The Beauty's Beast

by Eddie Cleveland

  "Harley? You want to end a fifteen-month tour by crossing the United States on your motorcycle?" Cooper tilts his head and his lips curl up into a half-cocked smile. I'm not sure if he's impressed or if he's laughing at me. Either way, I don't care.

  "Yes, sir. I've been riding for over ten years now. I've taken a lot of small trips here and there, but I’ve never done a coast-to-coast ride. That's gonna change when I get back."

  "Don't you want to spend some R & R on a beach or something? Maybe spend a few weeks at an all-inclusive resort? And, you know, relax a little?" He keeps pace with me without ever removing his piercing stare from my face. It's not like I've been going easy on him either, this whole week Cooper has been keeping up with us like a pro. The guy lugging the camera on his shoulder, capturing our “intimate chat” impresses me even more.

  "No offense, sir. But, what kind of an idiot would I have to be to want to spend time on a sandy beach after spending over a year here? If I never see a beach again, I'll die happy I think."

  Cooper laughs, a little pink creeps up into his cheeks as he shakes his head from side to side. "Yeah, I guess that wasn't the best example," he looks over his shoulder to his camera man sheepishly. He's only thrown off for a second though before he's back to his poker face, staring into my soul.

  "Fair enough, I can understand why you wouldn't want to spend time on a beach then," he continues, "but what I mean is, don't you just want some time to relax? Don't you need a little time to decompress after all this?" Cooper is back on his game.

  The wind suddenly picks up and whips some sand at my face. I squint and keep my head down, watching my boots navigate through the filthy fog of dust as I wait for it to pass. I remember when we first got over here and these dust ups would feel like razors against my cheeks, but now my skin is like a leatherback turtle. And my shell is just as hard to crack.

  Once the swirling dirt settles back down, I scan the horizon. The village of Gumbad is in sight now. The little clay houses punctuating the vast expanse of nothingness. The day is almost done. One more X on the calendar. One day closer to home.

  "Well, sir, I think relaxing and decompressing look different to everyone. Most of my guys are gonna go home after this and spend time with their loved ones, or binge watch the tv shows they've missed over the past year, and that's what they need to do. It's what they deserve to do after all this."

  As we keep trudging forward I can see a handful of young boys kicking a soccer ball in bare feet. One of the boys points to my platoon and picks the ball up, tucking it under his arm. His friends stop and watch as we approach, cupping their hands over their eyes like makeshift sunglasses.

  "To me, there's nothing more peaceful than when I watch the sunset as I drive over the horizon on my bike. The calm that washes over me, well, no amount of Netflix can give me that. It's just who I am, I guess." I shrug.

  Cooper looks satisfied with himself. Maybe I gave him some good footage, I don't know. His focus turns to the village a few yards away and his camera man adjusts his shot accordingly.

  The boys suddenly run back toward the houses and elderly village men shuffle out to greet us in their place.

  "Willoby! Move up!" I yell over my shoulder. "Company, halt!" The forty pairs of boots crack to a stop like a clap of thunder. Willoby is by my side, ready to translate for me as I disengage from the platoon to make introductions.

  Stepping forward, with my arm extended, I try to look friendly and relax my face as my eyes scan the village behind them. A large group of children are running around, excited by our presence. The ladies are huddled together by a wash basin, whispering to each other and eyeing us suspiciously.

  I shake the hand of the man in front, noting his long white beard and deep wrinkles before my eyes settle on his. Willoby introduces me and the elder welcomes us to Gumbad. It's the same routine we've been doing all day. It's the same for every Shura. Right out of the manual and PowerPoint presentations we're given. Just like everything in the military, there's protocol to follow.

  I give the command to move my company forward and we make our way closer to the huts. The children run around my men like they're trying to herd them together, circling them excitedly. After posting four men as lookouts, we sit together on the ground. We take off our helmets, laying them in front of our crossed legs, and lay our rifles down as a show of good faith. Again, protocol. Regulations. Orders. There's a disciplined and planned way to do everything in the army.

