The Beauty's Beast

by Eddie Cleveland

  Chelsea is still blah-blahing about something or other, but I can’t pay attention. My eyes scan the article below the video, she’s right. Mack is doing an exclusive, live interview with Cooper Sanders tomorrow night.

  “Do you think they’re going to talk about us?” I can’t tell if Chelsea sounds horrified by the idea or flattered. “Do you think he’s going to explain what happened?” She continues.

  “I couldn’t tell you,” I answer her glumly. One thing is certain though: I’ll be tuning in to find out.

  38

  Mack

  2014

  “I’m just gonna dust a little powder on your nose, that’s all. You don’t want to look shiny on camera,” The chick I banged in the back of a vehicle in Afghanistan leans over me and runs a fluffy makeup brush over my face. Her tits are popping out of the low V-neck of her shirt. “There, all done,” she steps back and admires her work, blinking her long eyelashes.

  She’s pretty, that much is undeniable. Too bad looking into her eyes is like taking a glance down into the Grand Canyon. A barren, empty, seemingly bottomless void. What was it Cameron said the other night about these chicks? All flash and no substance.

  Not like Lauren. My gut churns as I remember for the tenth time in the past hour the perfect woman I lost. Again.

  “Thanks, uh…” there’s no way this woman’s name is coming back to me. Lauren would call her a card carrying member of my bimbo fan club, but I doubt she would appreciate the nickname. Although from the vapid stare she’s returning, it might not bother her as much as you’d think.

  “Tiffany,” she fills in the blank cheerfully. From the way her face doesn’t move at all, she’s either full of Botox or she doesn’t care that I forgot.

  Probably both.

  “Ok, let’s get this stuff cleared out of here,” Cooper walks over to the chair poised across from me to get ready for the interview. “Thanks Tiffany, you can go too,” he directs her. She practically skips off the set, flipping her hair like she’s in a shampoo commercial the whole way.

  I can’t believe I ever found girls like her sexy. Once you’ve been with a woman like Lauren, all you can see is how every other girl comes up short. Once you’ve had an exquisite work of art, paint by numbers just don’t cut it anymore.

  Cooper sits on the very edge of the chair across from me, holding a small stack of papers in his hands. His crew are buzzing all around us, checking wires and aiming cameras. I never realized how much went into these interviews. When he joined us in the desert, it was bare bones compared to this circus.

  “Ok, so I just wanted to go over some of these questions with you so you know what to expect,” he’s hunched over with his elbows on his knees and barely speaking above a whisper. I get the feeling that he doesn’t usually give his interview subjects a preview of the hard hitting questions he’s known for serving up.

  The cameras have been following me around all day, recording me being “natural”. They’ve gotten footage of me cooking food, running with my blade, and of strangers recognizing me and thanking me for my service. I’m starting to feel like I’m in an infomercial selling portions of Captain “America” Mack Forrester.

  But wait, if you act now they’ll even throw in scenes of me petting puppies and kissing babies.

  “Obviously, we’re going to show the footage of the incident, ok? Then, I’m going to have to ask you if you think this is appropriate behaviour for a highly decorated war veteran. I know that sounds rough, but don’t worry, I’m gonna follow up with a bit saying how you’ve had a hard go and that this is being blown out of proportion. Ok?” He looks up at me with his steely blue eyes and I can see that he’s concerned for me.

  He cares.

  “You don’t need to do that,” I run my hand over my beard and try to ignore the voice inside telling me that this can all blow over, if I just let it. It looks like my old buddy Cooper Sanders is offering me a get out of jail free card. Wouldn’t I be a fool to turn it down?

  “The hell I don’t!” He raises his voice and then looks around the studio self consciously. The two of us pop our heads up like a couple of groundhogs looking for shadows in February, but if any of his staff noticed him raise his voice they don’t care enough to look our way.

  “Come here,” he leans into me, “look at this,” he continues, rolling up the sleeve of his dress shirt until the lower half of his arm is exposed to me. “You see this?” His blue eyes settle on me.

  “I can.” I don’t quite have a full sleeve of tattoos, but Cooper does.

  His twisted scars mark a time I wish I could leave in the desert. A time that haunts my days, let alone my dreams. Down the entire length of his arm is a roadmap of the cowardly attack we both survived in Afghanistan.

  “The plastic surgeons, they wanted to fix it. Make it disappear.” He talks to me like he’s revealing his deepest secret. “I told them to leave it alone. You know why?” His blue eyes always been hard to look away from. Never harder than now.

  “Why?” The word somehow bubbles up from my lips.

  “Because, when I went over there, to do the piece on you and the platoon, I thought I was king shit.” He smiles sadly at the memory. “I thought I was at the top of my game. A hero, at least in journalism. That’s why I pushed to keep up with you guys over there. I convinced myself I was just as badass as you guys, just without the uniform, you know?” He frowns and closes his eyes.

  “Ok.” I don’t know what else to say? Do I tell him I’m sorry that Afghanistan ruined that for him? That me getting my leg blown off somehow sucked for him? Less words are often better, I’m learning.

