by Weston Ochse
The bodies of the skinnies who’d attacked and his friends who’d died fighting still lay in the same places they’d fallen.
Trent shook his head. He must have fallen asleep. He reached over and touched the barrel. It was still warm so it couldn’t have been for long.
“Got yourself in a right fine mess. Didn’t you boy?”
Trent glared at the wall that rose across the road. The sun had moved behind it so the front cast a shadow. Was that a foot sticking out at the base? Was a man leaning, leaving his foot as a target? Had it been there before? No. It looked almost like a man sitting with a pipe in his mouth like the one his father liked.
Finally Trent frowned. “You aren’t real,” he said.
“Neither are you,” growled the voice that was so much like his long dead father’s.
Trent blinked and tried to think of a response. The idea that the words were a figment of someone’s imagination was hilarious. Who’d want to imagine his father and all of his problems?
“Seriously,” he argued. “You aren’t real.”
“If you say so.”
Trent heard the familiar sound of a tobacco pouch being opened, the pipe being filled and then tamped down.
“I’m not gonna die,” he stammered.
“If you say so.”
The sound of a match being struck and the pipe being lit filled his senses. Although there was no illumination from the match, Trent swore he could smell the sandalwood tobacco his father favored. What the hell was going on? Was he dead? Was that what was happening? Was it the enemy trying to trick him again? Trent attempted to push the axle off for the thousandth time.
“Why did you do this, boy? Why’d you join the army? Damn fool thing to do, if you ask me.”
Because you wanted me to be a man. “To see the world.” A cough racked Trent for a moment. When he was done, he wiped warm sticky blood that had dribbled from his lips onto his hand and wiped it on one of the bodies nearby. He’d broken a rib or two. Maybe more. “I joined for the adventure,” he added. He reached down to his legs. He couldn’t see them anymore, but he knew they were ruined. A stray memory surfaced of firm hands running the length of muscle and bone, prelude and postlude to the motions of love.
“If you say so,” came the same cold voice.
Trent closed his eyes and counted to ten. When he opened them, the shadow in the shape of a man had moved. Now it appeared to be reclining, one foot cocked over a knee.
“I did it for you, Daddy,” he whispered.
“Rubbish! You did it to run away. Same as you always did. Like in Scouts. Like in track. Like in life, Trent. You can’t deal with your problems so you run away.”
“I wouldn’t have run away if you’d treated me like a son.”
“I wouldn’t have chased you out if you weren’t more like a daughter.”
Trent gasped. What is this specter to call him names? His dad had told him to keep everything private. Why did Trent run? His father had never run, he’d just kept things private. He panted around the pain for several minutes, then glared at the sky. “If you say so,” he finally said.
He looked again, but the shape seemed to be gone as the sun set behind a dune. Then again, it may have just been his eyes playing tricks on him. He’d lost blood. No telling how bad he was hurt.
“If you say so,” he whispered to the dusk.
THE DRIVER’S FACE had been lit by the interior lights. She’d been applying lipstick when she hit him. Trent remembered the look of surprise, and how the lipstick had ripped across her cheek, creating a maniacal clownish gash that uttered a single scream before the bumper of the Cadillac slammed into his shins.
Then pain.
Then darkness.
The first thing he’d heard was his father’s snores. Then he’d heard the beeping of the hospital equipment. His eight year old mind hadn’t been able to relate the two sounds. He’d pulled the covers over his eyes before opening them and was blasted with the harsh cold light of his room. The sheet smelled like detergent and was stiff between his fingers. It had been washed so many times he could see through the spaces in the fabric.
“You in there, boy?” he heard his father ask.
But Trent remained silent. His father was most certainly mad at him. He’d been out late, and if he hadn’t been so desperate to get home, he wouldn’t have run across the street without looking.
“Come out from under there. Are you okay, Trent?”
Worse, the old man might be disappointed in him. Trent couldn’t live with that. He couldn’t deal with it. Maybe his father would understand if he explained.
“Come out from under there and talk to daddy.”
Trent opened his mouth to answer and the pain hit him. Like when he’d tried to do a flip off the McMurty’s diving board and hit the water face first, the pain stole his senses away. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t speak. All he could be is there in the pain, under the covers, in the pain, in the dark, in the pain.
HE AWOKE GASPING.
The sun had set. He couldn’t see the wall across the way. The sounds of skittering came from his left. He swung the machine gun towards the sound and opened fire. It could have been a kangaroo rat, a vagabond sirocco, or the enemy crawling towards his position, he didn’t care. A dozen rounds lit the night. He saw nothing in the flashes, just the road and the dirt and the bodies of his friends and foes.
“You never told me it hurt,” came the voice of his father like he was sitting right beside him.
“I didn’t want you to be mad at me, Daddy”.
“Why you ever thought I was mad at you, I’ll never know.”
“You told me to get the fuck out of the house,” I screamed as I scanned the area for more enemy, aware I might just be a little crazy.
“But that was different. That was when you were older and I caught you with that boy.”
