by Larry Brown
“He was in prison for a while. A long time ago. Twice.
“I was over there within six months. Did it smell like something dead the whole time you were over there? Same here. I thought I’d never get out of there alive. I couldn’t sleep for a long time. I couldn’t sleep at all without a rifle next to me. I was usually always the biggest so I usually always kept the M60. Twenty-six pounds. I loved that damned gun. Kept it clean. I could by God shoot it, too.”
We went hunting for the last time together about a week before I left. Mama said he wouldn’t even go after I left. Wouldn’t even take his gun out of the rack and clean it. Didn’t care anything about it if I wasn’t with him, she said.
We parked on the Hartsfield Hill and went off down the bluff to hunt toward the bottom. He taught me how to get down in a dry creekbed and just slip up through there. He went off to the left and gave me the best place. He always did that. He’d always give me something before he’d take it for himself. It was hard to get used to having him again after not having him for so long. Or just be able to visit him on the weekends. He said the law always worked better for the rich than it did for the poor. I guess he was right.
I guess we hunted for about an hour and a half. We had a big sweet gum tree we always met at right before dark. I think I had five by the time I got up there. I’d been hearing him shoot once in a while, but he only had two. He wasn’t thinking about squirrels.
He was stretched out on the ground smoking a cigarette under the tree when I got there. I unloaded my rifle and sat down beside him. He had a little whiskey on him. He was sipping on it. I could tell he had something on his mind. Something he wanted to tell me. He never would talk very loud in the woods. And he didn’t ever talk much anyway. He was one of those people. The ones you don’t want to fuck with.
Finally he looked at me and said I didn’t have any idea what I was getting into. He said two or three hundred Americans were dying every week, and none of them thought it would be him. He said in war you’ve got to kill all the people you can to try and keep yourself alive. The less of them, he said, the better the chances for you. He said to keep my eyes open, look and listen and learn all I could. Trust nobody. Depend on nobody.
He said what he’d done was something he’d had to do. He said he’d known what it would cost before he did it, but he went on and did it anyway because it was what he had to do, that he didn’t have any choice. He said now that he finally had us back, he was losing me. And he’d thought about me every day. He said all he wanted me to do was take care of myself. Listen to what they taught me. Because he wanted me to come back home to him. And not in some goddamn coffin.
Man can go crazy laying around a place like this. That’s the truth. Take me early this morning when he first got here. Sun come up like it always do. Yeah, sun also rise for Braiden Chaney. Me in my bed. Window frame start getting lighter, the floor, sheets on my bed. The morning always the quietest time in this place. Nobody stirring. Everybody sleeping. Television’s off. Which I don’t watch them fools no way. Nurses are all drinking coffee, getting ready to go home. Diva too. In the mornings I always know it will be a long time before I’ll see her again. Know I can’t wait that long for her. Why I have to go somewhere. Go somewhere yesterday, go somewhere today, another place tomorrow. Can’t stay here.
But people out there in that city coming to life. Waking up, cooking breakfast, hating to get out of the bed. They’d been in one long enough, they wouldn’t. But hold on. Wasn’t bitter. Just tired. Lots of them getting their kids ready for school. They drive by here, they ain’t thinking about who’s in here. They watching for the red lights. I hear them come by. I hear their horns. I know what they do. They go to their jobs and do things with their hands, legs carry them from one place to another.
World’s too big. People don’t know what other people doing. Ain’t no way to keep up with everything that’s happening. Too much stuff, and too many people. Only thing you can know of the world’s your little bitty piece of it.
I guess the Lord knows it all. He made it. But I never could see how He kept up with it.
I am wishing they’d hurry up with my breakfast. Want to go on and get that out of the way. I’m wondering how much he gonna talk to me anyway. I got lions to kill, and tribes to fight off. Got maidens. Many of them. Many beautiful ones I can touch with my hands.
“I was wounded three times before this happened. I was shot twice one day and then another day I got hit with some shrapnel. Nothing major. I think I got three weeks sick leave altogether for that. Went to the Philippines for R and R one time. I started to not even go back. If I’d had any sense I wouldn’t’ve. But I was just a kid, I didn’t know any better. The whole world was out there, Europe, Canada, Mexico, Australia. I went back. I was back in country four days when I got hit.
“Damn that beer’s good and cold. I wish somebody’d come in here and tell me something. I don’t even know what the hell happened. I guess I had another one of my fits. Spells. That’s why I’m here, I know. They’re scared to operate on me. My speech might be affected. Something about my brain, and scar tissue. They did plastic surgery on me and I went through all that. They’d do some more if I’d let them. I just said fuck it. I can live without it. Nobody has to look at me if they don’t want to.
“It was one morning we hadn’t even been out. It had been raining all night, was still raining. Monsoons had set in. They called for us to fall out. We’d all been drinking beer. That’s where I started drinking. I’d never even had a beer when I went in. We were all about half drunk that morning. An army patrol had been hit about two miles west of us. I think they’d killed five or six of ours. They’d done medevaced everybody out and called artillery in on it, but they wanted us to go check it out. Get a body count if there was one. We had this little chickenshit second lieutenant just out of Quantico they’d give us, he was raring to go.
