War, page 2
“You getting faggoty on us, kid?”
“Some of Vel va’s Aqua splash onto you when you garaged his larynx?” The men often reminded me of the killing, either to tell me that they weren’t afraid or themselves that they were.
“So we’re all alone, that’s it?” I offered. “Hard world. Hard men.”
“Live or die trying, bleeder.”
“I stopped bleeding,” I said.
“Looks like you started again.”
Funny thing was, I had it wrong. R. didn’t have a bullet for Mc. He had a promotion. After only ten spins inside, Mc. was given the first assignment any of us had had on the other side of the wall.
R. gave him his instructions, and Mc. left at dawn, turning around to popgun me from the door. “Genius never sleeps,” he smiled, and light from the street I’d never seen sucked his thinness into its thinness and they both disappeared.
When I was a teenager, I used to paint in the room above our garage. The fumes of the cadmiums and ceruleans made me high enough to think I was good. I’d never find out. I burned all my paintings in the backyard after my brother stepped off a curb in town without looking. They said he had actually become a part of the driver, the impact was so great. They couldn’t tell where some fifty-three-year-old man began and my twelve-year-old brother ended. Strangers become entwined in the oddest places. The death scene of an accident. Or a soldiers’ hotel.
Because here I was, missing Mc. And remembering a question I had back when I was seventeen. What is the color of grape? I’d been trying every combination of blue and white, add pink, more white, pthalo blue, alizarin red, to get the color of grape juice. And after three weeks of exhausting my paint supply, I’d never even gotten close. I was going to ask my brother that afternoon. He was five years younger than I but already far smarter. And I remember berating myself for not asking him sooner. He would have mixed it for me with this ruler he always carried. To squash bugs, or scratch his back, or occasionally actually measure something. He would make grape with his ruler and the world would return to its place in the galaxy.
The ruler didn’t break in the crash. It was the only thing.
Now here I was, waiting for Mc. to return from his assignment. As were the others, even R., though they hid their desire like boys at a middle-school dance. I had suddenly lost all interest in what story he had stolen from the outside world. I simply needed to ask him the color of grape.
Two days. Three. Seven. It didn’t matter now that we were counting. R. had put a calendar grid without months or a year where the TV had been, and L. checked it off every morning that Mc. hadn’t returned. R. cut back on The Run. We only had two during the days we didn’t hear from Mc., and they were lazy affairs. The hunt and escape playing out on fading batteries. Once R. even rose up high enough to show his face from behind the blind. No one bothered to notice.
Like all things overly anticipated, the end came without fanfare or clarity. In the middle of the night, Mc. knocked on my door. My first instinct when I opened it was to gloat. He had come to tell me first. I was so focused on my worthiness, it took me a moment to see the haze over his eyes, like steam above a kettle. “Can’t sleep,” he said, his voice cracking.
“That’s OK,” I encouraged. “Geniuses.”
“They don’t need geniuses out there.”
“We need them here,” I said gently, as if to my brother. As if in my forsaken youth. And then I began to ask him, “What is the color of —?” when Mc, useless as a broken ruler, collapsed into my arms.
We kept him in the dining room. There was a so-called infirmary, the old staff dressing area, where the waiters of this once glamorous hotel did their presto chango from wise-ass locals to continental servers. It was a cold, gray room with a halogen overhead that spooked on and off, its own Morse. Supplies consisted of refrigerated bags of everyone’s blood types. Gauze. Coagulants. Iodine. Ibuprofen. Levaquin and penicillin. Not comprehensive armor against a war.
Mc. deserved the dining room. R. had us lug his bed and nightstand in, not easy with a king-size and its headboard. Even strong as we were, making the corners, taking the stairs made for a crude, scraping ballet. Mc was conscious enough to thank us with a nod, a mumble, but not enough to mock us for our over concern. Which is what the healthy Mc. would have done. He’d have collected ways to humiliate us for years to come if he’d seen us lend this much attention to any of our crew. But his mind had become a Nebraska road and he had no markers to help him keep track.
