The Outside Lands

by Hannah Kohler

  It’s him and fear.

  Tom / July 1968

  The brunette walked by and peered through the glass. Tom watched the doors, but she didn’t return. Just the Italian orderly, leaning against the door until it gave way to his bulk and his bucket and mop. Tom closed his eyes.

  Visiting hours. His mother came, bringing Girl Scout cookies.

  “I’ve got Peanut Butter,” she said.

  “No, thanks.”

  “You’re not hungry?”

  “I can’t eat.”

  She put the box on his locker. “You never could before a big day,” she said. “What time’s the surgery?”

  “Eleven hundred hours.”

  “It’s going to happen this time, honey. I can feel it.” She leaned over to squeeze his hand, throwing a drift of maternal incense across his bed.

  “The chief said it might not look half bad,” he said. “When it’s done.”

  “You’re always handsome to me.”

  His throat tightened. “You’re not listening,” he said. “He thinks he might be able to cover the worst of the damage. I might look half normal.”

  “Yes, honey,” said his mother. He heard the appeasement in her voice, recognized the forced optimism from the dozen disappointments they’d endured along his recovery.

  “Forget it,” he said. He banged the rail of the bed with his palm.

  “I’m listening, Tom,” said his mother. “I’m on your side.”

  He stared at the ceiling, heard her pour a cup of water.

  “What’s this?” she said. The box was in her hand.

  “Mom,” he said, but she was already opening it.

  “They gave you a medal?”

  “It’s nothing, Mom. Give it to me.”

  “Of course it’s not nothing.”

  His voice rose. “Give it to me.” She handed it over. He pushed the box under his sheet.

  He felt her soft scrutiny. “You can have the cookies after your surgery,” she said. “When you’ve got your appetite back.” She straightened the things on his locker. “I wanted to bring the Chocolate Mints too, but your father ate the whole boxful.”

  “He didn’t come.”

  “No, honey.” His mother fell silent, an old deflection strategy. Tom faced her, and waited. She gazed back, her eyes dumb and gentle as a cow’s.

  “You said he’d come,” said Tom.

  “I know, honey.”

  “It’s been two weeks.”

  “It’s busy at the bank right now. He’s barely out of the office.”

  “We both know that’s not the reason.”

  “Tom—”

  “I just had a four-star general in here, saying how proud my father is of me. But the guy can’t bring himself to come look at me.”

  “This is new for him, honey. He doesn’t know how to deal with it. Give him time.”

  “If I’d been blown up by the enemy instead of by one of my own damn men, he’d be dealing with it fine.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “We both know that.”

  At first, his father came often. He sat and watched Tom for what seemed like days at a time. “He didn’t think you’d make it,” his mother told him later; but as Tom labored on, his father grew impatient, pacing the ward and sniping at the nurses. When the chief told his parents their son had done “most of the job of healing,” Tom saw the distaste stiffen his father’s features. His son—the college athlete, the decorated Marine—was a victim, a cripple; not at the hands of the enemy, but at the doing of some shitbrain American punk. His father’s visits dwindled. Soon it was only his mother and aunts coming by. His father had abandoned him to the women.

  “Don’t get yourself upset,” said his mother. “Keep your strength for tomorrow. You look tired.”

  “I can’t sleep.”

  “This is a much smaller surgery, honey,” she said. “You’re stronger now.”

  She thought he was afraid of dying; but he’d learned to control that fear a long time ago. The trick was to persist for another minute, and another minute. Once he discovered the trick, it was straightforward. But now it wasn’t the dying to be mastered, it was the carrying on. Each night he pictured that grain of black, hauling him in, and tried to disappear into it. Each morning, he woke to his face and his body. He wasn’t afraid he wouldn’t survive the surgery; he was afraid it wouldn’t work, and he’d have to carry on.

  “I need to get the hell out of here,” he said.

  He woke hours before dawn. Watched the shadows, knew from the uneven breaths that he wasn’t the only one awake. By the time the chief arrived at zero nine hundred hours, Tom was taut with anticipation. He clocked the chief’s slow walk, and dismay spiked his throat.

