Toward the Sound of Chaos Read online

  Toward the Sound of Chaos

  Carmen Jenner

  Toward the Sound of Chaos

  Copyright © 2016 Carmen Jenner

  Published by Carmen Jenner

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  This is a work of fiction.

  Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places, events, and incidents are either of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return it to the seller and purchase your own copy.

  Thank you for respecting the author’s work and for not making me set a very pissed off Jake Tucker on you.

  Remember: Pirates are douches. Don’t be a douche.

  Published: Carmen Jenner May 13th 2016

  [email protected]

  Editing: Lauren McKellar

  http://laurenkmckellar.com/hire-an-editor/

  Cover Design: © By Hang Le

  http://www.byhangle.com/

  Formatting: Be Designs

  http://www.be-designs.com.au/

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  More from the Author

  Acknowledgements

  I will remember the kisses

  our lips raw with love

  and how you gave me

  everything you had

  and how I

  offered you what was left of

  me

  – Charles Bukowski

  – For single mothers and veterans everywhere.

  Thank you for your service.

  Chapter One

  Ellie

  “Come on, come on.” I turn the key in the ignition, prayin’ it will spark to life before I choke the living bejeebies outta it. My car, the evil spawn of Satan that it is, coughs, sputters, and dies, and I slam my hands against the steering wheel as I scream, “Stupid piece of crap chunk of metal.”

  “Mamma swore,” Spencer drawls from the backseat.

  “I know, I know.” I rest my head against the wheel and wish I could have a complete do-over.

  “Piece of crap, piece of crap, piece of crap,” Spencer singsongs, getting louder with each word. I turn my head and glare at him. He promptly shuts up.

  Good Lord. Why in the world did this have to happen today of all days? I only just got Spencer dressed and out the door in time for our morning walk around the duck pond—which I had to hurry him through as if the devil himself was chasing us—and now we’re not only going to be late for school but I’m going to miss the whole damn reason I get dressed each morning, fix my hair, and try and look cute when all I really want to do is put on my robe and fluffy slippers, and leave my hair à la bird’s nest while I grip my travel coffee mug for dear life.

  Desperate for some kind of miracle, I turn the key again and it backfires. Spencer starts hollerin’ in the backseat about it being a “No!” sound, his hands pressed to his ears.

  “I’m sorry, baby,” I say, and fumble with the radio to find a channel that’s not running commercials. He hates those. I settle on one with a song that he actually likes and the screamin’ stops so I turn back to the road and check the dash for the time—8:32 A.M.

  I take hold of the key, close my eyes and promise the man upstairs that I’ll contribute to the church bake sale this year in exchange for one little itty bitty favor. A beat later the engine roars to life. I let out a whoop and peel out of the parking space along North Beach Road.

  Like clockwork he emerges from the walking trail at the end of the street, wearing black Nikes, black shorts, and a fitted grey Henley that sticks to every plane and angle of hard-won muscle. How he runs in full sleeves in the summertime is beyond me, but as sweat plasters that shirt to his body like a second skin, I am not complaining. His dog, a monstrous black thing with a shiny coat—that looks more like a wolf than any other breed I’ve seen—runs alongside him, tethered to his waist by a long lead fastened to his belt loop. The dog also wears a vest—Marine camouflage with the words Veteran Service Dog embroidered on the side.

  Obviously I didn’t get all this from just one glimpse. It’s more like an accumulative set of glimpses over let’s say a period of about ten months. Give or take. That thing I was talking about earlier? The reason for me brushing my hair each morning? Well, I’m looking at it.

  “Good Morning, hot Marine,” I whisper, and of course my son’s ears prick up. Spencer may only be eight, but he can tell you every statistic worth knowing about every war in history. He is fanatical. Especially about Marines.

  Spencer is special. At two, he was diagnosed with Autism and Sensory Processing Disorder. I knew there was something very wrong with his behavior. He didn’t laugh like he had as a baby; he couldn’t handle crowds, fairs, or the farmer’s market, and playgroup was completely out of the question. He stopped speaking for a whole year, just out of the blue. Scared me half to death. His pediatrician said I should encourage some of the things he took an interest in. He’d been like a sponge when it came to anything military-related, and I’d worked for months to afford a trip to Mobile for the weekend where we could visit Fort Gaines, Fort Morgan, and the USS Alabama. He spent the whole time riding a high of processed sugars while he took it all in with excited whimpers and not-so-gentle taps at my thigh. I’ve been saving up my pennies to take him again, but it hasn’t happened yet.

  “That’s Jake Tucker,” Spencer says, just like clockwork. I think the excitement of seeing this recluse Marine is just as much a part of his morning routine as it is mine. For different reasons, of course.

