“I got shot in the knee. You’ve got the records.”
“The knee, the foot, forty-two pieces of shrapnel. I want to know everything after the sun came up. Everything till you landed at Landstuhl.”
–––
Zilker asked me to follow him out on the smoking deck the next morning. We stood looking over the west end of town, feeling the cool breeze blow through the chain-link. Another patient stood inside the double doors, watching us, maybe to see if I’d attack Zilker. I snarled at the guy and he backed away.
“Sorry to hear about your little confrontation.” Zilker pulled up a plastic chair and shoved another toward me. “Want to tell me what happened?”
I told him, not knowing if I should say I’d felt ready to break both of Guzman’s arms. I knew a way to do it and chose not to, and that should have been to my credit. “What the fuck is he doing here, sir? He never saw combat.”
“Everybody has their own problems. You have some time to think about your assignment?”
I sat, gestured at his brief case. “You’ve got it already, don’t you?”
“I’ve got a hospital record, mostly surgical notes, five different surgeries, and a small field note from some medic named Garcia. Sent from a smart phone.”
Garcia. I remembered Garcia. “Haven’t thought about Garcia in a while.”
“Go on. Start anywhere.”
“Nice guy. Short, jovial, glasses.”
“Breakfast. That day.”
I tumbled every intrusive image fragment I’d struggled with since, pictured Garcia crawling on his elbows. “There wasn’t any breakfast.”
“No. There wasn’t.”
“Shit hit everywhere at 0500. They even blew up the latrine. Killed a kid named Cummings.”
“And what did you do?”
“I was the designated marksman.”
“Sniper. You finished sniper school in ’98.”
“There wasn’t much sniping or recon the last month I was there.”
“That morning, what did you do?”
“Grabbed an M21, a vest of magazines. Took cover in a HESCO stack, toward the south of the base. Base wasn’t really finished; still waiting for more plywood.”
“Were you scared?”
“We’d been on edge a couple of days. Lot of swingin’ dicks coming into the valley—we could see them up in the hills—but not armed. You could shoot anybody with a weapon, a phone or walkie-talkie, but not otherwise. So, we’re racing to get dug in, knowing the shit’s going to come.”
“That morning, what did you feel?”
“Surprised. Relieved maybe. No more wondering. I remember my boots weren’t tied. I tied my boots.”
“And then?”
“I had a narrow angle of fire to the south. Shot every hostile I could see through that angle as they came.”
“That’s where you were the whole time?”
“After ten, twenty minutes, they figured out I was there. Started trying to mortar me out.”
The details fogged over, and I wondered if I should just make something up. Zilker wouldn’t know. My narrow angle of view made me vulnerable to enemy approaching from my broader flanks because I couldn’t see them. RPG could come in and I wouldn’t be able to hide.
“I remember taking cover under a Humvee. I think I’d started working my way toward the north end of the camp. We were taking fire from the hillsides and I spent a little while scanning, maybe nailed two of them.”
This part was true. I remember thinking I wouldn’t get a confirmation, and how I didn’t give a shit anyway. Just didn’t want to die.
Zilker and I both looked down the street for a few minutes, me looking at the roses again. He glanced at me and I didn’t acknowledge it, stalled him about as long as we could both tolerate the silence.
“So, you stayed under the Humvee the whole day?”
“You know I didn’t.”
He looked at me with that eyebrow raised again. “Keep going.”
“I moved north through the camp. Was by the barracks for a while, then the barracks caught fire. Everybody retreated to more HESCOs in the center of the camp. Both of the 249s overheated about the same time, then the 240. I remember Hendricks pouring CLP all over it, smoking like burnt tires. Whole day was a clusterfuck.”
“You pulled a man to safety.”
“Was going to use him for cover.”
“You don’t mean that. Why do you say stuff like that?” he moaned and glanced in the folder. “Kid named Mortenson. Saved his life. You did a good thing. Own it.”
“Mortenson.” Always had a fistful of sharpies, drawing everywhere, signage over your hooch, did a very nice mural in the shitter one time, sun setting over an ocean. “He was our artist.”
