One September Morning (11 page)

Al Fallujah, Iraq
Emjay

F
rom high up in the warehouse, Emjay stares down at a stain that won’t go away.

Some of the guys from Alpha Company were here last night and again this morning scrubbing the hell out of the bloodstain for hours, pouring on bleach and cleansers. Emjay heard them cursing under their breath, unaware that he was watching from above.

But it won’t go away. Damned bloodstain. You’d think John was freakin’ Superman or something. The whitewashed surface continues to ooze rusty brown, as if the blood is now running from beneath the floor, an underground spring.

Perched some twenty yards above on a loft that was probably once used to store tiles, Emjay Brown stares down at the dark spot on the ground, which seems to darken and grow before his eyes. Like a curse, a scourge, it will never go away.

What’s that Shakespeare play where the woman tries to scrub out a bloodstain but can’t get it out? “Out, damned spot! out I say!” Emjay can still hear his junior high teacher acting out the scene for the class. Lady Macbeth, he thinks. She became a chronic hand washer. Shakespeare’s attempt to point the finger at obsessive-compulsive disorder before Freud was even born. Emjay doesn’t have an advanced degree in psychology like Doc, but he’s read enough to know about the psychosis of the month. When you live on a chicken farm there’s a lot of time for reading, and unlike his old man, he wasn’t ashamed to make the trip into town and borrow a bunch of books from the library. That old library became his refuge, a safe place to go when the old man was on a tirade and his friends dried up. By the time he finished high school he’d read through more than half the fiction section, women’s books included. Not that he was like that or anything, but Emjay didn’t really care who was telling a story, as long as it was interesting.

Yeah, that was Lady Macbeth, scrubbing the skin off her own hands.

Could use a neurotic scrubber like that to work on the stain three stories below.

And all because of…what?

The army wants to make it sound like a raid gone bad, an insurgent who turned on them, but Emjay knows better. The man he saw running away was no Iraqi insurgent.

“It was one of our own, sir,” he told Lt. Chenowith and Col. Waters at the debriefing.

Waters sat back in his chair and pressed a finger to the bridge of his dark glasses. “What are you saying, Corporal? Do you mean you saw a U.S. soldier shoot John Stanton?”

“No, sir, when the shots were fired I could only see the muzzle flash. But I saw the gunman running away.”

Chenowith leaned over the table of the briefing room, a small spartan space in a bungalow that held only the table with an ancient slide projector and a few wrinkled maps and satellite images on the wall. “Did you see who it was?”

“No, sir. Only that it was one of our guys. An American.”

Col. Waters rubbed the stubble on his chin, considering this. “And why would an American soldier kill John Stanton?”

“That I don’t know, sir.” Emjay set his teeth tight, bracing against the colonel’s disdain. Either the man didn’t believe him, or he was furious that Emjay would open up this can of worms in his company.

“Have you mentioned this to anyone, Corporal Brown?” asked Waters.

“No, sir.”

“Good. Information like this is of a sensitive nature. You’re to repeat it to no one, understand, Corporal?”

“Yes, sir.”

Chenowith squinted at Emjay, then turned to the colonel, who opened a folder and started leafing through it.

“You’re dismissed, Corporal,” Col. Waters said.

Dismissed…just as the truth had been dismissed.

A man killed in cold blood, and damned if the army would do anything about it because, if the truth got out, they might look bad.

The stain blurs and moves before his eyes, and Emjay crawls on his belly to the edge of the platform, staying low in case another phantom bullet flies through the dark warehouse. His fingers dig into the dusty wood of the platform of the warehouse that used to hold dates. Canned dates, it seems. Which led to the usual wry comments from jokers like Lassiter, who made cracks like, “Now there’s not a date to be had in Iraq,” or “This building couldn’t get a date now if it were the last warehouse on earth.”

This dark, dismal place. Nobody would have figured John’s life would end here. A life so huge isn’t supposed to fade out in a dark dead end like this. John was a freakin’ football hero back home, a rising star on the Seahawks. Even Emjay had seen him play once or twice on television.

