by Suzy Parish
“My son’s nickname.”
Glenn drew on his cigar with a long, slow breath. When he breathed out, the smoke spiraled deep into the night.
“He died a year before I arrived in country,” I added. I hadn’t meant to spill my guts, and to Glenn, of all people, but speaking the words relieved the pressure deep inside me.
“It seems we have more in common than I first thought.” Glenn leaned back and rested against the bench.
A red glow twinkled on the end of my cigar. I turned it toward Glenn so he could see. “Looks like a thousand fireflies. Like we used to help my boy catch in a mason jar on humid nights. Sophie would pull an old jar she’d cleaned out, and I’d get a hammer and nail. I’d punch holes in the lid so they could breathe. Then we’d sit on the front porch and watch the sun go down. Cicadas would start up, sounded like a bunch of raspy-voiced drunks. Little Mac loved it all. I’d help him chase fireflies. We’d get as many as we could in the jar and set it down on the porch steps. He kept his face pressed against the glass so long, watching the yellow lights inside.”
Glenn took another draw on his cigar. “I always thought Lauren and I’d have a son.” His voice was muffled, but it wasn’t from the smoke.
“Why didn’t you?”
“Lauren was unable to get pregnant.” He mouthed the word “pregnant” as if it left a bad aftertaste. “We tried. Then they found cancer. I knew I wouldn’t make a good single father.” He twisted around on the bench and extended his hand to me. “Truce?”
I shook Glenn’s hand and noticed the gorilla grip from our very first meeting was gone. He’d given me a regular handshake. “I’ll tell you, McCann, real love is sacrificial. It’s not flowers and candy and trips to Paris.
“It started out that way with Lauren and me. I sent her flowers all the time. I gave her gifts. In the end, it was only me, holding her hand and keeping her company while she slowly left. I couldn’t make her stay. I couldn’t keep her on this earth. It was beyond my capability. All the flowers in the world couldn’t keep her here. Don’t you see? Don’t waste your time on chasing something meaningless.”
“It was working for Travis,” I said.
“You think so?” Glenn asked. “His room’s right next to mine. I couldn’t help but overhear his conversations with his wife. She wasn’t happy. What you interpreted as romance was really Travis vainly trying to heap wood on a dying fire. He was desperate, so he pulled out all the stops, sending flowers every week, making calls home all the time, and sending extravagant gifts,” Glenn said.
“But that’s what Sophie wants.”
“She doesn’t want gifts, man. Wake up. She wants you.”
I could feel the blood drain out of my face. I’d taken the one thing Sophie wanted and moved it miles away? But how could she want me? Where did she get that kind of love? “It isn’t humanly possible to love someone that way. At least, I’ve never seen it. She doesn’t know who I really am.”
Glenn’s cigar burned to a nub. He methodically pulled a new one out of his shirt pocket and deliberately took his time lighting it. I knew he was giving me mental space to approach the subject, but I felt the crushing weight of Little Mac’s death again. It sucked the air out of my lungs in just the same way the brittle, dry heat of Afghanistan did.
“Who are you, then?” he asked.
“A murderer.”
I expected Glenn to be shocked, but he just toasted the end of the cigar in the flame, rolling it back and forth until I wanted to curse.
“I killed my son by my negligence,” I said.
“OK.”
“What?”
I jumped from the bench and paced back and forth in front of him.
“Tell me what happened.” Glenn sucked in a long draught of smoke and let it slowly escape his mouth.
I launched into the scene. My mind rebelled at going over the details. Is forgetting possible?
When I reached the part about the ambulance, Glenn sighed. He didn’t move. The only tell he had, like in a poker game, was the tip of his cigar bobbed ever so slightly.
“Then you are no worse than I.”
“How can you say that?”
“Because I was the one who had her ventilator shut off.”
“That’s not the same at all.”
He glared at me.
“I was my wife’s executioner. I was the one who had the power to decide when it was time to pull the plug. She trusted me, and I betrayed that trust.”
“Not the same. You stood by your wife while she fought cancer.”
