Stupefying Stories: August 2014

by Alison Pentecost

  My first night back we went out for a steak dinner at the best restaurant within fifty miles. My father had finally retired from his job to enjoy his golden years, which meant that he was working twice as many hours for five times the pay as a consultant. Mother was still in private practice but had cut back her hours. She was getting inundated with soldiers, and their stories had been giving her nightmares about me. I felt a stab of guilt, but shoved it down. You can only accept so much responsibility. Danny had continued his education, double-majoring in political science and sociology, and was fulfilling all that his intellect had promised in childhood.

  He told me his ambition was to put an end to the war if he had to become Chancellor to do it. Mother and Father gave him a pained look, stealing glances at my dress uniform. I told him nothing would please me more than an end to the fighting. There was a nasty moment when I told them I had signed up for another tour. Danny’s jaw actually dropped, his pacifism had only become more potent, and our parents grabbed one another’s hands. I didn’t try to explain because the decision was beyond the rational, born of shared pain and hope.

  The whole evening was jarring for me. It felt like a sad mockery of the dinner with Jesse and his family. It was too loud and public. There was a subtle elegance to my dinner with the Takahara’s, a beautiful simplicity and a duality—aloneness and oneness with the group. In that restaurant, we were surrounded by all the trappings of elegance and none of the substance. We talked and laughed. We greeted friends. We all drank too much and talked some more. It was nice, but ugly. All I desired was to be alone. I was still reeling from Jesse’s announcement. I wanted to rest and find my balance again. No, that’s not entirely true. I wanted to find my faith again. I couldn’t, but when has that ever stopped anyone from trying? The temple was in ruins and I was dusting off the altar. You do what you have to do to survive.

  One relief was that my family never asked me what it was like fighting the Cricks. What could I have said to sum it up for them? I could have told them that it was being afraid all the time, or that it was finding the heart of darkness in yourself, or any other number of clichés that say it all and tell you nothing. The truth was complex. Fighting the Cricks was drinking from the cup of bitterness, every day, knowing it was killing you, but telling yourself better to die slow than fast. That’s what it was for me.

  That month passed quickly for me, as time away always does when you know there is something grim waiting for you. I slept straight-through the first few days. Fatigue settles in the bones and only hard sleep can wash it out. After my brief coma, I visited with old friends and teachers. They all seemed pleased that I had not managed to get myself killed. I started walking for miles every day, trying to outdistance the feeling of displacement—I didn’t know where I belonged. Beneath the outward pleasure that my lack of dying caused, there was hesitancy in everyone. I had been “Out There” somewhere, doing the things they heard about in the news. They treated me like I was different and they were right. I was different, but I couldn’t articulate the change even to myself. It was too fresh and we were all at a loss. So I walked.

  I thought about Jesse a lot during those weeks. I wondered if he was signing divorce papers, dividing property, or rewriting his will. I almost called him a dozen times, but my mind went blank every time. Nothing I had to say would make it easier. I settled on sending him a message. I invited him to visit with my family before we shipped out again. He sent me a short, but friendly, message accepting the invitation. A mountain of weight dropped off my heart when I saw his name on that message. He walked out of one hell and into another. I couldn’t imagine what that did to him in those first days back. I think that I was afraid that he would request an early departure back to the front. A soul in enough pain will do unimaginable things.

  When I went down to the Boston Depot to pick up Jesse, I found a changed man. He stepped off that transport carrying his duffel, in full dress uniform, and it was like watching someone walk away from everything behind him. His eyes were fixed on a point in the future, not the past. The change went beyond the expressive, but into the physical. He had always walked lightly, more like a stalking animal than a man. Now he marched, each step planted as if he meant to fix his foot in the earth forever. Gray had crept into his jet black hair and the lines around his mouth had become trenches. I caught his attention and those lines around his mouth softened. He walked to me with a lightened step, dropped his duffel, and threw his arms around me in a fierce hug. I was shocked. His formality had always been quiet but firm. I did my best to adapt to these changes on the fly. After he let me go, I reached down, grabbed his bag and swung it over my shoulder. We didn’t speak until we were on the road.

  “I’m divorced,” he said.

  “That fast?”

  “Yes. It’s a courtesy extended to soldiers in my country. Given our mortality rate,” he shrugged.

  “Jesse, I didn’t get a chance to say it when I was there. I’m sorry.”

  “You don’t need to be sorry. I should apologize. I misled you.”

  “How’s that?”

  “The things I told you about my family were half-truths. They were how I remembered them or how I wanted to remember them. I read my old journal and enlisting delayed something inevitable. I’m sorry for lying to you.”

  “You didn’t lie. You weren’t trying to deceive me.”

  “True. How are things for you at home?”

  “Different and, I don’t know, harder I guess. I thought coming home would be this huge relief, and it was,” I trailed off, not sure how to finish.

  “People look at you differently now,” Jesse finished for me.

  “Yeah, how did you know?”

  “You’re a soldier now. In people’s heads, whether they admit it or not, they see you as a necessary evil. Your job is killing.”

  “Do you really think so?”

