One Way Soldiers Die

By T. Martin Koller

PTSD is now a well known malady, generally brought about by experiencing a traumatic event or events. During the time of the Vietnam war, this phenomenon was poorly understood, and often misinterpreted. As a result, many of the soldiers who suffered from this were often classed as malingerers, cowards, or once back in civilian life, were treated as if they were simply mentally ill, crazy. Mental illness was still stigmatized in those days, so that rather than being helpful, most people simply avoided or ignored the sufferers. That happens in our time as well, but was more pervasive back in the 1970s and earlier. Because their malady was not a recognized, specific mental condition, many soldiers who were dealing with PTSD were ignored and misunderstood. Certainly, they received no support from the government or the society in which they found themselves. Occasionally they became violent, a threat to others around them, or to themselves. This novelette, loosely based upon an actual case, attempts to explore the mental and physical world of such a returning veteran. The reader will accompany him as he reaches the denouement of his situation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Thomas Koller
• Release date: Jun 19, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386685920

T. Martin Koller

The author has lived in the U.S., Canada, China, and now resides in Taiwan. He is married and has more children, by more wives, than he cares to enumerate. His working career includes working in libraries and bookstores, land surveying, civil and electronic engineering technician, and owner of a company which provided computer and networks systems support. Late in life, he developed a severe and crippling ailment. This limited his mobility so that he returned to university and took a B.A. and M.A. in English Language Studies. Since that time, he has taught in Canada, China, and Taiwan. He also writes things.

Book preview

One Way Soldiers Die

The knocking at the door is what got me up. It was Jerry, of course. I knew he wasn't going to quit, and I wasn't going to sleep if he didn't, so I got up and opened the door. He swaggered across the floor in his chipper, early-morning way, then half hopped, half flew up to the table for his breakfast. Jerry is a raven. He's also my closest neighbor and friend these days.

He's better than most friends I've had in what has been, after all, a fairly long life. I like Jerry, for the most part. He's smarter than most people I've been around, and a helluva lot more considerate.

He sauntered around the table, finding a few crumbs left over from my supper, but no big prizes. Then he stopped, cocked his head and looked at me with one eye, bent down and whacked the table a few times with his beak―made quite a sound too. Well, I grant you, I'm moving slow this morning and he's wondering where the food is―hope he likes oatmeal again, because that's about all I've got left. It's about time I went to town for supplies.

Actually, I should have gone a couple of weeks ago, but winter has been slow going this year. I could have made the trek out, I suppose, if I'd really wanted to or had to. But I didn't want to. It's a good three or four day hike to town on a good trail and, while I actually enjoy the hiking part, I don't enjoy dealing with the people once I get to town. Those who know me, or know of me, think I'm half crazy (which I guess I am), and those who don't, just don't know what to make of me at all.

It used to be, when I first started going there, that sometimes kids would either run from me or throw things. Not all of them, of course―there's been quite a few over the years who seemed to actually have some brains and curiosity―didn't have their heads buried in a video game or telephone all the time. But most of all, I'm comfortable here, which I am not when I'm in town. I don't know why it is, but whenever I'm around people, all the bad feelings start to come back. Anyway, it didn't take much more than the mud and snow still on the trail to convince me I should put it off for a bit.

The oatmeal took about a half an hour, and then I waited for it cool a bit before I set it out or Jerry would have probably burnt himself on it before he knew it was hot. Maybe not, though―he surprises me all the time with what he knows. Maybe it's just that I don't like to eat in front of him without feeding him too. It does seem a bit rude, after all the time we've spent together. Jerry and I got together about two years after I got here. I'd probably seen him around before, but hadn't paid any attention. As near as I can tell, he lost his mate and then just sort of adopted me. I can't be sure, but I did find a clutch of raven feathers and some blood on the ground, not too far from the cabin, a few days before he first started hanging around. I think one of the coyotes got lucky―they usually aren't either fast enough or smart enough to catch a raven.