  “I’m sorry,” said the chief.

  “Just tell me.”

  “Your plates showed signs of infection.”

  Tom waited. Frustration flashed across the older man’s face.

  “So, we can’t operate,” he said.

  “I’m fine,” said Tom.

  “It’s not worth the risk.”

  “I’ll risk it.”

  “We’ll place you on antibiotics and test again in a week or so.”

  “If you don’t do the graft, it’ll get infected anyway.”

  “You have to trust us.”

  “This is the third time.”

  “We’ll get there.”

  “Please,” said Tom. He heard the beg in his voice and felt a sting of self-contempt.

  “We’ll get you through this.” The chief gripped his shoulder. “You have to be patient.”

  The curtains were pulled open, a dozen hopefuls on display. He watched the Italian couple head for Car Wreck, the woman with the toddler for Factory Accident. The curtains were closed, one set after another. Tom heard low voices, care packages being unwrapped, and, somewhere, the plunk of a liquor stopper. He eyed his neighbor, who’d been wheeled in this morning from God knows where—some medical close-quarters combat where they yanked the kid away from dying decently. The kid was in a bad way, his whole face covered with a thick dressing, pits cut for the eyes and mouth. Pus seeped through the gauze on his arms.

  The doors opened, and a teenybopper entered. She stopped to speak with the desk nurse. She was toothy and tan, dressed for shopping in the city. The nurse pointed. There was something stuck-up in the way the girl clicked down the ward, like she was bracing for a wolf whistle or a holler. She was here for the New Kid—he could tell by the slowing at ten paces, the show on her face: uncertainty, disbelief, revulsion.

  He’d seen it before—in his own mother, his aunts—the female reflex to seeing a burned body, the disgust that registered before all the other responses that came trooping in the rear: fear, pity, tenderness. He didn’t know which was worse, the revulsion or the crying. And here it came—he saw the teenybopper’s chin give, the roll of tears, and felt a lurch of ferocity—he wanted to hit her or fuck her, make her scream or shut up, anything to stop the weeping.

  “Danny,” she whispered, dragging her wrist across her nose. She crept to the bed and touched the mattress.

  “Danny.” Her eyes moved over the dressings, the pus. She leaned in, enough to get a noseful of it, the smell of the dying. She stepped back, nausea rolling up her neck. The Kid moaned.

  A nurse walked by. “You okay, sweetheart?”

  The teenybopper nodded, her mouth clamped.

  “Go grab yourself a chair,” said the nurse. “You’ve got plenty of time.”

  “Thanks,” the teenybopper managed; but she kept standing. The Kid moaned again. The teenybopper took another step back, and, glancing to check that the nurse had gone, turned to leave.

  “Miss?” said Tom. She startled. “Miss?” She looked over her shoulder for someone who could answer for her, but there was nobody. “Could you get me a cup of water?” He smiled. The doubt in her face eased as she took in his good side.

  “Sure,” she said.

  He watched her.
She kept her eyes down, filled the cup to the brim, and returned the pitcher to the locker, knocking over his clock. She hurried to set it straight, and turned to go.

  Tom grabbed her wrist.

  “Come here.”

  She gasped, wriggled her arm. He gripped harder, yanking her inward.

  “Hey—”

  “Want to see under these bandages?”

  “You’re hurting me.”

  “Come closer.” He pulled so her face was an inch from his. Her cheeks were covered in blond down.

  “Why were you leaving?”

  Her breath smelled of cinnamon. Tom remembered Sharon Gust under the bleachers at senior prom, her damp panties and her Hot Tamales breath, and felt the tug of a hard-on.

  “Please, let go of me,” said the teenybopper.

  “Answer me.”

  “Let go.” Her voice shook.

  “Tell me why.”

  “Nurse!” she called, craning her neck. Tom could see the nurse standing outside the ward, talking to a doctor.

  Tom twisted the teenybopper’s wrist; her head swung back to face him, her eyes widening.

