Ashcraft blew air through his nostrils. “Shit, a lot of people got murdered, sure, but if it happens in a war zone, it gets classified differently.”
“S’all bullshit,” said Beaufort. He glared at his beer.
Jonah flippered a hand around. “A curse, yes, that’s bullshit. But the murder? Bet on it.”
“Wasn’t Curt. He was sitting right there on his stoop for everyone to see,” said Beaufort in a way that made Dan wonder if he’d been right there, maybe shooting up beside his buddy. He imagined Beaufort coming out of his high and finding Moretti with vomit on his chin and no pulse. He had to admit the image gave him a nasty bit of satisfaction.
“ODs, blown up in Iraq, who the fuck even knows what else,” said Jonah. “Either of you guys been to Fallen Farms lately? Bet the Flood brothers have at least a couple bodies buried out there.” He laughed by himself.
“This is a grim conversation,” said Bill.
“Grim like a lizard,” Jonah agreed and fingered something stuck in a molar. “That’s why I totally buy it every which way. Shit like that doesn’t just pop up outta thin air. Somebody had too much to drink, let a little something slip, and then it entered the grapevine. Psychos walk among us, man, trust me.”
“There’s no such thing as psychos.” Everyone looked at Dan at the same time. Jonah was raising his blood pressure, similar to how he’d wake from a dream of smoke and metal fragments. Occasionally Dan felt like civilians had no idea about either bad luck or grace.
“Uh, yeah there is,” Jonah asserted like a second grader explaining that ghosts are real.
“Remember Mrs. Bingham’s class? Seventh-grade Ohio history?”
Jonah gave him a baffled shrug. “I guess?”
“She talked about the massacre at Gnadenhutten—remember that?” Blank stares. “During the Revolutionary War, American soldiers, they led a bunch of Delaware Indians into two killing rooms like they were cattle or pigs, including thirty or so children. And while the Indians kept on singing and praying and kissing each other good-bye, one by one the soldiers beat their heads in with a common cooper’s mallet. So a couple of months later the Indians captured an American commander, this guy William Crawford. First they scalped him clean to his skull. Then they cut off both his ears. Then his nose. He was still alive, begging to die, when they stripped him naked. Then the women of the village took turns burning his body with firebrands, so the flesh slid right off. There was this white man with the Indians named Simon Girty. A guy raised on the frontier, who spoke the Indian languages and fought alongside them against the Americans. Still, he was white, so as Crawford’s being tortured, he pleads for Girty to shoot him. All Girty had to say was, ‘I have no gun.’ ”
Bill tore apart pieces of a napkin, let the snowflake bits fall to the floor. Beaufort sat with his back to the man who might have been his father. Finally, Jonah said, “Gross, Danny! What the fuck’s your point?”
“Point is . . .” His eyes flitted up and back down. “We lack a whole lot of imagination about violence. We want to chalk it up to ‘psychos,’ whatever that means. It’s a notion that feels safe. It’s comforting. But shit like My Lai or Auschwitz or Gnadenhutten—that’s not aberrant. It happens because of what we all have in common. How frail we are. We’re insecure, we’re greedy, we want a promotion at work, we’re afraid of the guy in charge—that’s the stupid, mundane bullshit that makes people do terrible things to each other.”
The four of them were quiet, looking at the table, except Bill, who glared at Dan with what could only be described as a kind of jealous affection. Jonah hopped up from the table.
“Not that you aren’t a real ray of sunshine, Danny, but I got my chance with this filly.” He nodded happily at the young woman Brokamp had left alone, either for a cigarette or the bathroom, and Jonah made tracks to sidle up beside her at the bar.
Beaufort had his thick arms crossed, and his gaze was impossible to read beneath the bill of his Buckeyes cap.
“Shit, that’s spot-on,” he finally said. “That’s really spot-on. You get into a shitty place, you might do all kinds of stuff that don’t make sense. Man—” He pulled the bill of his hat farther down on his head, as if retreating beneath it. “There was a time I couldn’t get through the day without about two hundred milligrams of Oxy and a couple of benzos. Couldn’t face the world, just a total slave to it.”
This revelation hung in the air, and Dan felt great pity for this guy who he’d always viewed caustically, one-dimensionally.
