Does anyone knock anymore?

Even at a friend’s house, an office, or my bedroom, I would knock. No one can be too careful. Everyone was out for you. That was what the news told me. That was what was on my mind when this guy just walked into my new apartment unannounced.

“Hey, Cameron—”

He took one look at me and left. No apology. No explanation. I rushed out the door to find him heading for the stairs at the end of the hall.

“I’m so sorry, I—”

“You don’t just walk into someone’s place.”

“I know, I know.”

“You’re lucky I don’t have a gun.”

He shook his head and left. I hope he finds Cameron. Clearly he was willing to die to get to him, unlike me. Maybe it was time for that gun.

My mailbox was surprisingly full today—odd, considering I had just moved in a month ago. Letter by letter, the name ‘Cameron” was on each one. He must have forgotten to change his mailing address, or the post office was just taking its sweet time. With the number of problems I’ve had with the USPS, it would be the latter. I ripped up all the mail and threw it in the garbage.

~

It happened again the following week. My mailbox was full of junk mail and notices all addressed to Cameron. Each one got trashed immediately. Not my problem, Cameron. Better change your address before your paycheck hits my mailbox.

~

Goddamnit. Again this week. But this time, it was double the amount. Thirty letters. Nearly all of them were collection agencies. Cameron needs to stay on top of these things. It had been two months, and Cameron had yet to knock (or barge through) my door. Imagine having this many debt collectors on your ass. Sad.

After my ritual mail trashing, a nice, expensive dinner awaited me to celebrate having no debt. I worked hard to get where I was, unlike some.

~

Whoever this Cameron was, he was on my shitlist.

None of my personal mail was coming through, only Cameron’s debt collectors. A sticky note with my name on it next to my mailbox should seal the deal. They can’t be that incompetent.

~

Tax dollars at work. My mailbox was still overflowing with Cameron’s mail.

The post office never answered my calls. A while later, my phone rang, but it wasn’t the post office. It was a young-sounding woman.

“Is this Cameron?”

“No.”

“Well, I really need to talk to him.”

“Okay?”

“Can you put him on the phone?”

“He’s not here.”

“Do you know how I could reach—?”

I hung up.

~

Illegal or not, I was going to open Cameron’s mail.

Someone had to tell these senders that they were wasting their paper on me. On my kitchen table were two sorted piles: collections and junk—a total of 23 letters for Cameron.

The first letter in the collections pile was from A&A Solutions seeking payment of a late hospital bill totaling $309. Beyond all the basic debt-collector jargon, my hawk-like eyes found a phone number. Someone immediately picked up when I called.

“Thank you for calling A&A Solutions. This is Sylvester on a recorded line. What is your account number?”

I told him my name and my situation.

“Hmm, and you are saying that you are not Cameron?”

“Yes.”

“And you have no relation to him?”

“No. Please change the mailing address.”

“Unfortunately, I cannot do that right now. I will have to put in a ticket for you.”

“That’s fine.”

“Can you confirm that you are not Cameron and that you do not owe $309?”

What the hell kind of a question was that? “Just do as I say, people.”

He did not like that response.

The next letter was from Beswick Collections, this time for $712. No one answered, so I left a voicemail making sure to hammer in that there was no Cameron who lived at this address.

Another letter from The Jones Group was demanding $1,087. It was the same shtick as A&A, but this time it was voice-automated. No one has time for that nonsense. They’re stealing jobs, you know.

The junk mail pile was all pre-approved credit card offers. Some of these offers had high limits, too. Predators, all of them. Cameron’s credit score haunted my dreams that night.

~

Cameron’s laziness was pissing me off. I didn’t like the USPS as much as the next guy, but it’s not hard to change an address. I looked up his name online to attempt to contact him. There were a few Facebook profiles, but my account got terminated when COVID hit, so I couldn’t message them.

Beswick called me back. They said nothing. Literally. There was silence on the other line. This level of incompetence was getting too much. Why did I deserve this? I’m a better person than this scumbag Cameron who probably mooches off welfare. No phone number, no new address, and no picture to identify him. Now what?

~

The USPS worker approached the apartment’s mailroom. She took out one of her earbuds and listened to my problem: my once-clean apartment was now infested with Cameron’s envelopes and you guys needed to do something about it. She put the earbud right back in her ear and walked off.

We should have defunded them.

~

If I mailed a letter to Cameron using my address, would it go to wherever Cameron was?

~

My God, it worked.

~

Cameron responded a few days later.

Sort of. A small white box greeted me in my mailbox. No return address, but it had a name: Cameron’s. Sure enough, it was addressed here but with my name. It was almost strange seeing my name on a piece of mail now. After staring at the package as if it were a foreign language, I opened it to find a clear plastic baggie with a brown wallet inside.

Was I dreaming? Hallucinating? Dead? My finger was on my pulse when looking at the driver’s license inside.

It was my name but not my picture. It must’ve been Cameron. Then again, it could be anyone, but I wanted this to be him. He was so plain looking that he didn’t look real, and with all this talk about AI, he could be. Generic short black hair, flawless tanned skin, and that classic get-me-out-of-the-DMV blank stare. His eyes struck me, though. They were so dark they looked soulless. Pure evil. I knew it.

My first instinct was to use this license as target practice at the range, but I needed it as evidence for suing the daylights out of him. The problem was that the address on the license was mine, which was probably why it was shipped here. It wasn’t much, but it was a start.

~

My phone was about to go into the toilet. People kept calling me, but not just any people—the truest scum of the earth. They didn’t care if I was Cameron or not. It was all about their money. How could they sleep like babies at night pestering me like this?

My phone rang again while cleaning my bathroom, sending me into another blind rage until noticing the caller ID didn’t have a random string of numbers this time. It was someone I actually knew. For once in my miserable life, getting a call from my doctor’s office made me ecstatic.

“Hello!”

From the silence on the other end, my readiness probably shocked the man on the phone. He asked if a certain person was there, and by God, he called me by my real name. Finally. After hearing the dreaded C name for so long, someone finally said my name.

“Yes, this is him.”

“Good afternoon, this is Dr. Cameron—”

My phone made a satisfying plop as it hit the water. Flush. Flush. Flush. My phone’s life blinked away and I was thinking about doing the same at this point. The news he was about to give me could make me end up like my phone, but I shouldn’t care if Cameron wasn’t going to either.

~

Even though my parents told me to do it daily, I prayed for the first time today.

“The world is giving me your battles. Your sins. I’m dying for you, Cameron. All I ask is that you return the favor now.”

I was becoming his Christ. Every day, every waking moment, the letters wouldn’t stop. The calls kept doubling. His name was everywhere around me. Others deserved this torture. Why me? This couldn’t be hell; my family were God-fearing people.

“Why, Cameron? Why?” The makeshift altar on my kitchen table didn’t respond. His driver’s license was face-up on a stacked throne of his letters, totaling at least hundreds. The blank expression on his face mocked me from beyond the grave. His eyes now looked pitch black. Cameron was Satan himself, but why target me? At least I wasn’t a baby murderer.

A knock on the door interrupted my prayer. At least someone had that decency. A flurry of papers shot through the door as I opened it. A lady in a tan blazer and bun was there one second and then gone the next. My trembling legs chased after her.

“Tell me who the hell you are before I call the police!”

“I’m legally allowed to serve. Please reply to your court summons in 20 days, sir.”

“You must be looking for Cameron, right? That’s not me. Please, you need to understand.”

“It’s not that I don’t trust you, it’s just that—”

The next moment, my hands were cuffed. Typically I support the police, but those bootlickers tried to lecture me on how no one should hit a lady doing her job. I wouldn’t say another word without a lawyer; good Americans like me knew their rights.

~

The United States government was setting me up, plain and simple.

Cameron was an experimental psy-op devised by the CIA and ATF to drive me insane. The government was just waiting for me to crack, to see how far they could push a man. It worked. Now that they had proved their experiment a success, they would practice it on a large scale next. Every single person in America was going to have their own Cameron and be driven insane to the point of reckless violence like me. Civil War II was looming, and I had to stop it. I would not wish this upon my worst enemies, not even the political ones.

Some would listen to this and reject it as a brain-dead conspiracy theory. How else could people explain my situation, then? From a good neighbor to sitting in a cold holding cell in less than three months. Explain that! This was a planned, coordinated attack. I may not have proof, but it will come after my inevitable release. I planned to leak the government’s plan to the media, but they were in on this, too. They always were. I had to move out of this beautiful country, my home—a country that was worth having people die for. I had to pick a new home soon before getting put on a No-Flight list. Even North Korea didn’t sound half bad.

~

Thanks to my lawyer, I was able to make bail. Maybe this country wasn’t so bad after all.

My apartment was wiped clean when my shaky hands opened the front door. My furniture, appliances, and altar were all gone. None of that bothered me one bit, though. What bothered me was the man standing in the living room with his back turned to me. He gave me a quick glance. It was him, that bastard.

“Are you Cameron?”

“Have we met before?”

“Can I see your driver’s license?”

“Are you a cop or something?”

He pulled out his license. I swiped it from him and burst out laughing. It had Cameron’s name but my picture.

“CIA or ATF?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Who put you up to this?”

“Let me see your license.”

I yanked out my wallet, but it wasn’t mine. It was the one that got mailed here. Cameron’s? Who knew at this point? It was the only thing in my pocket. He looked at my license and scowled.

“You need to learn how to change your address, asshole. Look at this,” he yelled. A kitchen drawer flew open and out came dozens of letters for Cameron, Cameron, and Cameron. My name. My identity. My new life.

“You need to pay your debt and stop getting things you can’t afford. Collectors keep calling me asking for Cameron, Cameron, Cameron. You’re what’s wrong with this country. Why should good people like me take the hit for people like you? And what the hell are you thinking? You don’t just walk into someone’s place!”

He moved his hand carefully to his side but stopped when he saw my body sink to the carpeted floor. I then did the very thing a man shouldn’t do, according to my dad: cry. He put his hand on my back as I put mine on his. It just felt right to do. Our touches felt lovingly like two souls becoming one. Someone might walk in and think we were lovers, which I wouldn’t be caught dead doing, but so be it. When our eyes met, he didn’t have that demonic gaze. They were full of life in front of me, not a blank expression on a piece of plastic. We smiled at each other.

“We need to defund the USPS, don’t we?”

Finally, someone who understood. We carried ourselves out to the hallway. Our bodies tumbled and hit the stone-cold pavement. Speckles of blood painted the grey canvas. Our soulless eyes met. We had a good belly laugh about the gun he was reaching for on his side and my hands wrapped around his throat.

“Does anyone knock anymore?”

ONLY MUDDY BOOTS AND HELMETS CAKED RUSTING
ROTTING IN STEAMING GREENHOUSES STICK UP
FROM DECAYED REMAINS CAUSED BY DETESTABLE
HUMAN ANGER VENT BY WORLD POLITICAL
COMPANY FOUNDED ON INORDINATE DESIRE. STOP.
BLUE POWDER SMOKE SIFTS THROUGH THIN LIGHT
RAYS AMONG MANY OTHERS YOUR SON ARRIVED HERE
TODAY SHORTLY AFTER MORTAR FIRE
STOPPED ON PHENOM PHENH. STOP.
PUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGOD

We saw a stain on the desert roadside.
The moist spot wasn’t from an emptied spit
bottle or a planned checkpoint alongside
the route to stop and relieve the unit.
It wasn’t a bloodstain from a gun fight,
where men and rifles roared and proved their worth.
It was diesel used to compact dirt tight,
to leave no impression of disturbed earth.
I followed my CO. He dug for the bomb.
I did not call for help or special gear.
I failed to think of a prayer or psalm.
I stood with him, too loyal to show fear.
He talked the whole time about his ex-wife,
said she’s the biggest mistake of his life.

I’ve changed all the names in this story except my own. They’re all dead, but … that afterlife thing just might be true.

I’m an old man now, but I was ten or eleven or so in this story. Across the road, lived Ben, six months my senior, and Timmy, six months younger than me. We lived out in the country, without another kid our age for miles. So, we bonded. We bonded by chasing the neighbors’ cows. We bonded by stealing cigarettes from our parents. And we bonded by reading GI Joe comics. Each week one of us would put up the nickel to buy the latest one. When we got a chance, we lied our way into a war movie in Brunswick, usually Audie Murphy stuff. We were fixated on the glories of war.

At the time, Ben and Timmy’s father, Arkie, would get drunk and talk about war. He had fought in the South Pacific. Word was he’d killed 27 men in hand-to-hand combat there. [I wonder why he drank.] Another skill he had was theft—or souveniring, as he called it.  He shipped or brought home on leave an impressive assortment. Helmets, ceremonial flags, swords, maps, and firearms. Had he made a career of the military, I’m positive there’d have been a Sherman Tank over there.

Did I mention firearms? The one that fascinated us most and was most supported in the GI Joe comics and Audie Murphy movies was the BAR—Browning-Automatic-Rifle. And among the things we liked about it from our reading and viewing were TRACERS. These were bullets that left a fiery trail so the soldier could see where his ammo was hitting at night. This was exciting on the pages of a comic. It was thrilling in a movie. And Arkie had a BAR and according to Timmy a bunch of clips with TRACERS written on them.

We knew better than ask him for a demonstration. “You stay the hell away from that war shit. It ain’t good,” is what sober Arkie would have said. However, we weren’t about to stay the hell away from this fixation, and besides … we were sneaky.

I don’t know if the counterpart of carpe diem is carpe nocturn or carpe noches or what, but there came a night for us to carpe … or seize. My parents were going over to Cumston Hall in Monmouth where the players were doing Gilbert and Sullivan operettas that summer. I had made them pay dearly for dragging me to Madam Butterfly two weeks before. So, they made me promise to brush my teeth and go to bed on time. Step 1 of the plan was handed to us. Step 2 came just about as easily, as Arkie nodded off just when it got dark. Ben snuck the BAR out, and Timmy scored three clips that were marked as having one tracer every fourth shell or so. We headed for their back field.

We settled ourselves on a rise with about 120 yards of open field before the tree line and the railroad tracks. We hefted the rifle, and brought it up to our shoulders, practiced bracing our feet. That last didn’t work so well, and I decided that I’d shoot from the hip, just like GI Joe. But I wouldn’t do it one handed because, at about 18 pounds, the gun was too heavy.

We usually did a series of rock-paper-scissors to determine who would go first, but this night Ben played the age card. “I’m oldest. I go first.” Since we’d all get a chance, Timmy and I let him get away with it.

Ben got into a sitting position and mock sighted with his elbows on his knees. Satisfied, he set the adjustment for full-automatic, slapped the clip into the magazine, jacked a shell into the chamber, and released the safety. He took a breath and pulled the BAR tightly into his shoulder. He held the trigger enough time for four or five tracers to launch. Then, he put the gun on safety and prepared to hand it to me.

But I was jumping up and down and slapping Timmy’s back. We were excited beyond belief that it was even better than the comics or the movies we’d seen. Then Ben, reflecting on something new, yelled, “Stop, for chrissake. STOP!” We stopped.

What neither G.I. Joe nor Audie had explained to us was why tracers glowed. It’s a magnesium fire in the bullet, and it burns at about 3500 degrees.

Ben elaborated. “Down there. We set the pickin’ woods on fire.”

Pickin’ was our word then; it was safe to use around adults, and they wouldn’t get on our ass, but we knew what we meant. Timmy and I looked at the tree line and, sure enough, the pickin’ woods were on fire.

I’ve never known that level of fear, before or since. We three were ripping up ferns and tearing down branches that were on fire. We stomped them out. We kicked apart brush piles and jumped on anything that glowed. We gave up our bodies rolling on tufts of flaming grass or even sparks. We had to get those fires out, all of them, or Arkie could easily round his total up to 30.

With our last breath, we felt that we had all the fires out, little and big. We unloaded the BAR and headed for home. They went in their house, and I went across the road to mine.

Since we didn’t have running water then, I couldn’t take a bath or wash my clothes. They were burnt and sooty, so I threw them away. I went to bed without brushing my teeth.

I was asleep when my parents came in all excited about The Pirates of Penzance. The smell in the house dispelled that excitement right away and drew my mother to the trash bin. “These are what Freddie wore today, but they look like they been rubbed with ashes. Look, some are burned through.”

My father took the clothes, sniffed them.  “I’ll get him up.”

The combination of fear and fatigue put me in a truthful state. I didn’t even consider making up a story to cover this. I told the truth, the whole truth.

“Are you sure you got all the fires out?”

I nodded.

“We’ll check.”

So, I put my filthy body into clean clothes, something I was never allowed to do, and my father and I walked past Arkie’s house and down to his back field. I showed him where Ben sat when he shot, and where the fires were. I skipped the part about how pickin’ dramatic tracers are at night. Right about then, I just wasn’t feeling it.

We went behind the tree line and paced back and forth. In somewhere between 30 minutes and three months, Dad said, “Looks like you got it. Good job.”

When we got back to the house, Mom had bath water heated. I stripped down in the middle of the kitchen and washed the grime off.

Dad said, “Now go to bed. We will never talk of this again.”

And I haven’t until now. Everybody’s dead.

Here is his daughter in a mustard seed bauble
bearing the initials M.S. And this is the hyena’s claw
that dug up ash-cloud & gold putrescent tooth
yet I had to ask, who, how many.

I was all trust and confiding hands. This is a snap of the destroyer
on which a body tried to come clean in hard water.
Here, too, memory’s ineradicable scum
rendered as the famous scream.

There is the miniature house where we four never slept very well –
was it only chance, the refugee street? We moved among them
death in the pocket, the cue ball rolling on felted grass.
These are the countries that stirred fear

around the fragrant globe, whole areas grayed out.
The affinity of heart with ice
a chicken stripped of feathers, candles for new blackouts.
In truth, M.S. sired no children but the wild mustard

boiled down for soap. Still, bees pierce yellow & lungwort
duple lobes which marry seed to breath, Everything
came of that nothing on the street of transliterated names,
gardens where none would bury psalm or song.

My brilliance is slow-growing as magma.
And that’s my fault, like the San Andreas:
consequential, but maybe not this year.

My brilliance has dimmed
in the silver drawer,
polished for company
who never comes.

Meanwhile, I’m cracking
Earth’s mantle way below,
and above, work shoes walk
dirt roads, or city sidewalks,
finding fault. Whose fault is it
when everything firm is now shaken?

Someday I’ll blow,
and carve a fiery blackening river
out of a tropical forest
to your door.

My urgency has waited
a thousand years.
Now I’m here.

The little mountain-village known as Sheen Bagh sat right on the border. So exact was the placement that the people in the village often did not claim either country that surrounded their home, but simply stated that they were from Sheen Bagh and that the borders had been built around them and not the other way around. Regardless, a tattered Pakistani flag waved from one of the walls surrounding the village, though it could never be certain who had placed it there and when. No local had ever cared enough to take it down.

Sheen Bagh and its people did not simply live in the space between borders, they also lived in the middle of countless conflicts. Twenty years ago, the government in Pakistan had decided that this region was where radical militants were based. This decision led to their allies also agreeing that this was, indeed, the area where their enemies must be. And in a turn of cruel fate, the militants they were looking for decided that since this region was frequented by several different enemy troops looking for them, it was the perfect place to engage them.

No matter whose decision was more foolish or ill informed, the countless villages, townships, and other localities suffered as a result. Sheen Bagh, along with most of the valley and borderlands, had been torn apart by fighting. The land lay barren for the most part since continuous bombing and skirmishes had blasted apart the meadows and valleys, leaving them upturned and a dry brown, with only the skeletons of the oldest trees left standing. When the winters came, the fighting was stopped, since nobody but the people living in the mountains knew how to traverse the dangerous terrain in the snow and bitter cold. And come springtime, when the valleys thawed out, as the first flowers started poking through the cracks in the ground, the bombs would begin falling once again and smother them before they could fully bloom.

Even the Pakistani flag that hung on Sheen Bagh’s wall was not green, but black from years of ash and dust settling on it. Only the crescent moon and star symbols on it retained a bit of their original white color under their now mostly brown hue.

As jarring as all of this was, none of this was the strangest thing about Sheen Bagh. The strangest thing about Sheen Bagh was a man named Ghamay Jaan, who was living in a crumbling and abandoned building that had once served as a jewelry shop. Ghamay Jaan was a man who was deeply in love but, to the people of Sheen Bagh, he was utterly insane. A tall, lanky man in his early forties who wore a dirty, gray turban wrapped around his long, mostly white hair and who dressed in a simple, blue tunic and shalwar. His boots were torn and their color was unidentifiable and on the middle and ring fingers of his right hand he wore two silver rings with faded, black stones.

The older townsfolk could recall the man’s childhood, back when he was as normal as anyone else. A quieter but still happy child who played football and went to school and raced horses just like the other children. When he was around fourteen or so, both of Ghamay Jaan’s parents fell ill and within that year, both died. This left Ghamay Jaan to be herded around to different relatives for the next two years until he wound up right back where he had started, in Sheen Bagh. A cousin of his mother’s had moved back to the village and had agreed to take the boy in on the condition that she be allowed to find him a wife when he turned seventeen.

The death of his parents had already triggered the beginning of what everyone would label as Ghamay Jaan’s insanity. He hardly spoke back then and if he did, it was never more than a few words at a time. Despite still being a young boy, his hair had begun to whiten at the ends and this showed in his sparse, new facial hairs as well. ‘Grief can color deeply sometimes,’ an elder had remarked one day to a friend when they saw the boy walking home from the store.

He was also seen talking to himself quite often and after a couple of years of living with the aunt, Ghamay Jaan developed a habit of wandering off without any warning. Word of this, just like word of anything else in a small town, spread rather quickly and people began to regard Ghamay Jaan with a mix of pity and mild fear. All of this served to eliminate any chance of his aunt marrying him off to anyone from the village and so she spent another year or so trying to find prospective brides in other towns and villages in the region. Nothing ever came of these efforts; the families of the young women would find out one way or another about the young man’s afflictions, or they’d see them firsthand if they made it to the point of meeting with Ghamay Jaan in person. There was no hope to be had and so Ghamay Jaan’s final guardian simply packed up and left Sheen Bagh, leaving Ghamay Jaan behind, for a return to a less difficult life in the capital city.

It was shortly after this that the fighting began, and Sheen Bagh fell victim to the continuous violence, that Ghamay Jaan’s insanity took complete hold. Nearly every night, bombs and rockets and gunfire went off on the outskirts of the village, shaking the surrounding fields and lower mountain ranges. Shouts would echo through the night in vibrating tremors of Pashto and Urdu and English, all blending into the same dull ringing in the ears. And every few days, the destruction would breach the walls of the village and bring death with it. Bombs and rockets would explode in the center square; stray gunfire would rip through the stones of the wall and the stones of buildings and houses; the locals would scream and run and duck for cover. And they would pray: the loudest of the prayers being shouted out by those who found themselves engulfed in flames from an explosion, or blasted in several different directions from the force of a bomb, or torn through a dozen different ways by hot gunfire.

Sometimes, the militants in the region would storm the townsfolk, accusing them of helping their enemies, of betraying the Almighty, or simply because they needed to rob the locals of their supplies. It was like this in all the towns and villages of the region, not just Sheen Bagh, and it became a new cultural norm after several years for everyone, boys, men, women, and girls alike, to be taught how to swing a sword. This was not to fight off the militants, but simply to behead them as they entered through the gates. The locals learned the hard way that to shoot them as they entered came with the risk of setting off an explosive strapped to a suicide bomber.

Every morning, after the violence settled, the locals would tend to their dead. Ghamay Jaan would stumble around helping, just like everyone else. He would carry the mangled remains to the mosque so they could be buried, and he would grab a clean cloth and a bucket of water and go around the village, wiping blood off walls.

One evening, around the time the shelling and firing would usually start, he saw a glimpse of dark hair from a rooftop right above him. Shielding his eyes with one hand, he looked in the direction of the distant, fading moon. It was right past the edge of the rooftop and he saw another glimpse of hair. It was fleeting, but curiosity urged him on and Ghamay Jaan reached up to the wall and then grabbed the edge of the rooftop. He pulled himself up to where he could just barely look over the edge and, in an instant, he fell in love. Letting go of the wall with a laugh, the man fell backwards onto the ground and lay there laughing and smiling up at the evening sky.

He had moved into the building that very night, hoping the woman would come down eventually, and this was where he had been ever since. The old jewelry shop, housing the village madman who fell in love at first sight.

The villagers, at first, could not figure out what woman had taken to the man enough for him to fall in love and apparently move in with her. In the moments of calm between the violence of their day-to-day lives, they asked each other; they listened for rumors, gossip, anything that might tell them the truth of this curious matter. A few men asked Ghamay Jaan himself one day when they saw him at the market, singing loudly to himself while he bought fruit. ‘Let us meet your new wife, Ghamay Jaan. Let us congratulate her and welcome her to the village,’ said one of the men.

Ghamay Jaan simply laughed loudly and said, ‘FOOLS! Do you think a beauty like Ghamay Jaan’s is around all the time to meet the likes of you? Ha! Ha! No, no, she’ll come at night. She only comes at night!’ and he pointed up into the sky and the men along with some of the marketgoers glanced up into the air.

‘What’re you talking about, you madman?!’ cried one voice.

‘Last night her face was half hidden! Veiled! She was so high up, how could none of you see?! You’re all blind, BLIND! My eyes always find her, always!’ and Ghamay Jaan laughed, throwing a few coins at the fruit stall owner before dashing out of the marketplace.

The villagers spent a few hours in confusion, convinced that Ghamay Jaan had lost his mind entirely and was now simply at a new point in his mania. Some of them wondered if the constant fighting and death hadn’t finally shattered whatever remained of the man’s psyche. It wasn’t until the sunset prayers that one of the villagers pointed up in the air and cried out ‘Look!’ And immediately, everyone understood. ‘The fool thinks the moon is a woman!’ these words rippled through the village and, by nightfall, everyone was touched with a mixture of alarm and amusement.

‘Maybe someone should see about getting that man to a hospital in the city,’ said one of the elder-women of the village with concern in her voice.

‘Oh please, Khala Jaan. This is no issue; we have bigger problems! We have to survive here, don’t we? How can we worry about carrying some mad fool to a city? If he’s happy, let him love his moon-woman. So long as he doesn’t hurt anyone or get in anyone’s way when we’re trying to survive all this fighting,’ said a young man who had realized the truth of the matter after prayers. Everyone else murmured in agreement and so it was decided, Ghamay Jaan would be left alone, as usual.

But Ghamay Jaan himself couldn’t care less what the villagers decided to do; he was content. He would whisper snippets of poetry while laying on his back, gazing up at the moon every night. In his eyes, she turned her head and pushed her long dark hair back, blushing and smiling at his words. Sometimes she would even reach down from high up in the sky and touch his weathered cheek. ‘I love you so much, my Ghamay Jaan,’ she would say. And this would cause a warmth strong enough to make Ghamay Jaan think he could sit through the entire winter with ease.

The problem became apparent to everyone the next time the village fell victim to shelling from the mountains. As usual, everyone scrambled for shelter. And Ghamay Jaan, laying in the jewelry shop, suddenly saw something bright fly out of the Moon’s hands to the Earth below. He ran from the shop, heading in the direction of the fire and panting hard before someone tackled him around the knees and pinned him to the ground. ‘Where are you going?!’ cried the man who had tackled him.

‘Let me go! Let me go!’ cried Ghamay Jaan, ‘She has sent a gift for me! She has! I have to go get it!’

‘You’ll be killed you fool!’ But Ghamay Jaan would not hear it; he struggled and fought the man on top of him before the man swung his fist into Ghamay Jaan’s face and knocked him out.

A few others were called over and together they all dragged Ghamay Jaan’s unconscious form to the mosque where all the corpses were. ‘The madman thinks his Moon is throwing gifts down for him!’ said the man who had tackled him.

‘What are we meant to do now? Is someone supposed to watch this lunatic every night now? Don’t we have enough troubles?!’ roared another

‘Let him die! So what?’

‘Ya Khudaya! Fear Allah, Ghamay Jaan is his creation like the rest of us. He cannot help what he is. You would just let him die?’ said an elder who had known Ghamay Jaan since childhood.

The village people argued back and forth while they tended to their dead that night. Half were set on leaving Ghamay Jaan to whatever fate awaited him, the other half thought to shake the man out of his latest bout of insanity. So absorbed were they all in their dispute that they didn’t notice Ghamay Jaan get up and limp back to the jewelry shop. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ he sobbed, staring up at the sky. Moon was not out yet, shadows of stars were beginning to peek through, and somewhere just beyond the lowest clouds, Moon was descending to her perch. Ghamay Jaan could not see her yet; he hobbled over to the ancient sink in the corner and washed his face and performed his ablutions. He prayed in the corner and by the time he finished, he could see her in the sky again.

Ghamay Jaan knew what he would do; he snuck out of the shop and circled the village, walking near the outskirts and watching as candles were lit in people’s homes and fires in their courtyards. He knew they were preparing for the night, bracing themselves for what might happen. He knew the sandbags would be piled near what remained of the front walls to try and hold back any damage. And he also knew that the villagers all now kept their horses in an old building towards the back end of the village, as far back from the usual areas of damage as they could without setting the beasts free entirely.

He approached the building slowly, pulling some old sugar candies out of his pocket. It took him a little while to find a horse that didn’t rear its legs up at his approach; it was a small, dark brown horse. And Ghamay Jaan spoke to it quietly, holding the candies up to its mouth and waiting for it to eat them before he reached out and patted the muzzle. Once the horse bowed its head, Ghamay Jaan led it out of the little hut and swung his legs over the back. He held the reins and looked up at the sky, waiting.

Moon turned her face to look at him; her head rested against her hand and she smiled, her lips parted, and she called out ‘Ghamay…’ and Ghamay Jaan felt his heart beat so furiously that he could taste it. She nodded her head, beckoning to him, her lampshade earrings bobbing between the stars in the sky. Ghamay Jaan praised Allah and squeezed his heels into his horse’s sides; they began to trot along and Ghamay Jaan urged the horse along, flicking the reins with both hands. The horse began to run with Ghamay Jaan crouching down low in the saddle. He sped through the village, alarming everyone who quickly dove out of the way or stepped out of their homes to see who was going by. Before the villagers could finish calling out his name, Ghamay Jaan sped through the village entrance and onto the dirt road leading through the mountains.

When he glanced up at Moon he could only laugh with triumph and he could see the bemused expression on her face as well; she knew her Ghamay was heading towards her. ‘A gift! I want a gift! I want whatever you’ll give me! I want you forever!’ he cried up to her with happiness as he tore through the valley.

A short distance away, perched on one of the cliff edges holding the caves that surrounded Sheen Bagh and the rest of the valley, an American soldier held his rifle up to his gaze. Through the scope, he could see a man riding along on a horse at quite a pace, but it was a strange sight, for the man had no weapons on him that he could see. No ammunition or explosives at all either. The soldier’s finger rested on the trigger and he glanced back at his commanding officer, who was busy some feet away going over a map of the valley with a translator. Was this worth getting the commanding officer’s attention over? He looked back at the figure on the horse as it rode into a thicket of trees; he might have sworn he heard a voice crying out and saying something but there was no way to be certain. The moment had passed, the figure was gone.

The soldier took his finger off the trigger and shouldered the rifle. No threat at all, it seemed.

Each night our mascot—a black and white cat—sneaks into the base searching for a warm lap and scraps of food. Tonight our reconnaissance unit joins an elite group of combat fighters. These guys volunteer for their unit with the promise of death missions into enemy territory.  I wonder why the cat isn’t afraid of these men, their lack of fear, so thick it sets me on edge. Our orders are to confiscate cars and drivers’ licenses from local farmers. This allows us to drive through villages undetected and gather information about terrorist activity. I know what hasn’t been said. I know these guys in my ranks feel untethered, buzzing with adrenaline at the implicit license to do whatever it takes.

“Be careful tonight,” our captain warns. “When you get back there’ll be hot chocolate on the stove.”

Darkness falls. We set ourselves into ambush formation and wait for our prey.

I sometimes think I was crazy to sign on for this.

“Get out of the car and hand me your license,” the commander barks.

“By whose authority,” the farmer says.

“Fuck you—that’s whose authority.”

He slowly gets out of his car and looks into the commander’s eyes. “If I give you my car I can’t get to work, if I can’t get to work I lose my job, if I lose my job I can’t feed my family—no, I can’t give you my car.”

The commander waits for him to finish and then cocks his gun and points it at the ground.

“If you don’t give us your car you lose your foot,” he says.

The farmer looks at the ground where the commander is pointing the rifle and says, “I can’t give you my car.”

Suddenly there is a rustle in the bushes and the little cat appears, a flash of black and white. For a moment his meow breaks the tension and there’s nervous laughter from everyone —except the farmer and the commander, locked in a staring contest.

“Let’s return his license and move on,” I say.

He looks at me as if I am less than a soldier—but agrees. He gives the farmer his license and slams the butt of his rifle into his stomach. The farmer doubles over and falls to his knees.

We return to the base before dawn, sip hot chocolate and sit around recounting the mission. Suddenly there’s a noise in the nearby woods—the commander tells everyone to get down and be quiet. Our mascot comes prancing into our party, rubbing his body against the commander’s leg. We all break out in laughter. He looks at me with a forced smile, cocks his rifle and with one shot silences the cat forever.

Somehow I knew this would happen. I knew the cat’s lack of fear was strange.

I panic at the thought of what else I know.

I. Valley of Quest

Before what happened to Christine, before arriving in Iraq, before even leaving Nebraska, all we knew for sure is that there would be violence and sand. We began by trying to solve the wrong problem. And although wearing our gas masks in sandstorms was almost certainly the most sensible way to avoid breathing difficulty and probably eye damage, the memory of her exiting a port-a-potty in one, sand swirling around her, still chills me. So much can hide in the sand when it’s like that—some things you want to conceal and some you later try desperately to uncover. And I guess some that you’re just not sure about.

I remember lying and sweating on my cot, mask in place outside our tent where I slept to get some privacy, my head hanging over the edge so that she was upside down in the haze walking toward me, her uniform covered in the white ragged circles of salt from her sweat. It was only Christine, but with the fog creeping inward on my mask’s lenses, she seemed like an astronaut on Mars. And in the mask, she looked like the rest of us. Like nothing special at all.

***

She came from another unit, somewhere far away like Maine. I don’t know why she was transferred, but someone said she’d been a stripper there. Her unit wasn’t deploying, and ours was—and in need of military police—so I guess that was it; it definitely didn’t have anything to do with stripping, if that was even true. She didn’t seem like the type.

The rest of us weren’t MPs, the rest of us girls, I mean. I was an admin clerk, but the others were medics and food service. Four of us altogether. Well, five if you counted Christine, but we never really did. She slept in the female tent, but she rarely talked, and, yes, I have to say it, even though no one else did, she was startling. I mean that in the literal sense, that her beauty was so strange it startled you. I won’t describe her; it wouldn’t do her justice. Just picture what you will. Personally, I always thought of her as a bird I’d seen on the cover of National Geographic from one of the donation boxes that came in every week: a grey crowned crane; it has a halo. And dignity, like her.

Her face made her less welcome in our tent, where we sat around, breathing in burn-pit fumes, sweating with IVs in, courtesy of the medics, and watching Sex and the City on scratched and skipping DVDs. And being less welcome in our tent meant being vulnerable. We weren’t the only ones bored, and we were far outnumbered.

We had a plan, and in our defense, we did try to tell her. It was when we were washing our uniforms. We only had two because this was the beginning of the war, what we all later called the Wild West, when units of untrained reservists were handed M16s and sent to do infantry work, regardless of their actual job. All that meant, when it came to uniforms, was that we had to wear one and wash the other in buckets with grey water every so often.

When it came to everything else, it meant innumerable things. Like, we took the plates out of our vests on patrol because it was so hot, they were heavy, and it made more sense to us to carry snacks in there. Like, we took pictures with ammo we found out in the desert and explored old bunkers as if this was summer camp. Like, we didn’t have armored vehicles, so we put sandbags under our feet to slow rolling over if we hit IEDs, and we actually thought it would work.

Nonetheless, uniform-washing provided a good opportunity to talk. And Christine, perfect as she was, still had to wash her uniform. So, pastel wash buckets in a line next to the water truck, we orchestrated a casual intervention, like hyenas luring our crowned crane to the watering hole.

“May I join you ladies?” Peterson asked, but we were prepared for this.

“Hey, we need to chat about something. Would you mind coming back in twenty?” I said, walking him away. “And tell your friends.”

Christine looked up at this. “What’s going on?”

Monica, the only sergeant among us, but still just Monica to us, said “Let’s take our buckets over there.” She pointed to sand far enough from the water truck to avoid overhearing.

“Look,” I said when we’d started washing, water warmed by the sun battling ineffectually against salt stains and dust. “You have to choose someone.”

“What are you talking about?” she asked, but I knew she had to understand.

“You have to pick a guy,” Nikita said. “Anyone want an IV?”

She hooked Jen up, and I said, “I can’t believe we have to explain this, but the reason you are constantly fending off guys is because you haven’t chosen one yet. And it’s not just about you, you know. We don’t want random MPs creeping around the tent all the time.”

“You mean like the dudes you guys are fucking?” she asked. “I’m not into them creeping around either.”

Monica, perhaps due to the emotional escalation, jumped in. Though, the truth was that even though Monica outranked us, she wasn’t really into leadership. “Look, having a boyfriend at home isn’t enough. You need to have someone here who they respect enough to leave you alone,” she said, kind of too quietly, I thought.

“Christine, they will keep hounding you until you pick one of them,” I clarified. “Simple as that.” My hands were getting pruney, but submergence in water was a luxury, and I didn’t want to be done. I watched the bubbles spread to the edges of the bucket and slowly dissipate, and I wanted to put my face in the water and stay there forever.

“I don’t want a boyfriend here. I’m not going to have sex with someone so that you guys feel better. None of this is your business.” Christine wrung out her uniform, dumped her bucket, and walked away.

“Hey, we tried,” Monica said. “Right? Victoria?”

It was shocking how quickly the moisture left your body here. My hands were dry, not a wrinkle on them now. I nodded. “There’s only so much you can do,” I said.

“And you know she was a stripper in Michigan, right? Maybe she knows what she’s getting into,” Jen said.

“Maine,” Nikita said.

“Right. Well, I’m sure they have strippers there, too.” Jen said.

Nikita looked at me, waiting, and I said, “Tell the guys to keep an eye out for her anyway.”

She nodded, satisfied, I guess, and we got up to leave. The trouble was that our guys were not MPs, so our guys were never close enough to keep anyone safe but us.

II. Valley of Love

I had a secret. I was happy on that deployment, really happy. I loved being part of a team, being valued. I hadn’t fit in in high school, mostly because I was too smart for the normal classes and too poor for the gifted ones. But here, my poverty was an asset. I used tenacity and ingenuity to solve problems, the way only someone with a lifetime of training could. I was used to dirt and hard work and sleeping on the ground and eating terrible food or going hungry. I didn’t have to waste time becoming adjusted to our situation or wishing I was somewhere else. When we couldn’t get enough water shipped in, some of the girls wasted what we had washing their hair, but I cut mine off. In Iraq, the guys called me Sunshine. For the first time, I flourished. Obviously, I pretended I hated it, but secretly, it felt like home.

Christine had a secret, too.

III. Valley of Knowledge

I spent the day Christine was raped with the People’s Mujahedeen of Iran—the MEK, eating biscuits made from chickpeas called nan-e nokhodchi and drinking dark orange tea heated with their samovar. I was the only female who worked in the command tent, mostly filling out forms and fending off the Major’s childlike advances, so I got to drive them to the meeting. The MEK was still a terrorist group then, but borderline, in possession of things we needed, and, importantly for me, mostly matriarchal. So, I joined the officers in the Humvee on an adventure outside the wire to represent all American women, though I’m not sure that including one who was so inferior that she was driver, note-taker, and photographer all in one sent the message they thought it did. They were certainly annoyed when the female generals addressed their questions to me and served my tea first.

But that story is always tainted in my memory by the worst sandstorm we saw on that year-long deployment and what happened to Christine when it kept the officers away from camp for so long. It rolled in like waves of a waterless ocean. The tent shook, and the MEK covered their mouths with their hijabs. Less prepared, we pulled our shirts up over our mouths and noses as professionally as we could. But the wind was too strong, and sand stung our faces through and around the tent walls, so one of the MEK soldiers shoved blankets in our direction. I helped cover the officer nearest me, but we’d run out of blankets by then. The youngest general came to me and covered us both. Our faces were side by side, and we smelled like sweat and dirt and tea under the blanket.

I suppose it was obvious I was terrified from my shaking, so she told me a story muffled by the roaring wind, by sand simultaneously pounding and peppering the tent, by her accent, and by her hijab.

It was about birds. The birds didn’t have a leader, so the wise hoopoe thought they should find the most righteous and courageous bird to lead them—the simorgh. She lived in the middle of a sea in a tree that held all the seeds of the world. When she flew away, a thousand branches grew, and when she came back, a thousand branches broke, and the seeds fell into the sea.

To get to her, they had to cross seven valleys, each with its own peril. Along the way some of the birds died from fright or thirst or violence, until only thirty were left. When they reached the tree in the sea, they learned that the simorgh was their reflection, their shadow: si: thirty, and morgh: birds. But not all along; the simorgh was the thirty birds who crossed the seven valleys, not the untested ones that began the journey.

It was dark under the blanket so I couldn’t see much of her face while she told the story, but suddenly, the tent, which had been flapping wildly, partially dislodged, and we were exposed to the storm. The wind beat us down, and my young MEK general—I didn’t remember her name—pushed me to the ground and covered my body with hers. Sand cut into our skin through the blanket, and then I saw something I never expected. Lightning. So bright, I couldn’t mistake it even through tightly woven wool. Lightning without rain, breaking up billowing clouds of sand in brilliant, ragged lines. Although dwarfed in significance by what followed, it is still the most magnificent event I’ve personally witnessed.

***

It was night by the time we could leave. We picked ourselves, and what was left of our military bearing, up less gracefully than our hosts, who were presumably used to such intrusive acts of God, and drove dazed and shaking back to camp. But before we left, they agreed to provide us water and internet, so the Major said all in all, it was a successful journey.

IV. Valley of Detachment

A farmer from a family of Quakers, the Major maintained that attaining water rendered the mission a success, “because, Sunshine, we can’t live without water.” But he didn’t sound as convincing when the doc visited the command tent with news from Christine’s examination. Of course, the other officers didn’t notice I was there, but the Major sent me outside. The thing is that a tent only blocks eyes, not ears.

“There’s considerable damage,” the doc said.

“Definitely forced? Or borderline? What’s she saying?” one of the officers asked.

“I mean, I can’t say for sure, but it looks bad. She’s saying forced.”

“Who was it?” the Major asked.

“That’s not really my department. I think you should ask her.”

I didn’t finish listening because I decided to ask her for him. And for her. Our camp was in shambles from the storm, so almost everyone was helping rebuild it. Returning to their owners personal items scattered across the sand and re-erecting tents in groups of four or so. If I didn’t know better, this could have been the scene from any missionary trip—college kids setting up an area to feed refugees or provide medical aid. Because we were college kids; almost all of us joined the reserves to pay for school and left it to play soldier. Though, I guess, some took it more seriously than the rest of us, testing the line between machismo and misogyny.

I took a deep breath. How much she must hate us to go to the doc alone, to feel safer without the only other females in camp. I knew there was something wrong with us, something damaged. Why else would we have abandoned her? It was the only explanation. We were broken.

V. Valley of Unity

Before I even found Christine, everyone was unified in the narrative. Nothing else we did was particularly efficient or organized, but in the face of a threat, suddenly we were the dream team. Hers was a voice shattering what we wanted to believe in. That we were the good guys, the civilized ones, doing something worthwhile. It was a lie, I could see then, that made it bearable for them. I didn’t need that lie; I just wanted to belong to something, and, at the time, I didn’t think I cared if it was something good.

Christine was behind our tent, on top of a shipping container, staring out into the world beyond the concertina wire. I climbed up, sat down next to her, and handed her my water. From the container to as far as I could see there was nothing but sand. Nothing. “So, everyone knows?” she asked.

“No. Only you know.” 

I was watching the nothingness, not her, so her sob surprised me. She crumpled next to me, and I wrapped my arm around her and pushed her head onto my shoulder. “I’m supposed to be a cop,” she said through tears. “I can’t even protect myself.”

“No. He’s supposed to be a cop. You’re supposed to depend on your battle buddy to watch your back, not assault you. What a piece of shit.”

“I can’t go down there.”

I nodded. “Then I’ll bring you food up here. She hugged me and drank the rest of my water. 

“Are you scared?” I wanted to ask, but I didn’t, and I didn’t say: “You have to turn him in. He can’t be allowed to go around hurting people. Was it Martin? DeMazzo?” I just hugged her back. 

But she was scared, so we stayed on top of the container where she could see anyone who approached. And I could feel the unit holding its breath to see what damage Christine was going to do. What she did was tell me her secret.

“Did you drink with him or was that just something else they made up?” I asked, still not knowing who him referred to.

She shook her head. 

“Do you want me to tell them that?”

She stared at the desert. “No. It doesn’t matter.”

“It might help—” 

“It doesn’t matter, Victoria. People have consensual sex without alcohol every day.”

“I’m just saying that it might make it more likely—”

“Victoria,” she interrupted quietly. “Can I trust you?” 

“Of course,” I said. “Look, if you tell me that you made the whole thing up, I will take it to my grave.”

“What? No. The reason it couldn’t have possibly been consensual is because,” she breathed out. “I’m gay.”

So, I finally understood. “And he knows.”

She nodded. She didn’t have to tell me that it was worse to be gay than raped in the Army in 2003, when “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was still enforced. And she didn’t have to tell me that she could be kicked out and unable to pay for college. “I’m so sorry,” I told her.

She looked at me, and I think she understood what I meant. She handed me the hot sauce from her MRE. She hated it, and I loved it, so it worked out well.

I looked at the little glass bottle. It seemed so out of place in an MRE. “You know, I’ve never met a gay person before,” I said, the way only an eighteen-year-old from Nebraska two decades ago could.

She laughed. “I bet you fifty bucks that’s not true.” 

After a day or so, the rest of the girls started taking shifts watching while she tried to sleep, stockpiling MREs, taking her to the latrines. And slowly we all moved up there with her, our cots in a row with her in the middle, and she slept again. Through the whole night. 

VI. Valley of Wonder

The other girls still had to do their jobs, so they left during the day, but the Major strongly implied that my mission was to watch Christine ; whether to keep her safe or to keep them safe, I never asked. So, I brought up binoculars to make her feel like she was contributing to security, and when I returned with more MREs and some magazines from care packages, she said, “Come here.”

She handed me the binoculars and pointed in the direction of the MEK camp. It was still beyond sight, and I didn’t know what I was supposed to see. “Are you at the horizon?” she asked.

“Mmhmm.”

“Okay, down three inches and two to the right.” She waited. “Do you see it?”

“The rock thing?”

“Yes! It’s a fulgurite! From the lightning the day of the storm.”

The thing I was looking at was like a weird coral rock, ragged and crooked and thin. But it was strange because there was nothing else out there at all. “How do you know that? Are you sure?”

