Paul shook his head. “You don’t get it, do you?”
“Get what?” Levi spat back.
“Brother, they feel like they lost you a long time ago.” Paul closed his laptop, slid it into his leather messenger’s bag, and stood up. “Maybe they feel like the army will shape you up and they’ll finally get you back.” He walked around the table and patted his nonplussed brother on the shoulder. “If you want to join the army, join the army. If you don’t, don’t. But if you are going to do anything, do it for you and not as a cry for help. Just grow up is all. Just grow up.”
1.11 STICK YOUR FINGERS IN YOUR EARS AND SAY LA LA LA LA
January turned into February with no discernible change, and Levi thought the end of the school year would never come. He thought the long Wisconsin winter would last forever and the sun would glare off the snow for the rest of his life. The ice would never melt, leaving the fishing shanties forever on the lakes and the salt forever on the roads. But spring did come and the ice did melt and the boats emerged from their docks once again to cruise the three rivers in search of their bass, crappie, and sunfish. Before he knew what had happened, Levi found himself setting the little blue exam book from his last final on a stack of little blue exam books before walking out the door of the lecture hall, elated.
Levi had already boxed up his journals, and both he and Nick had boxed up all their other sentimental items like high school yearbooks and old DIY concert posters. They took them to the Hartwig basement for indefinite storage. They had not, however, packed their guitars. Both Levi and Nick decided that their going-away party would be one final show at The Warehouse the night before they left for Fort Benning, Georgia. The owner of the club gave A Failed Entertainment the honor of headlining. Instead of drinking before the show started, instead of sneaking pot into the backstage hangout room while the other bands played, Nick walked around talking to all his friends and the few local fans they had come to know over the past few years. Levi sat alone with an ashtray and a pack of cigarettes in the room behind the sound booth. He didn’t hear the door open and close.
“You have an ashtray right there on the table. Why don’t you use it?”
Eris stood in front of him in a pair of Docs, tight jeans, and a ripped-up form-fitting NIL8 T-shirt. Her makeup was thick, her eyeliner dark. He had rarely seen her since he and Nick had told her over coffee that they were leaving. She had done everything possible to avoid them. Levi had noticed, and he had missed her. And now, here in front of him, she looked broody and gorgeous. She sat in a folding chair in front of him.
“So you wanna tell me why?” she said.
“Why what?”
“Why what do you think? Because of The Attacks last fall? Because you’re bored? Because why? Why, Levi. Because why.”
“Well, yeah. But not only.” He stuffed his cigarette out in the ashtray.
“Well, what else?” She leaned forward in her chair, her elbows on her knees. If it weren’t for the coffee table between them, Levi was sure they’d be touching.
“It’s complicated and probably sounds dumb, and so.” She looked at him in a way that made him feel naked. “Because I want to do something exciting. Be exciting,” he said.
“And why Nick?”
“I don’t know.” Levi stood up. “I have to get out to watch the next band.”
“Sit down.”
He obeyed.
“Why Nick?”
“I don’t know.” He threw his hands up and let them drop in his lap again. “He wants to do good. Be good?”
It must have been something in his voice or in his look, but she took a deep breath, licked her lips, and sat back in the chair. She crossed her legs. Before she spoke, Levi had thought she might tell him he was the most exciting person she’d ever known, and that he was good too. Even if it wasn’t true, maybe she’d say it to get them to stay. Instead, she said, “If you want to be good, don’t go halfway around the world to kill people.”
[That stung. It had never been about that for me. It had been about leaving a life that was boring and going nowhere. Sure, I had vaguely contemplated the possibility of being killed, and that’s where the excitement and allure was—in the danger—but until then, the thought of killing other people had never even crossed my mind. Not once.]
