A Hard and Heavy Thing

by Matthew J. Hefti

  But life has its own rules of inertia, so here is an image from today: Nick reading a postcard from Levi, a smile playing at his lips. Nick read it as he walked in from lunch. He tossed his keys on the table, and turned the card over twice, looking at both sides.

  “Why are you smiling?” She didn’t think it was an odd question. It had been a long time since he had smiled like that.

  “I’m not smiling.”

  “Yes you were.”

  He handed the card to her, postmarked from Watertown, New York. “Levi still thinks he’s living in some story.” The postcard was covered in a small, slanted, cursive scrawl.

  •••

  Dear Nick,

  Let me introduce myself. My name is MISTER Levi Hartwig and I’m free of all obligations and responsibilities. Hitting NYC. I’ll try to dance with some older women and maybe hire a prostitute, just to hear her talk. After that, home.

  Levi

  •••

  She, too, turned it over. There was a picture of a red-and-blue snare with two drumsticks. “I thought he was in Afghanistan.”

  Nick shrugged. “He was.”

  “So how is he coming home?”

  “Who knows? It’s army. Things change.”

  “So Levi’s coming home? Is he coming back here for good?”

  “He’s probably not coming back at all. Soldiers are always dreaming of home.”

  He walked to her and took the postcard from her hands. He set it on the table next to his keys, and he hugged her. It had been months since he hugged her. He hugged her tight and wouldn’t let go. As if he just now realized that if you don’t hold onto her, she could leave.

  3.2 THEY ESCORTED ME OUT LIKE

  A CRIMINAL

  Levi looked up at First Sergeant Top Powers struggling to zip his Gore-Tex coat over his massive belly. “Time to go,” the man said, knocking on the desk. “Need to grab anything else, or are you good?”

  By no means did Levi believe he was good, but that which belonged to him was now packed in his shabby one-bedroom apartment off base; everything else he had accounted for, inventoried, and then returned to Uncle Sam, ensuring to get every checklist item on his basic item issue sheet signed and dated. “We can go,” Levi said.

  Snow flurries blew into the entryway. Levi pulled up the hood on his parka when he walked outside, and he enjoyed his first new privilege as a civilian: He shoved his hands deep in his pockets and kept them there as he stomped through the snowdrifts to the parking lot.

  The first sergeant, unable to deploy because of sleep apnea and chronic back problems—what Levi thought of as simple symptoms of extreme obesity—breathed heavily as he shifted and forced his girth and puffy coat behind the steering wheel. Instead of scraping the ice, First Sergeant Powers waited for the defroster to do its work.

  The man was a flurry of activity. First, he breathed into his hands. Then, he rubbed them together. He reached over and opened the console and took a Skoal pouch from a tobacco tin. He turned the heater to the vents, felt the air coming out, and then switched it back to defrost. He turned on the radio and after only a few seconds, he changed the station. He turned on the windshield wipers and when they loudly scraped against the still solid ice, he sighed audibly.

  “Suppose I could have had you start the car while you were waiting,” Top said, laughing nervously.

  Levi didn’t respond, but instead watched his own white breath flow out in front of him.

  “Do you need to stop by finance or anything else? Final accounting of your pay, or is that all wrapped up?”

  “Nope. I have already rendered unto Caesar what is Caesar’s.” And far more, Levi thought.

  He stared out his window on their way off post. The sun shone off the drifts in blinding glares, and the thick snow and ice covered the flaws in the old rundown government buildings, shielding their dilapidation with a thin veneer of romanticism and nostalgia.

  After a few moments of silence, Top Powers said, “You know it could be worse. Colonel Torres really did a good thing for you. I never seen an admin separation under your circumstances as anything higher than a general discharge before. Never seen a guy in your shoes get an honorable discharge before, but the Colonel saw that Silver Star in your package and said to me, ‘Top, this guy’s a bona fide war hero, and he’s getting an honorable, and I don’t care what the JAGs say.’ That’s what he called you for real. A bona fide war hero.”

