mom —
Sweat drips from Jake's nose, splatters the empty page as seconds, then minutes tick by. Red-rimmed eyes stare at the paper. Nnerveless fingers hold the pen. No words come, not even for his mother. The sun stares at the desert like Jake stares at his unwritten letter. There is no shade, no cool breeze. Heat waves shimmer, warping the distant horizon into oceanic mirages real only in the mind of the beholder. Jake's eyes burn, scorched by sun, scoured by sand, seared by sights no man should see.
There are sounds around him. Mail call. Men exchange news from home, sharing pictures sent by wives, mothers, girlfriends. Photographs of new babies, older children, brothers, sisters, parents. Family portraits in which they do not appear. Some of these men are true soldiers—Army, Marines, National Guard. Others are soldiers of misfortune, like Jake. Everyone of them are tired, thirsty and miserably hot in God's forsaken sandbox. Dust colors their faces ashen gray, the color of death. They are walking ghosts in camouflage, wraiths whose eyes mirror the horror of another war that is not always fought against men.
It's been a while since I wrote, but I wanted you to know —
Pen halts. Words stop. Emotions do not. Memories do not. Jake stares at the black ink on white paper smudged by his sweaty fingers. Brownish-gray dirt that smears a letter when brushed by a careless hand. Sun-baked grains of sand ride a wind that is never cool until after night falls. The air grows gets cold, forbidding, as if bereft of feeling. This is a lifeless land, pocked and pitted with craters like the moon. Sand and rocks are watered only by blood, sweat and tears.
Jake wipes his face, then wipes his hand on the sleeve of his BDUs. He leans against a wheel of the deuce-and-a-half truck he drives for Jennings & Rall. The tire is hard, the ground harder, but there's a little shade to relieve the noontime sun. The convoy will roll soon, the unfortunate village left behind to lick its wounds and bury its dead. He's fortunate to be driving the lead vehicle; he'll eat dust only from the command humvee. Freddie rides shotgun, watching the desert for more insurgents, his automatic rifle ready. Their body armor offers some protection, but there is no safety from fanatical suicide bombers.
Jake's eyes squeeze tightly shut, sweat stinging. His throat is raw, hurting. His heart pounds in his ears, his breathing is rapid, shallow. Sounds and images wash over him. The staccato tattoo of gunfire. The roar of explosions. The sharp crack of his own weapon. Blood. Bodies—it all rushes together like a mad kaleidoscope of horror. Momentary vertigo. Nausea roils in Jake's stomach, his gorge rising, threatening to unman him. Again. The only cure is to write it down, to put into words what he does not want to remember in dreams. His hand trembles as the pen scratches across the paper.
— that today I killed a little girl.
There is silence, now. A single piece of paper is crushed in the dust beneath the wheels of many trucks as the J&R convoy rolls over the desert sand, leaving behind the horror.