Onward, Drake!

by Mark L. Van Name

  Bobby turned on the light and propped himself on one elbow. He’d learned long ago that Crane didn’t want contact until he was back in this world. “Joseph?” he said.

  Crane forced himself to breathe slower. “I’m okay. Give me a minute.” He threw back the covers, went to the bathroom, and closed the door. In the blue glow of the nightlight he barely recognized the old man staring at him in the mirror. How did that happen? A minute ago he was back there, and now he was here, and he was old. He was sure he would die there—part of him had died there—and now he was still alive, older and older every time he looked, but also always stuck there.

  He splashed water on his face and chest, dried himself, and opened the bathroom door.

  Thanks to the moonlight streaming through the skylights, Crane could see that Bobby had changed the sheets, put the damp white set in the clothes basket in the closet, and made the bed with a fresh light blue pair. Had he been in the bathroom that long?

  Crane nodded toward the hamper. “Thank you.”

  Bobby patted the sheets beside him. “Come back to bed.”

  Crane checked the bedside clock, hoping he was close enough to morning that he could get up and paint.

  It was barely after three, too early to start the day even for him.

  He crawled into bed and pulled the fresh, cool sheets up to his waist.

  “Better?” Bobby said.

  Crane nodded. His mind knew—had known even then, back in that hole—that he could not have saved the man, that no one could, but his heart couldn’t stop blaming himself. Still, this was one of the easy nightmares, because at least his rational self could accept his own innocence. He nodded again.

  “I hate what that war did to you,” Bobby said.

  Crane nodded once more, but what he thought was, You might as well hate the sun, for all the good it will do.

  “I know this therapy can’t undo any of that,” Bobby said. “Nothing can. But what if it would let you sleep through the night? What if you could stop having the nightmares? What if it took away the pain?”

  What am I without them? Crane thought. I can’t be who I was before it. I can’t even remember that guy. I am what the war left me. All he said was, “I don’t know.”

  Bobby leaned closer. “What I know is that you are a good man, Joseph Crane, and you deserve some peace.”

  Oh, no, Crane thought, you don’t know. You don’t know anything at all. If you did, you wouldn’t be here, which is one of the many reasons you never will know.

  “Don’t think I don’t see right through you, Joseph,” Bobby said. “I don’t care what you think: you are a good man.”

  Crane shook his head, all the answer he could make himself give.

  Bobby put his arm across Crane’s chest and snuggled closer.

  Crane looked down and smiled, as he had a thousand times before, at the beautiful contrast of Bobby’s black arm and his own pale chest. The nightmares, the memories—they’re what I deserve, he thought. “What I don’t deserve,” he said, “is you.”

  “That’s my choice,” Bobby said. “You don’t get to decide for me.”

  Crane nodded, turned, and kissed Bobby lightly. “Thank you.”

  Bobby smiled. “Let them do the assessment,” he said. “You can still back out, but at least find out if they might be able to help you. In the meantime, you can think about how great it would be to sleep through the night, night after night after night, every night, here with me.”

  Crane had to admit that the prospect of nights full of unbroken sleep was appealing. He stared at his husband, marveled again at his luck at having this beautiful man as his, and finally nodded. “Okay,” he said. “I will. I’ll call in the morning and set up the assessment.”

  Bobby kissed him again. “You won’t regret it.”

  I don’t know, Crane thought, I’ve regretted everything about the Army, but maybe this will be an exception. I’ll hope you’re right.

  He closed his eyes and fell quickly back asleep.

  Crane almost laughed when they showed him the test apparatus, a wrinkled metal helmet trailing dozens of wires as thin as fishing lines.

  The tech, a twenty-something woman in hospital blues with no nametag and no apparent rank, must have read his reaction. “Yeah,” she said, “we chuckle at it, too. It’s like a prop from a Fifties sci-fi flick. But it does the job, and we don’t have to poke any holes in your head.”

  “Holes in my head?” Crane said.

  The tech winced. “I take it they haven’t told you.”

  “No, they haven’t.”

  “It’s no big deal,” she said, “really. For the final process, we have to insert a bunch of electrodes. We numb the insertion points, so you don’t feel anything. We don’t even need to shave your head, so no one will know anything happened.”

  “Uh huh,” Crane said. “But for this assessment . . .”

  “You sit in that chair,” she indicated what looked like a fancy dentist’s chair in the center of the room, “and wear the silly helmet. That’s it.”

  Crane longed to leave, but he’d told Bobby he would try, so he didn’t move.

  “Speaking of which,” the tech said, “if you would take a seat, we can get going.”

  Crane sat. At least the chair was comfortable.

  The tech fitted the helmet on him, adjusted it a bit, and then ran a strap under his chin and fastened it to the other side of the helmet.

  Johnson breezed through the door into the room. “And how are we today?”

  It was as if the man was purpose-built to piss him off.

  “I don’t know how you are,” Crane said, “but I’m thrilled to be here.”

  “That’s great,” Johnson said. “Just great.”

  Being impervious to irony might help you last in the Army, Crane thought. You asshole. He knew what Bobby would advise him to do and forced himself not to respond.

