1991

It was 1991.

Paul was nervous; pacing in circles in the hospital waiting room with a cigarette in his hand. He'd never been more afraid in his entire life. He was going to be a father. It wasn't exactly news, but now that he was in the hospital, it was real. He loved Ruby, or at least he was pretty sure he did; he married her, after all.

That was different, though. It was before they knew about the baby. As if by some freak twist of fate, Frank Schimon's predictions actually almost came true. A war did indeed break out, but not with the Soviets, and they learned that both of their units would be shipped off to Kuwait as soon as deployment began.

Ruby was in tears when they found out, and Paul was terrified too, though it tried his best not to show it. She would be in the motor pool, doing what she'd always done, but who knew what Communications would be doing out in the desert. What if they were split up and something happened to one of them? No, Paul couldn't let that happen. He'd finally managed to find someone that seemed to get him, and he wasn't ready to let it go, war or not. So, like their own version of Romeo and Juliet, they defied the Army's no-fraternization policy and decided to get married. Nothing would be able to separate them then, Kuwait or otherwise.

Then, less than a week later, Ruby came into his room early in the morning, crying. He asked her who died, and all she could do was lift up the test and hand it to him. He had heard about surreal moments before, and now he really knew what it was like. The second he saw that little plus-sign, the world melted away. Their deployment was called off within a week, but that joy was short-lived at the prospect of the 18-year tour of duty that was to come.

He always figured he would have kids someday, but that would be after he made his mark and his fortune, however that may be. He did okay in the Army for only being 24, but it wasn't enough. Money aside, what did he even really know about being a father? Sure, having kids seems great, in theory. It's easy to see all of those nice happy moments like school plays, birthdays and weddings when it's a thought experiment, but the reality is so much deeper and more terrifying.

He was going to have to be responsible for raising a living, breathing human. Not just that, but a functioning member of society. Any little mistake could lead to horrible physical or emotional damage, and he would be responsible for it. Neither of them had any kind of example to go on. His father was disinterested at best and Ruby's childhood was a living nightmare. What would he turn his own son into? Would he hate them like they hated their parents?

As all of these thoughts ran through his mind, something new shot through the noise. His parents provided and excellent example for him. It was so simple he almost smacked himself for not thinking about it before. He had dozens, no, hundreds of examples of exactly how not to be a father. He knew what he wanted when he was a kid, his parents just didn't give it to him, but he would give it to his son. He would be the father that Frank could never be.

A wave of relief washed over him. That could be his new purpose. He could be the best husband and father that ever lived, and stuff it in Frank's stupid face. He could finally have his I-told-you-so moment. But how could he do any of that with the life he'd chosen for himself? The military wasn't going to cut it, not anymore.

The relief was gone, and worry started to creep in. How could he possibly give Ruby and their son the life they deserved? The weekend after the wedding, he started doing research to see where his future would be if he stayed on the path that he was on. He decided that there were only two options.

He could try and move over into a position as an Intelligence Analyst, which could pay well if he stuck with it, but he would be working so much that he would never see his family. If he stayed where he was he could maybe end up with a slight pay bump over the course of years, and that would never be enough.

He had already changed his MOS once, and he doubted they would let him do it again. His enlistment contract was going to expire in four months, and he knew that it was time to move on, but move on where? Her family was only a few hours away, but from everything he'd heard from Ruby, they wouldn't find anything there. He had to try; there was no way he was going back to Montana. Not in this life.

With all that racing through his mind, he barely heard the nurse call out to him. He had been staring at the floor, mumbling to himself.

"Mr. Schimon?"

He looked up at her, but didn't respond. Something primal quickly bubbled up in him. His fight-or-flight response was kicking in, and there was a little voice in the back of his head that told him to just run; get the fuck right out of that hospital and never look back. He could hop in the car and head in any direction as far as his gas tank would take him.

It could be for the best. Ruby was young; she could probably do better than him. Maybe she could find someone who already had it all figured out. Maybe he wasn't ever going to be ready for this. Maybe his father was right.

"You are Mr. Schimon, correct?"

He nodded.

