by Max Bolt
Mason was assigned a reintegration manager who devised a reintegration plan and a reintegration timetable, complete with reintegration checklist and reintegration support pack. But Mason’s reintegration manager was clueless as to just what he was dealing with. How do you reintegrate someone, whatever that means, without understanding (experiencing would be better) why that person requires reintegration in the first place?
At first Mason appeared to adjust well; a poster boy for post war assimilation. He was happy, he was energetic, he was optimistic – on the surface at least. He settled in with Linda and established a bond with the seven year old son whose formative years he missed. He took a job in procurement for a large building materials company.
But slowly the demons caught up with him.
What began as random nightmares soon became a nightly return to the Stan. Taliban creeping out of the shadows. Bodies strung from trees. The disfigured faces of the dead wasting into the desert dust. And Mason was powerless to stop them.
Because how do you explain why you hide in the closet staring at the thin strip of light beneath the door for hours on end? Or why you duck for cover and reach for a non-existent weapon when a door slams in the supermarket? And why you are yelling abuse, that you cannot remember minutes later, at the innocent cashier at the post office? Why you are yelling at people on the street? Why you are hurting and distancing your family, the very people that waited for you to return from a war they never wanted you to fight?
Mason felt his family slipping away. He felt himself slipping away. He blamed the war. He blamed the people that sent him to the war. The politicians that beat their chests, committing Australia to war only to hide in the safety of their Canberra mansions. He became bitter toward the country he risked his life to defend, as the average Australian was too self-absorbed to understand the gravity of his sacrifice.
What war? Afghanistan? Are we still over there? Didn’t we get out of Afghanistan years ago? The Taliban? Tell me, why are we fighting them again?
It was a war that the vast majority of Australia forgot the country was fighting. The only reminder was the odd body coming home. A momentary distraction before returning to the latest instalment of Master Chef or The Bachelor.
Mason fought his battle in private. He believed it a sign of weakness to ask for help. Instead he played mind games with his mind games and ultimately lost. In Afghanistan the fighting was simple, see enemy and shoot. But how do you fight the enemy in your brain that has no physical form? The enemy formed from the fragmented memories of what you experienced in the field, and the guilt of having returned home when others did not. The two A’s, Anxiety and Anger, fed off each other. Anxiety fed his anger, and anger devoured his anxiety. He developed a list of criminal charges: assault, road rage, and domestic abuse. He imploded.
Thankfully, though, there is a name for all of this: Post-war traumatic stress disorder. It is real and it is debilitating. But outing it with a name is one thing, correcting it, well, where do you begin?
Mason begins after Linda walks out with their son and after some tough talking from his police chief brother – you got to man up Mason. They used to say that in the field too; man up, closely followed by an apologetic man down and a call for the medics.
Enter the Government sponsored phycologist. When things get too hard call in the brain shrink; a well credentialed university graduate who has read a lot and is therefore well suited to fix these kinds of things. The role of the shrink is simple; he picks apart the memories, discards the twisted ones, and puts the rest back together. Like fixing a battered race car. The shrink, let’s call him Mr S, encourages Mason to talk about things.
But how do you explain to the uninitiated what it is like to see fellow soldiers ripped to shreds by roadside bombs or burned alive by anti-tank missile strikes. And how it feels to live every minute like it is going to be your last.
Don’t analyze things Mason, just talk.
Mr S believes everything can be solved through Q&A.
Tell me what you see.
“I see bad things.”
What kind of bad things?
“Real bad things.”
Describe them.
“They’re real bad.”
I can’t help you if you don’t share with me.
“Alright. I see a woman standing over the burnt body of her husband after an allied air raid. Only she can’t stand over all of him at once because there is a bit here and a bit there and some of him just isn’t there anymore.”
Mr S rubs his chin pensively, unsure what to say. Mason continues.
“I see a young woman with a rope around her neck strung from a tree. There’s five others like her nearby. Their faces are uncovered, their hajibs having been discarded, in a final act of disrespect by the men that did this to them. And below one of the women a child is crying and reaching desperately for the feet of its mother.”
Silence.
“Next? Want to continue? Mason has a thousand more stories. And when we are done reminiscing we can discuss how this country treats its veteran soldiers. How you risk your life for a country that doesn’t even remember the war you are fighting.”
Mr S surrenders. This kind of thing wasn’t covered in his university texts. He gets Mason on the pills. You can’t repair the mind organically you do it chemically. Two pills four times a day, and–
Mason is transformed. Well, he’s normal again. Not to pre-war Mason standard but social standard at least. Welcome back to the land of the living Mason, just pop two pills at the door and step right in.
But the human brain is a resilient organ. It is used to controlling things and it does not like being overridden by foreign substances. It resists. So they up the dosage of pills. The brain responds. More pills. Brain fights back. And so on. It becomes a chemical arms race and soon enough Mason is popping eighteen pills a day. The up is great, like flying with the birds, but the come down when he stops taking the pills?
Well just ask Linda and his son Ben.
