All the Ways We Kill and Die

by Brian Castner

  Most of Evil’s decorations were small, almost comically undersized in the large space. But the hangar was the perfect size for its two main occupants: an airplane and a something else.

  The airplane was Evil’s. He owned it fair and square, without even a loan to pay down, paid for out of his own pocket with saved-up deployment cash. It was an experimental Glasair IFT. In the world of general aviation—those aircraft that are neither commercial nor military—the “experimental” designation indicates that the plane had been built from a kit at home rather than by a manufacturer in a factory. Evil didn’t build his own plane, though; he bought it complete and certified.

  The Glasair IFT is airshow small, a modern tummy-rumbling throwback for those with only Boeing 737 eyes. A single prop on the nose turns under the direction of 160 horses, a small automobile engine. The wings are attached to the underside of the narrow fuselage, and to climb into the cockpit one must walk up specific reinforced sections that are labeled Step Here. Step other places, and you are liable to put a foot through the skin and into a fuel bladder. Evil’s Glasair was painted in American stripes: blue about the cockpit, a layer of white the length of the body, red wings and undercarriage. A fiberglass flag.

  The other occupant of the hangar, that something else, was the very idea of the plane, and it took up nearly as much space as the aircraft itself. A breezy and easy confidence filled the space, a casual defiance of human physics, a perpetual attitude drawn from the earliest days of aviation, when experimental aircraft were just that.

  When I walked into the hangar on that warm morning, it seemed to me more likely that a fabric-skinned De Havilland Tiger Moth should emerge, or that we should load up bags of airmail, or prepare to map some unexplored Arabian desert. I thought Evil might toss me a scarf and a leather helmet and goggles to wear for our flight, totems from a more trusting time when all would have intuitively understood this truism: the only people who fly airplanes are those that love it and are passionate for an elevated freedom above all else.

  I opened the wide hangar doors via a clattering chain as Evil removed the wooden chocks from the plane’s wheels and tossed them in the rear of the open cockpit. We were nearly ready to fly together for the first time.

  We pushed the plane out onto the well-trimmed infield grass, and Evil started to prep the engine. Calling the Glasair IFT a two-seater strains the definition. Evil sat on the left, to be closer to the modern electronics mounted on the dash. I sat on the right. Shoulder to shoulder, wall to wall, the stick rose from between our knees, and Evil shifted the right side of his torso in front of mine for an easier grip.

  “Comfy, huh?” Evil said with a smile. Ten pounds of potatoes, five-pound bag.

  We put on our headphones, and Evil flipped on the motor using an ignition switch and a push/pull throttle with a novelty-size black knob. As cool as starting your car, the engine buzzed to life. In a plane so small, I felt the engine as much as I heard it through the thick earmuffs, a vibration in my seat that made me burp. We kept the dual-gullwing hatches of the cockpit open as we taxied over the grass, my right arm and elbow hanging outside over the lip like I was on a Sunday drive out in the country. Maybe Evil was; he flew this plane nearly every day.

  At the end of the runway, we latched the doors shut and Evil asked over his microphone whether I was ready to go. His voice was clipped and static. I gave him a thumbs-up. Evil flipped through the dials on the avionics and radioed the closest air traffic control, and I looked around the cockpit and noticed that at my right shoulder, written in bold black stenciled capitals, was the word EXPERIMENTAL. Beneath was an FAA label warning all potential passengers that the plane they were sitting in was built by an amateur. The moment before takeoff in any sort of plane—wide-body commercial jet or regional puddle-jumper—is all about trust. Whom should I trust now?

  Evil pushed the oversize knob, and the quivering plane suddenly jumped down the runway. The sea-level air was fat with moisture, and the little plane was airborne before half the asphalt was gone. A flick of his wrist and Evil raised the nose, the airplane elevating as if lifted by a magician’s hidden string. A crosswind grabbed the tail and immediately yanked hard on our backside, but Evil kept the nose true, and with a buzz we bounced over treetops and turned east in a free pattern of the pilot’s own design.

  We flew to Tyndall Air Force Base, following the white sand coast, and I managed to not throw up before we landed. Once on the ground we parked, chocked, and wandered over to the F-15C flight simulator, where Evil offered to dogfight me, pilot versus EOD robot driver. Time compressed, and though he whooped my ass continuously for an hour, it felt like only minutes. By then the light was fading, so we got back his tiny Glassair and took off for home.