Dan offered, “My lieutenant, a guy named Holt. He needed painkillers for all kinds of things, and when he got out, last I heard, he went straight to being a full-blown addict.”
Beaufort squeezed the plastic cup so that it crackled and kept sharing. “Got my first scrip for ’em when I separated my shoulder sophomore year on jayvee. Basically didn’t stop popping until a few years ago. Hardest thing I ever did in my life was get off that shit. You’re not yourself. You’ll do evil, unbelievable things. And there was moments.” He nodded his head, matter-of-fact. “Was a lotta times I wanted to eat a whole bottle and just have done with it.”
He reached for the pitcher to pour himself another. Dan had the sense he was about to say more.
There was a meatpacking thunderclap and a sharp cry from the bar. Their heads all whipped in time to catch Jonah, reeling back, blood gushing between clawed fingers as he clutched his nose. Brokamp, back from the bathroom, gave his hand a shake and closed it back to a fist. Jonah stumbled and slid to the floor.
No one in the bar moved.
“You got balls, fucker.” Brokamp grabbed Jonah by the shirt and hauled him to his feet, muttering, “I know you. I know you, fuckface bitch.”
Bill stood, knocking his stool back. He hovered just out of the guy’s reach. “Fuck off, man! Leave him alone.”
“You want this too?” Brokamp asked. He got his knuckles righteous again, his arm pistoned, and Jonah’s nose exploded. He drew back the fist. Doused in brown-crimson, it looked like a brick, and he wore an enormous metal band on his ring finger that probably had traces of other people’s blood in its grooves. Dan made no move to help and instead gripped the edge of the table as if anchoring himself. Because at the sight of blood, his instinct was to grab this man’s skull and try to break it against the bar. He could already see what it would look like when his head opened up. Dan had seen such things many times. The girlfriend watched from her stool, disinterestedly, drunkenly, twirling an earring between thumb and forefinger. No one in the bar looked ready to break this up, maybe because they could feel what Dan felt, the electric buzz of tragedy on the way. He thought of Rudy, whose own father was killed in a drunken altercation. Guy takes out a knife over a stupid disagreement that he wasn’t even a part of, and there you go, no more Rudy’s dad. Happens all the time, Rudy had said. Go look in any city paper sometime, Eaton. Every Sunday go look in the paper. People get drunk; they think they’re invincible. Beaufort now stood but made no move to intervene, and Dan wondered if the look on his face was that of a coward, like he’d seen among the insurgents—people who were willing to visit violence upon others as long as the odds were weighed endlessly in their favor. Or maybe he watched the man who might have been his father with total disinterest—maybe even a bit of drunken glee that he was at least getting a free show. Jess Bealey clawed through her purse, probably looking for her cell phone. The frantic but unsurprised look on her face told Dan this guy wailing on Jonah was a problem client, that she’d been here before, and yeah, he just might kill Jonah if someone didn’t pull him off. Because the unemployed and underemployed came in here, drank away a disability check, and then went looking for an excuse to wail on anyone, to open up some cheek flesh. Brokamp had unrequited revenge in him, and he would take it out where he could. Here was his chance to feel like he could hit back. And when he drove his fist down a third time, the sound Jonah’s nose made was the crunch of dry cereal stomped to dust underfoot. He went limp.
Jonah had tossed his pack of cigarettes on the table—Virginia Slims—and now Dan drew one, put it to his lips, and lit it with a Harley-Davidson Zippo. As Brokamp ordered up his arm again, elbow cocked, Dan slid from the stool. Took a step to within an arm’s reach.
Dan said, “Hey, man,” and Brokamp looked up. His expression was delighted curiosity. Who would be dumb enough to interrupt his lovely moment?
“He’s good,” Dan said. “You made your point.”
Brokamp let go of the fistful of shirt. Jonah oozed to the floor, trying to cup the blood from his ruined nose.
“Man.” Brokamp’s voice was a whiskey whistle. “I’ll take your pride too if you want.” Breath heaved in and out of his barrel chest. His face and skull were sweat-streaked, the bright pink of a crayon.
Effete smoke drifted from the moon-white Virginia Slim. Worried he would cough, Dan didn’t inhale. The Backstreet Boys’ “I Want It That Way” played on the jukebox.
Dan nodded, thought about how best to put this. Maybe this would work, maybe it wouldn’t.