*
Mason is feeling the come down right now. He’s fidgety and uneasy, and real thirsty. He has left the train in search of water and finds it in a 7-Eleven. He gets a bottle of water from the fridge and approaches the counter. The cashier is distracted by the television on the wall.
“Crazy. Nutters. Yes?” the cashier mutters to no one in particular.
The television is playing a news segment on the War on Terror. Now exactly which war is that again?
There is the usual footage of black clad supposed terrorist fighters marching up and down in the desert; guns raised like the spines of a porcupine, black and white flags blowing in the hot wind, and the dust cloud of a supposed suicide bomber in the distance. Then there are the Russian and US, yes, you heard right, Russian and US fighter jets dropping death together from the skies in the Syrian civil war. Blurred bodies lying in the street. Women and children crying.
The terror of the War on Terror.
All of it fueling the propaganda machine. Because like all good wars, the war on terror is fought in the field but won in the minds of the wider public. The footage cuts to the German Chancellor denouncing terrorism and muscling up to ISIS and the flood of immigrants into Europe.
The German Chancellor denouncing terrorism? 1940’s anyone? But hey that was then this is now.
The news dissolves and the cricket resumes; Australia none for 111 against the Poms, order restored. When–
two masked men burst into the store; one with a gun, the other with a machete.
“Down! Down! Get the fuck down!”
Mason lays down.
Gun Man approaches the counter. The cashier, a thin lad with dark hair, could be a poster boy for the 7-Eleven minimum wage scandal, shies back. Gun Man shoves a bag across the counter.
“The money. In here!”
Machete Man, hopping from foot to foot, scopes out the place, ensuring Mason and the cashier are the only two people in the store.
So thi
s is how it happens out here. Mason has read the news about service stations and pubs getting hit. The news portrays the hits as well coordinated. The reality is remarkably clumsy.
Dumb and Dumber, Mason thinks. The blokes are high on drugs and think they can get rich with a gun and a machete. Even viewing things from the floor Mason can spot the flaws in their plan. No one manning the door blocking anyone else from entering. Machete Man standing so close that Mason could upend him with a simple swipe of his arm. Gun Man waving his gun around like a wand rather than keeping it steady in case he has to fire it. And the whole exercise taking far too long.
“Don’t move. Please don’t move.”
Mason hears the fear in Machete Man’s voice. He does not want to be doing this. Gun Man is more direct.
“The money you Indian prick. In the bag.”
The cashier hesitates.
Just give em the money. Don’t be a hero. The owner pays you below the minimum wage and muscling up to armed bandits is not in your job description.
Mason is afraid for the attendant but not for himself. You spend years fighting the Taliban on their home ground, and a knife and gun do not faze you much. And Mason knows it would take a certain type of person to try and kill him with a machete. To just swing and slash, as the blood flies, and he knows Machete Man just isn’t that committed. Mason is more concerned that the store attendant starts channeling his inner Steven Segal and gets shot.
“The fucken money. Now!”
A gun to the forehead clears the cashier’s mind quicker than a shot of Red Bull, and he starts emptying the register. And everyone is so transfixed by the money entering the bag that no one notices the movement at the rear of the store. Dumb and Dumber have incorrectly concluded that the store is single manned. Big mistake. Very big mistake.
Would the real Steven Segal please step out of the shadows? And–
he does. He comes out of a storeroom, swinging a steel pipe with all he’s got. Gun Man, Dumb, does not see it coming and topples like Saddam’s statue after the allied taking of Baghdad, his gun spinning across the floor past Mason’s face. Dumber sees his mate go down, weighs up the reach of his 10 inch machete against the length of the steel pipe, and bolts. The steel pipe follows him out the store and up the street.
Mason casually steps over the sleeping gunman, nods at the rattled cashier, and places $2 on the counter for his drink and leaves.
*
Craig is deep in thought when his secretary buzzes him. He has asked not to be disturbed. But–
“It’s Mia. She says she just, absolutely, must, talk to you.”
Craig rolls his eyes as Mia’s voice comes through high pitched and distressed.
“Craig. It’s me, Mia.”
She says this like she genuinely believes he might mistake her for someone else.
“I’m concerned about tonight Craig. I don’t know whether we should go to Ivy Bar or Cargo Bar. Kylie has invited us to a private party at Cargo Bar but Frank…”
She refers to Frank like he is a close acquaintance.
“…is making a guest appearance at Ivy, and I just love Frank, he’s…”
Craig tunes out from Mia’s emergency. He stares instead at the atomic mushroom cloud rising above the Blue Mountains; a thin column of smoke that expands into an ominous dome high in the sky. The end of things?
Craig checks his emails as Mia, his sometimes girlfriend, describes her like, totally, like screwed up day. First, her personal trainer was fifteen minutes late for her hour of power in the park. Craig wonders absently if said personal trainer made up for his tardiness with a free fifteen minutes of power at their empty house afterwards, but that is a different matter, because the late training session kicked off a nasty chain reaction that saw Mia like miss her nails appointment, and have to like cut short her power shop at Double Bay with sometimes good friend Sami, and now her hairdresser is like off sick, so she’ll have to go to whichever party they like decide to go to, looking like, in her words, a total manky skank.
