**********
Sheriff Lewis slams on his brakes and veers into Jon’s driveway, his tires screeching from the strain of his sharp right turn. He’d exceeded the speed limit the best he could to try and get here before Jon returned from the liquor store, but he’d gotten stuck in traffic and ended up losing the race.
Lewis couldn’t help but smile as he put his car in park and killed the engine, though, because he realized he still had control over the situation. Though he hadn’t been the first one back, he’d retained the element of surprise.
He’d expected a nasty confrontation with a drunken combat veteran, so imagine his relief when he peers through his windshield and sees Jon passed out on the steps leading up to his front door.
“Jesus,” Lewis whispers to himself. “He was so far gone he couldn’t even make it back into the damn place. I wonder if he locked the door on his way out...”
Sheriff Lewis exits his vehicle, taking his super-sized cup of soda with him. A bucket of ice-cold water would’ve been ideal, but this would have to do. He didn’t need the empty calories anyway.
He sets the two-thirds-full plastic cup on the steps just inches from Jon’s unconscious body – very quietly, he doesn’t want to wake him up yet – and proceeds to check on the front door. The knob turns. It’s unlocked. He lets himself inside.
Kitchen to his right, dining area to his left... Lewis finds what he’s looking for on the dining room table. Jon’s duty belt... more specifically, the loaded handgun nestled in the holster attached to it. “I sure am glad you didn’t decide to take this with you on your little walk this afternoon,” Lewis says as he removes the loaded weapon from Jon’s holster and secures it in his pants by tucking the barrel between the skin of his lower back and the back of his waistband.
Lewis heads back outside, carefully removes the brown-bagged bottle from Jon’s grip and chucks the bottle into the small wooded area bordering Jon’s yard. He grabs his gigantic fast-food soft drink, removes the lid, and splashes what’s left of the sugary goodness within all over the soon-to-be-former police officer’s face.
“What the FUCK?!?!” Jon growls, sitting up abruptly and purging his airways of his Sheriff’s disgustingly warm and sticky choice of a wakeup call.
“Funny... that’s what I wanted to ask you,” Lewis says with a smirk. He lets Jon finish clearing his nose and mouth. “So,” he continues, “I had an interesting phone call from my wife today.”
Jon rests his elbows on his knees and holds his head in his hands. Lewis waits for him to respond but it’s pretty clear that Jon is still trying to piece together where he is and how he got here.
“And I’ll tell ya why it was interesting, Jon. As you know, I’ve been in law enforcement quite a few years... but never – never have I heard of a uniformed officer being drunk off his ass and stumbling his way down a city sidewalk with no damn shoes on.”
Shame on his face, Jon glances at his bare feet. At his clothing. Shame evaporates into amusement. “I remember leaving the house to go out and get more to drink, but DAMN,” he says, still very intoxicated... “I can’t believe I didn’t think to shed my uniform first. No wonder the gal behind the counter was lookin’ at me funny... ha, I just figured maybe my fly was undone.”
“I know I said we’d talk about you coming back to work after you’d sobered up, but I’d like to settle this right now. Do you really think you’re ready to return to police work?”
TWENTY-TWO
Jon’s bloodshot eyes meet the Sheriff’s just long enough to acknowledge his question, but he doesn’t say anything. His facial expression gives Lewis his answer.
“Yeah. I didn’t think so. Look... before this little stunt you pulled today, I would’ve let you back out there, let you get back on the road. But now, having seen just what kind of shape you’re in, I just can’t do it.”
Lewis knows he has to be careful with how he phrases his next statement. He doesn’t want to offend Jon.
“I’ve got nothing but respect and admiration for what you and your fellow Marines did over there... are doing over there. Hell, I couldn’t do it. I may be Sheriff around here, but the thought of entering a no-shit combat zone scares the hell out of me. So for what it’s worth, Jon, you’re twice the man I am, twice the man I’ll ever be... and you’re half my age. Be proud of that.”