He started out by flying low and buzzing me when I went outside for anything. Never hit me or anything―just seemed to be a kind of counting coup thing with him. Then he started dropping twigs on me when I was out and about. That's when our first game started. He hit me with one―it didn't hurt―just stuck in my hair, and I grabbed it and threw it back at him. Quick as can be, he wheels around in the air and grabs it again before it hit the ground. Then he tried to hit me with it again, but he missed. I picked it up from the grass and tossed it up to him, and he caught it again. We played catch for quite a while that day, and often thereafter as well―most fun I've had with another person (I think of Jerry as a person) in a long, long time. Anyway, that's how it started.

After breakfast, I went out and finished spading the garden soil and turning it over again, before it could dry out and set up on me. The ground was still too wet, and the weather too cold, to start planting anything. Fact is, I really do need to go to town for some more seeds. Don't know why I forgot them last fall, when I made my last trip―guess I'm getting forgetful out here, all by myself. I started a list after that. I only go to town about three times a year, late in the fall, as early in the spring as I can (except for this spring), and sometime in the middle of summer. I'd skip the middle of summer trip, except that I can't carry all the stuff I need in just two trips. I should have gone to Mexico, where I could have grown more of my own stuff and the weather was a little more accommodating. But then the people might have been all over me, and I won't have that. When the people are around, so are the voices.

Jerry followed me around for a while, as I dug, hoping maybe to find some worms. Too early for them yet though, so he got bored and took off to reconnoiter. I could hear him squawking at something a couple of times―maybe running other ravens off, or some of the pesky crows―ravens are pretty territorial. They're also social, which makes Jerry just about as peculiar as me, because I'm the only society he has, that I know of. He's handy though―twice he's warned me when a big cat that hunts in these parts was out in the bush, watching me.

I don't think the cat would have done anything―probably just curious―but I like it that Jerry's on top of what's going on around here. I wish he'd learn to actually play checkers though, instead of just throwing the pieces around.

I had a wildlife biologist tell me once, that Jerry probably only did that squawking to guide the cat to me so he could feed off the leftovers. That doesn't sound right to me―I feed Jerry pretty well. No, I think that's another example of people putting their own worst characteristics off on other animals. It's a bad joke, when people talk of man's inhumanity to man, or about inhuman behavior―what they really mean is man's humanity to man. No other animals do the sort of dirty, mean, vicious things that humans do to one another, and to everything else on the planet for that matter.

***

Well, that does it. My vegetables are gone. The last of my dried pinto beans got some moisture into 'em and sprouted, then rotted. All I've got left is a pint of oatmeal, some dried meat, and some fruit leather I made last fall―enough to get me to town and that's about it. So now I'll have to go. Well, at least most of the snow is gone, and the worst of the bogs have set up a bit.

We live by a little lake, Jerry and I do―it's called St. Paul lake. It's a nice little lake, not more than a quarter of a mile across and clear as glass. You can see right to the bottom. My cabin's on one side, the north side, and the other side is a mountain that rises up another eight hundred feet or so. It's steep and granitic, with a lot of talus at the bottom, and it has a little glacier, about three hundred feet up the side of it, that I can get ice from if I need it in the summer. As I mentioned, I hike out two or three times a year for supplies. It's all downhill, in more ways than one, until I get to town. Mostly it's not too steep, which is good, since I'm packing about eighty pounds on the way back. Coming back takes four days, more or less, depending on how lazy I'm feeling.

Jerry keeps me company when I start out, flitting from my shoulder to branches on nearby trees, until we get to an old, lightning-blasted hemlock. There, he usually flutters off to a large rock outcrop and squawks a goodbye, or else he perches on one of the hemlock's lower branches and croaks a bit as I go by. That's where he meets me when I return―I've never been able to coax him a bit further down the trail.

I spent the first night in a cedar grove, next to the stream and about thirty yards from the trail. It's a nice spot with very little underbrush. Sometimes hunters use it or, even more infrequently, a casual hiker does. Not too far from the the grove, at the end of a nice little riffle in the stream, there's a pool where I sometimes take a bath and almost always catch a fish. They like this spot too. Across the stream, and up the side of the hill a few hundred feet, is a huckleberry patch that I know about. So do the bears. There wouldn't be any