When I left home for Afghanistan I had everything in the world to look forward to. My parents had just retired early, moving from the city into a little gingerbread style home in the country. My two older sibs were both doing great and raising families of their own. And my girlfriend was pregnant with what I hoped would be the first of at least three children for the two of us. All that stood between me and coming back to enjoy it all was a thirteen month deployment.

But things went straight to hell almost from the moment I touched Afghan soil. My parents were involved in a really bad auto accident on their way home from a weekend of gaming at a local Indian Casino. A woman who was several times over the legal limit of alcohol ploughed right into them at speed. My dad died almost instantly. Mom lingered for a few weeks in the hospital before joining him. While the news was certainly devastating, I still had my girl and our baby to think about returning home to.
At least until she e-mailed me ten days before I was scheduled to rotate back to the States and told me she had lost the baby early on, but had kept it from me so as not to further depress me. Not only that, but she was now seeing her male friend Brad, because after the loss he was there for her while I wasn't. She said she understood why I couldn't be there, but she had still needed comfort and support and Brad had given it to her. Fucking right, I fumed. I wondered what else the fat, rich little prick had been giving her.
I destroyed the laptop in front of me and walked out into the Afghan night in a world of pain. I felt like throwing up. I felt like raging up at god in his heaven, asking him if he was enjoying destroying my life. I felt like killing someone. Anyone. Finally I just sat there on my ass, my arms wrapped around my knees blubbering like a fucking baby.

When I returned home, it was decided that I could live in my parents country house. Technically it belonged to all three of us kids, but my older sibs didn't mind just letting me have it. They already owned their own homes and knew I needed some solitude. Because of the insurance money, I wouldn't have to look for steady work for a really long time. Years, if I lived frugally and didn't waste it.
My parents property was almost entirely surrounded by huge vineyards owned and maintained by the Sun Maid Corporation. And the nearest neighbors were more than a quarter mile away, which was fine with me. I hated everyone and didn't want any human interaction. I got rid of the phone, the television and my parents desktop pc. It all went into storage. All I wanted was a radio, my books and a dog for company. I adopted a shepherd mix mutt from the pound and named him Doc. We became bros almost immediately.
I guess I first noticed the little girl staring at me around the fifth or sixth day I moved in. I could see her hunkered down on her haunches in the vineyard spying on me as I worked in my mother's garden. She looked about eight, had long jet black hair, big dark eyes and skin like cinnamon mixed with brown sugar. Maybe Hispanic, maybe Native American. I wasn't sure. We had plenty of both in my home county. The couple of times I acknowledged her presence by speaking or waving, she'd bolted like a scared rabbit. So I just started ignoring her and decided she was just a weird little kid.
I didn't think about her much after that until maybe a couple of months after moving in. I'd woken up pretty early as usual and had slogged my sorry ass into the kitchen to put on coffee and stare out the window above the sink and see what kind of a day it was shaping up to be. I was still in the boxers I slept in. That was when I caught movement out in the vineyard and saw the girl running flat out for my place, with a really big dog on her tail. It was a feral. We had all kinds of trouble with ferals out in the boonies. City people had a nasty habit of dumping their unwanted dogs and if they survived, they'd go mean and revert back to their inner wolf. They played hell on the livestock and people's pets. Sometimes on the people themselves.

I bolted through the pantry and the wash room and out the back door, grabbing the aluminum baseball bat I kept handy for ferals. Doc, sensing something was about to go down ran out with me and we both seemed to have the same idea at the same time. We ran up the dirt service road that zigzagged all through the vineyards to make better time. Doc ended up getting to the girl ahead of me, shooting past her as she dropped to the ground and went into a fetal position arms above her head, and tackling the much bigger dog with a fearlessness I've sense come to admire about him. With the two dogs a snarling, biting blur of motion, I positioned myself above the girl with the bat cocked back waiting for a chance. It finally came when the larger dog, some sort of chow-pitbull hybride, flipped him aside and lunged toward me and the girl. I clocked him upside the muzzle so hard the reverb stung my arms. It yelped and half flipped backwards, where a bloody but thoroughly game for a rematch Doc descended on him, ripping and tearing. With a frustrated yowl that was about as close to "Fuck this shit" as I've ever heard a dog exclaim, the big feral retreated the way he'd come. Doc didn't pursue, he just stood his ground, breathing heavy, hair standing on end, watching him go.
I looked down at the girl and asked her if she was ok, she nodded and picked herself up. She pointed at her throat and then to her mouth and shook her head. She was mute. Finally getting a good look at her I could see she was Native American. She had the beautiful almond shaped eyes and the fine facial bone structure. I asked her where she lived and she pointed across the vineyard at a little speck of white. A little shack set behind a larger house. I told her I'd better walk her home, because the feral probably hadn't gone too far. I needed to get dressed first.
I didn't know it then, but I'd made a friend.

