No Man's Land

by S. T. Underdahl

  One faulty step and everything’s undone.

  “Hold on a second,” she says, seeing a customer come in. “I’ll be right back.”

  I watch her go, thinking that this time I’m not going to lose my nerve. I want to talk to Scarlett about an idea I’ve had for her to submit one of her poems to the school newspaper, the Longview Leader. I’m sick of putting up with the harassment and judgments of morons like Ray Sellers, and I want him and everyone to see Scarlett’s amazing talent. I’m not sure she’ll go for it, though; if she has to give her poetry to me anonymously, I figure it’ll take some major convincing to get her to publish it for the rest of the school to read. Still, I hope that once she sees how much everyone loves her work, she’ll be more open about it. Miranda and I express our feelings through our drawing, but Scarlett gets hers out with words.

  Things are getting busier at the Pepper and it’s a good ten minutes before she’s free again. Until then, I watch her smile and talk to customers as she waits on them. It’s nice to see her smile, and she’s been smiling a lot more lately. She’s dyed her hair blond on top and black underneath. Even though it’s dramatic, it looks happier, somehow. According to what she’s told me, her mom said her dad was doing better. Scarlett hopes she’ll be invited back home by Christmas, or maybe Easter.

  She comes back to my table carrying a glass of soda. “I can take my break now,” she says, sliding into the seat across from me.

  I watch her peel the end of the paper from her straw. “So … I want to talk to you about something.”

  She aims her straw at me and blows the wrapper in my direction, grinning when it nails me in the shoulder. “Sure. What’s up?”

  “I want to talk about the, uh, poems.”

  She tilts her head. “Poems?”

  I almost expected this. “Scarlett,” I say patiently, in a c’mon-we-both-know-what-I-mean voice. “The poems you write?”

  Now it’s Scarlett who hesitates. “What about them?”

  “They’re really good, Scarlett.” I take a deep breath. “I think a lot of people would like them. So, I was thinking maybe you should submit some of them to the Leader. I know it sounds lame, but … ”

  Scarlett raises her eyebrows. “The Longview Leader? Dov, I don’t think it’s really the type of stuff I want people to see.”

  “But the ones I’ve read … ”

  Scarlett looks confused. “The ones you’ve read?” she repeats. “What are you talking about?” Her face darkens. “Did Kerr show you my poems?”

  “Kerr? I mean Polychrome, and the other ones … the ones you put in my jacket, and my locker, and my … ”

  “Poly-what ?” Scarlett seems genuinely puzzled. “Dov, Mr. Kerr is the only person who’s ever seen any of my poetry. He keeps them in a file in his office. They’re all about … well, you know … the stuff that happened before I came here. Not stuff I want the whole school to read.”

  Now I’m the one who’s confused. “But if you didn’t write those poems … then who did?”

  She shrugs. “How would I know? Why did you think it was me in the first place?”

  “I don’t know … I guess I just assumed it was you. It kind of started around the time you got here, and … it was just something that seemed like you, I guess. They really are good,” I add thoughtfully.

  “Nope,” Scarlett says. “Not me.” She tilts her head to one side, curious now. “So someone’s been slipping you poetry? Geez, Dov, who do you think it is?”

  “No idea,” I admit honestly. “None at all.”

  Thirty-Five

  Brian’s DUI means that I’m stuck driving him everywhere, especially since Victoria is no longer in the picture. This is becoming problematic for both of us.

  As if Mom isn’t already upset enough about the DUI, now Brian has decided to postpone college for a while. This morning, he wants me to take him to Scheels to talk to Scott about getting his old job back. “Come on, Dov, let’s go,” Brian shouts from the living room. “Don’t make me come in there and get you.”

  I’m in my room with Leo; it’s been a week since he died, and it’s clear I can’t keep his body forever. With duct tape, I carefully seal him into his Kleenex box for the final time. Zen Arcade, Leo’s favorite, is on the turntable.

  Look, if it was impaction, nothing would have helped, Jared assured me when I confessed to him that I’d lost Leo. In fact, force-feeding him would only have made him more miserable before he died, which is what ultimately would have happened.

