No Man's Land

by S. T. Underdahl

  She nods. “It’s so frickin’ hot in here.”

  Outside gives us immediate relief; the cold, clean air feels amazing in my lungs. I breathe in deeply, cooling myself from the inside out.

  Scarlett is gazing up at the sky, her eyes soft. “I love nights like this,” she says, walking a few steps away. “When the sky is so clear that you can see every single star. Most nights you never realize how many are up there.”

  I look up to see it the way she did. “Yeah,” I say. “I guess I’ve never thought about that before.”

  “It makes me think of summers when I was, like, eight. My mom would pack food and we’d drive out to the lake and spend the whole day out there. I’d run all over the beach looking for interesting pieces of driftwood, fossils, whatever. At the end of the day, Dad would build a fire and we’d make hot dogs and s’mores and watch the sunset. And then the stars would come out.”

  The blackness of the sky expecting stars … the line from Polychrome pops into my head. I still haven’t asked Scarlett about the poems. She hasn’t mentioned them, and for some reason that makes me unable to bring them up. Until now. “Hey, Scarlett,” I say, “I’ve been meaning to ask you—”

  “There you are!” Koby’s coming toward us, his sweaty blond hair sticking to his forehead. “No one knew where you guys went. The band’s going to start any minute.”

  “We came out here to cool off a little,” I tell him. I’m kind of bummed that the moment has passed to ask about the poetry bombs.

  Koby nods appreciatively. “It does feel awesome out here,” he agrees, shaking his head violently enough to send the sweat flying. Scarlett backs out of range, but she’s smiling.

  “Are you glad you came?” I ask her.

  “A hundred percent,” she says. “I’m so glad Miranda invited me along.”

  “Miranda’s awesome,” Koby agrees. Even though he’s addressing Scarlett, for some reason he’s looking at me.

  “Yep,” I second.

  We stand there quietly for a minute or two, studying the sky and enjoying the night air. A smattering of snowflakes drift down from the sky and we have a contest to see who can catch more of them on their tongue.

  “Man, I need more than this to drink,” Koby says finally. “Too bad the line to buy water is like a mile long.”

  “I don’t mind,” Scarlett says. “I’ll go get us all some.”

  “Better hurry,” I advise. “It can’t be long before Poisoned Hearts comes out.”

  Koby and I dig in our pockets for money and Scarlett sets off.

  “She’s pretty decent too,” Koby comments as we watch her walk away. “Not like she seemed at first.”

  “Yeah.” I know my friends have given Scarlett another chance because of me, because they care about and trust me. It’s so different from how I feel at home.

  All of a sudden, the unmistakable strains of Poisoned Heart’s opening number issue forth from inside the Coliseum.

  “Damn!” Koby exclaims. “I wanted to see them come out!”

  “No big deal.” I shrug. “We can catch Scarlett on the way.”

  We head inside to get what we came for.

  Thirty-Two

  Poisoned Heart doesn’t disappoint; the music is tight and the band makes sure to cover both of their albums, playing a sweet mix of old and new stuff. The mosh pit swings back into action; bottles of water and other, sweeter beverages start arcing through the air. It isn’t long before the floor is both wet and sticky, but miraculously, no one falls. Crowd surfers spring up and a Wall of Death forms briefly, but Security steps in and it quickly flames out.

  Even with all the action on the floor, Poisoned Heart’s sound is amazing—every breakdown pumps new energy through the crowd.

  “I hope they play ‘Sanctuary’!” Miranda shouts.

  I try to reply, but between the pulse of the music and the pounding in my head, it’s impossible to tell if any sound is coming out of my mouth or not. I’ve downed the bottle of water Scarlett managed to buy, but the place is like a sauna and I’m sure I’ve probably sweated it all out already. Just as I decide I have to head back outside or I’ll pass out, the band cues up the opening bars of “Sanctuary.”

  I will build myself a castle

  Hang a bright sun in the sky

  Fill the fields with golden flowers

  Pour a crystal lake nearby

  I’ll construct a stony fortress

  Where I cannot hear your lies

  And then hide myself inside it

  So you’ll never see me cry

  Sanctuary … sanctuary …

  It’s surreal hearing the words coming straight from the band that wrote them. Miranda grabs my arm; when I look at her, she has tears of happiness in her eyes. “I can’t believe we’re actually here,” she hollers in my direction, or at least that’s what I think she says.

