Everyone Dies in the End #18

Cindy

Dixon’s strength was different. No less strong, but gentler. She remembered the respect he had shown the elderly couple at the gas station, the evident concern for his men. Eddie cared for two things: himself, and to his everlasting credit, Cindy. No one was going to mess with Eddie, and no one was going to mess with his girl. Nothing else mattered. He wasn’t mean, didn’t go out of his way to pick fights, but neither would he lift a finger to stop them. If an elderly couple asked Eddie what he was doing with a convoy of armored vehicles he would have no doubt wisecracked, “Saving my ass.”

This Dixon was a horse of a different color. His world was bigger. Dixon’s reply to the elderly couple, “Restoring hope,” defined the man. His life was about much more than himself, it was about others. The thought warmed her, and her mind drifted to less esoteric, but no less exciting, contemplations of Dixon.

“Well, Missy, you look pleased with yourself.” Dixon’s voice pulled her from her reverie and she blushed, as if he could read her thoughts. She pointed a slender finger at the setting sun. “Just enjoying the view.”

He turned to look. After a moment he nodded. “Yes, it’s almost normal.”

“But things will never be normal again, will they Lieutenant?” 

He took off his helmet and ran his hand through closely-cropped, sand-colored hair. The helmet went to the hood of the Jeep, beside Cindy. She looked at him, but not too long, that might be dangerous, but he looked at her. Not appraisingly, not the way a man looks at a woman, but the way a human looks at another. “I won’t buy into that.” A shrug. “Things will never be they way they were, but things can be normal again. If I didn’t believe that I wouldn’t be here now.”

She laughed, and pain flashed through his blue eyes. “No, Zack,” she touched his arm, it was the first time she had touched him, and the first time she had called him Zak. “I’m not laughing at you. I’m laughing at this.” She lifted her chin toward the soft glow on the horizon. “I’m laughing at this. How can this be normal, how do we fix this?”

“One day at a time.”

They were both silent for a moment, then he bent to his pack, which was propped against the front of the CJ-6. He stood, brandishing two of the brown packets she had seen the other soldiers tearing into. Meals Ready to Eat, or MREs, dehydrated food. Just add water for a somewhat less-than-delicious meal.

“It’s been a while since I had a dinner date. Care to join me for some,” he paused to read the black lettering on the front of the pack, “Jamaican Pork Chop or Red Beans and Rice?”

She laughed, making a show of searching both sides of the jeep, “Sure, I don’t see any better offers cropping up anytime soon.”

He bent to the task of heating the meals over his own Sterno cup. She watched, a smile spreading on her face, and for the second time that day she forgot the picture in her jeans. The picture of Eddie.