“When did it stop? When did the day end for you? Nightfall?”
“It was still light. I kept moving north.” I stopped again, this time because I really couldn’t put enough together. I crouched behind a mud wall, an RPD on the hillside somewhere ahead of me, crunching away at the mud, working its way toward my face. Zilker stared at me, and I looked at my only civilian shoes, black Nikes. “It was still afternoon.” Eventually I pointed at his bag.
“What’s it say in there?”
“You really don’t remember where you were at the end of the day?” He pried open the attaché beside his chair, pulled out two manila folders, opened one. “Most of this is surgical stuff from Landstuhl. And a whole bunch of rehab notes.”
He turned the sheets down one by one on the deck, his foot on them to keep them from blowing away, and stopped, transfixed briefly. “A blast. Overturned your Humvee.” He held the page further away and squinted. “No, that was in 2003. A little TBI likely.” He peeled off several more pages. “Here it is, smartphone note. SGT KENT CNFUSED, EXPSING SELF TO ENMY FR. WOUND RT KNEE. RT FOOT. BLEEDING, UNCOOP. L. Garcia. Transmitted from a civilian structure north of the camp. There’s a written note, and then some amendments.”
Zilker pawed through the folder again, then picked up the second. “Sort of a commendation, really. ‘Sgt R. Kent pursued enemy to north perimeter and took a position on the second level of a residence there but was exposed and disoriented from rocket blast that occurred, with HCLOS radio contact broken. Found at scene with severed head of insurgent in grip and would not put it down.’” He closed the folder and stared at me. “That’s what I was hoping you could recall. Anything familiar there?”
“There was a struggle.” Imminent failure pounded inside. I wasn’t going to put it together for him. I couldn’t. “Shit goes by so fast you’re surprised you’re alive when the dust settles. I was totally fucking deaf by then, you know.”
“Don’t remember the head?”
“Honestly, no sir. Nothing till Landstuhl.”
Zilker opened the folder again. “There was some speculation that you had decapitated the insurgent with your knife. Your captain, a fellow named”—Zilker squinted at the report—”McMasters corrected that, said that the head was from a suicide bomber. His note cleared you of the 93, eventually.”
I sighed. “I don’t remember that.” I got up and walked around the deck while he put away the folders. Generous of McMasters, sticking his own neck out. Must have really screwed with Garcia’s mind, seeing that. We’d been friends.
“I believe you,” Zilker said without looking up. “You got a place to stay?”
“Sir?”
“You’re not living under a bridge or anything?”
“I rented a studio out in the valley, just before I got picked up.”
“I’m going to discharge you. Probably safer for you out there than in here. Not sure we’re accomplishing much.” He stood. “You going to hurt yourself?”
I shook my head.
He moved so he was in front of me, locked my gaze. “Hurt anybody else?”
I shook my head again.
“I need to hear it, Robert. Tell me, I am not going to hurt myself or anybody else.”
�
��I won’t hurt myself. Kill myself. Won’t hurt anybody.”
“You hurt somebody, it’s my ass on the line as well. Understood?”
I nodded.
Zilker shook my hand, then got out his gum, offered me a piece. I folded it into my mouth.
“I’m surprised you didn’t check out earlier.”
“Check out?”
“You could have left at any time after seventy-two hours. You’re voluntary here.”
“Fuck.”
“Need to read the fine print at admission, young man.”
“What do I do now?”
“Get a job, a day job, where you have to show up every day.”
“And my disability?”
“Volunteer if you have to. But get a job where you have to meet people.”
“Been trying, sir. But some people find out you’re a vet, you get that feeling.”
“What feeling?”
“They’re scared of me.”
“Then you’ll need to be an ambassador of goodwill. Cut people some slack. They haven’t seen everything you have.”
He handed me his card and turned back to the door. “I want to see you in four weeks. Date is on the back. You need anything before that, call me. And take your meds this time, okay?” He held the door open for me, patted me on the back as we went in.