She took off her surgical mask and gave him a smile.

"Congratulations," she said, reaching out to shake his hand. "You're a father."

The words hit his body like a shotgun blast and everything that he was worried about blew right out of his body. He was a father. He wiped off his clammy hands on his shirt and then shook the nurse's.

"Thank you. Can I see her now?"

She pointed down the hallway.

"Of course. Follow me."

His legs worked without him thinking, like a train on a magnetic track. Everything around him was gone, and before he knew it, he was watching the nurse open the door to Ruby's room. He heard a small cry and a smile grew on his face. That was his son. That was his son.

He walked in the room and saw Ruby holding a tiny little thing wrapped up in towels. She was really glowing. He felt something then that he hadn't felt in a long, long time. He was content. Everything was going to be okay.

He walked over to her and knelt down to kiss her forehead. That's when he noticed that he'd been crying. Ruby was crying too. She looked exhausted, but so happy.

"Isn't he beautiful?" She asked in that sweet twang

Ruby was crying too. She looked up at him.

"Isn't he beautiful?"

He just nodded. Of course he was beautiful. It was his son, how could he not be? He was the world, the moon and the stars. He was everything. They were everything. There was no going back now.

Ruby looked down at the baby and then backed to him. "How do ya feel about Paul Jr.? We could call him PJ."

He chuckled a bit. He remembered something his sister had told him when they were younger. They had met this group of brothers once in High School who were all named after their father. She said that there was nothing more arrogant than naming kids after yourself. Only an asshole, she said, would think that he was that important. Unfortunately, he was so wrapped up in the moment that he couldn't think of anything better.

"Sounds great to me," he said with a smile.

PJ it was. Little PJ, he thought as he stared into his boy's hazel eyes. He would give him the life that he always wished he had when he was little. He had to make something happen to do that, and he would have to make it happen soon, but that could all wait for another day. All that mattered was his family, the rest would sort itself out.

Three weeks later, and they were having breakfast in their little apartment just off base. They only had a few weeks left before they had to go back, and they wanted to make the most of them. They had a long talk about him not re-enlisting and what they would do. He brought up the idea of moving to Texas, but she wouldn't even hear it.

"I'd rather be homeless than subject my sweet little baby boy to those vipers!"

It was the first real argument they had. He had just put the eggs and bacon on when they got into it.

"I know how you feel, babe," he said, flipping one egg over and adding two strips of bacon to the other pan. "I feel the same way about my family too. I know that your family is poor, but trust me, you don't even want to meet my parents."

She shook her head. "Ya don't understand, Paulie," she started. "They're filthy people. It's literally a toxic environment. I told you I joined up so I never had to go back to that dump, and I meant it."

He nodded along as she was talking, but he wasn't actually paying full attention; he didn't want to burn the eggs. He took the bacon out of the pan and placed it on a plate, taking a paper towel off of the roll and putting it on top of the bacon, blotting up the grease. After he was done, he picked up a piece and bit into it.

"Listen, honey," he started. "Just because they're dirty, it doesn't mean that we have to be dirty. We can go down there and I can try and find work. It's better to have someone that we know close to where we are. You don't get out for what, almost another year? By that time, we won't need them for anything, and we can have someone to take care of PJ if we need some time alone."

She stared daggers at him.

"Did ya not hear anything I just said?"

He could tell she was getting angry, every time her temper would rise, her accent would start getting a little bit thicker. It was a great way to gauge her mood. Based on her tone, he could be crossing into dangerous territory, and he wanted to diffuse the situation as quickly as he could.

He pulled the eggs off of the stove and put them on a plate with the bacon strips and rushed it over to where she was sitting at their small dining table.

"Let's make a deal," he started as he sat down next to her.

"Let's take a trip down there. I want to see what it's like, and I'm sure your mom would love to meet PJ. If things are really as bad as you say they are, we'll figure something else out. How does that sound?"

She took a piece of bacon from the plate.

"It sounds like a waste of time and money, but okay."

He looked at her, unconvinced.

"Okay."

"Okay. On one condition."

Paul smiled; he was getting somewhere.

