Anger and Hope

By S. W. Stribling

War was easy. The battle with himself is another story...

 

When Will returns to America after years overseas, he comes with high hopes of reconnecting with his younger brother. But being a disgruntled veteran and a struggling depressive, Will isn't easy to love.

 

Misunderstood, homeless, and with little reason to live beyond his faithful companion, Maverick, Will must face his past to find peace with his family and himself.

 

But when it comes to family, is love enough?

 

'Anger and Hope' is the second book in the 'Sin and Zen' series. It is the Philia love to 'S&Z's Eros love, and it deeply explores the ideas of shame, pride, anger, hope, and what home truly means. [Important note: Though 'Anger and Hope' may follow Will beyond 'Sin and Zen', each story is standalone. In fact, the themes and 'nature' of each story definitely stand on their own and are not dependent on each other.]

• Language: English
• Publisher: S. W. Stribling
• Release date: Jul 24, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393167389

S. W. Stribling

USAF Iraq Veteran, French Foreign Legion parachutist, and rolling stone English teacher, Stribling has lived more stories than he has written.  Despite trying everything else in life before accepting his role as a novelist, Stribling has always kept words in his life as a form of therapy and creative outlet. Though he may be a broken soldier and no longer chasing trouble, Stribling is still traveling the world,  experiencing life, and writing the good stuff to share with his readers.

Book preview

To Maverick.

1

WHEREVER A MAN GOES, he carries his story with him.

He could be anywhere. He has all of his reasons, good and bad, for being where he is.

He will tell you how if you really listen.

He can walk into a new country, a new career, or a new lover’s life, then stop and look around and realize how he forgot why he was even going there. Like walking into a room looking for something and then forgetting what he was looking for.

And then he wakes up.

He remembers.

If you listen, through words or through actions, he will tell you about the time he thought he was doing the right thing, when he thought he had a chance at living a good life.

Then with a touch of light and a wise smile, he will tell you about how it’s all okay.

The world isn’t perfect.

We are flawed.

We want so much more than we need.

And we are even more ruined when we get what we think we want and wish for what he had before.

I got off the plane at Miami international and I could feel the difference already. Maybe it was just stepping off a plane I had been on for 9 hours, but I always felt like you could sense the difference of the earth beneath you whenever you arrived in another place, especially a different country. As if the air, the very dirt, had its own culture and personality attached to it.

My aunt picked Maverick and me up, and we drove back to her house in her black SUV.

‘Your uncle Shelby finally sold his ‘vette and got a big truck. He still doesn’t let me drive it, but I’m sure he’ll take you for a spin in it.’ My Aunt Sheena said.

‘Uncle Shelby sold his ‘vette?’ I said. ‘I thought I’d never hear those words.’

‘Yeah, even more surprising, he ended up with a monster of a truck. Who would have thought his New York roots would have let him do that?’

‘Is he still a Yankees fan?’

‘Oh yeah, we follow the Marlins, but his heart will always be with the Yankees.’

‘Well, we can’t all be perfect.’

‘I’m still a Cardinals fan like any true Strief.’

I laughed. ‘I can’t say I’ve followed sports these last years.’ I said. ‘But I imagine my team is still the Cardinals as well.’

‘Well, maybe you and Shelby can catch one of their spring training games while you’re here. I can’t remember who they’re playing this week. But I think it may be the Marlins.’

‘That sounds like a good idea.’

‘Your cousins are excited to see you too.’

‘I’m looking forward to seeing them as well.’

‘Julie wants to take you out for a drink and Daniel has a day planned out on the boat in Miami Bay.’

‘Nice. This is quite the welcome home.’

‘We are just so happy to have you back state-side.’ She said. ‘We’re gonna do a BBQ too. The weather is supposed to be perfect all week.’

‘It is good to be home.’

THAT FIRST WEEK WAS spent with my cousins and their families.

