The Long Walk: A Story of War and the Life That Follows

by Brian Castner

  I’m not just Crazy. I have a broken brain exhausted from fixing itself.

  My New Shrink and I are doing a guided-meditation session. I haven’t relaxed in months, and this is supposed to help. I sit in my upright chair, close my eyes, and try to concentrate on her words.

  “First, feel your left thumb,” she says. “Flex your left thumb. Make it as tight as you can. Good. Now relax it. Now your left index finger. Slowly now. Feel the tension build in each finger, and your whole hand, and then release it.

  “Release the tension and relax,” she says.

  But I can’t relax. I’ve already flexed my left arm and right thumb and right hand and right arm and gut and legs and feet before she has made it above my elbow. And anyway, I can’t flex the Crazy, and I can’t release it.

  “Good,” my New Shrink says, assuming I have followed along with each individual step instead of skipping ahead to the end.

  “Now we breathe,” she says. “Breathe deeply into the base of your stomach. Breathe into your entire rib cage. Breathe into the base of your spine. And relax.”

  But I don’t relax. The Crazy expands in my chest. I breathe deeply and it fills with Crazy. I exhale completely, but my rib cage is still full.

  “Open your collarbones. Be present. In your mind,” she says.

  My mind is aware. It sits behind my closed eyelids, staring into nothingness. It directs the tension, the breath. It sees through the darkness.

  But my mind is not centered. It is not balanced, does not lie equally behind my eyelids. It drifts, first barely favoring the left eye over the right, then slipping further to the side, then abandoning the right completely. My mind sits to the left of my eyes, looks back at an angle at the black void stretching endlessly before my physical body’s line of sight. I sit beside myself and breathe.

  My New Shrink tells me to open my eyes.

  “How was that?” she asks. “Do you feel more relaxed?”

  I describe how my mind drifted away from behind my closed eyelids. How I stared into the depths off-balance.

  “Fascinating!” she exclaims.

  It is the birthday of my fourth son. He is two today, and the family has come over for a party. Grandma and Grandpa, aunt and cousin. Even Ricky unexpectedly stopped over, the first time he was able to come. His little daughter is four now, growing up too fast, though she couldn’t make the party.

  The two-year-old is gleefully unwrapping presents, discovering puzzles and games and cars. He opens a red stuffed animal, and with a squeal, dives on top of it and rolls around on the carpet, his older brothers tickling and giggling with him.

  I don’t remember any of their second birthday parties.

  I concentrate on the sights and the sounds and I check my rifle. I gulp it in, watching, analyzing, encoding. Burn this one in, Brian. Remember it.

  My wife is pulling out the camera and elicits a “cheese” from the tangle of arms and legs on the floor. Grandpa is in search of another piece of cake. Grandma watches with a small smile on her lips.

  But it’s already starting to slip away. A fading echo. I concentrate harder.

  Remember it, Brian!

  I grasp the slipping sand with both hands. There are plenty of gaps for this party to fill, but my bucket has a hole in the bottom, and by the end of the day, it’s nearly gone.

  I died in Iraq. The old me left for Iraq and never came home. The man my wife married never came home. The father of my oldest three children never came home. If I didn’t die, I don’t know what else to call it.

  I liked the old me, the one who played guitar, and laughed at dumb movies, and loved to read for days on end. That me died from a thousand blasts. Died covered in children’s blood. Died staring down my rifle barrel, a helpless woman in the crosshairs and my finger on the trigger. That me is gone.

  The new me is frantic and can’t sit still. The new me didn’t laugh for a year. The new me cries while reading bedtime stories to my children. The new me plans to die tomorrow. The new me runs almost every day, runs till knees buckle and fail. The new me takes his rifle everywhere. The new me is on fast-forward. The new me is Crazy.

  The new me has a blown-up Swiss-cheese brain, and doesn’t remember all of the old me. But he remembers enough. Enough to be ashamed. Enough to miss the old me. Enough to resent the old me. Resent the way everyone mourns him, while I am standing right in front of them.

  Do you remember when Daddy used to? That daddy is gone. He doesn’t do those things anymore. Do you remember when we used to be happy? Husband isn’t happy anymore.