“I feel like half the man I was before I left, that’s the messed up thing,” Jon admits, startling Lewis with his quick, honest response. “I’m not ready, Sheriff.” He pauses to wipe his eyes, thankful for the liquor coursing through his body in this moment because it allows him to show human emotion without feeling embarrassed. “I’m not ready at all.”
“And you shouldn’t feel bad about that,” Lewis says sympathetically. “Shit, if I experienced even half of the things you’ve seen and done I wouldn’t want to...”
Jon cuts him off. “I didn’t plan on calling you today. Not until I found my test results in the mailbox.”
“Test results? What test results?”
“I went and got tested for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder because I’d heard about the possibility of getting a monthly ‘benefits’ payment from the government.”
“And it came up negative? That’s why you’re upset?”
“No, they say I have it... I just couldn’t believe how little they said I was entitled to. It’s certainly not enough to live on... and that’s kind of what I wanted to see happen, because honestly, Sheriff, I can’t be a cop anymore. I just can’t. I can’t keep my promise to my dad anymore.”
“Promise to your dad?”
“Yeah. I made a silent promise when he died that I’d follow in his footsteps. That’s why I became a cop, why I joined the Marines... so after getting discharged, being told that I have PTSD and realizing I don’t have the stomach to pick up where I left off with police work, I feel like I’m letting him down – in a BIG way.”
“Your dad and I joined the department about a year apart. We were close, and not a day goes by that I don’t miss him. Because we were close, I know for a fact just how proud he’d be of you, of what you’ve done in his honor, if he were still alive today. I also know that he wouldn’t want you building your life and making your choices to match his... unless it made you happy.”
“It did make me happy. Or at least I thought it did...”
“But it doesn’t anymore. I can see it in your face. I can hear it in how you’re talking about it. There is some truth to the saying ‘a drunk man’s words are a sober man’s thoughts.’ You’re not coming back to the department. I don’t want you there, and I mean that in the nicest way possible. I think it’s time for you to start living your life the way you want to, not the way you’d think your dad would want you to.”
A calming sense of clarity washes over Jon. “You know something, Sheriff? You’re absolutely right. Look at everything I did in an effort to make my deceased father proud. And where did it leave me? I’m single, I’m unemployed, I’m disabled (according to the government)... and I’ve got half a liver, half a stomach, and one kidney.”
“Jesus,” Lewis says, “I knew you got hit but I had no idea it’d done so much damage. You’re lucky to be alive, my friend.”
“That’s what everybody keeps telling me.” Jon smiles as he lifts up his shirt to show Lewis the scar on his torso and lowers it back down when his eyes turn into saucers.
He looks out at the street, at cars passing by. “So I’m done being a cop. Man, it feels weird saying that. Good, but weird. Well, let’s see... I assume you’re gonna want my weapon,” he says, getting to his feet.
“Already got it,” Lewis replies, removing Jon’s handgun from his waistband and showing it to him.
“Oh, I see,” Jon laughs. “Somebody walked up here with a plan...”
“Sure did,” Lewis says, laughing right along with him. “I didn’t know what that booze would make you do... better safe than sorry. No offense.”
“None taken, none t
aken. I’m honestly ashamed I brought Jack back into my life. He’s such a bad influence on me.” Jon sighs. “I know better than that, I really do. Wait, where’d my other bottle go?”
“I threw it in the woods,” Lewis replies. “Heard it shatter against a tree. Sorry...”
“Don’t be, that shit’s poison... ugh, I can’t believe I picked it up again.”
“Well, you’ve been through a lot,” Lewis reminds him. “Don’t be too hard on yourself.”
“Thanks Sheriff, I appreciate that.” Jon looks down at his uniform. He feels like he’s forgetting something. “Shoot,” it finally dawns on him, “you’re gonna need this back to, right?”
“Nah, keep the badge,” Lewis says. “Technically I’m supposed to make you give it back to me, but if you ask me you’ve earned the right to hang onto it.”
