Re-united.

He’d always been a shuffler, dragging his feet as he trudged through the fearful
paths of a twisted childhood down to the recruitment center on his seventeenth

birthday. He came in through the metal doors, pushing on the locked one first,

pausing for a moment as if to reconsider trying again, and then he reluctantly

entered. He needn’t bother to fill out the “What made you interested in joining the

military?” section or ask any questions after scanning the required literature. As he

impatiently jumbled his fingers in a continuous pattern, he scooted his dismal,

slumped figure into the folding chair on the side of the entire world opposite me.

There I was, a volunteer, who was supposed to be assigned to “office tech support”

and instead was given a pair of cynical spectacles and personal files stacked miles

high of poor young men who fled from their troubled childhoods to find refuge in a

war zone. And he, was a shuffler who took his time. And never looked, only to see

that perhaps I’d have smiled at him, lighting his dark days enough to see the right

road.
********************************************************************************************************************************************************** .
I gathered the boxes of inconsequential paperwork for my latest endeavor as a junior

partner and rushed to gather all my essentials before I rushed to the train. I’d been

promoted to partner status just a few months ago just after I became in engaged to

my fiancée, Jane. I have to admit I was over-exerting myself to make an admirable

impression in my new field of work, but it’d all recently played out.


I half-galloped through the underground station, juggling cardboard boxes filled with

hours of mental devotion. I was near a full paced run as I heard the train cars

scrape against the stained cement. The train doors were just about to close as I

threw my slim frame in between the sliding doors known as heaven and hell. The

train car was full, so I kicked my boxes across the aisle to the nearest railing where

I stood pinned on either side by homelessness and hunger. After a few stops

though, the nameless crowd reduced to a few as I slid into a window seat on the

near empty car. I placed my boxes on the seat next to me, subconsciously creating

a few more inches of schism between a stranger and my life.


At the next stop, the few sleepers left had toddled off onto the city trains, and I was

the only one left, as the train would hit the suburbs. The doors were closing swiftly,

but a man thrust his shadow through the sliding gates and forced his way on to the

car. He was a gruff young man, with slumped shoulders and an evenly-paced

shuffling gait. His clothes were worn, but neat none the less. Up his right wrist was

a small tattoo of the yin-yang symbol, and on his left were three stars, each

engraved with the designs of which I did not recognize. The man sat down across

from me, looked down at the garbage encrusted platforms and then slowly and with

quite uncertainty moved his gaze to meet my eyes. And I knew at that moment,

that the shuffling gait rung with familiarity.


“Hello.” I said hesitantly, nervously adjusting my white-collared shirt and loosening

my knotted tie.


He looked at me, or at least it seemed that way. He studied the changes, the boy

with the cynical spectacles and inexperience coursing through his veins and how he

had grown a white-collar and an ego, or so should have been thought. Then we

locked eyes, like a sniper locked with its rival equivalent. He rolled up his sleeve to

reveal his starred tattoos even more. He began, glaring down at them and

whispered.


“This one is for my sergeant, shot and killed on my second tour.”


I looked down and twiddled my thumbs.


“This one is for the psychiatrist who advised honorable discharge due to post

traumatic stress disorder.”


I put my hand behind my neck and felt the sweat seep into my palms.


“And this one,” rolling his sleeve up ever so slightly, revealing an elegant star with

beautiful colors which was obviously meant to be different from the others, “is for

you.”


I immediately raised my gaze and at that moment, the small boy whose future I

signed away in a folding chair while he couldn’t even tell me why he wanted it. This

was the first time I had seen his eyes and this time, I didn’t feel the mile of

ignorance in between us, I felt like my heart rubbed against his started to feel the

roads he carved a place for.


Shaking, I paused for a moment, and then mumbled, “Why me?”


He hesitated, as if he hadn’t really thought of the genuine answer, if there was one

at all. Then, his icy blue eyes staring straight through everything I’d built up and

around me, he said, “Because I would have never looked up if I hadn’t.”


I felt stunned, and looked that way too apparently. So he continued, “ Once you’re

there, you have to look up or you’ll miss everything that was there…”


“And reflect on everything that isn’t,” I finished.


For an infinite time, we just saw. I saw him slumped over, his broad shoulders

hunched next to his neck. His feet rubbing against each other, as if they itched

constantly. But then, I really saw. I took my peephole into his heart, through my

permanent resting place on his wrist and switched places with his navigator and

began to unmap and remap his heart.


As the train dragged its limp body into the station, I reluctantly gathered my boxes.

As I reached for the last one, it wasn’t there. Because by then, the shadow had

moved by my uniformed hero, an illuminant figure, with a shuffling gait.