  I try to take comfort in that. “I’m sorry,” I tell Leo’s spirit for the hundredth time. “I’m really gonna miss ya, buddy.”

  No reply; the silence is deafening. I wish there was some way I could know whether Leo has forgiven me.

  When I’m satisfied Leo is entombed properly, I leave his sarcophagus on my desk and snap off the record player, then head out to the living room, ready for orders. As usual, Brian is in a surly mood; Brian 2.0 seems to have an overactive irritability chip, and it’s wearing Mom and me thin. “Finally,” he snaps when he sees me.

  Mom is reading a magazine on the couch and doesn’t look up. It was Mom who informed me I’d been drafted as my brother’s new chauffeur, adding that Dad has decided to stay on the road indefinitely. She hasn’t mentioned our conversation about Brian again, but I found a pharmacy bottle in the bathroom cabinet with her name on it. For Depression, the label read.

  I grab my keys and coat and follow Brian out to the Gator. There’s no doubt winter has arrived; going out without a jacket now means risking hypothermia. It snowed a little last night, and I feel the Gator’s tires skid on the slippery street as we head downtown.

  “Have you talked to Victoria lately?” I ask Brian, searching for something to make conversation.

  Brian grimaces. “No,” he says shortly. “Why would you ask me that?”

  “All right.” I shrug. “My bad.” Talking to my brother these days is like juggling active grenades; you never know when one is going to go off.

  We ride on in safe silence until I finally pull into the Scheels lot. “Come back in about an hour,” Brian orders. He straightens his eye patch, which these days qualifies as dressing up, before getting out and slamming the Gator’s heavy door behind him.

  “Yes sir,” I mutter sarcastically.

  I drive aimlessly downtown, figuring I’ll stop in the Dusty Groove and look through the LPs. Since Christmas is coming, I figure they might have gotten some new stuff in.

  Inside the store, I’m surprised and happy to see Miranda flipping through the used LPs. “Anything good?” I ask, coming up behind her.

  Miranda turns and her face lights up. “Hey!” she says. She holds up a Rites of Spring album entitled End on End. “Look what I found.”

  “Wow, sweet.” Rites of Spring was an 80s hardcore punk band, but a lot of their lyrics really make you think. I’d love to have End on End as part of my collection.

  Miranda nods. “Jelly?”

  “Um … little bit.”

  “I know.” She grins happily. “So what’s up? You just come downtown to hang?”

  “Nah, I had to give my brother a ride.”

  “He’s still not driving?”

  I shake my head. “No … his eye. You know.” The whole DUI thing makes me embarrassed. Even though everyone’s adoration of Brian irritates me, there’s something in me that likes having a brother who’s pedestal-worthy. I guess there’s a part of me that doesn’t want people to see that he’s losing it.

  Miranda nods, but something in her face tells me she knows. I wish I’d been honest. “A lot has changed since he got back, hasn’t it?” she says softly.

  I lift my eyes to meet hers. “Kind of, yeah. Actually, pretty much everything.”

  “I know. I’ve been watching you. You seem different, Dov. Quieter. Even your art has changed. And you don’t talk about Twohey as much.”

  I’m surprised; it isn’t something I figure anyone noticed. The truth is, I do feel di
fferent lately.

  Miranda sets the Rites of Spring album down and reaches out, taking my hand. Her nails are painted a dark peacock blue, and in her small, warm hand, mine look oversized and rough from the cold outside air. When she turns it over, we both look curiously at my palm, where I’ve written NO MAN’S LAND in red pen.

  I expect Miranda to ask what it means, but she doesn’t. I could have told her; I looked it up. According to Dictionary.com, it means “an area between opposing armies, over which no control has been established” and “an indefinite or ambiguous area where guidelines and authority are not clear.”

  That sounds about right.

  “You can talk to me about anything, you know that right?” Miranda says now. “I would never tell anyone. Not even Koby or Ali. I’m your friend, Dov. Always.”

  I nod, surprised to find tears springing to my eyes. It’s something that seems to happen a lot lately, and it’s embarrassing. I know Miranda has probably seen, but I pull my hand away and turn to flip rapidly through the used LPs, making myself focus on the selection. To her credit, Miranda acts as if she hasn’t noticed anything, and we spend the next half hour browsing companionably through the Dusty Groove’s latest inventory, talking music and comparing finds. By the time I leave to pick up Brian, I’m feeling a little better. Miranda pretty much always makes me feel that way.