“He just had got there. He was running around, raising hell, cussing, trying to get us ready to go. Took us about an hour to get over there. Mud everywhere you walked. And I was toting that machine gun. I was tired and ready to sit down. Finally we got over there. They’d done blowed everything all to shit. This one little area we were in, there was just a couple of little trees left standing. That was it. They had some leaves up in the top of them but we didn’t think anything about it. Hell, they’d blowed craters in the ground big as swimming pools. And we found a couple of people. Found two or three, parts of a couple more. You couldn’t tell how many. The lieutenant was trying to get everybody to pile it all together so he could get a body count. Crazy sumbitch. I don’t know why they didn’t shoot his ass.
“Hell, maybe it was because I was the machinegunner. Maybe they wanted to kill the firepower first. That’s a good tactic. I was sitting down smoking a cigarette on the bank of this little creek. I guess it was a rocket grenade but I never did find out for sure. It hit about twenty, thirty feet in front of me. I think I had my head down, taking a drag. I guess that saved me from being killed, catching a piece in the throat or something. But I always wore a flak jacket. It seemed like it went off in my face. And I knew I was hurt pretty bad. But I got up. Had blood all over me. Running off my chin, handfuls of it. I felt of my face. It was all tore up. I could touch some bone. I started walking over to this boy I knew and it was like somebody hit me with his fist in the top of the head. Sniper. That was it. I remember it happening. I just don’t remember anything after it. Not until I woke up in the hospital. That was four weeks later. In the Philippines. Subic Bay. They discharged me after that. Medical. One guy said they couldn’t operate, that the bullet went in too deep. Another one said he might could get it out, that it’s in three pieces. But he said it might leave me mute. Unable to talk. It’s scar tissue in there too. Causes these seizures. So every once in a while, I just pass out. I might go six months without it happening. It has hit me twice in one day. Sometimes there’s a warning to it and sometimes it ain’t. Sometimes it just happens.
<
br /> “I don’t know what happened this time. I was with a girl. A young lady. I’d just met her a day or two before. We were in a car.
“She’s like me, she’s not … normal. But she was good to me. She could stand me. But I don’t know what happened. I don’t know where she is now. I don’t know where anybody is. I’ve got to get out of here.”
He was talking, I didn’t want to interrupt him. I told him I had somebody to take care of me. Didn’t want to tell him who it was yet. Thought I’d just let him see her. Cause she’s fine. Finest thing in this place.
Naw but I was thinking about what it must have been like for him, face full of shrapnel one second and a bullet in the head the next. And coming home to a mama whose boy ain’t got his own face no more. Not knowing when he was gonna fall. Said while ago I’d seen every kind of man and injury there was come in here.
Hadn’t seen nobody like him.
I didn’t care for him talking about what happened to him. Some of em you can’t get nothing out of em. Just clam up, go off. Be mental cases. Some of em can take it and some can’t. Plenty of them that ain’t nothing physical wrong with them. Their minds is just gone. Have to push them around in a wheelchair, guys in their thirties and forties, like old crippled people. They crippled, all right. Just in a different way.
It do something to you to kill another person. It ain’t no dog lying there. Somebody. A person, talk like you, eat like you, got a mind like you. Got a soul like you. And everybody have to handle that in a different way. Cause that a heavy thing to handle. That something you don’t forget. You pull the trigger on somebody, it pulled forever. Ain’t like dropping a bomb on him, where you way up high in the air and can’t see what’s happening on the ground, even though you know it’s bad.
You look in somebody’s eyes, then kill him, you remember them eyes. You remember that you was the last thing he seen.
“Usually I just stay in my room. I live with my mother and my brother. But I don’t see them much. They get the red-ass if they have to look at me too much.
“Ah shit. I ought not say that. Hell. I know it hurts them to look at me. I just try to spare them. Stay out of the way. I’ve got plenty of stuff to do in my room anyway. I keep my headphones on most of the time. I’ve got a bunch of books and movies.
“He’s my little brother. He’s almost as big as I am. Only brother I’ve got. I hope they’re here with me. I hope somebody’s here with me.”
* * *
He didn’t even remember Daddy. But it wasn’t any wonder. Daddy’d been gone so long and he’d never seen him to begin with. I’m sure he felt funny. Having to hug this man he knew was his daddy but he never had seen him. Just seen pictures and stuff. Stuff he brought home from the war. Medals, and patches off his uniform. He sent home a luger in the pocket of an overcoat but they x-rayed the package and saw the luger and took it out and sent the coat on home. He was in Berlin at the end.
He didn’t want us to meet him in town when he came home from the pen the first time. He didn’t want our reunion to be held in a bus station. He caught the bus but when he got to town he got a taxi to bring him home. I think Mama was glad of that. But Max didn’t know what to do. Didn’t know how to act. Daddy kept wanting him to sit in his lap, and he kept going, but after a while he’d get down. He wouldn’t hardly open his mouth. Finally what he did was sit down on the floor and put his arm around Daddy’s ankle. Just sat there holding his ankle.