“But in the end, what did it matter? I told her we would beat cancer together. I told her she would make it. When the doctor said she wouldn’t, I refused to discuss death with her.”
“Maybe she didn’t want to discuss it?” I said.
“No, she tried many times. She’d say, ‘Glenn, let’s talk about my funeral.’ I’d glare at her and leave the room. In my mind, I could keep her alive. Somehow, I’d find a way, and I failed her.”
I dragged the toe of my boot through the gravel.
“Is that all she said?”
“No, she said it was OK to talk about death. Lauren said she knew she belonged to Christ and that she would be with Him soon.”
There was that name again. The name Sophie clung to. I didn’t know Him.
“I guess that gives you some comfort,” I said, “But I don’t believe in that stuff. It’s too far out there for me. I need to experience something before I believe it. I mean, if I can touch it, put my hand on it, then it’s real to me. It’s like this cursed dust that’s everywhere. I’m covered in it. It seeps into my clothes and my shoes. Dust is real. It grinds in my shoes as a constant reminder that I chose to come here and that by causing Little Mac’s death, I will never be clean again.”
Glenn ground the stub of his cigar into the gravel with a twisting motion of his boot. “Christ never did anything for me. If He exists, if He is who Lauren said He is, then why did He take her from me? Wouldn’t He know I needed her?”
“I got nothing for you on that one,” I said.
As I said it, a light blew across the sky. Out here, shooting stars were so familiar, you could become jaded by their frequency. But this one lit up the sky in a way I have not seen before or since. “Did you see that?” I pointed over Glenn’s shoulder.
“What?”
“A shooting star, man. It was the brightest I’ve seen since I’ve been here.”
“Maybe God’s trying to tell you something, eh?” Glenn laughed bitterly.
“You don’t know, but the night we buried Little Mac, I asked—”
“What?”
“I asked for a sign that God was there.”
“What did you ask for?”
“A star.”
“I guess you just got your star. Let me know how that works for you.” Glenn stood and ambled toward our tent.
I slid back on the bench and drew smoke slowly into my mouth. I was surprised at the subtle earthiness. My body relaxed, and for the first time since I was in Afghanistan, I allowed my mind to rest. I felt hazy, slightly euphoric, and numb. Afghanistan noise faded into the background, and I leaned back and pondered the God Sophie talked to.
“Was that you, God?” I exhaled, and the words seeped out of my mouth and ascended with the rising smoke trail.
20
The morning beeps of MRAPs screeched through my tent walls. The sounds were my daily alarm clock. I cleared my throat, sandpapery from Kandahar dirt and cigars. I grabbed a fresh bottle of power drink and washed the remnants of last night’s cigar smoke away.
I e-mailed Sophie first thing when I got back in my tent, yesterday, letting her know we were all right. Let there be an e-mail from her. When I pulled up my e-mail, there was only a short reply.
I prayed for you. Please be safe.
Sophie.
Not I love you, not please come home to me. I started to reply three times, but the words were stilted. I erased them. I had no idea what to say to Soph
ie or how to heal us. Instead, I went to the hospital website, punched in my login, and clicked the “Pay Now” icon. And with that Little Mac’s last medical bill was paid.
Between me being in Afghanistan and Sophie managing the bills at home, we finally did it. I pulled up my computer game and tried starting a few missions, but it didn’t have the same draw as before. I kept hearing Sophie in my head. Did I hide by playing combat games? I shut the computer down, feeling dissatisfied and lost. I wandered down the dark hallway of our tent.
Glenn’s door was propped wide, and he was cutting open a brown shipping box on his desk.
Travis barreled past me. “Did it get here?”
Glenn stepped back like a proud daddy. On his desk was a wooden box.
Travis pulled up with a start at the sight of Glenn’s face. Glenn’s lip was still swollen from our altercation the night before. It was shaded with spectacular circular colors ranging from black to purple. Glenn grinned. He actually looked proud of it.
“Whoa! Who gave you the fat lip?” Travis asked.
“Mac.” Glenn smirked wickedly.
