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CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Author’s Note
Ugly in Black
Poets Write Eloquently
Loving Any Soldier
Of Course, If You Ask
Too Late for Me
We Talk for an Hour
I Never Met Him
Still, to a Point
In the Meantime
Strange
Meaning Imagined Cheating
January 2007
I’ve Never Been Much of a Flirt
Something Special About That
I Had to Envy
It was Kind of Fun
So, Somehow
Ended Up
With a Kiss
My Bank Account
Game Well-Played
Tickets Purchased
I Save the Question
Every Soldier’s Story
Celine’s Story
So He’s a Pog
The Music Stops
Easy Flirtation
My Beginning
At Least
Neither Did I Ask for Specifics
That Kind of Love
Breathless
When I Woke Up
Clutter Always Bothers Me
That Kind of Foreplay
Leviathan
Darian Lives
They Say Military Wives
She Glances at the Others
I’m Half-Worried
We Make It Safely
She Is Serious
As Kids
Laughter Snort-Chokes
The Great Thing
I’m Afraid to Ask
It Took Me
We Spent Our First Sunday
The Short Exchange
All Resistance Weakened
The “My”
Size Definitely Mattered
I Am, by Nature
Not Only Was he There
The Spaghetti
I Was Up in Time for Class
At the Time
A River
I’ve Never Considered Myself
I Can’t Bring Myself
Her Family?
Not My Place
The Rules Are Simple
All Comfy in Blue Flannel
We Both Laugh
This Isn’t Fun Anymore
Tired and Buzzed
Our First Year Together
School of Infantry
College
I Knew
Round Three
Love Can Complete You
I Did Get Regular Calls
All Signs Pointed
The Weight of Silence
The Timing
I’m at a Loss
I Start to Turn Away
The Real Question
I Manage
I Pace the Apartment
Slow Burn
In the Days
When Cole Arrived
As the Weeks Wore On
Some Time Later
An Uglier Mess Was Brewing
I Could Barely Watch the News
In Cole’s Case
When I Finally Heard
Delusions
Secrets Suck
Silly Me
Now, This New Secret
I Nudge Harder
I Don’t Blame
What Coalesces
I Am Over the Pacific
Spring Break 2008
At Least
For the Next Week
We Did Pick Up
Rather Than Investigate
He Didn’t Wait
By the Time
Saying Good-Bye
Oh, to Breathe You
As Wilderness
No Lei Awaits Me
He Won’t Get the Message
They Turn Aggressive
I Decline
I Consider Leaving
Waiting for a Soldier
It Has Been Only
Five Minutes Ago
Cole and I Don’t Argue
Our First Argument
In Retrospect
I Threw the Phone
By the Time I Finished
She Was Joking
I’d Like to Say
Which Set the Stage
We Made It Home Untoasted
He Wasn’t Kidding
After Dinner
Rarely
One Thing You Learn
It Was the First Time
My First Instinct
I Was Genuinely Hurt
People Stare
I Leave Cole Dripping
I Was Always
So I Control
The Sound of Sirens
It Is Almost Noon
The Grunt Code of Honor
There’s a Nice Picnic Area
After Lunch
Cole Left for Iraq
Cole’s Battalion Touched Down
Living Conditions
I Combed the Internet
The Thing About Tequila
Every Now and Then
It Felt Anything But
It Was a Breeze-Soft Kiss
He Did not Apologize
His Care Package Wish List
Moving Targets
Evasion
That Thought
Two Hours of Sleep
He’s So Sincere
He Doesn’t Elaborate
The Door Closes
It’s Insanely Bright
But by the Time
I Am in the Cab
Lance Corporal Gleason
I Didn’t See Him
Play
I Was So Looking Forward
He Did Cough at Dinner
It Started Out Fine
He Left Something Unsaid
Spence Went Ballistic
In the Morning
You Can Take a Soldier Out of War
It’s a Very Long Plane Ride
Men are Awful Communicators
As the Bags
I Go Straight to the Base
I Knock Gently
An Important Question Dangles
Her Voice Has Risen
When We Get to Her Townhouse
But I Can’t Ask Her Now
Words Have Power
She Leaves the Calzone
Some Secrets Bite
Cole Had Met Dale
Dale’s House
That Would Change
It Was a Memorable Christmas
But That Was the Last Thing
Cole’s Mom
Probably a Valid Philosophy
Lara Was His College Sweetheart
I Folded the Green Sweater