  “Go sit with your boyfriend until they throw your bony ass out of here.” She sobbed. “I don’t care if you never come back. Right now, you stay.” He let go; she stumbled, her face crumpling. She rubbed her wrist and backed away.

  “You all right, sweetheart?” called the nurse, walking back down the ward. “You’re still standing? Here.” The nurse dragged a chair beside the Kid’s bed and took the teenybopper’s arm, steered her to sit, and patted her shoulder. “You call if you need anything.” The nurse shut the curtains. Quiet; then the sound of crying. The Kid groaned. Tom listened to the snuffling and keening until the sun leveled with the window and baked the air out of the ward. A shift nurse came by to syringe morphine into his mouth. Tom’s throat furred, his eyes grew heavy, and he slept.

  When he woke, the Kid’s curtains were open. The teenybopper had disappeared, and the Kid’s bed was empty. A young nurse was tucking new sheets over the mattress, her hands shaking.

  Kip / July 1968

  The piggies are getting roasted.

  The more men they cram in these cages, the more the cages are getting rattled. You can see fear sweating on the piggies’ faces as they pace the cellblocks. A few weeks back, you swear or spit at a Brig Pig, they would throw you in the Box, and mess you up on the way. But now it’s a rite of passage for the new brothers, a blood game, and the piggies don’t want to play. Besides, the Box is stuffed full. Sometimes on sandbag duty I think I see a pair of eyes blinking through that slit cut into the Conex; and sometimes when the heat has got its thick breath all over me, I wonder if that pair of eyes is me.

  The truth is, this place will crack you faster than any combat zone. When you’re baking your ass on a hill in gook country, waiting for Victor Charlie to light you up, you know the exact number of days you have left before you get home, provided you don’t get the bejesus blown out of you first. But I’ve been in this shithole for so many weeks I can’t even count them, and still I got no word on What’s Next, or even if there is a fucking Next. It’s not just me—there are rats who’ve been waiting months longer than me for their court-martial, waiting for the Big Men with their good, easy lives to decide their destiny.

  Whether it’s Mr. Marshall, Mr. Huffacker, Justice Choate, Vance, the brig L-C, Westmoreland, McNamara, or President LBJ, there’s fleshy, loaded white men stacked up all the way on top of me, sitting their saggy old-man balls on my face and making me smell their power. They don’t wish us life, liberty, or happiness, they just want to get rid of us, and they have all kinds of ways, from pushing us through courts, to burying us in cells, to throwing us into war. At least with psychos like Mr. Marshall and LBJ you can see the meanness in their eyes; they know that you know they want to hurt you, and there’s an honesty in it. But Captain Vance and all those other Marine-in-Chiefs are the worst kind of torturers, the kind who think they’re doing you a favor by hounding you and ripping you and sending your torn-up ass out into the woods to bait gooks. You treat a man like an animal, you take away his pride and his comforts and make him live in the dirt, he’ll grow claws.

  Captain Vance pushed me too far, shamed me, punished me, nearly got me wasted, then shamed me again. It broke me down, unhooked my wires and scrambled my signals, so I had no control. He did wrong, and he got corrected—that white light in my hands was made up of thousands of tiny vengeances, mine and Esposito’s and those of every single enlisted man he bitched and shafted and slid into the heat of a hot combat zone.

  And I can feel another correction coming. There’s violence in these cells, and it’s about to break loose.

  Tom / July 1968

  “Not today,” he told the nurse, a heavy Asian woman with a pockmarked face.

  She laughed. “The sun rise in the west today.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Every time, you can’t wait for physical therapy. I come, you already sitting up with leg over side of bed, ready to get in that chair.”

  “It’s not a good day.”

  “You go, sir. You got to get strong.”

  “I say I’m not going, I’m not going, you understand?” He spoke loudly, as though across a language barrier. Offense creased her forehead.

  “I not stupid, sir. You come.” She gripped his crippled arm, the flesh swinging at her upper arms. She was strong, had real muscles beneath the fat.

  “Get your hand off me. You’re out of line.”