We all sensed that even the best hospital couldn’t mend what was broken in Mc. It wasn’t what had happened to him. It was something his own hands had done. The only sign of his mission was that the last three fingers on his left hand were burned and blistered over. His hair smelled of cordite and sulfur, so we guessed it was a bomb, and R.’s silence at our questions confirmed it. Mc. had been sent out to blow something up and in so doing had destroyed something fragile inside of himself.
When we’d signed up, we knew that there was a war. When two enemies had memorized the math of their hate, we would be sent in to alter the equation. One and one stops equaling two and starts equaling blood. This was included in the recruiting chat I was given while sitting at the far end of my local bar, reading a magazine someone had left behind.
The recruiter had used it as a conversation starter. Great article on disarmament on page seventy-two. I’d just been looking at the pictures, but this man, with his golfer’s tan and candied breath, knew things about me like Jesus did in the Bible. Not that I believed in Christ or anything close. Not believing was part of my profile. One of the things that got me noticed in the first place. They didn’t want true believers. True believers had passion and direction. They didn’t yield to instruction. They were not human Play-Doh, ready to be palmed and knuckled into the shape of the day.
No, they sought out guys exactly like me. Orphans, or one-parenters. (My father had died of cigarettes and cynicism when I was a teenager. His death had felt like a reprieve from the governor. I remain grateful to Phillip Morris and all their fine tobacco products.) Athletes that played well in high school but never tried in college. Overachievers and hard workers were anathema. Jail time. Preferably less than a year, preferably for sudden violence. I was on probation at the time of my visitation for taking a chair to a table full of English tourists. All men, they had been laughing like thugs too close to my quiet zone and dared to reject my request for silence. Only reason I’d gotten probation was that one of the victims was too tied up at work to travel back to the States to attend the trial.
Ability to hold liquor. Apparently, one of the newest interrogation techniques of the enemy was to loosen the tongue of the captured through the generous proliferation of rum and other spirits. I was told that they once watched me drink eight whiskeys, six beers, and an ouzo, then drive home and (this was their favorite part) parallel park in one move.
Disenfranchisement. A collective disappointment with everyone and everything, including oneself, was the clincher. The other skills could be taught. True disillusionment was a gift. My recruiter scooted closer when he told me that. Put his hand on my shoulder like a confidant or coach. “I want to hit you now,” I had said, smiling. “Really fucking hard.”
“Good,” he smiled, his mentholated aroma sneaking out even through his gritted, frightened teeth. “But don’t. Your country’s already proud.” He then slid me a napkin with a number on it. “That’s per month.” And the same smile, still hoping I wasn’t going to earn his dentist a hefty fee as well.
I looked at the number for longer than I wanted to, unwilling to let him know how shocked and appreciative I was. “Have to work on your poker face, bleeder,” he said. He walked out, leaving a hundred on the bar for the tab, the show-off. Then I really wanted to hurt him.
Even though he didn’t mention a second meeting, I knew I’d only need to wait. And it suddenly dawned on me that whenever he or someone else did come for my answer, it wouldn’t be only the second time. The man in line at the grocery store. His beard thick and dark-golden as a hive of bees. He’d chatted with me for five full minutes, with the express lane open and only two cans of coffee in his basket. We’d talked college football, showcasing our opinions like museum pieces for the clerk and other customers to admire. He asked me statistics, and I answered with the confidence and sudden steadiness of a ticker tape. He unspooled useless knowledge from me that I had no idea was woven inside my head. Made me feel uselessly smart. I thought, I like that guy, and even yelled, “Go Wildcats,” to him as our cars passed in the parking lot, he in a convertible the color of a bullet.
The elderly gentleman at the post office who had asked for help sealing his envelope. “Arthritis,” he’d said, “is a motherfucker.” And I laughed, and he spoke of other frustrations in life. Politics. Marriage. Fathers. This had been another test. His envelope was addressed to the next town over, but the zip was wrong. When I corrected it for him, he thanked me and said, “Glaucoma is —”
“A motherfucker,” I finished.
“I was going to say son of a bitch. But close enough.” Thinking back, were his age spots real? Was that a thin sheen of glue around the hairline? Clearly I had been passing these tests.