I Started to Pace
I Was in a Shadowed Space
I Am by Nature
To Rage
It Has Been a Long While
Can’t Be
I Haven’t Seen
No Matter
Bone Weary
Being an Adult
Deep in the Dark Heart
I Stumble Through the Day
Of Course He Does
Why Is He
I Chalk It Up
The One Time
A Trip to Kansas
She Was Pissed
I Had to Hand It to Spence
I Have to Admit
The Reported Statistics
I Asked Cole Once
All of Those Men
War Is All Kinds of Ugly
The
y Say Truth
Wrong Thing to Say
I Go Into My Room
I Do Sleep Through
The Rest of the Week
I Don’t Hear
Saturday Afternoon
The Sudden Sexual Tension
He’s Nodding
The Parking Lot
If I Really Were to Dissect
It Was a Bad Time
War Widows
That Image
We Didn’t Know It Then
The Chasm Widened
I Spent a Lot of June
Cole Finally Caught Up
Close to Morning
Something Invisible
Spoken Word Poetry
He Chooses an Upscale Steakhouse
I’m Always Just
He’s Infuriating
Conversation Slows
Liberated
Inside, Alone
Ghosts
Sleep Studies
Cole Was in Afghanistan
He Took Pride in That
Christmas 2010
I Had Enough
With the Xanax
A Week Later
I Never Saw Her Again
Prisoner
Cole Is a Month
With a Stop
With Only Coffee
I Would Protest
That Feeling Only Grows
Mom Finds Something
Eyes Stinging
It’s a Stunning Revelation
The Door Opens Again
Last Fall
Whether from Within
So I Was Surprised
I Couldn’t Manage More
Speaking of Calls
Truth
That Was What I Hoped For
Suspicion Breeds Bad Dreams
Something About November
Planning a Wedding
I Check My Calendar
I Hate Logic
I Spend a Couple of Hours
I Start My Own List
Let’s See
And Yet
The Woodie is Totally Cool
Relationships
Swami’s
All Squeezed
As the Time Approached
It Was a Wound
What Do You Say
The Rotting Lesion
The Pressure
I Stumbled to Cole’s Room
Then he Came to Me
There Was Something Frantic
Haven
Some Things You Do
Seems to Be the Case
Either Way
No!
I Try to Put Away
The Disembodied Voice
Banter As Distraction
I Am, In Fact
Grown-Up or Not
I Never Hassled Cole
It Was a Rotten Day
There Were No Taliban
Decorum
No Need to Admit
I Carried the Vision
And, You Know
It was the Admission
Later, After
Water Never Disappears
For the Second Time
I’m About to Ask
What’s Up
I Weave, Room to Room
That’s Mom, All Right
I Outline My Reasons
I Want to Promise
The Party Goes
The Joke
Dar Makes Up
Which Somehow Brings Us
Late Christmas Eve Morning
When I Was a Kid
Just Like Santa
After Dale’s Funeral
We Slept Together
Satiated
The Next Day
Cole’s Reaction
The Color of Passion
Jumping Ship
I Never Met Luke
The Joke
Rough Day at the VA
That One
I Have Yet to Receive
How Could He
I Refuse
It’s Three Days
That’s Bull
January 2012
Cole’s Growth
As I Was Filling Out
I Was in the Dark
Triple Digits
Early May
When I Told Him
Friday Evening
Over Lasagna
Anxiety Builds Steadily
Saturday Morning
I Stay Out All Day
Dense
I Hang Up
One Big Question
Except There Are Reminders
I Spend the Week
Friday Morning
Every Time
The Apartment Isn’t Far
Next Door
By the Time
School Starts
I Didn’t Lose
Wake Me Like Sunrise
About Ellen Hopkins
This book is dedicated to America’s warriors and their loved ones, whose patriotism and sacrifice cannot be overstated. Be strong. Be safe. Let love conquer the loneliness.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many thanks to everyone who shared their stories of deployment with me: Abi, Amanda, Amber, Ashley, Ash, Corrina, Elyse, Jen, Jenna, and Rick, plus several who shared them in passing. To all of you, and any I may have forgotten, please know how important your stories were to creating this book.
With a huge shout-out to Kylie Alstrup and Mary Claire Boucher, whose stories served as special inspiration for characters you’ll meet in these pages. Thank you, ladies. And thanks to Connor and Dana, too.