I went out for drinks with my cousin and her husband while my aunt baby-sat their kids. My brother would occasionally interrupt Julie by texting her. Apparently, they played games by text message. I didn’t even know that was possible, but I guess it was like some word game that looked like scrabble.

‘He’s such a jerk when he wins.’ Julie told me.

I laughed.

‘He always has to have these little jokes that aren’t funny after he makes a good word.’

‘That sounds like Johanno.’ I said.

‘Look.’ She said and showed me her phone.

I helped her win a few words and then my brother texted asking if she was cheating.

We both laughed.

‘Do you guys talk a lot?’

‘Not really.’ She said. ‘Maybe once a week. We have a group chat with all of us in it.’

‘Everybody but me.’ I thought. It stung a little to see how close my brother had kept in touch when this was the first time I had spoken to them in 3 years. Much longer before that.

After that game had ended and we were a few drinks in, we grabbed a game of Jenga from the bar and played on our table outside. It used to be a bar that her and her husband went too often before kids became part of the picture and I could tell they were enjoying the night out as much as me.

We had a laugh and played Jenga and eventually had people watching as we got louder and louder. A few came over to join before we passed the game off completely.

The waitress seemed to like me too, and my cousin and her husband teased me about that.

‘I don’t think I’m ready for that yet.’ I said.

The next day, I went snorkeling and tubing in Miami bay with my cousin Daniel and his family. His oldest son was only 12 but becoming a professional with taking pictures of fish with his underwater camera. The youngest was a daredevil like myself that wasn’t afraid of riding the tube behind a speedboat over the biggest wakes. We also went for a walk on a little island that had its own history museum. We had a picnic on the beach there and swam with the fishes until the sun went down.

It was good to be back.

Most of my time was with my aunt and uncle. We sat in the back of their house, swimming in the pool or watching the daily progress of my aunt’s butterfly hatchery. It was homemade, and I got to watch 5 or 6 Monarchs complete their full transformation. I couldn’t help but think, ‘What phase was I in?’ Nothing but goo, I imagined.

My aunt and I got drunk on wine every night and talked about life and love and family. It was a very adult conversation and I could sense we were both seeing each other in a new way. It wasn’t scary or off-putting; it was welcome and exciting. I felt like she got me now more than ever.

My last full day, we had a BBQ, and I played darts with my uncle. He still beats me every time. We played football and cornhole in the street and it was a beautiful day of drinking and laughing.

Maverick was with me and they accepted both of us into their home as if we were their own children.

It was a beautiful vacation, but it wasn’t meant to last forever. I had to move on to the actual reason I came back to the US.

‘Are you sure you don’t want to stay another week, Will?’ My uncle said.

‘No.’  I said. ‘I’m ready to get up to Johanno and start this revived life of mine.’

‘That’s good.’ He said. ‘You’re doing a good thing. We’re happy to have you back on American soil. And remember...’

He pointed up to a sign that was nailed up above the patio door.

FAMILY IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING

2

MY AUNT AND I DROVE up the peninsula to Mexico Beach. A small town sitting just outside of Panama City on the panhandle. People call the panhandle, LA. Not named after the city of angels, but after the ‘Roll Tide’ state. And when you get there, you can see why. The panhandle of Florida truly is ‘lower Alabama.’

My brother was living there, and I came back to be a part of his life. I could have chosen anywhere in the world to go, but I chose to be with my brother. It seemed like the right idea. Coming home to America and reconnecting with the person whom I should know, and who should know me, better than anybody else in this world.

It wasn’t a good idea.

The first hour was hope and promise as we said hello to each other for the first time in years. But that first hour would be the only light I would see in my brother’s eyes as we spent the next few months together. My brother was ashamed of me as a brother and fellow human. However, he was too polite, too passive-aggressive, too weak to face what he saw in me and speak of it openly. Yet, I could hear it and see it in every interaction. It was not the welcome I had expected, but reality never was.

