Disarmed
Page 2
Too late. Another failure. Another loss. Can I handle that? How much can one nerd take in a year? I know that if I arrive at the spot to find the girl gone, I'll be sure to read the headline: “American IDF Volunteer Who Lost Arm in Mortar Attack Dies at Beach.” Funny way to go, after all I've been through. Real funny. I can see my mother dying of laughter.
Sure enough, with only three meters or so between us, the girl sinks from view. “Where'd she go?” Kobi shouts. We're both out of breath. And far from shore.
“I don't know. Kobi, check that spot! I'm looking over here.”
“We've gotta go under!”
He's right. Diving below, I find no girl—no girl's body—and come up twice before spotting the hair. Long brown hair undulating like waterweeds. The head attached to that hair has decided, Nope. No more. I'm done. But help is just a breath away. So often the case, I've found.
I consider Captain Rosner. How we set off to retrieve his body that day in Gaza, to bring him back home. Except it was different for him. He knew. Like all of us, he knew going in. Early that day, under the rising sun, Rosner understood those fading breaths would be his last. He knew—he'd seen men die—the medics couldn't seal his gaping neck. He knew he'd not survive the hour. And yet, despite the torture of drowning—on land—he fought on. He continued rasping out orders so his men might live through the onslaught of enemy RPGs. Yeah, that's courageous. Different from dying alone in the ocean for a stupid decision.
Or failing to rescue someone dying alone in the ocean. No, Rosner really was Superman, soaring outside the atmosphere of Earth. The living embodiment of the superheroes I worshipped as a boy.
Yeah, but somebody's gotta be the ninety-eight-pound weakling. Somebody's gotta get sand kicked in their face.
UP, UP, AND OY VEY
The girl.
Her hair, fast flying toward the bottom, reveals her path of descent like a tracer bullet's red glow scarring the air behind.
Thrashing blindly, I follow the trail of hair to her neck and shoulders, and find her arm. I tug. Come on. I've got you. Come on. But the undertow wants her, too. It pulls even harder. A tug of war now against the girl's weight, her will to sink and end the struggle. Her own briny Phantom. I yank harder. I won't let him have her. I have to pull her up, which will require both holding her and somehow swimming. I'll have to use my legs, those that have marched hundreds of miles under a punishing rucksack. Those legs that helped me jump over a seven-foot wall to prove myself worthy of combat status, that propelled me up that rope. Those that helped me stumble and crawl away from the explosion.
So I kick. Never harder. I kick while pulling. Then her face, strewn with hair, all that brown hair, breaches the surface, and mine does, too, coughing up seawater. She gasps, slurping air. Eyes wide.
She's been sapped of all the energy she needs to stay afloat. Complete dead weight. “It's a pack,” I tell myself. “It's just the pack you carry in training, the pack you take in the field every time. You can handle that weight.”
Lightweight.
Holding us up there, resisting the current, not getting sucked farther out to sea—that is hard. The currents and eddies and waves feel like a mob of liquid zombies, rigid and cold with rigor mortis, snatching at us, hauling us down, trying to consume us. An irresistible meal we might make for the wading dead. If I had a dime for every zombie comic, movie, and graphic novel I've ever read, I could buy this beach (and fire that lazy lifeguard, fire him right out of a carnival cannon). There are lots of ways to evade a zombie. The best way? Run.
The legs, remember. It's all about the legs now. I kick with everything I've got.
The cavernous ocean seems to convulse with a laugh, flexing its gills. It wants this girl. But so do I. She's mine.
Not so fast.
Mine and Kobi's. He's finally with us. He's holding her, too, kicking, too, and trying hard to stay afloat. Three arms are far better than one. That must be an expression, right?
Kobi and I catch each other's wild eyes. “Oh, man,” he says, gasping. “Oh man, oh man.” He takes some of her weight just when I've given up hope. “So much for a relaxing day at the beach.”
“Screw you, Kobi,” I say, choking on my own words.
The tide continues to rip us away from shore. Now, instead of one victim, three struggle to stay afloat. We're too far out now to hear the girl's friend, too far from shore to see over the waves. The waves. So small on the beach as I stood and wondered, and now they're surging. They crash on our heads. Is this really it? After everything I've been through? Where the hell is that lifeguard?