"Anything baby, just name it," he said, trying to put some charm in his voice.

She dipped her strip of bacon in some of the yolk from the egg and held it up to her mouth. "We can go visit, and if ya like it, then ya can move there ahead of me and try and get things goin'."

She took a bite of the bacon.

"But," she continued. "If ya don't like it, the next time I'm on leave, we're packing up and going back to Montana to visit your parents and then I get to make the decision whether or not we stay there."

His smile immediately turned into a frown. He was pretty sure that her hometown couldn't be that bad, but how sure is sure enough? If he was wrong, then he would be stuck right back where he started, but with a wife and kid that his parents hadn't even heard about, unless Janice broke her promise.

On the other hand though, he knew that she would feel the same about his parents that he did. She was a good judge of character, after all, and would be able to realize that living in the middle of nowhere, stuck with those people, wouldn't be an option. The worst case scenario was that neither of the places would work out, and they would have to go somewhere else and try and make it on their own. It was a wash.

"Fine, it's a deal."

She had a satisfied smile on her face and he started to worry about just what was in store for him. He needed to distract himself. He looked down at his plate and tried to pick up an egg with his fork, but most of it fell apart, landing on his pants and the floor.

"Fuck," he muttered under his breath, reaching for a napkin. Maybe this was a sign of things to come. Anything would have to be better than going back to Montana. At least that's what he thought then, he had no idea what was coming.

A little over three months later, Ruby finally got some time off and they were on the first flight to Dallas. They considered driving, but they'd rather have a fussy baby on a one hour flight than five hours in a car. Paul was completely calm on the entire trip down.

He convinced himself over the previous months that Ruby had to have been exaggerating. Not about the horrible things her parents did to her, but about the place. How bad could it really be if Dallas was only an hour away? That had to be the case, it was all he could hope for.

When they got into DFW they rented a small car and headed northeast. The further he got away from Dallas the more his concern grew. Even the local "big city" of Paris, which is where he would most likely be working, wasn't looking great.

He could feel the depression and malaise in the brutal muggy air. It was exactly what he tried to escape in Honduras. Then, they actually got into the small town of Hillyard. He thought Paris was bad, but it was just purgatory compared to this place. He could almost see the sign hanging above the county line, "Abandon all hope, all ye who enter here."

Every minute they drove further, the hope was slowly draining out of him, like a cut that wouldn't stop bleeding. Then, just as if God came down to show him the errors of his hubris himself, they had to stop for gas.

As he was pumping, he took a good look around what passed for Hillyard's main street. It wasn't actually all that different from Mountain West, in a way. It was an abandoned little backwater that time was slowly forgetting, it was just a lot further along in the process.

To him, the place looked like something out of one of those old Romero movies. Many of the buildings were dilapidated, shuttered and crumbling apart, and dead grass wove in and out of cracks all along the sidewalk on every street. He was sure that if ever there was a place where zombies would be found, it was here.

He tried to look on the bright side. The place could have charm; don't judge a book by it's cover, blah blah. It wasn't working. He already knew that it was over, but he tried his best to put on a brave face.

Ruby, meanwhile, was angry. She told herself she wouldn't be angry, but she couldn't help it. It started when she got off the plane. It brought her back to the last time she'd been at the airport, and she couldn't wait to leave this place behind forever. It got deeper when they got to Paris, especially when they passed by that stupid Eifel tower statue with the cowboy hat on it. As if her new husband needed any more reasons to see just how trashy everyone where she came from was.

By the time she saw that they'd have to stop in town and get gas, she thought she might end up like a cartoon character with smoke coming out of her ears. They weren't supposed to be there. She should have been happy. The more Paul saw of this place, the more she knew that she'd seal the deal on never coming back, but she was just sad.

She knew enough about where he came from to know that this place would change the way he saw her forever, even if he would never admit it. She just wanted to get to her mom's, get their little reunion over, see the kids and get back to the hotel in Paris. Jesse was getting old enough to drive, and he could bring the others into town later for dinner, preferably leaving mom behind. Then they could get back home and she could put this place behind her once and for all.

She steeled her resolve as Paul stepped back in the car.