  [By that point I was too exhausted to fight. Too exhausted to ask if that was supposed to be consolation. Too exhausted to tell him they didn’t even give me a chance. Too exhausted to be bitter, sarcastic, or rude. Too exhausted to be anything. ]

  They passed the guard shack and the visitors’ center as they exited the gate to the base. Levi took one last mental snapshot of the post through the rearview mirror. No longer could he enter through those gates. No longer was he set apart. No longer was he accepted. No longer was he part of that communal brotherhood doing powerful and mysterious things behind those tall fence lines. He felt like Adam being expelled from the Garden of Eden, except instead of an archangel with a flaming sword guarding the gate, it was an eighteen-year-old MP with perfectly erect posture and perfectly bloused pants over his immaculate and unscuffed boots. I have boxer shorts with more time in the desert than that kid, Levi thought.

  “And hey,” the first sergeant said. “You still got that GI Bill.”

  “Already got my degree,” Levi mumbled.

  “What’s that?”

  He turned and spoke up, defiant now. “I said I already got my degree. What do I need a GI Bill for?”

  “Well even better,” he said, still painfully affable. “I’m sure you’ll find a job in no time. Highly decorated vet, leadership experience, college educated. I’m sure there’ll be people banging on your door trying to hire you.” When Levi didn’t respond, he began asking questions. “So what’d you go to school for?”

  Levi wanted to cry, wanted to yell at the guy, wanted to wallow in his own failures, but he could not bring himself to do any of those things. He whispered, his voice nearly cracking, “English.”

  “Gonna be a teacher then?”

  [I didn’t respond. Honestly, it had been years since I thought about what I wanted to do because I had been so busy doing what I felt I had to do. And I hadn’t earned the degree with the night and online classes because of these big lofty dreams so much as I earned it because the army bred this compulsion in me to simply finish what I started. Until you called me out on it, I barely remembered a time in which I had planned on traveling the world and writing books to save it. It seemed—still seems?—like that person had been killed in action, and I couldn’t even pinpoint when it happened.]

  When they neared the apartment complex, Levi leaned so he could get to his wallet. He removed his white common-access card and placed it on the dashboard. “Suppose you need that,” Levi said.

  The first sergeant parked and turned to Levi. “Look, I know it’s hard for guys like you to listen to guys like me. I’m not stupid. And I also know I ain’t got a clue what you’ve been through and wouldn’t ever dream of pretending I have. Now do I think the army’s doing you right? No. But could they be doing you worse? Sure. But it is what it is, is one thing I know.

  “Aw, hell.” Top Powers stuck out his hand. “I like you, Levi. I really do. But things are the way they are. Just—whatever you do, don’t let this define you.”

  Levi shook his hand weakly. “Roger that, Top.”

  The first sergeant pumped his hand and looked him in the eye like any good soldier would do. “I believe you can call me Jeff now, Mr. Hartwig.”

  Levi nodded and left. After filling a plastic gas station cup full of Absolut and diet pop, he sat on a packed-up footlocker in his living room. He chugged half the glass and picked up the black Steve Wariner Signature Edition Takamine that he had purchased with tuition aid money his freshman year of college. He played jangly open chords, and by the time he’d finished h
is first cup, he had started singing slow, sad versions of songs his band played in high school.

  Halfway through his third cup, he heard a knocking on the wall and then the thickly accented voice of his neighbor. “Shut up, Meester Levi.”

  Levi ignored it, took another drink, and kept singing.

  “I am serious tonight. Please, shut up, please. I have to work tomorrow.”

  Levi strummed harder. “Just come over and join me,” he yelled at the wall. “I’m sure the 7-Eleven won’t miss you, you walking talking Slurpee-slinging stereotype.”

  “I’ll call the manager,” his neighbor yelled.

  Levi yelled back. “I’ll call ICE on your ass.”

  “I’ll call your command post or your first sergeant.”

  Levi laughed, lit a cigarette, and let it dangle from his lips. He squinted through the smoke. “I’ll give you his number.” Levi heard one more knock of resignation and that was it. He played and drank until his B string broke, at which point he let the guitar fall to the floor with a clang. He gave it a kick to send it skidding across the cheap laminate floor. It connected with the wall in a sickening crack and a metallic vibrato.