Levi said nothing to dispel her notions of why he was leaving; he didn’t spill his guts to her like he did years later in retrospect, after his mind had been destroyed. Instead, he leaned forward over the table and earnestly reverted to parroting Nick’s fervent speeches. Levi thought phrases like, “The Defining Struggle of Our Generation,” and “The Only Time for Action Is Now,” and “We Weren’t Created for the Sidelines,” sounded thin and cheap coming out of his mouth—[I don’t have your heart. The naked sincerity. The earnestness in you that I admire so much. I couldn’t strip the irony from it no matter how hard I tried. Still can’t, but I’m working on it.]—yet he spouted them anyway. He was too afraid or too in denial to get at the heart of the matter.
When he had finally finished, he sat back in a mix of exhaustion and exasperation.
Eris stood. “When did you become such a follower?”
“Like you’ve got all the answers?”
“And what if I do?”
“Do you have a single reason why we should stay?”
“What if one was standing in front of your stupid face?”
“A reason for whom? A reason for Nick?”
She held a middle finger up in front of his face, stood still for a moment, and walked away. She slammed the door. Levi picked up the ashtray and hurled it against the wall where it shattered in silence against the feedback, open chords, and clanging cymbals of the opener’s finale.
He sat there in angry silence until he heard the next band begin. A mass of teenagers swelled against the stage. Levi waded out into the group until he was surrounded, and the group started moving, and swaying, and bobbing in beat to the lazy introduction of the first song of the set. He allowed himself to be swallowed by the crowd until they were all one body with a thousand feet shuffling on a splintered wood floor, all of them wearing thin sheens of sweat. Cigarette smoke drifted at the pace of the thin noodling of the lead guitarist, which soon gave way to a heavy riffing. The music consumed all of them as the early bobbing turned into a raucous rocking of the entire upper half of the collective body until one touched soul started thrashing about through the crowd. Each pointy, frightening tip of the spikes on his wristband glinted in the lights of the stage in the small and dingy club. He pumped his fist along with the beat of the double bass drum, a pounding which by itself had the power to make their collective heart want to burst out of their collective chest in celebration of the freedom that they were experiencing in the music that preached independent thought in pursuit of an honest and more upright world. Or the agony in it all, which Levi could feel when the music stopped just for a millisecond, during which time each heart stopped with it.
The sparkle of light that had been dancing on the spiked wrist stopped. The smoke that had been drifting toward the ceiling from endless cigarettes stopped. The hand that triumphantly held a gray nylon guitar pick in the air stopped. Levi’s thoughts stopped. In the silence, he locked eyes with Eris, who stood alone in the corner. Only the hum of the amplifier tubes remained, nearly indistinguishable from the hum of silence, until the weight of all that hope and desire and youth and angst and sweat lust fire idealism freedom longing potential independence difference confidence became so much to bear that the music came crashing down once again so they could all move, unsure of how to live, or be still.
[When my turn came to stand on the stage, emote until my throat was raw, and jump from my half-stack like a madman; when our turn came to keep perfect rhythm during improvisational key changes simply by making eye contact with each other and with Jesse behind the drums; when our turn came to sweat under the lights, to announce our penultimate song, to flow seamlessly into our finale; when my turn came to fall
trustingly into the crowd, it was finally a time in which I could forget myself.
That’s only one kind of release that I miss.]
Long after the lights had come up, after the crowd had dispersed, after they had finished carting their amps and drums down forty-nine stairs to Jesse’s van waiting on Pearl Street, they shook hands with the owner of the club and said goodbye to an era. They gave Jesse casual, choreographed handshakes, and he was off. For Jesse, the end of the band couldn’t have come too soon; he was newly twenty-one, and now he had other opportunities for mayhem. His mind hadn’t been in the music for weeks.
Nick and Levi sat at the top of the tall staircase leading down to the street from the first level of the club, and they smoked one last cigarette in silence, not wanting the night to end. Finally, they walked down and out together.
Eris sat on the sidewalk, her back against the building. When they opened the door and walked out onto the street, she stood up and brushed the dirt from the back of her jeans. “Took you forever,” she said.
