Wingsofaneagle

The Rock

I first met them on a military base in San Diego. He was strict military man, straight back no nonsense type.

He was not the big muscular stereotype you see in the movies, but a tall lean man with a cold hard look that told you he was dangerous. I was told that he had been assigned to the base here in San Diego only temporarily till they could figure out what to do with him. He was injured in an accident in Israel and rumors around the base said that he was an Elite Forces Member. He did not eat in the mess hall often and when he did he had the table to himself. He did not speak unless spoken to first and then it was just enough to answer the question asked. Frenchie, who knew of him, said he was a Loup, which is Cajun it means lone wolf. So that is what we decided to call him. She was a Peace Corps worker, beautiful, intelligent, and the daughter of an Air Force Colonel. She had finished high school by the time she was fifteen, and was taking a year off from college working with the Peace Corps as a physical therapist. This is how she had met the man we called Loup, he went three times a week for therapy on his legs. God, how we all hated him, it just was not fair that he got to spend three hours every two days with the most prettiest lady on base. A girl that I fell in love with the very first day we met. No one could figure out what she saw in him, but when you would see one the other was not far behind.

I first met Anne and Loup one evening on base. I was pulling Military Police duty that night and was investigating a drunk driving incident, where a woman who had been out walking her dog had been narrowly miss by the drunken driver of a sports car doing 60 mph in a 15 zone. The dog was not so lucky.

Anne and Loup pulled up, Anne asking if any one was in need of medical assistance? The drunken soldier said something vulgar to Anne and Loup hit him once with the tips of his fingers in the side of the neck; the soldier went down like a stone. I was reaching for my weapon when I seen his eyes meet mine, the look told me if I pulled my weapon I would die on the spot. Anne stepped between us and when he looked at her his eyes soften. That was when we heard the dog whimpering under the car and I witness a side of the man named Loup that made me realize what Anne had only seen before. Loup like I have said was not a big man, but he walked over to that car looked underneath it and stated that the mutt was still alive. I said it would be best to shoot the dog, but Loup had other ideals. He put his back against the side of the sports car and lifted the car up high enough for us to pull the dog out. The mutt did not live long but Loup held it, petted and talked to the mutt until it passed on. Then without saying another word got up and walked back to his jeep. Anne just smiled and asked if I would join them later at a bar off base. I agreed and when she smiled I fell head over heels in love with her, later after I had joined them at the bar. I decide to size up my chances of scoring with her but ten minutes later I had to admit to myself that she was totally his. I also had to admit there was something about him that I liked too?

We dranked too much and Anne and myself laughed a lot. Loup just smiled a kind of crooked smile that was hard to read anything from. I asked Loup how he had talked her into going out with him when she had turned down almost every soldier on base? Loup just smiled that crooked smile and reached into his pocket and pulled out a Rock. It was not a pretty Rock, but a plain brown ugly looking Rock that was cold to the touch. Loup got up and said he was going to the toilet. Anne smiled and said she had given him that Rock because it reminds her of him. I was about to ask her to explain when Loup returned to the table. He put the Rock back in his pocket and stated it was time to leave.

Three weeks later we buried Anne in a small cemetery in the mountains.

This story would have ended here but for the Rock. Two days after we had first met, Anne and Loup were married. The only people there were Anne, Loup, the military chaplain and myself. Loup would disappear for a few days then show back up on base. During Loup’s absences, I was Anne’s consistent companion. I worried about this at first for fear of what Loup might say or worse yet do? But when Anne mentions it one evening, Loup just smiled that crooked smile of his and nodded his approval of this. Feeling like I had become his friend empowered me to ask where he went when he would disappear off base. The look on Anne’s face, told me I had asked the wrong thing. Anne got up quickly and mentioned something about getting some drinks for us, but she headed for the ladies room instead. Loup looked at me with those cold hard eyes’s, for a moment I thought he might pull a gun and shoot me.

But instead reached into his pocket and pulled out that Rock again and laid it on the table and said tell Anne that I will be back for it. He then got up and left, Anne returned to the table without any drinks. She looked at that Rock and I told her what Loup had said, all she said was he damn well better. We sit and dranked not saying much to each other until after midnight when we heard helicopters flying overhead. She looked towards the ceiling like she could see those Choppers flying over us. There was tears in her eyes, she said take me home now.