  Cooper sits in the dirt next to me, he stays quiet as Willoby chats with the elders. His camera crew focus on the talk, I can't imagine they'll use much of this footage. It can't be very interesting tv to watch a translator and old man make small talk in another language.

  My eyes wander over to the women and children standing off to our left. The women whisper to each other, looking over at us nervously. This isn't new. Having a group of armed men around them and their kids would be enough to make any mother anxious.

  "Can you ask him how old he is? And how many wars he's lived through?" Cooper asks my translator.

  As he asks the questions, I notice the women begin to gather the children into a group as they move them away from us. My head snaps as I quickly look around us. Suddenly, the village is deserted except for the men sitting with us. Checking back on the group of women, they have picked up the pace, scurrying now to put distance between them and us.

  The boy who held the soccer ball under his arm as we approached looks back at us as one of the women yanks his arm. My gut twists and the blood rushes in my ears as I jump to my feet. "Troops! Grab your weapons!"

  The words barely escape my lips when one of the village men jumps up, pulling an ax from under his robe and runs at Corporal Thompson. I snatch up my gun and hastily snap on my helmet as I watch the man raise his arm and split Thompson’s head open with a thud. The sound of the ax sinking into my young Corporal’s brain sounds too faint to be real. Too far off, and too quiet to account for all the blood pouring out of the young Corporal and into the dirt.

  "Shit!" I pull my gun into my shoulder and squeeze the trigger, dropping the man.

  BOOM! Dirt explodes into a mushroom cloud around us. Fuck! Did someone set off a bomb? Was that an IED? Christ. I can barely make out the silhouettes of my men scrambling to position. Shots are being fired in the dusty haze.

  My eyes finally adjust to the filth falling from the sky and focus on Cooper Sanders. He's just standing, staring into the chaos as gunfire explodes around him. Damn it! He's not even wearing his fucking helmet! What the hell is he doing? Suddenly a green egg drops to his feet, he doesn't move, he’s still just staring. Like he's waiting for a little birdie to pop out instead of being frozen to the spot as a grenade is about to blast at his feet.

  I look over to his right, and Armstrong is lying on his belly, desperately fighting to fix a jam on his rifle. A jam means no bullets. No bullets mean death.

  I've got to do something! I run to Cooper, throwing him to the side and kick the grenade like it's the soccer ball we saw the boys playing with earlier. As the edge of my boot catches the casing, I can feel it fly away. Then a blast of hot air surrounds my leg as the grenade explodes. I'm lifted through the air like a pillow being tossed around at a teen girl's slumber party before my back thuds into the dirt and I roll another ten feet. My ears squeal the horrific siren song of war; my eardrums must be fucked.

  I manage to push myself up onto my elbows and look at the scene unfolding in front of me like some kind of Scorsese wet dream. Blood and fragments of skin and bone are painting the beige ground a deep maroon as my men continue to fight off the ambush. My leg feels like someone is pouring hot water down it, when I look down my eyes confirm what my mind and body already knew: it's gone.

  There's no time for that right now! Another explosion sends dirt flying everywhere and I flip over onto my stomach and use my good leg and my elbows to drag me back over to Cooper. He hasn't moved from where I threw him, I'm not sure if he's dead, but I know he
's unarmed. The sand grates against my exposed skin and the feeling of hot water running over my leg continues. Somehow, I crawl to Cooper. He's not dead. Maybe injured. Definitely in shock. But not dead.

  "Fuck! What the hell is happening!" he screams. I guess I can hear after all; the blast must've just phased me. I lay over him like a sandbag and raise my rifle. Pop! Pop! Pop! I squeeze the trigger, aiming for the center of mass, or the heart as civilians say. Another man from the village drops to the dirt.

  I can hear the whirling rotor blades of a Blackhawk overhead. Thank you, Jesus. Keeping Cooper still beneath me, I raise my rifle, scanning for another fighter to come into view. However, I don't see any through the heavy fog of sand.

  "Captain! Captain! We've got to take you out!" I twist my head over my shoulder to see 3 medics with a stretcher running up behind me.

  "I'm not going anywhere without my men!"