  Rather than attempt any words, I grab her hands in mine and we grin at each other with pure joy. It’s doubtful that any other night of my life will be able to top this one.

  I’ll lock my heart away from you

  That precious piece of glass

  Send a messenger with my farewell

  This pain will be my last

  Sanctuary … sanctuary …

  Too soon, it’s over. The band plays two encores, but it still isn’t long before we’re being swept along in the wave of dazed, happy, and nearly deaf people flowing out of the Coliseum. We chatter all the way back to the car, laughing at how odd and distant our own voices sound to our damaged ears.

  Finally, we reach the Buick and stand around smiling tiredly at each other while Koby finds his keys. With the doors unlocked, everybody collapses inside. Despite the great time we’ve had, it’s a relief not to be jostled and buffeted by total strangers.

  “Whoa,” Ali says, after we’ve been quiet for a few

  seconds.

  “Yeah,” I agree, thinking Ali has pretty much nailed it, and Scarlett nods in agreement.

  “Totally awesome,” Koby sums up.

  Miranda sighs happily. “Anyone else starving?”

  It isn’t until much later, after we’ve filled our bellies with truck-stop food and piled back into the car for the long ride home, that I look at my phone: Four missed calls.

  Quickly, I fumble with the buttons, reviewing the history. I’ve missed four calls all right. And every one of them is from Victoria.

  Thirty-Three

  (ABC News)—A radio-controlled model truck sent to one soldier by his younger brother likely saved the life of Staff Sgt. Christopher Fessenden. Fessenden and his platoon used the toy to check the road ahead of them on a patrol, and were surprised when it became tangled in a trip wire connected to an estimated 500 pounds of explosives. The bomb

  went off, sparing the lives of six soldiers

  controlling the truck from their Humvee …

  I’ll never know whether it happened while we were watching Poisoned Heart or while I was chowing down on pancakes and eggs at the I-94 Café and Truck Stop, but sometime during the night, Brian got pulled over by an alert police officer. Victoria told me that the cop gave him a breathalyzer test and arrested him for driving under the influence of a controlled substance. It doesn’t matter what the controlled substance was, although since I’d seen the Gator at Marhoola’s, I figure Brian and his friends had met up with Brian’s new best buddy, Jack Daniels.

  When I get home, I find Brian sitting upright on the sofa in the darkened living room, looking ready to face a firing squad. On the positive side, he seems to be mostly sober.

  “Hey,” I say. “I talked to Victoria.”

  “Yeah,” he says. “Her dad bailed me out.”

  I can only imagine how humiliated Brian must be to have been bailed out by his ex-future-father-in-law. “Is Mom up?” I ask.

  “No,” he says. “She doesn’t even know yet. I figure I’ll let her sleep. She’ll need her energy to be ashamed of me in the morning.”

  There’s reall
y nothing I can say to that.

  “God,” Brian moans, burying his face in his hands. “How could I be so fucking stupid?”

  I open my mouth, but can’t really come up with anything that makes sense. “I don’t know,” I tell him finally. “It happens, I guess.”

  “Not to me,” Brian sighs. “This isn’t something that’s supposed to happen to me.”

  He looks so lost and hopeless it worries me. “Look,” I say, “right now there’s no point thinking about it. I’m completely shot and I’m sure you are too. Let’s just go to bed; we’ll figure it all out in the morning.”

  “Yeah,” Brian says, his voice flat. “Mom’ll have to give you a ride to the cop shop and get the Gator. They towed it there.”

  “Okay. We’ll get it figured out. Let’s just go to bed.”

  Brian nods, but continues to sit there until I get up and reach out to pull him off the couch. His hand in mine is as cold as death, and he wobbles slightly before he gets his footing and I feel okay letting him go.