Finally, to Deb Gonzales. Thanks, m’dear. You were so right.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
With Collateral, my goals are to put a spotlight on our returning warriors and to hopefully increase interest in providing the resources they need. As more and more return home, the help they require will become harder to find, because of the struggling economy and also because of the growing anti-war sentiment in this country, which may very well be valid. But our service people didn’t take us to war, and they lay their lives on the line for our freedoms every single day.
I have a special interest in traumatic brain injuries, and the cumulative effect of smaller, often undiagnosed traumas that can result in devastating consequences. A lot of this research is relatively new, and it’s hugely important that both military families and civilians understand the possible outcomes.
This is not a book meant to dismiss or lessen the sacrifice of our soldiers. It is highly researched. Cole’s Marine battalion does, in fact, exist, and was deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan over this exact timeframe. I followed them through news stories, battalion newsletters, and Facebook accounts. I also read accounts of coalition forces, watched hours of videos, movies, YouTube postings, and more. Plus, I scoured Iraqi and Afghani news sources, seeking information largely never seen in the U.S.
Collateral illustrates war from the warrior’s POV, as well as its effects on both soldiers and loved ones and, yes, even those who live in the countries we’ve occupied. It is not a “romance novel” (though love is a driving factor), nor does it make light of the impact of war. I have the utmost respect for those who choose to serve our country, either overseas or on home shores. And, while I currently have no close family members in the service, I do have many friends there, and many readers there, and their stories speak to me.
Within my fiction, I write the truth always, and I have to believe military families want to read the truth about themselves, and to have this truth realized by those who live dissimilarly. Civilian or military, will you like every fact you read in these pages? Probably not, but I can’t whitewash war, any more than I can prettify addiction or prostitution or abuse. Surely military families don’t want their realities scrubbed of pain or danger or love or what that love might evolve into, when war is the driving factor.
Ashley is one of thousands of military girlfriends trying to build a future from the scraps of her present. The peripheral stories here are just as important, and the heart of them all came to me from
real soldiers’ spouses. Some military relationships survive, and even thrive. Others simply can’t. That is fact. I truly believe military families want books that represent their daily lives, not some scrubbed version. Knowledge is power, I often say. And so is understanding.
—Ellen Hopkins, July 2012
UGLY IN BLACK
As Earth returns to chaos, her women brace to mourn,
excavate their buried faith, tap reservoirs of grace, to mourn.
Soldiers steady M-16s, search stillborn eyes for welcome
or signs of commonality. Ferreting no trace, they mourn.
Few are safe, where passions swell like gangrened limbs
you cannot amputate. Sever one, another takes its place,
and you mourn.
Freefall into martyrdom, a bronze-skinned youth slips into the
crowd, pulls the pin. He and destiny embrace, together mourn.
Grenades are colorblind. A woman falls, spilling ebony hair
beside the blond in camouflage. Death’s doorman gives chase. All
mourn.
Even hell capitulates to sudden downpour. Cloudburst sweeps across
the hardpan, cracks its bloodstained carapace. Hear God mourn.
Up through scattered motes, a daughter reaches for an album. She
climbs into a rocking chair to search for Daddy’s face, and mourn.
Downstairs, a widow splinters on the bed, drops her head into his
silhouette, etched in linen on the pillowcase, to mourn.
Alone, the world is ugly in black. When final night descends
to blanket memory, drops its shroud of tattered lace, who will
mourn?
Present
POETS WRITE ELOQUENTLY
About war, creating vivid images
of severed limbs, crusting body fluids
and restless final sleep, using nothing
more than a few well-crafted words.
Easy enough to jab philosophically
from the comfort of a warm winter
hearth or an air-conditioned summer.
But what can a sequestered writer know
of frontline realities—blistering
marches under relentless sand-choked
skies, where you’d better drink
your weight in water every day or die
from dehydration? Flipside—teeth-
cracking nights, too frigid for action,
bored out of your mind as you try
to stay warm in front of a makeshift fire.
How can any distant observer know
of traversing rock-rutted trails,
hyperaware that your camouflage comes
with a built-in bull’s-eye; or of sleeping
with one ear listening for incoming
peril; or of the way fear clogs your
pores every time you climb inside
a Humvee and head out for a drive?
You can see these things in movies.
But you can’t understand the way
they gnaw your heart and corrode