  He walked to the kitchen and picked up a box he had packed full of pots, pans, and kitchen utensils. He grabbed the keys to his truck and headed over to his neighbor’s apartment.

  Not wanting to put the box down, he didn’t knock on the door, but instead kicked it. “Open up,” he yelled. “Police.”

  A dark-skinned Afghan even shorter than Levi opened the door. He rubbed the thick gray mustache that seemed to cover half his thin face. Once upon a time, the man in khakis and a plaid button-up two sizes too big had been a practicing physician in Kabul. This was before he left his homeland in the seventies. He went by the nickname Albie. “Why are you always screwing around? And why are you here on Christmas?”

  “What do you think I’m here for, Albie? I come bearing gifts. Besides, it isn’t Christmas for another two days, you heathen schmuck.”

  “I don’t think you can call a Muslim a schmuck.”

  Levi kicked his shoes off as he entered, and he set the box down on the kitchen counter. He tossed Albie a bottle of gut-rot whiskey from the box. “I don’t think you can call yourself a Muslim.”

  Albie broke into a large smile. “Now we are talking, my friend.”

  He followed Levi into the small kitchen and took two ornate glasses from the cupboard, each made from smooth green stone. He poured them each drinks, raised his glass, and said, “Merry Christmas, my friend.”

  Levi sipped while Albie drank three cups in quick succession. Levi tried to make small talk and asked about his family. Albie’s wife had died years ago, but he still had a daughter teaching at a private high school in Brooklyn. She rarely traveled upstate to visit.

  “She’s getting so old,” Albie said. “She’s almost thirty and she does not even have a boyfriend.” He shook his head sadly. “Soon, I shall give up all hope of having grandchildren.” He sucked whiskey off his mustache with his lower lip. He leaned forward and whispered, as if someone else might hear. “Do you think she’s a lesbian?”

  “Introduce her to me and I’ll find out.”

  “I put up with lots of kidding, Meester Levi, but you better not be pushing on that button.”

  “You don’t want me pushing your daughter’s button?”

  Albie gave him a look that made it clear the conversation was over.

  “So what about you? What’s new with you? When will you go back to kill more Taliban?”

  “You mean Afghans?”

  Albie shook his head. “No. Afghans are a peace-loving and honorable people. See?” He put an open palm on his chest. “I have invited you—an infidel and baby killer—into my home and you are safe here.”

  Levi laughed. “Well, safer here than there, I guess.”

  “So?” Albie said. “Will you be returning?”

  Levi took a drink and let the silence hang. “I’ll go back and do some more soldiering when you can practice medicine again.”

  “Oh, I can’t practice medicine here. You know that.” Albie clicked his tongue, as if reprimanding Levi for his forgetfulness.

  “I know, Albie. That’s my point. They won’t let me go back. They kicked me out.”

  Albie nodded, “Ah yes. I understand now.” He frowned and looked into his glass, but he didn’t ask why.

  [And this is why I loved him. He accepted the news with the quiet understanding of someone who has seen tragedy, with the quiet understanding of someone who understands there is no why.]

  “Don’t you want to know why?”

  Albie shrugged, still looking into his glass. “Probably you are too nice.” He looked up and tapped Levi’s chest. “Probably not enough hate in here.” He tapped a cigarette from a pack on the counter. “Probably,” he said, waving an unlit cigarette. “They saw you hanging out with me and think you are a terrorist now. Probably Dick Cheney listened to your phone calls and heard you talking bad about the war. Who knows why? There are so many reasons.”

  Levi shook his head. “No. I get too drunk and I can’t shoot my rifle. I can hit the women, but I miss the babies. They’re too small.”

  “Yes,” Albie said gravely. “To be a good soldier, you must not miss the babies.”

  After a few more drinks, Albie’s eyes began to droop. He swayed, using the counter for support.

  “So you work tomorrow.” Levi said.

  “No. No drinking if I’m working.”

  “You told me you had to work.”

  “I lied so you would shut up.”