  Maybe my wife should pull out the letter I left for my sons and read it to them. Maybe it would explain why Daddy didn’t come home.

  When you go to war, and die, and come home Crazy and with a ragged brain, you get to watch your family carry on without you.

  Everyone longs for the old me. No one particularly wants to be with the new me. Especially me.

  The yoga studio is on the second floor of a rather dingy 1960s-era retail box. This flat storefront, uniform block and picture windows, sits dissonantly in a neighborhood of historic wrought iron and brick, the wide squares and monuments of downtown Savannah, my two-week home while on the road teaching at the local Army post. Thin worn carpet covers the creaking stairs leading up to the stifling studio. It’s summer in the South, and the heater is on. Intentionally.

  My New Shrink first suggested the yoga. It holds the symmetry and release I crave. The muscle strain boils off the Crazy. The repetition dulls, then frees, the mind. On a bad day, the forms demand all of my concentration: my legs shake, my arms twitch instead of my eyes, and I hold the Crazy at bay for another hour. On a good day, the flow reverses the Crazy for a moment and my healing mind is present beneath and apart from the movement. Yoga is club and scalpel. Yoga is exhaustion and insight.

  My Yogini likes hot yoga, and she has the space heaters cranking in the wide hardwood-floored space. I strip as far as public modesty allows, and the sweat builds on my brow even as we sit, cross-legged, waiting to begin our practice.

  The Yogini walks to the front of the room and sits on her own mat, crossing her legs and placing her feet on the top of her thighs. She is younger and shorter than I, athletic, confident, with a high calm voice and the gift of putting everyone around her at ease. I would find her presence and choice of tight clothing distracting if I weren’t so embarrassed at being Crazy.

  “We start our yoga practice by breathing the word ‘Om,’ ” my Yogini begins. “When you say your Om, pull it from the deepest part of you. Press your hips and flesh into the earth below us. Your Om comes from there, up through your body, through your lungs and out of your mouth.”

  I sit flat and wide and prepare my Om as best as I know how.

  “We will send our Om into the universe,” says the Yogini. “Our Om will join and harmonize with all that is. Then we will let it go.”

  She takes a deep breath, and an enormous Om, astonishingly loud and deep, erupts from the small form seated in front of me. The rest of the class joins, choosing her octave or another above or below.

  My breath fills my lungs all the way down into my stomach, and I self-consciously release my Om. My voice is deep, but my Om does not resonate. It is thin and tempered.

  “Do not judge your Om,” the Yogini says in my mind, but the Crazy does not let go easily.

  When our collective Om is a memory of an echo, and hot humid silence has returned, the Yogini begins the vinyasa, the flow, the sequences of poses and forms that exhaust and renew mind and body.

  Tadasana. Uttanasana. Chaturanga Dandasana. Urdhva Mukha Svanasana. Adho Mukha Svanasana. Tadasana.

  Mountain. Standing Forward Bend. Plank and lower. Upward Dog. Downward Dog. Feet forward. Mountain. Repeat your vinyasa.

  Tadasana. Uttanasana. Chaturanga Dandasana. Urdhva Mukha Svanasana. Adho Mukha Svanasana. Tadasana.

  I have to think about the forms at first, watch my hand placement, concentrate on the turn of my arm, stretching m
y legs, pulling the Ujjayi, the Sounding Breath, from deep in my belly. The first vinyasa is clumsy; my muscles’ thoughts are full of rifles and pistols and transitions between the two, and my body struggles to remember the forms. On the second vinyasa the sweat is already building, oppressive heat turning skin sheen to stream. The third aligns my breath and movement. The fourth I don’t remember.

  I spend more and more of my time at the VA hospital now. Tall, gray, in four wings with a skullcap cupola at the top, Buffalo’s veterans hospital is a monolith to sorrow and loss; that mausoleum could double in size and it still wouldn’t be big enough to contain the misery it houses. I started as a patient in the emergency room for heart trouble. But it turns out it was Crazy, not Cardiac. So now I go to Mental Health on the tenth floor instead of Internal Medicine on the eighth.