My father and grandpa came down to visit a few days after I arrived. They never visited in the 7 years I lived abroad. They don’t do flying or passports. But when they knew I was coming back to America, they made the 10-hour drive from Arkansas and the 8-hour drive from Mississippi to come to see me and my brother.

They both seemed happy I was just back in the country.

We did a fish fry.

We had a BBQ.

We sat around and drank and told stories. Sometimes of the old times, sometimes a bit of catching up on what we had missed out on in each other’s lives.

My father and grandpa lived the same lives they had when I had left. They told me the highlights of the family: the deaths, the divorces, the recent family members born, and the ones just starting school.

Johann spoke to them every week, so there wasn’t much to tell on his part.

I had most of the stories to tell. My father just looked off in the distance and sipped on his beer. He never understood why I left home and stayed gone. I could tell he was listening, but I could also see he didn’t like the underlying truth of my stories. I wanted to be anywhere but at home.

My grandpa reacted differently, however. He made jokes about being gone too long, about needing to settle down somewhere and start a normal life.

Yet he smiled.

He looked at me with a sense of pride. My brother saw this too, and it killed him. He was the perfect one. I was the fuck up. How could our beloved Papa Tom have any affection for me? How could he possibly admire me or respect me for my way of life?

It made matters worse when my brother needed to change a light fixture in the kitchen. He hadn’t done it because he didn’t know how. Both our dad and Papa Tom were electricians. So when my brother asked them to do it, they told him he better get up there and do it himself.

I tried to save my brother some embarrassment and offered to do it myself. That only further infuriated my brother. He was a college-educated engineer. I was the drop-out. But my dad and grandpa started telling him how to do it and he seemed intimidated by all the talk as they spoke of it so easily and he did not understand what they were saying.

He pulled out all of his tools, a complete collection, all unused. He didn’t know what he would need so he started pulling everything out.

The three of us looked at each other, wondering if we should stop him.

My grandfather stopped him and told him to just start with a screwdriver and some electrical pliers. He looked over them a few times before I pointed to the pliers.

The entire scene gave me a flashback to our childhood when we used to work on our dirt bikes together.

‘Johann, hand me that ¾.’ Our father would say.

Johann would look around and hand him something like an air filter wrench.

‘Goddamnit, boy. The wrench. The wrench that’s got ¾ written on it.’

Most of the tools barely had any engravings on them anymore, but our father still expected us to know which ones were which. My brother wouldn’t say a word, but I could tell, even at that young age, that my father was eating away at his soul a bit at a time.

I would usually be working on my dirt bike just nearby, but I wouldn’t say a word. I would just help my little brother sometimes. Unless I couldn’t.

‘Hold the light still, dammit.’

My brother would grab the flashlight with two hands.

‘Not there.’ Our father would say. ‘How in the hell am I supposed to see anything with you holding the damn thing there?’

My brother never liked dirt bikes and racing, but I did and he wanted to like it too. Our father taught us the basics of changing the oil and spark plugs and filters. I absorbed it quickly and found pleasure in taking care of my motorcycle. My brother stopped trying after a while. My dad wasn’t a patient man and after a few times of my dad losing it with my brother for not having ‘a lick of sense,’ Johann gave up on the entire motorcycle thing.

Twenty years later. Here we were again. Johann was still looking to prove himself against his own weaknesses. Only this time, nobody was being hard on him but himself. We were all patient as we watched and guided him through the process. He completed the job and smiled. Then he stopped smiling and acted as if it was no big deal.

I was happy for Johann at that moment. Unfortunately, I don’t think anybody really cared about this substantial achievement for him. And he felt too ashamed to be proud of it, to show it.

I still saw the boy that was my brother 20 years ago. Still fighting for our father’s approval. Still trying to prove he had the same mind and sense that my father had. In so many ways, he was still the scared, angry, and quiet boy that brought all of his books home every day after school to study and make the best grades.

