confirmation

Silas joined the navy at eighteen years old because he did not know what else to do. He signed the paper and passed the tests with ease. They shipped him out as a body on a maritime security boat. Silas spent nine months floating around the open ocean with a gun in his hand. He was miserable for every second of it. He missed the trees, the grass, the mud. He even missed the mosquitoes. Sometimes the boat would be caught in a terrible storm that would throw the men inside around like loose tools in a box. When someone in the crew got sick, it was only a matter of time before everyone had it. Silas spent endless hours staring down the mouth of a metal toilet, unsure whether he should aim with his mouth or his ass. 

He hoped that after nine months served, he would be sent back to port, but instead, he got another four months. And then another three. And then four more. It had been nearly a year and a half on that boat when Silas decided he could take no more. He dove into the ocean from the top deck of the boat, head first during a storm. His crewmates thought he’d gotten knocked off by the wind and someone dove in after him. Silas landed poorly in the water and broke his back.

He survived the injury with very few serious complications and made a full recovery. He was honorably discharged and sent back to land to recover. Silas did all sorts of healing after he got out of the hospital. His first stop was Vegas. He got there during the off-season, the bleak middle weeks of January when the strip looked like a ghost town. Silas did some drinking and some gambling and a lot of sleeping around. He got a room in a clown hotel that only cost him eleven dollars a night and spent days meandering the empty hallways. He imagined that the place was actually full of people, but that they were invisible to him and that he was invisible to them - like a ghost. 

Silas got lucky again when he hit the jackpot on a Whitney Houston slot machine and walked away with a little over $30,000. He bought a banged up truck and drove all the way home to Louisiana, taking a few pitt stops along the way. When he got back, the first thing he did was go to church. Silas used to go to church every Sunday with his mother before she died. He never thought he’d miss it, but when he was out on the ocean it was all he could think about. The hum of voices too shy to sing above a certain key, the cold draft that rustled its way through the open windows and told him to button his overshirt. 

Silas met May through the Pastor, who was her father. He’d asked Silas to run the youth group, given his familiarity with hardship. Silas remembered that conversation well. He remembered thinking how lucky he was, how lucky he’d always been. That was his confirmation, his green light to live the way he wanted. Silas knew that no matter what he did, God was in his corner.