“I was a meteorology major. And I guess I could be wrong; it’s pretty far away, but I’ am pretty sure. It’s glass. Glass formed by lightning hitting the sand. Isn’t that amazing?”

“Like a sculpture,” I said. “Out there, in the middle of nothing.”

“People used to call them fingers of God,” she said.

I looked through the binoculars again. It was pointing toward us. “Let’s go see it,” I said, and she smiled.

Borrowing a Humvee was easy at that point because the officers were terrified of her. When the Major gave me the keys, extra ammo, and a walkie talkie, he just said, “It’s a four-seater, so fill all four seats. And be careful, Sunshine.”

He knew that she would never leave the wire with a man, and I like to think he also knew that she needed this. Still, I had to say, “Could you call me Walters, Sir? Victoria is okay, too.”

He nodded and looked tired. “Be safe, Walters.”

VII. Valley of Death

We all went. There were four seats and five of us. Jen said, “I can’t believe this is happening” from the back between the medics. I drove, and Christine directed. The cool thing about nothingness and an off-road vehicle is that you can drive in a straight line, and it was actually safer than roads there because no one plants IEDs in the open desert. All you had to worry about were landmines from the Gulf War, and most of those were probably too old to blow up.

The fulgurite was about twelve feet long, curved like an elderly finger toward our camp. It felt like hollow rock, and when we were finished touching it and gaping at it, we sat down under its crook. Christine started laughing and couldn’t stop. We exchanged looks that were somewhere between worried and hopeful and waited. When she caught her breath, she looked at us and wiped her eyes. “I told him I wanted to see the lightning, so he came with, and we had to hide in the shipping container when the storm got bad.”

“The container we’ve been living on?” I asked, shocked. I could not believe we moved onto the place she was raped, that she had wanted to stay there.

But she didn’t seem to hear me and said, “And here it is. A fulgurite is petrified lightning. It would have waited for me forever.”

“Yeah,” I said. “But you’d never have known if you weren’t sitting on top of that container with a pair of binoculars.”

She looked at me for a second and ran her index finger across God’s. I looked up at the glass suspended by a force I hadn’t even known about and saw a tiny clear spot that reflected my eye and nose and some of Christine’s face, too.

We came to provide help that you didn’t want.
We came to provide security you didn’t need.
We came to provide schools that you didn’t care about.
We came to provide a government that didn’t work.
We came to provide democracy you didn’t understand.
We came to provide infrastructure you wouldn’t take care of.
We came to provide a better life that you didn’t ask for.
And we kept spilling our blood and couldn’t understand how you could be so ungrateful.

Experimental Simulation of Joint Morphology During Desiccation

Second Deployment

Our agreement was
only one. I have
difficulty carrying myself,

I – weightless. Rising
to the crags. Old world vulture
alone I sail for hours in the sky.

I eat my home. A pile of bones.
I’ve learned to crack open
what I cannot swallow,
a lamb’s femus. I am

bone breaker. Soft tissue drinker.

I eat his words.
I’m now dust bather.
Silent blood tracer.

I am a burial maker.
Tossed knuckle
scraper. Someday he’ll find me
by the bed
in a pile.

There will be a hovering
and a hollowing
No welcoming home.

CO’s Canon

If the cadence may be regarded as the cradle of tonality, the ostinato patterns can be
considered the playground in which it grew strong and self-confident.

His green duffel bag
could have carried two of me inside.

Near the opening a faceless angel,
I try: Dearest,

because I’m tumbleweed,
but he never reads me.

There are more important things
to do, shake hands with soldiers

going out on mission,
because when you’re the commander

it’s about survival.

I didn’t need to take
that last glance.

Suddenly tyrannosaurus.
Angel’s sepia teeth baring.

CROATOAN: A Review of Kevin Honold’s Our Lady of Good Voyage (Orison Books, 2024).

Kevin Honold’s Our Lady of Good Voyage begins in an unnamed Ohio town populated with German ghosts. The Germans, the children and grandchildren of once prosperous immigrants, all elderly now, move through the streets incuriously, “lacking the imagination to move on.” Joe, the novel’s reluctant protagonist, pulls his squad car over and tries to help one of these living ghosts but ends up giving her two dollars and advice to buy some lozenges. As he drives off, he realizes that despite “a common language,” he once again “failed to trade a single piece of worthwhile information.” “I may as well be a god damn ghost,” he thinks.

Joe’s childhood friend does not have time to be a ghost. Kenny believes that Mary, the mother of God, comes to him in dreams with a crown of stars and the moon beneath her feet and wants Kenny to visit her in what the Aztecs called the center of the moon, and what we, today, call Mexico. He believes that the devil is a miracle that has created the illusion of our self-centered world (“lovelier than a thousand Sistine Chapels”) and only the act of a journey, a pilgrimage, can save us from this first miracle with a second.  He believes that the voyages of Captain Cook and Intuit hunting practices are as real and as present as the toilet pipes he and Joe repair after high school. He knows that all is sacred, all always alive, and that we, unlike ghosts, have a choice to see this or not.

But Kenny is gone, and has been for ten years. He haunts the edges of Joe’s muted days, appearing shoeless in crowded city streets, preaching his vision to empty train cars, leaving the final message of the vanished Roanoke settlers (CROATOAN) graffitied in drainage ditches. Joe circles the flickers of this ebbing fire in his squad car, these hints, only sure of one thing: that Kenny, his best friend, failed at everything, but that failure itself somehow legitimized the undertaking. “Anything else was not worth the time.”

The novel’s other chapters take place on the road, in memory. Joe and Kenny make their way down from Ohio toward Mexico. They drink with a man with his head caved in on a bus, hitchhike with a suicidal veteran, violate the Missouri law of being poor (and from Ohio), escape an apocalypse-obsessed family cult in Louisiana, and hop trains with immigrants across Texas. The immigrants smile but nod off at Kenny’s story. They are too exhausted to hear the end, how he and Joe will find Mary outside Mexico City and beg her to reveal the truth, and this truth, her love for them, and their love for her, will make it impossible to deny the sacredness of every living thing. Border Control disappears the immigrants. VA hospitals and jails disappear the drunks. Churches and homes warm the faithful and the righteous and those who never leave home. It is difficult to say who the ghosts are here. Kenny tells us the devil most certainly is not one. We should love the devil, he confides to his fellow inmates in a Missouri prison, for “if we don’t love him too, the work will forever remain unfinished…I see him every day.”

Joe smashes a scorpion during his tour of duty in Somalia that follows their pilgrimage. He uses an oil barrel three times to crush it, and it does nothing spectacular, just stops moving. “Damn, killer,” says another soldier. Joe does not believe in God or that this world can mean anything more than it is. He sees only the humiliated and the humiliation. He signs up for the military because in a world that is all ghost, deployments and war become un-ghostly, a quickening, bloody heart in a waste of gray. They have been raised by exhausted and unhappy men with repressed memories of brutal World War 2 campaigns. But the pride of that rare past, of being someone else once, keeps their uncles and fathers alive to themselves in a world that has moved on. Joe sees this. He is smart enough to know that it is nice to have done something, to go somewhere, to be someone, at least once. And the military pays for school now, they say.

We all have a bit of Joe in us. It’s all sad. It’s all a loop, nonsense, a slow fading away. Don’t be too curious. Don’t look too far outside the electric light. Suck it up. You don’t know what’s out there. Keep your head down by pretending to hold it up. The is is the is. Stay alive. And we do. We survive for so long. Thousands of years. Whole eternities. Look at us! Examine our cities, our “brief golden clusters suspended in the night” and the armies of creatures crossing silently through the fields and trainyards around and within them. “The dead never hurt anybody,” Kenny tells Joe during a training exercise with the moon above them like a spider’s egg in the naked, winter branches. “It’s the other ones we have to worry about.”

Then Kenny almost despairs. He says he can hardly remember Her anymore. He warns Joe that “forgetting is the only death…Evil is everything that dims and obscures and wears away the gift for remembering.” Joe says, no, “Evil is time itself. Time is what takes everything away.” Kenny’s eyes go bright (brighter) with tears and hugs his friend. “You have been listening. Now I know. Thank you.” Joe does listen. We do listen. Even if we pretend that we don’t. Some say that’s all ghosts can really do. Some say that only ghosts believe in time because they are trapped in the idea of it. Others—like me—say that novels as true and wise and joyful as Our Lady of Good Voyage prove Kenny wrong. There will always be people among us who remember, ergo nothing ever dies, and there is no evil, despite the best attempts of the righteous and incurious to make us believe otherwise.

But enough with the ghosts. In the book’s final pages Joe, a child again, runs away from a snapping turtle that a group of boys have stomped to death, back to Kenny, off the path, somewhere in the woods. They spend hours “contriving little ships from bark and twigs, binding the planks and timbers with long green grasses.” They make a fort out of some old logs and beg for food from the local bakery. They work like devils to create a home that is not a home thanks to Kenny’s mom, who provides them somewhere safe to come back to, to return to after their long difficult pilgrimages, in Ohio, and Mexico, and Africa, searching for the mother of God the world over. They complete their project. They look out from their fort with immense human satisfaction. “Neither deadlines nor schedules concerned them, not the world’s troubles, and the long days led away, in gratuitous succession, to the very vanishing point of time, which was inexhaustible as air, and warranted as little concern.”

You can buy Our Lady of Good Voyage at Orison Books.

Chapter 12 of One Tick Stopped the Clock

Published by Legacy Book Press

Excerpted from ONE TICK STOPPED THE CLOCK Copyright © 2024 by Jennifer Crystal. Used with permission of Legacy Book Press, Camanche, Iowa. All rights reserved.

Some edits made for context

“Slow down, Mom! I want to get there alive.”

I don’t think my mother heard me. She rolled through a stop sign and swung a hard right at the hospital entrance, swerving as we roared up to the ambulance bay where she slammed the car into park.

“Mom, we can’t park here…”

But she was already out of the car, sprinting through the automatic doors, shouting, “Help! My daughter needs help!”

That September afternoon had started like any other during my multi-year convalescence from Lyme disease and other chronic illness. Too sick to work or take care of myself, I’d had to give up my independent life and, at age twenty-five, move back with my parents. Every afternoon, I left my sickbed and came downstairs when my mom arrived home from teaching. We made snacks as we talked. She had her usual flatbread with margarine, and I mixed banana slices and peanut butter in a bowl. 

“I can’t believe you like that,” my mom said. “Such a sticky mess.”

“Yum!” I put a big glob in my mouth, flipping the spoon over and dragging it across my tongue for affect. “Much better than that cardboard you’re eating.” I scrunched my nose and ate another spoonful. “How was your day?” 

“Long, and it was only the second day of school.”

“Only 178 more to go,” I joked, my mouth full and sticky.

“And to think they already made us have a faculty meeting today.”

Suddenly I felt flushed and shaky, like I sometimes did before my blood sugar crashed, a symptom of the tick-borne illness babesiosis. Beads of sweat formed on my temples.

“The nerve, keeping us so late on the second afternoon—” 

I stood up, feeling lightheaded and dizzy. My blood sugar couldn’t be low; I was in the middle of eating. But I felt like I might faint. “I’m sorry to cut you off Mom, but I have to go lie down. Right now.”

Alarmed, my mother stood up, too. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know, I just suddenly really don’t feel well.”

I stumbled to the edge of the kitchen, holding on to the wall as I took the one step down into the den, then turned to the couch on my right and flung myself over its arm. I was gripped by a searing abdominal pain that made me scream and writhe.

“What? What’s wrong?” My mother reached towards me, but I rolled away.

“Oh my God, Mom, it’s like someone is stabbing me with a jagged chainsaw.”

“What? Where? Is it your stomach?”

I gasped for breath, clutching the right side of my abdomen. “Right…here…below my…rib cage.”

“Maybe it’s your appendix!”

“No, the appendix is lower.” I moved my hand down on my abdomen to show where the appendix is. “This is up here.” I rubbed the area below my rib cage. I felt like my insides were being sliced into little pieces. I threw myself off the couch onto the beige carpet, trying to get away from the pain. “Please Mom, make it stop. Make it stop!”

“Okay, okay. You’re okay. Here, just try to sit up.” My mom crouched over me, trying to pull me upright.

“No! That hurts more!” I thrashed on the floor, kicking my legs from side to side. 

“Let’s call the doctor. What’s the number? Do you know the number?”

Sucking in my breath to hold in the pain, I slowly called out my doctor’s number as my mom dashed into the kitchen to get her phone. She waved her free hand, trying to shush my moaning so she could hear. She walked away into another part of the house for what felt like an unbearably long time, then finally ran back into the den. “They said to take you to the E.R.”

Panting, I tried to pull myself up on the couch, but slid back down in pain.  “Can you go get my purse? It’s on my bedroom floor. We’re going to need my insurance card and medication list.”

My mother ran off, taking the stairs two at a time. She raced back through the den with my bag in hand and flung open the door to the garage. “Oh no. Oh no!”

“What?”

“The car’s not here. Oh my God, I forgot, Elizabeth has the car. She went to Mackenzie’s house.” My sixteen-year-old sister had just gotten her license, and borrowed my mother’s car whenever she could to go to a friend’s house. 

Pain and fear seized me again. I pushed them aside to say, as calmly as I could, “Okay, well Mackenzie only lives five minutes away. Call Elizabeth and tell her to come right home.”

For an excruciating five or maybe even ten minutes, I thrashed and howled while my mother paced in front of me, wringing her hands and peering out the window. “She’ll be here any minute,” she kept saying. 

Finally, we heard the engine in the garage and car doors slam. Elizabeth and Mackenzie tumbled into the house. They both stopped short when they saw me. Mackenzie’s eyes grew wide. She backed away, as if whatever I had might be catching. “Oh my God, Jen.” 

My mom grabbed the keys out of Elizabeth’s hands. “Give Jen your flip flops. Help me get her into the car.”

I screamed as my mother drove. When we got to a crucial turn at the edge of town, she said, “Maybe I should take you to a hospital in Hartford.” If we turned right, we could get on the highway and be there in twenty minutes. But I couldn’t hold out that long.

“No,” I whimpered. “It hurts too much. Just go to the local one.” Another hospital was a few blocks away. It didn’t have as good as a reputation, but this was an emergency. How bad could it really be?

After my mom slammed the car into park in the ambulance bay of the closer hospital, I stumbled after her into the E.R., hunched over at almost a ninety-degree angle.

The triage nurse sat us in office chairs across from her desk, as if we were here to open a bank account or discuss our taxes. I clutched my abdomen as I rocked back and forth on the seat. 

“Insurance card?” 

I reached into my purse and handed the nurse my insurance card, my license, and my medication list. “Here, everything you need is right here. Can I please just see a doctor? I’m in so much pain. My mom can go over all this stuff with you.”

The nurse peered at me over her wire rim glasses, sizing me up. “On a scale of one to ten, how bad is the pain?”

“Eleven!” I hugged myself harder. “Please, can’t you just get a doctor?”

The nurse sighed. “I have to assess the situation first.”

“What’s to assess? I feel like I’m being stabbed in the gut. Look, I have a PICC line in.” I showed her my left arm, where a peripherally inserted catheter ran from my elbow to my heart, pumping antibiotics to kill the Lyme disease bacteria. “I’m afraid it might be related to that.”

“Why do you have a PICC line?”

“Intravenous antibiotics for late-stage neurological Lyme Disease.” 

The nurse raised her eyebrows. I realized this might be one of the hospitals that followed certain protocols that didn’t approve of the use of long-term antibiotics. I did not have it in me to fight about Lyme right now. I needed my acute issue treated, stat.

My mother chimed in, “Look, she’s really in pain. Please can’t we just get her to a doctor?”

The nurse sighed again. “Ma’am, I’m just doing my job.”

Holding my head in my hands, I started sobbing. The nurse gave me an exasperated glare.

I screeched, “It hurts. It hurts. It hurts so much.” Dear God, I am screaming in their faces and still no one hears me. Please help me. I don’t want to die. 

Finally, I was brought to an exam room, but still there was no doctor in sight. 

“Can’t you give her something for the pain?” My mother pleaded with whoever was in the room, someone in pink scrubs. 

“We can’t give her anything until a doctor sees her.”

“Then, please get a doctor,” my mother cried.

“They’re all busy with other patients,” the woman replied. “There are several people in more serious condition than your daughter.”

I grabbed my mother’s arm. “Oh my God, Mom, I can’t take the pain. Please do something.” It felt like whatever I’d been stabbed with was now stuck in my stomach, cutting deeper each time I moved or breathed.

My mother brushed my hair off my sweaty forehead. “She said they can’t give you anything until the doctor comes.”

“That’s not how it worked on E.R. People came in screaming and Dr. Ross immediately ordered a liter of Lidocaine.” 

The sides of my mother’s mouth twitched in what would have been a smile if this were a different situation. She continued to rub her hand across my forehead. “This isn’t TV. George Clooney isn’t going to walk in here.”

“Believe me, I know. He would never leave me lying here in pain.”

“We should have gone to the other hospital.” 

I knew my mother was right, but I was too distressed for should-haves. I whined, “Just get the pain out of me. Get it out of me!”

The woman in pink scrubs turned around in alarm. “Are you pregnant?” 

“Are you kidding me? No, I’m not pregnant. I’m in pain. My stomach hurts. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I’m definitely not pregnant. I meant get the pain out of me. Not a baby.”

“Are you sure? Maybe we should do a urine test.” 

“OH, FOR FUCK’S SAKE!” Instinctively, I sat up, which only made it hurt more. “Look, I’ve been bedridden for almost two years, okay? Two years. Alone. There is no way I am pregnant. Please go get a doctor!”

The woman hurried out of the room, and miraculously, a doctor appeared. 

“What seems to be the problem?” he asked. He was thin and young with cropped dark hair and a few days’ worth of stubble. I wondered how long he’d been awake. 

Holding my stomach, I told him what had happened. He nodded and looked at my chart, but never at me. Then he pressed on my abdomen. I yelped.

“That hurts?”

“Yes, that hurts! All around that area. The pain has not let up.”

“Hmm. Well, let’s get an x-ray. A nurse will come in shortly to take you.”

“Just try to breathe,” my mother soothed as she rubbed my head. “Let’s do some Lamaze.”

I wanted to laugh, but it hurt too much. “Mom, I really am not pregnant.”

“I know. But you’re screaming like you’re in labor. So maybe labor breathing will help.” My mom demonstrated by taking a big inhale and then slowly blowing out her breath in spurts. “Breathe with the pain.”

I sucked in my breath each time the pain gripped me, then tried to blow it out slowly. The technique didn’t seem to do much since my pain was so constant, but by the time a nurse came to wheel me to x-ray, the intensity had lessened.

“Feeling better?” the nurse asked as she positioned me in front of the x-ray machine.

“The pain has decreased.”

“Well, you’re still all clammy,” she said. “Somethin’s definitely cookin’.”

What the doctor decided was cooking turned out to be a huge pile of shit.

“I read your x-ray and I see a lot of…um…stool, in your colon,” he said to my stomach, refusing to meet my eye.

“I’m not constipated. I have a lot of medical issues, but constipation has never been one of them.”

“Well, that’s what this is,” he said matter-of-factly. “I’m going to send you home with a laxative. That should help. You can follow up with your doctor tomorrow.”

“That’s not stool,” my doctor said when I got him on the phone later.  “I’ve got your x-ray in front of me. Those are gallstones.”

“Gallstones? Like in my gallbladder?” 

“Exactly. I don’t know how they missed this,” my doctor continued. “These gallstones are huge. The pain you felt was one of them trying to squeeze through the bile duct. Once it did, the pain stopped. Were you eating something fatty?”

“Yes, peanut butter.”

“Oh, that’ll do it. The gallbladder processes fat. You basically set off an attack.”

Vaguely, I remembered that when my doctor had offered me the option of the PICC line, he’d mentioned the rare risk of the medicine causing gallstones. “Rare” hadn’t seemed a likely scenario, then. I ran my free hand through my hair, twirling it around my finger. “So, what do I do now?”

“I’m going to call in some medication that might shrink the stones. Take that tonight, but then I want you to go see a specialist tomorrow and get an ultrasound. You can’t play around with this.”

The next day I drove to see a specialist at a hospital about an hour away, near my dad and stepmom Janet’s house. During the time that I was sick, I often migrated between my two childhood homes. “These stones are the size of rolls of duct tape. Your gallbladder needs to come out immediately,” the specialist said. He scheduled me for surgery the following morning.

“I’ll come,” my mom offered when I called to update her. 

“It’s okay. Janet can take me.” 

“What about when you wake up from surgery? When you have the shakes and throw up?” My mom had been with me after four eye surgeries as a child, and after knee surgery as a young adult when I’d been a die-hard skier, before being sidelined tick-borne illness. No one knew how to care for me afterwards like she did. Janet would do her best, but my mom was the one who had always held my hand, rubbed my head, and told me it was going to be okay. 

Still, all those surgeries had happened when I was younger. I was twenty-seven years old. I felt like I should be able to get through this on my own. “I can handle it,” I told my mom. “You have school. You can’t take a day off during the first week.”

“Of course I can. I’ll take a personal day.”

I hesitated. I really wanted my mom there. 

“Besides,” my mom cut into my thoughts, “I have Cubby.”

Cubby was a stuffed bear cub that my mom had given me before my first eye surgery. I was only nine years old at the time, so the nurses had let me keep him in the bed with me right up to the operating room doors and had given him back to me when they woke me in recovery. Cubby had been with me for all my surgeries. It started to feel silly bringing a stuffed animal to the hospital as I got older, but he’d become a good luck charm. 

“Gotcha there, don’t I,” my mom said. 

I sighed. “Are you sure?”

“I already put Cubby by the door.”

That night in my room at my dad and Janet’s, I slept on my stomach, which was difficult because of the PICC line. I woke up every few minutes either worried that the port had come loose or that a gallbladder attack was about to happen. I prayed each time I awoke. Someone must have heard me because I made it through the night without incident. 

In the morning I infused my antibiotics, then put on a button-down shirt, knowing from experience that I would be too out of it later to pull a regular shirt over my head. I French braided my hair, which would keep it off my face but still allow it to lie flat under the surgical cap. I had both hands tangled behind my head, halfway through the braid, when Janet called up to me, “Jen, please come downstairs.”

I dropped my hands. My hair tumbled loose as the braid fell apart. I walked down to the kitchen, where Janet greeted me with a somber face. “Your mom just called. She’s been in a car accident. She’s fine, but she’s going to be late. She’ll meet us at the hospital.”

My heart started to race. “Is she really okay? How bad was the accident?” I studied Janet’s stoic face. 

“Just a fender bender. She’s fine.” 

I wanted to believe Janet but wondered if she was just telling me that because I had to focus on the surgery. She didn’t say anything more as we drove to the hospital. Terrible scenarios ran through my head as we checked in, went through pre-op, and waited for the anesthesiologist. The clock on the wall ticked off several hours as we waited, but there was still no sign of my mom. 

“She’s fine,” Janet kept saying. 

My mom was still not there by the time they wheeled me into surgery. 

“I’m nervous,” I told the anesthesiologist.

“That’s normal.” He fiddled with my IV. “This first dose I’m going to give you is like a glass of wine. You’re going to feel great in a few minutes.”

“But it’s not just about the surgery. My mom got in a car accident and she’s not here. I don’t know if she’s going to be okay…”

The next thing I remember, a nurse was calling my name. “Jennifer…Jennifer…” People rarely called me by my full name, and it felt strange to hear it. 

Something else felt different, too. I didn’t feel shaky. I didn’t feel like I was out of control from the medicine coursing through my body. There was a dull ache in my abdomen, but otherwise, I felt completely calm. In my head, a voice softly said, “You’re stronger than you think, Jen Crystal.” Maybe it was my own subconscious. Maybe it was God. Maybe it was George Clooney. Whoever it was, I knew, in that moment, that I’d survived the surgery and I was going to survive whatever else was coming, too.

“My mom,” I said to the nurse. “Is my mom alright? Is she here?”

“I don’t know,” the nurse replied. “I’m not sure who your mom is. But someone gave me this and told me to give it to you as soon as you woke up.” She held out Cubby. 

Only then did I start to cry. 

The President’s New Children’s Crusade

We are the mudweary
bringing the blossoms of death.
We are the Contras, the blessed,
liberty’s torching lames us,
we are the old children.
shredding night’s humid serenity.
bombs unleashed are our laughter.
we are the young men of war.

We are the death marchers
who slink through the mountain,
one endless serpent of soldiers
sent to strangle our enemies;
The president sends us
with his blessing, blesses us
with his sending, blesses
the bleeding.

There is no need for interceding,
for the Sandinistas
are infidels wrapped in red,
red in their wrapping;
rapping on doors in the night.
Contras are the bringers of light
rapoing indoors when we might,
we bring the light to the burning,
always discerning the right,
the right. After the bellies
are emptied of babies,
after the buildings are belching,
their flames springing higher
we scatter, no matter the plunder,
the thunder roars through the dark,
the spark of freedom is lighted,
ignited.

We are innocents marching,
we are the crusaders of death,
new life we bring our nation,
new breath, new salvation our message.
We have the president’s blessing
he sends us the blessing of rending,
his blessing is drowned
in the bleeding.

Detritus

You can tell me
that what happens
PUUUupon the soil
PUUUUUUUUUbeneath our feet
does not matter

that the violence –
PUUUgunpowder
PUUUbullets
PUUUlandmines
PUUUblood spilled
PUUUand rot of bones and flesh
does not affect the terroir

that the terror
over centuries
on land –
PUUUdisputed
PUUUand stolen
PUUUfought over
PUUUconquered
PUUUand lost
is not ad infinitum
buried in this graveyard
PUUUUUUUUUUUUcalled home

You cannot tell me
that what happens
PUUUupon the soil
PUUUUUUUUUbeneath our feet
does not matter

that the battles –
PUUUsweeping or contained
PUUUas enemy or ally
are not eternally captured in the earth
PUUUdust inhaled and ingested
PUUUUUUUUUbut also embedded
PUUUUUUUUUUUUin our collective consciousness
like a rusty compass
nestled in the palm of each newborn child
PUUUUUUUUUUUUits arrow clearly pointing
PUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUto the forever trenches
PUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUof inheritance.

Dr. Maldonado fiddled with the picture of his hot wife and blonde sons, making sure I noticed. Hot professors are rare at Christian universities. They’re mostly Anglican, for some reason. Such a character. I was happy for him.

“I’m thinking about grad school,” I said, taking a seat and crossing one leg over the other. “I suspect this could be my calling.”

Christians take this idea very seriously. Dr. Maldonado raised his eyebrow and rotated his coffee mug on his desk. It had a picture of his wife on it also. Her hair was done up in little ringlets. She looked like she had good theology, good ovaries. “Your calling,” he reflected. “Well, Lauren, your work thus far has been… general, I’d say. So I’d be inclined to ask what specifically you’d want to study.”

Ouch. I thought for a moment. “I don’t know.”

“Well, do you have a topic for your paper? Grad apps would be due in, what, a year? This would be a good opportunity to get some research together.”

“Dr. Maldonado,” I said, touched. “Thank you.”

A few minutes later he said he had to get ready for class. “Perfect timing,” I told him. “My grandpa’s funeral is about to start.”

He looked at me funny, then decided I was joking. “See you in class, Lauren,” he said. From his breast pocket he pulled out a small cloth and began polishing his lenses. His face was round and pale without glasses. He looked as blind as a mole. The spell was broken.

I walked across campus to my dorm. Around me the elect 2,000 bumbled along. Most of them were homeschool kids, weirdos. Unfortunate I would end up at this backwards school, but my grandparents were paying for college. Or I guess just my grandma.

Alone, I sat on my bed and FaceTimed into my grandpa’s funeral, which was down in California. I guess not a funeral, per se. He’d been a marine, so some soldiers would shoot their guns in his honor. My dad answered my FaceTime and directed the camera toward the proceedings. I was in Gram’s backyard. Two men in blue uniforms and crisp white hats appeared. My family stood off to the side. The marines folded the flag into a triangle with precise, robotic motions. My grandma accepted the flag with a bow, ran her hands along the fabric, then, with gravitas, held it out in offering. For a moment I thought it was coming to me, but then I remembered I was only a phone. My brother reached into the frame and accepted the Old Glory. He hugged my grandma and saluted the marines. He was in uniform also. A few hours later he’d be back in Texas, where he was stationed.

Afterward, my dad’s face appeared. “We were bummed you couldn’t be here, sweetie,” he said. “Mom and I are going to stay with Grandma through the weekend if you want to come down. She’d love that.”

“No thanks,” I said. Not a chance. It would be nice to see my dad, but not worth it, even with how boring my weekends had been. At Calvin the only thing to look forward to was the biscuits and gravy they served for the Sabbath. Everyone just hunkered down and tried not to masturbate until then. Luckily there was the prayer chapel when one inevitably failed. Nothing makes you want to jack off like a Christian university, I swear. Except your childhood home.

“Are you sure?” he said. “There’s a greyhound coming down tomorrow morning. Grandma said she would pay for it.”

“That’s very kind of her,” I said.

Shortly after we hung up, I heard the fateful footfalls. Two sets. One heavy, one light. So it was both. Brooke and I had dormed together just over a month; it was the end of September. Brooke was one of the few people I liked at Calvin. The problem was that she came with Wes, who sucked. Brooke opened the door and peeked her head in. “Oh, Lauren. I thought you were out.”

Before I could respond, Wes shoved his ogreish frame into the room. “Hmm,” he said, squinting at me. He had a round and pale chin, and wore a hat with an assault rifle on the front that said “OreGUNian.” I don’t know what he thought I was impeding. At best they would’ve made out. Brooke is super Christian.

“My grandpa just died,” I said flatly. Not technically true, but I was losing control.

“Oh!” Brooke said. “I’m so sorry! We can go somewhere else.”

Wes blew air from his nose and dropped himself on Brooke’s bed, his camo pants monstrous on the pink duvet. “We can’t go to my room,” he said. “Mike’s in there with the chick from Dead Sea Scrolls.” Brooke winced. “He said they’re going to be in there all weekend, so.”

“Okay,” I said. “Yeah, you guys can be in here, sure. I’m actually going home this weekend. I meant to ask, Brooke, could you take me to the greyhound station tomorrow morning?”

“Killer,” Wes said. “Yeah, she can take you. Mike is gonna be stoked.” He rolled his eyes lustily around the room. I had a vision of him urinating in my pop-up hamper. “That your brother?” he asked, settling on a framed picture on my desk.

The picture in question showed me hugging my brother on an airstrip at dawn—him in the marine getup, me in a hoodie. “Why,” I said.

“When you see him, thank him for his service,” he said bravely. “My uncle is in the army.”

The idea that there was some similarity between Wes’s convictions and what my brother was fighting for—which I understood to be nothing—made me want to puke.

“Aw,” Brooke said. “You’re so sweet.” She nuzzled beside him on the futon. He grunted and lay back like a fat lion. They lay side-by-side, shoulders touching like cloud-watchers in a field—so chaste it was dirty.

~

Brooke took me to the bus stop the next morning. “I think Wes might be a fascist,” I told her.

She turned the heater up all the way. “I’m not a political person,” she said.

I looked out the window. “Well,” I said, “thanks for dropping me off.”

I sat on a gum-crusted bench. The Chehalem Mountains sloped behind me, and in front the road ran out where the valley opens to the sky, which was thin blue at the top but yellow over the hills. Somewhere, my grandpa was looking down at me and this wide cold country, thinking about immigration and Reaganomics and law and order. Not heaven, but somewhere.

It was late evening when the bus reached the city. My dad’s hatchback was in the parking lot. He was a shortish man with fair hair that gleamed in the streetlight—a black sheep among the Italian eyebrows and thick black hair of the de Lucas, my mom’s side. He was a middle school teacher. I’d always had a soft spot for him, but over the years that softness had morphed into a kind of pity. He couldn’t pay for college, which seemed to diminish him. Still, I was glad he’d been the one to come.

“Welcome back, Lo,” he said, and hugged me and took my bag.

“Who’s at Grandma’s?” I asked as we pulled onto the freeway, heading into the suburbs.

“Just me and Mom. And Grandma.”

“How’s she doing?”

He gave me a blank, knowing face. This sort of frustration had been our secret language among the de Lucas—the solidarity of outsiders. “She’s Grandma,” he said. “How are you handling things?”

“Fine,” I said. “Grandpa was a tough guy, so.”

He shrugged.

The lawns were trim; the lanes were lined with poplars. Mansions of orange glass stared down from the hills. The gate swung open, and we drove to the top of the hill. We parked in the driveway of my grandma’s formidable house and walked up to the huge double doors, which were made of smooth red wood and latticed with glass like chapel windows.

My grandma threw open the front door. She seemed taller, thinner. She palmed the air for my cheeks. I let her grab my face. The smell of instant coffee, perfume, and wine washed over me with kisses. “It’s so good to see you, baby,” she said, then grabbed my hand and led me to the kitchen table. She pushed me into a chair and, seeing my parents shuffle in behind us, asked them to get me something to eat, I must be starving. I felt the empty rooms and hallways. My grandma sat with her back to a pair of tall windows. I ate microwaved chicken parmesan and said yes to the Chianti she offered.

“How have you been, Grandma?” I asked once I’d settled in.

“Carrying on,” she said. “It does get lonely. Though I’m on Facebook now,” she said, then laughed like it was the craziest thing in the world. “So, it’s been nice to connect with old friends. But how are you? How’s school?” I told her it was going fine. “Sociology, huh?” she asked. “Like your father? I just hope I’m not paying for you to make lattes once you graduate,” she said, then laughed.

My dad laughed softly. What infuriated me was the sense that my father’s deference was a tithe, his laughter a thing owed in lieu of money he, we, would never make. Because I am not my brother, I decided not to pay. “What’s your degree in?”

“Lauren!”

My grandma’s face went smooth. “It wasn’t an option for me,” she said coldly. “The only reason you’re able to go is because Grandpa spent his life 30 feet up a powerline. Public service. It’s the schools now, they don’t teach you kids that,” she said. “Though your brother seemed to pick it up somewhere.”

I looked at my dad. I waited for him to say something in my defense, but he stared into his wine glass, impotent. We shrunk back into a soured small talk. After a few minutes I said, “I think I’m gonna go to bed. Long drive.”

“Oh, but we forgot to toast!” my grandma said. She raised her glass. The three of us followed without enthusiasm. “To Grandpa,” she said to my mom and dad. “And to your brother,” she said to me.

My grandma, generous in victory, offered me any bed in the house. I chose the couch. Everything else felt dirty. I laid in musty quilts and cried. Then I got angry, and passed the time simulating arguments in which I smoothly dismantled my grandma in various political debates. But I would’ve been up at that all night. So I went to the kitchen for some water. I halted before the entryway. Someone was around the corner, breathing. I peeked around the wall. My grandma sat alone at the kitchen table, scrolling her iPad. Beside her was a cup of wine, filled to its brim, black in the darkness. She raised the cup to her lips. Her face seemed doubly wrinkled in the iPad’s soft blue light. I could see the tiny muscles of her face twitch to what she was reading: an elongation of lips, a flare of eyes, a crease along forehead, a plunge of brow—these gestures flashed across her face, signs meant for no one, formed in darkness. Like a malfunctioning robot. On her face was a secret despair at a country which had left her behind, and out of that, tiny celebrations of meaningless victories. Her breath was raspy like a snore. I crept backward with averted eyes, to hide the shame.

~

My dad dropped me at the greyhound stop early Sunday morning. The idea had been brewing all weekend. Gam was the symbol of a collapsing generation, a perfect case study of the mentally vulnerable, and the ideal intersection of my personal and sociological interest. I was eager to get on the road. As we drove, the sun rose over the long, grassy plains of Northern California, and I texted Brooke: “Can you pick me up at the bus stop tonight?”

“I don’t think so, I’m gonna be at Wes’s tonight. We’re watching Prince of Egypt.”

“I’m sorry I called Wes a fascist.”

She took a while to reply. “It’s okay. I get what you mean.” I wasn’t sure what she meant, but it sounded hopeful. I told her I’d buy her a coffee if she would pick me up. She said okay. With that taken care of, I set to work. The first thing would be to create a fake person with whom I could interact with my grandma. Who would she respond to? Not me, certainly. Someone like my brother. So I googled “American soldier” and scrolled through my options. I settled on a picture of a man wearing Oakley sunglasses. He stood in what looked to be a hot, dry place, surrounded by dusty green tents. He wore camouflage. Gam would love him. I used an old email address to make a Facebook profile. What should I name him? Colonel something. Colonel Sand— Colonel Sandro, I typed. I birthed him in 1964, and made him from Oklahoma, a respectable state. Then I plugged in the picture of American Soldier. I paused and admired my work. There he was, a tabula rasa, waiting for his breath of life. Colonel Sandro. At ease, soldier.

I set to it, giving him all sorts of strange biographical information. The Colonel, since his honorable discharge after two tours as an Army Ranger in Kuwait, had found work as an underwater electrician. He was a very serious snowmobiler, and in fact even built his own snowmobiles—sometimes underwater. I gave Colonel Sandro all the nuances of a flesh-and-blood human being, which, for the conservative patriot I was making him to be, could be fabricated in less than half an hour. Once the Colonel was online, I reposted a bunch of conservative content on my—our?—page. Little sticky traps for my grandma. Then I searched Elena de Luca, and there she was: her profile picture was of her and my brother, hugging tenderly the moment she handed him my grandpa’s flag. And there, in the background, was me: the phone in my father’s hand, a dark lens. I hit “Add Friend” then slept until Oregon.

~

The following afternoon my grandma became my friend. I messaged her. “Hi Elena,” I typed, voicing each word as a man’s in my head. “I’m sorry to hear about Bob. He was the best of us.” I grimaced and hit send. A few minutes later, the ellipses popped onto the screen.

“Hello,” she wrote. “Thank you for the condolences. How did you know Bob?”

“From work,” I said. “We met at an electrician’s conference in Tucson. He took me under his wing at a time when I didn’t know why I was doing it anymore. Bob was a great man.”

“I don’t remember him going to a conference,” she responded. “But there was a lot I did not know about him.”

Alone in my room I felt insane. I read her message over-and-over. “The men of this country bear such a terrible burden,” I wrote, my hands flying on the keys. “Especially of his generation. Feels like there’s not a single man like Bob these days.” I bit my nails and clicked send.

“I know,” she said. “My grandson gives me hope. He remembers the things this country was founded on. He is in the army too.” This was accompanied by an emoji of a terrifying grin.

“Well God bless,” I said. “Maybe I know him. I was in Kuwait just a couple weeks ago.” That felt stupid immediately. Kuwait? Sure, I’m there all the time.

“Probably not,” she responded. “He’s stationed in Texas. Lance Corporal Jimmy de Luca, 187^th Infantry. Is there a name and rank I could pass along to him? I’m sure he would love to talk with someone who knew Bob. The passing has been hard on him.”

I panicked. “Colonel James Sandro,” I wrote, “Army Ranger in the 101^st Airborne.” I hit send and began another message: “Bob did not seem like a man who kept secrets, but if he did, I’m sure he had his reasons.”

The ellipses were up for a long time. “Bob was a great husband,” was all she said.

~

I waited two days; I didn’t want to seem too eager. In the meantime, I drafted more focused lines of inquiry regarding Operation Catfish My Grandma. I decided to relocate my dear grandmother from the relatively banal Facebook into more extreme right-wing internet spheres, and basically just see what happens. Was I hoping to turn her blue? Of course not. People over 40 don’t change their minds. But neither did I want to mindlessly enact a political conflict for its mere drama. Instead, I would study it. Scholarship legitimized the whole endeavor.

On the morning of the day I was to message my grandma, just after my first class, I walked into my room and discovered Wes and Brooke sitting in silence on the futon, not touching. Brooke’s eyes were red.

“You’re still up for coffee, right Brooke?” I asked, as if we had plans.

Brooke looked up and nodded, smiling sadly. Wes stood and pulled his shirt down over his gut—the libertarian snake uncoiling—and walked out, giving her a look. The door shut. We released our breath simultaneously.

“What was that?” I asked.

“He’s not a bad guy,” she said. “I know you think that, but he’s not. He’s complicated.”

She looked so innocent. I empathized with her—both at the mercy of Republicans.

“Do you want to see something?” I asked. I sat down at my desk and opened Facebook. Brooke pulled her chair up behind me. “Hello, Elena,” I typed, thinking in the man-voice, then hit send and pulled up the Colonel’s profile.

“This is for my sociology class,” I told Brooke, scrolling up and down. “I made a fake person to talk to my grandma about her beliefs.”

“That seems—weird.”

“I’m gonna tell her, of course. Once I have the data.”

“Data on what?” she asked, but I just shrugged.

It took my grandma less than ten minutes to respond. “Hello, James,” she said. “I worried I’d never hear from you again. How have you been?”

“Check it out,” I told Brooke, then typed, “Oh, just fine, Elena, just fine. And yourself?”

When I was writing like that, I had a vision: the Colonel beside a grill, hairy toes tan in my flops, smell of charcoal and cut grass, a brew in my left hand, silver tongs in my right. Just fine.

“I’ve been mostly alright. A little lonely.” Then in a separate message she said, “It’s been very nice to find some old friends, but they don’t fill the house, you know.”

“This is kind of sad,” Brooke said.

I squinted. “Once, for Christmas, my grandma gave my brother $100, and me $50.”

Brooke raised her eyebrow. “You’re doing this for sociology?”

“I’m doing this for a lot of reasons.” I cracked my fingers then typed, “Nothing’ll replace Bob, but I know some folks he would’ve loved to meet. Folks who aren’t on Facebook.” To Brooke I said, “I’m trying to see how she’d react to a site like Reddit.”

“Wes is on Reddit every day,” she said. She looked at the screen with more interest.

 “Yes, I’ve liked some of them!” my grandma replied. “You know, I thought it would be harder to find level-headed people on Facebook. California is so Democrat I forget we are actually the majority.”

I took a screenshot and scribbled some notes. “I’m trying to see how people like her, and Wes kinda, end up as they do. Or how they get worse.”

“You mean conservatives?”

“No no,” I lied. “It’s both sides.” Then I turned back to the screen.

“Hell, don’t I know it,” I typed, feeling saucy. “And Facebook is just the tip of the iceberg. We’re everywhere. Can I show you a place that’s even better?”

“Will you be there?” my grandma responded. This time the emoji winked.

~

That’s how I got my grandma on Reddit. Making a col.sandro12 profile was no problem, and then there she was: ElenadeLuca1945. I spent some time beforehand mapping the conservative Reddit sphere. The best place to start was r/CollegeRepublicans. Most redditors there espoused old-school right-wing politics, deregulation and stuff. I explained the site to my grandma beforehand—how you went to a r/ page, how you posted comments, how the voting system worked. She picked it up in no time.

“It just blesses my heart to see the youth like this,” she wrote me following an exchange on how political correctness is modern Nazism. “On the news it seems like all kids care about are vaping, video games, and transgenderism.”

Gam was ready for the deep dive.

But I was wrong. When we moved on to the more intense r/Anglosphere, she was appalled. “This is awful, Jim,” she told me. “I don’t even know what ‘cuck’ means. My husband would flop in his grave if he knew I was on here.”

I panicked. “You can’t think of it like that,” I said, channeling the Colonel’s militancy. “No offense, Elena, but you come from a time when politics were civilized and rational. You’ve got to have grit! Just think what’s at stake.”

Grudgingly at first, then curiously, then zealously, she grew a pair of big Reddit nuts. I took meticulous notes. Over time we fell into a schedule: every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon we met on Facebook, moved to r/Anglosphere to bolster our traditional values, then made our way to r/politics to hash it out with the snowflakes. After six weeks I had compiled extensive field observations on the capabilities of my grandma to not only adopt the idiosyncrasies of incel speech, but even to generate and spread neologisms. Her language became violent as well. “If they don’t wanna work, shoot ‘em,” she wrote in one post. I encouraged this. It estranged her into the thing I hated. It felt like I was in the vanguard of sociological research. My grandma was my prodigy, and as time went on, when I pictured the Colonel by his grill, I imagined my grandma there as well: her toes brushing the surface of the swimming pool, looking up at me expectantly, waiting for the tri-tip. We’d never been closer.

But my research was constantly interrupted by Wes and Brooke. They fought so much they were comfortable fighting while I was in the room. I was spending so much time in Wes’s world, I felt like I understood him, too. As the weeks went by, more-and-more I heard Brooke crying in the dark, after Wes had gone.

I finished my paper just before Thanksgiving. At the time, I felt I’d conclusively demonstrated that the root of conservative thought was a sort of vestigial sociopathy left over from the toddlerhood worship of the father, and that only the senile, repressed, rich, or stupid—or some combination of the four—were susceptible to this kind of politics, but also that the senile, repressed, rich, and stupid constituted an alarming portion of the population, indeed even sometimes a political majority. I wanted to slap Dr. Maldonado on his juicy Anglican ass. I was an academic. I turned the paper in with a wink and a flourish. Perfect timing: back to my grandma’s for Thanksgiving.

The night I was to head back to Sacramento—Wednesday—I walked into my room after class to pack my things. Brooke was lying face-down on her futon, sobbing into the duvet. I set my backpack down and dropped to a knee beside her. “What did he do,” I said.

Brooke rolled onto her side to face me. Her mouth was all quivery. Spit webbed between her lips. “Are we even friends?” she moaned.

I leaned my head against her shoulder. “Of course,” I said. And I was happy.

After a few stabilizing bouts of tears, Brooke stood and wiped her eyes. “He’s such an asshole!” she said, pacing the room. “And don’t say anything.”

I put my hands up, hopeful at her use of the word asshole. “I would never,” I said. “What happened?”

Brooke sat down on my bed. She wiped her eyes with both hands outward toward her ears. “I broke up with him.” I waited. “And he said ‘no.’”

“No?”

“No. And said if I forced his hand, he would tell our bible study we had sex.”

I understood why that was a big deal, but it was still somewhat difficult to empathize.

“Jesus,” I breathed. “What are you going to do?”

“We’re gonna talk after I drop you off at the greyhound station.”

We didn’t say anything on the ride over. When I got out of the car, I told her that yeah, it would be tough if she lost her friends, but that I’d be there etc., etc. She just nodded. Then I left.

The bus rolled through the countryside. I couldn’t sleep. It was only after we rolled into the city, after I got into my dad’s car, that I finally slept, and hard.

I woke on my grandma’s couch in the late afternoon. The autumn sun was warm on my face. The voices of the de Lucas sounded from the kitchen, along with the smells of Thanksgiving. I sat up and rubbed my eyes. When I opened them, my grandma was standing in the hallway. “Hey, baby,” she said, then hugged me warmly. “So good to see you. Come say hi to everyone.” My mom and dad bustled around in the kitchen. The air was thick with the smell of food. With a wink my dad poured me a glass of wine, something bold and Californian, and because I hadn’t eaten, my cheeks flushed and my blood warmed. Conversation came easy across the generations. My grandma was glowing, happier than I’d ever seen her. And it was not so much a revelation I had, more like a voice I heard—my own—that asked what the fuck am I doing catfishing my grandma? In my head I executed Colonel Sandro by firing squad and felt much better. I swilled wine and schmoozed.