  "Captain, you're bleeding out. If we don't get you out of here you're gonna die," the young medic yells in my ear as he pulls my shoulders. I feel several hands on me as I'm lifted from Cooper. Lifted from the ground and put on the stretcher.

  "How many did we lose? Did we get them all?" I yell.

  "Don't worry about that right now, you'll be debriefed later. Right now we need to get you back to the base."

  I wince as they strap me to the board. Looking down over my body, I see my skin hanging from just below my knee in long flaps. Blood spreads over the stretcher in the place where my limb should be. My leg is gone. It's gone. For the first time, my mind has a chance to process the thought.

  I'm carried to the Blackhawk and maneuvered inside. I close my eyes as one of the medics begins tying off a tourniquet to slow the bleeding.

  Gone.

  I don't know how many of my men are dead, but I know I've lost some. My men are gone. My friends. My brothers. Dead.

  As the wraps are tied down tight around my leg, I can feel us lifting up in the Helo. I used to love helicopter rides. The thrill of soaring through the air, usually to be dropped somewhere exciting and new. I close my eyes and try to slow my breathing. I need to calm down.

  I need to ….

  Lauren!

  Her soft brown eyes and glowing almond skin race through my mind. I can smell fresh lilacs, her perfume. I can taste her gloss on my lips. I swear, I can feel her holding my hand as I’m lifted to the medical center.

  I need her.

  7

  Mack

  2014

  “So where did you disappear to, Captain America?” Corporal Lopez twists around in his passenger seat to shoot a knowing smile my way. “Can you believe this guy?” He jerks his thumb at me in the backseat as his attention falls on our driver, Specialist Parsons. “He’s got a whole pussy parade after him all night, rubbing up on him like cats in heat, and then he just plucks the two prettiest ones from the bunch and takes off.”

  In the rear view mirror I can see Parsons lift his eyebrows skyward. His moustache raises up higher when he does it, giving his face the appearance of a human arrow.

  “Oh yeah? Two of ‘em, huh?”

  I don’t respond, but the night before flashes in my mind. I can see their crimson lips brushing against each other as they slid their tongues from the base of my cock all the way up to the tip at the same time. My dick twitches up against my zipper, as if it’s reminding me that he had a great time when both the blonde and brunette from the night before slid their tongues up and around me like strippers on a pole.

  “It was a good night,” I admit to my reflection in the window as I watch the familiar Colorado scenery float by me. I haven’t been back here since I left for West Point about a decade ago. I’m struck by the little things that’ve changed almost as much as I am by all the things that never did.

  “A good night,” Lopez snorts over his shoulder at me, rolling his eyes. “You should’ve seen this greedy bastard in there, those girls were grinding up on him like a Roman orgy every time he got a drink at the bar. Man, that Captain America name is gold too. Did you come up with that or what?”

  I didn’t.

  It was just insanely good timing that the news footage of the firefight in Afghanistan hit the media outlets at the same time as the blockbuster movie hit the screens. Once Cooper Sanders got back on the air, he did a segment about the “real Captain America” who saved his life. Well, that was that. Fox, CNB and everyone else picked it up and ran with it.

  I don’t love it, being compared to a comic book character makes me feel uneasy about the men I lost. Like watching Thompson get his head split open like a walnut is the same as watching a scene in a movie theatre. Like my men who didn’t make it are just extras on a set. Like the flashbacks and nightmares are exciting little trailers teasing this summer’s big Hollywood hit.

  Captain America feels like it’s downplaying what happened over there for the sake of a quippy nickname. It feels like we’re trading compassion for sound bytes. But, I can’t change it, and it makes the girls practically cum as soon as they lay eyes on me. Not that bringing ladies home was ever a problem before. But, Lopez is right, now it’s as easy as pointing at one, two, hell, even three of them and heading out.

  “Nah, I picked it up from one of those news shows. Who gives themselves a nickname anyway?” I shake my head.

  “Yeah, Parsons, who would do something like that? That would just be weird, wouldn’t it Captain Forrester?” Lopez twists in his seat again to face our driver, who looks a little red in the face.

  “Shut up, man.” Parsons tenses his jaw and his shoulders stiffen. I can’t help but laugh.