"Funerals and weddings," she mumbled to herself as Paul started the car.

"What?"

"Nothing. Let's just get out of here. Head out back on the road we were on before and keep driving, my grandma's property is about ten miles outta town."

Funerals and weddings were all they were getting, if they were lucky, but she was done after this trip. She'd figure out what to do about the kids later. All of them were growing up, little David was already almost seven. Mom couldn't ruin them for too much longer. They'd be fine for now, she had her own real child to worry about.

Once they got out to where Ruby said her grandma's property was, any hope left that Paul had was finally gone, and a pit of despair started to grow in his stomach. They turned off on a dirt road, and he could see a small trailer in the distance.

There were enough broken down car parts in the yard to put together some kind of Frankenstein's monster of a truck. Some of them looked like they had been there for decades, and were so rusted that they almost blended in with the thick, red soil.

Then he saw it. There was a pile of trash in front of the trailer that was stacked like a bonfire. It had to be seven feet high and at least fifteen feet around. It had probably been building up for years. He was disgusted, but he didn't want to show it. He knew Ruby would feel bad, and he was starting to realize just how big of a mistake he'd made.

He stepped out of the air-conditioned car and was hit by the wave of humidity that he'd managed to forget since he'd pumped the gas. He carefully got PJ out of the car as Ruby took a few deep breaths to get ready.

Paul gave PJ the tennis ball that he loved to move around in his hands and they made their way toward the door. He covered the baby's head as they walked past the garbage heap. The smell of it mixing in with the thick air had Paul inches away from throwing up.

Ruby took one last deep breath and instantly regretted it. She never knew how bad it all smelled, it was all she'd ever known when she was growing up. Kids at school would make fun of her and her siblings all the time. One time, when she was in second grade, she was playing with another boy at recess when a teacher came up to her and pulled her away.

"Don't put your filthy little hands on him, you trash!"

That was the first time Ruby knew she was different, and it was all starting to come back to her now. She had to push through. She knocked on the door, but got nothing for a few seconds. She desperately hoped that against all odds (and despite seeing her mom's car on the way in) no one was home, but her hopes were dashed as she heard the door unlock. What she was greeted with was not the woman that she remembered. It had only been three years since she'd last laid eyes on Delores Marshall, but time had not treated her kindly.

When Paul first set eyes on her, he didn't know what to think. She couldn't have been more than 45, and yet she was somehow missing almost all of her teeth. Her arms and legs were thin, but she had a distended belly that she covered with a dirty house dress. The off-white of the dress mixed in a strange way with her deep red and extremely dry skin. It looked like someone had stretched a leather coat over a skeleton that wasn't quite big enough to fit it.

"Baby doll!" she shouted, with a slight whistle from where her teeth had been. She quickly wrapped Ruby in a hug, but Ruby didn't return it.

"Hi, Ma," she said flatly, "it's good ta see ya."

She turned to Paul.

"You must be my little Ruby Sue's handsome new hubby!" she said, wrapping him in a hug too. He could smell the deeply embedded stench of stale cigarette smoke that permeated through her entire body.

He put on what his father had called a "Salesman's Smile". It was fake, but real enough to convince people who didn't know any better. She smiled back, so she must have been convinced.

"Yes ma'am," he said through the smile. "I'm Paul. It's wonderful to finally meet you."

She turned her head down and saw little PJ. "Oh mah dear lord. Is this little Paul Junior? He is just the sweetest little thang I ever did see."

She planted a kiss on PJ's head and Paul had to fight the urge to pull the baby's head away from her.

She smiled once again to both of them. He could count the number of her remaining teeth on both hands; maybe one.

"Please," She started. "Y'all come in quick before the little one catches heat stroke. The summer's are murder out here, ya know."

If he thought Ruby had a thick accent, she had nothing on her mother. He was legitimately struggling to understand her. She talked so fast, but somehow so much of it was drawn out.

They stepped inside, and the last tiny bit of hope that Paul had for the place withered and died on the vine.