The doorbell rang just before dinner. My brother stood in the doorway. He was in fatigues, a bag slung over his shoulder. “Hello?” he called. The four of us swarmed him, my mom kissing his cheeks, my dad pulling him into a bear hug, and my grandma, tears in her eyes, resting her head on his chest, saying, “I missed you.”

“Hey, little sister,” he said, grinning, after they had cleared.

“Hey,” I said. “I didn’t know you were coming.”

He held me at arm’s length and looked up and down my face. “So you’ve got a nose ring now,” he teased. “It looks awful.”

“Haha!” I said, because it was stupid, because it was him. Disarmed without meaning to be, I wrapped him in a big hug. There was a sort of comfort, I realized, in the acceptance of differences—a playfulness on both sides I’d ignored. No matter what, I was one of them. I looked over and saw my dad smiling at us. I smiled back, home at last.

Before dinner we placed our phones in a wicker basket under the windowsill. De Luca tradition. As we took our seats, the basket filled with iPhones and Androids and Grandma’s tablet. Then we ate and had a good time.

“So, I’ve got some news,” Grandma said afterward. Her voice was high and thin from the wine. “I’ve met someone,” she said.

My blood went cold. I studiously rearranged green beans on my plate.

“Mom!” said my mother. “It’s only been a couple months.”

She waved away the criticism. “It’s not serious,” she said. “We’re just messaging online. And I’ve been so lonely. And Tommy,” she said. “He was in the Army, too!”

After a second, my dad said, “Good for you, Elena,” and my mom reluctantly echoed, “I’m sure Bob would understand.” But that was all. Conversation awkwardly resumed. I was quiet.

My dad filled the sink with soap and water for dishes. “Will you dry for me, Lo?” he

asked.

“Sure,” I said, and got up and grabbed a towel.

“I can help too,” Tommy said, but my grandma grabbed his arm.

“Hold on, Tommy, I want to show you something. Go fetch me my iPad, will you?” she said, putting on her reading glasses. “I want to show you a picture of Jim.”

I watched as Tommy took the iPad from the basket and brought it to the table. Grandma used her index finger to open Facebook. Her eyebrows popped over the top of her reading glasses, as though this were a thing which required great concentration. Finally, she managed to pull up the Colonel’s profile. Tommy squinted at it. “Well,” she said. “Do you recognize him?”

He laughed. “No, I don’t,” he said. “He probably served before me. What division?”

She swelled with pride. “Army Rangers,” she said. “101^st Airborne.”

He laughed, again at her ignorance. “I doubt it,” he said. “That’s not a special forces unit.”

Grandma frowned. “Well that’s what Jim told me. Here,” she said, scrolling up through our messages. “Look, Jim said ‘Army Ranger in the 101^st Airborne.’” Her voice was stubborn, assured. Out of touch. Like any grandma. I was drying off a saucepan and listening, blurry with anxiety.

“Let me see,” he said, taking the iPad. He went to the Colonel’s profile. “Grandma,” he said severely. “How long have you been talking to this person.”

“Oh, I don’t know, a couple months?”

“This profile was made a couple months ago,” he said grimly. “There’s only one picture. Have you given out any information to this person? Credit cards or anything?”

“Goodness no,” she said, shocked. “Why would Jim ask me for that?”

“This is a fake account,” Tommy said.

“What do you mean, fake? A person can’t be fake. Give me that,” she said, taking back the tablet. “I’ll message him right now.”

I dropped the pan and cut toward the basket. Too late: my phone buzzed, impossibly loud, rattling against three other phones. Tommy looked at the basket, then at me. His mouth fell open at the panic on my face. Grandma was still focused on Facebook. I snatched my phone out of the basket just as she sent a second message; it buzzed audibly in my hand. Then she looked at me, her eyes narrowed. She sent another message, then another. Dumbly I gripped my buzzing phone.

“Lauren?” she asked.

The confusion in her voice broke my heart. There was no explaining. I slipped my phone into my back pocket and looked at my socks on the tile.

“Is this you?”

The question contained a number of dimensions, not a single one of which I was prepared to answer. “I…”

“Excuse me,” she said. She stood, an old woman, and pushed in her chair. She went upstairs.

“What did you do?” Tommy said.

I looked around. My mom and dad were watching me also. “I’ve been messaging her,” I said. “For a school project.”

My mom followed upstairs without a word. I stood in the same place, not sure where to go, what to do. I turned to my dad, but he just shook his head and gravely said, “Lo…” Tommy got up and followed my mom. I sat on the couch, looking dumbly again at my feet. My dad finished the dishes in silence.

Finally, my mom came back downstairs. I anticipated anger, but she took one look at me and broke down crying. “What?” I begged, but she walked right past, into the kitchen where she began to speak to my dad in a low voice.

I walked upstairs. The bedroom door was open. My grandma sat in the easy chair, my brother at her side, silent. She stared at me. I stared back. An odd look of triumph was on her face.

“I’m sorry,” I said. What else was there to say?

Her voice was measured. “If you’re so intent on being this, this outcast, then you can do it without my help.”

What did that mean? I looked at my brother, but his face was a mask. I left.

Downstairs, at the kitchen table, I sat across from my parents. My mom wiped the tears under her eyes. “So,” she said weakly. “Grandma’s not going to pay for college anymore.”

I felt weightless. “What?”

“What did you do, Lo?” my dad asked. His voice was so… tired.

“Nothing,” I said. “I just… it was a school thing. For a paper. She’s really doing this?”

My mom nodded, very slowly.

“I’m not moving home,” I said. “Dad, please.”

“Please what,” my dad said. He grabbed my mom’s hands, then lay his head across her knuckles.

~

My brother took me to the greyhound station early the following morning. “Are you alright, Lo?” he asked in the parking lot.

I wanted his anger, not his concern. “I’m fine,” I said. “Thanks for the ride.”

I boarded the bus and curled up in the back. The bus took off into the plains. Up ahead Mt. Shasta rose against the ice blue horizon, into which the sun had not yet risen. I wished it wouldn’t. A few rows ahead, a little boy peeked around his seat. He stared at me with black eyes. For a long time I stared back, us two alone awake in the lawless dawn.

By the time we rolled into the Willamette Valley, I felt strange: hollow but intensely perceptive, my mind quick and sharp. I did not want to leave, I realized. Brooke picked me up. I asked if she wanted to get a drink, and was surprised when she said yes. It seemed we both were reluctant to share how the weekend had gone. We drove to Lumpy’s on the edge of town. She asked me what she should get. I said I’d handle it, and came back with an armful of dollar gel-o shots. We took a booth and used hairpins to scoop out the muck. At first Brooke puckered at the taste, but after three or four, she put them back easily. I waited until I felt the alcohol, then asked her what happened with Wes.

“If I tell you, can we still be friends?” she asked.

The word friend almost brought me to tears. “Yes.”

“We’re back together.”

“Fuck, why?”

“It’s just easier,” she said. “You don’t have friends like ours. They’re not very… nice.”

I put my head in my hands. “Fuck, fuck,” I said, then groaned.

“What? What is it?”

“My grandma found out about the Colonel. She said she’s not paying for school anymore. I might have to move back home.”

“How did we both—? How come neither of us could—?” She looked away, embarrassed.

The bar became rowdy around us. A fly landed in one of the cups and rubbed his little hands on a nuclear green bit of gel-o.

“Do you want to play ping-pong?” I asked.

The liquor hit while we played. “You’re good,” I told Brooke, wobbling.

“Church camp champ,” she said, then pounded a topspin off my side. It bounced into a nearby pitcher of light beer. “I’m sorry!” she said to a couple of old drunks, then caught the ball back and served it past me again.

After a couple of games, neither of us could drive. We sat in the dirt at the edge of a vineyard. The wind rustled the vines in the light of a full November moon. I was happy.

“How are we getting home,” I asked lazily.

“I can text Wes,” she said. The thought made her giggle.

“Yeah, yeah. Do it. That would be fun. He doesn’t drink, does he?”

Brooke recoiled and shook her head dramatically. “No way,” she said. “What’s he gonna do, break up with me?” She pulled out her phone and texted him.

“I have a plan to stay here,” I told her. “I want to stay. With you. Not like, I don’t know, but I want to stay.” I felt myself blushing.

Maybe I loved her. Maybe I did. But that is beyond the scope of this paper.

She just laughed. “I want you to stay, too.”

We were quiet for a while. We watched the valley. The moon was so bright we could see the hills rear up against the night, their slopes covered with vines and thatches of fir. Moonlit clouds rose up flat in the darkness behind them. It was not too cold. A pair of headlights flashed into our faces. We shielded our eyes. A car door opened. It was Wes.

“You guys smell,” he said.

“Shut up,” Brooke told him.

~

“Do you remember a few days ago,” I told Brooke at breakfast the next day, “about that Navy veteran in Portland? Who shot and killed that protester?”

“Wes was talking about that,” she said warily. “Why?”

“He’s facing 25 to life,” I explained. “Conservatives are riled up about it.”

“So?”

“So my grandma’s been watching that,” I said. She waited for me to explain. “You’re a computer science major, so you know how to set up websites and stuff?”

“Why?”

I told her my idea.

She frowned. “No way,” she said. “That’s fraud.”

“It is,” I said, “but all you have to do is show me how to do it.”

“Won’t they know it was me who helped you?”

“Who’s they, Brooke? Come on. I need you. Don’t you want me to stay? My life is fucked if I have to leave. I’ll end up living in some crackhead apartments. I’ll become a prostitute. Please!”

So Brooke taught me how to build a website. Basically, the idea was to create a fake fundraising webpage for the Navy veteran’s legal team. www.right2selfdefense.law. I did some research and filled the site with a lineup of conservative legal experts, then surrounded them with American flags and right-wing adages. The donation fund linked to a stealth PayPal account that Brooke helped me set up, which I could route to my own account. Then I posted the website link on 4chan at the local library under a card I faked using a school ID I took from the lost and found. It was a professional quality job. I posted the link on all the old Reddit threads. After the post was up, I changed Colonel Sandro’s name and profile picture so I could repost it on Facebook where my grandma would see it. Then we were live.

We made two grand in the first week. When I opened PayPal and saw the number, I ran across campus to our dorm. Brooke started shaking when she saw it. That night we went to Lumpy’s and bought the whole bar a round of Rainiers. By three weeks we had $11,000. A popular far-right blog had kicked it to their social media. But I had no way of knowing if I’d bagged the trophy buck. Had my grandma even seen it? I called my mom. “Can you ask Grandma something for me?” I told her my question.

“What is this about, Lauren?” she asked skeptically.

“Please, Mom. You know how difficult this time has been for me.”

“No. Are you moving back home after this semester? We cleared your brother’s room.”

“I told you, I’m staying here.”

Then it all fell apart. A few days later, the Navy vet hung himself in jail. The tithes stopped coming in. Desperate, I started a fundraiser for the funeral expenses, but it didn’t get the same kind of attention. We’d already made over $17,000 dollars. Although this felt like a great sum, it wasn’t even enough to pay for one semester. My days in God’s kingdom were numbered.

“Brooke,” I said, “How committed are you to your education?”

“What?” She looked up from her phone. “I don’t know, very?”

“Come on,” I said. “Let’s get an apartment in the city. Let’s be cocktail waitresses at some fancy restaurant.” Brooke gave me this heartbroken look. She sat beside me on my bed and squeezed one of my hands. “What?” I said. “What?”

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Stop,” I said. “You sound like my brother.”

“What do you mean?”

I couldn’t explain it, so I told her I was gonna go talk to financial aid. Instead I went to Dr. Maldonado’s office.

“Are you looking for your sociology paper?” said the old humanities secretary when I came in. She eyed me warily. “It should be in your mailbox.”

I shoved into the mail room. A white-haired prof was waiting for the coffee maker to finish. After one look at my face, he left. A thin sheaf of paper rested in my cubby. I pulled it out. There was a big red D on the top. Underneath it said, “Unfocused, unorganized, unethical, un-Christlike.” I wanted to scream. I held it up with two hands and bit the corner as hard as I could. I cast it, mutilated, into the recycle bin, then stormed up the stairway to Dr. Maldonado’s office.

“Oh,” he said when he saw me in the doorway. A student was in a chair across from him. The twerp swiveled around, startled.

“Please give us the room,” I growled.

“Lauren, you can’t—”

“It’s fine,” said the boy, clearly shaken. I moved to let him pass, but stayed on my feet.

“That was very inappropriate,” said Dr. Maldonado.

“Are you happy with your wife?” I said.

“Lauren!” he said. “I’m going to politely ask that you—”

“I’m going to have to drop out,” I rushed. “My family won’t pay anymore. And what is that going to do to my calling?” The levee broke; tears spilled down my face.

He sighed. “Sit down,” he said. I did. I tried to stifle the sobs, but that just made them sound broken and gross. Dr. Maldonado handed me a box of tissues, shut the door, then sat and waited for me to compose myself. I arrived at a breathy calm. “What’s going on,” he said.

“I’m fine,” I said, wiping my eyes. “I’m not one of those girls who cries in their professor’s office. I’m sure you have other things to worry about,” I said, nodding toward the picture of his family.

“I’m not sure what you mean by that.” He angled the pictured frame away from me. “But I do have an obligation, financially and biblically, to be here. So. What is it?”

“My life is ruined, that’s all. I’m dropping out. I’m not gonna get a degree. My family wants nothing to do with me. I only have one friend. And I guess I’m no good at sociology, even.”

“Your paper did show promise at times. Certainly it was inventive. Perhaps I graded you to the standard of graduate school,” he said gently. “Regarding the other stuff, I’m sure a campus therapist would be happy to meet with you during your remaining couple weeks.”

“You mean the faith healers?” I sat back and crossed my arms. “I’m good.”

He sighed. “If your dream is really in higher education, then you’ll figure out how to make it happen. There’s community college, scholarships, plenty of resources. If you feel you’ve actually been called, then the matter is settled: nothing can rescind it. Do you believe that?”

That was the last time I saw Dr. Maldonado. I did leave his office feeling a little better, but it faded the moment I saw Wes and Brooke in the room, the same as ever. Nothing changes. I stopped going to class. As winter break approached, I kept feeling like the FBI was gonna bust down my door and throw me in lady prison. But no one ever came. Nervously I began to transfer some of the money from PayPal into my bank account. $17,000—I could live for a year on that. I took a room at the Rivercrest Apartments, a shitty complex across the highway. Brooke helped me move. Sometimes she comes over and we eat Chinese food. I didn’t go home for Christmas. My mom and dad called that morning, but it was awkward. It snowed that day—rare for Oregon. Of course nothing stuck. That evening I sat outside my door, on a plastic chair provided by the apartments. Me and all the other old smokers, lined up outside like gargoyles.

Me, I just sat there and thought about what Dr. Maldonado said before I left. About how you can’t be uncalled. I know what that means. It means some people are never called at all.

~

Fights within the infantry were common enough that their variations came to be source material for a dark form of in-unit comedy. So it was with one of my tussles in the Pendleton dirt.

My platoon, nearing a four-day weekend of liberty, hurled headlong into its assignments like men frenzied by a demon possession. Our leaders enthralled our thinking minds with the simple incantation of the word “leisure” alone. Noncoms whipped themselves into a lather, finding a way to use the carrot of a long weekend as a psychological stick. Every whiff of insubordination, every instance of languor was shouted-out as sufficient cause for losing precious hours of rest.

Leadership had planned this so-called Final Exercise prior to our release. It was as a field maneuvers demonstration一a check mark within the long list of requirements needed to attain the status of combat readiness, elevating us from a training atmosphere to a higher, deployable strata.

We hustled overladen vehicles hungrily about a portion of the base restricted from live fire. So deprived of ordnance within our training exercises, we found ourselves reduced to infantile instances of make-believe that rapidly bled-out the platoon’s energy. The brass fed us unsatisfying reasons for our empty magazines and absent ammo boxes related to fire safety and protected wildlife species, all of which we decoded as thin cover for their avoidance of the paperwork and bureaucratic effort involved in drawing ammo and identifying a suitable training theater. 

Jokesters in the platoon gifted us with over-blown sound effects to mock the silliness of the exercise, improvising the blast sounds of an 81 mm mortar system before gamefully cycling through childlike takes on the percussive noises of our small arms weapons. Daunted more by boredom than combat, they struggled mightily against the dullness by inventing a soundboard of fictional laser guns to mine for any scarce laughs. Gruff Marines felt uncomfortable as such horsing around left a residue of foolishness, implying the unwelcome notion that we were unserious men at play. Soured by the exercise, the warrior class of our platoon retreated into stoic silences and meditative tobacco dipping, abruptly disinterested in bird-dogging us onward.

We were ordered, uncharacteristically, to establish a static firing position for all eight of our mortar squads without the usual fuckery of being shifted about the terrain like a knight giving chase across a chess board. We set aiming stakes, assembled the M252 81 mm mortar systems, practiced site-to-site procedures to ensure we were firing as a unit, and spent the ensuing hours digging ever deeper mortar pits, filling sandbags, and rotating out to periphery watch positions, vigilant for an imagined enemy within the borders of Camp Pendleton and, unthinkably, within the United States.

Idle hands.

We settled in for the night with ample time to find cause for complaint, for our muscles to tense from disuse, and to turn on each other.

Morning came sleepily with its characteristic valley cold. Light fog lazed about the hills until chased away by an ambitious California sun. We burrowed into our three-layer sleeping bag systems and bulked-up on layers of Polypro undergarments which we shed through the slow progression of the day and its rising heat. Relative to other large-scale exercises, we were skating along Easy Street which we managed to spoil with the tone of our own malaise.

There were no hypothetical fire missions, no ammo dunnage to be cleaned, and our weapons would be free of carbon upon our return to the armory. There was only the occasional squawk of the radio and light whispers between the radio watch. The officers and Staff NCOs hovered around some kind of illicit field coffee maker that could have easily set the dry grasslands afire.

We reconciled ourselves to eating MREs the likes of beef stew or teriyaki chicken for breakfast, tending to their careful heating and preparations like entranced Zen masters engaged in sacred ritual. Some Marines tugged dog-eared novels from overstuffed cargo pockets and sought their escape through the mind. Others napped within their flak jackets and deuce gear, ready to move at a moment’s notice should such orders ring-out like spontaneous gunfire.

I was sent on an early perimeter watch rotation having been spared from a night shift through a miraculous cosmic dice roll. The lax discipline that was everywhere on display had seeped into my bones, and I sauntered to a watch position on an elevated ridge cocooned in my green poncho liner which I had tucked into the neckline of my flak jacket, flagrantly assuming too much comfort to be an effective guard. I chose a prone position, laying on my stomach, occasionally scanning the hillsides for movement. Intermittently, a few CAAT platoon Humvees could be seen, sight-lined along various hillside approaches.

“Contact right!” I called out, generally unclear if CAAT was considered our ally or our enemy in this particular portion of the pretend field exercise, as much to feign attentiveness than out of any real desire to invest effort into the day’s training. Our platoon leadership generally held back the underlying intent of any given exercise as a means of bottling information to feed their own self-importance and maintain an artificially created advantage they lorded over us. The only information that filtered through the sieve of ranks was when to break down, where to go, and when to dig-in. All else was “need to know” and it had been made abundantly clear that I didn’t ever need to know.

Having established a veneer of alertness by communicating a few vehicle approaches, I allowed the cool of the morning fog to lull my body into a relaxed state and slow my breathing as I pretended to look out beyond the sights of my weapon. Sleep quickly overtook me, drawing me down into a place of deep and inner calm like a rounded stone welcomed gradually to its new resting place at the bottom of a quiet pond.

“Wake the fuck up, Smith!” a voice screamed into my ear. His volume was deafening and was easily loud enough to carry throughout the valley. I had been caught. Panic and adrenaline began coursing through me. I had never fallen asleep on watch before; this was something I prided myself on, though many Marines struggled with the discipline of it throughout their enlistment. Yet, here I was, undeniably in the wrong and spotlighted before the Staff NCOs and the officer. I scrambled to my feet and sought out the snitch.

Alanzo.

Chunky. Worthless. He stood leering over me, a light duty commando who was able to slip through the cracks of the Marine Corps by embracing an encyclopedic documentation of his various and vague ailments that precluded him from ever engaging in any serious training. It confounded me as to why he had chosen to be in the infantry when he so clearly did not belong even, apparently, by his own assessments. I could understand not being talented; I could not abide the way he gamed the system to drift by. If you don’t want to be here, my thought was, then be bold and shoot yourself in the foot or take a few sips of weed like some many others did and move on. Don’t waste everybody’s time pretending you’re a part of the unit instead of a platoon bottom-feeder in search of an easy way out instead of working your way up.

He represented all that was wrong with the Corps. He regularly cheated on his Physical Fitness Test, finding sympathetic or similarly chubby Marines who would lie about the number of sit-ups he could perform in the span of 2 minutes to goose his score by about 50 points. There was no cheating on pull-ups or run-times, which were too public, but it was obvious he did not meet the weight requirement standards, nor could he complete a unit run without falling back, wheezing and making over-exaggerated facial contortions intended to convey the depth of his unbearable pain to justify his inability to run further. Through his sick hall manipulations, he managed to alter his status to non-deployable before our pump to Iraq. Though his pretense had sickened me, I was glad he hadn’t participated in the invasion. I had no desire for someone of his questionable worth to supposedly watch my back. Perhaps more true, I felt his inclusion in the Corps cheapened what it meant for me to be a Marine, robbing my chosen struggle of its intended meaning. That he represented what it was to be a Marine dimmed the light of our collective reputation.

His presence compounded my embarrassment and fear at having been caught shirking my duties. I felt dirtied by his involvement. Those emotions immediately evolved to rage at the sight of this shit-bag Marine gloating at having the upper hand over someone (anyone!) to divert the negative attention away from himself and garner a sliver of praise, if only for a fleeting moment. I reacted in the only way that made sense in an infantry platoon. I balled my fist and let fly a wild haymaker at the general direction of his stupid face.

My punch smashed into the side of his Kevlar helmet, dampening its intended effect but delivering enough power to knock him to the ground. After he fell, I immediately scrambled atop his chest to pin him to the ground with my body weight and began raining blows towards his mouth. My strikes were largely ineffective given he wore armor and used his flailing hands to shield the exposed portion of his mouth and nose and eyes. In the heat of the grapple, he managed to shoot his fingers up and into my mouth, thrusting his fingers into my throat. I let loose a bizarre animal growl, frustrated, and swatted his hand aside before resuming my ineffectual attack on his face. My anger was only ramping up, with years of smoldering disdain for this near worthless Marine stoked to blast furnace rage by his momentary air of superiority over me.

We had the platoon’s full attention. There wasn’t much going on that morning, so it was a welcome entertainment. Even so, it could only be allowed to go on so long.

“Smith, get your fucking ass over!” called Corporal Wes. My anger waned, undermined by the uncertainty of just how bad the disciplinary action to come would be. “Now!” I didn’t have much time to think it over. I released Alanzo, shoving myself to a standing position by pushing down on him to add a parting gesture of disrespect. I ripped the poncho liner out of my flak jacket, realizing how undisciplined I looked, collected my light machine gun, and trotted back to my squad’s mortar pit.

“What the fuck were you doing?”

“Punching that piece of shit in the face, like he deserves.” 

“You were sleeping on watch, weren’t you?”

“I was,” I admitted, clenching my jaw, forever proud.

“I sent him over there. I knew you were sleeping, idiot.” I didn’t respond, waiting. “Why do you think he was wearing armor? I told him to put on his Kevlar before messing with you. Fuck! It’s like I’m a puppet master pulling all the right strings! I knew you’d take a swing! I willed it into being!” he said, smiling around an oversized dip of Copenhagen snuff. I couldn’t tell if he was proud of himself for busting me asleep on watch, for manufacturing conditions that led to Alanzo getting punched, or for having an excuse to screw with me for the remainder of the field exercise. Probably all three. Corporal Wes—master drama tactician. I appreciated the subtle genius of it. In addition to the obvious amusement, I had also served as an example to the remainder of the platoon to tighten up. There was always a sacrificial lamb, and I had become the fool unknowingly marked for slaughter. Worse still, a fool unredeemed by innocence.

“What are we going to do with you?” he asked, rhetorically. I knew enough not to offer-up any solutions. Best to shut your face and work through whatever came. I deserved it, which made it easier to swallow. “To start, lock your body at Present Arms. Now hold out your SAW straight-out at arm’s length. Keep your arm perpendicular to the deck.” I followed his order. I was well versed in this game from boot camp. He observed me as the strain grew in my muscles, then he glanced at the Staff NCOs and the Platoon Commander who were watching from a distance. Unsatisfied with the visual tableau he’d created, he unclipped the Kevlar that hung from my deuce gear and placed it atop the flash suppressor on the barrel of my machine gun. He forced me to heft an extra five pounds or so, cantilevered at the distance of my extended, skinny arms. The weight immediately created fire in my delts and shoulder muscles. “You better keep it the fuck up, Smith.”

“Aye, Corporal.” The worst part was not knowing how long it would last and was worsened by knowing that it was a biological fact that I would ultimately fail. I threw myself into the hazing, concentrating my entire being into denying the existence of my bodily pain and to hold my weapon and Kevlar at a perfect arm’s length. My friends walked by, some laughing and shaking their heads, others making weird faces at me to disrupt my military bearing and get me in further trouble for their entertainment. I don’t know how much time passed. Not much. It could have easily been three minutes as thirty. Pain stabbed at my muscles with increasing fervor until Corporal Wes next came by to venture an appraising look.

“Put your Kevlar on and lower your weapon,” he said. “You’re going to be an Ammo Man for the remainder of the day,” he said, demoting me from my usual position of Gunner. “But while we’re waiting for our next fire mission, I want you to low crawl out to both aiming stakes and adjust them.”

“Aye, Corporal.”

“That’s not all. Put a dip of Copenhagen in, before you go.” He handed me his can of snuff and watched as I pinched a healthy portion between my lip and gum-line. “That’s right.”

I stepped away, clipped my chin strap into place, then began low-crawling toward the first aiming stake fifty meters away, careful to drag my Kevlar’s edge in the dirt as I had done in Basic Training to simulate avoiding direct fire and, more importantly, to help convey the sense that I was being adequately punished. I used my sling to drag my light machine gun along with me, careful not to flag any one behind me, but occasionally (unavoidably) flagging myself, inadvertently breaking the weapons safety rules. By the time I reached my objective, the nicotine ambushed my body, vulnerable in its chemical unfamiliarity, leaving my head plundered and spinning. The day was by then hot. The heat coupled to the unfamiliar tobacco had my stomach turning somersaults. Once there, I made minute adjustments to the cant of the stake based on hand signals from my mortar squad. I crawled to the most distant stake a full hundred meters out from our position. Occasionally, I took a scenic route to circumnavigate clumps of cacti and brambles with thorny seeds.

“Hurry the fuck up, Smith!” Corporal Wes yelled. I marginally increased my speed immediately after he ordered such things, but quickly returned to my previous rate which is the only acceptable way to say “Fuck You” to a ranking Marine while in duty without actually mouthing the words aloud.

Once returned to the mortar pit, Corporal Wes smiled broadly. “Come on, Smith! Lighten-up! You know I had to do something, or Gunny and the Lieutenant would have come over, and it would have been worse. They probably would have fucked with all of us, and that’s when the whole damn platoon turns against you.” I nodded, acknowledging the truth of this. I was sullen, but more so at myself for having fallen asleep than at having been called-out on it.

Stan Walton, a Lance Corporal like myself at the time, rejoiced in the retelling of my fight. Before enlisting, Walton had routinely played in a Death Metal Band while studying blues guitar at the University of Memphis. He had sleeves on his forearms—tattoos that covered all available skin with endearing messages such as “Dying” scrawled laterally down his forearms, with flaming skulls embellishing the periphery of each word.

“You looked like a retarded Superman!” he teased, smiling ear to ear. “We saw everything. When you went back to wind up for a punch, the poncho liner you had tucked into your flak jacket whirled out like a goddamn cape! Ha-ha! Then you gave this ridiculous over-punch that made you look like something out of a DC comic or like some fool trying a drunk version of a Street Fighter super move!” Everyone in the squad laughed until they couldn’t breathe. He began re-enacting the scene, miming it over and over, wildly exaggerating my every move. I couldn’t help but smile and laugh along with them at my idiocy.

“I just can’t believe you sent over fuckin’ Alanzo!” I kept saying. Obsessing over his involvement. Amazed by it.

“He’s worthless. He deserved to be hit in the face.” This was the general consensus of the squad and, most likely, that of the platoon. It was probably the driving reason Gunny and the Platoon Commander had decided not to get involved, tacitly approving of the desire to police our own. Letting us men work it out like men are supposed to do.

That I had been the bully in this remembrance gnawed at me, undermining my ability to think of myself as a good guy. I had beat on a weaker Marine to cover my shame. I regret. I have so many regrets.

Danny Llewellyn hadn’t shit himself since he was a toddler, back when nobody minded. Since then, he’d joined the Army, gone to war, left the Army. He was, by most people’s estimations, a man, especially because his exit from the service had been hastened by injuries sustained in combat. All the pain meds during his hospital stay had stopped him up, and things down there never quite got back to normal. That was part of the reason the accident took him by surprise—in those days, each bowel movement was a protracted trauma of its own.

It happened at the Veterans of Foreign Wars hall in Overland Park, Kansas. The VFW had a bar room. The bar room had a vinyl floor, and the walls were covered in photographs, unit insignia behind glass, and certificates of appreciation for good works in the community. The bar itself was u-shaped, made from teak like the deck of a boat, light and polished. It was the nicest bit of anything in the whole building, which makes a lot of sense when you think about it.

The winter sun had just set. Friday. Danny walked the mile from his apartment to the VFW through wind and gray slush. He had plans to get blind drunk, and he didn’t want to drive home. When he arrived, there were three people in the bar room. Two of them, both men, sat next to each other in chairs on the right side of the bar. Their backs were mostly to Danny, and he couldn’t see their faces, but they looked older. There was white hair and wrinkled necks and the broad, uneven shoulders which become under the weight of a hard life lived.

Only the bartender saw him come in. She was in her forties, and she didn’t take good care of herself, but she had great big tits, and she wore low cut shirts because she knew the fellas liked something to look at. She pitied most of them for what they’d seen and done.

The bartender told him to have a seat anywhere. The man in the chair nearest to Danny swiveled to see who she was talking to. He had a bushy gray mustache and wore a ball cap that identified him as a Gulf War veteran. Danny limped to the side of the bar opposite the men. The limp was the result of the explosion that had sent shrapnel up and down the right side of his body. The damage to his thigh and hip was especially bad. The doctors said he’d probably limp for the rest of his life, even as the pain got better.

Danny took off his jacket and sat. He ordered a Miller Lite while trying not to stare at the bartender’s cleavage.

“What’s with the hitch in your giddy up?” It was the mustache in the Gulf War hat. “You get that over there?”

Danny nodded. He hadn’t yet figured out how to talk about what happened to him, and he didn’t like to lie, so when people asked about it, he said as close to nothing as he could.

“Iraq or Afghanistan?” This time it was the other man asking. He was a head shorter than his friend, so he had to lean over the bar to be seen.

Danny told them Iraq.

The bartender brought his beer in a smudged glass. There was a lot of foam. Danny went for his wallet, but the bartender waved her hand.

“First timers get one on the house. Thank you for your service.”

Danny looked down and thanked her.

The old guys held up their drinks, so Danny did the same. His hand shook, and a little foam spilled over the edge of the glass, but the occupational therapist at the VA had told him he had to practice if he ever wanted the tremors to get better.

He took a big gulp of the beer and came away with a foam mustache. He wiped it off, willing himself not to think about shit-burning detail, but the sensation of something on his upper lip brought him right back with such force that he could practically feel the rough edges of the metal picket in his hands.

Before higher headquarters dropped the chemical toilets, his unit had been shitting in wooden outhouses. Each one had a hole in the floor positioned over a 50-gallon drum. The setup worked, but something had to happen to all that waste. Pour in some jet fuel, light on fire, stir. Danny always seemed to draw shit-burning detail. It wasn’t so much about the odor (jet fuel masks the smell of shit as well as anything), but his cackling squad mates had photographed him more than once with the Shitler mustache that inevitably takes shape under your nostrils after breathing in the smoke. All the while, other guys were out on the glamorous missions.

The two old vets were back in their conversation now. The first guy, the one closest to Danny, was doing most of the talking. He spoke with an intimidating energy. Intense. Fatigueless.

The bartender came around and asked if Danny wanted another. He said he wanted two. The fast talker was out of his chair now. He had the body of a marathon runner and the shiny cheeks of someone who still shaved every day. He was telling a story about a helicopter crash in which he’d been the pilot. He described the sound of bullets piercing the cabin, the feeling of losing control of the stick, the centrifugal force as the Kiowa plunged spinning towards the ground.

“I was sure I was going to die, of course.” He put both hands on the back of his chair and leaned. “In flight school, they tell you right off that helicopter crashes only have a twenty percent survival rate.”

The pilot had actually been in two crashes. The second one was during a training exercise. Mechanical failure. Danny didn’t know any of this, nor would he have been able to do the mental math on the odds of surviving two crashes, but he was still enthralled. His focus was the result of admiration and jealousy. Look at his joie de vivre! This was what happened to soldiers who never pulled shit-burning detail.

Danny was astounded that the bartender and the other veteran seemed bored. She was looking at her phone. He was paying more attention to the rim of his glass. Even if Danny assumed—as he did—that they’d heard this story a hundred times—as they had—it still deserved reverence.

Danny drank fast, and the beer sat heavy in his stomach. Foamy, so foamy, on top of whatever else had built up in there over the last few days. Panda Express. Frozen pizza. More Panda Express. He groaned a little, enough to draw attention.

“Say—” The pilot was looking at him. “What’s your name, young buck?”

Danny said his name.

“I’m Sal. This is Glenn. And the lovely Tina, of course.”

Danny said hello.

“What’d you do over there, Danny?”

Again, Danny did his best to avoid the question. Rather than say what he did, he told them what he’d been trained to do. Often as not, that’s what people meant when they asked about war. He told them he was an 11 Bravo. Infantry.

Sal’s expression brightened. “Glenn, you’ve finally got another knuckle dragger to talk to.” To Danny he added, “Glenn thinks infantrymen are the only real soldiers.”

“I hate it when you speak for me,” said Glenn. Sal the pilot shrugged.

Glenn stared straight ahead and took a drink. Truth was, he believed that anyone who volunteered to serve deserved as much reverence as a Medal of Honor winner. Heroism was mostly a question of circumstances beyond any soldier’s control. He’d won a Silver Star in Vietnam—his was one of the decorations hung on the wall of the bar room—and the citation read like a Hollywood script. But so what? He didn’t like talking about what he’d been through either, though his reasons were different from Danny’s.

Now on his fourth beer, Danny slid right past tipsy and into drunk. He hadn’t eaten since breakfast when he’d poured some questionable milk over a bowl of Raisin Bran.

“Got any war stories?” Sal asking again. “Good ones get another beer on me.”

Danny looked down. The pattern of the wooden bar was lovely, soft waves of amber and tan and brown running lengthwise along the planks. They reminded him of Iraqi dunes, which made him think of the day he’d been blown up. He’d been in and out of consciousness, but the view of the windswept sand out the door of the MEDEVAC chopper stuck in his memory.

Danny told them there wasn’t much to tell.

“There’s a story behind that limp.”

Tina the bartender sucked her teeth. “Sal.” She seemed to have some power over Sal, because he sat next to Glenn and was quiet for a while.

Of course, there was a story, it just happened to be one that Danny never wanted to think about, much less tell to a couple of war heroes and a bartender whose tits he planned on thinking about while he jerked off later.

But could he omit the embarrassing details without inviting more questions he’d have to avoid? Probably not. The embarrassing parts seemed like the whole thing.

They’d had the chemical toilets for about a week. A week of shitting in luxury—no risk of splinters in your hamstrings, flies kept mostly at bay by the thin plastic box around you, the smell of other soldiers’ waste muted by the blue concoction in the tank below. A little hot, maybe, but so was everything else. So was shit-burning detail. And now that was done forever. Danny had begun lingering in the new toilets. Five minutes. Ten minutes. Fifteen. Locking the door to the stall was like shutting out the war.

It was the middle of the night, and Danny’s bladder woke him up. Before, he might have just pissed into an empty two-liter plastic bottle and gone back to bed, but now the new toilets beckoned. He took an issue of Hustler from the stack under his cot and grabbed his rifle and stepped out of the sleeping bay.

The sand of the unimproved road looked blue in the moonlight. The concrete Texas barriers, too. It was a short walk to the row of chemical toilets, newly laid gravel at the edge of camp crunching under his unlaced boots.

None of the toilets were occupied. Danny chose one at the end of the row, because even though the likelihood of a midnight rush was low, he liked the idea of not having guys on both sides of him while he did his business.

Danny stepped into the toilet and closed the door. He waited for his eyes to adjust to the darkness before dropping the black PT shorts to his ankles. He took an effortless shit. His last one for years. From the sound, it must have knifed into the water below like an Olympic diver. He sighed. He opened the Hustler and stared at the glossy body of a girl with curly red hair.

That was the last thing he remembered until the fractured visions from his evacuation to the hospital in Balad. No matter how many times his squad mates told him how gruesome, how badass his injuries had seemed when they found him, Danny could only ever imagine himself strapped to a litter in the MEDEVAC chopper with his t-shirt on and his dick flapping in the rotor wash. The psychologists told him that was probably because of what he’d been doing when the mortar hit. Knowing hadn’t yet helped.

Danny’s stomach made a sound like a bullfrog. He was too drunk to care about the current of discomfort that shot through his groin. Besides, he was used to ignoring pain. He ordered another beer and drank it and ordered another one.

“You’re not driving are you, hon?” asked Tina.

Danny told her he wasn’t. He smiled, but he could tell the smile was crooked. Tina gave him the beer anyway. It was nice that she trusted him.

Sal was talking again. Danny didn’t know about what. He heard a few words here and there, but his drunk brain was busy trying to overwrite his memories. Maybe there was a way to change his perception of the past. Then there wouldn’t be any dishonor in lying.

Through the densifying haze of his vision, Danny saw Glenn’s eyes. They were focused on him. Unnervingly focused. Glenn got up and walked over to Danny. Sal was still talking. He didn’t seem to mind a mobile audience.

“Not my business, I know,” said Glenn, “but that’s a lot of beers in not a lot of time.”

Sal was still talking in the background. Danny nodded his agreement.

Glenn patted Danny’s shoulder like he was afraid it might break.

“Just to say, we’ll be here all night, you know?”

The pain that swept through Danny’s gut gave no warning. It stabbed at his stomach, puckered his asshole. Sweat erupted on his forehead. He sprang to his feet, and his chair toppled backward. It smacked the floor—Bang! Glen started to ask what was wrong, but Danny was already waddling to the door where he’d come in, only to realize he didn’t know where the bathroom was.

He stopped in the middle of the room, holding everything tight, afraid if he opened his mouth for directions, he would fall to pieces.

Tina, Sal, and Glenn looked at each other. They all thought he was going to vomit.

Tina said, “Go ahead, baby. It’s alright.”

Danny collapsed to his knees. Release. The heat of it running down his hamstrings, spreading across his skin and soaking his jeans. He could hardly believe the stench.

“Stay back,” he said.

And then a new memory, a clear one, struck him in the middle of the forehead like a sniper shot. He’d said the same thing, or tried to, when he felt the hands of his comrades on him, lying in the wreckage of the chemical toilet, cut and broken and dying. What if another mortar fell? What if people died because he’d lingered after a satisfying shit?

They ignored him of course. They lifted him up, uncaring about the smells and the stains his blood put on their clothes. They carried him for hundreds of meters to the helipad. They reassured him the whole way.

You’re not going to die. We won’t let you.

They hoisted him into the chopper and strapped him down and told him they’d see him soon. They squeezed his good hand.

He remembered all this for the first time, sitting there in his own filth. And then he was levitating again, as Sal and Glenn hoisted him to his feet. They guided him toward the bathroom.

“Thanks,” said Danny.

They agreed it was no trouble at all. Danny had his arms around both of them, and he thought that Glenn was sturdier than he seemed, and that Sal had a more tender touch than he’d expected.

Tina waited until they’d gone out of the bar room before she pulled another pint for Danny. She set it in front of the chair next to Sal’s seat. She figured that’s where he’d be sitting when they returned.

The terrorist sat down at the cafe at a quarter to one. She had always been punctual. Beneath her clothing was a bomb improvised from ammonium nitrate. The bomb was uncomfortable. She kept thinking things that didn’t matter, like: ripping off the tape will be painful, or, it’s going to leave red marks on my skin. She raised her hand and ordered a cappuccino and a chocolate croissant. Why not a little pleasure? Someone had left a newspaper at the table. She didn’t feel the need to read it. She knew all about what was happening now, here and all over. She looked around the cafe at the other people eating and drinking. She didn’t feel much of anything. It was difficult to imagine, really, that anything would be different in just a few minutes. She’d been in a hundred cafes just like this. A thousand! Nothing strange had ever happened before.

She looked down at the newspaper on the table. The sports section. How about that? She’d thought it was the news, but it was just sports. She didn’t know anything about sports. Everything going on in the world and there was just sports happening and that’s what people chose to read about. She looked around the cafe. All these people care about sports! she thought. She picked up the section and flipped through the games, reading the box scores carefully. This is what people care about, she said to herself, as if trying to understand something. She flipped to a page that printed the scores of local high school games. She hadn’t known newspapers printed high school games. She found her high school and read through the names of the varsity basketball players and how many points they had scored. She recognized a last name: Ramakrishnan. She had known a Ramakrishnan in high school. It wasn’t a very common last name. His son, maybe. She checked and saw that he had scored twenty-eight points, the most in the game. A surge of pride went through her, so strong and sudden it made her anxious. What did he have to do with her? Nothing.

Her food came. She paid and left a very big tip. Why not? The waitress smiled at her. A lesbian maybe. Go ahead, what did she care? That wasn’t the type of thing that mattered to her. She took a bite of the croissant and sipped the cappuccino. Ah. Very good. She would miss this. What a funny thought. She wouldn’t be able to miss anything. She laughed to herself. What a funny time to be funny! Her heart was beating very fast. She felt calm, but her heart was beating very fast. As if it were someone else’s heart. Wouldn’t that be something. The bomb goes off and this old man across the world dies because she’d actually had his heart all along. That’s who I would apologize to, she thought. I had no idea, she would tell his widow. It wasn’t supposed to be him.

She checked the time. There was a clock above the cash register and another by the door. Everyone had their phones out, and their phones were also clocks. There were clocks everywhere. She thought the world had done away with clocks, but she was wrong. There were clocks on the coffee machines. Timers beside the ovens she could see through a glass window into the bakery. Clocks that everyone thought would go on forever, but really they would stop. A clock strapped to her chest. Oh no officer, she thought. I’m sorry for the confusion. As you can see, that’s just a clock.

Just a few minutes now. Not one o’clock, actually, but twelve-fifty-nine. A little joke to herself. They would all expect it at one on the dot. But no, it was twelve-fifty-nine. As good a time as any! she wanted to scream. She pictured a hero from a movie, running computer programs in some dark basement, cracking the code. At twelve-fifty-five the program would blink—they’ve got her. At a cafe just down the street. The hero checks the clock (there’s always a clock nearby). We’ve got five minutes! he yells and rushes out the door, and as he’s running as fast as he can, he knows he has just enough time to stop her. Five minutes, the exact right amount, and he throws open the cafe door, just over a minute to spare, just what he needs, and then, boom. Twelve-fifty-nine. Ha!

The clock above the door crowed. She looked up wildly, heart pounding. Was it time? But the clock was five minutes fast. She let out a breath. She hadn’t been scared before, but now she was. Stupid clock. It should be illegal to have the wrong time on a clock. There should be someone whose job it is to go around to all the clocks and arrest the people putting the wrong time on them. She looked at the clock again, and this time she was surprised to find the clock was not just a clock, but was actually the belly of a wooden rooster. Cock clock, she thought, which calmed her. Then she looked around and saw all sorts of other things she hadn’t noticed: paintings of cardinals and shakers shaped like crows and napkin holders that looked like hummingbirds. It was a bird cafe! Ten minutes she’d been here, and she hadn’t even realized it was bird themed. Some old lady must really love birds, she thought, and for some reason this made her feel very sad. All those goddamn bird decorations that would be broken. That woman’s whole life collecting bird decorations and one day she starts this cafe and thinks, these goddamn bird decorations are just too darn special to sit cooped up in my dusty old house. The public needs to see all these freaking birds. So she puts them in the cafe. Bird mugs and bird napkins. Close up photos of beaks in tulips. Signs with bird sayings like, Toucan Do It!, and Flock Off!

Flock off! she wanted to yell, but didn’t. All of you, just flock the flock off!

She touched the lump under her shirt. There was no button. Just time. The clock would reach a certain time, and then it would happen. This made it easier. She didn’t have to press anything or do anything. It was almost like it was happening to her. She just showed up at this place and it happened. If you zoomed out far enough, she thought, there was no difference between her and any of them. She had been a normal woman and then, at some point, the circumstances of her life had led her to this particular cafe at this particular time and the bomb had exploded and she had died. Just another victim.

Would anything change? She didn’t know. She wasn’t really concerned with that part. She was concerned with doing something. She was concerned with being heard. They would hear her, alright, this time. What they did after, well, that was up to them. There was danger, always, in telling people what to do or how to feel. That’s how people end up in situations like hers. People always telling them what to do and how to feel until one day they turn around and say, No! This is what I am doing and this is how I feel!

She had always known there were bad things in the world. It seemed to her that all the people who tried the hardest to fix them only made it worse. There was a book she liked that said, All our worst crimes are committed out of enthusiasm. Yes! she had thought. That’s exactly it. All these bad things in the world because people think they know the answer and want to get there. She had lived her life with this in mind. Skeptical. Questioning everything. Always knowing everything that was wrong but never knowing anything that was right. Then, years later, she had reread the book and noticed another line: skepticism is the rapture of impasse. And she thought, Yes, that’s exactly it. All these years of questioning, she had done nothing. She had been skeptical, so she had done nothing. Then all the things she had been skeptical of just happened. Better, then, to commit a crime with enthusiasm!

So she had made the bomb. Improvised explosive device. That’s what they called it in the news. Not that anyone would know that, only reading the sports section. It was an evocative name. It made it sound desperate and spontaneous. It demonstrated creativity. That’s not a very good bomb, a professional bomb maker might say. Well, I had to improvise!

She had taken an improv class in college. She had hated it. She had hated it because the people were awful. The people were awful and they stared at her when she didn’t know what to say and they were always saying things like, The first rule of improv is always say, Yes! No one seemed to know any other rules. They just repeated that rule over and over. Once, when it was her turn in class, she got on stage and her partner said, Wow, what a crazy day at the zoo! What a stupid thing to say, she thought. Even if it had been a crazy day at the zoo, she would never have said that. She didn’t know how to respond to something so stupid. So she just said, Yes. I can’t believe what the chimpanzee did to that tiger! Yes, she said. The zookeeper is going to have some trouble cleaning up! Yes, she said. She said, Yes, over and over until the teacher had said, Alright, that’s enough, and she was allowed to sit down again.