“Wow, that means a lot to me,” Jon replies, very appreciative of the gesture.
“No problem at all,” Lewis says. “You deserve it. So what are you gonna do now, stud?”
Jon considers that for a moment, allowing himself for the first time in his life to selfishly think about what he wants to see happen. “I’m going to get a kickass, high-paying job as far away from military work or police work as possible, I’m going to find an amazing woman and fall in love all over again, and I’m going to kick my liquid crutch to the curb for good!”
Without meaning to, in a burst of inspired confidence, Jon had loaded up his plate of ambitions with too many worthwhile pursuits.
Only one would come true.
TWENTY-THREE
Jon pulls his Toyota pickup into the same parking lot. He parks in the same parking spot. The spot that has become his spot.
And already, he’s sick of it.
The boring, repetitive tasks; his lazy, civilian coworkers.
But tonight is going to be different. That much he can feel good about.
He exits his truck, pulls his heavy-duty coveralls on over his jeans and sweatshirt, takes a couple long swigs from his vodka and Vitamin Water concoction and walks toward the palletizing area, ready to start his shift.
Finding a job had been easy.
Weeks after the conversation with Sheriff Lewis on his front steps Jon had inquired about a ‘help wanted’ ad he found in the newspaper. A local ice cream factory wanted motivated, hard-working people who weren’t afraid of physical, manual labor.
On the strength of his military background and a short, five minute meeting with the human resources department, Jon was in – the job was his. It wasn’t ‘kickass’ and it wasn’t ‘high-paying,’ but work was work.
And he did the work completely sober... in the beginning.
He learned what was expected of him. He was to stand next to a conveyor belt, scoop up the packages of ice cream as they came down, stack the packages on a wooden pallet, and lower the pallet down to a forklift driver when it was full. Eight consecutive hours in temperatures well below freezing, doing exactly that, over and over again.
Every shift was the same. The job was stupidly simple.
Which made listening to his coworkers complain about it all the more frustrating for Jon. None of the guys he stacked ice cream with in that freezer of a work environment had been deployed. None of them had spent any time whatsoever in the military, and only one of them, only one, looked like he was less than thirty pounds overweight.
Josh complained about it being cold all the time.
No shit it was cold. It had to be cold. They were stacking ice cream. Ice cream melts.
Mike bitched and moaned about the conveyor belts moving too fast.
He could never keep up. Time after time Jon would let his own stacking area get backed up to run over and help Mike get caught up with his. Then Jon would catch up on his own stacking, just in time to see that Mike, again, was way behind.
And then there was Chris, who was just full of questions.
“Hey man, what was it like in Iraq?”
“Did you kill anybody?”
“When do you have to go back?”
It amused Jon, the way Chris automatically assumed that he’d killed people and that he’d have to go back... but he never answered his questions. Dumbass questions like these didn’t deserve an answer, as far as he was concerned.
It was the combination of these minor annoyances – the mind numbingly repetitive task of moving stuff from point ‘A’ to point ‘B’ all night long, from eleven o’clock at night until seven o’clock the next morning... the people he was forced to interact with while doing the work, listening to them bitch and watching them drag their feet – this is what drove Jon to even consider picking up the bottle again.
He switched bottles, though. Bad things happened when he spent time with his buddy Jack... like, walking to a liquor store wearing a police uniform... so he promised himself that, if he was going to drink, he’d stay away from Jack Daniels.
Vodka was the obvious next-best option.
Just as strong as Jack, but it was clear, so Jon could mix it with all kinds of stuff without raising any red flags. Keeping it a secret was crucial.
The first night he found the nerve to show up for work with a little booze in him, Jon wondered why he hadn’t been doing it from day one. Slinging ice cream onto pallets wasn’t boring anymore. It was fun.
His coworkers didn’t annoy the shit out of him anymore, either. He actually held conversations with them without wanting to blow their – or his – brains out. Like flipping a switch, even the most annoying of them suddenly became an interesting person that Jon wanted to spend time with.
