character :: Travis Gibeson
Travis still can’t believe it. He stares at the calendar hanging on the inside of his bedroom door, a day circled in bright red: January 17th. The anniversary of the day he showed up in an emergency room, alive – it’s a hometown holiday. People drop cakes and pies off on his front porch, all day there’s star-spangled flags up and down Main Street, and on that afternoon he’s expected to meet other veterans at the Civic Center to bullshit about tales of valor and drink free beer. His sister, Harley, sure makes a scene; she’s usually wasted by noon on all of the festivities and bragging about her heroic little brother that took everything he knew from her knowledgebase.
But Travis doesn’t feel like a hero. In fact, it’s quite the opposite: he survived his prisoner status by sheer luck. In his reality, America is warring with invading Russian troops coming from (what once was) the American/Canadian border; and Travis is what’s considered a symbol of patriotism. He was born to two model parents, a field medic mother and a soldier-turned-helicopter-mechanic father. He was raised like most who live in a small border city; compulsory education until 16 followed by a conscription of 6 years in the United States military.
To the grave if I must
Travis wasn’t a model student, nor was he the prime boot – it’s what happened after basic training that set him apart. While Travis awaited deployment, himself and his parents had it relatively cushy. While Harley was away on the last year of her conscription, the family had a paid home in one of the Guarded Cities (a city in which the families of active military are kept safe by homeland security), and the threat of attack was slim: but insurgent forces somehow found their way inside and all hell broke loose. Travis fought hard but just before he blacked out from a punctured lung, his mother and father at least had the opportunity to say goodbye as they took cover on the kitchen floor. Travis claims he can’t remember seeing them die, but the gunshots rang in his ears as he was thrown over a hefty shoulder and carried out into the bloodstained snow.
In fact, there’s a lot of claims that Travis makes if he’s asked. He’ll claim that he can’t remember exactly how he got to the work camp, or how his lung got patched up. He’ll claim that he was treated just as all of the other prisoners of war, even though about a year into his internment he became a “person of interest”: that’s never something you want in a facility like this one. Russian intelligence claimed that Travis knew something about a woman named Harley: but it wasn’t true, after all. They had the wrong guy.
And these were the only words his frustrated Officer could coax out of him. Hours of classified videotape sitting in a dusty box somewhere record a bruised American glaring down his interrogator with a tireless ferocity: a 12 second clip of was released to the public. Travis endured 2 long years of hard labor, malnutrition, and tortuous interrogation without cracking. When he eventually crawls himself over the border to a small medic camp emergency room, he’s missing three fingers, many of his teeth, and there’s indication that he is deaf in his left ear. He has bones in his arms and legs that have been broken and then healed incorrectly (which were a bitch to re-set by the way), scars travelling up his arms and legs like a road map, and certain patches on his head where hair will never grow again: but dammit, he’s alive. And for some people, that’s enough to bake him a stupid cake or give up one afternoon telling him how great he is.
What the people don’t see are the hours he spent in his cot, surrounded by other equally bruised and broken men, crying like a little bitch while others allowed themselves to suffer in silence. They don’t see the shameful cries he let out when he attempted resolute silence, or the smartass remarks and flying spit that landed him in such a situation in the first place. Travis replays every little scene in his mind, dwelling over every one: but the public is right about one thing – he didn’t give up the information that Officer wanted so badly. He never gave up his sister for certain death, or worse: a cot next to his.
And a flag that I trust
The only reprieve Travis had to his name during his time of need came in the form of something quite unexpected: acts that began with small parcels of food poked through the fence behind what inmates called the “brick factory”. They were precious bits of grain and bread, sometimes even luxurious items like bits of cake or nuts; and they were more valuable to Travis at these times than all of the money in the world. He would have given every penny in his pension today and forever for one hot meal; so these gifts were what kept him going. The parcels got bigger and more sustaining until finally, one night, he met the mysterious source of his secret key to survival: a beautiful Russian woman with flowing hair and shy eyes. It was impossible to speak for very long, but over the last year of his imprisonment he learned many things about his savior: she loved tea, felt terrible about the work camp that was built into the countryside of her home, had no control over the war or what was happening to the prisoners inside, and eventually it came to light that “she” was actually a “he”.
Travis knew how unacceptable it was to be homosexual in this particular area, after all there were Russian people in this work camp with him. It didn’t take a genius to put two and two together even though there were a vicious rivalry between Russian and American prisoners. Andrei, Travis learned, was saved from the same fate as himself out of sheer luck of circumstance: and now, the young man wanted to do what he could for his brethren on the wrong side of the fence.
When a small hole the size of a child replaced the carefully wrapped packages of food one night, Travis didn’t ask questions: he bolted. His ribs were the largest thing about his chest those days, and squeezing through was difficult but not impossible. Too emaciated to run, Travis simply stumbled down the steep embankment and prayed for the best: luckily, a snow drift saved his life at the end of the hill. Two days and a terrible case of frostbite on his left unshoed foot later: he was back on American soil. On a wing and a prayer.
Returning to the United States wasn’t the sweet thing he had dreamed about, keeping himself sane in prison. He returned to a shell of a sister who buried her entire family when she returned from service, himself coming back as a ghost and certainly a changed man. She was also harboring a dark secret - one that Travis would go through great pains to accept. And then there were the fevered dreams of Andrei, the angel who saved him from certain death: the thought of what must have happened to him kept him up at night just the same as his own nightmares. No, Travis isn’t a hero: he’s a scared little boy waiting for something to make him feel safe again. Hopefully, he can find it.
Just medals and scars, so damn proud of me