She looked around at the cafe and suddenly it felt to her as if she were stuck again in a terrible improv scene. That everyone around her was trying poorly, desperately, to seem natural. Off-the-cuff. She took another bite of croissant and closed her eyes, imagining herself on stage. There’s a bomb in the cafe! Yes, she said. Everyone is going to die! Yes, she said. Yes, yes. She squeezed her eyes. Yes, yes, yes. She squeezed as hard as she could. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Even the word eyes was made of yes. Yesses everywhere. Yes, yes, yes. Eyes closed yes. If her eyes were closed when it happened, it was like she wasn’t there. If her eyes were closed when it happened, it was like she wasn’t there. If she closed her eyes when it happened.

Yes.

But she couldn’t make it. She peeked. She had always been a peeker. At Christmas, tearing the corners off wrapping paper to see what was hidden inside. That’s how she felt then, in her final seconds, squinting through one eye at the people around her. Sticking her eye to the dark hole she had ripped in the paper and hoping it would let her see some new world that had not yet come to pass. But it was just the same. Just people. Yes. And she realized with a start that each of these people had their own lives, and that those lives were about to end. But that, of course, was the point.

I can still see it.
I hit him with a burst from my M16.
He jumped up and danced.
Everything gray.
Bamboo stood silent
and lowered its leaves.
The earth stood still.
Breathe! I said.
Breathe!

We hike toward a waterfall cascading
through a split in the wall of rock above us.
A crow soundlessly slices a shadow
across the field of snow.
One breath, and the bird is gone.

At the tree line, the tail section
of an airplane, the metal edges ripped
and ragged, stands shiny in the twisted
alpine firs.
The engines lie in the shallow creek,
water pouring over cylinders.
Scrub cushions one wing, the other
is charred into rock,
the ground littered with pieces
I can hold in my hand:
aluminum with buttons, rivets, zipper
heads, upholstery, and jacket fabric
melted into lumps.
In one, the fingertip of a leather glove,
a bobby pin.
It happened in nineteen forty-eight.
A cargo plane clipped the ridge
in a blizzard. Six men died. One woman.
The color of her hairpin tells me she was blond.
The townspeople saw
a fiery flash in a night sky filled with snow.
In daylight, fighting drifts and high winds,
they dragged the bodies out in bags on toboggans.

This would be a good place to leave
your spirit. In the silence,
the wind breathes over the ridge,
and water trickles beneath a layer of ice
that turns blue as it melts into itself.
Gentians and Indian paintbrushes
in the meadow throw their colors
against the rocks.
And the delicate columbine, pale
yellow and pink, only blooms in August.

Doug Rawlings had his life planned out:  graduate school, business school, eventual law school, and a career in business. But then, like thousands of other young men, he received the dreaded SSS Form No. 252, Order to Report for Induction. Future plans on hold.  Rawlings completed Basic Training at Fort Dix, New Jersey, and AIT at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.  After a two-week leave, next stop, Vietnam, where he was stationed in the Central Highlands (about 100 miles east of Pleiku), “B” Battery, 7^th/15^th Field Artillery, Firebase/LZ Two Bits, with an MOS of 93F20, Ballistics Support.

 After his return to the States, he moved to Boston, and discovered the poetry of Denise Levertov and Muriel Rukeyser.  He started writing his own poems, and sent a handful to Bill Erhardt and Jan Berry, who published them in the 1976 Demilitarized Zones: Veterans After Vietnam.  Rawlings’ first book, Orion Rising (2014), opens with two prologues:  the first discusses his reasons for being one of the five founding members of Veterans for Peace, which originated in Maine in 1985 (and now has chapters in all fifty states, England, and Vietnam). In his statement he is especially concerned about the effects of war on children, past, present, and future.  He writes “A group such as Veterans for Peace can offer us, veterans of war, a vehicle to bring our special message to the children of the world.” The second prologue, and the first section of poems, is entitled “A Survivor’s Manual: Out of the Ashes.” In this prologue Rawlings has a running “conversation” with Robert Bly that was touched off by the 1970 Forty Poems Touching On Recent American History, edited by Bly. Rawlings presents excerpts from Bly’s introduction and then he reflects on how Bly’s comments connect to his life and work, especially as they relate to the idea of “political poetry.” Rawlings synthesizes these two apparent opposites, politics and art, when he writes “So I found some kind of comfort, if not inspiration, from Bly’s insistence that poems can be written that would ‘penetrate deeply into the psyche of the nation’ without sacrificing a personal voice.”

Many of the poems in the first section of Orion Rising concern the continuing impact of the past on the present, specifically the ways that memories of Vietnam haunt the life of the veteran. For example, in “A Soldier’s Lament,” Rawlings writes about the Vietnamese children who sat “beneath the barbed wire/ . . .  to sell us what they would: . . .  .” Now, decades later, “our souls/blister and burn/across the years/above the bonfires/of children’s curses.” In “Medic” Rawlings pleads with a medic to wash the blood of a wounded soldier off his hands, and then in the present to “come stop his screams/from tearing through/my dreams/my dreams . . .  .”

About section two, entitled “The Maine Poems: Family, Friends, and Place,” Rawlings notes “So it is a life of books and ‘hands-on’ labor that infuse many of the poems in this section. It is no mistake that love of the land, melded with love of family and friends, weaves throughout them.” Poems such as “Homage to the Winter Moon” find solace in Nature by providing a respite from the “strident headlines” of the world; similarly, in “Ice Out Poem: A Quartet,” the cyclical renewal of Nature offers hope for another year. At the same time, the poems about family often have a melancholic tone and hint at the tension between father and son, in “Father Grieving” and father and daughter, in “The Exchange.” In the heart-wrenching “To Jen Turning Sixteen” the writer is forced to come to terms with familial change and loss as his daughter, “The princess I made you out to be” grows into womanhood:  “Yet celebrating you on this day/A new rider on the rhythm of the moon/I must also mourn my own passing/before your eyes . . . .”

The final section of the book, “Fiddleheads: Poems for Children,” contains twelve of the original eighteen poems Rawlings wrote for his young children.  He writes that he and the children, ages five and seven, were “immersed in A.A. Milne, caught up in his poems musicality and utter joy of language play. . . . I carried this musicality into the woods and meadows and followed it where it may.” The poems activate the imagination with whimsical juxtapositions, like “Rainbow Girl,” who “just drank up/a hatful of rain/and gobbled down/a most enormous chunk/of sunbeam . . . .” Likewise, “Gravity Experiment”:  “But what if we took/a moose/and pumped/his antlers/full of air/and then cut him/loose—-  . . . ”

Rawlings next book, A G.I. in America:  The Government Issue Chronicles and Selected Poems   (2015), comprises two major sections:  “The Government Issue Chronicles” and “Selected Poems.” In the Foreword Rawlings recalls the start of the Full Disclosure project, a program of Veterans For Peace. He includes the text of a flyer he wrote announcing the event, held at the Judson Church in New York City. His basic question is, who gets to tell the truth of war?  “Is it the soldier coming home wounded in body, mind, and soul? Or the farmer whose land is sown with blood and unexploded ordnance? Or the families with loved ones buried in the ground? Or the families with loved ones maimed in body and mind?  Is it, perhaps, all of the above?” His poems attempt to answer all these basic questions by giving voice to those affected by war.  For example, “Working in the Garden” is dedicated to Suel Jones, who returned to live in Vietnam after the war. He finds “solace . . . in the warm soil.” However, the past rises up and any sense of peace is destroyed when the memories take hold: “Until they come at him again — unbidden —/those images of the village children/he was ordered to think of as weeds/as better to be wasted early on/than allowed to grow/into the enemy . . . ” Another poem, “Unexploded Ordnance: A Ballad” (dedicated to Chuck Searcy and his team that scour the country for unexploded materiel), juxtaposes the poet on Christmas Eve, pondering the shells he had sown in the war, with a scene in Vietnam of a grandfather leading his granddaughter into a field: “They trip into a searing heat/brighter than a thousand suns.” The book closes with the poem “The Wall” and an apostrophe to the dead whose names are on the Wall. In the poem he writes “Slipping past the panel where/my name would have been/could have been/perhaps should have been . . . ” The lines indicate both a sense of guilt for surviving and also the randomness of war. Why did he live while others died? In the apostrophe he seeks a connection to those brothers:  “I will touch your names and force myself to swing back through these many years and put myself in the place and time where and when we may have met.”

In the Shadow of the Annamese Mountains was published in 2020 (hardcover; paperback issued in 2023). The new and selected poems cover work from the years 1974 to 2019.  In their various ways the poems offer a gloss on the book’s epigraph, “Whatever you run from becomes your shadow,” as the poems attempt to confront and erase the shadows. There are poems of resistance and hope, and many of the themes Rawlings explores in his other books are evident here. For example, in “Walking The Wall: A Song” (2014), dedicated to his friend Don Evon, Rawlings notes at the start of the poem:  “My time in Vietnam started in early July, 1969—Wall panel number W21—and ended in early August, 1970—panel W7, line 29—a walk of about 25 paces past the names of around 9800 dead. I call this ‘walking the Wall.’” While the 1986 poem “The Wall” has a more melancholic tone, this poem ends defiantly, angrily, anti-war: “So take a walk with me down the Wall some late evening/Where we can all listen to the ghostly young soldiers keening/But don’t waste your time thanking them for their service/They just might tell you the truth – all your wars are worthless.” Another “Wall” poem likewise has a sense of anger. In “At The Wall for the Memorial Day Service 2015: A Lament” the speaker is at the Wall for a supposedly solemn service but observes nothing but hypocrisy and phony sanctimoniousness (“The beginning does not bode well./A pasty white rent-a-padre/ . . . wants us to know that the young/did not die in vain”). The dishonesty of the ceremony is in contrast to the reality of this “black granite wall/glistening with the entrails of those/poor bastards we left behind . . .  .” The poem ends on a hopeless note:  “How can I possibly abolish war in their good young names/how can I tell them they certainly did not die in vain/when I can’t even stop these clueless clowns/from desecrating this holiest of all grounds?”

The book includes a number of photographs by Rawlings’ fellow soldier, Don Evon, which mainly show village scenes, landscapes, and children, and in some cases offer a counterpoint to a poem, as in “Please Don’t Shoot the Orphans” (2013) and “On the Path of Moral Injury: More Questions Than Answers” (2019). About the photographs Evon writes in the introduction: “My hope is the photos here will trigger good memories for those who were there and will provide some small insight into the way of life of a non-political, non-military Vietnam.”

Relatedly, Rawlings co-edited three volumes of Letters to the Wall (2015-16, 2017-18, and 2019-20).  The letters are from veterans, family members, friends, and others affected by the war.  Some of the most moving letters are from sons and daughters addressed to a parent killed in the war.

Cầu Tre/Bamboo Bridge, Conversations between a Vietnamese Refugee and an American Veteran. Told in Poetry and Prose was published in 2021. The book is a collaboration between Rawlings and Teresa Mei Chuc, and is bilingual, with work in both Vietnamese and English.

The poems and prose alternate between Chuc and Rawlings. They do not necessarily form a “dialogue” between the two writers but rather create thematic echoes in the book’s five sections.

Most recently, Rawlings journeyed to Vietnam in August, 2023, for the 14^th Engaging With Vietnam conference.

 In his remarks at one session of the conference Rawlings talked about the idea of heritage and noted “that we who were in the U.S. military as part of the American war in Vietnam are now part of Vietnam’s heritage and, through us, American veterans, Vietnam has become part of America’s heritage.” He also read two of his poems in English, “Unexploded Ordnance: A Ballad” and “The Girl in the Picture,” which were then read in Vietnamese by Ms. Tran Xuan Thao, the director of the War Remnants Museum.

Rawlings’ poetry is about the many forms of heritage. There is the heritage of the war and its effects not only on the veteran but also more broadly on society. There is the heritage of family through the generations. Finally, the poems are about the heritage embodied in literature and the arts. In “Song of Myself” Walt Whitman asks “Who wishes to walk with me?” Through the many facets of his poetry we can walk with Doug Rawlings.

In September 2024 Ron Shetterly’s portrait of Rawlings was unveiled at the Common Ground Fair in Unity, Maine, as the 275^th in the series Americans Who Tell the Truth (see https://americanswhotellthetruth.org/).

Larry Abbott:

Let’s start by asking how you came to write poetry, starting around 1974, four years after your discharge in 1970.

Doug Rawlings:        

My earlier education was not leaning towards poetry at all. I had received a degree in economics and was working on an MBA at Ohio State University, to go to work at Eastman Kodak, where my dad worked, and become a corporate lawyer. Then I got drafted.

After my war experience, I came home, and my wife and I moved to Boston in the early ’70s for whatever reason. I don’t know. I got a job at a hospital, counting out pills and stuff. But Boston, at that time, had a number of all-night bookstores, and I wandered into one, on Harvard Square actually, and found this collection of poems by Denise Levertov from New Directions Books about her recent experiences in Vietnam, in North Vietnam, with Muriel Rukeyser, another poet. And I was just blown away. These poems were just amazing. They were, to me, the first realistic, honest account of that war that I read. There wasn’t that much out there. A lot of it was the gung-ho crap or really stoner stuff. I have nothing against that. I was a stoner when I was in Vietnam. Trust me – I was. But I just didn’t want to go in that direction. Her poems had a clinical tinge, but they read beautifully. Again, when I talk about political art, political poetry, I always talk about that notion that you have to be really careful about diluting the politics for the art, or destroying the art in favor of the diatribe from the politics.

It takes real skill to walk that line and come out at the other end with a powerful poem, and Denise Levertov did. I was reading her work and I started writing my own. I didn’t have anybody to share it with; I was just writing it for myself. This was before computers and the internet and all that. I started piecing together some poems, and I discovered in about 1975 or 1976, I think it was, these guys down in New Jersey, Bill Erhardt and Jan Berry, putting together a collection of Vietnam veterans’ poems, called DMZ.  I put eight poems in the mail and sent them off to these guys, thinking, what the hell? And they wrote back and said, “We love your poems. We’re going to put all eight of them in this collection.”

Wow. That, for me, was the first time – I like to call it an affirmation. Oh, my God. Maybe my poetry really has some kind of ability to reach others, to work with others. I started writing more poems, back and forth, back and forth, sharing with one or two here, whatever. There was a publication in Maine called The Maine Times. They published a few of my poems, which felt really good. So I continued writing.

Then we moved from Bath, Maine to this old farmhouse, an 1823 farmhouse in Chesterville, Maine. It just so happened that one of the people renting the house across from us was a guy named Jeff Kelly, who was into self-publishing and who had published a lot of books. He connected me with Lulu down in North Carolina, a company that does self-publishing. He, himself, has published 500 books, so he knew what he was doing.

He took me under his wing and started helping me put together these books of poems.

Larry Abbott:

This led to Orion Rising, which has three sections. The first section is more about your war experience, and one of the themes, I thought, was that the past continues to haunt the present, like the poems “Medic” and “Flashback.”

Doug Rawlings:        

Right. You’re making me think about this work I’ve done at Togus Veterans’ Hospital [Chelsea, Maine]. I went up there and volunteered for three years in the psychiatric ward, and we would talk about poems from the Civil War right up through the Afghan wars, looking at Walt Whitman, looking at the World War I poets, various writers like that. I would encourage the patients to take material from their psychiatric journals, which they had to keep, the therapeutic journals which they had to keep, and see if they could pull something from that and transform it into this thing called “a poem,” which is, in a sense, this abstract artifact sitting on the table that we’re talking about.

It’s not you, it’s not your war experience, it’s not your therapy, but it’s this thing called a poem. Can we craft it? Can we do something with this to make it for a particular audience, other veterans, yes, or people who are not veterans? We did that kind of work and it leads to this: my theory is that we can use our war experiences, which we’re never going to forget – they’re going to be with us forever, so forget trying to get rid of them – but we can use them in a positive way, as opposed to them using us. That’s what I was talking to these guys about. We had this one vet, he unfortunately died, who was a sniper in Iraq. He wrote these rhyming couplets about being a sniper, and he called them his Dr. Seuss couplets.

We would sit there and laugh. One time we had a sociology student sitting in there with us, and afterwards she said to me, “I can’t believe you guys were laughing at this stuff.” And we said, “Well, yeah, it’s just another way of dealing with it, quite frankly.” And they were quite explicit, but, again, they were humorous. It’s using that notion of gaining control over your experiences. The nurses said this really helped him sleep at night. He would work on poems and then he’d sleep at night.

Larry Abbott:

That relates to one of the quotes in your book: “Whatever you run from becomes your shadow.” If you confront those things, then you lose the shadow.

Doug Rawlings:        

Exactly right. If I can tie this into Veterans For Peace, when we formed V FP, that’s one of the specific reasons we did it. We are a 501(c)(3) so we’re an educational organization, not a therapeutic one. There were plenty of those and we knew that, but we thought, can we – most of us were Vietnam veterans, but others joined us later – use our war experiences in a positive way?    It was this notion that got us thinking about going to high school job fairs and setting up tables next to military recruiters.  We’d assure people that we are not anti-military, but we also want young people to have a deeper understanding of what military service entails.

We had some very interesting conversations with these guys – which, by the way, gets to the point of Full Disclosure, because people are accusing us of being anti-military, anti-recruiting. We said, “No. We’re all about full disclosure. Young people, if you’re going to join the military, take a look at the reality. Find out about how women are treated in the military, for example, or look at this. Look at that. Read this stuff.” So if you still make that decision to join the military, at least you’re going into it a little bit more informed than you otherwise would be.

Larry Abbott:

Another poem in the book, “The Girl in the Picture,” is about the idea of forgiveness and being forgiven.

Doug Rawlings:        

“The Girl in the Picture” is that famous photo of Phan Thi Kim Phuc, fleeing a village being napalmed. [“The Terror of War” by Nick Ut]. Most of us who are from the Vietnam Era know the photo exactly – I can look at people my age and say, “You know ‘The Girl in the Picture’?” And they know exactly what I’m talking about, that picture. It was iconic. It won the Pulitzer Prize [1973], and it was on, I think, the cover of Time Magazine. But it was a transformative picture for many people. They said, “This is the reality of war. This is what’s happening.”

I was writing this poem about suicide [the 1997 “Formula for a Single Car Suicide (A Tried and True Veteran’s Way Out)”]  – quite frankly, driving down Ridge Road, which is an S-curve, going 70 mph and turning the wheel to the left and to the right and heading into the woods and killing myself. After the war we called those single-car suicides. The VA did not recognize them as suicides, but we did.

A guy all by himself hit a tree, no alcohol involved, no skid marks? This was what he wanted to do. So that was where I was, working on that poem, and I happened to read in a magazine that Kim Phuc, the girl in the picture, was nine years old when that picture was taken, which, at that time, was the exact age of my granddaughter. It just flipped the poem for me, and I started thinking about it in those terms. And at the same time, coincidentally – or, according to Carl Jung, synchronistically, – I was also looking at this collection of poems, a collection from Buddhist texts, and saw that phrase, the shadow phrase, and it flipped the poem for me entirely. I imagined driving down that road and having Kim Phuc appear on the road. What would happen then? Well, I’d have to stop, as I say in the poem, pick her up, and take her home, because that’s what you do when you see a little girl walking down the road: you take her home.

That would happen to be a little village in Vietnam, as I say in the poem, where we could stand at high noon, and there are no shadows. The idea is that, perhaps, forgiveness exists somewhere – and as I say over and over again, I do not have the right to ask the Vietnamese people to forgive me for what we did in that war. But if they offer us forgiveness, we accept it graciously – and gratefully, actually.

I returned to Vietnam in August of 2023 with my son for a conference. I was meeting with a woman, Dr. Tran, who runs the War Remnants Museum in Saigon, or Ho Chi Minh City, depending on what you want to call it. She took me aside and gave me this phrase. She said: “We never forget, but we forgive.” And I thought, that’s exactly where I’m coming from.

Larry Abbott:

The second half of Orion Rising is titled “The Maine Poems: Family, Friends and Place.” This seems to be a counterpoint to the first half, although you do have poems about aging and death, but it seems to have a different tenor from the first section.

Doug Rawlings:        

It does. It makes me recall a poem I wrote for Suel Jones, a vet who chose to live in Vietnam after the war. I was talking to him one day and asked him, “Suel, what do these guys do, these NVA guys?” Because he goes out and gets drunk with his former enemies. “What do they do when they retire?” And he looked at me and he said, “Doug, they don’t use that phrase. They say they’re returning to their gardens.” I said, “Ah, okay.” I didn’t do this consciously; I did it unconsciously when I moved into the farmhouse in a  wilderness area. My wife and I, both raised in the suburbs, we didn’t know anything about living in the willywacks, if you will, heating with wood, plowing snow, and the like, but we made that choice.

We grew organic gardens and we heated with wood for 20 years, 10 cords of wood a year for three woodstoves, and figuring out that whole thing. Now I can reflect upon that and think, okay, that shifted my attention away from the war to the land – raising a family, having my two kids, a son and a daughter, learning how to do all these “outdoorsy” things. They’re both wonderful, amazing human beings now. They’re very connected to the natural world. But it was that reconnection with the natural world – or for me, a new connection with the natural world, I think, which is part of the healing process.

Larry Abbott:

You also have a section entitled “Fiddleheads,” children’s poems, which seem to be another counterpoint.

Doug Rawlings:        

At night, we’d put our kids to bed, they’d be three, four, five, six years old,  and we were reading A.A. Milne’s poems from Now We Are Six over and over and over again, silly kinds of poems, beautiful poems, with wonderful rhymes. My kids loved them.

So I started writing poetry in that fashion, just for them. Actually I put together a collection called A Baker’s Dozen, which is 13 of these poems, which were all written for my daughter and my son. They’re illustrated by my granddaughters. They’re reading a poem written to their mom, like “Rainbow Girl,” and my youngest granddaughter, Iona, does this drawing. So that’s what this collection is all about, sort of connecting the generations. I didn’t want to be known entirely as just a war poet. I wanted to expand if I could.

I was asked this by a student the other day at the university, about being a poet. I say this: I’m not really a poet. I think of people who are, like Denise Levertov, who dedicate their lives to writing poetry. I write poetry, I read poetry, but it’s not my main way of living; it’s sort of another part of who I am.

So I don’t kid myself about thinking my stuff is going to be immortal [laughter] or get on The New York Times’ Best Seller list. But I write it for myself and particular audiences.

Larry Abbott:

One aspect of your writing is that you’re trying to bring the voices of veterans to the page, either in poems or prose.

Doug Rawlings:        

Letters to the Wall, for example, tries to do that to some degree.  As part of Veterans for Peace, we discovered that Obama came up with $63 million to write a history of the Vietnam War. Unfortunately, he had the Pentagon do it. We looked at their website and saw the materials they were using and our reaction was, “Oh, my God, are you kidding me?” So that’s where we really started the veterans full-disclosure idea. What can we do to tell the truth?

I came up with the idea for Letters as part of full-disclosure. Why don’t we ask people who were adults, if you will, during the Vietnam War, who were directly impacted by the war – not just veterans, but conscientious objectors, friends and relatives of those listed on the Wall, Vietnamese people – write a letter to the Wall, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., and we will deliver those letters every Memorial Day. We did that for six years.

Larry Abbott:

How many volumes were there?

Doug Rawlings:        

Three volumes, about 500 pieces included in the three volumes. There’s a wonderful poem in there written by a student at the university where I taught. I did a little workshop and she came up to me and asked, “Can I write a letter?” And I said, “Sure.” Well, her grandfather was killed in Vietnam, and she wrote this beautiful poem to him, saying, “I wonder what your aftershave would smell like. What would your voice sound like if you held me in your lap?”  Incredibly powerful.

Le Ly Hayslip, a Vietnamese woman . . .  Oliver Stone did a movie about her coming to the United States [Heaven and Earth, 1993]. She’s written two letters to the wall. In one of the letters – it’s a beautiful letter – she said, “I forgive you.” She’s writing to the people who killed in Vietnam, American soldiers who killed in Vietnam. She said, “I forgive you.”

Larry Abbott:

You include your poem “The Wall,” with an introduction. In the poem you write: “Slipping past the panel where/my name would have been/could have been/perhaps should have been/. . . Staring through my own reflection/beyond the names of those/who died so young . . . ” How did that poem come about?

Doug Rawlings:        

We formed Veterans for Peace in 1985, here in Maine, five of us. In 1986, we found out some vets who joined Veterans for Peace were doing a water-only, 40-day fast on the Capitol steps. They were opposing the war in Central America at that time. We chartered a bus to go to D.C. to support them, which, by the way, was seen off by the governor at that time of Maine, who was a veteran and recognized the work that we were doing.

As a side trip we went to the Wall. This is where my friend, Jerry Genesio [a founder of Veterans For Peace], found his brother’s name. He was killed three weeks after I arrived in Vietnam.

I do this thing called “walking the Wall.” When I go to the Wall – and I’ve been there a number of times – I start at the date when I entered Vietnam, July 2, 1969, and I walk it to when I left the country, August 11, 1970. I believe, rough count, there’s about 9,800 names on the Wall from the time that I was there.

Earlier, I had written a poem that was opposed to this memorial. It’s a very angry poem. I had heard, before I saw the Wall itself, I heard that they were going to build this monument in Washington. I thought: Oh, shit. It’s going to be like one of those with a guy on a white horse with a sword and all that crap. And I said, “We spit on/your war memorials” as part of the poem [the 1984 “On War Memorials For My Beloved Friends in VVAW”].

And then I go to the Wall and it’s just beautiful. It’s just striking. I wrote that poem, what it felt like to be walking down that Wall, thinking of the names. I did it at 2:00 in the morning. There’s nobody around. Just thinking of those names, those people in that wall.

Larry Abbott:

Your second book is A G.I. in America. The cover image by Rob Shetterly is entitled The Dog of War [2015]. About the image Shetterly notes: “The greatest threat to the humanity of the soldier may not be the enemy’s weapon, but his own participation in the war. That’s the dog I see.” Does A G.I. in America continue some of the same themes as the previous book?

Doug Rawlings:        

It does. It’s one of those books that has older poems and newer poems in it.  I wrote it because I was chosen to be the first Poet Laureate of Veterans for Peace, which was quite an honor. They give me that at the convention. Over the first year and a half or so, I felt that I had to put together a collection as the Poet Laureate; that’s what this is. It’s got some new stuff in it and it’s got some older stuff in it.

Larry Abbott:          

There is a sense of bitterness, I thought. The poem “Government Issue at the VA Hospital” has a very bitter undertone.  You write about a vet waiting in front of a freight elevator: “what was left of his family/waited downstairs/in the lobby/for what was left/of him.”

Doug Rawlings:        

Actually, a lot of my poems come from actual experiences, like when I’d do my workshops at Togus, which, by the way, is the oldest VA hospital in country; it opened right after the Civil War.

I’d see guys in wheelchairs my age or even younger, and they’re going to be there for a long time, and I’m just walking around, looking at stuff. I saw one vet sitting in front of a freight elevator as I went by. That’s where the poem comes from, that notion like, “Oh, wrong elevator.” No, not really.

Larry Abbott:

Because I’m just freight, stripped of humanity.

Doug Rawlings:        

I’m just freight now, being sent down to see my family, what’s left of me.

Larry Abbott:          

There’s that sense of loss.

Doug Rawlings:        

Absolutely. Real loss. I have a tremendous respect for the staff and the doctors at Togus. I know other guys who go to other VA hospitals that are not so good, but this is an excellent hospital. They’re really caring individuals, but you can’t get away from the fact that some of these guys – I look in the eyes of some of these guys, my age or younger, and their lives are just totally taken over by their condition.

Larry Abbott:

There’s also the idea that the war, any war, is never really over, either back home, or in Vietnam, or any war zone. “Unexploded Ordnance” explores this idea.

Doug Rawlings:        

That’s a poem I wrote for my good friend, Chuck Searcy, who’s lived in Vietnam for 35 years now. He started Project RENEW, which is designed to make the former war zones safer. He trains Vietnamese to go into villages to look for unexploded ordnance, to look for bombs that have not gone off that are killing people now, maiming and killing people. When I went to Vietnam last August, I went to their place. It’s stunning, the prosthetic lab, for example, and all the other things they do. The damage done to the Vietnamese people … even 50 years after the war is over, kids are still getting maimed and killed by these unexploded ordinances.  I wrote that poem from the experience of being in the artillery, having done what we had to do, sending those bombs out there, some of which exploded and some of which did not. They’re still maiming people.

Larry Abbott:

And then, in 2000, you published In the Shadow of the Annamese Mountains, which included both new and selected poems. The image of The Dog of War was on the frontispiece.

Doug Rawlings:        

Oh, yeah. That’s an amazing image. I wish that image was on the cover of Orion Rising [that cover has a portrait of Rawlings by Shetterly]. I didn’t find him until later, but Shetterly is just an amazing artist. I could talk forever about him. But In the Shadow of the Annamese Mountains, what I like about this, it incorporates a number of photographs by Don Evon that were taken when we were in Vietnam. What I like to tell people – we actually did this – I was in country about eight or nine months. I’m in this little fire base in the Central Highlands, supporting the 173^rd. Everything’s off-limits. I was never any place on-limits.

We were surrounded by concertina wire and sandbags but we decided that we were going to go into the village of Bong Son. Our little fire base was set up there. Across this plateau, there was a Korean encampment, and then there was the jungle, and then there was the village down in the jungle. We took our helmets off, our flak jackets off, stacked our weapons, had somebody watch our weapons, and we walked into that village unarmed. A lot of the pictures were taken when we met these kids in the village, just walking along without weapons.

A recurring memory about my experience in Vietnam is the damage we did to children. I didn’t have children at the time when I was there, but obviously I had children afterwards. And I realized, walking along with my daughter when she was two years old down a dirt road, the wonder in her eyes . . . we stole that from those kids.

There’s one picture in there of our dope dealer. She was about 10 years old and she sold us marijuana, heroin, opium, and all kinds of stuff. We laughed about it at the time, but that’s what we did to this kid’s childhood.

Larry Abbott:

The idea of the war’s effects on children comes out in the poem “Grandfathers,” where you’re connecting your family in the present to the children’s deaths in war where the grandfather has to measure the three-foot long coffin.

Doug Rawlings:        

I’ve watched a video of a guy with nails in his mouth being interviewed by an American journalist. If you look in the background you’ll see these coffins, just this little, tiny, three-foot-long coffins. I start that poem about how my kids would measure the height of my granddaughters by chalking their measurements on a post. I thought, I know something about feet and inches, so when I saw those coffins, I said, “This guy’s making a whole bunch of coffins for grandchildren.” That just blew me away.

Larry Abbott:

Your most recent book is Bamboo Bridge. It’s in five sections, and seems to be a dialogue with another writer. The sections are: Family, Children of War, When the War Begins, When the War Ends, and Moral Injury.

Doug Rawlings:        

Right. This was, again, another amazing experience. I am the poetry editor of a publication called Peace & Planet News, which we’ve been putting out for a few years. One of my friends, who is now the president of Veterans for Peace, Susan Schnall, lives out in Los Angeles. She suggested that I check out poems by Teresa Mei Chuc for publication in Peace & Planet News.

So I did. I liked them. I wrote to Teresa and said, “I love your poems.” We corresponded back and forth. One of the things I like about poetry is swapping poems. She teaches high school in Los Angeles now, but she came over as a refugee. Her mom was a refugee fleeing Vietnam. Her father fought for the South Vietnamese Army, so he was put into a so-called “reeducation camp” for nine years. She didn’t see her father at all. He finally came to the United States, she writes about this in her book, and he tries to kill her. He’s just crazy. He’s just way out there. She’s just a little girl trying to figure out the world from the perspective of being a refugee. Her mom learned how to speak English and they did the usual refugee things, which is captured by her poetry.

What we decided to do was, say, “Let’s put together a collection where I’m the father of a young girl and you’re the daughter of a father. You include some of your poems to your dad, and I’ll include some of my poems to my daughter, and we’ll go back and forth, back and forth, back and forth that way.”

Larry Abbott:

Were the poems meant to be a dialogue?

Doug Rawlings:

Ideally, yes. But, in actuality, probably not. They were written separately. She wasn’t writing a poem in response to my poetry or vice versa. They were just poems that she had written and poems I had written. When we looked at them, we tried to put them somewhat together so they are not totally distinct from each other. We hoped that they would be related. That format has worked for some people. It captures the idea.

Larry Abbott:

You were in Vietnam in August of ’23 to participate in the Engaging With Vietnam conference What was that trip like? What was the goal of the conference?

Doug Rawlings:

Oh, my God. It was amazing. We were invited over there because of Ron Carver’s book called Waging Peace in Vietnam, which he has translated into Vietnamese. He’d been working with Dr. Tran and the War Remnants Museum for years. He’s been back and forth eight or nine times. Finally, they got this book published. This was the 14^th annual conference, looking at the heritage of Vietnam, put on by Vietnamese scholars, for Vietnamese people. She asked if some of us would do a panel discussion at that conference. Ron asked me to join him and do it, and we did. The conference was an amazing experience. I went with my son.

We landed in Hanoi, and ended up in this wonderful little hotel. We wandered around Hanoi for a little bit, and then we fly down to Huế, which is where this conference took place. There were about 500 people there, almost all of them were Vietnamese. There were a couple of people from Scandinavia and a couple Americans here and there, but most of them were Vietnamese. Fortunately, they were kind enough to translate for us. There were workshops on “How can we women in Vietnam overcome the Confucian code of how women are supposed to be treated in Vietnam?” Those kinds of workshops. There was also a workshop on the GI resistance to the war.

I was stunned. I shouldn’t have been. Nobody had heard about this. None of the Vietnamese people. They knew about the American flower children resisting the war, but they didn’t realize that there were veterans who were actually resistant to the war in country and when they got back. So that’s what our part of the conference was. Chuck Searcy, who did the Project RENEW and the Friendship Village was part of the conference, and Dr. Tran herself, and myself, and Ron Carver.

I had the honor, when I was reading my poems, of Dr. Tran translating my poems into Vietnamese after I had completed them, which was really quite special.

Larry Abbott:          

What’s next on the agenda?

Doug Rawlings:        

We’ll just keep on going, I guess. I’m doing presentations now. I do a slideshow of my trip to Vietnam. I’m doing some poetry readings in different places and focusing on political poetry and political art. I think my teaching days are done. I’m 77. If somebody asked me to come back in and teach, I would gladly do it, but with some amount of hesitation because I’m beginning to think: How would I be in front of the classroom now with my memory? Who knows?

I’m still living in the old farmhouse, and I’m going to be there until they carry me away. Yesterday, I was working, planting the garden and cutting the grass and getting the wood ready for next year.

Websites:

 https://kellscraft.com/DougRawlings/DougRawlingsPoetryPage.html

https://www.vietnamfulldisclosure.org/

https://www.veteransforpeace.org/

slideshow:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1rqDODNQ13Hn3jodGLuFR6wJ8BVGdEyoQjZuoyLkdNDg/edit#slide=id.g27eb81cd953_2_18

In Okinawa I made a fist
and my fingers stuck together
that stop over night
my one stop before Danang,
between two worlds,
the flag burning, tear-gas
U.S. and the Vietnam rat-tat-tat
automatic fire, the LBJ
How many kids … and the sandbag
fortified bunkers. Didn’t
see anyone die, only the dead.
In Okinawa, planes
on the runway, the air thicker
than Danang’s.
The smell of napalm,
how real for some.
I stood holding a metal tray
in a chow line, slept
in a top bunk, spit-shined boots
so their tips were mirrors.

PUTTTI don’t know whether war is an interlude
PUTTTduring peace, or peace an interlude during war.
PUTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT-French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau, 1919

Hurl of metal – iron, steel – as shrapnel,
as bail hail, as HE detonation, all
forged and spit out again with new fire,
matériel barrae, meat-mincer for
extruding the mortal mettle of mere men.
The sowing and the reaping are all one –
short is the harvest of those born to it.
After the wrecking, reaping, reckoning,
all are scuppered on the killing field,
khaki men with hopes of home snuffed out.
Sheaves of men scythed down mid the muck-mire-mud,
bowels churned with the disemboweled earth, red wet.
Gravity flows to the lowest reach, but not
here in the gorge of this blood-gutted earth,
saturated but not satiated.
On and on this crimson stain will drain,
young men will come to fill the gap – futile
like a record where the sylus is stuck
in the groove over and over again –
out of trenches to fatal, final ground.
They die individuals, but banal
as communally their yield is too large –
none a hero in this no-winners game
nor a tragedy – just raw statistics.
All that grieve them soon too, to oblivion.
After this Great War comes the entr’acte
before World War roman numeral II,
just in time for those who survived and bred
to lose their sons in the next harvesting.
Never an end, merely an ellipsis …

I wasn’t going to tie flies tonight because I’d been invited to the ballet.  The performance was at the Wilma and it was a formal affair.  I had gone through my drugs, auditioned them each in my imagination, and made my decision.  The invitation came from my new friend Colleen, the Arts & Culture Reporter for the paper.  Colleen had a boyfriend.  He was significantly older and was a wine buyer, or a wine rep.  Something with wine.  He was at a soft opening, which was why Colleen had invited me.  Also attending was the Arts reporter from the Daily Chronicle in Bozeman, who had been Colleen’s college roommate.  All of this was in my texts; I’d avoided replying more than one or two words at a time.  I still found myself playing hard-to-get with Colleen, and I begrudged her for the way I imagined she saw me.  This was not a case of her wanting to be friends and me wanting to sleep with her.  I believed that she saw me as a kind of backup or practice love interest.  Our interactions were flirty, but safe.  She roughhoused with me.  I was more age-appropriate as a partner and I guessed that her relationship with the wine guy was stifling and that she used me to play-act how it would be to date someone in her demographic.  There was no threat of our consummating this phantom relationship, because at the end of the day Colleen was old fashioned.

I folded up a Vicodin into a piece of tinfoil and put it in the coin pocket of my corduroys.  In terms of dress, I had decided on Evening Noir: midnight blue everything with a black cashmere watch cap and my silver watch.  The ballet was as close to a cultural event as we got around here, besides neo-traditional bluegrass and fishing film festivals.  I didn’t know anything about it, except that Colleen’s friend had traveled across the Divide to cover it, and there had been an unusual amount of traffic downtown this morning when I biked past.

According to the marquee above will-call, the performance was sold out.  There were men in tuxedos, and a row of idling black Suburbans in the bus lane.  I cruised the milling crowd and caught sight of the promotional poster.  It featured a black-and-white portrait of a craggy-faced man staring grimly into the camera.  Many of the assembled patrons were wearing dress scarves: silver-haired men and women looking formal and somber, no one smoking.  There would be a long line at the bathroom during intermission.

I was meeting Colleen and her friend at the distillery.  I wished I’d left time for myself to get a drink-before-the-drink somewhere sleazier, but I was going to be exactly on time.  I paused against the brick wall before I reached the plate-glass façade and fished out the foil packet from my pocket.  I bit the pill with my canine and it split into pieces.  I dry swallowed and made a face and then stepped out.

Colleen and her friend were inside with drinks; both women were beautiful.  Colleen is a freckled hippie with a face made up of flat broad angles, all upturned, like they were designed to catch sunlight.  She can do motorcycle mama and she can do flower child.  Tonight she was dressed like an art teacher, in corduroy overalls and a turtleneck, with a paintbrush ponytail.

“You know Jessica,” Colleen said, though I didn’t, and I reached across the table and held out my fist to a ghostlike figure in all black.  She had her arms crossed across her chest and a long thin neck and a pop of red lipstick. With squinted eyes and pursed lips she reached out a slender wrist and gave me a fist bump that sounded like a Pop-Pop going off.

“Wassup,” she said.

I ordered and then waited for my cocktail.  I already knew I’d drink it too fast.  The problem with cocktails here is that they’re too delicious.  It was better to order something hostile, like an aquavit martini, than one of the tasty tiki drinks with a hole in the bottom.  My internal metronome was calibrated to beer.  Then the drink came and it was delicious and I relaxed.  My tablemates were nourishing to look at, and because I’d dressed elegantly and knew that I, too, was nourishing to look at, I felt comfortable drinking them in: everyone wanted to be looked at tonight and the pleasures were all reciprocal.

The girls filled me in on the context of the evening’s performance.

The ballerino, Jugo Lypynsky, was a Ukrainian national who’d trained under Ratmansky.  Among many principal roles, he’d danced Siegfried in the Bolshoi’s Swan Lake.  In his early thirties, as his body began to show the gravity of his age, his work took on an inverse levity: in a solo piece for the radical Un-Bolshoi, he danced both Odette and Odile in a marathon performance that crescendoed with a flawless, turbulent, breathtaking, and utterly masculine interpretation of the famous thirty-two fouettés.  It was the company’s first and only staging of Swan vs. Swan.  To hear Colleen and Jessica tell it, interrupting each other in their excitement, and obviously familiar with the same sources and opinions, Lypynsky was an artist of the highest order, a technician, classically trained but not a hidebound traditionalist, whose attachments to the Bolshoi and the old order more generally, strained already, were severed at the outbreak of the war in Ukraine.  Lypynsky’s talent, his leftist upbringing, and above all his sense of humor and experimentation had already drawn him from the grand halls and theaters of the old school into the thin air of avant-garde dance, and now, as the sun set on his body but (in his words) rose on his soul, he stepped forward into his grand pas: political action on behalf of the Ukrainian people.

It was then that he suffered the attack.  Lypynsky was—

Colleen pursed her lips and glared at me.

“It’s French for ‘whipped’,” Jessica said.  “The past participle of fouetter.  It’s a one-footed spin.”

“Thank you, Jessica,” I said, smiling annoyingly at Colleen.  Our second drinks arrived.  Everyone readjusted themselves and waited for the server to walk away.

It was then that he suffered the attack.  Lypynsky was back home in Odessa, an area thus far spared by the bombings, closing down the black-box theater where for the past three weeks he’d been hosting open-mics, 24-hour plays, poetry readings, one-acts, bake sales, AA meetings, food drives, and every other kind of gathering he or anyone else could think of to keep morale high and to bring high-net-worth civilians into contact with artists and organizers.  At ten PM, after he ushered out the last of the laypersons, he put on a fresh pot of coffee, turned off the house lights (except for the traditional single bare bulb over the stage: he wrestled with the logic of this, and ultimately conceded to superstition), and retired to the basement office, where he waited for his second wave of visitors to trickle in.

For the past few weeks, these had been the members of what used to be a recreational club for building and piloting drones.  They slipped in through the delivery entrance carrying milk crates and cardboard boxes filled with tools and padded cases containing their enormous drones.  These were high-school students, engineers, tinkerers, grandfathers: a group of dorks, in sweatpants and Velcro shoes, with tiny toolkits and headsets with retractable antennae.  They were retrofitting the drones to carry bombs.  Their leader was an obese, straight-edge lesbian with a streak of pure white in her hair.  Lypynsky had requested only that they not bring the bombs themselves inside.  At first, they’d giggled at him, these dorks, who had no access to bombs, but lately he’d sensed a new seriousness in the room, and he believed they’d made contact with someone in the military.  He preferred not to know; his role was as a facilitator, as a host, as a fundraiser, and as a benevolent countryman.

During these sessions, Lypynsky leaned against the kitchenette counter drinking coffee and thinking about the dancers he knew in Russia.  Once upon a time he’d believed that art had a moral value: a rightness conferred by the universe on that which was beautiful to look at.  Then he spent time in ballet companies.  He’d seen what these beautiful people did to each other.  They were backstabbers, they were gluttons, they were wolves.  Now he wondered if, when the circle met back up, it wasn’t beauty and cruelty that touched at the ends.

The members of the drone pilot’s club were not the beautiful people of the world.  But night after night they sat around this table chatting quietly about each other’s lives as they built incredible machines.  It seemed inevitable to Lypynsky that, before long, one of these pilots would be directly responsible for the killing of Russian soldiers.  In all likelihood, it would be the boy Petr, whose robot was the best of all: a bulky and sinister machine with a trapdoor on its belly that could drop a bowling ball onto the floor with the push of a button on Petr’s enormous remote control.  Petr was in high school.  He had a brother with Down’s Syndrome, a condition that made Lypynsky emotional.  He couldn’t pass one of these people in the supermarket or on the street without his chest tightening.  He was the same way with the blind.  If it was an obese person who was blind, or, God forbid, a person with Down’s Syndrome, it affected him extremely.  Or, a person with Down’s Syndrome who had very thick glasses, or a person with glasses who had a lisp.  He wasn’t proud of this.  He was afraid it was a kind of fetishization; he believed it probably had to do with his own beauty and physical robustness.  Nevertheless, he felt it, and when he saw the reporting of his countrymen under attack in the Donbas and elsewhere in the east, and when the victims were, for example, a person with Down’s Syndrome, this was when he felt the pathos of the war most acutely, which was to say, this was when he became the most fiercely defensive of his country, and when he became thirstiest for revenge.

Petr was among the downtrodden.  He wore dirty track pants too short at the ankle and slippers that he clearly borrowed from his mother.  He had government-issue glasses and he flipped his hair off his forehead like a girl.  He had a bird chest and soft shoulders and he bounced on the balls of his feet when he walked.  When he got excited, he shook his hands like he was trying to dry them off.  But he had good teeth and a strong jaw, and Lypynsky would glance over to see the boy leaning into his huge robot, his arms buried in its guts, with a screwdriver and pen light clamped in his mouth, and Lypynsky would swell with pride.  Lydia, and Masha, and Grandpa, and Petr, who would someday kill (someday soon), and the silent black dog with no tail and ears like a fox, and Mama Inna, who ordered a pizza to the basement (Lypynsky could have killed her), a pizza for them all to share: these were soldiers.  These were heroes.  Even Lypynsky himself, a soldier, leaving that bulb on upstairs and sneaking down into the basement on sore feet to put on coffee, and who in his extreme boredom found his muscles twitching into just the suggestion of plié, then relevé, and his arms going through the old progressions, now closing his eyes and feeling his body fill and lift, the muscles firing, though he was only barely moving, more thinking than doing, though the thought of each movement flowed into the next just as the movements would, and his breath matched the thought of each movement as it would the movements themselves, dip, turn, breathe, lift: the old steps, the classical steps.  And then a gasp from the audience as he spun, his buttocks never leaving the counter of the kitchenette, but each muscle of his body responding, preparing on six-seven, his right leg à la seconde, lift to releve, close to passé, his body whirling in place—passé, passé, passé—and he opened his eyes to see everyone in the room staring at him, though he hadn’t moved, hadn’t made a sound.

It was after one in the morning when he locked up, taking out the folded pizza box under one arm.  The alley was empty.  It was a bright night and the horizon shimmered with what he’d come to think of as the glow of war.

To have the alleys of Odessa to himself on these shimmering nights was the small gift of this conflict.

He opened the lid of the dumpster and quietly shoved the pizza box inside.  They were still collecting the garbage, still washing the streets, and still the stoplights changed from yellow to red, and red to green, and the cranes stood over the shipping lanes like huge birds drinking from the sea.  The Sailor’s Wife, his favorite: walking once with Felix and Felix’s son, only a year old, and the child had leaned out of his father’s arms to suckle from the statue’s breast.  Lypynsky grinned at the memory.

There was someone behind him.  A heavy step: Mama Inna, having forgotten her keys again, perhaps.  Lypynsky turned.

“Good evening,” Lypynsky said.

