Apparitions

Renaldo was a ghost.  A mere shell of the man he'd once been.

The oldest son of migrant farm workers, he was tasked as a child with not only keeping himself out of trouble, but his younger brother and sister as well.  Of course, moving a lot and missing more school than they attended made it difficult for the Rivera children to gain the benefit of the doubt from their teachers. As kids, they were often unjustly punished and their protests were not well-received, to say the least.  But, they all graduated high school. His little sister even went to college and is teaching in Orlando. For Tomas, though, the military was his best bet.  Even if he had qualified to go to a university, he couldn't afford the costs of out-of-state tuition they charge non-citizens.  Nevertheless, his bedroom as a teenager was decked out in orange and blue and he never left the house without his Florida Gators ball cap.  Less than a week after he walked the stage at graduation, he was at MEPS in Miami, signing up for active duty.  His mother was an emotional wreck, so it was his father who drove him to the bus station when he left for boot camp.

It was less than six months later that destiny showed her face.  On leave for an Iron Bowl game that his bunkmate scored two tickets for from the local rock station, he saw her sitting on a tailgate and was done for.  He struck up a conversation with some of her friends and when they ran into each other at a local bar late that night, it wasn't entirely by accident.  He'd also picked up her brand of cigarettes on the way.  Jeff was a perfect wing-man and by the end of the night, he'd snagged Jill's phone number and a piece of her heart.  By the time he was shipped off to Iraq the following year, she was an army wife, much to her father's dismay.

Jill was as sweet as she was beautiful, and all that kept him sane these days.  Dead now for 7 years, she was ironically the only thing keeping Renaldo alive. That, and Pabst Blue Ribbon.