by Aaron Gwyn
“Think about it,” said Serra. “You get back stateside, we’ll drop your SF packet and you head up to Fort Campbell.”
He released Russell’s hand, then walked across the room, opened the door, and stepped out into the hallway, closing the door quietly behind him.
Russell lay there for several moments. He’d heard folks talk about the fog of war, the uncertainty of combat, but they didn’t seem to understand that there was something beyond the confusion, out beyond the gray, occasions where the universe narrowed to black and white, to either/or, and the equations you solved were zero-sum. Recognizing those occasions was the real challenge, and Russell thought that, for the captain, such choices came down to principles or people. That day in the cave, Wynne had picked the former, Russell the latter. Run the scenario a thousand times, they’d end up making the exact same selection.
At the time, all Russell had been able to think about was Wheels, and the captain was a thing that had finally been unmasked. Now that he knew Wynne had blown the gold, Russell felt differently. He didn’t want to like this man, but he couldn’t help admiring him—his purity, his drive—and then the gray reached and tugged at him, and he was back inside the fog. He still blamed the captain for Wheels’s death, but he knew the principle Wynne fought for was noble. Furthermore, in that final moment, Wynne had let him go.
Russell lay there. His back hurt, but he wasn’t thinking about his back. He was thinking about the captain, his blue eyes burning, that smile playing across his lips as though the world turned on its axis because he’d given it a push. And through the pain, he felt once again the pull of this man, a gravity strong as any planet. He closed his eyes and tried to shove him away. Drew a breath and released it. When he opened his eyes, the captain was still with him, another ghost to carry through his days. Russell reached over, took the plastic handle off the rail, and pushed the button.
He waited several moments.
Then he pushed it again.
Russell was in the hospital at Ramstein Airbase for the rest of April, and then two weeks into May, walking in the shallow end of an Olympic-sized swimming pool, lifting three-pound weights while balancing on a Swiss ball, lying prone on a low table while a German masseuse kneaded the muscles at either side of the surgical site. The scar, when he glanced in a mirror, was still a bright jagged red. You wouldn’t think surgeons would make so uneven an incision. And after the exercises, after the massage, lying on ice packs, staring at the ceiling, home another lifetime away and the war still very close.
His final week on base, he limped down to the building’s Internet café. He wore black sweatpants and a gray sweatshirt with ARMY printed in black across the chest, and he carried a cane in his left hand. They’d dug into his right hip to get a bone graft for the fusion, and the pain was very sharp. The doctors said he wouldn’t need the cane forever, but he certainly needed it now, every step its own separate struggle. There was a guard behind a table at the call center, but the man didn’t ask for Russell’s ID, just looked at his face, looked at his cane, and nodded him through. He went to the nearest computer terminal, sat, and brought up a browser. The person before him had been on Facebook, and Russell typed in his e-mail address and password. Then he sat several moments, staring at the screen.
He had 3,342 friend requests and another 2,000-and-some-odd updates. He scrolled and clicked, trying to figure out how to deactivate his account, but it was completely beyond him, and he ended up logging out and bringing up CNN’s homepage. Didn’t care about the headlines, just wanted to make Facebook go away. He couldn’t remember why he’d wanted to get online in the first place and was about to close the browser and get up when he went to akologin.us.army.mil, slid his CAC/PIV into the card reader, and signed in.
There were the standard government e-mails he used to read and delete and now didn’t bother reading at all, several spam messages that had managed to make it through the server, an e-mail from a “Sergeant Dime,” another from “B. Stafford Storm,” and then three in a row from [email protected]. The first was titled “Testing” and the second “Is This You?” and when he opened them they both read: “This is Sara. E-mail back so I know this is the right address.” Russell felt his throat tighten and his pulse begin to race, and when he clicked on the last e-mail, there was a longer message. It read:
Elijah,
I don’t know if you’re going to get this, but I decided to write it anyway. I wrote a couple of times before—maybe you don’t do e-mail? I have to say, you don’t seem like the e-mail type. I’m not either. (This is an exception, so feel special, okay?) If you get this, please send something back pretty soon, because I don’t know how long this address will be good for. I’m guessing not long.
They kicked me out—you might’ve already heard. That little incident with the Xanax and the loony bin that I thought my aunt was able to “fix?” Well, not so much. “The wheels of justice grind slow in this big green machine, but they do grind.” (A warrant officer actually told me that. He outta be in pictures). The MPs arrested me at Kandahar Airfield last month, week after you left with your guys. They didn’t tell me what the charges were until we’d landed at JFK. “Lying on my application,” they said. I thought they were too desperate to worry about that kind of thing, but turns out they’re just desperate enough. Go figure. They were threatening to bring charges, but my aunt (same one who was supposed to have “fixed” my situation to begin with) has a good attorney, so I ended up with a dishonorable discharge instead.
So now I’m back in Reno. Living here in this apartment with my mother, working at the Panera down the street. “Would you like an apple or a baguette as your side?” That’s my life now. I thought with my time over there I might be able to get my old job at the hospital, but the dishonorable discharge put the kibosh on that. I’m thinking about going back to school for my RN. Not a lot of motivation these days, though, so I don’t really know.