The stranger continued toward him: a man in a ski coat, the kind the slalomers wore, with the collar zipped up to his nose, his hands in his pockets, and the little spider logo glinting back the glow of war.

“Good evening,” Lypynsky said again.

The man pulled a bottle from his pocket.  The aura between them blinked from red to green, and Lypynsky saw that the man was wearing medical gloves.  A drunk, discharged from the hospital.  Or, a doctor, and therefore a patriot.  Lypynsky’s thoughts accordioned together.  He stepped backward to let this man pass.

“Eat shit, swan,” the man said.  He flung the contents of the bottle into Lypynsky’s face.

“Three months in the hospital,” Jessica said, making full-on eye contact with me.  She licked her lips, and glanced sideways at Colleen.  She lowered her voice.

“Sulfuric acid.”

“Full body burns,” Colleen said.

“Liquid fire,” Jessica said.  She took a sip of her drink and puckered her lips as though the drink itself were acid.

“He nearly died,” Colleen said.  “It went through his clothes, all over his face and neck, his hair, everything.”

“It pooled in his underwear,” Jessica whispered.  “You know what that does?”

“Fuck,” I said.

“Like Play-Doh,” Colleen said.

“His eyes melted,” Jessica said.  “Like egg yolks.  He swallowed some of it.”

“You’re a sicko,” I said to her.  She wiggled her eyebrows at me.  I had forgotten Colleen.  Colleen who?  I was now in the thrall of Jessica.

“So, but, wait,” I said.  “This is who we’re seeing?”

“Yes,” Colleen said.  “He hasn’t been seen since the accident.”

“He’s been in the hospital the whole time,” Jessica said.  “They had to reconstruct his face.”

“And his dick,” Colleen said.

“But, so, it’s like a talk?” I said.  “On Ukraine?”

“It’s a performance,” Jessica said.  “Lypynsky dancing, full orchestra.”

“Why here?” I said.

“Dunno,” Colleen said.  “Apparently there are a bunch of world leaders in town, so it kind of makes sense.”

“Why are there world leaders here?” I said.

“To see Lypynsky, probably,” Jessica said.  “And they’re going fishing.  Shouldn’t you know that?”

I blushed.  I did know.  There was a group of VIPs who’d been on the river all week and I wasn’t one of the chosen guides.  From what I heard they were having a blast and catching lots of fish.

“All proceeds go to the war effort,” Colleen said.  “We don’t know what the ballet is.  They won’t say.”

“But—” Jessica said.  She looked to Colleen, who gave her a smile and a small nod.  “We heard a rumor.”

“We heard…” Colleen said.  They both leaned in, their smiles witchlike over the tea candle at the center of our table.

“He’s reprising the fouettés!” they said in unison.

They waited for my reaction, staring at me, barely containing their glee.  Each was beguiling; together, they were an enchantment, like twins from a fairy tale.  It wouldn’t have surprised me if, under the table, they were holding hands.  The Vicodin was working.  I was protected from their power; or, I should say, I shared in their power.  In my smart midnight outfit, in the bloom of my late-season tan, with my rowing muscles and two cocktails and the undivided attention of these extraordinary companions, these ballet experts.  I felt commensurate, I felt up to the implicit challenge.  I felt ready for an evening at the theater.

The fabrics of our outfits interacted with the fabrics of the outfits of the people already seated in our narrow row as we made our way to our seats.  It produced diverse sensations: camelhair on corduroy (sticky), camelhair on cashmere (very sticky), camelhair on puffer coat (frictionless, loud), camelhair on dark wool stockings (so sticky, and so pleasurable, I almost forgot to say sorry: I just grinned like a jack-o-lantern as I peeled myself off the poor seated woman).  We were in the middle, fourth row, very posh for the press.  It was the same theater where I’d attended fishing fundraisers, but transformed: velvet seats, a huge velvet curtain, and a scaffolding of lights the size of five-gallon buckets.  I checked my pockets, smoothed my pants, adjusted my socks, hitched up my belt, folded my coat, and was careful not to spill my drink as I settled into my seat.  I was outside right, leg to leg with Jessica, and I looked at her and acknowledged this leg contact, which was unavoidable and intimate, and she reached down and put three fingers on my leg, briefly, wonderfully, and I quit fussing with my pockets and just sat for a moment soaking in the creature comforts of my velvet seat at the theater.

The people in front of us kept turning around to watch something going on upstairs on the balcony.  I turned to see.  Instead of ushers, there were several large men in suits directing a procession of old people, some in suits, some in stylish and colorful button-up coats or robes, and one guy in military fatigues.

“What’s going on?” I asked the woman in front of me.  She was in her 50s, short hair, turquoise brooch, Prue Leith glasses.

“It’s the delegates,” she said, looking past me.

“The what now?” I said.

“The UN,” she said.

I pivoted and watched a tall man with a short white afro and a carved cane take his seat.  Next to him, already seated, was my friend Dane.  Dane was wearing a collared fishing shirt and sunglasses on croakies around his neck.  He must have guided today.  I tried waving to him.  He and the old man locked hands and came together in a brotherly embrace.  Then Dane lifted his feet and pantomimed like he was falling out of a boat and the two of them cracked up.

“Dane!” I hissed for a second time.  Probably he couldn’t hear me.

The crowd was excited.  Everyone was talking to his or her neighbor, old people were using their outside voices, and there was the swish and crinkle of fall clothing, and the tuning of string instruments from the pit in front of us (it wasn’t a real pit, just an orchestra assembled in folding chairs before the stage), and the whole room surged with activity, except for us: we were silent and still, brimming over with our own private excitement.  Then the lights flickered once, and twice, and it was like water hitting a hot pan.  A player drew his or her bow across his or her instrument.  The velvet curtain shuddered, as though the curtain operator was testing the controls.  For once, I did not have to pee.  Colleen reached into Jessica’s lap and squeezed her hand, and Jessica leaned her shoulder into mine, and I pressed my leg into hers, and she squeezed Colleen’s leg.  The string player bowed another note, this one long and clear, and ended with a flourish.  The lights went down.

They came up on the red curtain; the curtain opened on a plain black stage.  Someone cleared his throat.  Two rows in front of us, a hearing aid blinked, illuminating a woman’s pearl teardrop earring.  The silhouette of the orchestra shifted and resolved against the black stage as the players readied their instruments.

There was a murmur in the room as something appeared stage right: the knees and feet of a person in a wheelchair, pushed by an invisible assistant.  The chair came to a stop and with great effort, haltingly, the figure lifted himself to his feet.  He took a single jerky step forward onto the stage and the wheelchair receded from view.  It was Lypynsky: it couldn’t have been anyone else, though he no longer looked like the man in the poster.  His face was gone.  There was a general din in the room as people whispered and other people shushed them.  I would have been surprised if Lypynsky knew or cared: he had no ears.  He wore a skull cap over his waxy, featureless egg head.  The hat was the same off-white cotton as the rest of his outfit.  He moved across the stage with short staccato steps, favoring his left leg, his ballet shoes scraping the wood as he moved, and when he reached center-stage he turned to face the room.  The skin of his face was a shiny mottled camouflage of skintones but missing key features: no eyebrows, one eye completely gone, covered by what must have been a graft, the other eye hooded and searching.  His nose was two snakelike slits.  Where his upper lip should have been were beautiful tall white teeth that shone under the stage lights.  The scarring continued invisibly into his shirt and down his billowing pants.  One of his hands looked fine, with a halo of light catching the dark hair on his wrist; the other was shiny and clenched.

The first violin struck a plaintive note and the room went silent as though we’d been struck with a magic hammer.  I certainly felt that way: my limbs were floating and I kept glancing down to make sure my arms were still on the armrests.  I counted to five so I wouldn’t keep inhaling forever.  The orchestra began to play, and Lypynsky stood unmoving, or close to it, though when the music began he went from standing still to standing still with purpose.  His bearing shifted.  He was in a dancer’s pose: feet shoulder-width apart, arms at his side, neck taut, his one eye scanning the audience, finding the balcony, and then coming to rest on the stage in front of him.  His shoulders were hunched and his good arm hung lower than the disfigured one.  The strings filled in.  We were very close to the orchestra, and I could feel the vibrations from the bigger instruments.  The music rose, and shadows on Lypynsky’s shirt shifted as he took short shaking labored breaths.  And then the shaking halted and he became perfectly still.  The orchestra paused, leaving one high violin alone.  It trilled and fluttered, searching for a way down, and, finally, fell, and as the other strings swelled to catch it, Lypynsky extended one foot, and began to dance.

He moved slowly and carefully, progressing through what I assumed to be the basic positions of ballet.  He made his feet into an equals sign, with his arms at his hips.  He lifted his arms slightly and separated his feet.  He brought his right foot forward and made a hoop with his arm.  He lifted his arm and extended his foot, which through his ballet shoe looked like a cameltoe.  He began to raise his other arm, and faltered, blinking hard: he couldn’t lift the damaged arm fully over his head.  The music slowed, as though waiting for Lypynsky to recover, and he did, bringing his extended foot back into alignment with his first.  He exhaled and returned to a neutral stance.  The music looped, and Lypynsky moved through his positions again, more surely this time, still unable to get his arm all the way up in Fifth (Jessica whispered the positions now as he advanced through them), and when he finished the progression a third time, he began to move across the floor.  He still looked down at the stage, and as he moved, haltingly, apparently without much strength in his left leg, he seemed to be rehearsing steps in his mind: he stepped across the floor gesturing with his arms and legs, moving his head and neck with the music, though not quite dancing, moving his good fingers as though conducting a ballet in his mind.  He drew into a clumsy pirouette, pivoting on both feet, dipping no more than an inch, moving his jaw with the music, and returned to his mark at center stage.  The music restarted, and he resumed the same sequence, more committed now, though he still paused and faltered before the pirouette.

“He’s rehearsing,” Jessica whispered.

“It’s the White Swan,” Colleen whispered.

Jessica nodded, her eyes never leaving Lypynsky, who was advancing through the steps more fluidly, his fingers suggesting grand movements as he worked in a half-circle around the stage.

“It’s Odette,” she said.  “B-minor.”

Now the music stopped almost completely, except for one oboe, who sounded lost in a dark wood, and continued searchingly as Lypynsky returned to his position at the center of the stage, and, finally, lifted his gaze toward the audience.

“He’s a performing a rehearsal for Swan Lake,” Jessica whispered urgently into my ear.  Her breath was hot and smelled like red wine.  She could have been reciting the alphabet, or serving me court papers.  I nodded in total agreement.  Jessica turned and whispered the same thing to Colleen.

This pause was longer than the others, the oboe still searching, and then the rest of the orchestra began to play.  It was the same theme, but fuller than before.  Lypynsky began his circuit, this time not only gesturing with his good fingers but lifting his arms (the right still higher than the left), and, in a moment that elicited a gasp from the audience, lifting up onto the toes of his right foot.  The right stayed stubbornly down, and something like pain crossed his waxy face.  He lowered to the ground and completed the circuit and, as though he were in a hurry, began again, and the orchestra quickened to keep up.  He reached his mark stage right, lifted his arms, extended his chest, and rose first onto the toes of his right foot and then, with a sound like a seam ripping, onto the toes of his left.

Colleen made a squeaking noise in her throat, and someone behind me said, “Oh, god.”

Lypynsky remained en pointe, arms hooped asymmetrically over his head, and then slowly lowered himself back to the stage.  When his heels touched, he seemed to lose all strength: his arms dropped and he collapsed forward onto his hands and knees.

The orchestra abruptly stopped playing, and the room filled with voices.  Someone in the first row tried to stand and was pulled back down by his sleeve.  The curtain to the left of the stage rippled.  Through the back of Lypynsky’s shirt, drawn tight, I could see his dancer’s muscles.  There was a scratching sound that seemed to come from everywhere, and then I saw the fingernails of his good hand, scraping the wooden stage as his hand clenched and unclenched.

“He’s mic’d up,” Jessica whispered.  “His body’s mic’d up.”

Lypynsky drew himself up, first kneeling, then to his feet.  He held out a finger to the orchestra and gestured for music.  The oboe was the first to play, slowly at first, and he was joined by the strings, and now, with music again, Lypynsky resumed his circuit across the stage.  A dark stain bloomed just above the cuff on the left leg of his pants: blood, and something colorless around it.

Whether it was the adrenaline from his injury, or the new range of motion from whatever had torn, or just the choreography, he now broke from the circuit he’d been following and crossed the stage with long, sweeping steps.  He rose to point and began teetering on his toes back toward the front of the stage.

“Bourrée couru,” Jessica whispered.  “He’s flying.”

Indeed, as he flew, he lifted his arms and began to move them like wings, down at the elbow, the fingers of his good hand pointed, and the effect was like when you jiggled a pencil and it seemed to bend.  He flew past the orchestra, and began to flap harder.

“Oh, don’t do it,” Colleen said.

He did a small jump, extending one leg behind him, landed hard on his heels, made a swimming motion with his arms, and there was another sharp tearing sound.  He fell to his knees.

The orchestra stopped, the room stirred, and again Lypynsky got to his feet.  There was blood and the other wetness now blooming on his shirt from his left shoulder, and the fabric on his pant leg clung to his ankle.  He gestured to the orchestra, and they resumed playing.  He moved to the back of the stage, rose up on point, and again began tittering on his toes toward us, his arms moving in a pantomime of wings, and now he jumped, landed, swam forward, and rose elegantly on one foot with his arms and leg pointing behind him, his chest and chin extended like the figurehead on the prow of a ship.  From the audience came scattered applause.

And now he flapped harder, and jumped, and stumbled and fell.

His shirt clung to his body, dark with blood, and several people in the audience rose in the dark and made their way loudly toward the aisles.  Lypynsky danced, and fell, and the orchestra kept irregular time, slowing as he struggled to get up, and quickening as he flew and spun, leapt, and fell.  The spotlight stayed on him.  He danced more freely now, without some of his skin to stop him, and his smart jumps and spins earned him scattered applause, and then the shushing and scolding of the applauders.  How long had it been—ten minutes?  Not even.  And already the crowd had split into factions.  Even the orchestra seemed conflicted.  Only the spotlight operator remained loyal to Lypynsky, never taking his beam off the dancer, who left a slick of blood and something else—the word that occurred to me was “plasma”— as he danced and stumbled across the stage.  And now the beam operator held his light perfectly still at center stage as Lypynsky, his clothing dark and draped wetly on his body, stood breathing hard, his feet a perfect equals sign below him, and the left arm he’d been fighting with half-bowed above him.  With great effort, he lifted the arm higher, and higher still, and two seats down from me Colleen closed her eyes.  The oboe player, alone again, increased his volume as though trying to protect us, or himself.  And still we heard it, a sound like an inkjet printer, and Lypynsky’s mouth opened silently and his left arm lifted finally into a perfect oval above his head, fingers touching the outstretched fingers of his right.

“Fifth position en hout,” Jessica whispered.

From the orchestra came the sound of vomiting.  There was a pulse of light and low voices behind us: the large men guiding delegates out through the balcony door.

Jessica gripped Colleen’s knee.  “It isn’t Odette!” she whispered urgently.  She hadn’t taken her eyes from the stage.  “Look… listen!”

Colleen didn’t respond.  Her chin was to her chest and her knee was jiggling.  Jessica put her hand on my wrist.  Her palm was sweaty.

“It’s the black swan,” she said.  “He’s dancing Odile!  Listen… Look at his clothing… Oh, my god.”  She squeezed with her nails.  “It’s the fouettés!”

Lypynsky had returned to the front of the stage, breathing hard, his shirt hanging darkly from his chest like a wet sail.  The orchestra struck a jaunty melody, led by the symbols and the big strings, and Lypynsky waited, his arms bowed before him, one leg extended behind him.  As he stood, something changed in the music: the sound curdled, dropping from major to minor, oozing down in tempo until the jaunty melody had become a dirge, sticky and dragging, percussive still with the symbols, but staticky, the way a storm might sound from a sewer.  The lights dimmed around the lone spotlight.  Lypynsky drew his rear leg forward, lifted his arms, bent slightly, and whipped his arms into a spin.  He rotated on the toes of his left foot, extending his raised leg, and as he bent the leg into a triangle and drew in his arms he accelerated into a tight spin that took him off balance.  He slipped in his own blood and fell hard to the floor.

The orchestra continued playing.  Lypynsky lay still on the ground, only the toes of his pointe foot curling and uncurling in pain or some electrical misfire.

An audience member rose from his seat and, loudly saying “Excuse me” over and over, moved to the end of his row and marched down the aisle toward the stage.

“I’m a doctor,” he said.  “I’m a doctor.”

He got to the steps at the front of the stage and paused, as though waiting for someone to stop him.  Where were the ushers?  The doctor took an audible breath (the whole stage was mic’d up) and stepped up the short staircase.  When he got to the top, the curtain beside him rippled and the arm and head of a big man in a black shirt emerged and blocked the way.

“I’m a doctor,” the doctor said, and his voice was projected throughout the room.  He startled, and shrank from the stagehand or assistant, whoever he was, and the stagehand beckoned him close.  Lypynsky was still on the ground, and the orchestra was grinding out its heavy dirge.  The stagehand whispered something in the man’s ear, and together they withdrew into the curtain.  It was the last we saw of the doctor.

Lypynsky recovered his strength.  He slid himself over to a dry part of the stage and rose to his knees, then his feet.  His face, smeared with blood, had the exaggerated contours of a Halloween mask.  And he again drew up his arms, and bent at the knees, and whipped himself into a spin, extending his leg, now drawing it into a triangle, accelerating, and then extending his leg and arms again, spattering with fluid the orchestra and the several remaining audience members in the front row.  The music plodded along as though it were coming from somewhere deep underground.  Lypynsky slipped and fell.

The door at the back of the room was passed from hand to hand.  Beside the doorway, a man in a tuxedo, his coat over his arm, chugged a glass of beer as his date pulled on his elbow.  The door opened all the way to let out a wheelchair and I thought I saw the reflected lights of an ambulance.  On stage, Lypynsky got slowly to his feet.  Less than half of the audience remained in their seats.  Colleen stood up and looked down for a moment at Jessica, then me, and turned and walked quickly down our empty row.

“That’s twelve,” Jessica whispered.  She reached out and took my hand.  Hers was hotter than mine.  Lypynsky found a dry patch of stage and drew his arms into an oval.

“Thirteen,” Jessica said.  “Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen…”

A droplet of something hit me in the eye and I lifted my non-Jessica hand to wipe it off.  There was a wet thud, and for a moment we were backlit as the house door opened, let out a body, and closed.

Jessica and I were having sex when Lypynsky died.  We were in my easy chair; he was in an ambulance on his way to the ER.  We’d left in a hurry after the fouettés, when the curtain finally closed, passing with the rest of the thin crowd through propped-open double doors into the lobby where various uniformed medical personnel stood waiting around a stretcher.  Thanks to the Vicodin, I had incredible stamina.  Afterwards she got out her phone and googled Lypynsky.

“Confirmed,” she said, her face ghostly in the light of the screen.  She was sitting in my chair with one leg over the armrest, naked except for white ankle socks and her silver watch.  There were red marks all over her pale body.  I was lying on the carpet, covered in bits of feather and thread and brown chenille.

“Bummer,” I said.  We were in the front room, facing the street.  My window shade was askew and I was convinced we’d been watched.  With the new urban camping ordinance the bike path by my house had become a thoroughfare for tweakers and the homeless.

“Pronounced dead at 11:07 PM,” she said.  She checked her watch.  “Injuries sustained during a ballet performance,” she read off her phone.  She squirmed in the chair and exhaled loudly.  She scrolled with her thumb.  “Dancer suffered…” she closed her eyes for a second, letting her knee fall to the side.  I watched; I couldn’t move.  “…Severe injuries from an attack in 2022,” she said, “when an assailant… Mm, fuck.”  She swirled her middle finger and closed her eyes.  She exhaled through her nose and opened her eyes and had to lift her phone to her face to unlock it.  “Yada, yada, yada,” she said, scrolling fast.  “Mumford & Sons show scheduled for Wednesday night has been postponed and the Wilma closed until further notice.  This reporting is trash.  I’m going to write the fuck out of it.  Do you have any Adderall?”

“I have Ritalin,” I said.  I could feel my voice vibrating in the floorboards.

“Regular or time release?” she said.

“Time release.”

“Yeesh,” she said, checking her watch again.  “Alright.”

I guess she stayed right there, working on her phone.  I don’t know.  She radiated professionalism.  I took a shower and brushed my teeth and then brought her a glass of water and disappeared without saying anything weird.  In the morning she was gone.  I checked the Arts page of the Daily Chronicle but there was nothing posted yet, and anyway it was behind a paywall.

The War

“The war continues working, day and night.”
–The War Works Hard, Dunya Mikhail

It has a way of knowing people,
the way a night knows our stories.

Everything’s quiet, then you learn to fall,
deeply. It’s said how you approach an issue

says a lot about you,
PUUUbut how do you approach war?

Everything quiet – almost
at peace – when you learn to fall. Deeply.

And even the night changes its colour.
The dawn is difficult to accept.

Your palms have broken into little chips
of stone, which you will either throw

at people or swallow yourself.
In the kitchen, the water’s boiled, the pan

is ready for eggs. The child you sent out
to get some bread hasn’t made it back.

In the news: everywhere, the streets
PUUUhave learnt the meaning of blood.

Krakivets, Odyn

I wasn’t a medical volunteer – only came in with a backpack, an overweight suitcase,
all the baggage of the past eight months and a heart to pump into here
the ability to stop someone’s bleeding in whatever capacity and degree I could.

But that would’ve been too much nuance for that moment,
with me just being able to count to not much more than eight in Ukrainian
and the guard’s English and tone more apt to counting to three.

I’ve already forgotten some of the exact nuances of that moment.
Did the guard ask me through the open car door, over the empty driver’s seat in the dark, “What were you doing in Ukraine?” or something more like “What brought you to Ukraine?”

For almost a week? Your first time, with emphasis on now?
Incredulity, perhaps, that someone would choose to come to a war,
unarmed, at least in the Kalashnikov sense.

Was he holding such an automatic rifle, a worn cousin of the one I’d fired       in Texas -just precaution-or was it only a fellow guard I saw cradling the legacy of an empire chasing again the impossibility of restoring itself

by unloading                terror upon
and blasting                    through flesh
of people                           like him or me?

I tried to answer the guard’s questions but he got frustrated
and he waved us on to keep the line of hundreds of vehicles moving toward Poland,
as foreign fire engines and weapons re-supplies for firefights came in the other direction.

And with that, we crossed the line — after the Polish guards searched the car, anyway.
One side, the imminent threat of death from the sky above — and not on the other.

Those night skies, no light on the ground to obscure the stars or guide the drones.
I slept well, except when I cried myself to sleep the last night in Kyiv at the thought
of having to leave you, brother, in all this.

Your big windows in Lviv didn’t bother me much.
Neither did the lights in the sky out your windows in Kyiv,
lights that moved in the darkness.

Elemental

Hydrogen, the sun’s power
sends light 93 million miles
to give life to the sunflower
that stands for hope in all our trials.

Nitrogen and phosphorous, they make the sunflower fields more fertile.
When used in explosives and incendiaries, they add more shock and awe to a projectile.

Oxygen, the spark of life in my lungs.
I would give you the last of it from my chest,
my last breaths, if suited best,
for a continuance of your song to be sung.

Heavy stuff, uranium.
It’s not all gone as quickly as in a flash,
not for many or most.
Did I mention half-life with strontium-90?
Like calcium, it seeks bones as hosts.

Carbon, the basis of life as we know it.
If I had to, could I recall any debt to be owed it?

Could all I’ve ever sent off to be recycled
be traded to rebuild your body, your blood, your soul?
Enough to make you whole?
With enough left over to also recreate the man shot off his bicycle?

Our bonds are strong.
Between two hearts, two time zones.
Subatomic critical mass, but love more than chemistry and physics alone.

Time in a combat zone passes strangely. When you are surrounded by the incredible, the human mind has a tendency to dull your senses so that the days aren’t memorable, but there are a few days that stand out as brightly to me as a muzzle flash spitting in the dark.

One morning we were cruising along. Afghanistan in its simple beauty whipped by me. Women tightened their shawls as we passed. Children laughed and shouted, waved, or threw rocks.

“Chocolate mataraka!!!” they’d shout. In English this means literally ‘give me chocolate.’

A hand taps my leg. I chance a glance downward. Sgt Northmoney is looking up at me.

“Do you smell something funny?” he asks.

“I’m smoking a cigar,” I answer without hesitation. I’m too high to care that I might be found out, and frankly, I was a little annoyed at what he was insinuating. Yes, I was smoking drugs on our patrol. Yes, I was getting high as the lead gunner in a convoy. Yes, I was endangering the lives of everyone on board with my negligence. Guess what? Prove it! Not that I really wanted my Sgt to look closer, I just was in a constant state of defiance.

“Okay,” he says unconvincingly, but then he shrugs and I know I’m in the clear. The rest of that patrol was uneventful.

I had been in Afghanistan for months. I was ready to go home. I was sick of all the hot sun and long mission briefs. Sick of all the crude jokes and mindless drivel. The mocking we as men give one another makes me think of the schoolyard and crushes we had; we may as well have been pulling each other’s pigtails.

I had started smoking hashish in the turret of my vehicle around the middle of our battalion’s deployment. A few of us would purchase it off an interpreter back in our FOB whenever we had some down time.

Up to this point the idea had never occurred to me that the things I was seeing and doing would have any affect at all on my mental health. I was the same Avory in my mind who had joyfully flunked out of high school a few years before. The same Avory who played video games all hours of the night, and screamed obscenities at random passerby while driving in America. The same Avory who missed his brother and his mother.

There’s an idea we’ve all had that remains just out of focus. Slightly out of reach to our mind. Of our understanding. You think to yourself, “I’ll just forcibly extend to this idea, and then I’ll be one with the idea, and the idea won’t be out of focus anymore.” Instead, you notice no matter how hard you think on it, or maneuver it or your thoughts to achieve or attain this idea, it remains foggy. So it was for me from this point on, and for a long time afterwards. The idea I was seeking to achieve was soundness of mind, and it continued to elude me.

I was fooling myself that I hadn’t changed. I was meaner. Less trusting. Snapped at any moment. I started volunteering when I didn’t have to, and stopped taking care of myself altogether. I had a nickname through the rest of my time in the marine corps because of this. Dirty, they called me. And I was dirty. Crusty. I didn’t care.

On the last day of Ramadan, I volunteered to be the lead gunner again. We needed so many bodies to make up a full squad, they were short one. I volunteered. We left the wire like normal and set a cordon for a ground patrol that was sweeping through a couple compounds. I had my 240 machine gun in condition 3, like how it always was. That meant ammo was in the receiver on the tray ready to be fired. The only thing missing in this condition is I would have to pull the bolt back to the rear. After that, all I’d have to do is pull the trigger, and I’d be slinging 7.62 rounds down range at the rate of 950 rounds per minute. Condition 1. It makes sense that we would ride around in condition 3 when you think about how deadly it was at the touch of the trigger. You wouldn’t want to accidentally put a burst into someone’s house. Or family member.

The cordon was uneventful, though. I even decided against smoking this day. So I believed my mind was clear. I had a mud wall I could just see over in front of me, that led to a medium sized courtyard.

I was busy thinking about something, when gunshots rang out in the compound in front of me. The familiar rush of adrenaline pounded through my veins, along with the familiar fear.

I risked poking my head down really quick to ask my Sgt. “Is that right over there?”, I burst out to him incredulously, but I didn’t shout.

My Sgt said, “yeah I think so”, perfectly calm.

Back on my 240, I slammed the bolt to the rear, now ready to put so many rounds through it that it melted the barrel if I needed it to.

Adrenaline urges me on as I press my cheek on the buttstock, and I firmly plant my shoulder behind the gun.

I can’t believe it, contact right in front of me, not even 30 feet away. With a chilling thought, I realize we are in grenade throwing distance. A helicopter screams by overhead, its rotors beat a drum against my back.

The rims of my vision take on a reddish hue, before darkening to black. All I can see is the top of that mud wall, and the sight of my barrel. My hearing starts to dim too. All of a sudden there is no sound, just an increasing whining noise that starts somewhere deep in my psyche. A place I didn’t even know exists. All the while gunfire rings out staccato like, one pop followed quickly by another.

“Schanfelter!” A voice from the bottom of a well.

I rotate my machine gun methodically back and forth along the top of the mud wall, daring a taliban to pop his stupid head up. Wishing he would. ‘Do it’, my voice screams in my head. ‘Pop your head up. My finger is on the trigger, ready to split your skulls ,and shred your bodies, and spill your brains, and spill your guts, and—‘

“SCHANFELTER!” A voice I hear but don’t hear echoing again from that well.

‘Do it, you stupid, stupid taliban pieces of crap. I dare you. I want you to come at me, stick your stupid head up, taste my fury! Taste my vengeance, feel my wrath, pay in blood, pay in blood, pay in—‘

“SCHANFELTERRRR!!!!!”

That voice finally reaches me and I scream, “WHAT,” while tearing my tunneled vision briefly off my sights to see something very confusing. It’s my vehicle commander Cpl Junger.

Standing in the open.

Looking relaxed.

I notice no one else has moved either, except they all look at Cpl. Ewing and me.

“Schanfelter.” Cpl Junger says soothingly.

“What?” I say, matching his low voice.

“They’re fireworks.” He smiles at me.

I look around at everyone looking at me, and the continued gunfire popping repeatedly in the compound along with the sound of children laughing wildly.

Wait, children laughing?

Then reality comes flooding back to me, and what Cpl Junger says sounds home. It’s not gunfire, there are kids in the compound shooting fireworks. My vision starts to return. It’s just fireworks. People start to look away and go back to what they were doing.

Another bout of popping sounds, followed by the screeching joy of carefree children.

Just fireworks.

I look back at Cpl Junger as he smiles at me reassuringly.

“Oh,” I say.

We look at each other a moment.

“I was gonna do a whole other thing.” I say jokingly.

Cpl Junger laughs, turns and walks away.

I smile at the few remaining faces turned towards me. They take the bait and go about their business.

I turn and open the tray, take the bullets off, and pull the trigger, holding the bolt so it doesn’t fly forward, and ride the bolt home. I return the bullets to the tray.

It was the last day of Ramadan, and the whole city of Sangin was celebrating. Fireworks and dancing were happening everywhere.

And here I was about to shoot a couple of kids.

Every two or three months Jon and Steven would meet  for lunch at the McDonald’s outside the town center where Main Street met Route 1. Jon was married and Steven was single. Steven had been married before, but his wife caught him cheating. Now he was divorced. The divorce had not interrupted their tradition of meeting for lunch, though it had limited its frequency for a couple years while Steven sold his half of the house and packed up his college fraternity mug, cashed out his stocks to split 50/50 with his ex-wife, and, after some consideration, finally bought a dog.

The tradition had sprung up because both men enjoyed McDonald’s, particularly the quarter pounder with cheese, and neither man’s wife (ex-wife, in Steven’s case) had appreciated their enjoyment of McDonald’s.  Jon’s wife, in fact, was offended that he preferred McDonald’s fast food to her meals. He wasn’t unreasonable. If you asked Jon, even if his wife was nowhere to be seen, he’d tell you that she was a great cook. Every once in a while an irresistible urge arose in him to buy and consume one or two quarter pounders with cheese, plus a medium fries and a Coca Cola to wash it all down.

In addition to the guilty pleasure of the food (if that’s what you’d call it. They did),  the men also enjoyed one another’s company.  Jon was a lawyer and worked at a firm in the city nearby. Steven was a developer, also in the city. They had met on the train during the middle of President Obama’s first term, as young men. The friendship they formed had lasted all that time.

It’s unusual that men form significant emotional bonds in adulthood with anyone besides family, and it would not be fair to say that Jon and Steven were close friends. Steven had never invited Jon and Jon’s wife to the Christmas parties he and his now ex-wife had held when they were still together. Jon had never invited Steven over for Sunday football with his neighbors. Still, they enjoyed the respite their occasional forays to McDonald’s provided from domestic life. So they had entered a small conspiracy together, which consisted primarily of talking about local and state politics or whatever extraordinary event was driving the news cycle, and eating fast food.

One day late November, they’d made plans to meet after the presidential election. The election had gone mostly how the previous election went: too close to call, with contested vote counts everywhere. A foul mood had settled over the state, as it had just about every state in the U.S.  and probably the world.

The two men met in the parking lot, pulling in at almost the same time. Steven greeted Jon with a wide grin that Jon returned, and the two men shook hands with their right hands, and hugged with their left arms. Even out here in on the pavement the men could smell that they were in the right place for fast food, the air greasy and warm.

Jon and Steven ordered their meals and paid for them both (they’d settled into a casual reciprocal rhythm years ago), then grabbed an order number and found a booth looking out over the road. It was mostly empty, just past the usual lunch rush hour.

“How are things looking? Feeling ok about the election? Still worried it’s all going to fall apart,” Jon said, reclining in the hard plastic seat.

“Not good amigo,” Steven said.

“Cheer up! Things happen, people are used to disappointment,” Jon said. “Unless the economy is truly fucked—  and it isn’t! Most people have a place to live, and food to eat! — you won’t find people desperate enough to pick up arms and fight. The French Revolution was started by starving peasants, not by annoyed nobles.”

Steven shook his head.  “You’re underestimating the anger out there, Jon. People are upset, not just about the economy, but about culture. All this DEI and woke stuff. And this is a middle-class country. So it has middle-class worries. Culture’s something that middle class people worry about, how to be a good citizen and neighbor. That’s always to the American been as important as food.”

Jon crossed his arms and leaned back. “I don’t know man. I get what you’re saying,  we’re a bourgeois country with middle class values. It’s just… you’re gonna pick up a rifle and maybe die to own the libs? Or because there’s a black family living down the street? Doesn’t it sound ridiculous? You’d die because of something imaginary some rich guy made up with a bunch of suits he paid for advice?”

“Me and you wouldn’t die, no, but we’re not everyone,” Steven said. “I know people in my world, you probably know people in yours, who sincerely believe every Democrat is a far left radical Marxist who’s going to ruin America. I’m not even talking about the conspiracy nuts, the ones who believe Democrats are pedophile groomers harvesting the adrenaline of children. I’m talking about normal people who feel the ‘progressive’ centralized federal bureaucracy is out of control. People who lost their job or some crucial opportunity because of a woman, or a minority. They know, and you can’t tell them different, that the most important thing is to ruin that federal control by any means necessary .”

“I guess the question is whether they’re ready for die for that, and — again — I don’t see it,” Jon said.

“Well I hope you’re right,” said Steven. “Look at that, right on time — the food!”

A heavyset woman who spoke with Spanish-accented English brought out their meals  on trays. “Enjoy!”

The men thanked her and tucked into their lunch. Steven ate more deliberately, chewing each bite and seeming to savor the meal . Jon devoured his food. He was finished with his second burger before Steven was through his first. Jon leaned back in the booth and spread his arms out.

“Ahhhhhh,” he exclaimed. “That hit the spot”.

“Why do you eat the burgers first and not the fries?” Steven said between mouthfuls.

Jon looked at his tray. “I don’t know. Maybe that’s how I saw my dad eating.”

“I’m the same way,” Steven said. “Burgers first, fries second. You know Ellen, she always ate fries or salad first. Never understood eating the burger beforehand.”

“The fries, also, I’d say, they’re more sortable. You can eat some of them. Much harder to eat ‘some’ of the cheeseburger and save the rest for later. And that goes triple for fast food. Maybe I’d do it differently if it was a restaurant burger. But I wouldn’t say it’s a deliberate thing. It’s just sort of how I eat.”   He paused. “Hey man, what’s going on?”

“You see that?” Steven pointed. “What’s that?”

Jon turned to the window.  Outside, about a hundred yards away at the intersection, there was some sort of commotion. Three pickup trucks had just pulled up and blocked the intersection. Armed men were getting out of the backs of the trucks or exiting the cab, about a dozen of them in total. They were carrying rifles, and wearing helmets and body armor. One of the people reached up and affixed a red light, like a police light, to the top of the middle cab. Several of the others were unloading materials from the backs of the trucks — orange construction cones, sawhorses.

“Is something happening? Is that police?”

“Must be FBI,” Jon said, thoughtfully. “Police have different uniforms. This looks like — I don’t know what it looks like. Can’t be police, though.”

Steven pulled out his phone and searched for information.  “Don’t see anything about it on the news.”

“Well, you know what they say,” Jon said. “If it’s not on the news, make the news. Film it.” He leaned forward. “Wait a minute. I think I know one of those guys. Yeah… the short heavy guy, over on the right. That’s his pickup truck. He goes to my church!”

Steven had begun recording the checkpoint. Lines were beginning to form at all roads. The intersection wasn’t busy at this time of day, which meant there wasn’t much of a line, but that’d change, this was a big road. Some drivers turned around. One driver traveling toward the McDonald’s in a Subaru Outback had rolled down his window and was gesticulating  at the men. Two armed men walked over and talked with him, then waved him through.

“I guess it’s a checkpoint,” Steven said. “Look, he’s turning in here — if he comes inside, let’s ask him what’s going on.”

“Are they wearing balaclavas? They’re wearing balaclavas, look. That’s not police, or FBI,” Jon said. “No way man. That’s a militia.”

The man parked the Outback. He got out and walked into the McDonald’s. Wearing a ballcap, boots, jeans, and a plaid shirt, he looked like he could’ve been a lumberjack — which is to say, like most of the people who lived in the area.

Jon flagged him down. “Hey, sir — sorry to bother you. Who are those guys out there? Do you know what’s happening?”

“Didn’t say much except that the road was closed. I told them I was just here to grab a bite to eat, and then needed to get home. Didn’t hassle me none.”

“Did you recognize anyone? Are they local? Police?”

“I don’t think so,” the man said. Turning to the self-order kiosk, he indicated that the interview was over.

Steven continued to film the men, some were setting up concertina wires, others continued to block traffic. “Call the police,” he said. “Let’s figure this out.”

“Already on it,” Jon said, his smartphone at the ready. “I’m on hold.”

“Did you call 9-11?”

“No, I can’t see as it’s anything urgent — I mean what if it is the police, or deputies, or something. Then I’d just be clogging up the emergency line. Someone might be out there hurt or dying.”

“Makes sense,” Steven said, still watching the checkpoint.

By now all but one of the cars had turned around. That last car, an electric Chevy, was being driven by an older woman, as far as they could tell. It was hard to see from this distance exactly what was happening. But the two men near the car were gesturing , and seemed to be exchanging words with her. Finally one of the men walked back toward the center of the intersection, and consulted with a group of the men who were erecting some kind of booth or room. Jon pointed at the phone and nodded; someone had picked up.

“Yeah, hi … I’m at the McDonald’s at the three-way intersection at Main Street and Route 1. Armed men in pickup trucks are setting up some kind of barricade or checkpoint and turning cars away… uh… rifles, assault rifles, that kind of thing. They’re wearing body armor and camouflage… about a dozen… three pickup trucks… not that I can see, ma’am, no. One has a red light on top of the cab of his truck. Ok, thank you.” He hung up. “It’s not police. They’re sending a car over.”

“Hope they get here quick. Things are escalating,” Steven said.

At the checkpoint, the woman had rolled down her window and was arguing with the men. One of them backed up, and raised his rifle, pointing it at her. Circling around to the other side, the second man tried to open the door.

“Holy shit,” Steven said.

The woman put the car in reverse — hers was the only car in that lane — and the man on the passenger side fell to the ground. Even from inside the restaurant, they could hear the other man shouting what must have been “get out of the car.” Instead the car whipped around and took off in the other direction as the man holding the rifle continued to aim.

One of the men from the center had run forward and was yelling “don’t shoot.” He reached the man and pushed the rifle down.

“Jesus,” Jon said. “Jesus are you getting this?”

“Every second,” Steven said.

“Here comes the cavalry,” Jon said, as a squad car appeared from the other direction — the direction of the town center. That’s where police HQ was, a couple minutes’ drive away.

The car pulled over to the side of the road, and two officers stepped out. After looking at the center, where one of the men nodded, the rest of the people took their hands off their weapons and raised their hands. The police officers walked up to the checkpoint. One of the armed men — he was short and stocky, well-built, the same one who’d disarmed the situation with the old woman — walked out, and shook hands with the lead officer. The two of them talked, the officers nodded, then returned to their squad car and left.

Steven laughed nervously. “What the fuck?”

“Should I go out there? Like I said I know that guy. We’re on OK terms.”

“I think we should get in our cars and get the hell out of here while we still can,” Steven said.

“Woah, look at this,” Jon said. Google maps was showing red traffic at several 3- and 4-way intersections around town. “We might be too late.”

“But what are these things for?”

“If the cops are ok with it, how bad can it be?” Jon said.

“Bad enough I don’t want to find out how bad it can be,” Steven said. “Hell I’d even say ditch the car, let’s just hoof it out of here.”

“Fine, I’ll finish recording. You finish your burger and fries.”

“I’m not hungry anymore,” Steven said.

The men at the checkpoint resumed their positions. One sat in a running truck, five were in the middle assembling some sort of ad hoc building or office, and the rest in pairs, guarding the roads and turning cars away.

A car approached that they waved into the checkpoint. The car — a maroon Toyota Prius hybrid — slowed down as it was approaching, almost as though it was having doubts. Like a warthog approaching a lounging pack of wild African dogs on the savannah, wondering whether to taunt them with its strength and quickness, or to escape. One soldier pulled back a strand of concertina wire and the other waved it into the area, while two of the men in the middle, who had stopped working, approached. The car moved through, and the concertina wire was replaced.

“That car looks familiar… can’t place it, though,” Jon said.

The leader of the armed men, or at least the leader of this group, opened the door, and a middle-aged woman stepped out from the car. He motioned her to walk with him, and another one of the armed men accompanied them, as the two appeared to talk.

“That’s our State Representative, Steve. Trish Froem. I knew I recognized the car, we worked together on a couple cases in the state capital.”

“Wasn’t she — there was some kind of scandal, right? She pulled influence to get her kids into that prep school on full scholarship?”

“That was a while ago,” Jon said. “And I think it was kind of blown out of proportion by conservative media.”

It happened so quickly. The man accompanying Trish and his leader jabbed her with what must have been a taser; while she jerked spastically, (flopping like a fish, Jon thought) he gently lowered her to the ground, then flex-cuffed her. Two of the other men ran up to help. After securing her, they carried her limp body into the back of the running pickup truck, and rapped on the hood. The driver exited the checkpoint and headed off down the road, away from the town center. Another one of the men piloted the abandoned Toyota into the McDonald’s parking lot.

Steven and Jon looked at each other. Steven stopped recording and put the phone in his pocket.

“You were right, we should’ve driven out while we had the chance,” Jon said.

“Wait — isn’t that the dude you said you know from church? In the Prius?”

Jon cocked his head. “Yeah, that’s him.”

“Ok, check it out. We’re gonna walk out of here like we didn’t see a thing and pretend to just bump into him, casually. Offer him a ride to the checkpoint. That’ll get us through.”

“What are you going to do about your car?”

Steven sat back, his food unfinished. “I don’t know, I’ll figure that out later. Right now we need to get out of here. Some bad shit’s going down.”

Jon nodded and they got up together, trashing the uneaten food, letting the empty wrappers slide off the tray and into the bin, then stacking their trays. Jon had this impression that he was floating in a swimming pool. Step by step, he thought. Don’t lose it.

Going out the front door was the hardest part. The doorway felt like a portal to a strange new world , one in which the election of a person, a human, to public office — state rep! — was less important than a handful of men willing to do that same person violence . Maybe that was the real world, and civilization was the delusion, a happy fantasy that enough people had tolerated for a few decades or centuries to make real. Maybe the truth was a world of violence like a crocodile catching a deer drinking water on the savannah and making the deer its dinner, and these people had figured that out. The question now, the urgent question, was how Steven and Jon were going to fit into this new world. Would they be waved through, or tased?

Jon willed himself to place his hand on the door, like walking into a courtroom, nothing to it, and then pushed through. Steven followed into the parking lot.

They’d timed it perfectly — the short militiaman was pulling himself out of the Prius, having parked it. Jon stopped somewhat dramatically — selling but trying not to oversell the moment of recognition. “Jeff? That you?”

The heavyset militiaman froze.

“Jeff Parsons! Hey, what’s — what’s going on, new car? What’s the getup?”

Jeff seemed disarmed by the questions. He froze, then pulled down his balaclava. “Hey Jon, how are you.”

“Good man. What’s, what’s going on?”

“I’m with a group of folks who are looking for enemies of the, uh, state,” Jeff said unconvincingly, shifting from foot to foot. “We got deputized by the local police to help.”

“Is that right,” Jon said, looking up at the checkpoint. “Well, this here’s my friend, Steve. Steve, Jeff and I go to church together.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Steven said, extending his hand. Jeff pulled off one of his tactical shooter gloves and shook Steven’s hand. Jeff’s rifle — an AR-15 secured by a one-point sling — dangled awkwardly from his plate carrier, spinning unsecured. I could grab it, Jon thought, but the moment passed.

“Hey so, I guess we should probably head home, if something’s going down — is that right?” Jon said.

“Yeah, that’s probably smart,” Jeff said.

“Let us give you a ride back to the checkpoint. I’m right here, hop in,” said Jon.

“Oh, thanks,” Jeff said.

The three climbed into Jon’s car, a Chevrolet Suburban. Jeff huffed and puffed a little pulling himself into the back seat. Steven got into the front passenger seat, and Jon piloted the car slowly to the checkpoint. When they were near, the car slowed, and Jeff got out the back, approaching the checkpoint on foot. He turned back to wave them forward and through.

“Well done,” Steven said quietly, his lips barely moving. Then raised his hand to wave, an insincere smile plastered across his face. Jeff waved back.

The two militiamen at the checkpoint pulled back the concertina wire, and Jon drove through, slowly navigating the wire and barriers. As the SUV moved through the checkpoint, militia men watched it. Behind their balaclavas it was impossible to know what they were thinking, or who they were. Other men from the town or area, Jon thought, men pulled into a movement or who had sought it out. Were they extremists? Or regular folks, like Steven said? Like Jeff? It wasn’t until they exited the other side that Jon exhaled. He hadn’t realized he’d been holding his breath. Without accelerating quickly, he pulled the SUV away, and the place receded into the rear-view mirror.

“Jesus Christ.”

“Tight, that was tight,” Steven said. “But listen. Where are we going.”

“I’m going home to get my wife and kids, gotta figure out what the next step is for the family. Might be able to make our way there through side roads, miss any more of these bigger intersections. I can drop you anywhere you want after that.”

“Yeah, no problem.” Steven consulted his phone. “Look there’s a kind of long way around where you only hit one intersection. It’s down the road a bit, you’ll take a right on Landsdale, past the high school, but we avoid the center. Obviously local police are part of whatever this bullshit is. But there’s no way to make it clean to your house without hitting any intersections. What do you think.”

Jon was already piloting the Suburban where it needed to go. “Good plan.”

They drove for a few minutes in silence, the measure of their friendship overwhelmed by the magnitude of the circumstances.

