One September Morning (26 page)

Fort Lewis
Madison

T
here is no reason for her to be here.

None of these soldiers want to meet her. The married ones avert their eyes as if their wives will scold them for talking to her, and the single ones salivate until they learn that she is the sister of Spec. John Stanton, who was killed in action. When that realization hits them, they skulk away, afraid to defile the legacy of a hero.

Which makes for a deadly dull party.

Thank God her friends agreed to meet her here. She steps into the dark, mildewed chamber of the girls’ locker room, her fingers crawling over the wall for a light switch. There. Light bounces off the gray lockers, the wooden benches so worn down you could get splinters in your butt.

As she passes through the rows of lockers and past the glass-walled office used by P.E. teachers, she wonders about the ghosts that might haunt this locker room. People say that a gym teacher keeled over and died of a heart attack in the boys’ locker room back in the sixties, and that his ghost rattles the locker doors whenever bullies pick on a puny kid.

Or maybe that’s, like, the wind blowing?

Under the red glow of the
EXIT
sign, she pushes into the metal bar of the outside door and steps into a puff of cool, damp air. It’s barely four-thirty but it’s dark already, mists clinging to the empty football field where a handful of joggers circle on the track. To her left, she sees two dark figures leaning against the brick of the building.

Two slackers. Her friends.

Madison lets the door fall against one hip as she leans out to yell, “Get me something to prop this thing open!”

Sienna leans back against the wall and sucks a red glow into the dark, as if it’s all too much work, but Ziggy scrambles off toward the baseball field. A steel trash barrel proves too heavy to budge, as does a rock half buried beside the backstop, but he emerges from the dugout with the solution—an old sneaker someone left behind.

“Weird,” Madison says as he jogs closer.

By this time, Sienna has swaggered along the length of the building, taking her good old time. “Any luck in there?” she asks.

“Nah. They’re selling beer, but nobody’s going to serve me.”

“Shit.” Ziggy lodges the sneaker in the open door. “We’ll have to recruit a buyer.”

They go to the front of the school, where people spill out of the party to take a smoke. Madison hangs back, afraid that one of her parents’ friends will breeze by and figure out that she’s with the kids trying to cop some booze. She’s seen Ziggy try to score alcohol or weed before, but she’s never been a part of it. Not like this.

I used to be a good kid,
she thinks, as the black enamel of her nails winks up at her. That was then, this is Madison A.D.

After Death.

After a few false starts, Ziggy seems to have hooked a young soldier who wants to talk. Madison hangs back with Sienna, two shadows against the wall, watching Ziggy perfect the art of the deal.

“I go to school with your younger brother,” Ziggy says. “Clayton, right? Plays JV basketball, right? I know him. Wears that thick white headband.”

“That’s him.” The soldier sucks on his cigarette stub, then plucks it out and pitches it into the wet dirt.

“He’s good.” Ziggy pats his ankle-length black coat and finds a package of cigarettes, which he offers to the soldier boy.

“He’s good, but I was better,” the soldier says, taking a cigarette. Madison notices that his hand shakes as he leans into Ziggy’s lighter. “I was good, but nobody picked me up for college play. My grades weren’t so hot. So. I had to go. Nothing to do but enlist, and they pulled me right in.” He makes a sucking noise.

“Hey, man, how was Iraq?” Ziggy asks.

A moment of hesitation, and Madison is sure Ziggy has blown it with this guy. He doesn’t want to talk about the war. Nobody wants to talk about it.

The soldier doesn’t blink as smoke curls into his face. “I’m glad it’s over.”

“Did you get shot at and shit?”

“Yeah, it’s dangerous over there. One of my buddies lost his leg from an IED.” He says this last part over his shoulder, as if he didn’t mean to open up but the words had just spilled out.

“That’s crazy shit over there.” Ziggy dances from foot to foot, the keep-warm dance. “Hey, you think you can do me a favor? Get us a couple of brewskis inside?”

“That’s baby shit, man,” the soldier says, but he holds out his hand for the cash. “You got somewhere to put them?”

Ziggy grips the lapels of his black coat and opens it wide, a small bat stretching its wings into a graceful glider. “Man, I got pockets in my pockets.”

The soldier holds the crimped twenty-dollar bill like a paper airplane and points it toward the entrance of the school. “Giddyup.”

Fort Lewis
Emjay

S
omething is twitching in his left eye, inside the eyeball, an alien in his eye. It’s in there tugging ever so gently, pulling his string. Sometimes it pulses while he’s on duty, and he’s sure Lt. Chenowith is going to rip him a new one and send him to the infirmary, but so far that hasn’t happened.

He pauses in the doorway of the high school. Does anyone here see it? Has anyone noticed?

The squeak of his heel on the linoleum floor of the corridor seems loud as a shot as he steps forward again—careful, metered steps. He feels brittle and frail, like he is walking on eggshells, but Doc says that’s just the medication doing its job. Keeping him sane.

He studies the faces of people passing by on their way to or from the gymnasium.

The tug on his eye is invisible. No one knows he’s being yanked.

Or is he invisible? The two women seated at the check-in table are locked into each other, caught in a story. They act like it’s okay for him to be alone, although he’s having trouble with his aloneness. After months of being part of a platoon, and before that, being part of a couple, Emjay has been suddenly set adrift. Alone. Even when he is surrounded by people, he is alone.

Ironic, but he used to lie on his bunk and wish for solitude, close his eyes and pretend that no one was there.

“How are you doing?” the woman is suddenly asking him.