Yep. We're on our own. If I survive this and can manage to close my fingers after this brutal swim, I vow to punch that lifeguard in the throat. It'll be worth breaking my final fist.
HEAD ABOVE WATER
No. You don't just die. My mother is not coming here to claim her waterlogged son. In a desperate last effort to survive, I plummet my legs downward. I keep thrusting them down, keep at it, going deep underwater to find some answer, to find something. I'm not sure what I'm looking for.
But I find it. There. I find sand. The current is dragging us parallel to the shore now. As my head goes under the surface, my outstretched toes dig into the ocean floor. I still cling to the girl's arm above me, a vise-grip, and extend her up—I shove her—as far up as I can. Her mouth must be sitting just above the surface again. And I can feel her straining upward, reaching, her and Kobi. They're both heaving, vacuuming air. She wants to live. She can live, for now.
“So, OK,” I think, finally able to ponder, to plot a potential escape. “We're anchored in place here, and two of us, at least, are breathing up there. Good start, a fine start.” I consider that line from the first Superman movie: “You've got me? Who's got you!?”
Old plan: Keep moving. New plan: Hold your breath.
I've always had a talent for this feat, ever since the long weekends, hundreds of them, back home in that pool a world away. At age eleven, I even won a volleyball, betting against my neighbor, a fat, bald Israeli guy, that I could hold my breath underwater for two full minutes. A volleyball? What the hell kind of a weird bet is that? I lived in the pool back then. The ocean, too. In Miami, I learned to test those waters, to test my breath for as long as I could. It was a game.
This is not. This is no fun at all. Exertion and fear have robbed me of air. “Oxygen stores are depleted,” I think, calling on the scraps at the bottom of my will.
Without oxygen, the human body can only survive—
That's enough out of you, PF!
To be fair, though, he has as much at stake as I do. So what do we do? I wait a beat. Ten seconds. Fifteen. Twenty. Decision time, Izzy. Let's go. I reckon this all with a growing despair. They say drowning, when you're finally drowning, is supposed to be peaceful. So why is my whole chest heaving? I know if I let go, then my friends won't fare any better. If I let go, they're dead.
Yep.
For the second time in less than a minute, something emerges from the depths for our aid. Some mighty force, summoned by God only knows. The tide begins to recede, fast, almost as if we've passed some test. Almost like those parting Red Sea waters I learned about in Hebrew school. Somehow the waters lower, though barely enough for my chin to breach the surface, my Adam's apple tickled by the slosh. And with that neck outstretched, I swig in a delicious mouthful of air, just as the next breaker smashes over our heads. Deus ex machina at its salty finest.
“All right. You've got what you need, Izzy.” The new burst of O2 has given me the strength, the resolve. I have just enough in reserve to kick off the sand and—with my friends above—to creep to shore. It's three feet forward, one foot back. All the way under, then up just enough. And the closer we get to the shoreline, the friends, the crawl, become less and less of a toil. “I've twice survived now,” I think. And this time, I'm coming out in the same number of pieces, with a heavier load to bear, not less.
Finally, Kobi and I stagger out of the waves. We hold
up the girl between us. A sopping ragdoll, she collapses on the sand into the embrace of her friend. I hit the deck, heaving, all acid and salt. The indignity of being down on all threes. This body. This one. If it could do all that—maybe it can do anything.
And it's alone. For the first time in nearly eight months. It seems that Phantom has left me, maybe swept out to sea, jetsam on his way into a clutch of hungry jellyfish.
And just where on God's sandy Earth has the lifeguard been this whole time? Taking a piss? Chatting up a girl? By now, I'm really hoping he'll die of mono. I'm willing to contract it myself so I can pass it to him.
HAND IN MARRIAGE
With both knees and one palm planted in sand, I force my eyes open, look over at the girl. Straining to assess the damage my rough grip must've caused her, I discover an interesting thing. I feel my cheeks flushing—she's no girl. Not a young girl, but a woman. A young woman cradled in another young woman's arms. A stunning woman. And I don't breathe again. Can't.
