The Collector of Names by Patrick Hicks

Author:Patrick Hicks
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Schaffner Press, Inc.
Published: 2015-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

I was pregnant, of course, and the hormones in my blood made me feel hazy and depressed, kind of prickly too. My face erupted in pimples, my ankles swelled up, and my boobs felt like they were constantly bruised. It’s like I was trapped inside someone else’s body, which is strange to think because my baby was trapped inside my body. It’s like we were both caught inside this changing, swelling, shifting jellyroll of a woman who wasn’t me. The days dripped by and I began to glow with radioactive hate for the United States Marine Corps. The Corps was keeping me from Kurt, and whenever another day went by without getting an email from my husband I just sobbed and sobbed. Fucking Corps.

It’s crazy, but I wanted to be with him so badly, I actually thought about flying to Baghdad. It could be done. I’d have to fly from Minneapolis to London, London to Amman, Amman to Baghdad. The internet said it would cost $2302.92 and my total flying time would be nineteen hours. I had these fantasies about walking into his compound and watching him near a Humvee. He always held a wrench or a tire jack in my daydreams, never an M-16. There would be a stutter-step run and then a pause because he’d wonder if he was seeing a mirage. Then he’d shout my name like it was a question.

I missed Kurt so much I set the clocks in our house to Baghdad time so that he didn’t seem so far away. I needed to be on Iraq time because I wanted us to share something—anything—and when he called me from the Telecommunications Tent he never talked about work. He asked plenty of questions about the boy growing inside me though. We decided to name him Cody because it sounded masculine and full of steel. Cody Rommerheim.

“I’m safe over here,” he said through static. “Don’t go worrying about me.”

Funny thing: I didn’t worry about him until the Battle of Fallujah when US muscle rolled towards the Mosque of Imam Ali. That’s when I really began to worry, especially since Kurt couldn’t email or call during this time of fighting, so I watched the news nonstop. I flipped through the channels and willed an image of his face to flash across the TV. I searched for the lanky way he walks (it’s sort of a bounce, like the ground beneath him is made of rubber) but I never saw him. FOX. CNN. CBS. NBC. ABC. PBS. They all showed plenty of bullets cracking into buildings and date palms exploded into balls of dust, but I never saw my Kurt. I started to play these stupid games with myself like imagining he would come back safe if the phone rang in the next thirty minutes. Or this one: My husband is alive if, in the next hour, I see an advertisement for pickles. It was crazy, but I felt like I could control his safety if I raced through the cable channels looking for a pickle commercial.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.