If only he saw that he was so much more like our father than me, he wouldn’t be so angry with me. Or so I thought. Perhaps he hated me because I wasn’t.

My dad and grandpa’s visit continued with the same air of one-sided competition. It was mostly funny on my side, but almost depressing to watch my brother so bothered.

Even when we cooked, he would go crazy if I tried to help. He wanted all the credit when everybody said the food was delicious. The food that he cooked exactly the same way my father did as we grew up. We all knew how to cook, but he needed everybody to know that he could. He was a legend in a lunchbox in the kitchen.

I didn’t know what to do but step out of his way and let him have this. He spent his entire adult life proving he was my father’s son in the best ways, and even when I was seeing them for the first time in years, he still needed the spotlight.

He was already the poster boy of American success. He could be a politician the way he lived his life. No skeletons in a closet. Air Force officer in a nice engineering job. No messy love affairs. No criminal background. Valedictorian of our high school. Admired by all for his pure lifestyle.

One could say he was living the perfect life, or no life at all.

What was I to do other than allow him this self-torture of trying to have it all? I had my own troubles and forms of self-torture.

My ex and I had broken up just a few weeks before. Until I flew back to America, we were still living together. And this first week here, we were still talking. I told her it was unhealthy, yet I still responded to her. Well, I did until she got playful remorse.

‘How are you still haunting me?’ was the last thing she said to me.

I had yet to respond to that. I know she meant it sweetly, but I wasn’t sure how to respond to it. Or if I even wanted to.

I was happy to see my family, but it didn’t feel right to be where I was. However, I knew what I had left behind wasn’t right either.

So, I got shit-faced one night and went out. I had no friends. I had no car. It was a small town and only had one bar open after 11 pm about 3 miles away. I walked there. It was a small bar right on the time-line between Eastern and Central. We lived on the Central side of the line; the bar was on the Eastern. But it was so close that my phone hadn’t adjusted.

‘Last call.’

‘But it’s only 12:45.’ I said.

‘Not here, son.’

I looked up at the clock on the red wall above the glass shelves holding the top-shelf whiskeys that nobody in this town could afford. They didn’t even bother to dust up there anymore.

The music was playing, and I ordered one more for the last 10 minutes and one more for the road, literally.

In my last few minutes, as I sat alone at the bar, I wrote a poem.

I’m here.

Life

My situation

People

The world

The struggle

The questions

It’s all shit.

No alternative.

I don’t care.

Yet I feel shame,

Shame for where I am,

For what I’ve become,

My failures,

My emptiness,

Lack of worth,

Lack of creation,

Lack of beauty.

I am a waste of life.

I am ready to burn.

Burn

With no expectations

Of a great

Rebirth.

Burn.

Die.

Burn.

That night, I got a free ride home in the back of a police car.

3

I GOT A JOB THE NEXT day as a bartender at a small restaurant just down the street from my brother’s house. It seemed like a small dream: small town, small bar, and tending right away as manager. It felt like early retirement.

I felt like I needed to retire. I felt like I was on borrowed time. At 30, I had made it longer than I thought was correct. One birthday on Saturn seemed correct to me. Was I being reborn, would I get another year of Saturn’s revolution on Earth?

I thought about the word ‘revolution’ then. Was it a coincidence that it meant making a full circle? Did people start a revolution knowing they were simply restarting the circle?

Shit. Another 29.4 years to figure this life out or live another one. It almost seemed like a cruel joke. And yet, here I was, almost back where I started when I was born.

According to religion, the first half of life was just getting upgrades. The second half was just riding life downhill. I didn’t feel very upgraded. Were any of us?

The Strief boys: Papa Tom - formally known as Thomas Strief, my father - William Strief Sr., myself, and my little brother - Johann Strief.

What was there to say about us? Too much, and yet, not much at all.