There is a paradox in moments of crisis. One spends much of one’s life dreading catastrophe and everything that catastrophe means. But when the bad moment arrives, when the wind carries ill fortune, most people have within them the animal intuition for how to respond. Fight or flight. Everyone knows what to do, based on how evolution and education formed them. Jon was thinking about his wife and kids. Steven was thinking about his ex-wife and their kids, living a state away in Massachusetts, though they weren’t his family anymore. Also, he was thinking about what was happening, and his likely part in what might be to come. The old New England style houses and various small businesses of the town flashed by while Steven looked out the window at the newly foreign landscape.

“Here we go,” Jon said, slowing as they approached a long line of cars that heralded the checkpoint. It was still out of sight, around a bend in the road. “Guess the story is, we’re heading back to my house, you’re my friend, we’re grabbing dinner with my family.”

“Best lies happen to be true,” Steven said.

Though the line of the cars was long, it moved quickly. Some were peeling off rather than waiting. As they rounded the bend, the checkpoint came into view.

This one was different. It was made up of two police cars, one pulled off the road, the other in the middle. An officer was in each lane checking cars and directing traffic, while two more lounged by the parked squad car, carrying shotguns. This checkpoint worked as follows: a car would be brought forward, the officer directing traffic would take a photo of the license plate, then take a photo of the car’s driver holding up their license. It took each car about 30 seconds to be processed and sent on its way.

“So much for our clever cover story,” Steven said.

“Let’s not celebrate yet,” Jon said. “We don’t know whose laws these cops are enforcing.”

When they pulled forward and rolled down the window, Jon asked the officer about the other checkpoint.

“Can’t say what’s happening elsewhere,” the officer said. “But we haven’t deputized anyone. We’re state police,” he said. “Maybe local police are doing things different.”

“Doing what different,” Steven said. “What’s happening, sir?”

“Best you get home and watch the news,” the officer said, waving them through. “You’ll know more about what’s happening than I do. We just got orders to establish this checkpoint and log transients and that’s what we’re doing.”

They drove through. “’What’s happening.’ Dude!”  Jon said, shaking his head. “What were you thinking? The cop was waving us through!”

Steven didn’t respond.

“Well, it didn’t get us killed this time. So, straight shot to my house from here. You want to come with, figure out what the next steps are?”

Steven was still looking out the window. “Actually, why don’t you drop me off. It’s not too cold. Think I’ll walk back to my apartment. Maybe get the lay of the land.”

“You sure? I can drop you there later, once we’ve sorted out what’s happening. Safety in numbers.”

Steven didn’t want to say so but the idea of plugging in with Jon’s family did not appeal to him. Being part of a family at a moment like this, it was an implicit commitment to others he didn’t feel like making. He had too much (or too little) self-regard to insert himself into another man’s family. To be their Kramer, some guy who was a third wheel, to the main plot of Jon and his wife’s journey with their children.

Part of him had this idea that whatever was happening was an opportunity, a change in the order of things. The state representative (Steven resented how Jon had put it; he remembered her being crooked, a person of low integrity, not ‘blown out of proportion’ at all, if anything tolerated and swept under the rug) had been poorly treated. Nobody deserved to be tased. But was her removal unjust? No, the people had just had enough of being oppressed. he thought about how his ex-wife had demeaned him and gotten into all that crazy woke DEI stuff. He wasn’t sadistic, Steven; he was a reasonable man. And you can push a reasonable man so far, he thought.

“Yeah, let me out here. I need the exercise.”

“Good luck,” Jon said pulling the car to the side of the road. “Maybe I’ll see you around.”

“You too,” Steven said, opening his door. He paused, then turned back to Jon. The men shook hands and looked each other in the eye. Then Steven nodded, and closed the door.

The most versatile piece of equipment an infantryman carries is a four-letter word. It can be used in almost every conceivable situation. It’s sharp, cuts smooth and clean. It can sever all manner of ties, emotional or professional or anything in between, in a single motion. Its shock-and-awe effect can rattle even the most linguistically tolerant. It can fly. It is a unit of measurement. It weighs nothing and takes up no space. It’s a navigation tool. Just uttering the word can elicit an immediate reaction from your surrounding environment. Regardless of the context, say that crude four-letter word and you’ll know exactly where you are just by the way those around you react. Say it right now. Out loud. Go ahead.

Fuck.

Nice. Felt good, right? Admit it.

The ways in which that little word can be modified and altered are almost endless. It is a verb. An adverb. An adjective. Even a noun. Its versatility is unmatched in the English language and there is no better way for it to reach its full potential than in the hands of an infantryman. There’s something about the way those four letters fit together that appears intrinsically correct. Puzzle piece-like. And yet it’s the only piece of equipment an infantryman is always completely out of.

I’m far from the first to pontificate on the significance of Fuck to the infantryman. In his memoir Helmet For My Pillow, Robert Leckie runs the gamut of all the ways Fuck shaped his experience serving as a machine gunner during the Second World War.

“Always there was that four-letter ugly sound that men in uniform have   expanded into the single substance of the linguistic world. It was a   handle, a hyphen, a hyperbole… It described food, fatigue, metaphysics.  It stood for everything and meant nothing; an insulting word, it was  never used to insult; crudely descriptive of the sexual act, it was never  used to describe it; base, it meant the best; ugly, it modified beauty; it  was the name and the nomenclature of the voice of emptiness, but one  heard it from the chaplains and captains, from Pfc.’s and Ph.D.’s until, finally, one could only surmise that if a visitor unacquainted with English were to overhear our conversations he would, in the way of the Higher Criticisms, demonstrate by measurement and numerical incidence that this little word must assuredly be the thing for which we were fighting.”[i]

Fuck you. Fuck me. Fuck this. Fuck that. Fuck it. Get fucked. Fuckwad. Fuckhead. Fuckass. Fucknugget. Fuckstick. Fuckhole. Fuckup. Fuck Boy. Fuck Face. Unfuck. Motherfucker. Fuckin’ A! Fuck your mother. Fuck my life. Fuck off. Fuckwit. Flying Fuck. Fuck-all. Fuckety-fuck. For Fuck’s sake. Fuckery. Fucktangle. Fuckton. Fuckload. Fuck a duck. Give a fuck. Fuck Buddy. Buddy Fucker. Shut the fuck up. Holy Fuck. I don’t give a fuck. Tired as fuck. Fuck around and find out. Fucking Hell. Bumfuck. Mindfucked. Zero fucks. McFuck. Dumb Fuck. Royally Fucked. Fucked up beyond all recognition.

It’s not just the word itself but the way you say it.

Fuck. Short and sharp. A punch to the throat.

Or Fuuuuuuck. Drawn out and lingering in the valley of the second syllable with an elevation in volume the longer you draw it out.

FUCK. Belted out like a shotgun blast.

FAHK. Keep it in the sinuses.

Commandants change. Uniforms change. Regulations change. Missions change. Even the instantly recognizable Eagle, Globe, and Anchor emblem of the United States Marine Corps has been redesigned and modified several times over the history of the Corps. Fuck might be the only constant that the infantry has ever known.

At times, it is a crutch. Sure, it can be used to excess. Maybe some people feel that overuse can diminish the impact. But there are few words more powerful than a precisely placed Fuck. It packs just enough heat to elevate a simple complaint or concern into a higher registry of human emotion. Imagine: Your friend comes to you and unloads all their problems and finishes by saying, “My poor life.” Do you really feel where they are coming from? I don’t. “My poor life” drips with melodrama. Now, that same friend comes to you, unloads all of those same problems, and ends with a brisk “fuck my life.” You know exactly what they are trying to say.

The f-bomb occupies a place all its own in the English language. A quick Google search pulls the top result from Oxford Languages which starts its entry with a bold-lettered, all-capital warning: VULGAR SLANG. Fuck means “to copulate.” Fuck means to “ruin or damage something.” At one point, “Fuck” meant to strike. According to several dictionaries, the word has Germanic origins, with the earliest known recordings appearing in Middle Dutch dialects sometime in the 1500s with the word Fokken which meant to breed cattle. The Comstock Laws banned it from print from the 1870s all the way up to the late 1950s. Merriam-Webster sees it as a “meaningless intensive” that is “usually obscene” while Sassy Sasha, a regular contributor on the website Urban Dictionary, defines it as “The only fucking word that can be put everyfuckingwhere and still fucking make fucking sense.”[ii]

In some ways, the connection seems obvious. The infantry is a profession that prides itself on brash ruggedness. To be infantry is to be vulgar. It is an obscene way of life. We carry the heaviest loads for the longest distances with nothing but our backs to bear the burden while we are told to pray for war and a chance to kill, and we are expected to smile and thank the gods for the privilege to do so. It’s about as far removed from the domestic sphere as one can get. Still, there are other interesting connections between the infantry and Fuck as well. A significant portion of an infantryman’s identity revolves around the ability to shock and awe those who are not part of this holy tribe. Fuck and all its varieties fit right in with this philosophy. At the same time, it’s also one of those words whose absence can actually have just as much, if not more, impact as its presence. A British veteran of the First World War recalled:

‘It became so common that an effective way for the soldier to express this emotion was to omit this word. Thus if a sergeant said, ‘Get your fucking rifles!’ it was understood as a matter of routine. But if he said ‘Get your rifles!’ there was an immediate implication of urgency and danger.”[iii]

Fuck is the standard. It is expected, so commonplace that a grunt who resists its use can also stand out for all the wrong reasons. Your fellow infantrymen might see your clean mouth as a sign you think you’re better than everyone. You’re different. You’re special. Individualism of any kind is immediately (and I would argue rightfully) suspect in the profession of the infantry.

The Online Etymology Dictionary tracks the evolution of Fuck through a long, windy path of bastardized Latin and Middle English to its increased usage in common language at the start of the twentieth century.[iv] The verbal phrase “Fuck up” is “to ruin, spoil, destroy.” Likewise, the very doctrine of the Marine Corps rifle squad is written in similarly plain English. According to MCRP 3- 10A.4, “The mission of the rifle squad is to locate, close with, and destroy the enemy by fire and maneuver, or repel the enemy’s assault by fire and close combat.”[v] So, while Fuck might mean nearly anything in the civilian world, its most precise meaning in the infantry is “to kill.” In one of the more unsettling but poignant scenes in Steven Pressfield’s Gates of Fire, an experienced soldier educates a younger recruit on the ecstasy of killing another man by comparing it to Fuck:

“Killing a man is like fucking, boy, only instead of giving life you take it.  You experience the ecstasy of penetration as your warhead enters the  enemy’s belly and the shaft follows. You see the whites of his eyes roll  inside the sockets of his helmet. You feel his knees give way beneath him  and the weight of his faltering flesh draw down the point of your spear.  Are you picturing this?”

 “Yes, lord.”

 “Is your dick hard yet?”

 “No, lord.”

 “What? You’ve got your spear in a man’s guts and your dog isn’t stiff?  What are you, a woman?”

 At this point the Peers of the mess began rapping their knuckles upon the hardwood, an indication that Polynikes’ instruction was going too far.  The runner ignored this.

 “Now picture with me, boy. You feel the foe’s beating heart upon your  iron and you rip it forth, twisting as you pull. A sensation of joy surges  up the ash of your spear, through your hand and along your arm up into  your heart. Are you enjoying this yet?”[vi]

The meaning is clear. Killing is fucking with the only difference being the creation versus destruction of life. The intimate knowledge of both elevates a soldier above his peers. The lord’s accusation that the young soldier might be a woman if he is not aroused by the mere thought of killing an enemy combatant is a telling moment that reveals gendered attitudes toward the act of killing as well as fucking. According to this portrayal (which has held an on and off again spot on the Commandant’s Reading List since 2000), in ancient Greek military culture, they are both considered the realm of men.

The writer Ocean Vuong views violence as an implicit piece of the American lexicon, especially when considering the way American men communicate with each other. Violence is their language. In his poem “Old Glory”, Vuong attempts to highlight this phenomenon by merely constructing a poem of common American phrases. The narrative that emerges is at once recognizable and progressively disturbing.

“Knock’em dead, big guy. Go in there

guns blazing, buddy. You crushed

at the show. No, it was a blowout. No,

a massacre. Total overkill. We tore

them a new one. My son’s a beast. A lady

-killer. Straight shooter, he knocked

her up. A bombshell blonde. You’ll blow

them away. Let’s bag the broad. Let’s spit-roast

the faggot. Let’s fuck his brains out.

That girl’s a grenade. It was like Nam

down there. I’d still slam it though.

I’d smash it  good. I’m cracking up. It’s hilarious.

You truly  murdered. You had me dying over here.

Bro, for real though, I’m dead.” [vii]

The physicality of the imagery is evident from the first line and continues to the last line with the projection of death as an achievement as well as the ambiguity of “I’m dead”, a common phrase used to describe someone exhausted by humor. For Vuong, this type of violent communication is encouraged, even celebrated, and therefore internalized by American men from a very young age. While appearing as a guest on Late Night with Seth Myers in 2019, Vuong said, “‘You’re killing it,’ you’re making a killing,’ ‘smash them,’ ‘blow them up,’ ‘you went into that game guns blazing,’ and I think it’s worth it to ask the question what happens to our men and boys when the only way they can valuate themselves is through the lexicon of death and destruction?” In that same interview he went on to say, “I think when they see themselves as only worthwhile when they are capable of destroying things, it’s inevitable that we arrive at a masculinity that is toxic.”[viii]

The infantry is no exception to this dynamic. In fact, as an inherently violent profession, it should come as no surprise that language of destruction is not only in use and encouraged but is also heightened in this environment. It is embedded in the identity of an infantryman, if not for vaunting then for survival. Still, it is worth considering the ramifications of internalized violence through language in wider society, and there is much to be gained by examining the ways we communicate with each other; the words we choose, where they come from, why we insist on resting upon violence as our chosen mode of meaning. Language matters. Our words matter.

But then, of course, sometimes fucking is just fucking.

The infantry is a life of necessity, a life largely spent in austere environments with whatever personal gear can fit in a pack. There is little if any room for creature comforts. Therefore, memories hold a higher value in the field. The mere recollection of a good Fuck can be enough to keep one warm through the bitter cold of a long field op. But there’s no such thing as privacy in the infantry. Everything is shared, from the candy in the MREs to the most salacious sexual encounters. These stories are both whispered and shouted. They are almost always exaggerated and drawn out. Often, they’re told in bold detail with knowing smiles and nods from listeners. Not everyone participates and there are usually some unspoken ground rules about who and what is exactly on or off limits. It’s a way of relating to one another and, at times, especially if the story can be corroborated, a way of boosting one’s social status within a platoon.

Twentynine Palms, California. July, 2017. Every day the temperature crept just north of 135°F. My company was taking part in a battalion-wide exercise, and we were running 16-18-hour days. I was a machine gunner in a CAAT (combined anti-armor team) platoon and at the end of every movement, I climbed down from my turret atop the up-armored Humvee with new sore spots, which quickly turned into sickly yellow and dark purple bruises. We grew accustomed to the weight of our flaks and the particular way they rubbed the salt and sand into our skin. We slept on our trucks under obsidian night skies and the temperature dropped to about 85°F, which felt like zero after spending all day in the desert sun. We rose long before the sun and our drivers bore down on their accelerators, peering over their steering wheels through the thick, clouded Humvee windshields with the strange acute alertness that comes with being awake for several days. We barreled through shadow-cloaked valleys and over open desert plains strewn with thousands of discarded guidance wires from TOW missiles crisscrossed like dental floss in every direction. After the conclusion of one of the more strenuous training evolutions, my squad leader decided it was about time to round everyone up and have some quality platoon bonding time. Tensions had been running high and the strain was showing on morale. The best way to ease this dynamic? We were all going to tell the story of how we lost our virginities.

We circled up under a thin stretch of cammie netting just as the sun set, most of us perched on crushed MRE boxes, some seated right on the sand. At first, hot and exhausted, no one felt like talking. But after some prodding and cajoling, the group began to open up. What followed were some of the strangest and most bizarre stories I had ever heard. There wasn’t a single virgin in the group nor a single story that resembled anything romantic. There were experiences involving teachers and friends’ moms, back rooms in churches and public restrooms, names remembered and names completely forgotten.

My own story?

When I was seventeen, I met a girl on Myspace while I was trying to boost my punk band’s online presence and we struck up a casual correspondence. She lived in England but she really liked our music, and our casual correspondence quickly took on a more intimate and intense flavor. At some point we exchanged phone numbers and began calling each other daily.

“Don’t fuckin’ tell me you got fuckin’ catfished,” a Sergeant interrupted. (At this moment whenever I tell this story, I always take a second to point out that “Catfishing” wasn’t even a thing at that time and I, in fact, was way ahead of the game in the online dating world. Some might even say a trendsetter. But yes, I was about to discover my newfound companion wasn’t exactly who she said she was.)

I guess the guilt and dishonesty of claiming to be an honest-to-God Anglo-Saxon residing in the United Kingdom got to her enough that she just had to come clean. It turns out, she was not British nor was she living in England. She was American and called Joplin, Missouri home. I took this revelation surprisingly well. I believe I was just in shock at how easily I had been hoodwinked by this random stranger I had met on the internet. Of course, being a horny teenager may have obscured my vision as well.

“I knew it. I fuckin’ knew it,” said the Sergeant.

Her true identity revealed, our relationship not only continued but became somehow fiercer. Spring break was near and we both had a week off from school. She booked a plane ticket to New York. I booked a hotel room at the Red Roof Inn with my mom’s credit card.

“The fuckin’ Red Roof Inn, Plunkett? Are you fuckin’ kidding? Couldn’t spend the money on a Marriot you cheap fuck?”

The whole thing went smoothly. I picked her up at the airport and we spent the day together. At the end of the night, I took her to the hotel. The door closed. We turned off the lights and were consumed in darkness. I searched for warmth. The intensity of what followed was brief and strange but life-changing in the way those moments are. It felt like love. But the line between Love and Fuck is impossible to distinguish in the darkness of a bedroom. We fucked. We un-fucked. Pain. Pleasure. I just remember that it was important to make it, right there. Put it all into that moment. Just that exact moment. Nothing before nor later would matter. The relationship didn’t last, of course. Things unraveled fairly quickly after that week spent together. We graduated high school in our respective states and went off to different colleges. There was so much more to come. Even though we did not know it in that moment. We barely knew what fucking was. Or what it could be. It’s never the act itself but the slivers of the moment that remain afterward. My memory of Fuck is an incongruous chain of these slivers from years past.

The way her eyes softened in the moment (the moment) and held my own and the earth might as well have stopped moving. And she looked like—and became—every woman I had ever known or would ever know. It was right there. In those soft eyes. For the rest of my life, I will remember her head illuminated, backlit by a halo of light, her hair pulsing from the whirring blades of a ceiling fan. The glow of ivory-white skin taught me the importance of warm light in a hotel room in Tribeca. How I briefly forgot my own name after a particularly passionate encounter and I just lay there for a few moments in complete nothingness. The pinpoint clarity that comes afterward.

There’s that other four-letter word: Love. A word so much more difficult to define and yet just as closely linked to Fuck and maybe even Kill.

All these four-letter words. Each one leads back to the other. Fuck. Kill. Loss. Love. They are different but so close to the same.

There is a section titled “Love” in Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried where Lieutenant Jimmy Cross feels such an intense longing for his one-time girlfriend Martha, that he takes a small pebble she sent him in a letter and places it in his mouth just to feel closer to her. He has a strong desire to “sleep inside her lungs and breathe her blood.” Lieutenant Cross longs to consume and be consumed. This longing is somewhat physical and sexual in nature but there’s a desire for some deeper connection he cannot have with her.[ix]

Late one night, after a particularly rough ruck march with my company in Camp Lejeune, I dropped my pack and felt my soul uncrumple itself, and the only thought that went through my mind, as strange and perplexing as it sounds, was that I just wanted to crawl inside my wife and be contained in her warmth and softness in a way that was not fucking but also not love. This thought hit me with such startling clarity, I had to pause a moment. The sky above was crude oil black and pocked with stars that glowed like incinerated diamonds. A soft breeze wrapped around me and swept up in the space between my soaking wet blouse and skivvy shirt, all the places where the straps dug into my shoulders, my waist. My skin turned to gooseflesh. My muscles, saturated with battery acid. Everything ached. A metallic taste coated my mouth. The stench of a hundred sweat-drenched, cortisol-dripping bodies consumed me and I looked skyward, trying to escape it. You will have moments like this in the infantry and you will not want to tell anyone about them. Instead, you say fuck, that really fucking sucked and you move on.

[i] Leckie, Robert. Helmet For My Pillow. New York, NY: Random House, 1957.

[ii] Sasha, Sassy. “Fuck.” Urban Dictionary, February 18, 2018.

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=fuck.

[iii] Brophy, John, and Eric Partridge. Songs and Slang of the British soldier: 1914-1918. London: Eric Partridge Ltd. at the Scholartis Press, 1931.

[iv] “Fuck.” Etymonline. Accessed June 6, 2022. https://www.etymonline.com/.

[v] Gehris, Scott. “MCRP 3-10A.4.” United States Marine Corps Flagship, August 7, 2020.

https://www.marines.mil/News/Publications/MCPEL/Electronic-Library-

Display/Article/2472229/mcrp-3-10a4/.

[vi] Pressfield, Steven. Gates of Fire. New York, NY: Doubleday, 1998.

[vii] Vuong, Ocean. Time is a Mother. New York, NY: Penguin Random House, 2022.

[viii] Michaels, Lorne. Episode. Late Night with Seth Meyers Season 6, no. Ep. 111. New York, NY: NBC, June 12, 2019.

[ix] O’Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. New York, NY: Penguin, 1991.

“Drone up,” said Lieutenant Levi.

Heads turned and eyes followed the drone’s swift ascent to the sequoia canopy 350 feet above. It briefly hovered there before slipping out of sight, free of the enclosing redwoods and the damp shadowed ground.

“Eyeballs on the treeline,” ordered Captain Sophie Bencker. She stood next to the prisoner in the midst of the small circle of Rangers in the clearing. Good soldiers, special forces and Marines. But they’d been out here three weeks. Too long, she thought, and searched for Cat. It was a game to see if she could spot its nano-camouflage. There! Some thirty yards away by the northeast treeline, just beyond the unit’s defensive EM bubble. Still and sphinx-like, Cat was peering into the trees, perpetually ready. A hybrid predator of nano/biotech and huge male cougar, its luminescent red eyes gave troopers the shits.

Snowbird-North Fork CS Zone was an immense glory of primeval forest. In the early 2040s the UN had renamed all world forests, temperate and tropical, as Carbon-Scrubber Zones. An attempt to save our planetary lungs from incessant pillaging, it also made for good PR. Yet Snowbird had rare earth mines—and hydrothermals—which added up to very big bucks. Particularly for the Consortia, unholy alliances between defence, mining and tech-media, which sponsored most public ventures.

In the clearing, Janssen, Fernandez and Kelly were fastening their HOTS, Hostile Terrain Suits.

“I’m sick of pissing in my suit. Three weeks out, it stinks,” said Fernandez.

“Yeah, you stink like a bear,” said Kelly, activating her own suit. “But gotta recycle those meds.”

They urinated on the march to recycle their precious mix of bio-protection and performance-enhancing drugs, triple-A approved, and a vital advantage in the Games.

Once Taiwan was off the table, the superpowers had seen the futility of endless confrontation. They could still dominate the show and make gestures to eco-stewardship while keeping a tight rein on their own populace. The business of war had become too risky for those in power and far less rewarding. Also in trouble were the bloated dope-ridden Olympics, tame sports for fractional achievements. Already losing their appeal for fragile societies ridden with eco-guilt, suicide bombers at the 2036 Mumbai Games put the nail in their coffin. Sensing an unprecedented opportunity, the Consortia and their shadowy financiers had created the New Reality Games.

Its players were veterans and loner-chancers of all nationalities; its stars were ex-special forces. For these near-redundant military, the Games meant good money, playing with new if untested tech, and rules of engagement that were… flexible. Survival odds were equally variable, and players needed any edge they could get. The HOTsuit was nano-metamaterial and piezoelectrical-responsive, sealed head-to-toe, and designed by Hugo Boss, to boot.

“Hey Kelly, your tits really that shape or is it just the suit?” asked Fernandez.

“You’re never gonna find out,” Kelly countered with a smile.

“These suits really protect us?” asked Koch, the newbie on his first deep patrol.

“They’ll take a hit from light fire, shield your body heat against infra-red detection, and bend light to give basic camouflage” said Janssen who really got off on this stuff. “Temporary protection against biochems, and limited EM defence”

“Can’t wait to see if that’s true,” muttered Kelly. Looking at Fernandez she added: “If the Enclavers or Smugglers get hold of you, they’ll strip it off. And dump what’s in it.”

“You’re kidding, right?” asked Fernandez. Kelly just turned away.

The New Reality Games offered a spectacle of lethal conflict at human scale in a choice of environments “protected” by a bankrupt UN. Governments bought in. The Global South ravaged by floodwaters, firestorms, and epidemics saw lands emptied by violence and migration become newly lucrative. In the First World, rulers eschewed the thankless business of governance in favour of full-on entertaining of their consumer-citizens, those purposeless slaves to the social media mainstream as they curated their stories and imbibed podcasts. Gamers&Gamblers Anonymous briefly became the flagship 12-step recovery programme until outlawed.

“Just stay on mission, stay alive, and bank the friggin paycheck,” said Kelly wearily.

Protected forests needed protectors, and Bencker’s Rangers were among the best. They were owned by PC—the Pacific Consortium of Afrikaan Mines, AppleMeta, LevantSolar, Nike, Russian SiberNex, Vatican Zurich Holdings, and X-Disney. The PC yellow-flash-on-blue logo adorned their uniforms, along with its slogan We fight For Trees, which was unwise to dispute.

This particular, early Spring mission of Bencker’s Rangers was a deep sweep into Snowbird to check on the principal mining operations and tolerated human activities, read tree monitors, gather intel on strange reports filtering in from deep country, deal with any bad guys, and generally strut their stuff.

“The HOTS will keep you safe, Fernandez,” Janssen put in helpfully, exchanging a look with Kelly.

The Games were invisible to those on the ground. Airtime was not live—financially and politically way too risky—but edited and sold for online VR/AR products showcased at Moondance, the annual games fest where the world came to shop for some dynamic oblivion.

All of which made the Captiva, their new prisoner, very valuable. They’d stumbled upon her just before dawn. Strange. She was one of the forest dwellers, rarely seen. In Snowbird a deep patrol could come up against armed groups either from the fortified Enclaves of wealthy religious wackos or from Vancouver smugglers using stealthcraft to run in food, Sinopioids, weapons—oh the bosses loved a brush with those guys. There were also survivalist Treeboys looking for redemption or whatever, and these Captivas, who just goddam lived here. Then there were the weird rumours, stuff that bounced around a campfire at night. Keep the lid on that shit thought Bencker.

The Captiva. She was compact and muscular, Asian-looking with black pony tail and a crest of grey like a warning, and eyes that missed and betrayed nothing. She sat on the ground, her hands bound behind her. Lieutenant Levi’s SCAR 7.62 mm had the safety off and its barrel was in her face, and she held his gaze. Captain Bencker entered the small circle of troopers.

“Lower your weapon,” she ordered in even tone.

A spasm played across Levi’s well-shaven jaw; troopers watching the treeline glanced over.

“Sir, the Rules say prisoners are without rights,” countered Levi. “She’s probably been raped, anyway.”  Trooper Fernandez, down on one knee and eyes on a small navscreen, shook his head.

“Not by us,” said Bencker quietly. “The weapon, Lieutenant.”

Bencker never pulled rank and the quietness of her voice spoke of something coiled. Those within earshot tensed. This had been brewing awhile: a shaven-headed female commander with a reputation even outside the Rangers, and a marine hunk with a gilded tech-and-sports education and son of a Consortium bigwheel. And now this prisoner, who likely doesn’t know shit about the Games. Levi wants to waste her, WTF?

Cat had locked its red eyes on Levi. Neurolinked to the commander, Cat received Bencker’s biofeed and instructions and sent back images and recon sense-data. Levi didn’t have to look at Cat, just felt the eyes. Slowly he turned from the prisoner and cradling his weapon, sauntered to the perimeter with a fuck-you roll in the shoulders. The Captiva’s eyes followed him, then went to Bencker who spoke for everybody to hear.

“The Captiva might have intel, and knows how to survive here.” Play with what you’ve got. Her own weapon was slung across her back, her preferred Heckler & Koch MP5 upgrade.

“Hope daddy Levi don’t spot that little scene,” Kossowski said quietly to Janssen, who nodded.

* *

Something had now opened inside the unit. An opening could be as sharp and haphazard as an incoming shell or as drawn-out as nursing a cold beer while stoned under a hot shower after a patrol in bad bush. It was all SAR, Situational Awareness and Readiness, what nerves fed on in the field to make each moment full and keep you alive. Regardless of all the think-positive shit or meticulous PPTs in a pre-op briefing, out here in deep Snowbird the mind was veined with uncertainty. How does this Captiva survive? wondered Bencker, moving away to sit against a small rock.

* *

Janssen finished cleaning his Glock automatic, an uncle’s hand-me-down; he loved the heft of it. He looked over at Cooper sitting on the ground with his plants. “Cooper, what you got for us today?”

A trained botanist and mycologist, Cooper could spot a mushroom at 30 yards. “The usual, some buttons, ink caps, oysters, chanterelles. And a shroom,” holding it up. “Psilocybe semilanceata. This little beauty will open your mind and mess with your brain. If you have one.”

“Fuck you,” said Janssen, and Kelly smiled, then noticed the Captiva looking at them.

“What’s your problem?” asked Kelly. “Hungry? You want some?” as if teasing a child.

“Shut it, Kelly,” said Cooper, squatting in front of the prisoner and holding out the mushroom with a questioning look. He waited; they all waited.

“If she won’t speak, maybe Levi had the right idea,” said Kelly.

“Maybe she’s scared of you,” said Janssen.

“Not this one,” replied Kelly. “But she might hate us. And she doesn’t like us picking her mushrooms.”

“Sacred.”

The word fell from the Captiva and drew eyes to her, and nobody spoke. Again Cooper held out the mushroom: “Sacred, how?” he asked quietly.

Bencker had put down her book and was looking at the group.

“We talk to the dead,” and her eyes travelled over them, “to our ancestors.” Cooper nodded, his brows knitted together, and backed away.

“Now that is intel,” he said, mostly to himself.

Kelly breathed out audibly. “Friggin ancestors done shit for me. I don’t even know my parents.”

“Hey, straight up, Cooper,” said Janssen, whose social skills were what you’d expect from someone on the spectrum. “What you reckon’s out there?”

“No friggin clue,” said Cooper. “And hope it stays that way. Anything could stay hidden in this.”

“C’mon, what aren’t they telling us?” insisted Janssen.

“It’s probably the mines,” answered Cooper slowly. “Rare earths and heavy metals discharged into ponds and streams, then leaking into the aquifers. And the mines are just the stuff we know about.” Silence.

Bush fever. Bencker couldn’t let that get into her unit.

“Trooper Nurri, activate Exemption,” she ordered loudly. Nurri stopped scoping the treeline through his gunsight and touched his suitPad. He was the only one Bencker could bounce ideas off of—the price of being a woman in the ancient profession of arms commanding men, some of them smart… some, well, less than smart. Nurri was self-contained and ruthless, with a devilish sense of humour and piercings in strange places.

“Snowboard CSZ is unoccupied, Captain,” commented Nurri, and Bencker gave him a pointed look.

Exemption protects us but also reveals our position, I know.

“Exemption activated,” quickly confirmed Nurri, knowing better than to give her attitude.

Regardless of popular misconceptions and Consortium hype, big data-assisted AI had only amplified the uncertainty of warfare for those on the ground. Sure, troopers humped hi-tech weaponry and sweated in HOTsuits, but they were up against odds they could never fathom. Game rules forbade calling in fire-support or medical evacuation. You went in and you came out. Or you didn’t. Shareholders and spectators of the Games would always be the winners, so finish the mission and stay alive. Troopers functioned more or less strung out in their private meds-enhanced SAR-cloud; some of these Rangers were also stoned a lot of the time, thanks to Cooper.

“Another morning in paradise,” said Kossowski, sitting on the ground and spooning rations into her mouth. “Friggin mist, it’s always shifting, things appear and disappear, can’t tell what I’m seeing.” She licked the spoon carefully and began packing her gear.

“And drip drip drip all friggin night,” added Koch, bloodying a Tiger mosquito on his arm; dengue was rife here but the meds should handle that.

Fernandez took a last look at the photo of a lady, his, and their child, slid it inside his suit and stood.

* *

Bencker took meds; she also had Cat to bounce off. But her refuge was a tattered copy of the Odyssey. Where it spoke of creatures that lure ships onto rocks she’d noted: “the Sirens speak to each sailor only about himself. Like algorithms.” Damn this Captiva.

Bencker went to the prisoner, knelt and held out the black carbon neck-bracelet. “Put it on.”

The woman stared at it, expressionless, stared at her and down at the large dagger in Bencker’s belt. The Captiva took the bracelet and slowly put it around her neck, clicking it to lock. She now belonged to their SecurNet—in fact, to Cat. She could try and run but… bad idea.

Bencker moved back to the rock and the Odyssey. Her father had also been a reader and his old copy of the Iliad was on her desk back at base, his photo tucked inside. It had ridden in her pack until she’d discovered the Odyssey, the first tale of a lost wanderer

Her father the Colonel had been a decorated warrior of the conflicts that had seen the rise of the consortia. He’d died in an infamous op at MB7, a mining-base in northeast Africa, when everything had gone fatally wrong for the unit… and unexpectedly well for its sponsors.

Twenty years later, situations were even more “fluid,” even for the Games. Slick Powerpoint assumptions broke as soon as a boot touched the drop zone—even because it touched the ground, in this quantum fuck-up of a world. Bencker had become an elite soldier because her loneliness and rage could only be soothed in battle and its liminal moments, where knowing and caring were fused in pure awareness of death, of its imminence. Her personnel file was a mix of medical reports and censorial black ink, and troopers either avoided her in the mess or vied for a place on her team.

Resting on the ground against the rock, Bencker read her Odyssey. Kelly and Janssen, sitting nearby, exchanged looks.

“Any answers in there, Captain?” ventured Janssen carefully.

“No,” said Bencker. No answers; acceptance, maybe. She resumed: “Three thousand years ago wars were short and small-scale, close-to and savage, sometimes honourable,” said Bencker, echoing her father. She turned her head, suddenly aware that the Captiva was looking at her and the book.

“Men fought like animals, some saw themselves as half-gods,” she added.

“No shit,” said Janssen, nodding. “No shit.”

“Uh, and the space thing that the Colonel—” began Jenssen.

“The Space, his notion of leadership, Trooper,” Bencker said with finality, putting away the book.

“And the women?” asked Kelly.

“They washed bodies and mourned, or waited for their men,” replied Bencker. “If on the losing side they were sold, or…” she stopped, remembering the Captiva and Levi and what he’d said. Kelly and Janssen looked at the Captiva then away and began scoping the trees through their gunsights.

“Move out in ten,” said Bencker. “Lifting the Bubble.”

Gloved fingers checked safety locks, flipped off screens, patted pouches, stoppered canteens, felt to ensure a knife was to hand, adjusted straps, all before catching the eye of another trooper for a long second.

For Captain Sophie Bencker, the Space was her Rangers and this forest, was achieving the mission and bringing everybody home. The troopers’ HOTs were now sending in their KVIs (key vital indicators) which flitted across Bencker’s visor, confirming their biochems were stable: the Space rebalances itself.

Suddenly she was aware how quiet it had grown. Cat?

“Check for Sweepers,” she ordered. These autonomous weaponised droids were the delight of west coast EcoPuritans and ZenBuddies, each with a self-righteous agenda and no time for human messiness. Sweepers protected the forest and had the legal right to kill interlopers who didn’t signal an Exemption.

“Movement, one click northeast,” said Kossowski, and troopers turned and looked at her. Kossowski was on point, a comms role that demanded one’s visor-SAR to be always active and attention at 100%. Point was a prime target for snipers. On the edge of Bencker’s mind a wind blew down the neurolink as chunks of data fed in from Cat already speeding towards the unidentified threat.

“Moving erratically… in our direction,” said Kossowski.

“Could be a Sweeper, Captain,” said Nurri, frowning, and with reason.

Their Exemption was active so there should be no problem. But the briefing had said the area was empty of Sweepers and likely hostiles.

“The drone?” asked Bencker, looking around for Levi. She had just touched her sleeve panel to raise the collective EM defence bubble again when suddenly she gasped as if hit in the gut, feeling her feet begin to slide. Koch had raised his rifle toward the northeast but was already crumpling to his knees. In the same instant Bencker’s own suit-bubble was activated—Cat’s doing—as she pivoted to throw herself on top of the Captiva and everything went dark.

* *

Seated in PC Command outside Eureka, northern California, Operations Controller Ellis squinted at the big wallscreen. “Bencker’s unit?” He’d never gotten used to the Consortium’s obligatory “team.”

“Offline, Sir. And we’re trying to confirm a sonic pulse.”

“Sonic? Out there?”

“Trying to identify but interference is heavy.” An understatement, given canopy density and high hydrothermal humidity.

“Find them,” said Ellis as calmly as he could manage.

Sonics were not standard on Sweepers, so that should rule out a rogue droid, or so he hoped. He had maybe 30 minutes before this “situation” leaked to the Consortium’s ears-and-eyes and his red desk telephone went berserk. Turning his head from side to side to ease his neck muscles, he walked oh so casually out of the Ops Room to his office. Closing the door he activated the bugscan: all clear. Carefully he punched a code into his private phone. After a lapse, another phone buzzed far away.

“Marvin.” Ellis heard his codename with relief despite its nerdy ring. “What a pleasant surprise,” said a rough, careful female voice.

“Aunty,” he replied in what he hoped was a neutral tone: This cloak-and-dagger stuff was not his game. He paused, then: “The lady. She’s disappeared on mission in Snowbird. Her unit is down, no movement.” Silence. “We’re waiting confirmation on a rogue sonic pulse.”

“And Cat?” asked the woman after a beat.

“Active, was active for nearly an hour after the incident, then nothing.”

Ellis heard the slight seeping of breath from ex-Lieutenant M’Gele, officially KIA. She’d served under Sophie Bencker’s father and her Shibriya dagger would reply to any who dared speak a word against the Colonel.  After MB7 her missing body was just one of the strange things that had happened that day. She had survived, and only Sophie and Ellis knew this, which suited M’Gele just fine.

“If Cat is moving then the lady is too. If you have no indications of further attack then we can assume she decided to go dark.” Just like that day years ago at MB7 with her colonel in their last battle. The entire squad, an ambush—though by whom had not been clear.

“Keep me informed, please.” She hung up. Ranger Sophie Bencker, with the blue-eyes of her father and a ferocity all her own, was going to hunt. “Be without mercy and find your song, little leopard,” M’Gele said to the shadows. She touched the red garnet at her throat, remembering the promise she’d made to her Colonel as the light had left his eyes: I will protect your daughter.

Ellis sat, not moving. He too was back to that day at MB7, as the young Watcher in Rome EuroCommand following Colonel Bencker’s unit, seeing events unfold on screen, recalling the carnage found later at the mining base. Taking a deep breath he slowly let it out. Tonight would normally be an at-home with his wife Paula and their two little girls, for pizza and TV. But not this night.

* *

‘‘Dad.” Captain Sophie Bencker flashed back in cinematic microseconds. “Dad dad dad.”

If only she could have known him as one soldier to another. Would he approve of her tatoos, and her shaven head, devoid of the golden locks he’d so loved? He might balk at CAT and its neurolinks; he used to look at their dog Mifty and just grunt, and it had seemed to work between them.

Her father’s image wobbled; the eyes changing to red and Cat looking down at her. Clarity flowed along their link. But never make assumptions: “Identify!” She said with difficulty, and felt its purring of approval. Bagheera entered her mind, the private name she’d given Cat, taken from a story dad used to read to her. Then down came Breathe, and Cat’s own deep breathing began to pace and calm her own.

“I’m good.” SAR was re-establishing itself.

“Nurri?” Nothing. “Levi? Kossowski? Cooper?… Janssen? Kelly, Fernandez?”  Cat, Sitrep!

Down the neurolink came images of troopers scattered on the ground, none moving, and: Levi has gone. There was no signal from the drone. What the hell happened?

Swift activation of her HOTSuit had saved her and the Captiva. Need to move, she thought-sent. Cat replied with an image of the woman and a warning. Bencker flashed back: she comes with us. Intel, survival.

With a growl Bagheera bounded off, his sense-data flitting across her visor. Bencker nodded to the woman who sprung off fast, following Cat with ease. Bencker could see that this was her land. Levi. WTF?

* *

The team’s drone had returned, its control now overridden by CSZ Command. It hovered over the clearing and the scattered troopers of Bencker’s unit, then descended over each body. Away in the Ops Room, all eyes were riveted to the big wallscreen. As each face came into close-up the trooper’s name appeared in a side column. They looked peaceful, thought Ellis. A message came onscreen: two MIA, Captain Bencker and Lieutenant Levi.

“Can we get a fix on them?” asked Ellis. “And what about the Cat?”

“Negative, for the moment. Damage, or environmental interference,” said a young operator.

Ellis glanced at the red phone. “Levi,” he said quietly. An inevitable shitstorm was heading his way once Levi Sr in corporate HQ came looking for an explanation of a lost team that included his son—and for just a few seconds of footage. Heads would roll. He recalled a saying of Colonel Bencker’s: “When playing poker, remember it’s always serious, even when they say it isn’t.” As a rookie Watcher listening to the Colonel over a beer and totally overawed, Ellis had thought this unbelievably cool. Now he was beginning to see what it could mean, and didn’t like it.

“Keep looking, see what Narciss comes up with,” Ellis ordered. Narciss, their mighty AI sitting on photonic quantum hardware, was there to facilitate decision-making. But in the particularly fluid “fog of war” they had to confront nowadays it was of little use. “Beware of geeks bearing gifts,” he said under his breath, adding: “Keep safe, Captain Sophie Bencker.”

“We have one alive!”  All eyes in the Ops room flew to the wallscreen. There was an arm slowly rising. Ellis felt sick.

“Trooper Nurri, sir,” said the operator.

Ellis nodded. Nurri, tough bastard. And the Games don’t do immediate evac so I have to leave him, at least until Editorial decide how they can use him. He just has to survive the next few hours.

* *

The two women had stopped by a pool. The one with the black ponytail approached the small waterfall, and slipped behind the curtain of water. Bencker followed into the cave.

“We are undetectable here, the water and the rock,” said the Captiva, then: “Take this off,” touching the neck bracelet. Those eyes. Without you I’ll probably die here. Bencker removed the bracelet. The woman gently rubbed her throat; “I will prepare some food,” she said.

* *

They were sitting by a small fire. “It’s good,” said Bencker, carefully spooning the hot plant stew from a bowl in her lap.

“You will piss out the meds. Your body needs to rebalance to survive here.” Bencker paused in eating. “And you will take off the suit.”

My HOTS? “No friggin way!” Bencker’s eyes flashed. “I need to be in contact for my unit. They—”

“They are probably dead.” Then, matter-of-factly: “You would have heard something by now.” She waited, watching Bencker. “You must cut all comms to your base. And you cannot jog for long in the suit,” she said with finality. Rummaging in a wooden box, she handed Bencker a shirt, trousers, and top like her own, in a rough grey-green fabric. “Keep your link to the…” nodding towards the mouth of the cave, “but cut its comms to your base.”

Outside a shadow moved and a growl came down the link. Cat, cool it! This woman knows her shit.

“Also you smell wrong. Swim, wash.” She is used to giving orders, Sophie saw, but still didn’t move. The woman looked at her: “You stopped the soldier killing me. You covered me in the attack. Now I protect you.” She had brought out thick blankets, “At night it gets cold.”

* *

Later, the fire down to embers. Under blankets they were close for warmth, semi-naked.

“What is your name?” Bencker asked. The woman didn’t answer, but stretched her hand to touch the leather-bound Odyssey lying between Bencker’s breasts.

“I do not know you yet,” said the woman, looking frankly at Bencker’s body. “What is this book?”

I asked dad the same question. “Stories of ancient warriors.” Remembering his words, she added, “They were mighty as trees.” The woman nodded, and for the first time, smiled.

“My father said those times were violent, men were violent, a few were godlike. They fought knowing that any moment could bring the terror of gods in blinding light, and all a warrior could do was pray, ‘may the gods be on my side.’”

“Your stories are of people and the desire to be like gods. They could have chosen to be like trees, to be great without making the gods jealous.”

“Trees are dying, they get cut down,” replied Bencker too quickly.

The woman looked her full in the face. “We talk to our dead.”

Uh huh, mushrooms. Bencker was beginning to feel lost.

They stared into the fire. “I think your father is proud of you,” offered the woman. Bencker turned away from the fire, her gaze dropping to the dagger, her fingers resting on the scabbard.

“He gave me this Shibriya, a Christmas present. A week later came the funeral-drone carrying his ashes.”

It had been a clumsy, New Year’s Day media attempt to turn the Colonel into a posthumous legend as a prelude to the first Consortium Games. But by raising her teenage middle finger to the drone’s camera and the world, Sophie Bencker had become the angel of self-contained, traumatized anger, perfect for social media and its self-elected obsessiveness. Then she’d gone off-grid (keeping the details vague), eventually reappearing as a trained soldier hardened by pain. Now Consortium eyes and various nutters tracked the maverick Captain Bencker, Ranger. She was top dollar, with her tanned features and the sapphire eyes of her dad.

“I am sorry,” said the woman, putting out her hand gently to touch a shoulder. Bencker turned back, their eyes found each other. On the cave wall the dying fire threw their shapes which moved as if borne on the soft evening wind.

* *

It was first light and cold outside and they dressed quickly, then sat to eat in silence. Cupping her hands around a steaming mug the woman said, “You will know my name when I am sure of you.” Then added in a quieter voice: “I do not want the loss of you.”

WTF? Bencker’s gut churned. She knew about loss, her father, and now her squad.

“Do you know what happened to my troopers?” she asked.

“I was tracking you for a week.”

Bencker stared at her. “A week! But when we captured you—”

“I let myself be captured.” The words hung in the air. “We can talk later. Now we have to move. This is not a game, there are dangers.”

All clear came over the neurolink. Cat was blended into the forest shades, hard to see. All was still.

“Where are we going?”  Gotta keep my head straight.

“Into the deep woods.”  Bencker opened her mouth to ask another question but was cut off: “Now.”

Captain Sophie Bencker realized that she was going to have to trust the woman with her life. She already did so with Cat. For a soldier such trust was normal; it bound comrades to each other and to each waking day and each long night; trust defined them in a way that was absolute. But this woman was not a comrade in arms. Nor was she a stranger anymore. Bencker had unveiled herself to this woman, and with an intimacy she never showed. They were also bound together by danger. From now, uncertainty and danger would vie in her life with her capacity to trust, and this tension would be her Space. One hand resting on the hilt of her Shibriya, she looked up at the canopy far above and smiled.

“Ready?” asked the woman. Bencker nodded.

The woman set off at a jog through the shadows and mist among the trees. Her strong fluid gait reminded Bencker of another, many years ago: Lieutenant M’Gele. This land is their land. Now for Ranger Captain Sophie Bencker, the song of her hunt had begun.