  “I don’t care about your line or any other stuff about you,” she said, trying to pull him to sit. “You go for him.” She jerked her head toward Factory Accident, who was sitting in his wheelchair by the doors, waiting. “He got a baby and another one coming,” said the Asian woman. “He need to get strong to help his wife. You get tough, sir.”

  “It’s nothing to do with me,” said Tom.

  Factory Accident was a wimpish guy his age with a permanent expression of terror on his face. Tom assumed that until he was caught up in the explosion at the paint factory, the guy really didn’t have anything to be scared of: homely wife, standard-issue kid, steady job, nothing too beautiful or terrible to get worked up about. The first time they met in PT, Tom asked him if he was okay. “Yeah, don’t worry at all. My face was made this way. They called me Bambi in high school.” Tom couldn’t remember his real name and sure as hell wasn’t going to call him Bambi. But the guy’s panicked expression, even in the most tame situations, amused Tom; and he was the closest thing Tom had to a comrade on the ward. Ever since that first session, Factory Accident had shadowed him at PT, selecting the same weights and asking Tom which machines to use. He caught Tom’s eye and waved. Tom sighed and pulled himself up to sit.

  “You not so much asshole after all,” said the Asian woman.

  They rolled down the corridor. As they rounded the corner, Tom was run straight into a pair of stockinged legs, knocking their owner into his lap. The pain sucked his breath.

  “Oh, God.” She found her feet, using his armrest to push herself up. It was the brunette. She was even finer up close—full lips, big breasts. She looked down at him. “You’re Captain Thomas Vance,” she said in a hurry.

  He winced.

  “I’m sorry.” The brunette crouched. “Are you all right?”

  “He fine,” said the Asian woman.

  “I’m fine,” he said. The pain along his right side was burning away, leaving a long glow of agony. The brunette stood. “You were looking for me?” he said.

  “I . . . ?”

  “I’ve seen you outside the ward. Ward 4-B.”

  “Right. Yes,” she said, but she was distracted, taking in his stump, his hand, his face, her expression factual, professional.

  “You Veterans Affairs?” asked Tom. “They promised me somebody weeks ago, when I left the VA hospital. We’re only six kilometers away, but you’d think I’d left the country. My mother’s been calling but can’t ge
t any damn sense out of them.” The brunette stared. That’s all he needed, a birdbrain looking after his affairs.

  “This your first day on the job or something, ma’am?” said Factory Accident. “My friend asked you a question, but you can’t quit staring.”

  The brunette blinked, then smiled. She might as well have held a sword at Factory Accident’s neck, for the way it set him back in his chair. “I’m new, sir. But, yes. I’m with Veterans Affairs.” She cleared her throat. “There’s a few things I need to discuss with you, Captain Vance. Privately.” The Asian woman clucked her cheek. The brunette flushed. “When’s a good time?”

  She came the next day, after his meds. The morphine was warm, softening his pain and loosening his anger. He felt the strange weight and lightness of the drug, the heaviness in his eyes, the emptiness in his chest. Now he understood why people got high. Except it was more a feeling of sinking, into the dark, and as much as it saved him, he feared sliding away.

  He didn’t hear her approach. She slipped through the curtains, head bowed, like a thief. Tom dragged himself up to sit, drawing spit into his dry mouth.

  “Captain Vance,” she said.

  “You didn’t tell me your name,” he said.

  “It’s Genevieve.”

  “French name.”

  She nodded. “Francophile mother.” Her features sharpened with some tremendous focus. She was nervous. Irritation chewed him. That the VA would send him not only a chick but a green one—however easy on the eyes—was an insult.

  “Well, let’s get to it,” he said.

  “Right,” she said. “How are you doing?”

  “Listen, honey,” he said, leaning forward; and as he did so, he felt a small reaching movement in his right arm. He paused, moved his elbow, saw his forearm move across the sheet. “Jesus Christ.” He shifted it again. It was recovering; his right arm was finding itself, and even in this twitch, a different kind of future showed itself—one where he could use both arms, where maybe his face would heal too. A smile flopped over his mouth. He looked up to see her gazing at him, and his smile stiffened; but the electricity of the movement had lit his imagination, and new possibilities crowded his brain.