His throat chokes on an answer. The truth is, he’s not doing well, but he’s not sure how to say this, or that she really wants to hear the truth.

“How can I help you?” she asks before he can form an answer. Her gaze flicks to his uniform, then she smiles knowingly. “Corporal Brown? Did you RSVP?” She flips through a list. “Let’s see, we’ve got a couple of Browns.”

“Emjay Brown.”

“There you are! I’ve got you on my list. Welcome back, sir.”

He nods, thinking that he doesn’t feel as if he really has come back. He’s having trouble making adjustments. Leaving his gun behind feels so wrong, like a missing appendage. Yeah, he’s seen way too much of that. But you’re not allowed to take it with you everywhere you go, as you’ve been trained. People get scared. The police will arrest you. He knows all those things, and yet, he wants the gun with him, wishes he had it right now for peace of mind.

“Oh, see here? I’ve got a special note for you. You seem to be a popular guy tonight. People have been looking for you.”

Who?

For a glimmer of a second he thinks it’s Cheryl who’s come for him, that maybe she didn’t mean it about breaking up and she wants to be with him tonight. But that’s not real. She already moved down to Sacramento. He saw the empty apartment.

His therapist told him not to come tonight. Christ, could it be Doc looking for him? Ready to come down hard on him for breaking with the plan.

As the woman smiles up at him and hands him a piece of paper, he wonders how she can be so happy about everything. “Now refreshments are down the hall that way, and there’s music and plenty of places to sit inside the gymnasium. Oh, and here’s your name tag. You have a good time, okay?”

Knowing that’s his cue to leave the table, he presses the name tag to the note and starts down the corridor, away from the gymnasium. He can’t take the noise, the chaos, the squirming, unpredictable people, and all the soldiers, healthy and laughing now, but soon to be missing an arm or leg. Here today, blown into a bloody mist within a strange maze of streets in Biblical Mesopotamia tomorrow.

So why is he here? The pulse in his eye beats faster. He came here for a reason.

Once he’s out of sight of the ladies at the table, he presses against the cool glass and unfolds the note.

Not Cheryl, but Abby.

Of course, she is the reason he’s here. He knew there was a reason. There are things he must tell her, things John would want her to know because she’s trying to find out. She’s trying to figure out who did it. The army doesn’t want to know, but Abby wants to see it clearly. She even went on television to ask for help, and he wanted to help, but he was too far away, in another world, viewing a delayed broadcast on the Armed Forces Television Network.

“Corporal Brown?”

His hands jerk the letter down, startled by the voice.

Down the hall, two silhouettes loom against the light. Two women.

“That’s him,” says the woman whose voice he recognizes as the table lady.

“Emjay Brown?” The other woman steps into the gray fuzz as he begins to shrink back. “I’m Abby, John’s wife.”

Abby…Abby…

He wants to talk to her, but he feels himself imploding. He is the groundhog poised at the top of his hole, blinded by the light, stumbling back into the ground until another day.

His hand palms the cool glass of the window, bracing, trying to find foundation.

“Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?”

He waves her forward, not trusting his voice.

“Hey, Emjay.” She steps forward, her big round eyes alighting on him, peering inside him. “How are you handling all this?”

He lets out the breath he’s been holding. “Not too well.”

“It must be hard for you,” she says. “When John was killed, I had my friends around me. Time off from work. The funeral, so many people wishing me well. But you didn’t have that luxury. You just had to keep moving.”

He nods. “It got to me. Losing John, right beside me and…and Hilliard.” He clenches his jaw. “One minute you’re talking to them, the next minute they’re gone. You close your eyes, but you never stop seeing them, their faces.”

Abby nods. “It’s good to talk about it. Have you reached out for professional help at all?”

“I got a therapist in the army.”

“Good.”

“But I wanted to talk to you about what happened to John, because I told them, I told the C.O.’s what happened, but they didn’t believe me.” He glances into the shadows. The noise echoing from the gym seems hollow and mocking.

Abby is shaking her head. “I can’t believe they’re not investigating.” She sighs. “But that’s my battle to fight. What did you see, Emjay?”

He stands tall, sucking in a breath. “First, the muzzle flash. It was dark, and my night-vision device was all screwed up, but I saw the first shot. I think that one hit him in the chest. He went down, but he was still talking. Yelling, really. ‘Don’t shoot. I’m a friendly,’ he told them. And then he said his name. ‘I’m John Stanton, U.S. Army. I’m in
your
army,’ he said. Yelling from the ground. That’s when the second shot came, from closer range. That one hit his neck, maybe his head. It was dark, but there was blood everywhere. Shit, I was already pressing on his chest wound. That second shot whirred right past my head.”

His heart is hammering in his chest and he is sweating, his back drenched with perspiration as it ripples through him again—the panic, the chaos.

He sinks down, down to stop the blood, down to stay low, out of the line of fire.

“Who did that? Got to be someone John knows, the way he’s yelling. My NOD…Why aren’t these goddamned night goggles working?”

He reaches over, grabs John’s NOD that’s tipped off his head onto the floor, and pulls it over his eyes, searching for movement.

There he is…

An American soldier jumping over a wooden crate, running away. Dodging behind a scaffold of shelves.

“Medic!” Emjay screams. He presses his hands to John’s shoulder, but they slip down, bloodied, sticky. “Man down!”

“Come on, John! Come on, man. You’re gonna make it,” Emjay whispers, desperately trying to gain purchase on the wound so that he can apply pressure. “Keep breathing, John. Stay with me, man. John?”

But John does not answer.