A Game of Soldiers – A Review of Playing Army by Nancy Stroer

LT Minerva Mills is a hot mess. Literally. We meet her with ‘sweat pooling in her waistband’ as her mother rams through a terminally inappropriate ‘Pink Tea’ at Minerva’s first assumption of command ceremony at Fort Stewart, aka ‘Camp Swampy,’ Georgia, on a hot summer day in the mid-1990s. Mrs. Mills has fallen out of step with the times, the people, the weather, Army tradition, and her daughter’s need to project authority in a time and a place where Minerva had inherited none.

As the daughter of a Viet Nam MIA, Minerva has been an outsider to the ‘Army Family’ her whole life. She makes an unlikely protagonist – she eats too much, she drinks too much, she weighs too much, she struggles to control both herself and the people in her command. In other words, she’s totally relatable. She struggles to assemble the self-protective camouflage needed to help her straddle the insider/outsider divide which she must overcome if she is to succeed in command and in achieving her grail quest – understanding what happened to her father. Expert at Army field navigation, Minerva struggles with navigating human interaction among her superiors, her subordinates, and her equals. The novel takes us through physical and psychological terrain which challenges Minerva at every step.

It is rare to find women who write knowledgeably and skillfully about the US Army, and even more rare to find women as active military protagonists in gendered narratives of war outside the extensive military romance industry. In our current historical moment of mythical, Playing Army provides a welcome examination of the interior life of warrior women. Military women survive in the dominant masculine military culture by playing their cards very close to their chests. Those who have mastered the art of saying little and observing others closely rarely come out from behind their impassive masks to reveal the thoughts that they’ve learned to hide so well.

The clear, dry, acerbic interior voices of women who crave power, who search for meaning, who seek service tell their stories here. Their stories adeptly illustrate the uses of silence as a weapon and a defence among women in the US military. The novel also charts the Venn diagram of personal commitment and resistance which embroils all participants in closed systems such as the US military, but particularly those at the intersections of marginalisation. In addition to LT Mills, the novel explores briefly the interior worlds of two competitor peers – LT Logan, the golden child of a US soldier and a Vietnamese mother, and First Sergeant St. John, black, lean, an exemplar of Army ethos. These warrior women are observed and draw with precision and clarity, a deep sympathy for their situations, and a generous acknowledgement of their significant strengths.

Playing Army explores the structure of power through the micro-aggressions in a hierarchy founded on the management of violence. The neglected military narrative field of logistics, maintenance, and personnel takes center ground, mapping the tails that wag the dog. The change of focus from stereotypical US military blood combat narratives is both welcome and overdue. The keenly observed ground truths of the unglorious majority challenges the myth of that the ‘real’ Army exists only in and for combat. This optic brings into focus the dark play and unglorious realities of the ‘real’ Army for the majority of Army personnel.

Playing Army is skillfully crafted, satisfying in its resolution of LT Mill’s journey learning to be serve well as an Army officer, and tantalising, in that it leaves us with unresolved questions. The child of a soldier father who neither knew nor wanted her, why was she named ‘Minerva’ by her mother? Why has clear-sighted Minerva chosen to ‘Min’imise herself? The vignettes centered on LT Logan and First Sergeant St. John are both compelling and brief, inviting follow-on novels.

I hope Nancy takes them up on their offers of further stories to be told. Having hosted these complicated women with compelling narratives in my reading room, I find myself hoping to be invited inside their lives and thoughts again.

All I Can Do Is Watch

It’s 0400
on a bridge crossing over
the Tigris River.
Qayyarah is a town along its fertile banks,
15,000 people call it home.
I wonder how long it has been here,
how many times conquered
and rebuilt.

On the outskirts lies an oil field,
it’s where I live.
The wooden walls
of this makeshift bunker
in the sand
wouldn’t stop an attack,
just slow it down.

Surrounded by blackness,
my mind wanders valleys of homesickness,
forced to breathe toxic air,
flanked by those who want to kill
my invasive body, parade it
through the streets.

A bright light hits the oil field,
shakes the ground.
Movement on the hill to the north—
I call it in.

Orange flames rise in oxygen,
twirl in mirthful celebration,
the smoke swirling higher,
my life forever changed and
all I can do is watch.

No Way to Fight Back

I can smell the exhaust from
the plane that’s taking me home.

Standing in line to board the whale,
maw open wide to let us inside.

Air forming breath in the illume,
I’m done with moons in this hemisphere.

These stars, still foreign to me.
Even at the end, I know I don’t belong

in a land of sharp sand, the broken
glass bowl of democracy.

This land won’t let me leave, though.
Raining metal explodes my dreams of home;

swarming red flames engulf
the surrounding canvas. The sound

catches the light, knocks me flat
to the ground as alarms blare attack,

bullets ricochet off cold slabs.
And just like that, I’m crouched inside,

cold-cocked by the reality of
no way to fight back.

people boats

dreams swell/ lashed to circumstance in Syria/ in Gambia/ launched from Libya in leaky rubber chugs to birdless deep/ chugs w/ floor of feet w/ canopy of arms like 700 starfish sweating/ surfing demons/ keeling keening groaning spinning ferment/ tossed estrange/ the black moon sinking into raucous mucus maelstroms/ cataract of violet distress/ the turbulence of orange sun/ bursting over flotsom/ boats adrift/ boats repelled/ prison haulers fatal w/o water, w/o air fatal in shrieking rescue/ panicked sea/ 10 hours tossed to grief/ where vomit waters sweep the beaches gnawed by ruptured rubber masses/ huddled under searchlights/ infant wish:: democracy

pretending there is garden in the spring, paradise in time

this silk and golden weft that weaves
its vines through field and forest
this intricate design atop a kingdom
of the dying, above the restless thread
of streets, the rot beneath:: Deep
the sleep of mouse and wren, the carcasses
of crickets. The desiccated corpses
of the moths. Beneath the flowers all
dyed dismal, dog and possum disemboweled,
little deer with tongue stuck out, the rat
beheaded, like video of hostage

Missouri inmate Patty Prewitt has been in prison for almost 40 years. She is serving a life sentence for the murder of her husband, Bill, in 1984. The conviction, however, is problematic. The prosecution’s case relied upon slut-shaming Prewitt and questioning her fitness as a mother based on relationships that took place five and more years before the murder, a time when the Prewitts were separated. The prosecutor did not share with the defense evidence that established a strange car was seen parked around the corner, a significant omission. A pathologist, brought on only weeks before trial was discredited in a number of trials where he served as a witness for the prosecution.  

Prewitt is not eligible for parole until 2036, when she will be 86 years old. Maintaining her innocence, she declined a plea bargain that would have made her eligible for parole after just seven years. Had she taken the deal, she would have been released many years ago. 

Former Missouri Department of Corrections Director George Lombardi who, during his 41 years in corrections, has never recommended anyone for clemency supports Prewitt’s release.  In light of “the long sentence she has already served, the total support of her children and grandchildren, and her unprecedented contribution to the culture of the prison and to her fellow offenders,” he recommends that “Missouri Gov. Parson take the just, responsible and compassionate action and grant Patty Prewitt clemency.”  Warden Brian Goeke identifies Prewitt as a woman best suited for release.

“Where’d you get these? Did an officer give ‘em to you?”

“You think I’d do a guard for protein bars?”

 He looked appropriately shocked, so I continued, “No one trades a protein bar for sex! Look around! These horny hos give it away!”

Unabashed because he actually thought he’d made a good bust, this skinny eighteen-year-old corrections officer then asked, “Then where’d ya get ‘em?”

With the same degree of furious indignation, I spat out, “At the can-efing-teen! There’s a list on that wall of what they sell! Why don’t you check it out before you accuse this old lady of trading geriatric sex for protein bars!!!!”

As a mic-drop finale, I snatched the three bars from his hand, turned on my heel, and marched down the hall to my freshly-tossed cell to survey the damage.

At that very moment I missed my prison kid Amy with a heart-squeezing ache. We shared a cell for a decade and like an old married couple we regaled each other every evening with the events of the day—mostly tales of how stupid this prison and these people are. She would have howled at this encounter.

Because of her drug addiction, Amy passed through prisons for a couple of decades. I knew her during every incarceration and warmed to her readiness to see humor within the darkest of prison days. During her next to last confinement, she gave birth to a son. He was the one that she gave up entirely. She was finally mature enough to know she couldn’t provide a child with any kind of stable life. Her two daughters weren’t so lucky, and both ended up in this prison with us.

At the beginning of her seventh and final prison bid, I spied her across the chow hall at breakfast. I hadn’t heard that she was back. Self-disgust radiated from her slumped shoulders and bowed blonde head, so this captain-save-a-ho ambled over to hear the sad story of why she was back. Again. As a conclusion to the convoluted tale about how she ended up with two sevens and two fives running wild, she quietly added, “Yeh, Patty, I fucked up again. I’m under a mandatory fifty percent. Twelve years flat. I really fucked up this time.” My heart broke for her and all the broken-winged sparrows who fall from freedom into prison. Breaking my reverie Amy asked, “Ya gonna eat that toast? Butter? Jelly?”

As I shoved my tray her way, an idea sprang to mind. “What wing are you on?”

“A, and it’s a loud, disrespectful, trap-house zoo. Plus they put me on a top bunk above this rude, loud-snorin’ bitch with boils all over her butt. Boils! She says a spider bit her, but I bet it’s staph. No self-respectin’ spider would put his mouth on that ass!”

“Amy, I have an empty bottom bunk in my room. If you want, I’ll ask Ms. Raspberry if she’ll move you over. They train service dogs now, and you’ll love those pups.”

Amy brightened like the sun breaking through a cloud. That’s how we began our decade of cohabitation.

Because Amy owed nearly $2000 in unpaid parole fees, she reluctantly headed straight to the dreaded clothing factory to get a job. The factory was the only place that paid a living wage, and she had no one on the outside to help her.

Within the relative safety of a four-person concrete prison cell that had been converted to jam in six, we made our home. The other four bunks were inhabited with a parade of girls just passing through. Some joined our conversations. Some didn’t. Amy and I made a pact to keep the cell peaceful, and we did. During count times, I sat cross-legged facing her, while she perched on the edge of her bunk swinging her short legs. We verbally painted scenes, crimes, and memories from our free lives. We mulled over how the snarky librarian had admonished us. We worried about our kids. We conspired, aspired, perspired. No subject was off-limits. More importantly, I listened, really heard her. I didn’t give her a load of unsolicited advice. I just loved and listened. Therein lies the magic of healing.

When Amy was just a little kid, her father had her and her older sister at his place for the weekend. On the way to go fishing, he told the girls to run out to the pickup. He’d be right there. They waited until Amy couldn’t stand it any longer. Disregarding her sister’s protests, she raced back into the house to holler at him. When she burst in the living room poised to yell, “DADDY,” she choked. His limp body lay crumpled across the rusty-orange shag carpet, a ragged pool of red blood oozed from where the top of his head had been, the smoking shotgun muzzle still stuck in his gaped mouth, hunks of brain tissue, blasted across the wall, lost their grip and splatted on the console TV.

Less than ten years later, Amy was a pregnant teenager. Her heartless mother never spoke to her again. Small wonder she self-medicated.

Amy was the same age as my daughters, so I couldn’t help but mother her. I made sure she had the hygiene items she needed. I religiously placed a multivitamin on her locker every morning and encouraged her to eat her veggies, because she had Hep C. She loved softball and created, out of misfits, the best team in this prison. We didn’t win every game, but she made sure everyone felt good about themselves. We laughed a lot. Even through tears.

When the goon squad busted in like rabid Nazis to tear up our cells, Amy would want to lay down and take a nap. Tornado warning? She would be overcome with drowsiness. Prison is one anxiety-producing occurrence after another, so I mercilessly teased her that she suffered from some form of stress-induced narcolepsy.

As an integral member of our prison theater troupe, Prison Performing Arts, I tricked Amy into taking a speaking role in The Rover, a period piece with sword fighting. We were issued foam rubber swords, but during the first performance, as Amy thrust, the blade part fell to the floor. She was left holding the handle. At that moment Amy discovered she was a natural comedienne. She never looked back and was in every play we produced. A star was born.

All her life, Amy had considered herself a royal loser. A slut. A drug addict. A thief. A horrible mother. Stupid. Unlovable. A poor excuse for a woman. Ugly. A midget. (She was short, barely 4’10.) She had never glimpsed or believed in the special, talented human being that I saw in her. Acting became her saving grace, and she thrived on stage. When college courses were offered, she enrolled. Even though she doubted that she’d be able to do the work, with a bit of my tutoring, she turned out to be an excellent student. I’m a certified fitness trainer and talked her into training, too. The physical and mental work was hard, but she persevered and puffed up about an inch after passing the exams.

Our prison time marched on in its petty pace until we got the proverbial good news/bad news. The good news was that legislation had been passed that would free Amy soon; the bad news was she was not prepared. We always planned for her to work at the nursing home when she was eligible so she could save up a healthy nest egg. My daughter Jane set up a hasty go-fund-me account that raked in enough to buy her a laptop so she could continue her college. Amy left here with nothing but thrift-store clothes on her back.

It’s hard starting from scratch, but she was doing so well out there in the free world. Clean and sober, working to keep spirits up in the nursing home. Then Covid hit, and life got really scary for the confined. She had the Department of Corrections on speed dial complaining about how prisoners were poorly treated. Out of the blue, Amy fell in love with a man unlike any she’d ever known, a kind and honest man who truly adored her. She was making me believe in happily ever after.

But Amy died. Suddenly. The addicts all attributed her sudden death to drugs, but I knew better and felt vindicated when the autopsy proved me right. Amy’s big broken heart had failed. She suffered cardiac arrest as she was preparing to go to care for those women and men in the nursing home prison.

Real life is no fairy tale, Amy. I miss you.

“You coming to work, New Guy?” Sailor asks, and I snarl at my nickname. Dude gives me the creeps—somehow they stuffed a three-hundred-pound bear who never blinks into a uniform. When the plane landed in Kandahar last night a sergeant with bagpipe lungs paired us off. New blood was teamed with guys who’d been here for a while—I got saddled with Sailor. Ain’t no way some Navy goof is gonna push me around, even this missing-link motherfucker whose voice rumbles like grenade day on the range.

We leave the barracks and the Afghan sun kicks me square in the coin purse. Next thing I notice is the stink. Like when your little brother drops a deuce under your bed and, reaching for a sock, you grab it by mistake. “Hey Sailor,” I say, “Does it always reek like this?”

“Yep.” Deadpan. “Civilians wisely bury their shit to keep the stink at bay. Here in Kandahar we pool it in the poo pond. During hot days the shit heats up and particles attach to the dust. That’s why you can taste it.” Sailor leads me down the maze-like streets of the base, where twelve-foot concrete barriers offer a little shade. On top of each, coils of barbed wire scrawl like signatures. In fact, all I can see is concrete barriers and kill-wire, the world’s largest rat maze. Not some lifeless anti-oasis: there are troops everywhere with assault rifles. I snicker at a dead bird getting torn apart by ants like a bitch.

He’s right about the dust, goddamnit. Fucking everywhere. Within minutes of trudging through it, I could taste the poo pond and feel stones form in my nose. Next there’s this wicked-loud sound from behind—European police sirens wailing or how the fuck should I know? Sailor grabs my shoulder with a beefy mitt and we’re both face down in the ass-dust. “Rockets,” he hisses. The alarm eases into a snobby British voice of God going, ROCKET ATTACK, ROCKET ATTACK. Holy fuck, man. I’m not going to say I’m scared or anything—last summer after Phase Three of infantry training (HUA) I got jumped by four bikers and broke their faces with a pool cue, fearless. Still, having someone shoot missiles at my ass made my palms a little sweaty, ya know? But then there’s this huge WOOF except the dog is loud as six dragons. Gravel rains all over us. Alright, fine—now I’m scared shitless. Meanwhile, Sailor has hauled me on top of the friendly Afghan cactus, whose hook-like barbs itch for human skin. “Wait another minute, and then we move to that bunker,” Sailor rumbles, pointing with his never-blinking eyes to a concrete structure across the street.

“How am I gonna wank with my hands full of thorns?” Pretty sure I sounded tough despite my little squeak at the end. Sailor doesn’t say shit anyway—we hustle toward the bunker. I’ve got that feeling another rocket’s gonna burst before we get there and fill my guts with shrapnel. WOOF WOOF WOOF go the dragons.

Sailor flops against the concrete. “We’ll wait here until the siren sounds again, New Guy.” I’m not a big fan of taking orders from some cumguzzler—Sailor doesn’t give a fuck about my murder-gaze, and he seems to not get that I’m infantry, and Army, and therefore better. Sitting in the dirt, he rests his feet on the opposite wall and shuts his eyes. Sailor doesn’t look scared, but man, he’s about as tired as a Dad with forty-eight kids. I’m feeling safer since the bunker’s got these thick-ass walls—we’re talking three-foot-thick concrete. Almost underground except you can still see some sky through slits. Cloudless. Piercing. Blue.

Sailor catches my eye. “The Taliban pay locals to launch cheap rockets bought from the Russians. Fuck-all for accuracy, but as the base is big, there’s a chance that someone will hit the death-lottery and blow up a mess hall.” Dry laugh. “I don’t even blame them. The locals, I mean. Someone offers you more money than you make in a year to fire a few rockets at foreign devils? I’d take that deal too.” Sailor trails off and stares at that little patch of sky and the silence stretches. I’m thinking, fuck this guy.

“Sailor, you got a perverted way of looking at the Enemy. We’re talking terrorists and suicide bombers, right? Osama Bin Ladens? Fanatics who want to make an orphanage for your kids? I’m supposed to feel bad for psychos just because they’re poor? Listen, Navy, someone shoots a rocket at me they deserve to bleed out slow.” Sailor snorts. He looks like he’s gonna say something and maybe he’ll confirm that I’m the shit or maybe I’ll need to buttstroke the fucker, but that siren blares again and the British asshole is saying ALL CLEAR.

We pile from the bunker and start heading toward the mess. Sailor says, “When we get to work later I’ll introduce you to a friend of mine. He’s called the Fisherman.” He stares through me again. Oh great. This Fisherman sounds like another goddamn Navy guy, another silverback pillow-biter dreaming of ways to touch my junk.

The mess is colored with the same shit-paint as every other building. Sailor flourishes his ID to a raghead behind a counter. It’s like other messes I’ve been in back in Canada except there’s a hundred people here and no laughter. Sailor wanders to a depleted salad bar and scoops cucumbers. No wonder he’s grumpy—no fucking protein. I order the meatloaf, like a man, from a wizened dude behind a counter. Gandalf arches an eyebrow suspiciously, arms himself with a plastic glove, and tenderly places the loaf on the plate like it might explode. Not gonna lie, I’ve eaten some humble loaves in my day but that one could have moonlighted as the lung from the cigarette package. In the Army you choke down some weird shit and keep it down. I sit with Sailor and hack the rubbery mass with my plastic knife until it breaks at the hilt and Sailor hands me a spare. Finally get a chunk to my mouth. Never French kissed a corpse before but now I don’t need to: “Just add Tabasco,” I say, smiling.

After the meal we trudge down a street with big fuck-off tanks and trucks driving past. Tanks look different back home. These ones have sharp angles on the bottom and the turrets are belted with rebar. Distracted from the bubbles frothing up from the poo pond, and imagining what a swim would feel like on my naked skin, I lose situational awareness and follow Sailor blindly. Not that I’d ever admit it to him. I gotta get me a map of this place, man. There’s no fucking street signs or anything. I could get lost as balls and end up devoured by ants.

Pretty soon we reach a twenty-foot-tall gate with razor wire looping along the top. Sailor teaches me the door code and we enter the Canadian compound. I plug a nostril and fire a rock out of the other, and it ricochets off a second door with a separate combo. Inside, air conditioning. “Welcome to the Operations Centre, New Guy.” Sailor gestures at the room as if he’s pulling the curtain off a shitty masterpiece.

But what a fucking dump, man! There’s a couple of long tables covered with computers and wires which have a dozen grim-eyed dudes plugging away. At the far end of the room two large screens have words scrolling down them. Facebook chat for murder. There’s also a big television showing the news. Everything’s made out of knotty plywood, the cheap shit, except the computers and a well-stained coffee pot. “Time to meet the Fisherman,” Sailor says, guiding me to one of the screens at the front. No one looks up. “One of the things we do here is use drones to fire missiles at people putting bombs in the road. We watch them through our many screens, and when we catch them in a hostile act, we strike.”

“That’s what I’m talking about!” I say. “No fucking hidin’ in a bunker for me—reach out and destroy the Enemy.” I’ve heard about these videos: drone porn. This righteousness has spread all over the internet—assholes getting blown to bits. Sailor nods to someone and the video starts to play.

The screen shimmers into place over a dusty dirt road, lined with little ditches cracked with crotch rot. There’s this towelhead on the road, wearing pyjamas. He’s maybe seventeen or eighteen years old. The screen is gritty and the resolution sucks balls. Still, no cars, no humans, not even a fucking sheep, and the asshole is digging, no matter the afternoon sun.

“You killed this prick, right?” I ask Sailor.

He looks at me and for a second he’s a big fuckoff owl and I’m a mouse. He says, “We’d been tracking The Fisherman for a while, trying to make sure he was actually planting a bomb instead of working on the wadis. But here you can see a spool of wire and he’s connecting the wire to something in the hole he’s dug. We had the drones on site.”

As I’m watching the towelhead working on his bomb, the screen lights up in this flash. “Take that, you fucking raghead!” I cackle. There’s a big cloud of dust where the missile struck next to the dude. I’m surprised more people aren’t cheering. Killing towelheads gives me righteous wood, you know?

I figured he’d be evaporated, pink mist—get the mop—but no. When the dust clears the towelhead is on his knees and his turban is bobbing up and down like he’s praying. Wouldn’t it be a shame if the raghead pulled through? Maybe the missile missed? As the drone circles, the camera angle changes. I start thinking maybe he’s not praying after all. From the side, he looks like he’s fishing for something. Like he’s reeling in a bigass fish and he’s working his balls off to get that sucker in the boat.

I’m still trying to figure out what’s happening when Sailor says, “Praying and fishing, New Guy. Praying and fishing. My parents were born in Newfoundland in a little coastal village. Praying and fishing were all they had.” I see that the Fisherman’s not reeling in a fishing line at all. He’s got his guts smashed open, man. He’s got guts snaked out all over the fucking place. He’s just trying to piece himself together, grabbing handfuls of intestines and cramming them back inside. I can’t hear anything since we’re watching through a drone but the Fisherman’s got his mouth open in this noiseless scream. The meatloaf backflips in my stomach.

“New Guy, this is a Battle Damage Assessment, or BDA. We conduct a BDA after every strike to watch for a mob forming, to make sure the dropped weapons aren’t reclaimed, and to make sure the dead are truly dead.” The Fisherman writhes. He’s attracted a big swarm of flies, glittering grey pixels, trying to lay eggs inside him. He’s still cramming in his guts, but he’s losing speed. There’s so much fucking dirt and dust on his insides that there’s no way he’s gonna make it. “Normally when we strike and the victim is this injured we’d send a helicopter and get him to a hospital. But some zones are too dangerous, protected by RPG.”

We watch in silence. The Fisherman is still going. He’s getting slower and weaker, but he’s hanging in there. I get this awful feeling. My chest is made of cloth and it’s tearing. Some fabric I didn’t know I had, ripping apart slowly. You don’t know you have it until it tears.

Fuck this, man. Just gotta find the numb place. Just gotta get warm and comfortable and numb. I look over at Sailor and his face is as hard and cold and lonely as a mountain. I guess after a year of this shit, there ain’t no fabric left. Just rubble.

I don’t want to admit watching a towelhead snuff it bothers me, but after fifteen minutes I blurt, “Alright, Sailor, thanks. I fucking get it. It’s awful, alright? How long are we gonna watch this guy die, you sick asshole?”

Sailor fixes me with a stare. “This isn’t a television program where you can just change the channel. You talked shit earlier about how the Enemy deserves to be killed, and how the Enemy doesn’t deserve our sympathy. Well here’s something you don’t learn in your training. The skin colour is different but the guts are the same, aren’t they?” Now that Sailor has mentioned the guts I’m taking a closer look and they do look grey and slimy, even through the drone feed. The Fisherman is still twitching and I’m begging, actually begging in my head, Die, man. Just die already, alright?

I’m sure he only has a few twitches left when Sailor goes on, “Lot of people back home will want to know what Afghanistan is all about but you can’t explain the Fisherman to anybody. You just carry him wherever you go.” And as Sailor says this a dozen human shapes scurry down the road—I’m sure they’re scorching in those burkas. As they come closer I pick up details, you know? Like a few are wringing the shit out of their hands, a few have baskets and they’re collecting parts. One woman gets right next to the Fisherman and takes his hand and you can see her wailing wailing wailing. I think of my own mother back home and how she’d feel watching me die like this and that cloth in my chest tears from shoulder to waist.

Sailor’s voice is soft. “When you strike, you don’t just wound a person. You wound a whole community. Just because your job is to drop bombs on people doesn’t mean you have to be a monster.” He goes quiet and I see his eyes shut down and he’s a mountain again.

Fuck this shit, man. Killing from an office? Killing with compassion? I didn’t train for this—I trained to be a warrior. Give me a C7 rifle and send me out past the barbed wire. I wanna be in the shit, with the other killers. I wanna sleep on a big pile of dead Afghans at night…

Movement on the screen: the Fisherman is still alive. He’s sprawled all over the grass with blood bubbles popping out. His lips are moving like he’s whispering to his mother. I catch myself leaning towards the screen, trying to listen, hoping he’ll say whatever he’s gotta say and then he’ll finally slump down dead.

But the Fisherman will live forever.

I am careful with the coffee tray. It holds four coffees and one tea for my guys in the VA hospital lobby.

Everyone who comes to the VA hospital spends time sitting in the lobby, waiting for a meeting with a doctor, or a blood draw, whatever they need. All of us are in the lobby because our bodies paid the price for our service.

It is a large lobby, with many comfortable upholstered chairs placed in the center of the lobby floor. VA clerks sit behind the long counter on the left, and the Eye and Ear clinic is on the right. Flags for all the services; Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, and the new Space Force hang from the high ceiling. A large US flag hangs opposite the service flags. The doctor’s offices and labs are behind the elevator cluster near the information desk. Occasionally a nurse in blue scrubs would appear from the doctor’s offices and shout out the name of a patient for their appointment.

Everybody wears baseball caps proclaiming their branch of service or places where they served: Desert Storm, Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam. Vietnam Vets are the oldest guys now.

My group calls itself the Orange Brigade. You can tell by our baseball caps that we are all Vietnam War vets. We suffer from exposure to Agent Orange, the defoliant, hence the name of our group. We meet on Mondays as we wait for our appointments. The group started after we all met in the lobby one Monday for our appointments. We pulled together some chairs into a corner of the lobby and shared our Vietnam stories. We would wait for our name to be called and talk about the Red Sox, or the Bruins, and the state of the country. We started with ten in our group, but there are five of us now.

The brigade includes Gerry, a former Marine with Parkinsons, Jim, a six-foot five ex-paratrooper with cancer, Charlie, an Air Force vet with raging diabetes, and Shirley, a former Army nurse who has severe migraines. I’m an Army vet, too, the youngest in the group at sixty-seven with an ischemic heart. I make the coffee run to the café just off the lobby.

I bring the tray over to the group. Gerry’s hand trembles when he reaches for his coffee, which is half-filled, so he doesn’t spill.

“Thanks, Tim,” he says. Gerry had to cut his law practice down to almost nothing when he became ill.

I give Jim his large black coffee and a chocolate-dipped donut.

“Mama’s milk,” he jokes. “Thanks, brother.” Jim played pro football before the Army drafted him, now he is thin and frail. When he came home, it was difficult for him to adjust. His career in law enforcement was cut short by his difficulties, including lots of brawls and drinking. Two marriages went bust as well.

Charlie grabs his large mocha coffee, and a honey glazed. He uses a wheelchair because his legs can’t support his obese body. Shirley nurses her tea and shakes her head at Charlie’s gorging.

“You want to go into a diabetic coma?” says Shirley.

Charlie shrugs at Shirley’s comment. “Hell, I’m dead already. The Air Force killed me. I flew in the planes that sprayed Agent Orange.” He took a bite of the donut. “When the VA diagnosed me, I was shocked. I had to take insulin shots. I couldn’t eat what I wanted, or drink what I wanted. That’s no way to live. Fuck it, I’m doing what I want.”

I sip my decaf and Splenda and say nothing. Everyone makes their own choices. When I returned from the war, I had it made. My fiancée had her Dad get me work at his advertising agency, and we married, raised two children, and were happy till my first heart attack at fifty.

Shirley nurses her tea and shakes her head. When she first joined the group, she spoke of her time in the war. “So many boys, so much hurt,” She left nursing after the war. She had a lengthy career in retail, and the success helped ease her pain.

A nurse comes out of the clinic office and shouts, “Wentworth, Gerald!” Gerry shouts “here!” and grabs his walker to stand up.

“Carry on, folks! See you guys next week.” Gerry straightens up, turns smartly with his walker and shaky legs over to the nurse.

Jim shakes his head and says, “Man, Jerry will be lucky to be here with us next week. He’s getting worse.” Charlie laughs, Shirley just sips her tea. It worried me that Gerry was worse, and in spite of his bravado, he knows it too.

Another nurse appears and shouts, “Brackett, Charles!”

Charlie nods to us, says, “See you guys’ next week,” and wheels off. He is slowly eating and drinking himself to death. Jim says aloud what we all were thinking,

“I bet Charlie aint gonna make to next week.” Shirley nods in agreement. We are quiet for a minute or two, then I ask Jim how he is doing, and he says,

“Middlin, boy, middlin. My belly hurts all the time, and they wanna cut out my intestines and put me on a bag. I don’t wanna do that, but I guess I have to.”

Shirley says, “do it, Jim. You can live longer with the bag.”

Before he could reply, the nurse comes out again, “Kearney, Timothy!” Raising my hand for the nurse, then offering it to Jim, I tell him.

“I WILL see you two next week!” I smile.

“For sure, brother, take care,” he says. We shake hands. I bump fists with Shirley who smiles up at me.

Walking toward the nurse I look back at our corner of the lobby. Jim, wincing at the pain in his stomach, is slumped in his chair. Shirley tries to comfort him. I stare at the two empty chairs, Charlie, and Jerry. The Orange Brigade body count is rising. I take a deep breath and follow the nurse.

Art After War: The Visual Diary of Danish Soldier Henrik Andersen

As the memory of U.S. participation in the Afghanistan War fades in the minds of most Americans (the report on the exit fiasco notwithstanding), there was probably even less awareness that the military did not “go it alone” but had NATO allies, including Denmark (which entered the war 2001), one of the twelve founding nations in 1949.  In Afghanistan the Danish military suffered 43 deaths from combat injuries, with 214 wounded in action.  The raw number is low compared to the U.S. but was the highest number of deaths any country suffered if considered per capita, and so had an outsized impact.

That the Danish participation in the war still looms large in the country is reflected in an installation at The Danish War Museum in Copenhagen, which developed A Distant War – A Danish Soldier in Afghanistan over 10 years ago.  It reflects an on-going presence of the war and its aftermath, a memory embodied in a physical space.

Mai Stenbjerg Jensen, the curator, told me that “the exhibition was made in collaboration with the Danish Armed Forces, more precisely with soldiers from ISAF team 10. Objects in the exhibition have all been brought home directly from Afghanistan. The exhibition shows the Danish soldier’s journey during a deployment to Afghanistan. The story is told from the soldiers’ perspective” (personal communication, July 4, 2023).  The exhibit follows a ternary pattern of a soldier going to war, in country, and back home.

The return home to civilian life can be problematic, as soldiers of any country’s forces can be affected by PTSD.  In the same way that the war for the American public is largely forgotten, the effects of war on the individual are likewise ignored or misunderstood by the broader civilian population.  This can lead to a sense of dislocation and alienation.  For many vets, the arts can offer a pathway to understanding their feelings of estrangement upon return by creating a visual or verbal representation of those feelings. Another intention of veterans’ artistic creation is to share their work with both the general public and with other vets.  The artwork can provide the non-vet with a window into the veterans’ war and post-war experiences, helping to bridge the vet/non-vet divide, while sharing their work with other vets can both inspire and create a sense of community, thus reducing that sense of isolation and estrangement.

Henrik Andersen, now 40, served in the Danish army for 15 years and was deployed to Kabul, Afghanistan from February to August 2017. He had the rank of Specialist. When he returned home he was eventually diagnosed with PTSD.  He decided that he would use artwork as a way of dealing with the various levels of how the diagnosis affected his daily life.  Starting on January 1, 2022 and until December of that year he created a new watercolor each day.  He notes in an artist’s statement: “Follow my painted diary for better or for worse with my daily companion PTSD.  A new picture every day in 2022 that both describes my world in and around me.”

Photo courtesy of Mads Ullerup

Andersen told me that “the diary concept was one my wife came up with, and for me a way to express myself daily through both good and bad days with a troubled PTSD mind, the thoughts, the emotions and sense of things which made an impact that particular day. I usually made the picture at the end of the day to make sure I got the most important impact of the day down on paper. It’s sometimes really hard to go to a mentally neutral place when you’re filled with anger, depression and loneliness. To empty your mind of judgmental thoughts and emotions and find that one thing that mattered just that day, that in itself can become therapeutic.”

He continued: “It would be really nice for me to be able to reach as many veterans as possible with my art.  I hope that it will make a difference and maybe even inspire others and others like me, who are battling with the aftermath of their deployment, to inspire others to find new ways to express their daily struggle. Even though I have my Instagram account, I’ve still not reached out to as many as I would like to. I do think it is an important message to get out to veterans and their families, that there are other ways to express yourself than you might think. My artwork is very personal to me, and it was a big deal for me to go public with it. It is meant as a daily diary in pictures and every day a new picture in 2022. My wife convinced me to make it public through Instagram, so I would post a new picture, describing my day emotionally or physically.”

Photo courtesy of Mads Ullerup

Andersen is not a formally-trained artist.  He was adept at drawing and painting from childhood and was influenced by an eclectic mix of comics, the figures in Warhammer, movies, and the classical sculptures and paintings in museums. Regardless of the medium or the genre he was always interested in how a thought, a question, or an emotion could be expressed. To him, the work begins with an idea and then the manner of expression evolves from the initial idea.  The finished product, he says “comes from trial and error, both so rewarding and frustrating.”

He does not plan any of his daily images but rather allows spontaneous moments to guide his work. The images are diverse, ranging from the relatively realistic to surrealistic to expressionistic. Even though they are created to reflect what Petersen is experiencing on any particular day they are not merely solipsistic and self-referential; they become a visual correlative that take on a broader meaning.  The titles to the works help in this regard.

Photo courtesy of Mads Ullerup

The early pictures set the tone for much of the rest of the year.  “Angsten og Vreden del. 1/The Anxiety and the Anger part. 1” is dated January 2, 2022, and depicts a fragment of a face in profile, just a nose and a wide-open mouth in a scream, with a ball of reddish-colored smoke emanating from the mouth.

“Selvvalgt ensomhed/Self-selected Loneliness” (January 3) depicts an empty chair in a barren room; a day later, “Fjernsynet viser ingenting/TV is Showing Nothing,” a TV set in a bare gray room has a blank green screen, connoting that there is nothing worthwhile being presented. Each depicts a sense of emptiness and the inability of some vets to re-integrate into the broader civilian society. “Mareridt i rodt, derefter sort/ Nightmare in Red, Then Black,” completed a few days later, shows a bleak, war-torn landscape with a few burned trees in red, mirroring a burned-out psychological landscape.

The January 5 work “Stenen i maven, mørk og varm/ Stone in the abdomen, dark and hot” refers to the physical impact of PTSD, and suggests that PTSD affects the vet not just psychologically but also physically.

As the year progresses the imagery takes on different dimensions.  A few works show recognizable scenes, like the river and bridge of “Ude for at se verden/ Out To See The World” (February 21), a floodlight on a lone power pole (“Sidst i rækken/Last in line,” March 6), steps going down a tunnel (“Sidst i rækken/ What happens if you look inside,” April 15),  a dilapidated house with collapsed roof (“Ja der er brug for genopbygning/ Yes rebuilding is needed,” October 11), and an isolated cabin (“Hyggeligt uhyggeligt/Cozy Cozy,” October 14).  Interestingly, none of these scenes include people, and even in “Cozy Cozy” there is a sense of isolation and remoteness, while in “What happens if you look inside” there is an intimation of foreboding as the steps lead to emptiness.

Faces, especially the eyes, and stylized bodies figure in a number of works, a few of which are self-portraits. “Sidder her bare del. 1, 2, 3/Just sitting here sharing 1, 2, 3” (August 26, 28, 29), is a triptych of sorts.  The first two panels depict a skeletal figure sitting on a rock leaning its skull on its right “hand.”  In 1, the background is a washed-out gray.  The same figure is in panel 2, but some color has been added.  In the third panel the figure is in the same posture but is now fleshed out in green. There are three human figures in the October 21 “Bare en fornemmelse/Just a Feeling.” The figures, in foreground, midground, and background, are dressed in brown and wear neckties, but are faceless. The two closest figures have flames around their feet, while the figure in the background is engulfed in flames. The figures appear impassive, accepting pain and death.  “Sådan føler jeg mig/This is how i feel” (October 30) is a self-portrait.  The figure is fleshed, not skeletal, yet the posture is reminiscent of the skeletons in “Just sitting here sharing 1 and 2.” The eyes are wide and the face anguished, suggesting the pain caused by PTSD.  Although the title “Trivialiteten er skræmmende/Triviality is scary” (February 8) might be considered a bit strange, it points toward the inability to fully reintegrate into the daily minutiae of civilian life. In this self-portrait, the predominant feature in the multicolored, somewhat blurred face are the eyes. Similar to other works, the eyes are wide, staring, fearful.  In the July 23 “Selvportræt/Self-portrait” the face is disembodied, outlined in gray and framed by red, and seems to be floating in the clouds over mountains, leading to a sense of disconnection and alienation from the world.

There is also a self-portrait entitled “Tabt forbindelse/Lost Connection” from October 11.  There is a disembodied head attached to tendrils with a green object next to the cheek.  Both of these works connote a sense of loss, even a dissociation from one’s own body.

Much of the work has an abstract quality.  “Drukner på land/Drowning on land” (November 10) depicts shapes of blue and brown, yet the title reveals a sense of struggle and suffocation.  The November 2 “Tankespin/Mind spin” is a burst of reds, and represents both the explosions of war on the battlefield and in the mind.  “Hvor brænder det ?//Where does it burn?” (August 20-22) is another series in three parts. In each piece, stylized and intermixed dark and lighter blue smoke rises from what could be hills. Looking closely at the first panel one sees what could be disembodied eyes in the smoke. In part 2 the eyes become a bit more pronounced. In part 3 an outline of a face in dark red, with what appears to be bared fang-like teeth, is revealed in the smoke. There is an agonized expression on the face. Again, the burning can refer to the destruction of war and also to a mind on fire.

Not all the watercolors represent negative emotions. The March 8, “Et sælsomt lille væsen er mødt op/A happy little creature has appeared” shows a rabbit in a field. In “Foråret kommer nu/Spring is coming” from March 9 a sprig of green grows out of a finger on a green hand, showing the regenerative power of Nature. There is the playful “Guleroden er der, jeg kan se den nu/ The carrot is there, I can see it now” (April 4); a teddy bear is the subject of the October 18 “Ren kærlighed/Pure love”; likewise, a bird is the subject of “Maskot/Mascot” (November 10). These more “gentle” works indicate that even with the traumatic aftereffects of war there is the possibility for beauty and clarity.

As he looks back on his visual diary he told me “this picture [the April 1 “Hænderne, der skaber og ødelægger/The Hands that Create and Destroy”] and others like it, of a withered, sick hand, gives a new meaning after I tried to take my own life in February 2023, and the attempt left me with exactly that, and really makes me think about the dual meaning in a lot of my pictures. I’ll admit that I didn’t succeed every day, but it was just as important to some days paint through a veil of tears or immense anger. I haven’t continued in 2023 with the diary but I am still painting, it is my little safe zone through the day and it has a calming effect to put paint on paper, the colors and the brush don’t expect anything from me, and as long as I don’t try to force something on to the paper it’s very fulfilling and stressless. My pictures surprise me in ways I would never have imagined.”

The range of Andersen’s images offers a broad insight into the post-war experience, including the effects of PTSD.  His images reveal the uncertainty and tenuousness of what any particular day will bring. At the same time, the very act of creation becomes a shield or bulwark against this uncertainty and provides a sense of order, not only in the finished product but also in the process itself, which provides a structure that my otherwise be lacking.

All statements by Mr. Andersen were from correspondence with him on October 7, 10 and 11, 2023.

All artwork images courtesy of Henrik Andersen.

All photographs of Andersen courtesy of Mads Ullerup.

Images available on Instagram:  henrikerladetmedptsd

References:

Danish casualties:  https://politiken.dk/udland/art4788077/Danmark-mister-flest-soldater-i-Afghanistan

A Distant War:  https://en.natmus.dk/museums-and-palaces/danish-war-museum/exhibitions/a-distant-war/

Mads Ullerup, “With Paintbrush and PTSD,” October 22, 2022, https://www.veterancentret.dk/da/nyheder/2022/med-pensel-og-ptsd/

The Oscar-nominated Danish film Krigen (A War; 2015, directed by Tobias Lindholm), with echoes of “Breaker Morant,” examines the moral quandaries that war occasions and reveals that these dilemmas occur regardless of the size of a nation’s forces. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/05/movies/tobias-lindholm-narrates-a-scene-from-a-war.html

Dubai is one gigantic, grey strip mall.

“Does anyone know why they call this place Dubai?”

I look away from my bus window. The tour guide sits on the edge of her seat in the front row, leaning into the aisle, microphone in hand.

“Come on,” her eyes wide, “Anyone want to guess? ‘Do’ and ‘Buy’! Dubai! Because everyone comes here to shop…”

I look back out the window. Like the last port visit, Bahrain, this port visit is one solid color. But instead of brown, this place is gray. We are on a wide highway. Cement buildings flicker past. We drive up and over a bridge, take the next exit off the highway, and wind back down and under the bridge. A pair of palm trees stand a little way ahead like two green phalanxes guarding the terracotta-roofed buildings behind them.

“…and up ahead is the Trump hotel,” the tour guide says.

Everyone continues to look out the windows. Trump became president the first month of our deployment. I wonder if the tour guide expected a different reaction.

“We’ll drive around the back and get out so everyone can get a good picture.”

The narrow street is lined with plots of manicured grass and palm trees. All the palm trees are exactly the same height.

The hotel looks like the palace at the end of the Candy Land board game.

We pull off to the side of the road. I look away from the hotel and out my window. The expanse of calm, turquoise water merges with the sky in an exact horizontal line. There are no waves. There are no dolphins. There are no seabirds.

I step out of the bus and walk over to the sea wall. It is a little higher than my waist. I lean over the top and look down. There is no sand, just turquoise water. It is as clear as drinking water. There are no clumps of algae, no seaweed, no barnacles in the nooks of the seawall. It is as if everything has been sterilized.

I look back at the hotel. A lot of money has made this a picturesque seaside destination. The bushes are trimmed into perfect geometric shapes; there are no cracks in the paved road. Everyone holds up their phones, their faces masked in the hotel’s shadow. I turn back to the water. I search for a ripple on the surface, anything that shows a scar, an imperfection, a smudge, anything that will tell me this place is alive.

“Ok, everyone!”

The tour guide claps her hands, gives a broad smile. She moved here from the Philippines to work as a promoter of this country. That is what a tour guide does, right? Represents this place in such a way as to get tourists to spend a lot of money, tell people about it, then return sometime in the future to do it again. I wonder if she knew this was going to be her job when she left her family behind. I have to believe there is something here that she has found, something more than money, that keeps her here. Has she found a real, living place here?

“Next stop, the Carpet Factory!”

If so, I don’t think we will be shown that place today.

“Surgeon, how was your tour?”

I look up from the liberty log. The Physician Assistant (PA) leans on the bulkhead in the lobby of Main Medical. Over the last five months of deployment, he has assisted me in taking care of patients and has been a workout companion during group cross-fit classes. He always listens when the sadness gets too great, and I need to tell someone I am missing my husband and two young daughters.

“The trip? Depressing.”

“How so?”

“Everything seems sanitized…”

He wrinkles his forehead.

“Or covered in sand.”

He nods, “Yes, that is everywhere.”

I put the pen down. “Any updates on the patient we transferred off the ship yesterday?”

“The pelvis abscess patient?” the PA asks.

I nod.

He looks behind him then says, “He had surgery, but I think he did ok. They took out his appendix and drained the abscess.”

I exhale. I was afraid of that. I was up all night worrying I did not adequately convey to the transfer service the potential difficulty of operating on this patient. Not being able to directly dictate a patient’s care, or even just talk to the surgeon taking care of the patient is a very frustrating part about being deployed in a part of the world where I know no one and know less about their medical systems. But often, it is not safe to operate on the ship. The safest thing to do for a patient is get them off the ship. And for me to give up control. I hate that. I had hoped the patient would have gotten an interventional radiology drain, that pelvis would have been a disaster to operate in. I have the equipment to drain a pelvis abscess, but he was at risk for getting very sick postoperatively. We have no blood bank, we are not equipped to take care of a sick post-surgical patient for very long, and he is in for a long recovery. Even though I love operating, the right thing to do was get him to a local hospital.

“They started him on a diet today,” the PA continues.

“Wow, that’s quick.” I pride myself in being somewhat aggressive when it comes to feeding a postoperative patient, but if I had been staring at a pelvis full of pus, I probably would have held off feeding him for at least a day or two. His intestines won’t work normally for a while.

“SMO (the Senior Medical Officer, pronounced Smoh) wants to see if he can be discharged in time to get back on the ship before we leave port tomorrow.”

I shake my head.

“Well, that might be ok, right?”

“No. He should not come back to this ship. Besides, he won’t be ready to be discharged in a week let alone tomorrow…”

“But his surgery went ok…”

“No,” I say again, “He won’t be ready. His guts are going to freeze up and not work. That’s why all you try to do with a pelvis abscess is drain the abscess, not operate on him. That’s what I tried to convey yesterday over the phone anyway.”

“Well,” the PA says, “We are in port, you couldn’t have operated on him anyway.”

“That’s not the point!”

The PA takes a step back.

I exhale. I can’t explain to him how frustrating it is when no one seems to listen; when no one seems to understand how sick this patient is still going to get. Instead, I say, “I’m sorry. I just really miss my family.”

He nods. “I know.”

“I’ll see you at dinner.” I walk past the PA, step over the hatch to the lobby, and into the cross-department passageway.

The patient was in septic shock. If I am honest with myself, I was afraid to operate on him, I was glad we were in port. If we were out to sea, I would have had no choice, he would have been too sick for a Medevac flight. And his surgery would have been close to impossible to perform without another set of knowledgeable hands, Surgeon hands. And there is no other Surgeon. There is just me. And as the lone general surgeon I have gotten into the habit of thinking of the worst outcomes. If the worst had happened – me not being able to get him off the OR table alive – I would not be able to walk into that operating room again. Then what would happen for the rest of deployment? There is no one else to take my place.