“Whatever you say, boss. Only so you know, I got a particularly high threshold for pain.”
Then Dan took the lit cigarette and stuffed the burning orange ember in his eye.
Someone in the room gasped, a sound that seemed to come out of the walls.
He ground the cigarette into his prosthetic for a moment, ashes between eyelashes, lids wide so as not to singe them, and then let the butt drop to the ground.
The girlfriend’s expertly shaped eyebrows shot up. Brokamp’s face fell, like he suddenly glimpsed sobriety and hated what he saw. He looked worn out. Ready for bed. Todd Beaufort barked a short laugh. Dan blinked away smoke and debris.
“I never wanna hear you say / I want it that-a way.”
Bleary, Brokamp said, “Fuck this configuration.” He looked to his lady friend and cocked his head at the door. Jonah whimpered, blood puddling on the hardwood.
The woman hoisted up her top and threw back the remainder of her beer. She bopped off the stool in a dainty move and stepped around Jonah. Wobbling on her heels, fat pouring from the undersides of her midriff-exposing top, she took her man’s hand and led him to the door. On her way out, Dan heard her ask him, “I thought you couldn’t smoke indoors no more?”
Instead of responding, Brokamp stuck his ring finger deep into his mouth, seeming to forget the blood on his hand. He wet the finger and then tugged the ring off so he could clean it on his shirt.
When they were gone, Jess Bealey ran to Jonah with a bar towel. Beaufort tried to hoist him to his feet, but Jonah slipped and sat back down. Bill looked at Dan in total awe.
“Well, fuck me, Eaton!”
Jonah sat in his blood, eyes wet, and took the towel from Jessica. His nose called to mind Marjah after Operation Moshtarak.
“Just a stupid bar trick,” Dan said. Picked up from a guy named Benny Steidl, who’d also suffered an ocular penetrating injury. He’d been fitted for a prosthesis before Dan and was flying through the PT vision training when they met. He took Dan out to a bar near Ramstein Air Base and told him to watch his flawless pickup move. He put out a cigarette on his eye for a table of middle-aged German women, and they lost their minds. Works almost too good, Steidl told him. Last Dan heard, Steidl was having an affair with a married gal.
“What a night,” said Bill giddily. “These ten-year reunions should be a doozy.” Laughter floated in the ponds of his two real pupils.
* * *
Jonah composed himself by unraveling into a drunk, ranting fury. Crimson blood drying to rust on his T-shirt, hat knocked from his head and forgotten, he took three shots of whiskey in rapid succession, then stormed out of the bar barking about his helicopter and the evils of taxation.
“He gets like that,” said Beaufort.
“Should we go after him?” Dan asked.
Beaufort gave him a puzzled look. “Then we gotta listen to him.”
Dan told Bill it was time to go. He pulled something from his pocket. Dan saw it was a small electronic timer. He glanced at it and said, “Yup. Let’s boogie.” They exchanged good-byes. Dan noticed Bill’s pained handshake with Beaufort, as if both men wanted not to touch the other’s disease.
“Can I ask you something,” Dan said to Bill once they were on the road. “You got a problem with Beaufort?”
“Do I have a problem with Beaufort.” He considered this. “Nah, not really. No more than anyone else. I think that kid got about what he had coming. Maybe not. Rick had beef with him once, and he dragged me into it. Beaufort just reminds me of how this town sucks you in. Keeps you doped on its own mythology. And I’ve always felt more sorry for him than anything else. When we were smoking outside, Jonah told me he had double-digit concussions before he quit in college. Said he sometimes forgets simple things. He has panic attacks. You heard him talking about his pill problem. All that for fucking high school football and two years in a shitty small college program? Fuck.”
From the passenger seat, Dan watched the town of his birth recede into the valley below. Like a constellation fallen to earth.
“And how are you still buddies with Jonah?”
He batted a hand. “Oh, the guy’s an Agenda 21 loon to be sure, but, you know . . .” The hand trailed to the ether beyond the roaring window. “He’s my tribe. Gotta defend the tribe. Everyone’s friends as kids. You don’t know what makes you different yet.”
“Still, he’s like your arch nemesis politically speaking.”