“Hey, hey,” Nick practically shouted. “You waited.”
“Just cuz you’re leaving doesn’t mean I have to.”
Levi shrugged. “Fair enough.” He looked over at Nick, who was beaming.
Eris folded her arms over her chest and kicked at a rock on the sidewalk. “Is there a big after-party you have to go to? Some big goodbye bash?”
“Nah,” Nick said. “We figured it’d be depressing.”
“Well,” she said, looking up and making eye contact with both of them. “Wanna maybe at least have a small goodbye bash with me?”
Nick put his arm around her. “Depends. Will you give us a ride?” They walked off toward the alley. Levi followed, steps behind.
Three hours, nearly a handle of rum, and four liters of pop later, Nick lay passed out on the living room floor, a sweatshirt for a pillow. Levi and Eris looked down at him and giggled.
“One second,” Eris said. “He was out in, like, literally one second.”
“No kidding, right?” Levi said. “One second he wants to go steal a keg from downtown, the next: boom. Down for the count.”
“Let’s go soke,” Eris said, leaning into Levi.
“Soke?”
“Let’s go soke a smigarette.”
“Okay.” He put his arm around her. “We can go soke a smigarette.”
“Shut up,” she said. She hit him in the chest with an open hand and let it linger there. “Know what I mean,” she said. Or commanded. Levi wasn’t sure which.
Levi let go and led her outside where they smoked one cigarette in silence. They sat near the top of the stairs, Levi on the landing and Eris three steps below. When Levi snuffed out his cigarette on the bottom of his shoe and made like he was going back inside, she said, “Just one more. There’s nothing better than smoking when you’ve been drinking.”
Levi lit the cigarette dangling from her lips. She looked at the cherry of it as she smoked. She blew her smoke on it with each turn. Levi watched her lips purse, and he watched the cherry glow brighter with each of her breaths before it faded again.
Wanting to break the silence, he said, “Thanks for throwing us this party. I, for one, think it turned out pretty great.”
She brought a hand up and wiped her eye.
“Are you crying?”
She shook her head and sniffed.
“Hey, hey,” Levi said. “Why are you crying?” He paused but she did not answer. “I wasn’t being ironic or sarcastic or anything.”
She turned her head away.
“Look, Eris, I’m sorry about—” he looked down at his hands. “Look, tonight, this right here. Being with you before we leave. This was perfect.”
She wiped her eyes and said, “Stop talking already.”
Then quietly, “Is this because Nick’s asleep already?”
She turned and looked up at him with something like disgust on her face. Her tears had moistened her eyes and had made them shimmer in a way that caught the light from the naked bulb hanging in the landing. “Why would it be?”
“Aren’t you two . . . you know.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Aren’t you two, or weren’t you two like, sleeping together?”
“Ha,” she turned away from him again. “You really are dense. You live with the guy and don’t know that he hasn’t slept with anyone? Let alone me?” She took a deep breath in through her nose. “He doesn’t want damaged goods.” She put her elbows on her knees. “I can’t believe how stupid you are sometimes.”
Wounded and confused, Levi sat in silence. Should he leave her to be by herself? Should he console her? Should he apologize? And if he did apologize, for what would he be apologizing? Finally, he scooted down two steps and put his feet on each side of her so he sat behind her. He put his hands on her shoulders. He did it with caution, not knowing how she’d react. “You’re not damaged,” he whispered. To his surprise, she leaned back into him. He held his breath.
She turned slightly to the side and rested her head on Levi’s thigh. “You have no idea,” she mumbled.
“I don’t care.” He took a finger and brushed black hair over her ear so he could see her cheek and the contour of her chin. He bent down to kiss her head, in a manner that he could pass off as paternal or brotherly if she balked. He barely noticed how uncomfortable it was to lean down so far. When she did not turn and slap him, when she did not rear back to elbow him, he breathed. He leaned over further to kiss her cheek, and as he grew close, she turned and arched her neck so her lips met his. They kissed. She reached a hand up and touched his face. She turned completely around so she was on her knees on the stairs. She put both of her hands on his cheeks, and she kissed him. And she kissed him. And she kissed him.