Her name was Breanna Kingbird. She and her mother lived in an old shed that had been poorly (and probably illegally) converted into a house. Their landlord, a fat old Armenian farmer, lived in the huge house in front. Breanna's mother, Jamie worked as a cashier at a Walmart a couple Podunk farm towns over.
Breanna started showing up on my backsteps every morning, always carrying a Magic Slate, one of those old toys where kids write with a little plastic utensil and then lift the thin sheet of plastic to erase what they'd written or drawn. It was how she communicated. The kid talked a lot. Pretty soon I knew everything about her and her mom. And surprisingly, I discovered she didn't set off my "I hate humanity" triggers. In fact, I looked forward to her visits.
Over the summer I built a chicken coop and a rabbit hutch, then went to the local auction yard and bought myself some chickens and rabbits. Breanna loved helping me take care of them. I finally met her mother too, when she came by to see who the strange white man was her little girl was spending so much time with. Jamie was really pretty, like her daughter. But I could tell she'd had a pretty hard life. There was a sadness in her eyes.
Breanna had told me about her mom's boyfriends. Most had been real dirtbags. One of them was responsible for Breanna's not speaking. She had been molested while her mother was at work, and as a result of the trauma she'd just quit speaking. Jamie had called the sheriff when she found out and the child molester was still in prison. Since then she hadn't dated much, but one of her ex's, a big mean redneck trucker had recently returned uninvited and was making life for the girls unpleasant at home. They were both too scared to make him leave.

It was about quarter past two in the morning and raining heavy the night I heard the pounding on my back door. I still snapped wide awake, fully alert at any sound that shouldn't be there. So I rolled out of bed evan as my eyes were opening and I assumed a half crouch, as my waking brain focused on what had woken me. The back door. Doc was awake now too, his ears perked up and head raised as he lay across the foot of the bed. I went to the back door and opened it a crack, peering out into absolute black. I saw Breanna's fingers trying to push the door open and I unlatched it and let her in. She was frantic, gesturing wildly and trying to tell me something, without being able to use her slate. I finally got a napkin and a stub of pencil and had her write it. She wasn't a good speller, but I managed to make out "Help, he's killing mom". Once again, just in my skivvies I told Bree to stay put and lock the door, then started running for her shack in the dark, with cold rain driving down sideways into my face. Neither Bree nor Doc obeyed my "stay here" order. But I wouldn't know that until later.
I heard Jamie screaming and crying well before I made it to the shack. When I slid into the muddy yard I saw a guy that looked so much like that old wrestler Terry Funk I had to double take. And he was friggin huge. He had a handful of Jamie's long black hair and he was dragging her across the muddy yard. I heard the landlord's wife yell that she had called the sheriff through the screen of her backporch.
Then he saw me and he stopped dragging Jamie.
"Who the fuck are you??" he asked, his words slurred with drunkenness.
Well, I was either going to get my ass kicked or I wouldn't. Either way he wasn't hurting the girls anymore. I did my best Doc impression and without answering his question, I flew into him. He was strong. The guy's muscles were like coiled steel and his fighting technique included a lot of biting and attempts at eye gouging. But I allowed all that hate and murderous rage I'd been feeling since returning home to express itself through an outpouring of sheer physical violence. I actually blanked out, losing the time between colliding into him and falling to the ground and being pulled off his unconscious body by the Highway Patrol officers who just happened to be cruising down the road as the call went into 911.
I found out in jail that I'd nearly killed the guy. It looked as if I was in some pretty deep shit for a while. But the judge who was no friend of guys who got their rocks off beating women, let me walk.

Jamie began visiting along with Breanna more and more often after I returned home. I slowly found myself embracing the company of people again. In time, Jamie and I began dating. Now she's my wife and Breanna's my adopted daughter. She's speaking again, by the way. I asked her for permission to marry her mother, but told her I wouldn't do it unless she told me it was ok using her own mouth. It took her a little effort after being quite so long, but she managed it. Now I can't get her or her new little brother to be quiet. Guess I should be careful what I wish for.