Not that John ever allowed anyone to grant him special perks. “I played football,” he used to say. “Big fucking deal. It’s inconsequential compared to what American soldiers have been doing to protect our country from terrorists.” John hated to be pumped up or given special treatment. He often took the night shift, which nobody else wanted. He was always good that way, volunteering for the shit no one else would do. A team player, a good guy.

Those bullets that took him out nicked the heart of this platoon.

Emjay stares down at the spot and wonders if he did the wrong thing. Maybe he shouldn’t have applied pressure to John’s chest. The head wound might have been the thing that killed him, but Emjay hadn’t seen it, with blood everywhere, everything so dark. Or he could have gone to get Noah—get real help instead of trying to stop the bleeding himself. And then there were the seconds wasted when he scrambled for John’s NOD to get a look at the shooter. What a boner move! He could’ve saved Stanton.

Instead, he did the unforgivable…let his partner die.

The silence of the warehouse says that he’s alone, but Emjay stays low and crawls closer to the edge so that one arm can dangle over the site. Letting it drop down to the pull of gravity is somehow freeing. He watches the brown skin on the back of his hand swing to and fro, a dark pendulum in the darkness, ticking off the seconds until eternity. Resting his jaw on the edge, Emjay watches the patch of blood and fantasizes about flying down to it. Splat, right on top of it.

A one-way ticket home sounds sweet right now.

You are not supposed to kill yourself in the U.S. Army. The officers got in hot water for that one, and if the public found out about it there was hell to pay in the public relations office—probably bad for recruitment. Rumor has it that a marine committed suicide, right here in the Al Anbar province back during the first invasion. That’s why most companies have a shrink like Doc, tagging along to help them with their problems.

So Emjay is supposed to talk to Dr. Jump if he has any thoughts of suicide. Which would be great, except that Emjay does not talk to anyone but John. He doesn’t trust Doc. Doesn’t trust Lassiter. Noah Stanton is totally closed off. Gunnar McGee is a moron and Hilliard is in love with himself and Spinelli is just a scared kid who wants to run home to his mama.

John was the only person who made the days bearable, the nights peaceful. Once, when Emjay asked him how he could shut his mind down and sleep at night, John just said: “You gotta sleep, buddy. Regenerate. Tomorrow’s trouble can wait till tomorrow.” Somehow Emjay had found his words soothing. John could convince you of just about anything. And Emjay had started finding a way to sleep with John around.

But no more. Never again. Can’t sleep or eat. Can’t even breathe half the time. His heart thuds in his chest, his breath burning. Christ, why can’t he breathe? Can’t get air and can’t move from this spot. A panic attack, something no soldier is allowed.

But it hurts to breathe.

He tries to distract himself, focus on the bloodstain. Lose himself in the dark abyss of the warehouse—four stories of half-empty shelves and pallets that hold a sickeningly sweet odor. He leans over the edge, feeling gravity pull on his thudding heart. From this height, what kind of damage would he do?

Broken bones, maybe. The right break could get him home, in physical therapy. It needed to be bad, because after an incident like this he was going to be marked within the platoon as as a malingerer, a loser faking an injury to avoid duty.

Or there could be spinal damage. A wheelchair for the rest of his life. That’d suck.

Could bust his head open. That would probably kill him.

And maybe that wouldn’t be so bad, to end the fear. Take out the unknown.

Kill the pain and go home a hero.

He shifts his weight closer to the edge and lets his head dangle, free.

Free.

Just push away from the side and you’re free…

Fort Lewis
Jim Stanton

A
whimpering sound wakes Jim Stanton, and he’s not sure whether it’s the weary sob grinding in his own throat or the cry of one of the guys sleeping nearby. Although they have huddled in the dried reeds in an attempt to take cover, they know that no amount of camouflage can save you from the skilled eye of a sniper or the determined stealth of a night patrol.

“With my bad luck, I’ll wake up dead,” Riley had joked as they settled in for the night. Although Riley had a joke for every occasion, none of the men laughed or even cracked a smile. What used to be funny now yawned painfully in the dark, a grim reality.

Because how can you wake up, when you’re already dead?

Jim rolls over onto his side, adjusting the helmet on his head. His shirt is damp with sweat, and there’s moisture in his eyes. Perspiration or tears? Before ’Nam he’d been sure a real man never cried.