–––
Pharmacy came by, gave me a bottle of Vistaril for sleep, an antidepressant called citalopram, and six sildenafil. I had told Zilker I couldn’t get a hard-on anymore, couldn’t keep my mind quiet enough to dwell on a fantasy for more than thirty seconds. He didn’t say much about it, but it had registered. The antidepressants didn’t make sense to me, like having gangrene of the leg and taking a pill to keep anybody from smelling it. I could hurt people if I wanted, kill them from half a mile away. I just didn’t want to. If I did, a little tan pill wasn’t going to make any difference.
I packed the contents of my nightstand in a plastic bag and retrieved my small Gerber from the VA police as I left. All the while, I could not deny the one little voice—the agonizing fact that rose at every pause in my thoughts; the inconsistency that Zilker hadn’t recognized, or, if he had, he was waiting for me to square up with him. He’d been a doc in the Army before he came here. In Vietnam. Maybe he was thinking it as he handed me his card. I tried to remember if there was anything written on his face.
There were precious few suicide bombers outside the cities in Afghanistan. The Taliban in the field didn’t prefer to work that way. There sure as hell weren’t any that day in Kamdesh. And any idiot, especially Zilker, a doctor, would know a head removed by an edged weapon looked very different from one separated by a blast.
Causality. Correlation does not imply causation. I wanted to know that this led to that, and that could cause something for certain. Just a Möbius loop going around in my head. Why did the knife come out of the sheath? Parts were out of order, parts were missing, and I didn’t know how to tell anyone.
2
I rode the bus my first week there, trash on the seats and down the aisle, a rolling chamber of emptiness. In my car, or alone, it was different. But here I was, back on the bus, working through different arguments with the impound lot on why I shouldn’t be penalized, not wanting to play the poor Army vet card, figuring the car had been towed. It took me a second or two to recognize my green Corolla, but it was still in the parking lot behind Doughty’s, raindrop blotches of dust on the windows, a half-empty PBR can on the hood. I bought it from Dollar Rent-A-Car three days before I was picked up. There were two green ones and a maroon that day. I picked green to blend in. Cars are supposed to say who you are, and I didn’t want to be anybody. Green is earth, foliage. Green is camouflage.
Terry, one of the owners, was dragging the garbage out and offered a half-hearted salute. “Looked for you in the obits, didn’t see anything. Figured you’d be back.” He wiped his hands on his apron and took a few steps my way.
“Was at the VA. Unexpected. Thanks for not having me towed.”
“No problem.” He disappeared into the kitchen.
I backed in the Toyota at the apartment, a ways from the doors but visible from my balcony, half the other vehicles parked cockeyed, angled, taking up two spots. I always picked the same spot, if some asshole hadn’t taken it already. I grabbed a crushed Zips bag in the parking lot and put it in the can by the door. My mailbox was crammed with grocery ads, flyers for mobile home sales, bundles of coupons.
I flopped on the futon and threw my pack in the chair, felt beside me, then looked around the room instinctively for my M4, something I had done at least 500 times since getting out. Had to remind myself, again, I didn’t have one to keep track of.
I sorted my mail. All kinds of promotional stuff: coupons, ads, shiny cardstock asking me to re-elect Kathy somebody, that she’ll really listen, but I had nothing to say to her. A cream-colored envelope, handwritten, addressed to me. No, not handwritten, just a font that looked like it. I tore it open. The Neptune society. Had I considered cremation? Not recently, thank you. I arranged all the mail by size. Then all of the glossy stuff together, all of the dull, flat paper together. Then threw it all away.
Next door, kids squealing, thunderous TV cartoon sounds, mom yelling something unintelligible, something the kids apparently couldn’t understand either because it changed nothing. It’s a comfort to hear stuff like that, and I’m getting used to it.
She’s had a couple of boyfriends. I’ve heard that too, late at night. Sometimes friendly noise, sometimes something gets broken. Doors slammed. I’ve seen her twice—pink tights and a butter-yellow halter. Plum lipstick. Mouse-brown hair, long bangs with a streak of purple. She didn’t wear enough clothes to hide a weapon, and I could see her eyes. She didn’t know how happy she’d already made me.
The second time I saw her I nodded and she smiled, a syrupy smile, and I probably re-imagined it past midnight.