  “Seriously? I gotta hear this one. What was the name?” I watch Parsons silently plead with Lopez in a single look. For a second, I think the Corporal is gonna stop chucking shit at his friend and leave me in the dark. Then he turns around in his seat, his eyes are twinkling like a cat that caught a little bird to snack on.

  “Yeah, man, what was it you wanted everyone to call ya?” He pushes Parsons, but the only response is a flood of red rising up the back of my driver’s neck as he stares straight forward, unblinking.

  “The sperminator,” Lopez looks me straight in the face and answers. Parsons turns a shade of purple usually reserved for eggplants and stroke victims.

  “You’re a dick, man.” He manages to push the words through his locked jaw.

  Lopez starts laughing like a hyena and I can’t help but laugh too.

  “What? Why would you even want that to catch on?” Tiny tears form in the corners of my eyes as I struggle to breathe through my laughter.

  “I dunno, I thought chicks would think it sounded cool. Fuck I was seventeen, you think you can drop it?” Parsons snaps at us but Lopez and I keep laughing.

  “Dicks.”

  The scenery blurs by the car window like fragments of a dream. At least it’s not like my real dreams. Instead of the sand covered hell-hole full of bodies that I visit every night, I see the field I used to play little league on. Instead of the village that I keep walking into in my sleep, I see my old middle school.

  Memories piece together and remind me of my roots. I haven’t been back since I left for West Point, I was on my first tour when my parents packed up and headed to the sunshine state for retirement, so I never had reason to come home. A decade has gone by and I try to distract myself with all the little things that have changed. That strip mall never used to be there. Those subdivisions are new. It’s all a nice distraction from the only thing left in Colorado I care about.

  Lauren.

  Giving my head a shake, I push the thought away. If I’ve learned anything over the years, it’s that there’s no shortage of pussy. After all, I got my leg blown off, not my dick. Although, there’s been many women who’ve tried to suck it off. Who am I to deny them?

  After almost a year of intensive treatment at Walter Reed, the military gave me a choice: I could continue to be active duty or head out onto civvie street. It seemed like a no-brainer. I live to serve. Then I found out
“active duty” meant desk jockey. Nope. No way I’m gonna stamp piles of paperwork for eight hours a day for the next fifteen years. Nothing against those guys, but I need something with a bit more adrenaline pumping through it’s veins. Something a bit more dangerous than maybe getting a paper cut.

  When they told me I could discharge and finish my treatment at the Spalding Center near my hometown, I agreed. I mean, what else was I gonna do? Go hang out in an orange grove with my parents in Florida? Besides the military, Colorado has been the only home I’ve ever known.

  I stare out my window blankly at the city sliding by. Suddenly, my eyes snap to focus when I see the red, white and blue flapping crisply in the spring wind. A row of flags lines the street, out the other window it’s the same. The blue on the flags compete with the blue of the sky. Parsons turns the corner and the road is lined down both sides with motorbikes, firemen, police and a ton of folks cheering.

  A bunch of them are holding signs. “Welcome home.” “American Hero!” I wasn’t expecting this. The car slows down, and we pass hundreds of people waving and smiling. I roll down the window and wave back. On the sidewalk I see a pretty young thing with a couple of kids standing knee high to her. One of the boys stands straight and brings his little hand to his temple in a salute. I’m no softie, but I feel my heart twinge as I raise my hand to salute back at him.

  The crowd seems endless; hell I’ve seen Veteran’s Day parades with less turn out. I know that when the footage first got released of me kicking the grenade away from Cooper, I was getting all kinds of attention. Interviews with 20/20, 60 minutes, even Oprah sat down with me. As the months in recovery wore on, the media buzz died down.

  Unfortunately, so did all the fan mail from women who were offering me marriages and a womb to put my kids in. The wedding offers didn’t do anything for me, but some of the nasty descriptions of what they wanted to do to me to show their gratitude helped me get through some dark times. Luckily, when I was allowed to leave the hospital and mingle in the community, many more women were all too happy to show me just how grateful they really were. And flexible. If there’s anything better than a hot piece of ass with a patriotic streak and a deep throat, I don’t want to know.