Oh, the power of alcohol... it made everything better.
So what if Jon had half a liver? So what if he’d been advised, cautioned, and warned by every healthcare professional he’d been in contact with since his injury that consuming alcohol was a very dangerous thing for him to do?
He didn’t care. He was living in the now.
Drinking made life more interesting, made him feel alive, and made him forget the memories that haunted him, while helping him enjoy the present moment and getting him to feel comfortable.
In his mind he had a choice between extending his life and having life suck, or shortening his life and making every day a blast – a new adventure.
He chose adventure.
“I’ll see you crazy bastards in a couple days,” Jon says before climbing back into his pickup at the end of his shift.
What a night.
Never had his eight hours in the freezer gone by that fast. His productivity doubled, his enjoyment tripled, and nobody, not one person in there gave him any indication that they’d known he’d been drinking.
Oh yes, this was a good idea... a good idea indeed.
Michigan winter was behind him. The snow had disappeared, temperatures were climbing daily, and as Jon poured himself a victory drink for the drive back home, he knew how he’d spend his two days off.
Running by the river.
TWENTY-FOUR
The Grand River.
What the city of Grand Rapids was named after. Or at least that’s what Jon always thought. It made sense to him, but he never confirmed it. He hated verifying facts to make sure he was right. He hated researching; hated having to prove himself.
Know what else he hated?
Running.
Before the Marines, anyway... Now, he loved it. The only thing that kept him cooped up in his house those first few months after coming home was the weather. Winter running? Trudging through the snow? Not really his thing.
But take away that fluffy white stuff and crank up the heat a little and Jon could spend all day outside, just seeing how far his legs could carry him.
He worried at first that his combat injuries might keep him from running, but soon realized just how silly that was. Had he lost a leg? No. Had his feet or legs been injured at all? No. He’d come home with two strong, healthy legs, and for that he was thankful.
Jon figured if he could hand
le his ice cream stacking job – lifting things over and over again, twisting, turning – if he could do that without aggravating the injuries to his torso, then running would be a breeze.
But he hadn’t run in a while, so he wasn’t going to be an idiot and attempt something heroic right out of the gate. Like, running ten miles or more.
No, he decided to start light – with just three miles – the distance he used to run for the Marine Corps PFT, the Physical Fitness Test. That much he knew he could handle, no matter how long it had been since he last went running.
The only way he could run three miles close to home without having to stop every block or so to wait for traffic was to run alongside the banks of the Grand River. He’d go a mile and a half in one direction, turn around, and go back to his starting point.
That was the plan Jon decided on as he parked his truck and started making his way down to the water’s edge and mentally confirmed that he had everything he needed. He’d topped off his hydration pack before leaving, so he had plenty of water. He’d also remembered his GPS watch, so he’d know how far he ran and know when to turn around for the second half of his three mile adventure. He was ready.
One deep breath and his run was underway.
It felt awkward at first; a little foreign... but he wasn’t competing against anybody, it wasn’t a race, so Jon relaxed and eased himself into a comfortable, natural stride.
And while his pace was relaxed, his mind was not.
The river was to his left, and to his right were lush, grassy parks littered with picnic tables. Picture-perfect families played together in those parks as Jon ran by, throwing their football back and forth in what had to be the world’s wobbliest spiral. Happy couples sat and held hands and cuddled at the picnic tables, sitting on the same side of the table because facing each other from across the table would put too much space between them. Too much space for two people who are madly in love with each other to deal with.
Damn it, this was supposed to be relaxing. It was supposed to calm Jon down, not get him all worked up.
The more he tried to ignore the love and affection off to his right, the more he tried to focus his attention left, on the river... the more his mind drifted to Erin, to what they used to have, to how beautiful and amazing it had been before he decided to enlist and screwed everything up.
Blaming her was unfair. If he hadn’t wanted to be a hero, if he hadn’t molded his life to make a dead man proud… maybe, just maybe, they’d still be together.