It's oxygen deprivation. It's another near-death experience. No, whatever the reason, my mind races knots and knots ahead. This is exactly what happens in romantic movies—in chick flicks, in Lifetime TV movies. And, let's face it, this is how Superman lands Lois Lane, how Spidey webs Mary Jane.
This is how they always get the girl. My heart is battering its cage, only half because of the rescue. The other half is…no—not love per se. That would be cheesy. But with surety, deep knowledge of what's to come. “Amputee Saves Woman from Death. Woman to Be One-Armed Savior's Bride.” Yes. A much better headline now. My mother will prefer to come to this beach for a fall wedding.
“OK, Izzy?” Kobi wheezes from somewhere above and behind me. How is it he's still standing?
I nod robotically, but keep my focus on the woman, on breathing and dreaming, on what will be. I think of our vows—“I'll hold you up, always”—but before I can memorize any more, she stands up on her own. She comes toward me on fawn-like legs. Her eyes, a seafoam green. They meet mine.
This is it.
She wipes her delicate lips with the back of her hand. She says, “Thank you.” Then, with an arm on her friend's shoulder, she turns away. Limps out of my life. I remain on my hand and knees. I shake for a while as the adrenaline subsides. I'm out to sea again.
With Kobi's help, I get up for the silent trip back to Shoham. The sky seemed to darken, though I see on the dashboard clock that it's only four. Halfway back, I close my eyelids to see if I can feel it. Him. I open my eyes on the yellow line. We're flying home. All three of us. Phantom never really left.
The moment I recognize him here with us, rockin’ out to “I Gotta Feeling,” I feel the pulsing pain in the place where my arm used to live. What's a guy have to do to feel good about himself? To feel like he knows what the hell he's doing with his life? To feel like he's going places? What's a guy have to do to slay his Phantom?
“Kobi,” I murmur. “What would you say if I told you I was going back to combat?”
He stares ahead for a minute, absorbing that insanity. Then he smiles. “I'd say that's looking at the glass half full, Izzy.”
“The ocean, Kobi. The ocean half full.”
“The arm.”
“What?”
“My arm.” Can't they understand me?
One of the eighteen-year-old girls on the ambulance crew—a pretty girl with curls—looks over at one of the other eighteen-year-old girls, who smiles. There are three (the other's a redhead with bright-blue eyes). Or maybe my vision's screwy and I'm seeing triple. “What's he saying?”
“Not sure. He seems pretty doped up.”
“Don't…forget…my arm.” I say through clenched teeth. I consider unstrapping from the gurney to go hunt it down myself.
“He wants this,” says Amir, my squad mate, appearing outside the back of the rig. He shares an uncanny resemblance with Sgt. Zim from the movie Starship Troopers: big nose, square jaw, deep-sunken eyes. Amir produces my left arm, cradling it like a puppy. The last time I saw it, it was soaring up into the sky. Seeing the thing again now reminds me just how deep in the doghouse I really am. At least I can't see more than one Amir.
“Oh…” says Blue, the third girl on the crew.
Amir passes the appendage as though handing over a roasted marshmallow on a stick. She tucks it beside me, under the strap of stretcher. So this is what it takes to hold hands with a girl? My damn arm is doing better unattached to my personality.
They communicate my vitals. No sign of fuss about the whole I'm-handling-your-severed-limb thing. These teenaged medics are the real deal. Behind Blue is one of those tear-off, page-a-day calendars, compliments of Big Pharma. I mark the date: January 8, 2009. There's a tiny drop of something—blood?—on the bottom left corner of the page. It fades in and out of focus. Please don't vomit in front of the girls, Izzy. Not easy with this alien warmth pressing against my ribs.
Amir jumps in the back doors and looks me over, chewing his lips. “You're gonna pull through, Izzy. I'm telling you.”
A promise from Amir is no small thing. He's a damn Spartan warrior. I close my eyes a moment, and my whole world spins. I open them on Amir. He narrows his eyes, and leans down to listen to whatever words of wisdom I'm about to utter. These could be my last, the much-anticipated meaning of life.