He flops onto his back, shuddering as sweat runs down the center of his chest.

Above him, the singular tree looms, listing to one side in the mist.

The tree is the only sign of life in view, the last tree standing, just as he is the last man alive in this desolate jungle.

“Hello?” he calls out.

But there is no answer.

“Is anybody there? Someone…Riley? Where the hell are you. Shroeder? Report!”

Silence.

There is only desolate silence, isolation.

“No!” he shouts. It can’t be. He can’t be back in Vietnam, surrounded by death. After the injuries he sustained in the ambush, the docs said it would be his last tour of duty.

Why was he back here, goddammit? Paralyzed in the jungle, soaked to the bone in sweat and dread. His heart pounds painfully in his chest, a dark pulse thrumming in his ears. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. He was never going back. Never!

He pounds a fist into the ground beneath him.

It bounces back, the earth spongy beneath him as he yanks himself up…

And finds himself sitting in his bed.

It was the dream again, the nightmare.

Ever since troops were deployed to Afghanistan in Operation Enduring Freedom, Jim suffered from the recurring dream, the sinking vision of himself back in the game, back in ’Nam, exposed and scared shitless.

Each time he’s in a panic over being deployed again.

Each time he jolts awake soaked in his own sweat and tears.

This time the pounding beneath his ribs is disconcerting. He presses a hand there, as if to control the wild rhythm as he glances over at Sharice, who sleeps soundly, her silver-and-gold hair still, her shoulder rising and falling gently under the sheet. A heavy sleeper, thank God, so she didn’t have to know about his weakness.

Then again, she took a sleeping pill tonight. She had to. Sharice is a high-wattage lamp, without the turn-off switch.

The reality of it hits him again, sitting there in bed, and he pushes the sheet away and slides to the edge of the mattress, head in hands.

His boy’s gone. Killed.

And it’s all on my shoulders.

He never wanted to put his kids out there in harm’s way. Never. Other soldiers were so proud to have their sons follow them into the military, but not Jim. The eerie sense of responsibility and dread that pinched him since the boys enlisted came to a head yesterday when his commander called him into the office to tell him about John.

Killed in combat. All because his old man was never quite man enough to speak honestly about military service.

Jim tosses back the sheet and slides around, bringing his bare feet to solid ground. No use trying to go back to sleep. Once the dream tears through your night, he’s found, there will be no rest, at least not in the dire hours till dawn.

Stealthily, he makes his way through the dark to the door of the master bedroom and closes it quietly behind him. At times like these, he’s found the mindless chatter of the boob tube to be the most reassuring company available in the middle of the night. The blanket on the couch and the sound of a human voice sometimes make him feel human again, even if that voice is Rachael Ray telling him how to make spaghetti squash from the gourds in his own garden.

At the top of the stairs, he pauses in front of Madison’s room. Since she was a kid, afraid of being too far from her parents at night, she has kept the door open, and now he can’t resist looking in, reassured by the slender form slumbering beneath a summer quilt in the blue light from her night-light. Yes, sixteen and she still sleeps with a teddy bear and a night-light. Somehow Jim feels relieved that his daughter, who’s old enough to drive a car, sit for the SATs, and see “R” movies, still clings to some of the more reassuring vestiges of her childhood.

God knows, she’s going to need them in this world.

He is turning away, stepping over the threshold, when she stirs, sweeping in a deep breath.

“Daddy? Are you okay?” she asks, her throat so tight with sleep that he is reminded of the chipmunk voice she used to have, the voice that used to croon Christmas carols and spiral up to the high notes of the “Star-Spangled Banner” in school assemblies.

“I’m fine,” he lies, wondering if she remembers, caught in the haze of sleep. Has the pain of her brother’s death seeped so deep into her psyche that her whole being is crushed, her dreams tainted?

God, he hopes not.

His permission to sleep was revoked years ago, ruined, but he wants better for his daughter. “Everything’s fine.” Another lie, but a necessary one. A fifty-seven-year-old man can hardly tell his daughter that he’s exploding from within, dying of a broken heart. “Go back to sleep, honey.”