  “Good. I need a ride to the post office and then the airport tomorrow.”

  “Where are you going, young traveler?”

  “Going to visit a buddy in Walter Reed in DC. Maybe talk to Congress and have them end the wars. After that, Brooklyn. I heard there’s a lovely young teacher there looking for a husband. After that, home. To Wisconsin.”

  Albie shook his head and wagged a finger at him. “No Brooklyn. But I can’t anyway. I don’t have a car.”

  “You do now.” Levi dropped the keys to his truck on the counter.

  “You drink too much.”

  “I don’t drink enough.”

  “That is too much,” said Albie. “I can take some whiskey, but I cannot take your truck.”

  “So sell it. I don’t care. The title is in that cardboard box and it’s already signed over to Abdul Teyrawah, so that old truck is your problem now.”

  Albie dropped his burning cigarette in the last swallow of his whiskey, and he set his glass on the counter. He wrapped Levi in a hug. “You people and your Christmas,” he said.

  “Nothing to do with Christmas,” Levi muttered.

  “You come back anytime,” said Albie. “And if you convert, you can marry my daughter.”

  “I’ll think about it,” Levi said as he waved his goodbye.

  He stumbled into his own kitchen to pour himself another drink. He emptied the last third of his vodka bottle and threw it at the garbage can, the lid of which was closed. He opened the fridge to find an empty pizza box and a lone bottle of beer. He leaned against his fridge and lit another cigarette, smoking it as he drank the beer. He finished the beer before the cigarette, and when he had finished his smoke, he dropped the butt in the empty beer bottle. He sauntered over to the garbage can, stepped on the pedal that opened the lid, and he dropped the bottle in the can. Leaving the lid open, he unbuttoned the fly of his jeans and pissed into the garbage can before stumbling to his bedroom.

  3.3 ODYSSEUS RETURNS AND THE

  BLUE STAR FLAG COMES DOWN

  After returning home from the burn ward at Brooke Army Medical Center and before Levi returned home, it wasn’t the war that kept Nick awake; it was his febrile prayers over Oma’s deteriorating health. After he had returned, it was as if she had breathed a sigh of relief, a sigh in which she happily gave up her ghost now that her grandson was safe. She didn’t seem to suffer, but she g
rew smaller and thinner. He wanted to pick up this poor old woman and rock her like a baby. And then she died.

  Then there were the long months—or was it years?—in which anxiety over Eris’s drinking and wandering consumed him. Even when he could fall asleep—on the rare nights she was home and sober—he’d wake in a sweaty panic, feeling around to make sure she was still there.

  Other thoughts then kept him up at night. Like any entrepreneur trying to make his way in the world, thoughts of his business kept him awake. He thought about the razor-thin profit margins of the food service side of the house. He tried scheduling in his head to cut manpower expenses. After he had been taken for thousands by his manager, Kathy Stenson, he stayed up contemplating the cost versus benefit of boosting his in-house security to prevent employee theft.

  Since firing Kathy, he had been working every shift every day, and it had almost gotten to the point where he was too tired to sleep. Now, on the eve of Levi’s return, something else, something like trepidation kept him up. He leaned against Eris’s back and put his mouth on her neck and kissed her, trying to wake her.

  She reached her arm behind her and swatted at him. “Leave me alone,” she said. “Lemme sleep.”

  He turned on the lamp. “I get home, and you’re sleeping,” he said. “I wake up, and you’re gone.”

  “So.”

  “So you’re the one who complains we don’t talk.” Nick turned on his back and laced his fingers behind his head. “I just don’t know what to do.”

  “Start by turning the lamp off.”

  “That’s not what I mean.” But he did turn the lamp off.

  After two hours on the cusp of sleep, he got up. Through the window, he could see the streetlights shining off a thin layer of snow. He cleared his driveway and the rest of the walks on his block before driving to the Hartwig house in Bangor to shovel their driveway and sweep the snow from their deck. The snow was light and the work was easy, so making the rounds with a shovel and a broom seemed as good a way as any to release the nervous energy that fizzed and popped inside him.