Craig opens an email from his Head of Human Resources titled – must read – which makes Craig not want to read it out of principle. The police have been out to the Penrith office. The ex-wife of one of the terminated employees has called the authorities concerned about her former partner’s welfare. Bloke left behind a raft of essential medication and has not been seen since. Mr Head Off – Head Of rather – Human Resources, concludes it is all a storm in a something or rather and assures Craig there is nothing to worry about. Protocol was followed, all sign offs were received, everything was done by the book. Controller of all things human signs off with – they live differently out there – LOL!
“… you there… Craig… you there?”
Mia cannot hear him and is starting to panic.
“Yes,” Craig replies, “sounds like you’re having a terrible day.”
“Yes. But tonight Craig. Which party do we go to?”
Craig rubs his head wondering how this became part of his life.
“Ivy,” he says to get the sequence over with, “we’ll see that dick from the…”
“Bachelor. He’s the Bachelor from The Bachelor, Craig, and his name is Frank,” Mia corrects him, “you have to know these things.”
She breaks off for a moment and when she returns she is more frazzled than before, “oh shit and hell, we just got invited to a party at O Bar. What do we do Craig? Life is just like so complicated…”
“Go get your hair done Mia,” Craig interrupts, “the inspiration might come to you there.”
He hangs up and glances again at the email from his Head of Human Resources. His father’s words beat at his brain.
Don’t ever consider the people son. The moment you do…
*
Fitch could never do a desk job and Mason’s former workplace confirms it. Dark walls. Small windows. Staff trapped inside their high walled cubicles, tapping keyboards and talking on phones, and sneaking glances at the two police officers searching their former colleague’s workstation.
Fitch starts with Mason’s desk drawers and Nate the filing cabinets. Fitch sorts through reams of reports. Payment lists. Bank statements. Invoices. A team building presentation entitled “Teamwork – the fuel of champions.” A laminated card depicting what to do in the event of a fire or bomb threat; someone has scribbled Run! over the formal instructions of Stay calm and follow instructions.
Things get more personal in the upper drawers. Newspapers, paperback novel, reading glasses, family photos of Fitch’s sister-in-law and nephew, and as Linda said, several vials of medication.
“What we looking for Chief?” Nate asks.
“Stuff.”
“What kind of stuff?”
“Stuff.”
Nate rolls his eyes. Fitch often drifted into his own inner world. Fitch had told Nate only that they were looking for anything indicating where the former occupant of this desk, a recently redundant middle aged male, had gone. No where or how or why Fitch should care about any of this.
Failing in their search they interview Mason’s former colleagues.
Good riddance.
Bloody weirdo.
He won’t come back and go postal with a shotgun, will he?
Bloody crazy bastard.
Mason had clearly made an impression on his work mates. But no one knew anything about Mason beyond what they saw in the workplace. Fitch corners Mason’s former manager.
“I didn’t want to s-s-sack him,” the manager stutters, “but head office give you a n-n-number, you g-g-got to meet it.”
“How was his mood on leaving?”
The manager screws up his face trying to recall.
“Well with M-M-Mason there’s w-w-weird and then there’s b-b-bbloody weird,” the manager chuckles.
“Did he say where he was going?”
The manager shakes his head and Fitch and Nate depart. Ironically, the only useful piece of information comes from the least expected source.
; “You here for Mason?”
The receptionist flicks her peroxide blonde hair when Fitch glances at her.
“You knew him?”
“We spoke sometimes. He was misunderstood,” she says, “people are so quick to judge.”
“Did you speak to him this morning.”
She nods, curling her hair around her index finger.
“I asked him where he was going.”
Fitch raises his eyebrows. “And?”
“Said he was getting his job back.”
“Did he say anything else?”
She shakes her head.
“He wasn’t a bad person you know,” the receptionist calls out as they leave.
Driving back to the station Nate presses Fitch.
“This a missing person case chief?”
“Could say that.”
“You know him chief?”
“Kind of.”
“Reckon you should hand it over to someone el…”
A report on the car’s secure channel interrupts them; the aftermath of an armed robbery at a 7-Eleven. Hardly news, another armed robbery in the armed robbery capital of Australia. But the attending officer’s report is interesting. The shop owner swore the offender had a gun before he knocked him out with a pipe, but there was no gun left at the scene.
The information spikes Fitch’s interest. He calls ahead and asks to see the CCTV tapes when they arrive at the station.
“Anything you want to share boss?” Nate asks.
“No.”
Chapter 5
So enough about the what and how of Mason’s breakdown, let’s consider the who? That is, who is responsible for his demise?
So, who is responsible?
Mason is. Everyone is responsible for their own actions.
Really? Not everyone gets sent to fight a forgotten war in the Middle East.
Society?
Too righteous.