  I go to my room and pull off my clothes, too tired to even to think about brushing my teeth. I’m half asleep before my head even hits the pillow, but one last image drifts through my mind and brings me hurtling back to wakefulness: Brian, downstairs in his bedroom, alone, humiliated, and depressed. The pistol is in his hand.

  I bolt out of bed and run, through the kitchen and down the stairs. “Bri?” I call softly, not wanting to startle him under whatever circumstances I might be walking into.

  The Howard basement has always been a comfortably disorganized place, but Brian’s room is neat as a pin these days. His duffel has been unpacked, folded up, and tucked under his bed. His dress uniform hangs neatly in his closet, behind which the rest of his shirts are filed with regimented precision. To my relief, a quick glance at the bed reveals my brother, lying on his back and breathing heavily. He’s in the deep, drugged-like sleep of the exhausted and inebriated.

  I creep around in the dark, searching until I find the pistol tucked just underneath the bed, within easy reach. Even though I know there’s a chance Brian might wake up in the night to look for it, I’m not about to take any chances. Holding the pistol securely in two hands, I carry it out of his bedroom and upstairs, where I bury it in the bathroom closet behind a stack of towels.

  Back in my room, I make a decision: tomorrow I’m going to talk to Mom and tell her everything I know about what’s going on with Brian. Faced with all the evidence, it’s hard to imagine she won’t listen to what I have to say. And with my mind made up, I fall into my own deep, dreamless sleep.

  The next morning my mind revs into gear before I even wake up. Making the decision to talk to Mom brought me immense relief last night, but now that it’s morning, I’m nervous. The truth is, in the past, my parents never really put much stock in what I had to say; I seldom gave them any reason to. Now I don’t know whether Mom will take me seriously.

  Nevertheless, I have to try. Sitting upright makes me feel tired all over again, so I lie back down to finish waking up. As I do, my eyes focus on the aquarium across the room and I remember what else Leo and I had planned for this morning.

  “Guess what?” I call to Leo. “Today’s the day that your hunger strike officially comes to an end.”

  I figure he’ll have a few sarcastic retorts to that, but there’s nothing. “Look, don’t give me the silent treatment,” I say. “You and I both know we’ve got to do something. Things can’t go on like this.” I sit up and swing my feet out of bed, then walk over so I can look at him while I talk about this. “I’ll do the best I can to … ”

  Leo’s warming rock is bare, and he isn’t lying in his water dish or anywhere out in the open. I nudge aside a pile of bark where he sometimes likes to hide, discharging a torrent of scurrying crickets, but no Leo. A few shriveled mealworms are scattered around on the substrate, which tells me he hasn’t been eating them.

  “Buddy?” I call softly. “Don’t be like that. Come on, let’s … ” I lift up Leo’s cave, and there he is.

  His eyes are open but unmoving, their surfaces milky and dull. “Dude?” A feeling of unreality washes over me; from somewhere distant, I hear my heart begin to pound. Frantically, I toss the cave aside and use my finger to give Leo a sharp poke; he shifts a little, but stiffly, like a cardboard cutout version of Leo.

  “No!” I gasp, too horrified to believe what my eyes are telling me. Gingerly, I pick up his body, but it’s as lifeless and brittle as a twig on the sidewalk. Turning him over, I see that Leo has grown so emaciated that his stomach is practically glued to his backbone. Worst of all, it looks like the crickets turned the tables and nibbled most of the skin off of my friend’s familiar crooked tail.

  I carefully set Leo down on the desk next to the aquarium, trying hard to breathe. Seeing him loose outside his enclosure is strange, but there’s no danger of him running away now. “I was going to … feed you this morning,” I tell him, the words barely squeezing their way past the painful lump in my throat. Tears prickle in my eyes and I wipe at them angrily with my palms. I’m not sure who I’m mad at: Leo or myself. “Why?” I demand. “Why couldn’t you have hung on a little longer?”

  Suddenly everything washes over me in a huge wave, and my knees go weak under the pressure of it all. I stumble backwards and land on the edge of my bed, lurching with silent sobs. Through the hard times of the past, Leo was always there with his wry comments. Now, when things are at their worst, he’s gone.

