Page 4 of Under Pink Skies

I escaped my hometown. Seen the world. Or at least the parts the Marine Corps sent me to. I had a host of life experiences I knew would serve me well in this next chapter of my life. I met some of my best friends, including Kameron, who’d left the Corps the year before me.

My plan had been the Marine Corps, until I woke up one day and realized that I’d already accomplished what I’d set out to do. I’d gotten out of my hometown. I’d made something of myself. Even though I was ready to leave the active duty world, I didn’t have a clear direction for my next step. It’s not like spending four years in the Marine Corps infantry left me with many options.

So I’d done what any rational person would do and called up my best friend Kameron, and practically begged him for a job. His response had been straightforward.

“As much as I enjoy seeing you grovel, Harvey, you don’t have to beg. Of course, there’s a place for you here.”

While I was one of the stereotypical shiny new vets who had no plan or vision for their life, Kameron was the opposite. He’d lost his father, a first responder of over thirty years, to suicide several years ago, and since then, he’d made it his life’s mission to open a regenerative farm with an emphasis on holistic healing for veterans and first responders with PTSD. Kameron had never gone out drinking with us on deployments or done anything that cost him a dime more than he absolutely had to spend. He saved every cent of his active-duty paychecks and, at the end of his four years, he took that money, along with the inheritance from his father, and bought the Winding Road farm, a sprawling expanse of farmland and forest.

In the month since I’d left active duty, I hadn’t felt the impulse to curse. I worked with my hands every day, rebuilding infrastructure on the homestead, tending to livestock, and generally moving in a positive direction in my life.

With Kameron’s help, I’d been sober since the last year I was on active duty, which was no small feat, considering how far gone I’d been when I got off that plane at Camp Pendleton, a freshly-minted Marine who was more than ready to dive headfirst into the high life.

In a way, I had everything I could have dreamed of as a teenager.

The only thing I didn’t have washer.

I didn’t ask many questions when Kam offered me a job working on his farm. I’d been desperate, and my previous job as an infantryman didn’t lend itself to many civilian opportunities. I didn’t ask questions when Kameron booked me a flight into Portland and bought me a bus ticket to the mountains of eastern Washington. My naive, foolish self hadn’t even thought to check a map to see just how close Kameron’s new homestead operation was to my hometown.

As it would turn out, they were less than an hour apart.

Kameron’s final chuckle brought me out of my thoughts.

“Multi-purpose venue,” Kameron corrected, wagging a finger in my face. “We’ll host weddings, of course, but also private events and nonprofit training. We’re going to restore this barn. The best one Watford County has ever seen.”

I rubbed my temples. Watford County, Washington, already had many, many barns.

“This thing is falling apart, Kam.”

“You can’t see the vision, Harvey,” Kam said, shaking his head. “We keep the original frame of the structure, an open-concept floor, with a hayloft above where guests can take pictures, store gifts, or do whatever else people do at weddings.”

I laughed, unable to stop myself. “Have you researched this? Watford County is fairly remote . . . I can’t imagine there’s a large market for wedding venues that are literally in the middle of nowhere.”

Kameron waved my concerns off with his hand, gesturing for me to follow him inside the barn.

“It won’t just be restricted to weddings. People could hold concerts and baby showers and all that shit here, too. It’s amultipurpose space. One that will bring in income we can use to fund program expansions for Winding Road Recovery.”

I smiled as Kam wrapped grabbed the rusted handle and pulled the door open. My grin widened as the handle fell off in his hand.

“I never said it wouldn’t take work,” Kam defended himself, dropping the handle and kicking it off to the side. He shoved his index finger into the middle of my chest. “Wipe that shit-eating grin off your face and help me measure these pillars.”

I held my hands up in mock surrender before grabbing the pencil that was tucked behind my ear and taking the measuring tape from Kam’s outstretched hands. He barked orders, telling me what he wanted measured so he could buy the building elements to make his grand vision happen. This was what I was used to, where I thrived: having a clear-cut task and being able to fulfill that task to the best of my ability.

My cell phone rang out in the barn’s silence. Kameron gave me aseriously, dude?glare from the other side of the barn, where he was taking pictures of the original stain color, no doubt trying to preserve as much of the original look and feel of the barn as possible during the remodel.

I shrugged my shoulders and silenced my notifications without looking. Despite no longer being on active duty and having my phone notifications silenced most of the time, I must have forgotten this morning. I was still operating on an iPhone 8, which made me a boomer, according to Kameron and Lucas, another active-duty stray Kameron had taken under his wing.

We continued to take measurements and discuss Kam’s vision for the “multipurpose venue,” until my phone rang again a few minutes later.

“Seriously, dude, are you going to get that?”

I pulled my phone from my front pocket and flipped Kam the bird as I looked at the screen.

“It’s an unknown caller.”

“They had to have called you twice in two minutes to have gotten past your ‘Do Not Disturb’ setting,” Kameron pointed out. “You should probably answer it to be on the safe side.”

I grimaced, but given the greater context of the situation, I decided answering it probably was my best bet.

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