“Jonah wore a jersey with my name and number on the back to games. He stood front and center and got ‘MVP’ chants going when I was at the foul line. He knew my politics. I sure as shit didn’t make it any secret. But whenever I see him, we find a way to let it lie.”
Dan was silent for a moment, wondering if he wanted to challenge Bill on this. The beer helped make that decision.
“Did you and Rick ever let anything lie?”
Bill blew out a breath and sat in silence for a long time. They went by the Walmart, and Bill watched it as they passed. It was lit up like an army base, so bright it might be visible from space. “I’d like to burn one of those stores to the ground just once. Just watch all that shit inside go up in flames or melt in cool, fucked-up ways. Like how do you think an LCD TV melts? Probably burns in lots of awesome colors, right?”
Dan said nothing. Waited. Bill turned off Zanesville Road, bombing along 229. He knew the guy shouldn’t be driving, Bill’s adrenaline mingled with his drunk and maybe some other substance. His fingertips barely grazed the wheel, scooting it back and forth, alarmingly casual. His gas light had been on the whole time, but Dan wasn’t about to say anything. With some luck, the truck would die, and he’d have to call someone for a ride.
“You know what your problem is, Eaton,” he said. “Other than you wasted the best years of your life fighting for elite profit while those bastards fucked the rest of us dry.”
“Yeah, do tell.” In Bill’s drunkenness he missed Dan’s venom.
“Your problem is your good nature, bro. Hailey—you fucked that up so bad. No wonder she married Whitey fucking Frye, man.”
Dan rarely got angry with anyone, but Ashcraft was goading him, probably because of what he’d just said about Rick. Dan stared out the window as they rocketed by the backlit pines and a yard scattered with stripped engines.
“Yeah, and what’s your problem, Bill? You’re such a perceptive student of the human condition, how about you?”
“My problem? Oh, I don’t know. Substance abuse mostly. Also all my fucking friends are dead or won’t speak to me.” He hiccupped. “But most stupid of all—and here’s my real problem—even though I know there’s nothing left but to stand in front of the tank and let it mow me down, I still believe in the old myths. I still get drippy for meeting at Seneca or marching in Selma or rioting at Stonewall. I can’t give up this idea that if you can get enough people to stand up, then you’ve got a power you cannot suppress or repress or contest. And I’l
l probably chase that funny fantasy until my fucking liver melts and my heart explodes.”
“Yeah, or maybe you’re so wrapped up in your own bullshit that you can’t see the forest for the trees. Maybe your problem is you’re no different than Jonah.”
Ashcraft threw him a savage glance. “C’mon, that’s a false equivalence. And don’t spout clichés, Eaton, you’re smarter than that. Or do you wanna sit here and say you never questioned what you were doing on your two tours.”
“Three.”
“Whatever.”
Bill took the turn off 229 into the drive of Eastern Star Retirement Home. The sign was lit by halogen floodlights and an American flag rode above. His truck lurched up the drive and into the parking lot. The grounds had lights pointed at the brick, as if to keep at bay the dark of the surrounding woods, trying to convince the observer of a sense of warmth. He parked the truck in the shadows where a screen of pines shielded them from the road. Windows down, crickets screaming. They were buried in the dark, but he could see Bill’s face contorting.
“I got a feeling the only way left is the way of the knife, way of the gun, way of the bomb.” He snickered. He was worse than drunk, on something else Dan couldn’t figure. “Hard to see the truth and not want to immediately burn your eyes out. I was trying to explain that to Rick before he left—or not explain so much but belittle that stupid, stubborn asshole that he wasn’t fighting for his country or freedom or democracy or anything else. He was going to war so an overstretched superpower could flex nuts and maybe pump a few million more barrels per day onto the world oil markets—that’s what I told him. And I was so fucking right.”
He closed his eyes and rested his head against his arms on the steering wheel, the plastic creaking. Dan almost told him the story just to piss on him.
During the surge on tour #2, as their sector was quieting down, they pulled an absolutely terrible mission of escorting supply trucks to Camp Baharia. Not normally their purview, their captain had volunteered them. Guys grumbled but no one had the kind of energy necessary for mutiny. The drive to Baharia meant an hour-plus on open highway, exposed, heading toward Fallujah—not known as the sweetest getaway from western Baghdad. Of course, that was the mission that went without a hiccup. They could’ve watched movies on laptops.
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