I walk into my office and turn on the light. There is a large box marked Priority Mail sitting on my desk. It’s from my mom.

I open the box, pick up the pink envelope on top and open it. It is a Mother’s Day card. Underneath the card there are four pounds of whole bean coffee. “Thanks, Mom.” I stow the coffee under my patient exam table then look back into the box. I pull out a large pack of Red Vines.

“Ha! Well, at least they aren’t Twizzlers,” I say, remembering the sea story I had heard on my first day out to sea. On the ship’s last deployment, the supply ordering had gotten mixed up and the only things that were sent to the ship were pallets of Twizzlers. The joke was that there were surely still boxes of Twizzlers oozing red crust into the bowels of a ship storeroom somewhere. Ah, so that’s where the cockroaches are coming from, I had remarked, putting in my two cents like I always do. But I worried I had upset the storyteller. Instead, my comment was incorporated into future retellings, and will probably continue to be a part of this ship’s lore for longer than I will.

There is one last thing in the box, wrapped in floral paper. I pick it up and tear open the wrapping. It is a folded pink T-shirt. I hold it up and the shirt unfurls under the fluorescent lighting, its silver looped script sparkles: I am a mother and therefore blessed.

This is not what I need to hear today. I am about as far away from being a mother as I have ever been, even before I had children. I can’t ask my daughters about their day, I can’t tell them about mine, I can’t give them a hug. I have left their day-to-day care to a nanny – a very capable, loving nanny – but what mother leaves their five- and two-year-old children? For a career? For a duty? For medicine? I realize I am not the only mother who has deployed. I realize mothers will continue working, striving, and loving their children all at the same time. But it is hard to do everything all at once. Especially when I physically cannot right now. Being reminded of that impossibility is not what is going to help me feel better about being here. I refold the shirt with the words on the inside and toss it into the trashcan.

Just before Memorial Day, the ship re-enters the Gulf of Aden.

“Is it hot in here or what?” I ask the Radiation Health Officer (RHO), a member of the medical department in charge of monitoring shipboard dosimeters. Condensation drips down the bulkheads. Sweat drips down the side of my face. So much for taking a shower this morning.

RHO opens his mouth, raises a finger, but I cut him off. “Never mind. I’m going to breakfast; would you like to join me?”

“Sorry, I have a rad health physical with SMO in a few minutes.”

“Wow. Both of you here? This early in the morning? Is the world ending?”

“Don’t remind me! Plus, I think he said he was going flying later or something.”

“Oh, great. I really am always the last person to know.”

“Ha! I know!” RHO says, “And you are the one who has to cover for him…”

“Don’t remind me,” I echo and walk down the passageway.

I push open the Wardroom door. There are only two occupied tables. I exhale; some days it is preferrable to eat breakfast alone. I decide on a hard-boiled egg and a bowl of oatmeal and walk over to an empty table in the corner. I put my tray down, walk over to get some water, then head back to my spot. An officer who sometimes goes to the same weekly exercise class as I do sits at my previously empty table.

“I hope you don’t mind, Surgeon,” he says as I sit down, “But I hate eating alone.”

I nod because it’s the nice thing to do, roll the hard-boiled egg on the tray until it cracks, then start to peel it. I exhale; I need to make conversation. “How’s your day going?”

“Oh,” he replies, “I just came off duty. Going to get some sleep, then back on duty tonight.”

“Busy schedule on the Bridge?”

He nods, then puts his fork down. “Surgeon, are you ever not on duty? I mean, who covers for you if you get sick?”

“No one.”

“What’s your secret?”

“About working all the time?”

“No, about not getting sick.”

“Oh.” I look down at my oatmeal. It looks like a lumpier version of grade-school paste. “I don’t know.” I push the oatmeal away. “I have two young daughters at home, so my immune system is primed, I guess.”

“Yes, Ma’am.” He takes another huge bite of scrambled egg, swallows, then stands up. “Well, if I have your permission, Ma’am…”

“Yes, please.”

He picks up his tray. “I’m off to get some rest, we’ll be busy going through The BAM tonight.”

“The what?”

“The BAM…something,” he twirls his hand in the air, “Mandeb,” he shrugs, “You know, The Gate of Tears.”

“Oh,” I nod, but I have no idea what he means.

I wait until he leaves the wardroom then I pick up my tray, guiltily turn in my uneaten bowl of oatmeal at the dirty dishes window, and rush back to my office. I open the search engine on my computer, but per normal, the connection is painfully slow. I see sick call, clinic patients, cover for SMO while he goes flying, grab a quick lunch, see a walk-in abscess patient, and look at an X-ray for the PA before I can google, The BAM.

To re-enter the Red Sea from the Gulf of Aden, the ship has to traverse the Bab el-Mandeb, shortened to the BAM, translated as, the Gate of Tears. It is the narrowest part around the Arabian Peninsula, a choke point for container ships because of the minimal room they have to navigate safely around the point. Are aircraft carriers bigger than container ships? I don’t know. When we went through the first time, I did not know to ask that question. I was blissfully unaware; I did not question my own safety. Something has happened to me between the beginning of deployment and now.

I look up at the television screen on the bulkhead in my office. It is on the black and white flight deck camera channel. The sky is a deep grey, the water a dark black. I can’t clearly see the edge of the deck. We are going through this narrow passage at night. I know that I personally try not to do anything at night – I try not to operate at night, I try not to medevac patients at night – everything is riskier at night, right? Or does this mean that it is riskier to traverse this place during the day? I don’t know.

My heart races. I can’t make it slow down.

I want to go home. And I have no control over that desire. I have to trust that our Captain, just like a Surgeon, has tirelessly prepared for all possible contingencies. But I also know that not every part of a surgery can be planned. An anatomic variant, a hesitation from a team member, or just plain old bad luck, can end an operation prematurely. We got around this point the first time without a scratch – I didn’t even know I should have been worried.

I turn off the TV and rush out of my office.

The passageway is deserted. The ladderwell is deserted. The overhead lights in the hangar bay are off; everything has more shadows tonight. No one is working out in the hangar bay gym. All the Weapons Department office doors are closed. I make it all the way to my stateroom without seeing anyone. I am all alone.

I enter my stateroom. It is dark except for a small light on over the sink. My roommate’s bunk is empty. I take off my boots and lay down on top of my blanket. I don’t take my uniform off. I don’t take my hair out of its bun. Most nights I know I will be woken up in the middle of the night for a medical emergency, but I always change out of my uniform and get into pajamas to at least attempt to have a good night’s sleep. I don’t want to risk it tonight. I don’t want to use up all my luck. Perhaps, if I don’t change out of my uniform, the one thing I have control over tonight, I won’t be needed, I won’t have to get out of bed, and then perhaps we will have enough luck left to eventually get all the way back home.

“Surgeon?”

One of my Corpsmen stands in my office doorway. “Is it time, HM3?” His rank is Hospital Corpsman, third class.

“Yes, Ma’am,” the Corpsman says, “My flight leaves in an hour.”

I look back at the TV on the bulkhead. The morning after the BAM crossing, I rushed down to my office and turned it on. The waters of the Red Sea looked the same color grey, there was no indication on the screen that we had done anything significant while the TV was off. And this morning, the waters of the Mediterranean also look the same color grey. Perhaps that is the point.

I stand up and walk to the door. “Goodbye, HM3. Good luck at your next duty station.”

“Thank you, Ma’am.”

The Corpsman turns to leave, then stops. “Ma’am?”

“Yes, HM3?”

“When I first heard that you were leaving the Navy, I thought, there goes all the common sense.”

My breath catches in my throat. I don’t know what to say. Am I giving up? That is my greatest fear. And will there be anyone left who will continue?

“Ma’am?”

“Yes, HM3?”

“Can I get a hug?”

My chest aches. I nod and walk over to my Corpsman — my Corpsman who had worked tirelessly on the ward with me, who had carried his Medical Response Team bag to countless medical emergencies, who had cared for mass casualty patients and sailors in his repair locker, a remote location on the ship where sailors stop flooding, put out fires, and repair damage — and I pull him into a hug.

“Goodbye, HM3. Do good things.” And I let him go.

“Yes, Ma’am. Goodbye.”

I sit at my desk and close my eyes.

I shake hands with patients daily. I place a hand on a shoulder when I listen to a heartbeat inside a patient’s chest. My fingers touch tender abdomens. But in actuality, I have very little human contact.

I leave the department, change into gym clothes, and walk aft through the hangar deck. I catch a sliver of the turquoise sky just above the dark green of the sea. I walk up to the O-3 level, enter the cardio gym, and go for a long run on a treadmill. For the next hour, I forget about the pelvis abscess patient who flew back to the states and had to have another emergency surgery. I forget that my daughters are growing up without me. I ignore the constant questioning thought – What good am I really doing here? – and I just run.

At the end, I stop the treadmill, and clean the console. I exit the gym via the long port-side passageway. My chest burns: my legs are spent. I pass a berthing area, a lounge area, go up two steps, pass through a hatch, then walk by a humid open machinery room. I go through another hatch, go down two steps, and pass single-occupancy staterooms and the radio office. I stop in front of one of the midships knee knockers.

It is like all the other knee knockers — an oval opening for a hatch without the hatch, like the one that caused a large scalp laceration in one of my patients. The bottom metal rim of this knee knocker is immaculately shined. There is not one speck of dirt on it, no smudges, no fingerprints, no faint boot marks. I have never seen one so clean before. It is as reflective as a mirror.

I turn and look down the passageway behind me. I turn and look up the passageway in front of me. I am alone. I lean forward over the metal lip, hoping to see my face upside-down, like in a circus mirror, but all I see is a thin dark shadow.

I stand up, lift my foot over the shined metallic surface, and for a moment, my shoe meets only empty space. Where is the deck on the other side? I look down at the bottom of the oval. Its reflective surface is gone, replaced by one large shadow. I feel as if I am falling into that blurred image; I feel erased.

I am going to die.

I am going to die here, on this boat, and my family won’t ever know what happened.

I am going to die.

And I am all alone.

A rushing sound fills my ears. The bulkheads seem to vibrate.

Then, my daughter’s voice calls to me from across the void.

You aren’t going to die, Mama, just the part of you that you don’t need anymore. Everything is going to be ok.

I blink.

The rushing and vibrations stop.

I look back up and down the passageway. I am still alone. I am still going to die. Just maybe not today.

I lean forward, put my running shoe down on the solid deck, and continue walking down the passageway.

“Good run?” the RHO asks.

I nod. I open my mouth to ask if he ever felt like he was going to die. Now. Today. Or if he has ever heard his daughter’s voice in his head as clear as I hear his voice right now, calling him back from an abyss. But something tells me to shut my mouth. I can’t tell anyone about that shadow in the knee knocker, that void, that nothingness. But that also means that I can’t share my relief when I heard my oldest daughter, Evelyn’s voice.

Not that it matters. No one will believe me anyway.

Perhaps, I am just hungry. “Dinner?”

“Yes! I’m…”

“Medical Emergency! Medical Emergency! Medical Emergency in…”

The RHO looks at me. There is fear behind his eyes. “That is deep trunk extraction territory.”

In certain areas of the ship, particularly some Engineering spaces or Reactor spaces or Weapons spaces or Supply department storerooms, the only way to get in or out is up a long, narrow, vertical ladder. If a medical emergency occurs in any of these spaces, the Medical Response Team cannot carry the patient out on a stretcher. The only way to get out a non-ambulatory or unresponsive patient is by hooking them into a stretcher and hauling them up as quickly as possible by a big cable and pulley system.

“Surgeon!”

I unclip my radio. “This is Surgeon. Go ahead.”

“Surgeon. This is SMO. A sailor was found down, not sure if he’s breathing, not sure if he fell, either way, non-ambulatory. Senior Chief and HM1 are heading down there now.”

“A deep trunk extraction?”

“Yes. I already called CHENG.” CHENG is short for Chief Engineer. A team from the Engineering department manages the cable and pulley system.

I grab my go-bag from the bottom drawer of my desk. I push the talk button. “SMO. This is Surgeon. Where is the extraction point?”

“The aft mess decks. I’m on my way there, now.” My radio clicks off.

I look up at RHO. Do I ask him about that voice anyway?

I shake my head and run out of the department.

I jog down to the aft mess decks. If the patient fell, a closed head injury or a high cervical spine injury could cause airway compromise. But why did he fall? Sailors go up and down these ladder wells all the time, many times a day. Dehydration? Exhaustion? Did he have a heart attack? A stroke? Did he take too much Benadryl? Did he take too much of something else? Did he want to fall or was he just ok with not being able to re-grab a rung?

To erase one’s life, to take it away, means we all have failed that one person, our shipmate. It means there is no purpose in the mission anymore. And I am not talking about the dropping-bombs-on-bad-guys mission. I’m talking about the working together for something bigger mission. Freedom. Hope. Justice. Big lofty, naive ideals. Ideals I have had to hold close in the middle of the night. Tightly. If I did not naively believe, well, how would I have been able to treat patients with my limited supplies and personnel? How would I have been able to look a transfer patient in the eye and tell him he will be ok, he will be given better care at the host nation medical facility than with me on the ship, even though I fear I am lying? How would I have been able to hope that my daughters will someday understand why I had to leave?

And when those ideals fail us, it doesn’t matter how tightly you hold on. Like knowing the potential consequences of traversing the BAM in daylight. Like deciding, despite all the work it took to get to where I am, The Ship’s Surgeon, I cannot do it anymore.

The bulkhead closes in, the fluorescent lights buzz down, my vision flickers. I have to stop thinking about my decisions. I need to focus on helping this sailor. This is why I am here. And there is no one else.

Up ahead, a group of dark blue shapes bends and twists. I blink and my vision clears. There are so many people working to save this one sailor. Working, not for the mission of the ship, but for our shipmate.

I will my tired legs onward.

A group of sailors bends over a large pulley next to a hole in the deck, an open escape hatch. My Surgical Tech is crouched next to the opening, his Medical Response Team bag next to him. The Executive Officer (XO, the second in command of the ship), the Command Master Chief (CMC, the highest-ranking enlisted member on the ship), and the Senior Medical Officer stand off to the side. I nod to SMO. His role is clear – he will oversee, he will support the command, as needed. My role is less clear. I am supposed to do something, swiftly and expertly, if the patient needs it. No one cares if I will be called on to do something I have never done before. I am just supposed to be able to do it. Expertly.

My legs wobble. Even before surgeries I have done so often that I can do them in my sleep, there is always a brief moment before I operate when I doubt my abilities. That moment has gotten longer the longer I have been on this ship. It is hard to know if you are about to do the right thing when you are all alone and have no one to tell you that what you are doing is right.

“Ready?” one of the Engineering sailors yells down into the open hatch.

I cannot hear the response. I open my go-bag and take out two fourteen-gauge needles, the plastic wrapping slippery in my fingers. It is mechanical, my hands reaching for these life-saving devices. I do not think about it. If the sailor is unconscious from a fall, and cannot breathe from collapsed lungs, these needles will save his life. All I have to do is put them in the correct place.

Sound, buzzing, rushing returns to my ears. The clank of the cable against the metal hatch opening, the calls and grunts of the sailors around me.

It will be soon.

The machine clanks, pauses, then clanks again. My Surgical Tech stands up. The orange end of a stretcher peeks up over the hatch in the deck. He grabs the handle on the end as the stretcher emerges.

I cannot tell if the sailor is breathing. I want to rush at the stretcher, assess for signs of life, to work quickly. But I stay where I am. I wait until the stretcher is righted. I wait until it and my Corpsman are away from the gaping hole.

“Surgeon!”

I rush over to the patient. I see fog in the oxygen mask.

I bend down, place my fingers into the hole in front of his cervical collar. I feel a bounding pulse. “Stretcher bearers!” I yell.

I let our shipmates carry the stretcher down the passageway.

I lift my radio and call Main Medical. “We are on our way.”

I turn back to SMO. His face is tense. I nod and he returns it. Then I rush down the passageway.

“Surgeon, is the patient going to be ok?”

I nod, then hesitate. “I hope so, Nurse.”

I don’t know what it is like to be on the other end of a deep trunk extraction team. I can imagine it is far lonelier than stepping over a knee knocker and thinking there is nothing but blackness, an absence of hope. I can fix a collapsed lung, I can stabilize a broken neck, but I did not have to do any of those things for this patient. All I had to do was listen.

“Nurse, have a good night. Let me know if you need anything.”

“Yes, Surgeon.”

My patient is asleep in his bed on the ward. I nod to the shipmate already at the bedside, I hope my gratitude washes over him, and I walk on.

I walk past the closed OR doors. I don’t feel much like celebrating or raising a fist in the air. We work and we work, and we try to do the right thing. But is what we are doing, right?

I walk into my office and sit down.

How are we all going to be ok so we can continue to do this job until the end? I think that is the question Nurse is asking.

I look over at a drawing on the bulkhead next to my desk. My youngest daughter, Waverly, sent it to me. It has been next to me the whole deployment, retaped several times, the edges curling. It is labeled, My Family. I look at the row of faces with our arms and legs sprouting directly from our heads. That always makes me smile. There is a D beneath the biggest one, and an E and a W below the two smaller ones in the middle. And at the end of the row, beneath the medium-sized smiley face, there is an M. I lean forward. But there is something else. I have never noticed it before. Perhaps the pink construction paper needed to be faded enough for me to see it. Directly in front of the letter M there is a tiny, pink-colored heart scratched into the paper.

Perhaps that is the answer to Nurse’s question. With enough time, as long as it needs to take, we will eventually get to the answers. And hopefully, we will be ok.

29 April 1971

From: Naval Science Department

To: Midshipmen Second Class, Navigation and Piloting 301 (NAV 301)

Subject: Final Navigation Project-Due: 1600 hours, 13 May, Luce Hall, Room 104

Mastering navigation is critical for every Naval Officer. This project covers topics from the last eight months and represents 40% of your grade. Instructions, answer sheets, and charts are provided. The exercise simulates USS Robinson’s (DDG-12) transit from San Diego to Pearl Harbor as part of a carrier task force. You will serve as Robinson’s navigator.

****

“Company, ten-hut. Dress right. Attention to morning announcements.”

Our midshipman company commander’s voice was stern at our 0645 morning meal formation. “From the Battalion Officer: This is the final warning for whoever is bombarding the eighth wing tennis courts with debris. If littering continues, an all-night watch will be manned by eighth wing residents.”

Chortles and snickers filled the company ranks.

“It’s not my fault; business is business,” whispered my roommate, Billy Gleason, beside me in formation.

“Maybe it is your fault,” I said. “Did you look? Rubbers are everywhere.”

The company commander continued. “Alumni returning from their first duty stations will attend a reception in Memorial Hall at 1700 today. First Lieutenant James Creeson, USMC, class of 69 from our company is scheduled to attend if anyone wants to say hello.”

“We should go see him, hear his Vietnam stories,” I whispered.

After classes we changed from working uniforms to whites and rushed to the reception, anxious to see what had become of Jimmy Creeson. He was alone on the balcony, smoking Camels, flicking ashes into a plastic cup. He was five-six, muscular, a former collegiate wrestler. His skin had a yellow tinge, his hands quivered, the flame dancing when he lit his cigarette. The Marine Corps logo was engraved on his class ring stone. As our first midshipman squad leader when we were plebes, he’d been disciplined but upbeat, always smiling. We respected his demanding nature because the tasks he gave us seemed to have a purpose. We saluted him, excited to see him, but he didn’t return it, nor did he smile. He discreetly took a flask from inside his left sock and poured vodka into his Kool-Aid. He offered us some and Billy, at the risk of expulsion, accepted. We had listened intensely to periodic announcements of the Academy’s Vietnam casualties, including Creeson’s classmates, relieved that his name was not among them. He looked exhausted, his eyelids drooped, but he had survived. His uniform was immaculate, with three rows of new ribbons, including the Silver Star.

“How’s football?” he asked Billy.

“I didn’t make the team,” Billy said, slouching. “Lost my touch.”

“Football isn’t everything. It just seems like everything. It’s a diversion from all the BS,” Creeson said, his voice without inflection.

“How’s the Marine Corps? What’s Vietnam like?” I asked.

Creeson looked puzzled, perhaps offended, glancing about without eye contact. He took a long drag and gulped his drink. “I shouldn’t have come here. You guys, be careful. Really,” he said. He walked away, not checking out with the officer managing the reception. With perfect posture and bold cadence, he walked, heels clicking, down the Bancroft Hall stairway into Tecumseh Court.

I felt terrible about asking my questions. We talked with feigned interest to a few of the naval officers at the reception who had completed sea tours. Some had participated in naval gunfire support off Vietnam’s coast; others had cruised the Mediterranean, gladly assigned to ships far from war. None of them, except James Creeson, seemed damaged.

“Creeson looked terrible. He didn’t look like the same person. My uncle’s skin is like that when he needs dialysis,” said Billy.

“The Marine Corps is out of the question for me. I’m going to drive ships,” I declared. Billy, perhaps a little tipsy, was falling behind as we walked, maybe frightened by what he’d seen. “What about you, Billy? Ships? Planes? Submarines?”

“I haven’t thought much about it. We don’t have to decide until January. I guess the National Football League is off the table.”

We were not exactly model midshipmen but did the best our consciences allowed. Billy, from New Mexico, and I, from Nevada, roomed together during junior year. We were brothers in western solidarity, sons of landlocked mountain desert states that were isolated from the Navy. We stayed mostly under the radar, not shining, not failing, getting by. Billy’s business acumen made him famous in an underground way. By junior year, our classmates seemed to forget that he was a football recruit.

Billy’s right glutes, hamstrings, and calves were marvels. His right leg juxtaposed with his left appeared to be twice as big. He held his state’s high school records for the longest field goal and consecutive PATs, leading to his induction into New Mexico’s High School Football Hall of Fame. He was 5’10” and weighed 165—perfect for a kicker. His 800 math SAT and 20-20 vision, coupled with kicking skills, made him a perfect Navy recruit. He told me he’d dreamed of being interviewed on CBS following his winning kick in the Army-Navy game.

After a successful year on the freshman football team, Billy was cut from the varsity because he developed a chronic hook. His range exceeded fifty yards, but he couldn’t shake the portside hex. The team hired an ex-NFL kicker to assist—no luck. His father engaged a sports psychologist who calmed Billy’s sweating nightmares but didn’t correct kicking problems. The Academy medical staff warned his father that too much psychological treatment could hinder Billy’s ability to obtain a security clearance when the time came. Treatment ceased.

Ashore in Italy during a summer training cruise, a fortune teller told him he would live until he was ninety, but kicking was, “I am sorry, che sfortuna.” He tried confession in Saint Peters, seeking higher authority than the Academy Chapel confessional adjacent to the crypt of John Paul Jones. Religious entreaties failed. For two years, on his way to class, Billy threw pennies at Tecumseh’s statue overlooking the Yard. Tecumseh, a Shawnee warrior, brought luck to penny throwers.

“That won’t work,” Bobby Williams scoffed, throwing a penny on his way to an exam. “It only works for tests—not kicking.”

Billy suffered anxiety and boredom with the curriculum that he might have liked if playing football were included in his life. He suffered as an anonymous spectator among the rest of us. I marched next to him many times on our way through Annapolis to Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium for home games. Standing on the field within his kicking range of the south goalposts, waiting for the Brigade to complete the “march on,” he softly read aloud names of famous battles decorating stadium bulwarks—Leyte Gulf, Midway, Iwo Jima, Pearl Harbor.

“This is chip shot range for you,” I commented, attempting to change his mood.

“No kidding,” he whimpered.

In the first game of junior year with ten seconds to play, Navy’s kicker missed a thirty-five-yard field goal. We lost by one. A ray of hope emerged when Billy was invited to varsity practice on Monday—he was uninvited on Tuesday.

Billy searched for distractions. He wasn’t interested in Weapons Systems or Seamanship classes, earning lackluster C’s. He effortlessly earned A’s in calculus, physics, and physical education. He read passages aloud to me from his father’s letters, mocking his father’s chagrin. When the grades didn’t improve, sterner letters arrived.

“Can’t you try harder? You’re embarrassing us. How hard can ‘Introduction to Shipboard Weapons’ be? What’s going to happen when the weapons are real?”

Instead of studying more, he conjured a plan to become the entrepreneur of Bancroft Hall. He was our black-market Yossarian, a money-making machine, using his version of Wall Street analytical shrewdness.

“I can see the market,” he exclaimed in October before midterms. “Everybody wants comfort food that reminds them of home.”

“What?” I asked, looking up from homework.

“I can relieve homesickness. I’m going to sell grilled cheese sandwiches at night during finals week. We’re going to make a fortune. The sandwiches probably don’t even have to be good.”

He piloted his business plan during midterms. The Brigade had extended study time beyond normal taps during test weeks and midshipmen were hungry late at night. Billy borrowed money from our banker classmate, Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson and he recruited Bobby Williams and me as cooks. We practiced grilling in a Teflon-coated electric frying pan—a violation of every fire code and hygiene regulation in our universe. Billy hid the pan in his basement storage locker and retrieved it at night when we should have been studying. Instead, our spartan team wrapped steaming sandwiches in foil, stuffed them in paper bags with chips, and sold them door-to-door for two dollars each, quickly selling all we had.

When first semester finals week came, applying lessons from the pilot, Billy upgraded production capacity with six electric griddles and more workers. The buttery aroma of sandwiches filled the hall. We posted guards to ensure that our kitchens remained hidden. Our company’s seniors liked the grilled cheese so much that they turned a blind eye toward our enterprise and its brazen violations. We sold over 1000 sandwiches for four dollars a bag, five nights in a row. Miraculously we passed our exams, exhausted, cash happy. Billy repaid Stonewall with interest.

****

Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson, from South Carolina, was the son and grandson of Academy graduates; his father was an oil company president and a member of Augusta National Golf Club. Stonewall received unsolicited monthly deposits, “from Motha,” to his bank account and became a lender to classmates in need. After his successful investment in Billy’s business, the two briefly seemed like close friends. They played golf and Billy helped him with calculus. In April their friendship crumbled.

“You have Masters tickets?” Billy inquired, a month before Spring Break when the golf tournament was scheduled.

“Of course,” Stonewall replied. “Do you want to come? Mason’s coming. You should come too.”

“I can buy the tickets from you,” said Billy.

“Are you kidding? You’re a guest,” explained Stonewall.

Mason, from Raleigh, was Stonewall’s roommate and teammate on Navy’s golf team. Mason would do almost anything to escape Annapolis and return to Raleigh for weekends. He bragged obnoxiously about his harem there.

Two days before Spring Break, Stonewall cancelled Billy’s invitation explaining that his family “wasn’t going to the tournament because MeeMa was ill.” Billy had watched the Masters with his father on TV for years. He was heartbroken not to see it in person but gracious with the bad news. “Hope your grandmother gets well soon,” he said. We heard that Mason was still going on the trip, so Billy suspected that his own Yankee roots and lack of Navy “blue blood” had caused the family to veto the visit.

Instead of the Masters for Spring Break, Bobby Williams, Billy, and I took the train to New York, stayed in a Times Square hotel, drank beer, and watched the New York Knicks using free USO tickets. On Saturday in between tourist excursions, we watched the Masters on TV.

“Hey, that’s Mason,” yelled Bobby. “He’s wearing a Navy golf hat.”

Billy angrily glared at the screen, his blackball suspicions confirmed.

When we returned from break, Mason told us all about the Masters. Stonewall’s grandmother had miraculously, “praise the lord,” recovered. Mason bragged about the “ladies of Augusta” with whom he’d “had relaaations.” We didn’t believe him until we spotted the antibiotic on his desk a week later.

Billy became analytical about Mason’s illness and devised a new enterprise to exploit the ways of midshipmen tomcats. He ordered a case of condoms that arrived in an enormous box with no return address. “If I’m right, we have a bull market—more profitable than sandwiches,” he predicted. Advertising required delicacy—but he was convinced that confidential sales would be appealing. Mason and Stonewall were his first customers.

“Twenty dollars a box? Steep,” complained Mason.

“Not for quality,” explained Billy. “You don’t have to leave Bancroft Hall. I know you don’t want to be caught with your pants down again,” warned Billy, winking.

They bought two packages each and I thought Billy was going to be sick with excitement when he considered the profit potential.

Gradually, however, Billy realized what liars comprised the bragging Brigade. He made a few sales to guys like Mason, but no significant market emerged. Even when Billy lowered the price multiple times, nobody wanted rubbers. Occasionally someone would “buy one for my wallet, just in case, you know, better safe than sorry.” Billy sulked. “I should have run a pilot,” he lamented.

Reengineering Billy’s condom business was inspired by my chemistry professor, a Navy Commander whose whites were decorated with Vietnam War medals and a command-at-sea button. He seemed bored, unengaged with class, dreaming of the bridge of his destroyer. During class, he filled a latex glove with water and casually lobbed it to the lab’s deck where it exploded.

“The purpose of the Navy, gentlemen, is to deliver ordnance,” he proclaimed, suddenly inspired to provide us with important truths beyond the chemistry curriculum.

His explanation of the Navy baffled me. No one challenged his manifesto or even commented on the mess he created. My trouser legs were soaked, making me wonder how much water would fit in one of those high-quality condoms. Around three gallons, we discovered.

“The problem is lifting that little boy,” proclaimed Billy. He lowered his prices and began an aggressive advertising campaign, showing others a condom’s superb ordnance potential. They were nothing like conventional water balloons. Rubber wars erupted. Bombs were launched and booby traps set throughout Bancroft Hall. Vicious warriors, creative future ordnance deliverers, added Kool-Aid to their payloads—red water bombs were death sentences for Navy whites. For several weeks floods and condom remnants were everywhere.

Billy became a cautious arms supplier, warning overly aggressive warriors of risks. “Dropping three gallons from six flights up could injure somebody,” Billy counseled.

“We’re not going to hit anybody, just get them wet. This is America; shut the fuck up!”

Water wars waged by future Navy and Marine Corps officers escalated. Just opening a door could be disastrous and bomb squad pre-clearance became a requisite. Booby traps were planted in the most unexpected places. Halls were awash in a rainbow of colors, slippery, treacherous.

After a month, the antics died, skirmishes completed, scores settled; mutually assured destruction necessitated a cease-fire after so many uniforms had to be replaced. Business subsided and remaining condoms were sharply discounted, deployed mostly to nightly test bombings from rooms above the tennis courts at the base of Bancroft Hall. Spring-fevered weaponeers sick of studying jettisoned enormous bombs that barely fit through the windows. Noisy splashing geysers were so commonplace that we no longer watched them. Custodians grew tired of policing the mess and complained to the Battalion Officer.

****

Billy and Stonewall had jointly organized and financed a weekend party for eight of us earlier in the year. The party was scheduled for May, a month before our Ring Dance and the semester’s end. They had each paid half the deposit for a big house on Chesapeake Bay, ten miles from Annapolis. Because of continued tensions between them as the date approached, Billy requested a refund from the owner, a 1948 Academy graduate, who resolutely refused and reminded him that final payment was due. Seven of us wrote rental checks to Billy who consolidated payment. We cautiously proceeded with party plans, despite the lingering animus.

Along with our dates, or drags, in Academy vernacular, we arrived at the majestic, weathered house, greeted by warm southern breezes, azaleas exploding with color, Marvin Gaye blasting over speakers, and picturesque views of the shipping lane to Baltimore. The place was calming, filled with the owner’s Academy mementos including a signed poster of Roger Staubach. The intended calming effect of the party settled over us, temporarily easing the pressures of upcoming finals and the problematic Navigation Project. Our location, outside the seven-mile limit, a radius from the Academy’s chapel dome, allowed us to drink beer and other “laaabations,” Stonewall’s phrase, without violating Academy rules invoking severe penalties.

Billy prepared detailed plans for the weekend in the same manner he ran his businesses-an inclement weather plan, a transportation plan, menus, assignments for cooking, clean-up, sports equipment, security, safety. We mostly ignored his fastidiousness but were immediately thrilled to see the results of his food planning: blue crabs in bushel baskets and a keg of Michelob greeted us on the screened porch.

“How do you do this again?” asked Alison, Mason’s girlfriend.

With his mouth full of crab, Mason explained and demonstrated crab dissection. Alison, a student at Georgia Tech, was the reigning Peach Bowl Princess.

“See, there’s nothing to it. The biggest legs, that’s where it’s best.”

“Mason, I’ve ruined my nails. Can you hit this crab with the little mallet for me? The last one splattered crab guts. Smell your hands, Mason. How are you gonna get that off? If you think you’re gonna touch me with those hands, you’re dreamin, Darlin.”

We fifteen, minus Alison, pounded away at crabs, swilled beer, and occasionally took breaks to eat salad and cornbread and dance to the music. A salty breeze rustled our newspaper tablecloths as the sun disappeared. With his planning, Billy sought harmony, mostly for the sake of recovering his damage deposit. Nevertheless, his planning had gaps. In this case, his oversight was sleeping arrangements.

We had four bedrooms, eight couples, and no plan. Some would be stuck sleeping on couches or on the floor. The relationships, including mine, having just met my girlfriend in March, were in various stages. Most seemed relieved with sleeping arrangements that posed no pressures.

Mason, on the other hand, desperately wanted a bedroom. In the hastily executed straw drawing for bedrooms, Alison and Mason were stuck on the living room floor. Mason continued his entreaties.

“Please, Bobby, you don’t want a bedroom. You hardly know that girl and she’s only seventeen.”

“Fuck you, Mason,” Bobby’s date snarled, taking Bobby’s hand, leading him through the bedroom door, sticking out her tongue at Mason.

Mason waved his checkbook, offering to buy a bedroom. He whined and threatened to leave, but classmates who’d drawn bedrooms ignored him.

Alison had been steadily sipping Manhattans after declaring that she couldn’t deal with crabs. Her speech was slurred as she coddled Mason’s arm and kissed his neck. With no bedroom, she made a cocoon-like bed on the floor with two air mattresses, quilts, and blankets she’d found in a closet. She changed into her Georgia Tech T-shirt and silk gold shorts with a yellow-jacket insignia.

“Goodnight classmates and thanks so much for giving us a bedroom after I found this place and made the arrangements,” Mason spouted, emerging from the bathroom with toothpaste on his lips.

“Mason, you didn’t find this place, Billy did. And your contribution to the rent is pitiful. We should make you sleep on the beach,” I said.

“There’s room on that boat by the dock. You could move this little bed under the stars and practice celestial navigation,” Stonewall suggested.

Mason and Miss Peach Bowl looked comfortable, framed by the pinewood floor, perched between the wall with Staubach’s poster and a table filled with the owner’s collectibles. Twelve of us, now in sweatshirts, paraded past them. We took our drinks to the beach, revived the fire with driftwood, and breathed in cooling breezes. It was not yet midnight—why sleep with so much beer left? The lights shining from Bobby’s room ruined the starlight. We saw him through the window playing Yahtzee with his girlfriend. We banged on the panes, beckoning them to douse the lights and join us. The fire, the Old Bay aroma, beer, and female company created a lazy coziness.

“How far did you guys get on the Navigation Project?” Bobby asked.

“I’m past the fog in San Diego Harbor,” Stonewall said.

“Relax, enjoy this last weekend,” implored Billy. “We have until Thursday. It won’t be that hard once the enemy submarine gets out of sonar range and the ship doesn’t have to zig-zag. I think it’s a straight track from there to Pearl Harbor. If there’s some trick, we’ll find it.”

Under the stars the only sounds were the fire and the squeak of rubber fenders on the motorboat rubbing against the pier. No one seemed sleepy. Suddenly, the embarrassing sound of Miss Peach Bowl’s groaning, muffled screaming, and pounding fists against the pinewood emerged from the house, providing evidence that Mason was indeed the biggest stud since War Admiral. The ending to our jealous, disdainful listening came with the crash of glass shattering–a lamp or vase had been knocked to the floor. We assumed the amorous noises would cease, but they continued. I knew Billy was cringing at the thought of paying damages, but he remained calm, sipping beer, adding firewood. “Mason is such an idiot,” he complained.

On Monday Billy’s bank called informing him that Mason’s rent check had insufficient funds. The landlord also called wanting to know “What the hell happened to my wife’s crystal vase? I am taking the replacement cost out of the deposit.”

Mason immediately promised to pay his rent money the following week but grew hysterical when he heard about the additional cost of the broken vase.

“If you assholes hadn’t made me sleep on the floor it wouldn’t have happened. How did we know that vase was on the table? I can’t pay for it for a while.”

“What about you, Stonewall? You want to help your roomie out here?” Billy asked. “Should we convene a meeting to see what our classmates think about this?”

“It’s not necessary. When the owner tells you how much, let me know,” Stonewall said.

****

We were deluged with end-of-semester work. The Navigation Project took hours, but Billy was uncharacteristically inspired to finish. Thirteen charts and ten pages of problems covered the spectrum of navigation and piloting we’d studied—deriving fixes, ship positions, using Loran, radar, magnetic and gyro compass readings, celestial navigation with stars, sun, and moon. My charts seemed messy, bleared, smeared with erasures, and sweat. In all, I thought the Naval Science faculty had created interesting problems. I finished on Wednesday evening and packaged my project as prescribed. Smiling, Billy returned from Luce Hall, waving his receipt after submitting his project early.

“You’re finished, right? We can talk about it without worrying about an honor violation?” Billy asked.

“My charts are ready. I’m not opening them again,” I declared.

“Did you find the math error in the Antares star line calculation? If you correct the math, the stars cross in a point, a perfect fix,” he explained.

Billy’s math error discovery was ingenious. I’d never considered the possibility that math errors would be purposefully inserted in the problem. He stood beside our window, rubbing the strings of a football.

“Having the task force arrive on a Sunday morning in December was a clever touch. You noticed that didn’t you?” I asked. Distracted, he didn’t hear me.

“Look at those idiots.” He was peering down at Stonewall and Mason’s room, kitty-corner to ours on the deck below. Bobby’s room was next to theirs. Football fields and the Chesapeake Bay formed a scenic panorama to the south. Rooms were not air conditioned so in spring everyone kept the windows open. A cacophony of music blared from the open windows.

“What idiots?” I asked, examining the court lit with lights from dozens of rooms where midshipmen were studying.

“Mason and Stonewall. Look at them down there. You know damn well they’re working on the project together. We should turn them in.”

We turned off our lights and clandestinely watched them, reviving our anger at Mason, confirming our distrust of Stonewall who was peering out the window, yawning, checking his Rolex Submariner. Mason was marking fixes and drawing tracks on the large-scale chart of Pearl Harbor where the transit ended a short distance from USS Arizona’s memorial.

“It wouldn’t be that hard to hit them from here, do you think?” Billy asked.

“With what? Noooo,” I said. “No.”

“Let me ask you something. If you’d broken the vase instead of Mason, do you think Stonewall would have offered to pay for it?”

“Of course not,” I said.

“We’re just not in the same Navy as they are. Don’t you think an attack is justified? My balloons?”

“It wouldn’t be that hard, but it’s a bad idea.”

“One try. If we miss, they’ll just think it was another tennis court water bomb. We’ll be Yamamoto—surprise attack.”

“I have some line and canvas we can use—we can’t just throw it. Aim and stealth are the problems.”

Billy smiled. “Where’s the hose? I’ve got red Kool-Aid that will be perfect.”

“Don’t fill it too much,” I warned. “The plebes always add too much water and end up exploding it on themselves.”

With the big red balloon, like a rising sun in the middle of our deck, we plotted our attack. We meticulously practiced with a shoe tied to the end of the line hung from a window in a room across the hall from us, out of sight from our target. As we prepared in the twilight some of the plebes noticed us slide the rope out the window. We decided to risk one more test and swing the shoe toward the target to validate trajectory and line length. I could see a sweaty sheen on Billy’s face.  Mason continued charting, head down, and Stonewall was adjusting his stereo, raising the volume of “Give Peace a Chance.” Despite their egos, they would surely see us. They glimpsed our way but somehow didn’t notice the line. After several perfect practice swings with the shoe, we marked the line length with chalk and pulled the rope inside. When we raised the giant red condom to our window ledge and fitted the canvas straps around it, we could hear the plebes above the music gasping and applauding. Billy shook his fist at them, demanding silence.

The ball was heavy but manageable. We lowered it slowly to the marked line length and began swaying from side to side across the sill. The red ball moved smoothly, gaining momentum, bulging where the latex was weak, inching toward the target. It grazed the bulkhead below us, and we cringed at the thought of a rupture.

“Okay, here we go,” Billy whispered. “One more big swing.”

I guess we didn’t account for the size of the ball compared to the shoe, or the added length of the cradle, or the line’s stretch from the weight. The enormous red orb swung directly through Bobby’s window and exploded over his Navigation Project, turning his world ubiquitously red. Bobby screamed, overwhelmed by the explosion, a casualty of friendly fire. The plebes were flashing lights, jumping up and down, shocked, awed.

We threw the rope to the middle of the tennis courts below. Billy sat down, pretending to read, listening to Bobby’s profanity echoing across the court; I held a pillow to my face, fighting an explosion of laughter. Of course, we’d missed our target, like Billy’s kicks, to the left.

****

Second Class Ring Dance traditions prescribe that class rings be strung on ribbons and worn as pendants around our dates’ necks until each couple ceremoniously dips them into a binnacle containing waters from the seven seas. We completed the ritual and donned our rings. After three years of anticipation, the ceremony seemed anticlimactic. We’d been counting the days, and now, entitled to wear rings like Jimmy Creeson’s, they embodied alarming burdens we’d face in one year when we were commissioned.

Billy and I returned to our room after the dance just before curfew. Billy was jumpy, energized, twisting his ring, singing songs from the dance. Two Navy ships were anchored in the Bay, ablaze with strings of celebratory lights. The athletic field to the south was abandoned, its goalposts lit by streetlamps and a waxing moon.

“Come on,” Billy insisted, pulling his bag of footballs from the closet.

“What?”

“Come on!”

We trudged down the back stairs in Navy tuxedos with yellow cummerbunds, pleated shirts, gold buttons, and dance-scuffed shoes. The damp grass soaked the knees of my trousers as I held the ball for Billy Gleason on the forty-yard line.

“Look,” he exclaimed. “Antares is right between the goalposts. This is for Jimmy Creeson.”

His kick soared triumphantly through the uprights.

WHERE WE ARE NOW

Neruda wrote: You are mine; rest your dreams in my dream.
I wish that I could write that to you. I love you that much.
More. But because I do, I couldn’t. Couldn’t possibly.

We are approaching 80; the end is coming more and more into sight—
we’ve begun to feel it in our bones, our throats, even in our thoughts—
and women like you don’t rest their dreams in men’s dreams,
even in macho men’s, like the great Neruda’s. If they ever did.

You and I have had marriages that ended, spouses we watched die.
We have grandchildren, pensions, headaches, joint pains, and regrets
Books we started and will never finish, sweaters we haven’t worn for years.
Life promised so much and has given so much. If not everything.
Some of what we’ve done endures, some disintegrated to ashes, to dust.
You are my star, incandescent, lighting up the inevitable horizon.

As we complete the journey and feel the gravity of the black hole,
what can I offer you now, ask of you, try to provide?
Come in just a little closer and hold me even more tightly.
Walk alongside me, my love. Let’s lean on each other, lean together.
Wrap yourself around me and rest your warm old head on my old head.
Help me to remember. Help me to forget

COURSE CORRECTION

they told me Jesus would save me
but i have done all of the footwork
down here
on the ground
rolling my sleeves up
seeing what i have
a father who hates me
a mother who ignores me
a heart who turns the tenderness of each moment
into a tornado
i do the work
ask questions
write down thoughts
understand learned behavior
question patterns
slowly
brick by brick
i build the church of my own presence
and the altar of my own body

Somewhere near the Hải Vân Pass, Vietnam, 1969

I found her body tangled among a thicket of vines on the jungle floor. Our patrol stopped for the night, and we were digging into our defensive positions when I tripped over her shoeless feet.

“Grab your e-tool, Private,” the Sergeant said. “Let’s get her buried before sunup.”

I slung my M16 across my back and pulled the collapsible shovel from my rucksack. With the serrated edge, I hacked at the undergrowth snaked around her legs.

“Slowly,” the Sergeant said. “Check for wires.” The Viet Cong, we called them Charlie, booby-trapped the entire jungle. The Sergeant slowly ran his hand along the thickest vine, which wrapped around her shoulders. He followed it to the ground before slicing the root with the precision of a surgeon.

Around us, our platoon recovered from a nine-hour push through an uneven mountain pass. But in the boonies, sleep was elusive. Most nights, we sat back-to-back, resting in two-hour shifts, awaiting Charlie’s arrival. Their sadistic game of hide and seek.

Finally loose from her planted chains, the moonlight illuminated her body. She was short and thin, with calloused hands. Probably from a nearby farming village. The cotton threads that covered her torso were torn and blood-soaked. Her brown eyes peered through a veil of knotted black hair and followed me like Mona Lisa’s gaze. My stomach knotted.

“What are you going to do back home, Private?” the Sergeant asked. With the tip of his shovel, he drew a circle in the mud. A place to start digging.

I wrestled my gaze from hers. “I’d like to write. Fiction, maybe nonfiction. I don’t know.”

“Really, a famous author? Book signings, cafés in Paris, all that crap?”

“Not like that. I wouldn’t even use my real name.”

“Who in their right mind would do that?” the Sergeant said.

“Mark Twain was Samuel Langhorne Clemens.” I slid my shovel into the muck and tossed it off to the side, accidentally splashing across her face. With a rag, I wiped away the mud and pushed her hair from her eyes. In the trees, the nightbirds bellowed like a chorus of trombones.

“Is it one of ours?” the Sergeant asked. The hole in her ribcage was the size of a cherry tomato, but that wouldn’t tell where it came from. Charlie’s AK47 and our M16s made similar entry wounds but exited in different spots.

The AK47’s 7.62 round was powerful enough to blast straight through a femur. Our 5.56 rounds were smaller but faster. The bullet tumbled around inside the body, wreaking havoc on tendons, muscles, and organs before exiting somewhere completely different.

But she had no exit wound.

“Everyone knew who Twain was. He got the money and the fame,” the Sergeant said.

“The Bronte’s didn’t. Sure, they used men’s names because women had a tough time getting published. But Emily hated the notoriety.”

In the distance, the bushes rustled. Then, the jungle went silent. I froze. The Sergeant grabbed my flak jacket and pulled me into the hole. I strapped my helmet, pulled my M16 close, and held my breath.

Her body laid still at the mouth of the hole, staring up at the night sky. For over an hour, we crouched in silence, searching for eyeballs in the brush. But that night, no one came.

“I get it,” the Sergeant said after we went back to digging. “You just want to be broke.”

“No, it’s about the message. Orwell was a pen name to separate himself and his family from his ideology.”

“What kind of man puts ideas like that into the world and won’t stamp his name on it?”

“That’s the point. The story is more important than the name.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. I think that’s just what people say because, in the end, most names will be lost. The story goes on without them.”

We finished the hole and tossed our shovels to the side. It wasn’t 6 feet deep, maybe half that. The Sergeant grabbed her shoulders. I lifted her feet, and we slid her into the muddy ditch.

“Do you want to say a prayer?” I asked.

He shook his head no. “You’re the writer. You say something.”

But I couldn’t find the right words. So, we bowed our heads in silence. Then we picked up our shovels and filled in the hole.