That boy, Trent remembered, had been his first love. So powerful that feeling had been it seemed as if he’d spent his whole life trying to reclaim it.
“Why you couldn’t just date a girl like the rest of the world, I don’t know.”
“But I’m different.”
“Are you so much so? Are you sure?”
Trent shivered and hugged his shoulders. It was so cold. How it could be freezing when it seemed as if he’d been baking just a short while ago he’d never know. The Somali desert was a fickle bitch.
“Daddy, are you there?”
TRACK AND FIELD was so fucking boring. Dad wanted Trent to play a sport, but he was too small for football and too short for basketball. He had less hand-eye coordination than an epileptic. He couldn’t run very fast. But he discovered that he could jump. Boy could he jump. He could even do the Fosberry flop over the high bar.
Soon Trent was watching as the rest of the handsome boys ran circles around him. When they’d get close, he’d set himself, then take nine quick strides and launch himself over the bar. When he’d hit the pad, he’d sneak a look to see if any of them were watching.
And there was one who always watched.
It took three weeks for them to get together. The first time was behind the Eastgate High school gym, during a track meet. His name was Steve and his skin tasted warm and clean.
“You fucking little pervert!”
The second time was in his room. They’d thought his dad wouldn’t be home until later, which is why they’d blasted the music as they lay side-by-side naked and petting.
Steve had bolted, barely missing the belt wrapped in Trent’s dad’s hand. Trent had scampered into his bathroom and locked the door. He’d wedged himself in the space between the toilet and the wall and had covered his ears, trying as best he could to ignore his father’s screams.
“Pervert.”
“Pervert.”
“Pervert.”
Once, when the screaming had stopped and he’d thought his dad had gone and he was about to unlock the door, his dad had suddenly began pounding from the other side, screaming renewed.
Trent had gone into the shower then and turned the water on full. Standing in the cooling water, he’d hummed The Star Spangled Banner between sobs to block out the sound of his father’s disappointment. He hadn’t known if he’d stood there ten minutes or an hour, but when he finally stepped from the shower the screaming had stopped. It took all the courage he could muster to open the door. No one was on the other side. His room was as it always was except his dad had made his bed. Sometime during the drama night had fallen.
After toweling off and slipping into clothes, Trent had gone downstairs. He’d almost missed his father sitting in the dark in the kitchen. The old man only said one thing to him, before getting up and leaving.
“I thought you’d be different.”
IT WAS 3 A.M. and the wind scythed through the bodies, carrying to him the horrid stench of death. Clouds had long ago smothered the stars, making him as blind as the dead around him. He felt the ammunition belt and silently counted the rounds he had left. Less than fifty.
He reached down and felt his legs. They were wet with blood. He’d wondered before if it was his own blood, but now he was sure it was. He shouldn’t feel as weak as he did. Maybe all the blood was his own. He had to find a way to move. Eventually someone was going to crest the hill and come down the road. Whether they were friendly or not, that was the question.
And the answer would mean life or death.
The wind whipped again, the smell suddenly cloying. It made him gag, like he’d done his senior year in high school when Billy Cramden had caught him and beaten the hell out of him behind the school cafeteria. Trent had been too stunned to defend himself at first. Billy had never done anything to him before. In fact, Trent had fantasized from afar about the boy’s long black curly hair and the cut of his jaw, both influenced by Cherokee ancestry. Ronnie and Bobby were with him. Known as the Artrie Twins, they were as ugly as they were mean.
He’d finally come to at 1 A.M. He’d heard his dad calling for him. He’d replied weakly as he lay broken in the detritus of yesterday’s lunch, his body making a bed of rotting food and spoiled vegetables.
When his dad found him, he pulled him out and checked him for broken bones. Although they all felt broken, the bullies hadn’t done any permanent damage.
“What happened?” his dad had asked.
But instead of answering, all Trent could do was crack a single word. “Why?”
And for the first time in his life he watched his father cry. Silent tears fell from the eyes of a man Trent had never seen cry. Even when his mother had left, his dad had always remained stoic. Never once had he mentioned her. He hadn’t even seemed to have missed her. One would have expected tears then, but he’d never shed them. But now, kneeling in the lee of the dumpster, his son bruised and soiled, he cried like a man who’d just learned he could. Great shudders shook his torso as he fought back some hidden bastion of pain. Finally and with effort, he was able to control his breathing enough to answer. “Because you’re different.”
Trent couldn’t take his eyes off his dad.
“They don’t know how to deal with you,” his dad continued.
“I can’t help it.”
“But you can hide it.”
“Then who would I be?”
“The same person you always are, just more private.”
Trent stared at his dad as the shudders stopped, the tears dried and the stoicism returned. He realized now that it was a mask. It always had been.
“Come on. Let’s get you home,” his dad said.
Two weeks later Trent joined the army. He never returned to high school. He never planned on returning to the town. But during the last week of basic training he was notified that his father had been killed in a traffic accident. No one had been at fault, it was just circumstance – a dump truck had slid backwards on an icy hill and had slammed into his dad’s car, killing him instantly. Trent had returned home one last time after leave to take care of his father’s things. Among the items he’d discovered was a box wedged deep into the closet. Inside this box was evidence of his father’s privacy, things the old man never wanted anyone to know about, things that made them more alike than different.