  The longer elevator ride gives you momentary relief to feel healthier, comparing yourself with other patients. Decrepit World War II veterans, amputees from combat or diabetes, slumped in their wheelchairs and dressed in flimsy gowns and baseball hats denoting their last ship or unit. Vietnam veterans, always in insulated camouflage jackets keeping out the winter chill, covered in patches that read “These Colors Don’t Run” and “Never Forget” to honor POWs and MIAs. Younger guys, dark jeans and too-short hair, taking the trip all the way to Ten with me. One guy has a tan T-shirt with a comic-book-style drawing of a soldier, full kit, hand on his rifle, his amputated right leg replaced with an ergonomic flexible running prosthetic. Alongside is written “You should have killed me when you had the chance.”

  You look at the floor. So do they. You check your rifle. So do they. You walk up to the same check-in counter. You sit in the same waiting room. You wait your turn to talk about your Crazy. In silence.

  Today I turn away from the Behavior Health office and head to Neuro-Psych testing. It’s the next step in my evaluation. How much of me being Crazy is a shredded brain?

  I enter the smallish office and sit across from a young, dark-haired PhD. She writes down my medical history, deployment history, occupation, and stressors, using a long, just-sharpened pencil on a crisp white form. We’re probably the same age, but today, sitting in that chair and after the elevator ride, Crazy following in my shadow, I feel twice as old as the fresh-faced promising girl across the table from me.

  “What did you do in the military?” the PhD asks.

  “I took apart bombs.” It’s my standard reply now.

  “How often?”

  “Most days. Some days were worse than others.”

  “And you were safe while you did this,” she assumes innocently.

  I’m not sure how to answer that.

  “Well, the enemy is trying to kill you. So no, not really.” It’s the best I can do. She looks confused.

  “So you didn’t decommission bombs? These are bombs the enemy made?” she asks.

  I think she is starting to get it.

  “Right. Those roadside IEDs you hear about on the news.”

  “So every day you thought you were going to die?”

  “You could say that.”

  Furious note scribbling.

  “So when was your traumatic brain injury?” she asks.

  “All the time.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I blew up something every day. Sometimes the enemy tried to blow us up. Sometimes we were far enough away. Sometimes we weren’t.”

  More furious note scribbling.

  “I bet OCD is useful in your job,” she notes.

  “Yeah, it can be.” Less useful now.

  “We don’t get a brain like yours in here very often,” she concludes.

  Is that a good thing, I wonder.

  We get up and she leads me to the testing station. An empty desk, white walls, a pale institutional notepad, four yellow number-two pencils. For three hours I repeat numbers in order, memorize obscure lists of animals and vegetables, do mental arithmetic, draw geometric figures, and then recall those animal and vegetable names again. Zebra giraffe cow squirrel onion celery cabbage spinach. See, I can do it now.

  Why can I remember shapes and vegetable names, but not the events of my life as I live them?

  The problem isn’t that I’m dumb. The problem is that I’m Crazy. This doesn’t seem to be a test for that.

  Now we move to a nearby large, boxy desktop computer station where she calls up an antiquated blue-and-white text program. I’m supposed to rate my feelings of worry and stress. Now we’re getting somewhere.

  Do your hands shake? Do you feel on edge? Do you have trouble sitting still? Do you fear people are out to get you? Do you feel scared to go outside? Terrified of the future? Do you have trouble sleeping? Do you relive traumatizing experiences while you are awake?

  No questions about eye twitches. No questions about gurgles. No questions about carrying your rifle everywhere you go.

  Certainly no questions about the Crazy feeling.

  I finish the computer screening unsatisfied and go to the glaring fluorescent basement cafeteria for an early lunch of overcooked chicken, waiting for my test results and screening scores to come back. I hope for a positive result, a positive find, a massive failure of some orb or cortex. I pine for a physical reason for the Crazy symptoms. Physical damage to my head would finally be an explanation, a reason, a scapegoat. I finish my limp broccoli and return to the doctor’s spare office on the tenth floor.

  My results are spread out before the pretty PhD. The check marks are mostly on the right-hand side of the handwritten white page. I maxed out the test one way or the other.