“Ha! That’s a good one. Now tell me how you really got it.”
“Blackburn, you are aware of the prohibition against fighting in camp?” I asked.
Travis nodded, still mesmerized by the awesomeness of Glenn’s wound.
“Therefore, Glenn was not involved in any altercation, understand?”
“Got it. I still want to know who didn’t hit you.” Travis smiled.
I moved around the desk and ran my hand across the polished wooden box. “What’s in there?” I asked.
Glenn shot me another of his looks as if to say, “Haven’t I taught you anything?” but thankfully, he didn’t say it. “Behold, a one hundred capacity humidor.” Without waiting for me to ask, Glenn started demonstrating the features like a salesman at a car dealership. “Mahogany finish, Spanish cedar tray, humidifier, and a hygrometer.” Glenn waited for my admiration. I could see it in his eyes.
“Nice, very nice.” I didn’t know what else to say. He looked disappointed at my lack of appreciation.
“I have news, too. I just paid the last medical bill Sophie and I owed.”
Glenn’s face smoothed out into a lopsided smile. After last night, he understood how important this was to me.
“I didn’t know you had medical bills,” Travis said.
Glenn glanced my way. “There’s a lot of things you don’t know, Blackburn. For instance, did you know you have to keep the humidity between sixty-eight and seventy-two percent for optimum cigar storage?”
Over Travis’s head, I nodded my thanks to Glenn, and he smiled his acknowledgment. Then he returned to loading the humidor with his outlandish collection.
“I never knew you had so many cigars,” I said.
“I’ve been collecting for quite some time.”
“What’s this one?” I said, picking up a dark cigar, holding it to my nose and sniffing.
Glenn took it gingerly from my hands as if it was a treasure dug from the pyramids. It smelled like it should have stayed in the pyramids.
“Set me back ten dollars for that one alone.”
My pop addiction was looking downright frugal. I made a note to relate this to Sophie the next time she made fun of me. Would she be sending me any more packages? I didn’t even know if she’d want me back when my tour was up.
Glenn selected a cigar for himself, and before he closed the lid offered Travis and me one.
“ No, thanks. I know how much this cost. Give me one of your cheaper smokes.”
“Pick one for yourself with my best wishes then,” he said.
I studied the different shapes, lengths, shades of wrappers. “I still like those.”
“A distinguished gentleman’s choice.” Glenn handed me one and carefully closed the humidor. He grabbed his butane lighter, and we strolled out to the bench.
We were treated to a spectacular sunset. The sky was bright orange, the color of ice cream on a stick I bought as a kid. The rumbling of vehicles and helicopters played out like a soundtrack. The sounds no longer merited my attention. When I’d first arrived in country, every noise jarred me. After a while, I slept through the night with no problem.
Travis drew on his cigar and blew out a long stream of smoke. “I signed divorce papers today.”
He tried to say it nonchalantly, but I could tell it was eating a hole in his gut. I felt bad for him, but the last thing I wanted to discuss just then was divorce.
Glenn toasted his cigar.
In the background, faint explosions echoed in the starry Afghanistan night.
“Why do you hide the fact that you’re a Southerner?” I asked Glenn, hoping to change the subject.
“Give me a minute to get this baby going.” Glenn sparked his lighter and twirled the cigar in the flame, back and forth, until it glowed. Satisfied, he clicked the cigar lighter off and took a long draw. His cheeks rounded out, full of the sweet smoke.
“I mean, Savannah is a great place,” I said.
Glenn held up a hand. He opened his mouth, and a smooth stream of smoke drifted above. He inspected the cigar, seemed satisfied with it. “Northerners are enamored with the South, are they not? They love our music laced with hometown values. When they listen to it, they pretend they live in Mayberry. They love our fried food, chicken crispy and still spitting grease as it’s pulled from an iron skillet. Peach ice cream that rivals any gourmet menu. Yes, they love our food and music.”
“I’d agree with that but how does it figure in with your denial?” I asked.