  Thirty-SiX

  I drive into the Scheels parking lot and am unsurprised to see Brian standing outside waiting, his hands shoved into the pockets of his bulky army-issue jacket. The sky overhead has darkened, and it’s starting to snow. Brian’s hair is already dusted with crystallized flakes, making him look prematurely gray.

  “So, how’d it go?” I ask when he gets in the car.

  Brian shrugs. “All right, I guess. Scott’s going to think about whether he can use me.”

  “I thought he was holding your job for you. That’s what Victoria said.”

  “Yeah, well,” Brian says darkly. “I guess not.”

  I pull out of the lot and turn onto Main Street. “Don’t go home,” Brian suggests. “Let’s just drive. I’m not up for parental interrogation yet.”

  The only thing I have planned for the rest of the day is to bury Leo in the half-frozen soil of the backyard, so a random drive sounds like a good way to put that off awhile longer. “Where?”

  “Anywhere.” Brian mumbles. “It doesn’t matter.”

  We head down Main for a few blocks, then I turn right onto a side street and we drive up that. At the corner I take a left, then another right, taking us farther away from downtown. The snowflakes are growing larger and clinging together in loose clumps, but any of them that land wetly against the warm windshield dissolve immediately.

  “One time, our unit came across this dead Afghan guy …

  dude, he was huge,” Brian says out of the blue. “He must have stepped on an IED or something; it blew him nearly in half. Like totally gutted, bro.”

  “Huh.” By now I’m used to Brian’s random stories of death and destruction.

  “Usually they take their dead away, but I think this guy was just too big; he was just lying there with his eyes open and his arms up over his head, like he’d just given up. Or maybe they’d tried to drag him off and dropped him. Anyway, dude, for some reason, it kind of got to me. I mean, I still can see his face so clearly … and that red-and-white-checked rag on his head. ‘The Fat Man,’ we called him, whenever it came up. ‘The Fat Man.’”

  As often happens after Brian recounts one of his terrible stories, I say nothing, but when I glance sideways, I see that my brother’s mind is once again someplace far away. It’s hard to imagine that my brother’s eyes, only one of which still works properly, have witnessed such hideous things up close and personal. I wonder whether the eye behind the patch is constantly replaying those scenes for lack of anything else to look at; maybe that’s why he rarely wears it anymore.

  We drive past the Army recruiting office. “I’ve been doing some thinking,” Brian says, staring at the red, white, and blue flag on the door. “The doctors think my eye might come back better than they thought. As soon as it’s healed, I’m going to re-up.”

  Re-up; the only thing I can think of as Brian continues talking is a cop show I saw on television where the drug supplier said he had to go back to his crib and “re-up” his drug supply. Great, I think, what’s Brian into now? I’m about to ask him whether he hasn’t learned anything from his DUI, when the rest of what he’s saying starts to sink in.

  “The thing is, when I was talking to Scott today, it suddenly hit me: I don’t belong here, Dov. The place I need to be … the only place I feel like myself … is back there. It’s sort of its own universe, like that Stephen King book, The Dome. I thought real life was back home, but it isn’t. Real life is back there … inside the bubble.”

  “Back there,” I repeat. “So you’re saying you want to go back to Afghanistan.”

  Brian nods. “Bro, I wanted to come home so bad, but I had no idea what it would be like, you know? I can’t even talk to anyone about it, because no one really gets it. There’s no one I can tell about half the shit that goes through my head or they’d lock me up, Dov, seriously. I’ve got to go back; it’s the only thing that makes sense.”

  This is the second time I’ve heard Brian talk about looking to get deployed again, and suddenly I’m furious. Doesn’t he realize what it was like for Mom and Dad, for all of us, when he was in Afghanistan? When we had to worry every second that we’d get word he’d been hurt or killed … and now he wants all of us to go back to that again?

  “Are you nuts?” I explode. “If you go back there, Brian, it’ll kill Mom. And Dad. You have no clue how freaked out we all were when you were over there.”