  “I know so. Your friends and family won’t admit it to themselves, so they can’t admit it to you, but my family was quite forthcoming.”

  “Damn. What did you say?”

  “Nothing. No words of mine would change their minds. It’s better to know.”

  “Maybe,” I said, not at all sure I agreed.

  We passed most of the drive to my parents’ home in silence. I pointed out my old school and the field where we practiced in the year of miracles. Jesse was a big hit with my family. As an educated man and a soldier, he could speak on a level with my family and bridge a gap between them and me. I had warned them not to bring up Jesse’s family and they steered clear of that topic. Given all that had happened to him in the recent past, I was awed by his ability to adapt to this family situation. In his shoes, I’d have been drunk for a month.

  The next two days were a blur and then we were back in the cold depths of space. We rejoined our unit and were fighting like we never left. Prophet was in the infirmary with a broken arm, but Hellstu was still very much in command, barking orders and laying waste. There isn’t much about the first two years of that tour that warrants any mention. Jesse started screaming during firefights. It was a haunted, keening sound that would have broken my heart at any other moment. I was wounded once and Jesse twice. Jesse never mentioned his family again. It was surreal, but I followed his lead and left the topic alone. Instead, we talked a great deal about literature.

  In the third year of my second tour, a couple of new assignments to the unit and me got cut off. I was in command once we got separated and I made the call to surrender. It wasn’t self-preservation or cowardice that led to that decision. It was the new guys. They had all the tactical know-how of tree stumps and leading them into a fight was no different than shooting them myself. If Jesse had been with us, I would have fought it out. The new guys were terrified, but I took it in stride. The Cricks didn’t torture or kill their prisoners. It was just indefinite confinement. You can live with almost anything, but you only die the one time. They marched us back to their base and stuck us in a cell. They fed us twi
ce a day, not a lot, but enough to live on. For three days we sat around and, once in a while, a Crick would come and take one of us for questioning.

  The intelligence boys got it right for once. The Cricks were asking us questions about, of all things, home. What kind of food did we eat, what was our family structure, or what kind of government structure did we have. I was mystified by these questions, but I followed protocol and repeated my name and rank, over and over again. They were mystified by this behavior. The Crick prisoners we took talked freely about such things. There was a kind of darkly humorous absurdity to the situation.

  On the third day the cavalry arrived in the form of Jesse and Hellstu. They had penetrated the perimeter in a way no one could ever make sense of and cut holes in our cell walls. We would have made it away clean if not for one of the new guys. I try not to blame him, he was scared, but I do blame him. When the signal came down to halt, he kept moving. It was only a few steps before training took over and he stopped, but it was a few steps too many. A patrolling Crick spotted him and opened fire. The new guy’s head exploded. I still see that in my nightmares. Alarms started going off all over the place and we took off running. Jesse found me in the confusion and tossed me a weapon. The split second pause he took for that was what killed him. He got hit and stumbled into my back, taking us both down. I wrenched myself free of Jesse’s weight, swung my rifle up and killed everything that moved. I was lucky I didn’t hit one of our own guys. I rolled Jesse onto his back, trying not to notice the hole in his uniform behind his heart. His face was going gray, blood wasn’t moving anymore, but he managed to gasp out one last thing.

  “Tell my family I love them.”

  I wish I could remember what I said back, but the pain was too much. I knew he was dead, my friend of five years, who had saved my life so many times I had lost count. I wanted to kill everything, to burn the forsaken world we were on to a cinder, to unleash all my anguish in one fell burst and unmake everything. I got him up onto my shoulder and carried him, telling myself with every step that I just needed to get him to a medic and everything would be okay. I carried him for miles, telling myself that same lie, and killing every Crick I saw. Somewhere along the line we got picked up by some people Hellstu had standing by, but I would not let go of Jesse. I just cradled him in my arms, telling him that we’d get him all patched up. The personnel in the troop carrier must have thought I was insane, but they let me be.

  The medics were standing by when we got to base. They took one look at Jesse and declared him dead. I grabbed the one who said it and started beating him in the face, screaming and ranting that Jesse was not dead and they needed to help him. They restrained and sedated me; for my own good and everyone else’s. I came around a few hours later, bruised and sore, but somewhat saner. Hellstu was sitting next to the cot they stuck me on. He looked at me and I knew, as I had known from the second I saw that hole in the back of Jesse’s uniform, my friend was gone.

  “He’s dead isn’t he?” I asked.

  “Yes, he’s dead,” Hellstu said.

  I’d been harboring a shred of denial, but once the words were out, I broke down. Hellstu sat through all of it, waiting for me come back from the unthinking anguish that consumed me. It took a while, but I sat up and wiped the tears and snot off my face.

  “Not the last time you’ll do that,” he said.

  “I know.”

  “You need to listen now, because this is important. Jesse knew the risks and so do you. He chose this life. He died a soldier’s death, rescuing his fellow soldiers from the enemy. You need to remember that, if nothing else.”