Wait for it.
“Listen. I have, like…two packs of Mike and Ikes in my rucksack.”
“Izzy, I—What?”
“That's Grade-A American candy. If I don't make it, promise you'll go to town on them.”
“OK, Willy Wonka,” Blue cuts in, folding up her blood-pressure cuff. “We're ready to roll.”
Smiles jumps out the back doors. She must be sitting up front with the driver. Curls straps into the jump seat to my side, obscuring the calendar. But Amir won't let go of my arm, the one still attached to my personality. He wants to say something. I can see it on his face.
Wait for it.
“I don't really care for Mike and Ikes. Any Starburst floating around your pack?”
Blue peels him away and shoves him out the back. He jumps down, turns around, and the ambulance starts to pull away. The back doors are still flung open.
The last thing I see is Amir staring straight at me through the doors bouncing open and shut. He's yelling something, but I can't hear him over the engine. He cups his hands around his mouth and shouts each word slowly, so I can understand: “You're…not…a…pus-sy!”
Those are the kindest words Amir has ever aimed in my direction.
I am not a pussy.
A CALL TO ARMS
“Pussy!” Amir spits. Three months earlier, and I'm strapped to a stretcher during a forced march.
He bears the brunt of my weight, scowling at me the whole way back to base. “You better thank your friends for carrying you. You goddamn better.”
Amir isn't pissed at me. Lifting a nerdy American private like me is child's play for the natural-born warrior. Amir's angry for me—on my behalf. He knows only “pussies” volunteer to ride the stretcher in this exercise.
He's right. I'm the one who wanted this. I wanted to leave the suburbs of Miami, my Xbox and comics, my pool and my bookcase full of fantasy to join an army half a world away. But I didn't fly all the way to Israel to play soldier, for real soldiers to carry me.
HANDLING BUSINESS
Just a few months later, and I'm no longer playing victim. Now I'm doing the heavy lifting. This is “the shit” I heard so much about. And just in time for Hanukkah. I never expected it to be fun, exactly—but I didn't expect this, either; I didn't sign on for quite this level of suckage. Did I just lose my damn arm?
DEADLIFT
December 27, 2008–January 8, 2009. They keep repeating this is not a war. This is barely a call to arms. The brass, the politicians, the commanders—they practically shout it at us: NOT A WAR!
“What's that, sir? Your sister's not a whore? I can barely hear you with these rockets exploding above my helmet!”
Especially the thirteenth day. Lucky thirteen. Just before dawn on January 8th, my platoon is on an all-night stakeout on the fence. We rookies have yet to tramp a foot outside of Israel. We're right on the line, though. We don't know it yet, but over the border in Gaza, the flying fragments of an RPG have just ended Captain Rosner, one of our battalion's veteran officers.
He's already dead. I'm on the “safe” side of the fence, thinking about my buddies, Mike and Ike, chilling in my pack, and Captain Rosner's already dead.
ARMED TO THE TEETH
While Rosner's unit is a few clicks away at the tip of the assault force, taking heavy fire from a platoon of well-entrenched enemies—“Dirties”—our skeleton crew of fifteen spends the night fighting fatigue, trying to stay warm, trading candy, only the bitter wind for company. Our detachment spends ten hours on high alert, sighting every mule, dog, and rat. All those innocent, four-legged dudes escape our fire.
We lie stock-still on an incline of frozen soil. What are we waiting for? For the ground to cave in around us? For Hamas to break the surface of their tunnels and crawl out like the undead from their graves?
Actually, yes.
That kind of nonsense has happened before. We have it on good authority (Israeli intelligence) that it's going to happen again, exactly here. We're right on top of a known Hamas “breach point.” They could be under us right now, creeping with their AK-47s. There's other intelligence, too: Hamas leadership has ordered drivers to ram explosive-packed cars into the border fence. We're told they plan to send two-man crews to follow on dirt bikes into Israel. To inflict havoc upon the nearby Ein HaShlosha kibbutz—the communal settlement adjacent to our base—and slaughter as many civilians as possible with 39mm bullets before we can hunt them down.