  “Every brain is built differently, and every brain is damaged differently,” the PhD says. “Most people would be thrilled to have your spatial and cognitive abilities. We don’t know how your brain worked before, but we know it works fine now.”

  “So, I don’t have a TBI?”

  She considers.

  “No, you probably have some damage. No one could do what you did and not have damage. It’s just not impairing your short-term memory or reasoning,” she says.

  Giraffe Zebra Cow Squirrel Spinach Celery Onion Cabbage. No, I guess not.

  “What about the long-term memory?”

  “I’m not in your head,” she says. “I don’t know what used to be there. I don’t know what you lost, and there is no way to test for it.”

  “But there is something wrong. What is it?”

  “The problem isn’t your brain,” she says. “The problem is how you react to your brain.”

  So I’m Crazy. But I knew that already.

  The sweat is pouring down my face now in a stream, stinging my eyes, hanging and dripping off my nose, my mat slick in front of me.

  Tadasana. Uttanasana. Chaturanga Dandasana. Urdhva Mukha Svanasana. Adho Mukha Svanasana. Tadasana.

  Tadasana. Uttanasana. Chaturanga Dandasana. Urdhva Mukha Svanasana. Adho Mukha Svanasana. Tadasana.

  I lose count of vinyasas. The flow loosens my binds, frees my mind from the cage of the now-distracted body. It moves with my Ujjayi, the Crazy forming a puddle on the floor.

  My mind follows my Om, of breath and flecked with spit, released into the universe, back through time, no time, the continuum of the river flowing, no start or end. My mind flows upstream, dips into the HAS at Kirkuk, to a call coming, to the rhythm of timeless combat.

  The Warrior is called and the Warrior goes. It has ever been so. Who will go? I will go.

  When the call comes in, the ballet begins. First, the armor. My dō, my cuirass, my armored vest first. Then shoulders, sode, strapped and down. Tekko on my hands. My kabuto on my head. Thousands of times before. Thousands of times again. A miasma of ages but the same dance. Katana and wakizashi, broadsword and dirk, rifle and pistol. It has been ever thus, in our human river flow. My Om is their Om.

  Rifle in hand, suneate on my shins, Chaturanga Dandasana. My vinyasa flows out of the HAS, to meet security, to go on the call, to meet the challenge. Girded with breastplate and mail, the
shake and clank of metal on metal, we meet in a circle, surrounding the Chaplain, the Padre, the sanctifier of our mission, on one knee, head down, rifle inverted to forehead. A cross over our helmets, a blessing before battle. In Nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Rifle stock, barrel, magazine, optics. The flow continues.

  Tadasana. Uttanasana. Chaturanga Dandasana. Urdhva Mukha Svanasana. Adho Mukha Svanasana. Tadasana.

  My grandfather runs from the landing craft onto the cold, storm-racked beach. His plane lands on the jungled island, a speck upon the wide peaceful sea. He charges up the mosquito-infested Virginian killing field. He falls in the black forest.

  I am but a drop in the river. My Crazy is but a drop in a drop in the river. My Crazy has always been, if not in me, then in the river. The flow continues.

  Tadasana. Uttanasana. Chaturanga Dandasana. Urdhva Mukha Svanasana. Adho Mukha Svanasana. Tadasana.

  Blessed and mailed and armed and mounted, we charge to the call.

  When we got to the deserted street corner in southern Kirkuk the Iraqi Police were already on scene, shooting at the IED with their AK-47s.

  “How many times have we told them they can’t do this anymore?” I vented in frustration, to no one in particular.

  “It’s their country and they’ll do what they want,” Castleman replied. “But if they don’t quit it now we’re leaving.”

  The Iraqis lacked robots and training, and so shooting at an IED with a rifle was an attractive option to the desperate or slightly sane. The more typical Iraqi Army soldier or policeman, however, had little compulsion with invoking Insha’Allah and simply walking up to the IED and cutting it apart by hand. This is precisely what happened, in fact, as Mengershausen unloaded the robot and I started to build an explosive charge. Castleman was still chatting over security requirements with our local infantry fire team when a plainclothes cop walked up to us with a plastic box in his hand.

  “It is okay now,” he said in broken English. “It is safe now. All done. I do it. Okay now. You go home.”