At first he was blinded by the brilliant flashes of light behind his closed eyes, and the blindness was water, and all his thoughts drowned. Then every thought in the world went through Levi’s head. Memories of high school, of how he had longed for this moment and for a million like it. He pictured himself sulking as a third wheel as Nick and Eris developed such a close friendship. Now, as he kissed her, Levi laughed at being jealous about it all, knowing that what he had wanted—and was now getting—was something Nick had never had or even wanted. He thought of Nick on the floor upstairs alone.
[Everything I thought back then was foolish, and shallow, and sad.]
Levi thought of how he no longer had a bed, only a few pillows and blankets on the floor of his room. He thought how she must be getting uncomfortable on her knees for so long. He thought how in just a few hours he’d be getting on a Greyhound bus to Minneapolis. He’d get on an airplane for the first time and hold his breath as the plane accelerated and left the earth in the same way that he had held his breath before he kissed her. Then he thought of how he should be thinking of the kissing instead of buses and plane rides. Think of this kissing, he thought. You’ll want to remember this kissing forever.
She pulled away, and he opened his eyes. She stared at him with wide eyes, surprised. She shook her head, almost imperceptibly. She stood. “It’s getting cold,” she said. “We should get inside.”
He followed her in, wondering where she’d lead him. She walked to his bedroom, and he held his breath again. She stood in the middle of the empty room and crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m cold.” She shivered.
Levi picked up a rumpled blanket and shook it out over the floor. He did the same with a folded quilt. She got on the floor and climbed under the blankets, and Levi followed suit. He leaned in to kiss her again and he embraced her, but she held her elbows in close to her abdomen. She balled her hands into fists under her chin, keeping her forearms as barriers between them. She shivered. After the blankets trapped their body heat, after Levi had let his hands wander on her back, her legs, and other places, she rolled onto her back and took off her shirt. Levi hurried to take off his own. They explored each other’s bodies, but they did not make love.
When
the aching became too much, Levi stopped moving. Eris rolled on her side and faced him. He searched her face, but she closed her eyes. In that moment, he felt his entire life rested in the hands of that girl, and he was helpless. He thought he saw a small smile play at her lips. He took his finger and moved hair behind her ear again. He watched her for a while. “Eris,” he whispered. “Just tell me to stay.”
BOOK TWO
WE CARRY THE WORLD
2.1 THIS IS WHERE I HIT MY STRIDE
15 May 2005
Levi had been awake for nearly an hour, continuing his journey through the stack of paperbacks his mom had mailed him. The Humvees pulled up to the staging area outside their appropriated home, the old hardened ammo bunker that had been left relatively undamaged after the Americans invaded Iraq. After the gravel stopped grinding and crackling beneath the tires, the roar of the engines and the opening and closing of truck doors remained. Soon, the vehicle engines ceased. The generators continued their perpetual hum, and the scattered voices of the returning soldiers grew closer.
He stretched and slid his bare feet into his flip-flop sandals. Not bothering to put on a shirt, he pushed aside the woobie poncho liner that served as a door to his bunk. He wandered into the common area. The members of third and fourth squads stormed into the bunker as he reached the door. Someone flooded the bay with light, and Levi squinted and crossed his arms over his chest, chilled by the cold morning draft.
He stepped back so his toes didn’t get squashed by their tromping. Three water bottles were strung up to the door with parachute cord to keep the door closed, and since no one bothered to hold the plywood door open for the next man, the water bottles pulled the door shut with a slam after every second or third soldier. Then the next man would fling the door open and the process would repeat, prompting the members of first and second squads to yell profanities from their beds.
A Hard and Heavy Thing Page 9