Geez. I didn’t mean to go off on a thing, but it looks like I went off on a thing. You’re the one in a war, and here I am trying to depress you, apparently. It’s actually not that bad (that’s what I tell myself). At least I don’t have any Xanax.
Joking, of course.
I have TONS!!!
That was another joke. (Would you like a baguette with that?)
I actually went out for a run after writing that last sentence. Nothing I’ve said so far is what I wanted to say. Trying to build up the courage, I suppose, but it’s not working. So I’ll just go ahead and come out with it. You probably won’t get this anyway. And I’ll confess to having had a post-run glass of wine.
Meeting you, Elijah, and spending time together, and our talks, and that one night that I’m not going to say any more about . . . I can’t quit thinking about all of that. I know I’m being such a girl right now, but . . . I actually can’t think of any way to finish that sentence. BUT. That says it all.
I’ll be making plans to do this thing, or thinking I’m going to do that thing, and then I’m thinking of you. Wondering if you’re all right. Actually praying for you. And I don’t even know if I believe in God, for christsakes!
So what do I expect? I have no idea. I guess if you decided not to answer this I’d totally understand, since both my family AND the army think I’m crazy and I’m sure, by this point, you agree. I have these fantasies of us going out on an actual date (do people go on those anymore?), and I have fantasies of us owning a dog together (yeah: I have no idea). I have other fantasies, but I think I’ve embarrassed myself enough for now, so suffice to say, I really, really hope you get in touch. (Really.) Please write me back soon. If you get this, that is.
Love,
Sara
PS: Tell your buddy I said hi. (Is it terrible that I can’t remember his name?)
Russell finished the message and then he read it again very slowly. He hit the reply button, hunted and pecked on the keyboard with the index fingers of both hands, told her he’d received the message, told her he’d tho
ught about her a lot, told her he’d been injured but was fine and would be back in the states in a week. He sat there reading over what he’d written. Then he asked for a phone number where he could reach her and hit “send.”
A message came up in his inbox immediately. It looked like it was from Sara’s address but “Delivery Error” was in the heading, and Russell glanced over at the guard behind the desk and asked if he could help.
The man rose, walked up, and leaned over Russell’s shoulder. He had a slight German accent.
“What is the problem?” he said.
“I just sent this e-mail to a friend and then I got this back,” Russell said, trying to keep the panic out of his voice.
“It’s a delivery error,” said the man.
“What’s that mean?”
“You just hit ‘reply’?”
“Yeah,” said Russell.
“And then this came immediately back?”
“Exactly.”
“The address is no good.”
Russell stared at the screen. He turned and stared at the man.
“No good?”
“It has likely expired,” the man said.
Russell nodded. He thanked the guard and fetched his cane, stood, and started walking. The man asked if he wanted to log out, but Russell told him he never should have logged in.
He touched down at JFK a week later. An hour layover and then a connecting flight to Raleigh. He wore a brand-new uniform with his Airborne and Ranger tabs on his left shoulder, the 3rd Ranger Battalion Scroll on his right. A man in first class tried to give up his seat and swap with him, but Russell told him that was all right, then shuffled past him down the aisle.
In Raleigh, a staff sergeant named Kirby was waiting to take him to Fayetteville, about an hour’s drive, and they barely spoke the entire way. The radio was tuned to a country station, and at one point Sergeant Kirby asked if he’d like to listen to something else. Russell told him the music was fine, and that was their last exchange until they pulled through the gates and into the motor pool at Fort Bragg.
He filled out some forms in the office, spoke for a while to a lieutenant who brought up his file on a computer and informed Russell he was past due on his contract. Russell told him he was supposed to head up to Fort Campbell for reassignment, and the lieutenant told him he could take care of all of this up there.
Then he asked Russell what things were like in Afghanistan. He was just out of Ranger School, getting ready to deploy that summer with his own platoon. He asked Russell if he had any advice.
Russell sat for a moment. His back was tightening, and he reached into his ruck, pulled out his bottle of hydrocodone, and took one with the cup of coffee he’d been sipping.
“Listen to your platoon sergeant,” he finally said. “And don’t take off your helmet.”
He spent the night off base with a friend who’d been in the 3rd Rangers before transferring to the 82nd Airborne here at Bragg. He was now a sergeant major, and Russell had left his pickup parked in the man’s garage, stored several cardboard boxes in his attic. Two boxes of clothes. Another box of CDs and tools and a coffeemaker his aunt had sent him as a present. He and Travis stayed up most the night on the back porch talking, Travis drinking bourbon, Russell pretending to drink.
“They want me up at Fort Campbell,” said Russell.
“When?”
“Yesterday,” Russell said.
Travis cocked an eyebrow and stared at him over his glass. “You aren’t AWOL, are you?”
“No,” said Russell. “Contract expired. I’ll renew when I get there.”
“So, as of right this minute, you’re basically a civilian?”
“Basically,” Russell said.
“Fort fucking Campbell.”
Russell nodded.
“What—you joining Fifth Group?”