  “I can’t think about that right now,” Brian says. “The only thing I can think about is how miserable I’ve been ever since I got back.”

  “Of course you can’t,” I snap. “When do you ever think about anybody besides yourself?”

  Now I have Brian’s attention. “What did you say?” he demands angrily.

  “Ever since you got home, you’ve been a selfish tool,” I shout at him. “Half the time you’re walking around biting everyone’s head off, and the rest of the time you actually think you are back there.” I haul in a deep breath. “Come to think of it,” I spit, “maybe you should go back.” As the words leave me, a wave of anger and adrenaline swells through my body. In response, my foot presses down hard on the accelerator so that the Gator surges forward, as if the car and I are one being.

  Brian is opening his mouth to freak on me when out of nowhere, everything explodes: BAMM! Neither one of us is wearing a seat belt, and we both fly forward. My teeth slam into the hard curve of the Gator’s big steering wheel, and Brian catapults up and onto the dash; his head colliding hard with the windshield and leaving behind a radiating spider web of cracks. An instant later, he rebounds back into his seat.

  “RRmmm,” Brian groans. My chin grows warm and wet, and my mouth fills with saliva and the coppery taste of blood. After a moment of frozen shock, I move my tongue gingerly against front teeth, which move loosely in their sockets. When I lift a hand to my mouth, it comes away covered in bright red blood, telling me I’ve split my lip.

  “Y’okay?” I murmur to Brian. He raises his head and looks at me. I can see he’s dazed, and there’s a laceration etched across the golf-ball-sized lump rising on his forehead. Still, at least he’s conscious and doesn’t seem to be bleeding anywhere.

  I shift in my seat and stretch my neck, trying to see over the Gator’s steaming, crumpled hood. I have no idea what we hit, but as the air clears, I see it’s another car; we broadsided it on the passenger side and as far as I can see, nobody inside is moving.

  “Oh crap,” I mutter, praying I haven’t killed anybody. I struggle with the Gator’s heavy door and when I finally get it open, I half-fall out onto the street.

  Steam is rising from the Gator’s engine, making it
difficult to get a good look into the other car, but even through my shock something seems vaguely familiar. I take a few steps closer and see with horror that the passenger, a kid about my age, is slumped motionless in his seat. To my great relief, the driver is moving; as I watch, he turns and starts trying to rouse the kid.

  All of the sudden, I realize why the other car looks familiar to me. Oh my God, I think. It’s not possible. It can’t be them.

  But it is. The crumpled car jammed crosswise against the nose of the Gator is the gold-colored Hyundai sedan that usually sits in the driveway of the Gabol household. I’ve ridden in it myself when Ali’s mom drives us to movies or drops me off at home after a sleepover. Which means that the man driving the other car is likely none other than Ali’s dad, Dr. Gabol.

  And the injured passenger is my best friend, Ali.

  Fumbling for my phone, I pull it out of my jacket pocket with hands that are shaking so violently I can barely manage to push the buttons for 911.

  Thirty-Seven

  “Dr. Gabol!” I shout, yanking on the driver’s side door. “It’s me, Dov! God, I’m so sorry … ” The car’s frame was twisted in the impact; the door is jammed and I can’t get it to budge.

  Dr. Gabol turns away from Ali, looking confused. “Dov?” he says, his voice muffled behind the window, “What are you doing here?”

  “We had an accident,” I tell him, near tears. “I hit you with my car. Can you help me get the door open?” Why couldn’t I have been the one hurt instead of Ali?

  “Ali has been injured,” Dr. Gabol says in his formal way. “He’s unconscious. I’m not sure what happened.” Blood is coming from somewhere under his hair and running down onto his face. Absently, Dr. Gabol reaches onto the seat beside him and picks up a winter scarf, wrapping it around his head to keep the blood out of his eyes.

  “I know,” I tell him, trying to be patient. “We had a car accident. I already called 911, so help is coming. Push on the door, okay? Please!” For some reason, I’m frantic to make sure they aren’t trapped inside the car.

  Obediently, Dr. Gabol turns toward the door and takes hold of the handle. “Your face … you are bleeding, Dov,” he observes. “You may be seriously injured.”