  There was an inquiry into the incident. Command doesn’t like losing soldiers like Jesse and Hellstu hadn’t bothered clearing the rescue with them. Hellstu got off with an unofficial reprimand. Turns out he’d been given several dozen medals and it never looked good in the news back home to dress down a hero like that. Given my insane behavior and the mere months left in my tour, they discharged me. I went back to see Jesse’s family. They were informed of Jesse’s death, but they had met me and I wanted them to know Jesse was remembered. I also brought them Jesse’s last medal. It was in the works before he died and Hellstu gave it to me for Jesse’s family.

  I told them that Jesse’s dying thought had been of them. Amiko insisted that I stay for a few days and we reminisced about him. Then I went home and spent months in a drunken haze, overwhelmed by the guilt of Jesse’s death. It took a year find a way to live with the great lie of my life.

  Jesse Takahara had no last words. I had wanted him to have last words and, sometimes, I almost convince myself he did. What I told Jesse’s wife and children had been said so that my version, my vision, of Jesse would live on. And as I think about it now, I realize that he was right. Memory makes liars of us all.

  Eric Dontigney is a freelance writer, blogger, and author of the Samuel Branch novels. When not writing, he indulges his interests in entrepreneurship, marketing, philosophy, cooking and art. Raised in Western New York, Eric currently lives in Memphis, TN.

  MEAT 2.0

  By William Ledbetter

  PEACE AND QUIET. They said that’s what I needed. But it was hard.

  And lonely.

  I squirmed in the too-comfortable chair and moved my lunch tray to the little white table. Beyond the wicker furniture and potted rose bushes were ornamental trees so perfectly tended they looked plastic. Then the sculpted lawn sloped down to a lake complete with swans drifting lazily over sun-dappled water. Nothing too good for a war hero, they said.

  I wanted to laugh at the idyllic b.s., or throw my turkey sandwich as far as I could, or drive my little robo-chair into the lake, but the concerned PTSD therapists watched my every move.

  “You didn’t eat much of your lunch, Lieutenant Quinn.”

  I flinched and leaned away from the little robot standing next to my tray. Like all serving robots, he was only a meter tall, and a solid dull silver color covered by a white uniform. I almost screamed at him to get away, then remembered the lurking shrinks and spoke softly instead.

  “Why are you here?”

  “I’m just doing my job, Lieutenant.”

  “Well, I’d prefer dealing with humans. Why do they keep sending a robot when I asked them not to?”

  “Because the female staff members say you sexually harass them and the male staff members think you’re a jerk.”

  Typical robotic honesty. Still, I felt a bit embarrassed and laid my head back against the chair, waiting for him to leave.

  “The dietary staff will be disappointed that you didn’t eat more. Is there something more appealing I could bring you?”

  I raised an eyebrow and nodded. “A six-pack of cold beer and a pretty girl in a bikini. I’ll even let you choose the beer.”

  The robot didn’t answer, only stood patiently with his hands behind his back and stared at me. “I’m sorry. I can’t...”

  “Yeah, I know,” I said, and laid my head back against the cool padding of my chair again. I closed my eyes, but this time not all the way. I could still see the robot as he picked up the starched white napkin from the ground where I’d let it fall, and then...he stole the meat from the sandwich. The first two times, I hadn’t been sure, but this time I saw it.

  I reached out and grabbed his arm, stopping him before he could stuff the meat into his pants pocket.

  “Why are you doing that?” I said.

  The robot stared its usual expressionless stare. “Doing what, sir?”

  “Taking the meat from my sandwich?”

  “I’m sorry, sir. Were you not finished?”

  “Yes, I was finished, but that doesn’t answer my question. Why are you taking the meat?”

  In that half-second before he answered, my mind went into overdrive. Could the human staff here really be that desperate? Why else would he need meat? Then flashes of memory from the day I lost my legs made me flinch and I release his arm. I remembered that robots could eat meat. And bone.


  “It’s for—a friend of mine,” the robot said.

  The memories swirling in my head made me dizzy. I waved my hand and turned away. “Just go.”

  After he left, I sat for a long time staring at the lake. Trying to unremember those flashes of soldiers screaming and basketball-sized combat robots eating my legs. My stubs twitched in an unconscious effort to kick away ghost robots with ghost legs. Maybe the doctors were right about peace and quiet.

  ¤

  The next day at lunch I ate my soup, but saved the roast beef from my sandwich. When the robot came to collect my tray, I handed him the meat. “For your friend.”

  He took the rolled up slices, tucked them into his pocket, and finished cleaning up my tray.

  I was going to ask him more about his friend, but thought he might eventually tell me on his own if I didn’t press. So I looked out at the lake and closed my eyes.

  I must have dozed, but woke with a start when I felt a sudden cold pressure between the stumps of my legs. I started to scream, sure those monstrous drones had returned, but when I looked down I saw a sweating can of Coors lying atop the blanket covering my lap.

  “I couldn’t get a whole six-pack. Or a girl,” the robot said.

  I stared at him for a second, then glanced over my shoulder to make sure none of the well-meaning—yet unyielding—human staff were looking. The can’s top popped with a satisfying click and hiss, then the cold brew filled my mouth and soothed my throat. I’d never really cared for Coors, but at that moment, it was the best beer in the world. I sat back in my chair and sighed.