Sacrifice

Think of him as Elvis away from his Priscilla, a lover and a fighter—a man serving his country in the Army; a man removed from the love of his life. He sends her letters frequently, sometimes spending hours pouring the contents of his soul through the black ink of his only fountain pen, which he keeps carefully tucked inside of his pillowcase lest some fellow soldier borrow the precious instrument and forget to return it.

“My darling,” he writes, “I’m not a wealthy man, but I promise you the finest ring a man can buy. This war can’t last forever.”

He would go on to tell her that he had given up smoking and drinking in order to save his money for a wedding ring. His five dollars a week from the Army was meant for food and basic necessities, but he saved nearly every cent. There was no doubt in his mind that he would buy Josephine the wedding ring she saw in her dreams.

As the months passed, exhaustion claimed him more and more. But the money was steadily accumulating. His once lithe yet muscular frame from playing college basketball deliquesced until his cheeks were sallow and his uniform hung sadly from his shoulders. His stomach growled; his knees creaked. Mentally, he was drained. Only by the grace of God had he been spared on the battlefield each day. Malnourished as he was, he lingered on and fought with every ounce of strength he had left.

Lack of sleep slowly ate away at his brain and blurred his vision.

He didn’t seem to care.

“You’re worth it, Josephine,” he whispered while holding her black and white photo in his pale hands as he lie in bed for the first time in a week.

He traced the soft waves of her hair with a calloused yet gentle finger, smiling as the dim candle next to his bunk illuminated her face. Her peaceful gaze comforted him and reaffirmed his dedication to saving every penny he could for her ring.

His fellow soldiers shook their heads at him. “You won’t live long enough to see her again if you don’t eat better, Marshall,” they said, eyeing the steadily growing stack of rabbit skins under his bed.

He had taken to hunting during the past few weeks, as rabbits were abundant where he was stationed. The stack of skins formed a furry gradient of black to brown to white along the floor under his bed. If one looked in the trash receptacle outside, he would see mounds of bones, so tiny they could be mistaken for splinters of larger skeletons.

He could no longer bear the taste of rabbit flesh. As the months crawled by, his methods of hunting could only be considered murder. The once pristine furs of the hand-sized mammals now dripped thick blood; the bones were shattered, eyes gouged out. His favorite trap resembled a makeshift, yet quite effective, slingshot. He slaughtered these animals to give him just a moment of humor before he forced himself to choke down their flesh. After the 300th-or-so rabbit, his gag reflex prohibited him from swallowing a single shred of meat. More often than not, Marshall’s squad mates would find him hurling into a trashcan rather than eating.

“You’re worth it, Josephine,” he gasped between sprays of bile, shining pockets of vomit dangling from his lips. His stomach had nothing left to expel, but lurch it did throughout the nights.

Many thought Marshall would die. As if the war weren’t enough, he tortured himself every day by venturing into the woods for a food he could no longer digest, drove himself mad for the sake of such a small and arguably insignificant trinket.

If Josephine knew of his masochism, what would she say?

The evening fog crept thickly across the field one night, like a demon under cover of mist, clawing across the dirt. Marshall could see it from the trenches. It terrified him.

Marshall’s watery blue eyes grew large. His mind twisted the vapor into thousands of white rabbits bounding toward him. His heart began to race. The air he wanted to breathe was supplanted by a thick steam one would only expect to find under the canopies of a lush rainforest.

Thousands of rabbits.

He could feel his lungs pounding.

I can’t die, he thought. Not now. Not like this.

He pulled himself out of the trench, finding himself with little energy left. The past few months had disintegrated his dignity. He had no pride left to prohibit him from abandoning his station and crawling on hands and knees away from the battlefield. Some fifty feet away, he finally collapsed, breathing bloody earth onto his tongue.

Marshall did not die. A friend and fellow soldier came to his aid not five minutes after Marshall lost consciousness. He picked up the emaciated man and carried him to the clinic, where after four long weeks, Marshall would be gradually brought back to life.

“You can go home now, Mr. Cruikshank. I’ve managed to pull some strings, and you’re leaving a week earlier than everyone else. Shh…”

Marshall’s smile had regained its white glow. His blue eyes sparkled again. He thanked the nurse and hurriedly made his way to the car that would take him to the train station that would lead him to the train that would at long last deliver him home.

Chicago.

Josephine would now only have to wait twenty minutes before Marshall would fling open the gate to their modest suburban townhouse. G.I. duffle bag still firmly in hand, he entered the jewelry store he knew all too well, hoisted up his pack, unzipped it, and dumped every cent he had onto the glass case. The clerk raised his eyebrows in surprise at this strange and sudden intrusion, but did not seem to mind the pile of money that now littered his store.

Marshall pointed at a very specific area of the case.

“This one,” he said.

In minutes he breezed out of the store, sailed down the sidewalk, and turned onto his residential street. He felt so high that he didn’t even bother to unlatch the fence. He hurdled it easily and flew up the steps to his house.

To this day, he can’t recall the exact series of events, they happened so quickly.

Lawn. Door. Foyer. Look left, right. Upstairs? Singing in the kitchen.

He was walking so quickly, his heavy boots shook the crystals of the chandelier in the dining room as he made his way to the kitchen. He was already bending onto one knee before even crossing the threshold of the room.

“Josephine!” He breathed before she could even turn to see who had entered the house.

“Marshall!” Immediate tears flooded her eyes as she spun away from the dishes in the sink and crashed into him.

He embraced her tightly before directing her tiny frame to stand as he kneeled. She beamed at him with perfect teeth, encircled with her characteristic plum lips. Gazing up at her now validated everything he had been through. Now the ring he had coveted for so long paled in comparison to her radiance, but he slipped it onto her finger anyway. He felt her hands turn to ice as she excitedly asked how he could ever afford such a ring. Where did it come from? How much? How would they ever pay off such a fine ring, for surely he hadn’t afforded it all at once!

He merely smiled at her with tears streaming down his face. She would never have to know the great sacrifices he made for her. She would never know a home without love. He would always care for his Josephine.