  “That’s Jake Tucker,” I agree, somewhat wistfully, and I put my foot down on the gas so that we’ll be at the optimal spot for staring at those dark eyes and that emotionless face hidden by all that hair and beard as h
e runs along North Beach Road. Again, the eyes aren’t something I know of so much from seeing them up close—because I don’t think he’s ever looked in my direction a day in his life—it’s more from seeing the various news reports on TV and the paper and magazine clippings from my son’s collections of Marine scrapbooks. I never could tell if they were black or dark blue.

  Three, two, one. His heel leaves the footbridge over the duck pond and we’re moving toward one another. Time is suspended in the nanosecond it takes me to drive past him and his dog.

  And then it’s gone. I keep driving, glancing between the road and my rear-view mirror. My eyes roam over his butt, like they do every day, and then I notice a black smudge on the back of his leg. I move closer to the mirror, squinting my eyes in order to see better.

  “Mamma, look out!”

  “Hold on Spence,” I scream, as I try to take control of the wildly spinning wheel and my poor little car careens through Beach Park, beside the duck pond, and comes to a stomach-turning, metal-screeching halt between the footbridge and one very large tree.

  My head smacks off the steering wheel and nausea rolls over me like a tide as I turn to check on Spence. I catalog his limbs and head, all intact and no blood. “You okay, baby?”

  “Mamma, you don’t look so good,” Spencer says.

  “I’m fine,” I murmur, sounding drunk. I open and shut my eyes a bit, and the little green numbers on the dash come into focus. 8: 35 A.M. and already this day couldn’t get any worse.

  I close my eyes and lean against the wheel, and then the sound of Spencer’s door opening wakes me and I spin around in my seat so fast you’d swear I was possessed.

  “You’re Jake Tucker,” my son says.

  “Yes, I am.”

  “I’m Spencer Mason. That’s my mamma, Ellie Mason.”

  “Sit tight, ma’am.” His gruff voice fills the tiny cab of my car. I turn my head again to see what he’s doing, but everything goes black. “I’ll get you out.”

  “I’m fine,” I say, turning back to the door. I open it and attempt to get out of the car, but something stops me. I glance down, clumsily yanking on the seatbelt restraining me, but his face is there in my space. His whole body is as he leans over to unbuckle my seatbelt.

  I climb out of the vehicle, but halfway to straightening to my full height of a meagre little five-feet, one-inch, I get woozy in the stomach and wobbly in the boot, and I sag against the car as Jake Tucker leans into me, his warm breath on my face.

  “I got you.”

  “Blue eyes,” I mumble.

  “What?” he says. I didn’t expect his voice to be so low, gravelly. Sexy. It sounds like warm whiskey on a cold winter’s day.

  “Blue eyes and whiskey lullabies,” I say, my head rolling back against the car door rather drunkenly. I must have hit it harder than I thought. “I knew they were blue.”

  He stares at me as if I’m completely crazy. “I think you have a concussion.”

  “I’m fine.” I attempt to push off the car, but the big sweaty wall of muscle stops me from going anywhere. He grips my shoulders hard, as if his hands are the only thing keeping me upright.

  “My purse,” I shout, turning back to my door. He tightens his hold and stops me from going anywhere. “I need to call Olivia to come get us.” I look down at Spence who watches us closely and the world twists on its side, my stomach clenches, and I puke all over Jake Tucker.

  Since he came back from the war a year ago, I’ve imagined meeting this recluse mountain man in a number of ways: down at the Piggly Wiggly, at the Coffee Loft, and even right here in this very park. What I hadn’t imagined upon first meeting Jake Tucker was that I would mumble some gibberish about his eyes and how his voice sounds like a whiskey lullaby, and then puke all down his shirt. I hadn’t imagined falling into said puke-covered shirtfront either, but I do. Right before I pass out.

  You know when you think to yourself that this day couldn’t possibly get any worse? You’d be wrong. The universe always has a way of slappin’ you upside the head and showing you just how much worse it can really get.

  ***

  “I still don’t understand how you wound up wedged between the footbridge and a tree? What in the world were you doing?” Olivia, screeches from the driver’s seat of her minivan. She’s taking Spence and I home after we spent all day running tests that I couldn’t afford in a hospital I didn’t want to go to in the first place.

  After puking all over Jake and passing out on him, the man had called an ambulance. Then he’d rifled through my phone and called Olivia. Fairhope, Alabama was a small town, and if you didn’t know everyone, you knew of everyone.

  Olivia runs the local shelter and training center, Paws for Cause. She rescues dogs from death row, trains them to be service dogs, and pairs them up with eligible candidates from all over America. Olivia Anders is my best friend, and just like with an annoying older sister who is always right and way too fond of saying “I told you so,” I divide my time spent with her between wanting to hug her and wanting to squeeze the living daylights outta her.

  “Mamma was watching Jake Tucker in the rear-view mirror.”

  “Spencer Mason, you hold your tongue,” I snap.

  “You were not?” Olivia asks, her mouth agape.