  “Here’s what’s going to happen,” Johnson said. “We’re going to leave you alone in here and turn off the lights. Some of the instruments glow, so you won’t be in complete darkness, but the lack of light should help you focus internally. We’ll be monitoring you from a room on the other side of that mirror.” He pointed to the big mirror on the wall to Crane’s left. “We’ll give you some instructions, you follow them, and we should be done in no time.”

  “What kind of instructions?” Crane said.

  Johnson smiled. “Not very trusting, are you?”

  No, Crane thought, and if you’d ever seen action, you wouldn’t be, either.

  When Crane didn’t answer, Johnson continued as if he had. “Well, no worries. We’re just going to ask you to think about different things. Okay?” Before Crane could say anything, Johnson said, “Great. Let’s do it.”

  He and the tech left the room.

  A few seconds later, the lights dimmed to off.

  Crane sat, alone in the dark room, and fought to breathe slowly. He wanted to bolt, to throw off the helmet and get the hell out of here, but he’d told Bobby he’d do this, so he would.

  The tech’s voice played softly from speakers that seemed to be all around him. “It might help to close your eyes, but that’s up to you. Please think of something you find comforting, safe, even happy.”

  Crane closed his eyes, and it did help a bit. He pictured Bobby holding him at night, the slow cadence of his husband’s breathing, the comfort of their bed in their bedroom in their house in the woods, away from everyone.

  “That’s excellent,” the tech said. “Thank you.”

  Crane nodded.

  “Try not to move your head,” the tech said. “We should have told you that earlier. Sorry.”

  “No problem,” Crane said.

  “Now,” she said, “please think about some events—we’d like half a dozen, but we can get by with three or four—from the war that were unpleasant, memories that hit you in nightmares or that upset you or that you try not to think about.”

  Crane shook his
head before he could control his reaction.

  “I know it’s no fun,” the tech said, “but you don’t need to think about them for long. Just try to summon images, hold them for a few seconds, and move on. And don’t move your head.”

  “Okay,” Crane said. He took a deep breath to steady himself. Recalling his time in country wasn’t hard; not thinking about it was usually his challenge.

  For a few seconds, nothing would come, but then they flooded over him so quickly that he had to fight to see each one vividly.

  Riding in the jeep, the splotchy tan Comet coming the other way on the dirt road. Guns poking from its windows. Benny yelling. All of them raising their rifles and shooting shooting shooting. The Comet crashing into an old brown station wagon as their bullets slammed through metal and glass and flesh alike. Looking away as they passed it. He didn’t want to see the people inside, had no desire to know what he’d done.

  The soldier from last night’s nightmare falling into the hole across from him. The man’s expression of relief turning into terror and then into nothing, only slack-jawed death. Trying and failing to push back inside the man’s guts. Blood, so much blood.

  Staring at the village through Army binoculars steamed up from the humidity. Old men and women and children mingling in its square with the young men carrying rifles. Hearing the captain call in the air strike. Watching as the first bombs hit and the village transformed into fire and dust. Holding his hands over his ears and looking away, glad they wouldn’t have to walk into that firefight, ignoring everything else. Them or us always meant us, there was never any question.

  Hearing the crack of the shot at the same time the captain’s head exploded and the man fell two steps in front of him. Dropping, rolling, and firing into the jungle all around them, the whole squad doing the same, shooting and screaming and scrambling for cover and not knowing if they’d killed the enemy, never knowing for sure until they stopped, waited, and no one else fell.

  Trying to fall asleep, more nights than he had counted, as shells exploded far enough away that no shrapnel should reach him but close enough that you could always hear the bursts. Wondering at first if he’d wake up and then, later, not caring if he did. The night the tent next to his vanished as friendly fire vaporized it, the force of the explosion knocking down his tent and burying him in dirt and rubble, his ears ringing and screaming with pain.

  “Thank you,” the tech’s voice said. “We have all we need. Please wait for me to disconnect you.”

  Crane let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. His brow was wet with a sheen of sweat, his breathing ragged, his heart pounding. He focused on breathing slowly and calming himself.

  The tech pushed open the door, turned on the lights, and came over to him. She quickly undid the helmet’s strap and took the device off him. She looked at him as she worked. “I’m sorry,” she said. “We can’t calibrate without you focusing on the rough stuff.”

  Crane nodded. “So, would it work on me?”

  The tech opened her mouth to answer but stopped before she said anything, because Johnson entered the room.

  “She’s not really qualified to answer that question,” the man said. He stared at the tech, not Crane. “It takes a doctor, and not just any doctor but a trained specialist.”

  The tech hurried out of the room.

  Crane hated Johnson more each time he dealt with him. He forced himself to say only, “Well?”

  Johnson gave him the kind of smile that made Crane want to punch the man and then shower afterward. “You are an excellent candidate for the treatment. I’m confident we could locate and remove the major trauma-inducing memories, maybe even all of them.” The man pulled a stapled set of papers from his clipboard. “All you’d have to do is fill these out, and we could schedule you.” He stepped closer to Crane. “What do you say?”