  I think I cry for twenty minutes or more; every time it feels like the pain is subsiding, I lift my head and see what’s left of Leo, or think of Brian’s lost, defeated face in the darkness last night, and a new wave of tears comes from somewhere.

  Suddenly, a warm hand is on my shoulder. “Dov …

  honey … what in the world is the matter?”

  It’s Mom, standing over me, her face pained with worry. Even though I’ve seen her face look worried before, this time it’s for me, and the sight of it brings a fresh onslaught of tears. When she sees that I’m incapable of talking, Mom sits down on the bed beside me. She puts her arms around me and presses my head into her shoulder. “It’s okay, sweetheart,” she says. “Cry it out and then we’ll talk.”

  Obediently, I cry until my breath comes in hiccups, and although it seems impossible, Mom is right: eventually I run out of tears.

  Obituary

  It is with great sadness that Dov Howard announces the passing of his beloved friend, Leo the Gecko. Leo arrived in the Howard household as a special gift on June 23, 2007 and passed away quietly, on his own terms, on December 4, 2011. During his lifetime, Leo provided all who met him with dry wit and quiet friendship, and served as a reminder of the joy of simple things: fresh crickets, a warm, sunny rock, and a relaxing swim in one’s own pool.

  From the very moment he arrived, Leo was the epitome of a faithful companion and sage advisor. His wisdom knew no boundaries, and he observed the world outside his enclosure with an objective and thoughtful eye.

  Leo is survived by his wingman and human brother, Dov Howard. He will be missed beyond what Dov’s mere words could ever express.

  Thirty-Four

  (American Psychologist)—Suicides among soldiers continue to increase. The U.S. Army has reported yearly increases for the past five years, with the toll reaching 147 in the first eleven months of 2009. Figures released by the Army reveal that about

  one-third of these suicides involved soldiers who

  were deployed at the time of their deaths, and another third involved soldiers who had

  returned from deployment …

  “I don’t get it,” Scarlett says, incredulous. “She didn’t believe you?”

  “It’s not that she didn’t believe me,” I tell her, stabbing a straw into my cheeseburger. Scarlett is working at the Pepper now, so I came by hoping she’d be here. “It was just that the minute she heard about Brian breaking up with Victoria, tears started rolling down her face and she wasn’t even li
stening after that.” Frankly, I was surprised to see that Mom didn’t already know about Brian and Victoria—she must be the only one in town who hadn’t heard the news. I haven’t even told her about Brian’s DUI; I figure it’s my brother’s responsibility to break that one to her.

  “So, what now?” Scarlett asks, watching me.

  “I don’t really know.” I shrug wearily. “I’m starting to think that my parents see what’s going on, but they just can’t deal with it. It’s easier to pretend that Brian’s just ‘adjusting’ to being home, because if they admit that it’s anything more whacked than that, they’d have to do something. And I don’t think they have the first clue what that would be.”

  “Sometimes it’s just easier to look the other way,” Scarlett says quietly. “Especially when the truth is too hard to face.”

  “I guess.” We sit silently for a beat.

  “I’m sick of this subject,” I say finally. “Let’s talk about something else.”

  “Sure,” Scarlett says.

  The only other subject I don’t want to touch is Leo, who’s lying in state in a Kleenex box on my desk, cushioned by a layer of folded paper towels. Although she’s sympathetic to my loss, Mom isn’t happy about a dead animal in the house and she’s after me to dig a hole in the backyard to bury him. I haven’t been able to do it yet; if I even let myself think about what happened to Leo, a sledgehammer-blow of guilt nearly sends me to my knees. I know I shouldn’t have waited so long to try and fix things for him. And yet, like I see happening with Brian and my parents, it’s easier to deny how serious a problem is if acknowledging it means doing something you dread.

  I hesitate. I did have an ulterior motive for dropping in to visit Scarlett. Another poem has turned up, this time tucked into my History book. It’s the darkest one yet.

  Clinging to the wall of my abyss

  Curled fingers ache

  The dampness chills my bones

  Looking for a place to plant my weight

  I fumble blind across hardscrabble stone

  My teeth gnash hard together in my mouth

  The taste of blood explodes upon my tongue

  I slip and plummet down and down and down