Glenn ignored my question and continued. “Northerners wither when the humidity hovers at ninety percent. They mop their heads and retreat to their air-conditioned hotels. As hot as it is in Kandahar, it can’t compare to the sweltering humidity of Savannah in July. Northerners can pretend they understand Southerners, but they don’t. There’s as big a difference in our cultures as if we were from separate countries, which, when you think about it, came horrifyingly close to happening.
“You said ‘our.’”
Glenn grinned sheepishly. “I did, didn’t I? For all the admiration of our quaint ways, lies an unspoken arrogance toward their neighbors to the south. It’s there, smoldering below the surface. You can’t tell me you haven’t come up against it?” Glenn asked.
“I’d hoped we were viewed as the South of today, certainly not for our past problems. That’s why I talk about the space program and how high-tech my city is. We’re anything but a cotton town.”
“The reality is, Mac, that we’re still viewed as hillbillies. Stereotypes are difficult to put to rest. Hollywood’s South is not my South. It’s annoying when I hear some actor butchering a southern accent. It doesn’t bother me if it’s done innocently. It’s outright bigotry that bothers me.” He contemplated the bench and flicked an ash away from his coffee cup. “I won’t tolerate bigotry of any kind, not for skin color, or geography.” Glenn’s mouth tightened.
“Are you hiding from your ancestry to avoid conflict?” I asked.
“You paint me as a coward. I haven’t been forced to put it into words until now. I wanted to be successful and I felt being labeled might hold me back in people’s eyes.”
“So you cut the accent and any references to Savannah,” I said.
Glenn nodded, though reluctantly, I thought.
I clipped the end of my cigar and flicked the lighter. “When I was eleven years old, my father’s job was transferred from Maryland to Huntsville. My first thought was, is there anything good in Alabama? I drove my dad nuts in the following weeks, quizzing him about the state. ‘Do they have an airport? Do they only listen to country music? Will we have to eat grits?’” The cigar glowed as I rolled it back and forth beneath the blue flame. “My older brother, who was nineteen at the time, moved out of state. Dad used to joke that I threw the biggest fit relocating, and I was the one who stayed. Unlike you, born in a Southern state, I was transplanted, and I fell in
love with the place and the people. And as for bigotry in my city, I don’t see it to the extent it’s portrayed.”
“Do you mean to say it doesn’t exist?” Glenn asked.
It was my turn to hold up a hand while I drew in spicy smoke. It warmed my mouth, and once again, numbness filled my head with a mild euphoria. I blew the smoke out and watched it rise above our bench and mingle with the smoke from Glenn’s cigar. “That’s not what I’m saying at all. Evil exists everywhere.” In my mind, I saw the shadow men, the ones who would surely approach Bashir at some point and try and recruit him into a life of sexual slavery. “I love the South because I see potential. We’ve overcome so much already, and I believe we’ll continue to move toward being a place where people truly are treated with equality. Surely, I’m not the only one in Alabama who feels this way.”
Glenn looked doubtful.
“Maybe what you said about me when we first met is true,” I said.
“And that was?”
“I’m an idealist. I like that about myself.” If only I could give myself the same hope I so readily gave others.
21
“Sophie?” I could wait no longer. If she wanted to end us, I needed to know. I wasn’t the kind of guy who could live in uncertainty. I needed concrete facts. I tapped my foot as my computer made its slow-as-molasses attempt at signing on to the Internet. Eventually, it did connect. I repeated her name, hoped she could hear me.
“Hi.” She was withdrawn.
I couldn’t pinpoint her feelings. I studied the curve of Sophie’s lips and wondered if I would ever kiss them again. Then the picture froze, and in the background, I heard her asking, “Mac, can you hear me?”
The connection was lost.
I fumbled with my phone and dialed quickly. Sophie worried if I didn’t call when the Internet shut down. The phone connected and her voice swelled with relief. “Oh, hi.”
I ran my finger down the side of my cell phone, suddenly shy, like a teenager in love for the first time. “You all right?” I asked.
“Yes, I’m fine. It’s a little scary when that happens. I used to be able to handle it…until the mortar attack.” Her voice was strained, but she kept her tone calm.