Papa Tom was the sweet old man to his grandkids that used to be the tough old man to his own kids. I didn’t want to believe he was such a horrible father to my Dad and aunts, but maybe it was true. For me, he was my favorite person in the world. I never felt judged by him, and the more I learned about him in his youth, the more I saw myself. There was something about him that just put you at ease. It was as if his soul was free. It couldn’t be explained. Meeting a free soul was rare, but you knew it when you found it. It just felt good to be around that person.

My father, the one they named me after, was a man loyal to what he believed: southern values. He didn’t want to be an electrician. He wanted to be a farmer. He even studied botany in college. Yet, when Papa Tom called, he came and worked for him. Now he still runs the business my grandpa created. My father expected the same loyalty from me. I was a great disappointment. My father was a dutiful man, always trying to do the right thing by people’s expectations, but always angry. Angry because he didn’t feel like he got the credit he deserved for the sacrifices he made for other people’s expectations. I saw this young and chose not to live this way. My brother saw my diversion from this path as an opportunity to step in and be the hero.

Johann was a radical in belief: God, country, and family. I thought we would be of like-mind against the blind tradition and culture we grew up in. But he was a stronger advocate for it than my father. He saw our father lacking. He thought our beloved Papa Tom was the ideal example. But he didn’t see our grandpa for who he really was. My grandpa settled after his rampant days. He lived and then calmed after an exciting life. And he didn’t do it easily. He took it out on his children and wife, so it seemed. It wasn’t until he later ‘retired’ and divorced from one life that he began the next one.

My brother tried to imitate him, but it was all surface level. They didn’t have the same spirit, the same motivation, or the same humor. It was like a student that admired a professor and tried to be like him by dressing like him and using the same pen as him. It was trying to wag the dog with the tail.

The other day, my brother and I were speaking as he was cooking his supper. It felt weird to call it supper since it was 5 in the afternoon, but that’s when he ate supper and so that’s when we usually sat down to eat. When my brother finally gets to old age, will he look for an ‘early bird special’ at 2 in the afternoon?

He was standing in the kitchen and I was sitting at the bar that divided the kitchen and dining room. I was still hoping to get a real discussion out of him. To find some hope that he wasn’t as rigid as he was putting on.

We may have not seen each other this much in fifteen years, but I knew exactly the issues he would get touchy about. Well, any issue he would get defensive about, but two, in particular, were like big red glowing buttons I couldn’t help myself but hit from time to time. Love would shut him down. Religion would blow him up.

I genuinely cared about his success in love. But I saw one of his biggest issues with having any luck was his religion.

‘Whatcha cookin, Johanno?’ I said.

‘Bacon.’ He said.

‘Can’t go wrong with bacon.’ I said. ‘Leave it on when you finish, I’m gonna make some myself.’

Silence.

‘So what’s that hefty tome you’re reading?’ I gestured back over my shoulder at the book beside his recliner.

‘The City of God by Saint Augustine.’

‘That’s a heavy book to read.’

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I can only read about ten pages a night at most. Did you ever read that copy of ‘The Republic’ I sent you?’

‘Most of it, yeah.’ I said. ‘I took my time with it too, reading other books in between. I got it with me now. I have a couple of chapters left in it. It’s good, but I’m sure most of it is lost on me.’

‘Yeah. It’s a tough read. In college, we spent nearly the whole semester on it. The version I got you is supposedly the best. I wish I had had it when I read it.’

‘Must have been nice to have the guidance of a professor to help with it though, eh?’

‘I suppose so. I can help you with parts you don’t understand.’ He said.

‘Sure.’ I said. ‘I miss our old philosophical conversations.’

‘How much bacon do you want?’ He said.

‘Ah,’ I said. ‘Hmm, enough for a healthy BLT. Thanks.’

He threw some bacon in and then grabbed his plate with food and walked away. I watched him walk by me with his plate and drink in hand, taking a little sip of his glass of cold milk as he stepped passed me. Right past me to his recliner, where he casually sat down his glass of milk on the table beside his big book and reached over to