–––
It was time to get my suitcase back from the Dunhams. I’d been a goddamn fool to leave it there as long as I had, goddamn fool to let Julia bluff me, fool to expect anybody to hang onto it for so long without the courtesy of a call or letter, and I hoped they hadn’t dumped it at Goodwill or lost it in a house fire. Whatever solid, tangible artifact remained of my time before the Army was preserved inside, and it seemed, instinctively, the first place to explore. The only place.
The highway to Colville was prettier than I remembered, hillsides and mountains covered in fir and jack pine, a river winding across, a train track, and farms with long, vivid pastures, lots of them, some for sale, and I wondered if that might be something I could do. Pick a place, on a hillside maybe, a view five miles across the valley, a long perimeter. And then I found myself looking at a stand of trees, or an island of basalt on the valley floor, or a collapsed barn, and I thought, Somebody could hide there, and I’d be in their kill zone at night, and how would I stop that? Ideas like this just creep up, stupid, paranoid thinking. And I had to admit, I didn’t know a goddamn thing about farming anyway.
Maybe poppies. I marched through poppy fields all over Kandahar province. Should have taken notes, asked the locals for pointers.
A white-and-green border patrol pickup went by. Mr. Dunham could have been at the wheel. Probably not; he was close to seventy by now.
Clayton Burgers was still there. Went there once after homecoming with Michelle Williams, long satin legs, dreamy, sad eyes half-hidden under blond bangs—world’s most perfect girl. We only dated twice, and I think she would have loved me like a hurricane, like she did all the stray animals she adopted; something about my being a foster kid made her want to have babies with me. Her parents were both chiropractors and lived in a big house on Loon Lake, Sunset Bay Road. I think they could tell by looking at me that something wasn’t right. Maybe the alignment of my bones betrayed some illness they didn’t want their daughter to catch.
I stay out of burger places now. After I’d been out of the Army a co
uple of days, I stopped at a Burger King in Olympia. I told the kid behind the counter, “I want a triple patty Whopper with pepper-jack on each layer, with tomato and onion on each layer. And four pieces of bacon.”
He looked at me like I’d just spoken Chinese, turned around and glanced at the menu, then shrugged. I repeated myself, slower, because maybe I’d spoken too fast, and followed it with “Do you understand me?”
He shrugged again. “I dunno.”
I reached across the counter and took his tiny little bicep, like I might have with any new recruit. “If it’s not on the menu can you make it? I have money.” I waved a twenty under his nose.
He tugged sideways, said something like “Chill, dude,” or some kind of bullshit. I grabbed a fistful of his shirt and dragged him onto the counter.
“What I’d like to hear from you—” and right then I realized I was out of line, but I went on, because I had started, and it is important to follow through to maintain credibility. “I want to hear ‘Yes sir.’ Or ‘No sir.’ Or ‘I don’t know, but I will find out, sir.’”
Two cops walked in about that time and one wrist-locked me, the other put a baton under my jaw, and the three of us crab-walked outside. I had my Army greens on and a few battle ribbons, even though technically I was a civilian by that time. They asked me how long I’d been out, what I thought I was doing, and were entirely unsympathetic with my point of view. I could be cuffed, booked, or I could go back and apologize.
I have come to understand that such displays of aggression are considered an “anger control” problem, but I wasn’t angry. I was trying to make my point heard, and if one is not understood at first, you must clarify. I was used to being listened to. What I said to the men in my platoon was important. You rag on your guys because you want them all to stay alive, don’t want to write to some kid’s mom that her son didn’t listen and fucked up and now he’s in a bunch of pieces, so please try to remember how he looked when he enlisted. But that shift in my tone—how important something is to me at the moment—can happen suddenly, I’ve learned. I don’t know if it’s way over those hilltops across the valley or just off the shoulder of this road, and I could be there by just letting go of the wheel for a few seconds. Cross the centerline, kill myself and another whole family. Crazy shit. I need to tell Zilker about this, but I never think of it when I’m there. Never let go of the wheel. Never.
Finding Sgt. Kent Page 3