He imagined what that would look like, how that would make his experience of that exact moment in time different; how much better it would be.
It could’ve been him and Erin sitting back there at that picnic table, flirting, laughing, crazy about each other and not caring who knows it. Or they could’ve had a family by now... that could’ve been Jon playing catch with his young son, Erin watching from the sideline, sitting in the shade with the biggest smile on her face as she snapped photo after photo, capturing those beautiful memories forever.
Normally his mind shut off when he ran. Not today.
He could’ve had it all, but he ruined it.
Having tortured himself with what could have been but wasn’t, Jon did a quick, mental tally of what his life really looked like.
He had a job that paid him barely above minimum wage. A job he couldn’t stand anymore unless he leaned on alcohol – unless he depended on a substance he knew he shouldn’t touch to become someone else, just to tolerate the experience.
That wasn’t healthy. That wasn’t what he wanted. He deserved better.
He woke up alone. He went to bed alone. He ate all of his meals alone.
He went running alone.
Everything he did, he did alone.
Jon picks up his pace, angry and frustrated with just about every aspect of his life, determined and wanting to believe it was possible to run hard enough and fast enough to outrun his problems; his mistakes.
To make that little voice in his head shut the hell up, to go away and never come back.
But it stayed with him. No matter how hard he pushed, there it was, toying with him, taunting him.
You fucked up, Jon.
Did not, stop it.
Jon thinks he can argue the voice into submission; he’s naïve enough to think he can win the battle between his ears.
You shoved Erin out of your life for making one mistake. For one moment of weakness after you’d abandoned her and put seven thousand miles between you.
It was a huge mistake, I promised her I’d come back.
You went to war. There are no guarantees in war. You honestly expected her to believe that, to wait for you, to put her entire life on hold, all based on the CHANCE that you’d come back?
Well, yeah, we were engaged...
You couldn’t have forgiven her? Swept it under the rug? Started fresh?
WE WERE ENGAGED.
You’re a fool.
Oh yeah? How so?
People cheat on each other all the time. Erin never cheated on you. Not while you were here, not when she was reasonably certain that you’d still be here tomorrow. She was loyal to you. She loved you. Deep down you know how rare what you had with Erin was, and deep down, you know you’ll never find it again. Have fun dying alone...
The voice made sense. The little shit was right.
Defeated, Jon dials it down to a pace even slower than what he’d started his run with: nothing more than a weak-ass trot. Looking at his watch he realizes he’s not even halfway to his turnaround point.
And already he wants to throw in the towel.
You’re pathetic, the voice says. Stop running, turn around, walk back to your truck, go home, and drink. It’s the only thing that comforts you, the only thing that makes you feel better... it’s all you’ve got left.
Walking now, head hanging low, eyes on the ground, Jon feels powerless enough against this inner voice of his to, again, agree with it – to accept what it’s saying as truth, as fact – but he doesn’t follow its instructions right away.
He doesn’t turn around, quit, go home and drown his sorrows.
Instead he forces himself to pick his head up, roll his shoulders back, and face his future head-on. As soon as his eyes have a chance to adjust and focus on what’s ahead of him instead of what’s going on at his feet, there she was.
And the voice, for the first time, had nothing to say.
No more negative bullshit, no more insults, no more anything.
That was Jon’s clue.
She’d saved his life before he even knew her name.
That’s how Jon knew he had to keep running towards her.
AMERICAN DREAM: BOOK TWO
AVAILABLE NOW HERE
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“Discharged from the Marine Corps and depressed over how the United States government has decided to label him: "Disabled" – Jon Cole goes from his lowest low to his highest high when he meets Tara.
Tara inspires Jon to stop drinking and helps him believe that he can create his own living online, but her support and patience dwindle as Jon struggles to bring home the bacon.
When an attempted relapse lands Jon a lucrative cage fighting opportunity, all is good and hope is restored – until he wakes up underground.
Betrayal breeds revenge in American Dream (Book 2). Jon’s roller coaster ride continues...”
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