The days just seemed to blend into one another. I’d lost count at day seventeen. I hadn’t even realized that so many
had passed until Gil showed me the calendar he’d fashioned from an old school notebook in the kitchen.

“The army isn’t picking us up, are they, Joel?” he asked. I’d been asking myself the same question, but Gil looked so worried that I couldn’t bring myself to distress him further.

“I’m not counting them out yet. Listen, Gil, we can’t give up on ourselves, not ever.” Even if doubts had crept like dark shadows into my head, there was no point in letting on. Some leader that would make.

He didn’t reply, just picked the M-16 up off the floor and walked to the sliding glass door. The view should have been serine. It should have shown the balcony, back deck, pool and woods beyond. We should have been contemplating
a swim or a trip through the forest on the five-wheeler.

“Don’t know how much longer I can keep it together.” His voice was hollow. “I don’t know. The sadness, everyone’s sadness… I hear them, their cries in the night, the walls can’t contain it. I can’t listen to it anymore.” He began to jerk
as emotion overwhelmed him and the tears came. “It can’t go on like this, Joel, I know I can’t.”

I joined him at the glass door and watched the darkness distort all that I loved, all that we were. It wasn’t easy to keep
it together when somebody else was losing it, but I felt I had a responsibility to be strong. We stood there for God only knows how long. The sky was as the earth, muddied, wretched and dark. You could suffer a case of vertigo from
staring for too long.

Standing there, remembering all that this view once offered-the beautiful vistas in the fall, the lush greens of the summer foliage, the crisp whites of winter snow- I realized that memory was all that remained of this place. In my mind’s eye I saw the sun come out and cleanly sweep over the trees and the lawn, the field and the pool; all that I
knew were there, but could no longer see through the thick black rain falling hard from a bitter sky, just beyond the glass.

“Did you see it?” Never taking my eyes off the scene, I hoped the vision would return. It was so short lived. Was I
shown a possible future? Or did I just fall back into memory to protect myself from the present?

“What? Did you say something, Joel?” Gil’s response was slow and hollow. He was only reacting to the sound of my voice, never relinquishing his stare into the abyss.

“Forget it,” I answered, knowing what I’d seen was nothing more than a memory.

“There’s a hole, you know?” Gil was starting to scare me. I listened as his voice took on a sobering new tone. “A
huge hole...and I can’t fill it, not here, not now.” He stared at himself in the blackened glass as the rain snaked down
its smooth surface. “No one can... such a hole, nothing to fill it.” He paused, flexing his jaw muscles. “Only pain to
feed it.”

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