  “No, I wasn’t.”

  “Mamma’s a fibber donkey,” Spence singsongs, and I can’t help the smile from bursting onto my face even though it hurts my forehead as I laugh.

  “Jake Tucker. Really?” Olivia asks as she pulls into my drive. I really wish I could just grab Spence out of the car and disappear into the house to avoid her questioning, but I don’t see that happening on account of the fact she’s sleeping over to keep an eye on me. Damn doctors.

  “Don’t act so surprised,” I say, gathering my purse and the Minute Maid Lemonade she bought me from the drive-through at Sonic.

  Olivia holds her hands up in surrender. “It’s just that I’ve never heard you talk about Jake. I didn’t even know you knew him.”

  “I don’t. Not that it matters much now anyway because I just puked all over the man.” I get out of the car and open Spencer’s door. He climbs out, forgetting his juice as he races for the end of the drive and waves to Mr. Williams across the street. Olivia chuckles.

  “It’s not funny.” I wave at Mr. Williams who’s squinting at us.

  “What happened to your head? And where’s your damn car?” Mr. Williams drawls from his front porch stoop. He never goes any farther than that last step. Even the mailman comes up the walk because he knows Mr. Williams won’t go down it. He was a Marine aviator in the Korean War and went on to spend twenty years in the military. The man is as old as time. He’s also a terrible landlord on account of his agoraphobia, but what he lacks in repairs, he makes up for in time spent with my son. On the porch, of course, ’cause I can’t see him ever leaving it.

  “Oh, it’s in the shop.” I wave the notion away as if it’s no big deal.

  “Mamma crashed it into duck pond bridge ’cause she was too busy watching Jake Tucker, and now she’s got a goose egg on her head.”

  “Okay, Spence. That’s enough.”

  “Was she now?” Williams leans forward on the stoop, like this is the most fascinating news he ever heard. I throw my hands up and walk inside, leaving them all to their laughter.

  Stupid hot Marine.

  Chapter Two

  Jake

  One foot in front of the other. I sing the Marines’ Hymn in my head. Funny how those things never leave you. Even now, seven thousand five hundred miles away, I still hear those words I whispered to the darkness. Desert dust cakes my skin, gunfire and chaos send my heart hammering against my ribcage. The blast from an IED shakes the ground beneath my feet until I lose my balance. I can only watch as two of my men are blown apart and the spray of sand and debris rises into the sky like a plume, and then rains down over our shell-shocked bodies. The ringing in my ears is back.

  So are the screams.

&
nbsp; Every fucking cry for help or scream of terror, of loss, of agony from nine years’ worth of service. I hear it all on a loop in my head. Afghani, American, man, woman, child—it don’t make no difference, because terror sounds the same in the dark, no matter whose lungs it’s ripped from.

  Those sounds, tastes, smells—they burrow in bone-deep and they never leave.

  Nuke paws at my hip, jumping up. I’m snapped back to the present. And like a fucking head case I’m standing in a busy street of Fairhope, my world on full tilt as cars and people and overexcited children move all around me.

  The adults here don’t pay me much mind when I retreat inside my head like that, but the kids often do. Maybe it’s because sometimes I stare at them and see something else: blood, bone, a mass of raw meat where their faces should be. I look down at my dog and pat his head. “Good boy.”

  I turn my back on the town as they make ready for the festivities. Unease prickles down my spine. Everywhere I look the town is painted red, white, and blue. The fourth of July.

  God bless America.

  This is one holiday I could do without. When everyone in town gathers by the pier to celebrate America’s independence. I’ll be holed up in my house trying not to regress again when I hear the sound of the fireworks. On any given day I feel as if I’m taking one baby step forward and eight giant leaps back. In my head, I repeat the bullshit mantra of my shrink: Every day may not be good, but there is something good in every day.

  I count today’s goods, marking them off in my mind with a big green tick just like he told me to.

  Coffee? Good.

  Running? Good.

  Seeing the footbridge taped off and the massive tree at a lean earlier? Jury is still out on that one. Mostly because the second I’d heard the crash, I’d dropped to the ground like I was under fire. It took a few beats for Nuke to bring me back, and when I’d realized I was here, and the beat up red Datsun was wedged between the tree and the bridge, and there was a chance that the woman and her kid were in danger, I hadn’t thought much of anything except that I needed to get them out. That’s how it is with me. That’s why I find it so hard to function like a regular adult, because half of me will always be in a war zone, eyes always scanning for danger, seeking out ways that I can be useful and fight, and the other half barely functions. My mind is fragmented, broken into a million little shards, and no amount of meds or Zen quotes from my shrink will change that. My brain fights me at every turn, and it wins, because how do you fight a battle that only wages within your head? How do you undo everything you’ve done? How do you forget the screams, and the faces of your brothers as the light drains from their eyes?