  Though he desperately wanted to smash Johnson and run from the room, Crane reminded himself of his discussion with Bobby, forced himself to walk slowly to the door, and, as he was leaving, said, “I’ll think about it and get back to you.”

  Outside, he walked to a huge oak to the left of the research center and leaned against the lovely old tree. He felt the tree’s bark against his back and ran his hands over it. He looked at his own skin and at the tree. Why did some things grow only more powerful and beautiful with age, while others, like him, decayed and became shells of their younger selves? He appreciated the little bits of control that age and practice had bought him, but how he’d become this white-haired old man was a mystery to him.

  Standing in the shade, trying to forget the test and all the memories he’d summoned, he focused on the world around him. The morning light still played softly over the grass and the trees, the people walking on sidewalks, the cars on the road beyond the lawn. The building sat on the peak of a small hill that was covered in foliage except where a delivery road cut through the hill straight from the road across from him to a basement he hadn’t noticed before. A green railing marked the edge of the cut-through.

  A soldier in desert fatigues was leaning over the railing, looking down.

  Crane pushed off the tree and jogged over there. “Soldier!” he said as he drew closer.

  The soldier turned to face him, snapping to attention as she did. “Sir.” She relaxed a bit as she saw that he was a civilian.

  Crane noted now that she was a sergeant. “Sergeant Ortega, no one’s called me that in a very long time. I worked for a living, and when I was in the Army, you would have outranked me.”

  She smiled. “I didn’t mean it that way. It’s reflex. You know, right?”

  “I do.” He leaned against the railing, sad at being slightly out of breath from jogging such a small distance. “Are you okay?”

  “Why—” she flushed. “Oh, I get it. You thought I might jump. No worries; I’m not that type. I’ve just always found it useful to look down on things when I’m thinking. When I was a kid, I loved to climb trees and see the world from above.”

  Crane felt his own face turn red as he realized how wrong he’d been. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have intruded.”

  She waved her hand. “Don’t be. I don’t mind someone caring, genuinely giving a damn, not like these doctors. They all seem to be more concerned about processing us than helping us, as if we were packaged meat.” She laughed. “Which of course we are, to them.”

  He laughed with her. “Truer words . . .”

  “What was yours?” she said. “Your war, I mean. You laugh like you understand.”

  “I do,” he said. “Viet Nam. Way before your time.”

  She nodded. “Bad, though, right? My father did a tour there.”

  “Yeah,” he said, “bad enough. Why’d you enlist? Didn’t your father scare you off?”

  “He tried to.” She shrugged. “Not a lot of options, I guess. Plus, this is my country, you know, so serving it seemed like the right thing to do. What about you?”

  “Drafted. I wouldn’t have gone on my own, but when the letter came, I went. It was my duty.”

  “I get that,” she said. She stared hard at him. “Did you have the treatment here?”

  He shook his head. “No. I did the assessment, and they say I’m a great candidate for the therapy. My husband wants me to do it, but I just don’t know. You?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “I did. Couple of months ago. After two tours in Iraq and more time here and there, I was tired of not sleeping, the dreams, the way I feel—you know.”

  “I do.”

  They stood in silence for a minute, and then another. She looked everywhere but at him. He felt like a voyeur, but she also struck him as the first person in this place he could relate to.

  “Do you mind if I ask you something?” he said.

  She still wouldn’t meet his gaze. “Sure. Go ahead.”

  “Did it work? I mean, was it worth it? Doing the treatment?”

  She finally looked at him, her eyes wide. “I tell my hus
band it was. I say the same thing to the doctors. And in some ways, it really was. I don’t have the dreams anymore. I sleep through the night almost all the time. No matter how hard I try, I can’t remember most of my time there. It’s not blank, because you can see blankness; it’s just not there.”

  “But?” he said.

  She stepped closer to him and studied his face closely. “You saw action, right?”

  He nodded.

  “How do you feel about yourself?”

  No one had ever asked him that. People had asked about what he’d seen and what he’d done, but maybe just to be polite, no one had ever asked that. His throat tightened as he said, “The truth?”

  “What the hell else are we doing here?” she said. She looked like she wanted to hit him.

  He looked to each side and wondered if he should leave now. He didn’t owe this woman anything.

  But he did, one soldier to another.

  “Most days, most times, I’m numb. Good days, I feel good. If I let myself think about the war, though, and sometimes even when I don’t realize I have, I hate myself.”

  She bobbed her head in agreement. “Yeah, exactly. These doctors, my husband, everyone who’s never been there, they don’t get it. But that’s exactly right. That self-loathing, it’s down there, all the time, ready to come out, catching you when you’re unprepared for it.”

  “Yes,” he said. “The PTSD and the anger, they stay with you, and a lot of people understand those things, or try to, but they can’t get the rest. Not if they didn’t live it, do what you had to do . . .”

  “So you fight it, right?” she said. “The bad memories come, and you tell yourself you did what was necessary, to protect yourself, to take care of your squad, whatever. You fight it and most times you lose, but you have something to fight.” She paused. “It’s good to have something to fight.”

  He nodded his head as the memories he’d recalled during the assessment washed over him again. “Yeah. We never get to stop fighting.”