Just before I went to pay with the golfer’s hundred, I lifted it to the light. Looked OK, but I was no expert. I signaled the bartender and slid him the bill. “Do me a favor,” I said, recognizing that he was new. “Sorry, I don’t know your name.”
“No, you don’t,” he said. “Yes, it’s counterfeit. Keep it up, bleeder, you’re scoring like a champ.” He snatched the bill. I looked up. The place was empty. By the time I made it to the door, all the lights were off. My father would have liked that trick. He loved to posit that the world was run entirely behind closed doors yet equally in plain sight. No one was worthy of trust. He’d treated me as if I were a plant in his wife’s womb. Maybe the bastard had been on to something.
Curiosity and fear are a dangerous cocktail. What draws you repulses you, and halfway through the journey you forget why you dared begin it, or how to get back. I’d joined up because I liked that I didn’t know exactly what I was joining. I knew it was government work. I liked the paycheck and the anonymity. I liked that they thought they were smarter than me, while at the same time thought I was pretty damn smart. The night of the “intake” — their word — I had planned on bragging about all the details I’d caught. The old man’s wig and zip code. The coffee cans and convertible. The woman at the diner who sat in the opposite booth and spoke Italian into her cell phone. And then French. And then English. Repeating the same piece of news in all three languages, something about a pair of shoes and an uncle in from out of town. When she left, she bumped my table and said, “Pardonnez-moi.”
“Pasgrave”I’d smiled. Then the same in Italian.
“You speak …”Almost flirting.
“Every one you just spoke except English.” My mother listened to language tapes the way some women knit. Not that she was ever going anywhere. “Don’t need a passport to learn,” she’d say. Then repeat in French, German, etc. “I hope your uncle likes his shoes,” I’d told the woman, toasting her with my empty water glass.
“I speak too loud.” Embarrassment staining her perfect, pale face.
“Everyone does. Eventually all we’ll have is yelling and email.” She was pretty, and I wanted her to be just an attractive trilinguist with a hankering for diner pie. But by that point it was all too clear. She stepped close so that her skirt was pinned against my table and I could see the separation of her legs through the fine material. I flash-hoped that an evening with her would be my final test.
“Train station, ce soir, nine p.m. Don’t pack.” Before my witty rejoinder was fashioned into Italian, she was out the door, a handful of mints her final theft.
But there would be no bragging. That night two strangers, stronger than I, said hello and guided me down the platform steps. Three cars were waiting. We all got into the middle one. The first strongman manually opened my jaw. The other threw in a pill. “Chew,” they both said. I spit it out. The second time they weren’t so nice. Suffice it to say, I chewed, or they scissored my mouth with their hands to simulate chewing. And then I was drowsy. And then I was inside.
My hotel room was ornate, with blue couches decorated in gold like a captain’s jacket, and a bed bigger than a man needs. The hangover from the knockout pill was not nearly as painful as the hangover from the knockout elbow to my ribs that had preceded the chewing of said pill. Sitting up was like peeling a magnet off a fridge. Except I felt like the magnet and the fridge. When I did get to my feet, I was still dressed, shoes included, and a bottle of whiskey was my reward. Showered in the enormous double shower. Shaved with a hotel razor and cream. I put on the robe, since the entire thing felt like pretending. Let the terrycloth soak up the water and padded around my suite like a businessman waiting for a hooker.
First sign of trouble: the TV didn’t work. And at these prices, I laughed to myself. Next sign: the clothes I’d just slipped out of were gone. Replaced by … all my clothes. The closet was now stocked with everything from my closet at home. The shirts and one suit were hanging. The pants, socks, boxers, junior-college sweatshirt all folded and draw-ered. Sneakers, shoes, belts, turtlenecks. Every stitch of fabric I owned (there wasn’t much) and a few I’d forgotten about were now housed in my new dwelling place. I got dressed over my still partially wet skin, careful to keep my back to any imagined cameras. R. would chuckle at me days later about how I assed the cameras every chance I got. He didn’t know I wasn’t mooning, I was trying to hide.