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought. Until a grenade was thrown at my feet. Then I froze, didn’t I?” He opens his eyes and looks straight at me like he wants me to confirm what he already knows. I nod but keep my mouth shut. “But, you didn’t.” He says with reverence. “You didn’t even fucking hesitate. At all.” He looks over his shoulders again, but no one cares about us any more than they did five minutes ago. “You saved my life,” his blues suddenly look a little bluer when a mist forms around the bottom of his eyelids. “So, if I can return the favor, you better believe I will.”

  He sits up straight and pushes his shoulders back into the chair, looking at me like we’re a couple of kids in a staring contest.

  “Thank you,” I finally answer, letting the gravity of what he’s offering me to sink in. A second chance. Or is this three now? Either way, he’s letting me off the hook, that much is clear.

  “We’re gonna roll in five minutes!” A disembodied voice yells to the side of us. Neither of us breaks our stare. I must not have been the only one who grew up with an older brother. This unblinking Olympics only hosts the most experienced and fierce of competitors.

  “Got it,” Cooper still doesn’t break his stare, even as he runs the show. Gotta respect that shit.

  Finally, I look away. Well, over his shoulder. I look into my past standing only a few feet away. Tiffany. Her full tits and her empty head remind me of everything I hated about being the man America thought they knew. She reminds me of everything that I miss about Lauren.

  “In five, four, three, two…” The man behind the camera doesn’t count the last number for fear of being heard on television. It is live, after all.

  As Cooper introduces the show, I try to push thoughts of Lauren out of my mind and focus. If I’m going to do damage control, I need to stop pouting about her and think about winning over hearts and minds.

  Hearts and minds. Because those missions have always worked out well for me.

  “Welcome to the show,” Cooper cuts into my thoughts and I sit up straighter in my chair. “The last time I saw you was when you were still a patient at the Walter Reed medical facility. You were learning to walk again with your new prosthetic leg. The only time I had ever met you before that was when you lost that leg, by saving my life.”

  “Thank you for having me on,” I nod sharply. I don’t want to let my mind get drag
ged back to that day right now. Not when I struggle so hard everyday to let it go.

  “It looks like you’ve come a long way from the man I watched fight for each baby step back at Walter Reed. Would you say that you’ve fully adjusted to living your life with an amputation now?” He throws me an easy one, like a softball being gently tossed into the glove of a toddler.

  “I believe I have. I live my life like every other American now. There’s nothing that I feel like my leg holds me back from anymore. I’ve learned to run with my new blade, and get out everyday for a jog or some sprints. It feels like my life before I lost the leg, except for one thing,” I look up at him.

  “What’s that?”

  “I still haven’t gotten back on my bike yet. “I need to do that next. I can’t tell you how much I’ve missed riding.” I feel myself relaxing a bit as our conversation bounces back and forth like a ping pong ball.

  “If my memory still serves me right, I believe you had plans to come home from the war and go on a cross country tour on your motorcycle. Is that still in the cards?” The silver haired news anchor’s eyes twinkle.

  “You better believe it, I want to get my bike out of storage next week and take her out for some short trips before I go out to the coast.”

  “Of course you do,” he smiles. “For those who aren’t familiar with your story, I’d like to play the video of that conversation we had, and the footage we have of your heroic bravery in Afghanistan. I must warn our viewers: this video is very graphic and raw, as war tends to be. I strongly recommend that if there are any children in the room under the age of fourteen that they be sent out now.” He gives his content advisory and then pauses, again, unblinking. I’m beginning to wonder if he even needs eyelids at all.

  “Are we good?” He looks over my shoulder to the producer. The bald man watching a monitor in front of him gives him a thumbs up. “Ok, so the people watching this are going to see the footage we got in the desert. Then they’ll cut back to us and I’ll talk to you about what happened the other day, ok?” His eyebrows look like they’re trying to furrow, but between the fillers and the makeup, there’s no chance of that happening.

  “Sounds good, thanks man.”

  A couple of crew members shuffle up beside us with a small table and a laptop. “As you can see, for the discussion about what happened here on the road, I’m going to play you a bit of the video. Everyone has seen it so there’s no need to watch the entire thing. I think seventy million views is more than enough,” he chuckles.

  Seventy million views? That’s how many people watched my meltdown? The number feels too large, too abstract to even be embarrassed by. I can’t imagine what a thousand people look like, let alone seventy.

  I don’t have time to really mull it over though, because the man behind the camera is signalling us again. “We’re back on in five, four, three, two…”

  Anderson looks straight into the lens, “Welcome back. I’m sitting down with Captain Mack Forrester, for those of you who were able to watch the entire footage that we just shared with you, it’s easy to see how the nickname “Captain America” was given to you. The heroism that you displayed that day was nothing short of the acts of bravery you would expect to see in a movie about a superhero.” His eyes break from the camera and focus back on me.

  I try not to squirm at the comparison, “Uh, thanks.”