“Daddy, I need you,” Trent whispered to the coming dawn.
It was 6 A.M. by his watch and the sky had lightened to a dull gray. The shadow on the wall across the road had returned. It looked like a boy kneeling with a rifle. Trent watched it closely. When it moved, he tried to turn his own machine gun towards it but lacked the strength.
The shadow stood and crept across the road. When the shadow came into view, Trent saw that it wasn’t really a shadow after all. It was a young boy. An ugly scar marred his face causing his mouth to constantly grimace. But his eyes, his cool green eyes, were as pretty a thing as Trent had ever seen.
The boy raised his rifle and shot Trent through the shoulder. The pain burned as his vision dimmed. Trent noticed the piercing green eyes watching him, waiting to see if he’d return fire.
Remembering his father, Trent turned his face stoic, unreadable, private. This boy, this beautiful boy, would never know how beautiful he was even as he was killing him. It was a private thing and would remain so forever.
When the next shot came he barely felt it.
* * *
Notes from the Author: I’ve served with many soldiers over the years. Some I never knew were gay, others I could tell right away. My parents raised me to be compassionate so I never once treated them any other than I would want to be treated – the golden rule. But I tried to imagine how their life must be like, always hiding, always private. I know I can’t ever understand, but this story was me trying to just a little. Forgive my hubris in thinking I could ever understand. But one thing is certain. For me, a gay soldier is a soldier just like me. Who we love has nothing to do with the price of war, unless it’s a flag, or culture, or civilization.
Every War Has a Signature Sound
The sound of distant thunder that you hear isn’t what you think it is. It’s a car bomb and you suddenly find yourself on the other side of the news reports and in the war. You’re afraid of what might come next. You wonder if that’s the only attack or if there will be more. You sit in the silence waiting for the night to explode again, realizing that this isn’t fiction anymore.
For most authors, sitting at their desks and reviewing publisher’s edits is a quiet, safe, and probably boring experience filled with a modicum of expletives, face palms, and the mundane interruptions of daily life. I know this, because I’ve been there. The editing from my last SEAL Team 666 novel with Thomas Dunne Books was done on my dining room table, surrounded by my family, shelves of books, and the detritus of my Arizona life.
But this next book was different.
I finished the second draft eight days before I deployed to Afghanistan. I would have finished it sooner, but I was in the middle of combat drivers and advanced shooting skills training at a private facility south of Washington D.C. Wearing body armor all day in the April sun and running around like a twenty-five year old version of myself had sucked the life clean from me and left me too exhausted at the end of each day to even conjugate a verb. But I managed to complete the first round of edits a scant few days before I boarded the military rotator to Afghanistan.
It should have been obvious that writing about SEAL Team 666 from the comfort of my Arizona home and while in training in Virginia was a lot different than writing about the team from an actual war zone. When I received the final draft one month into my deployment, with the expectation to return it within a week, I thought it would be a simple matter. I think I took for granted all of my previous military service and figured I’d seen and done everything.
As it tu
rned out, I was wrong. There’s nothing in America that can be mistaken for the sound of live RPGs going off outside your window, or a roadside bomb detonating half a mile away, or a vehicle-born improvised explosive device (VBIED) crashing into the side of a bus filled with Afghanistan Supreme Court workers just three hundred meters away. These are sounds I can still hear in my mind, so clear, so close, so terrifying.
Granted, although I’d been shot at before, those few events had been when Third World rebels and narco-traffickers fired on our positions, not realizing they were firing on a small group of elite warriors with enough firepower to take down a battalion of bad guys – nothing at all similar to the stealthy, cheating tactics perfected by a few Muslim extremists, tactics designed not only to kill, but to strike real terror into everyone’s hearts.
I felt the terror.
Charles Heyman, former editor of the Jane’s Defense book series, says that “Every war has a signature sound. The key WWI sounds were artillery barrages. WWII was sirens, the Blitz and bombs, and the Spitfire. Vietnam had the helicopter.”
This idea of representational sounds appeals to me. Even at International Security Force Headquarters in Kabul, Afghanistan, the sounds of helicopters coming and going are a constant reminder of the combat going on outside my base. They’re the soundtrack to a real war and reminiscent of Vietnam War movies. Several times an hour Blackhawks and Chinooks come and go, their missions secret and important. But these helicopters aren’t the signature sound of this war. Here the sound is silence. Not just a “normal” silence, mind you, but the silence following a bomb blast. In that silence you live and wonder and wait and tremble. There’s no sound louder than the deafening silence following a suicide bombing.
I remember when I heard my first big explosion. I was about to leave my ten-by-ten foot steel-walled room for a run when a BOOM ate every other sound around me. I froze, waiting for the rumble to subside, for the reverberations in the steel to dissipate. Then the silence swallowed everything. I suffered long moments, wondering how close it was and how many people were now dead and if there would be another.