The walls were yellow; not painted yellow, but stained yellow from all of the smoking that had gone on in the house over the years. He could see cockroaches in various places, and it was the middle of the day. There were dishes in the sink that could have been there for weeks, with mold growing on some of them.

Ruby's mother turned to walk away from them into the trailer and he turned his head to her.

She flashed him a smile. It wasn't any kind of "glad to be home and see the family" smile, either. It was a smile of pure and righteous vindication. The war was over, and she was the victor. He couldn't even imagine sucking it up and pretending to like it just to save face anymore. He didn't want to spend another minute there, let alone a lifetime Who would have known that everything he hated about the third world was so close to home?

Something happened then that Paul would later think of as another little slap in the face from the cosmos. Maybe it was karma for some wrongdoing in the past. He'd never know. Little PJ dropped his ball onto the carpet. When it hit, a pile of dust shot up into the air, clouding the room around them. He actually let out a bit of a desperate chuckle. That was the final nail in the coffin. There was no denying anything anymore. They were going back to Montana.

"Ya'll want a beer?"

He desperately did.

"No thanks, we're good."

He turned to look at Ruby. Couldn't she at least give him this?

"Come on in and take a load off," Delores said, lighting a cigarette.

Ruby took a step forward and a deep anger flashed in her eyes.

"Just what in the hell do you think you're doin?"

Delores looked confused.

"What? Invitin' ya'll in ta sit down?"

Ruby took another step forward.

"The cigarette, Ma! Are you goddamn kiddin' me?"

Delores looked to the cigarette, then back to Ruby.

"Really? Come on, kiddo, I smoked when I was pregnant with you and when you was a baby. Hell, I smoked when all of you was babies, and ya turned out just fine, didn't ya?"

Ruby blew out a furious huff through her nose.

"Okay, Ma, we're gonna head out."

Delores walked toward them, but Ruby had already turned around, grabbing Paul by the arm and heading out of the still-open door.

"What the hell crawled up your ass, little Miss Priss? Your Ma ain't good enough for ya now, huh!"

Ruby kept walking.

"Tell Jesse and the kids that we're stayin at the Best Western up in Paris. You're welcome ta come too, but you ain't touchin' my baby until ya take a shower and put on a clean shirt, and no cigarettes."

Delores just scoffed and walked back inside.

Ruby opened the in the driver door to their car, leaving Paul to put PJ in the baby seat.

"Don't forget ta tell em, Ma!"

She got a grunt as a response. It would have to be good enough. If she didn't get out of there soon, there was going to be a full-on shouting match happening in front of her new husband, her newborn baby and a giant trash pile. Showing him the ugly truth was one thing, but she'd be damned before she'd see her life turned into another literal trailer trash melodrama.

When they got back on the road, Paul wanted to say something, but couldn't work up the nerve to. Ruby was still fuming. She didn't want to be mad at him, but she was. She tried to warn him, over and over again, but he just wouldn't listen, and now here they were; he got to see a nice little slice of what she had to grow up with first-hand.

"Ya just couldn't have taken my word for it."

Paul didn't want to go there. He didn't have a lot of experience with relationships before Ruby, but he knew when he was in a lose-lose situation. There was really only one thing to say.

"I'm sorry."

"I'm sorry, too; sorry that I had to drag us and the baby all the way to this awful place again, just to get you to trust me."

Again, no right answers.

"It won't happen again."

She was still fuming. He put a hand over hers.

"It won't happen again, I promise. I should have trusted you. I didn't think it would be this bad."

She took her hand away and put it on the wheel.

"I flat-out told ya that it would be this bad. I told ya about the cars, the trash and the people. I told ya about waking up with fuckin' snakes crawlin' through the walls at night. What could have possibly made you think… No. No, I'm not gonna do this now."

He looked away from her and back to the road ahead. He'd never seen her this angry before.

"Here's the deal: we are going to go back to the hotel and forget about this. Hopefully she tells the kids about it and they come by tonight. If not, we'll see them another time. You are never gonna mention living here again, and we are gonna meet your family. Is that clear?"

Paul knew that he had to take the loss, move on and hope that she wasn't still upset when they got back to Lawton.

"Crystal clear."