I wanted to hold her, to caress her, to express my love for her and tell her that he could not love her like I did.

But instead I helped her into my jeep and escorted her back to the apartment she and Loup shared.

The next day I was pulling guard duty at the main gate when Anne pulled up with a young lady about fourteen or fifteen in her pickup. She introduces her as her sister and at the same time we heard the helicopters overhead, she smiled at her sister and said he’s back. Anne’s sister asked when she could meet him and she replied after they debrief him, maybe tonight? If we are lucky. I asked her where they were headed in hopes of catching up with these two beautiful ladies after my shift was over. They both yelled — SHOPPING— for a birthday gift for Loup, and clothes for us……………..

That was the last I saw of Anne. Some say it was a drunk driver, some a robbery, somebody even said it was in retaliation for a military strike against a terrorist group. It was also said that Loup had came there moments after it had happen, Held his wife in his arms for a few seconds then laid her back down on the ground and ran off. Some said he had mental breakdown on the spot and ran off and hid for the next week and a half. Others said he

Sought revenge ………………..

I was still on duty at the main gate when another soldier came up to me and told me that Anne was hurt badly.

I jumped in his jeep and flew to the scene as fast as that jeep would go. By the time I arrived they had taken her body away along with her sister’s. I looked at the bloody spot, where they had laid, where her purse still laid, asking anybody and yet nobody why? When I looked again at the spot where my beautiful Anne had laid down and died. There was that Rock, that Rock I had seen twice before, still as cold and ugly as he was.

It was covered with Anne’s blood. For some strange reason I picked up that Rock and put it into my pocket.

Loup did not appear at Anne’s and her sister’s funeral or at the cemetery where we buried them.

Anne’s father was there and I asked someone about Anne’s mother? They said she had died when Anne’s sister was born. Two weeks later we buried Anne’s father beside them, the official version was an accidental gunshot?

I did not see Loup until almost 11days after Anne’s death. I spotted him getting out of a jeep with two other Military Police Soldiers; I wanted to confront him, to spit on him, To KILL him. How could he just walk away like that? I wanted to ask him how he could have not attended his own wife’s funeral? But most of all I wanted to tell him how much I had loved her. I thought how cold and ugly he was, and then I thought of that cold, hard, and ugly rock that was in my jacket pocket still. I decide that I would stuff that cold, hard rock down his cold, hard, and ugly throat. As I walked towards him I pulled that damn rock out of my pocket and it was then that I noticed the other side of the Rock? Why had I not noticed it before? The other side was covered with seashell fossils that shined like pearls. I thought of Loup and that Damn Mutt, I thought of my beautiful Anne and how much she had loved him. As I approached them I also noticed that he was in handcuffs.

He still had the cold, hard, straight back, chest out military look about him, but something was different? What? Then I noticed the eyes were no longer Cold and mean looking. But now blank and dead?

I walked up to him and said Anne would want you to have this. At first I thought he did not hear me?

But then he looked at that Rock and his eyes started to get watery, I placed the Rock in his hand and when I did he was no longer a cold, hard, straight back, chest out military man. But a man down on his knee’s sobbing like a lost child. As the M.P’s picked him up and lead him away. I realized that I had been wrong, that as much as I had loved Anne, That my loss of her was nothing compared to that which had reduce a cold, hard man like him to a lost little child carrying the only thing he had left. ” That Rock. “

It would be almost sixteen years before I saw Loup again. I had become a writer after leaving the military and was on a book tour in the Midwest. When a man asked me to sign one of my books. He was thinner, older, and his eyes had a different look to them now? But I still knew who this man was.

We talked about my books, my success; I asked him what he was doing now days and all he said was “SEARCHING”. He then asked me to walk with him, we walked up to an old beat up white pick-up and he reached inside and pulled out of the glove box that Rock. It was worn down a bit, the fossils no longer shined like pearls now, and Anne’s blood that had been on it the last time I had seen it was gone. But the other side was still as cold, hard, and as ugly as it ever was. I looked at him not knowing what to say? But he spoke first and said “we both loved her,” then he smiled that crooked smile of his and left.

I hear from him time to time now, but to this day he has never said anything more about Anne.

Nor has he ever told me the complete story of that Rock? I like to believe that he is still searching for that Love that he lost so quickly, so suddenly.

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