I guess Max was five or six when he came home. I was eleven or twelve.
He was drunk when he killed that guy. I wish he hadn’t done it. Maybe things would have been different. Or better.
I guess he was drunk on every major fuckup he made. Except for the last one. And it wasn’t even his fault.
Talk a minute then he’d hush a minute. Talk a minute then hush a minute. Like he wasn’t here but half the time. I started to ask him one time if he knowed his face was all scratched up. What I figured, he’d done been in a car wreck. Was how come they had him in here, probably, too, was probably treating him for the car wreck.
But it look like they wouldn’t let him be driving if he was gonna pass out. Don’t look like they’d even let him have a license. I wouldn’t want to be meeting somebody coming down the road passed out. Might run over you.
Was about to get the hunger on me. They come in then down at the far end of the ward. I asked him was he gonna eat anything but he just shook his head. He was steady sucking that beer. Finished that one and put it under his pillow. Which I ain’t got nothing against a man drinking in the morning if he want to.
Have to lay here every morning and watch them give everybody else their breakfast before they give me mine. Don’t take long, though. Ain’t many left. So many done passed away. Only new ones we had in a while was from Beirut. Had one from Grenada but he went home, too. Home to his Lord.
Talked to him some. Little old private. Course they give him some medals one time and made him a meritorious promotion to lance corporal. Jumped him two grades all at once. He was machinegunned too. Only he was shot all through the body. Kept having leaks inside of him. They’d sew up one and it would last a while and then another one would bust and they’d rush him down to surgery and sew it up. He hovered between life and death for three weeks before they brought him up here. He said his insides was about like a old bicycle innertube. Shit blood all the time. They kept him high was the only way he could stand it. Would come over here and pull his wheelchair up beside my bed and do card tricks. And would juggle, too. He come over here one night and we got to drinking beer and he got about half drunk and started juggling three Budweiser bottles and kept them going a while. He was from Port Angeles, Washington, and he would have been twenty if he’d lived one more day. Lance Corporal John Davis Williams, USMC. Semper fi, bro.
They come on down with my breakfast. Every morning I have me three over easy with two sausage patties and two strips of bacon and one piece of country ham, and two orders of homefries with just a little ketchup and two glasses of milk and one OJ. Don’t let em try to give me no coffee. Done been burnt too many times. Could probably let it cool off and sip it with a straw. But they ain’t got time for that shit.
I waited until they fed me and then I told him to go on and tell me what he was fixing to tell me cause it wasn’t gonna be long before they come in here to mop the floor and stuff and change sheets.
I told him I knew he was scared and everything and it was a strange place for him to wake up in but everything would be all right and would be even more all right when dark come. I told him to talk to me. I told him I knew where he was coming from.
“Well, hell. I might as well. Her name’s Beth. It was raining, I know that. It just had started. I’ll just tell you what happened from the start. My daddy died about six months ago. I think I told you we used to farm. I started picking cotton when I was six years old. Back in the old days. You remember them old days? Back when they paid two cents a pound? Hell, you know how it was, you’re from down there in the Delta. It’s flat, ain’t it? We’re up in the hills. It’s a lot different, I guess. The ground ain’t as good. We haven’t got two hundred million years of dinosaur shit up there.
“I don’t usually talk this much. I usually don’t have anybody to talk to. I’ve got a lot of books. I’m a big reader. Plus I like movies. That’s about all I do, read and watch movies. When I’m not passed out.
“He was pretty bad to drink. Hell, I’m pretty bad to drink myself. That’s probably why I’m in here, drinking too much. I have these seizures more often if I’m drinking. I can’t hardly get through it straight, though.”
I thought for a while they might send me down to prison and I remembered wondering if they’d let me stay in the same cell with him. I mean for stabbing Matt Monroe. I kept wondering if they’d have a uniform with stripes in my size.
Finally they didn’t do anything to me. Matt didn’t come close to dying or anything. By about an inch. I guess if I’d killed him they’d ha
ve had to do something with me, but I don’t know what. I guess they could have waited until I got grown and then sent me off.
But even with the way things happened, I imagine my mama would have shot the first son of a bitch who stepped in our yard to get me.
“Hell, they’ve been talking about maybe doing an operation on me for a long time. I don’t know how many times I’ve passed out. A bunch. At one time I kept up with it. I had a logbook. How long I stayed awake, what time I passed out, what time I woke up. What were the circumstances when I passed out. But it got to be too much trouble. I started seeing how much time I was losing. All that did was just depress me. I was depressed enough already. So I just quit doing it.
“It’s best to just not think about it. I mean it doesn’t do any good. Hell, I’m happy enough. Nobody messes with me. Of course some people are scared of me. Little kids especially. I guess I hate that worse than anything. I don’t get out much in the daytime. Usually just at night. I don’t see my mother and my brother too much. I don’t hide from them. I’m not hiding from them. I’m just staying in my room.”