With a moth-nibbled sweater and frayed jeans on, I went to the curtains to see where I’d agreed to come. They didn’t open. They’d been adhered to the wall. And behind the curtain I could feel the thick chill of corrugated metal. I imagined that hadn’t been standard in all suites on the hotel’s opening night. And no amount of yanking or tearing yielded anything but a rash on my hands. So this was the deal. Beautiful room. No view. Ever.
The first few nights, no one visited. I guessed they were nights. It didn’t matter. I figured that the solitary confinement — my door locked from the outside, no access or egress through the vents or ceiling (I checked) — was part of the disorientation program. The first experiment of malleability. And since I’d agreed to take this magicless mystery tour, and since I couldn’t figure a way out of the damn room, I decided to be as malleable as possible. I lounged around. I napped. I ate what they placed in my room. (Always and only after I had drifted off to sleep.) And I swigged the whiskey. Outside, in the distance, there was a staccato of bombings. Like a child practicing drums poorly to annoy his teacher. Some fell from the sky. Others threw their nails and fire out from the street. Skybombs sounded like a diver from a height. Street-sides sounded like my brother being hit by that car. Over and over again. I stopped remembering it and simply started living it. His death became present to me. And that was when I stopped being afraid.
Until Mc. Until he lay there, his face as bloodless as the moon, and looked up at us with something terrible and important to say. But his lips bounced off each other like two trampolines, crushing the words in between.
If Mc. had been able to tell us, the terror would have lifted. He could have spun one of his stories, even if it included unspeakable horrors, and we still would have fallen to hysterics. His tales were alchemical, pain into gold, and we were men in need of gold. But his silence, his defeat at the hands of life outside the hotel, sowed in each of us a darkness that bloomed by the hour. Our minds had become furrowed with fear, and roots had grown so deep, we were immobilized.
R. knew we would cease to be a unit if the weather didn’t break. We needed a change of subject. And that could only come with the removal of our obsession. The dining room was sealed, save for the single entrance from the kitchen. Mc, and the fear he was contagious with, was quarantined. Only L. and R. were allowed to visit, to check his vitals, administer his meds. L. was our only physician and was, at that time, the only reason Mc was still alive.
They let us say our good-byes, most of which consisted of a punch on the arm or a tousle of the hair. Mc. was asleep during much of the ritual but awoke briefly when I knelt low to tell him something. “It’s OK if you don’t wake up,” I whispered. “It’s all right to sleep.” He turned his head as I rose, as if to scratch his ear from a secret wind.
“No,” he said, still looking sideways. “You know I can’t sleep.” A half smile was all he managed after this, his first full sentence since his collapse. I looked around to see if I had a witness, but L. was busy counting out pills in the far corner.
“You son of a bitch,” I whispered. “Are you faking?”The haze rose again across his eyes, his mouth pulled dry. If he was faking, he was Houdini reborn. L. chased me out before I could get any more. And that was the last I saw of Mc. for a while. Because R. had a second tier to his plan to shake our lethargy. He would send another soldier out on a mission. A soldier who would return emboldened, electric, vigorous with the violence he had seen and caused. And that soldier would be me.
I was married once, when I was twenty. It had been three years since my brother’s death, and I woke up one April morning and realized I was sick of being sad. It was a strange day to have such a revelation. It was raining so hard by ten a.m. that the streets were flooded, garbage and toys flowing through the gutters. My mother was at work, my father now dead long enough for the house to feel nearly free of his ghost. Nearly. I tiptoed downstairs like a boy afraid to startle Santa, had a bowl of Rice Krispies avalanched in sugar, and stepped into the soak of it all for a good old-fashioned walk in the rain. It was about two and a half miles from our house to the center of our little village, and by the time I’d finished sluicing across lawns and hydroplaning over the copless streets, I was a single, giant molecule of water as I stepped into the ice cream parlor with the famous name. The bell rang at my entrance, and a girl looked up from behind that angled glass counter. She’d been losing a wrestling match with a bucket of Rocky Road, her face rosy with refrigerated frustration. “Don’t open till eleven-thirty.”
