The Shadows In Which We Rise (ePub)

What readers and critics have said about The Shadows In Which We Rise

"A must read!" Donald Anderson

"Vivid, strong memories -- eloquently reported -- make this book a master-piece of war, suffering, and redemption." H. H. Gregory

"…the most engaging book on the subject I have ever read!" Lawrence Drake

"…a searing story of war, survival and reconciliation told by a true war hero." C. Canton

"…as close to being in battle as any written account can be. David Hernandez

"A page-turner that won't let you put it down!" Jason Calhoun

Time.

Time drifts on an endless dream.

I wanted to be a writer. John Steinbeck. Someone.

Someone.

I wanted to love Janice forever.

Want.

My wormhole filled with want.

With daydreams and dream shards.

With gray images from a past life like cardboard men on a shooting range-two-dimensional, empty of expression, empty of life.

Time before, time after, and time now.

Time in the hospital, one day slipping into another, one week into two, until two and a half months are gone.

When I was lying on the ground after I got wounded, time slowed into a flicker of an eye, a half-step caught mid-air.

I heard each of my heartbeats like seconds ticking away on a windup clock-tick, beat, tick-tick, beat, tick.

And as the blood poured out, puddled beneath my back and soaked my head, time stilled to a slug's slow crawl.

As I lay on my back, stars flickered through the smoke, the night so quiet, so quiet except for the dull drone in my ears, my arms and legs heavy as lead pipes floating in the warm pool rising under my body.

Time before, time after, and time now, each moving at relative speeds.

X-ed out, sweat-drenched, mud-born days, days burnt like the pages of a rice paper calendar in a hootch I lit on fire.

Interminable days humping through the bush drifting into endless nights on listening patrols, nights so long I felt like I was falling in a falling dream, falling and falling through the pitch dark until I woke alive in a misted dawn, a dawn so hazy even the bushes danced in the mist like ghosts.

Time in the hospital in Chu Chi--one week there and four in Saigon-weeks punctuated by intense moments of ripping-off bandages, each bandage taped over a new, raw layer of skin, tearing off the old so it bled to prevent infection, day by day, scabs growing over the filament of the war-monsoon nights streaming into the wintry mornings in Japan, mid-March greys sifting into sun-bright April-February's monsoon morphing into March and now April's Spring, April blooming into soon-to-come May.

Today, a Monday in April.