“They want me training horses.”
“Horses?”
“Yeah,” Russell said.
Travis finished his drink and poured himself another.
“Greenies,” he snorted. “What a bunch of psychos.”
Russell told him he had no idea.
Russell was on the road before nine the next morning. He reached I-85, then traveled up until he came to the I-40 junction and turned and headed west. The day was clear and a little cool, and Russell drove with the windows down and the wind wings cracked to funnel the breeze. It was a seven-hour drive to Nashville, and he started the climb up into the Smoky Mountains a little after noon, the blue Carolina sky against the evergreen ridges, his pickup laboring around the bends. It was an old Ford F-150, a ’74 model—his grandfather had bought it off the showroom in Cleveland, Oklahoma, in the fall of ’73. It was Russell’s first and only vehicle, and over the years he’d rebuilt the engine and installed a new transmission, replaced the shocks twice and brake pads three times. In high school, he’d sanded down the entire body by hand, repainted the truck, and had the bumpers rechromed. The interior, however, looked how it’d always looked: rubber dash, cracked plastic steering wheel, steel glove box and doors, and a bench seat over which Russell had thrown a saddle blanket much like the one he’d used on Fella. He couldn’t think about the horse without getting emotional. You spend so many hours on an animal’s back, and with every bump and bounce you are jarring some part of yourself into the horse and the horse into you, a transfer of the spirit through violent osmosis, convection by impact, collision.
He reached Nashville early that evening. Here I-40 met up with 24, and you could take 24 all the way to Fort Campbell. Traffic was beginning to clog the interstate, but he made good time, and soon a sign told him that the exit for I-24 was coming up in a mile and a half. Then he passed another sign that said he’d turn off in three-quarters of a mile. When he topped a hill and saw the actual fork in the interstate, he put on his blinker, slowed the truck and pulled onto the shoulder. He sat there several moments with the truck idling and the traffic hurdling past, semis passing in a roar that rocked the pickup on its springs and shook the cab. He scooted across the bench seat, opened the passenger door, and got out. There was a guardrail and a grassy hill on the other side that descended to an access road, and Russell left his cane behind, stepped over the rail, and started down the slope. He stopped halfway and sat with his elbows on his knees, looking toward the lights shining from the buildings downtown. Chet Atkins. Merle Travis. Patsy Cline. All these names from records his grandfather kept in his office: they’d sung and played and died in this town. He sat there thinking about his grandfather, what the man had told him when he’d visited the hospital room. That was either a trance or narcotic hallucination, but it was his grandfather’s voice and his grandfather’s smell, and the words his grandfather had for him were the words his grandfather might have used. Which meant it was both real and it wasn’t. It was his grandfather and it was a dream.
When he stood and started back up the hill, the air was cold on his cheeks, and truckers passing, seeing this lone American soldier, tugged at their horns, but Russell was done with soldiering. He reached his truck, opened the passenger door, unzipped and removed his jacket, bent down and pulled a flannel-lined Carhartt coat from one of the cardboard boxes, threaded his arms through it, then climbed up into the cab.
Russell stood in line at the restaurant during the lunchtime rush. Men seated around the dining area in business suits. Women in skirts and blouses, hose and high heels. Russell turned and saw his reflection in the tinted window alongside the front doors. He wore a new pair of Tony Lamas he’d picked out at a western store in Amarillo. A new pair of Levi’s and a dark denim shirt with pearlized snaps. His brown leather belt was also new, but he’d fastened it to his grandfather’s old buckle and replaced the silver dollar in its center. He’d cut off his beard at the hotel that morning, then shaved for the first time in months. He stood in the mirror examining that smooth alien face, the skin pale on his cheeks and chin, dark on his forehead and temples. Then he dressed and hobbled along the street
s until he found a barbershop. The man cut it short, smeared it with gel, then parted and combed it to the side. In his reflection, it still looked a little wet.
The Nevada sun came slanting through the blinds, terrain out the windows like what he imagined he’d left behind. Low mountains in the distance, blue in the noon light. The line moved and he took a step forward. Two women in front of him, clicking the buttons on their phones. A large man in front of them doing the same. Another man at the counter, staring up at the menu on the wall, and behind the register, Sara. She wore a black visor on her head with the store’s logo embroidered on the front, a black polo with the logo above her left breast. She’d yet to notice him. She looked flustered, and her green eyes went from the customer standing in front of her, down to the register, back to the customer again. There was another woman working the register at her right and another to her far right on the other side of a glass case of pastries. She handed the customer what looked like a plastic coaster with red flashing lights, handed him a clear plastic cup and a receipt. The next man in line moved up, and Russell took another step forward behind the two women.
She wore a bit more makeup than she had at the outpost, a bit more eye shadow and rouge. She was more slender than he remembered. A little more slight. She’d let her hair grow longer, and it was gathered in a ponytail behind her head. He could just read her name tag from where he was, and he saw that whomever had made it had added an H to the end. He imagined a manager giving her the tag and Sara standing there a moment, a smirk playing across her lips. Perhaps she liked the idea that she wasn’t exactly herself.