  “I for one would like to thank you for your service and for the unflinching courage you showed when we came under attack. It must have been a surprise to you when, after the other video of you on the highway earlier this week went viral, how many people quickly turned against you.” He rubs his thumb and forefinger over the meat of his hand, “I was disgusted when I saw calls for your medals to be rescinded. How have you been dealing with the fallout of Captain America?”

  I blink for a moment, just trying to stay in the moment. “To be honest,” I clear my throat loudly, “that name has never sat easy with me. It’s always made me feel like it doesn’t honor the men I lost that day by comparing me to a Hollywood character. How do I feel about them being angry?” I look down at my missing leg, “I’m sorry that I let people down, but I’m much more concerned with how I made the man who I dragged out of his vehicle and his family feel. Those are real people, whose lives I affected, and for that I’m sorry.”

  “I think that’s appropriate. However, it appears to me that this entire thing has been blown out of proportion. As the last video we shared just showed, you’ve been through more than most people will ever face. You’re a true hero. You’ve sacrificed your own health and safety to save others. Now, because you experienced some road rage, people are demanding that you return your medals? I get road rage every week!” His unbiased reporting is getting buried under his emotions. “Everyone gets annoyed sometimes. I’m going to play a bit of the video showing the events that took place earlier in the week, in case there are some viewers at home who still haven’t seen it.” He leans forward and presses play on the already loaded video.

  On the laptop monitor, the familiar footage plays. I’ve seen bits and pieces of this video on the different news stations all week. Usually about ten seconds worth is all I’ve gotten through before shutting it off. My entire body tingles as I watch myself beating on the window of the man’s van. It’s strange to see yourself do something that you have no memory of. Like watching footage of yourself blacked out at a frat party. Who is that guy? Without the memory connecting me to the event, it feels surreal.

  We’ve now made it past the part that I usually see before scrambling for the remote. Now, I’m wrenching the door open and unbuckling the man’s seat belt in a panic. My seat suddenly feels extremely uncomfortable, like I just can’t find a way to sit in it that isn’t pinching into my skin. Cooper leans over to shut the remaining footage off, when the person who taped this on their cellphone suddenly sweeps across the car and over to Lauren and Chris.

  “No, wait, don’t turn it off.” I reach out and grab his hand.

  I can feel Cooper’s stare boring into me, but I can’t tear my eyes off the screen. Chris tries to break free from Lauren’s arms to run over to me, but her and Chelsea firmly grab him by the shoulders and keep him by their side. It’s a good thing too, with the state of mind I was in, I don’t know what I would’ve done if he tried to intervene.

  My guts twist up tight and my chest squeezes as I watch the tears slide down his face before he buries his head against his mother. Lauren is screaming my name, sobs convulsing through her body, but I’m too busy climbing into the man’s van to even know they’re near me. I let go of Cooper’s hand and he shuts off the computer.

  “So, those are not the actions that one would expect from a highly decorated war veteran,” Cooper continues, “but, it doesn’t look like anything more complicated than a little outburst of road rage. After all, you were stuck in construction, weren't you?” He looks up at me imploring me to follow the bouncing ball and help him downplay this whole thing.

  “No.” My voice is flat and empty.

  “No? You weren’t in a construction zone?” He sounds betrayed.

  “No, it wasn’t road rage. I wasn’t even driving. I think…” my voice cracks and I breathe in deep, I will not cry on national television.

  I give myself a second, but I can’t push the image of Chris trying to run after me, trying to help me...what would I have done to him? What have I already done to him? To Lauren? To my family. I fight the tears forming in the corners of my eyes.

  “What happened that day wasn’t road rage, Cooper,” my confession finally slips out. “I’ve been having flashbacks of the war ever since I returned home. I’m back there every night fighting in my dreams, and I’m often transported back in the day when something sets me off. I, well, I think that people look at me and they see that I’ve learned to walk again, and they say ‘oh, he’s better. He’s healed.’ But I haven’t healed. Because I have scars on the inside that no one can see, and they keep splitting open. I’m
not better just because I can walk again. Not when my mind is still fighting a war.”

  I take a deep breath and look straight into the camera, “I need help. I’m going to get professional help.”

  39

  Mack

  2014

  With a long day of fishing behind us, we’re settled around the campfire for the night. When I first looked into the Odyssey Project with Wounded Warriors, I wasn’t completely sold on their program. It just seemed like a bit of wishful thinking that you go out camping and fishing with other war veterans for a week and somehow you get better.

  Luckily when I sat down with the program coordinator, Jay, he set me straight on how it all works. This is only my first day, but I already feel that familiar bond that you have with your brothers in arms. There is an instant understanding and respect given to anyone who served their country. However, that bond is much deeper when you know you’re with others who fought for it as well.

  I stare into the fire, we all do, as Tim Baines wraps up his introduction. “So, that’s why I’m here,” he finishes up.

  “Great, welcome to the group, Tim.” His eyes travel over our faces, “Mack Forrester? Would you mind sharing why you signed up for this program and what you hope to get out of it?”

  I guess I’m up. I feel like when a teacher used to call on me in class because it was my turn to read. My head snaps up and my eyes try to focus after staring into the flickering flames to look at Jay.