  In less than a year, Evil would upgrade his plane to a six-seat Bonanza, called the Bro-nanza by his buds, because of the ski trips and bike excursions and tropical island booze-fests he could now swing. But he had room for other cargo as well. He volunteered to transport rescued dogs to new owners, and flew veterans to specialist medical appointments up and down the Eastern Seaboard, especially amputees like Fye and Frost.

  “I only really get along with fighter pilots,” Evil had said, by way of explanation. “But as I say, there are a lot of guys who fly fighters that aren’t fighter pilots. And there are a lot of fighter pilots who don’t fly jets. There were a lot of fighter pilots among the sensor operators and the SF guys in those task forces, they just didn’t know it.”

  I’m not sure it’s possible for Evil to give a higher compliment.

  The flight back to Pensacola was smooth and clear, westward into a sunset over the Gulf. As we flew across a nectarine sky bracketed by thunderheads, I thought of the vicious storms that raked Evil’s MC-12 over Afghanistan, and a conversation we had about the terrible night that followed.

  “A couple of weeks after the fucked-up op where the Predator never responded back, I saw that JTAC, the one whose team was pinned down. He traveled all the way from Salerno, and he came to the MC-12 compound looking for me,” Evil had told me.

  “What did he say?” I asked. “Did he have an explanation for what happened? Why they were left high and dry?”

  “No, he didn’t,” Evil said. “All he did was shake my hand and say thanks for helping him out. He said, ‘We’d still be getting shot at if you hadn’t come. I fucking hate the Pred. It’s never there when you need it.’ So, believe it or not, I try to be diplomatic, and I say, ‘Yeah, but it’s got a nice camera?’ And he says, ‘Fuck that camera. I need guys I can trust. Me and all my guys would be dead if you weren’t up there.’”

  Among fighter pilots, praising yourself with another’s words is not a cause for embarrassment; it is a simple statement of fact. Evil went on.

  “It was probably the proudest and most humbling moment of my life. But it’s a funny thing. If there hadn’t been a Pred out there, I couldn’t have helped him. But if there was another MC-12, they wouldn’t have needed the help to begin with.”

  The government wants safety and efficiency and distance and thus drones, but the warriors just want brotherhood.

  JENNY SCHWARTZ LEFT her anatomy class and walked across the small bit of green lawn that serves as the grounds of Laramie County Community College in Cheyenne, Wyoming. The campus consists of a single main building surrounded by open parking lots, asphalt plains that quickly give way to equally empty high grasslands stretching to the south and east. The unremitting wind blew her hair into her mouth and eyes as she made her way to an obscure corner of the campus. Her destination was not her Jeep or a counselor’s office or a class but, most unlikely in this prairie setting, a tree.

  They planted the tree for Matt. Well, not really, she thought. They planted it for every soldier who died in the war that was somehow affiliated with the college. But Matt never actually went to school here, so I guess they really planted it for me. I’m the one left in Cheyenne, trying to go back to school to fill the days.

  The tree is
on the back side of the main building, jammed in a corner up against two walls. No walkway or path leads to it. There is nothing to do once you get there, no bench or picnic table beneath, no one seeks out its shade. She wondered if anyone else ever visited this abandoned tree. It was a stunted thing with no leaves when they planted it. There was a little ceremony, about fifteen people, including the school president. That was nice, I guess, she thought.

  Jenny doesn’t go to the back of campus to look at the tree very often. What’s the point? Why bother? It’s nothing but a terrible cliché. What am I supposed to say? What are my kids supposed to say? What does a tree fix?

  She started to get angry again and thought, See, this is why I don’t make it a point to see this tree more often. Every time I do, its nothing but rehashing all of the futility and half-measures and misunderstandings and the foolishness of Matt enlisting and following him to Florida in the first place.

  In the end, the argument in her head always ended the same way:

  I never thought my kids would be able to say that their dad died in the war.

  Who says that? It’s such an old-fashioned statement. Dads didn’t die in wars, or, at least they didn’t anymore. No one she knew had a father who died in Vietnam. Nor a grandfather in World War II. Who are all of these people who died in the Argonne and Iwo Jima and the Mekong Delta? Real people, they really fought, and then they died, and some of them got trees too, but they were as distant to her as the dead of Iraq and Afghanistan were to all of the students she sat next to in class every day.

  But there could be a purpose in planting a tree, Jenny thought. A tiny, tiny purpose. The war is so far away, the people who planted this tree have no idea what it really means, what it represents.

  This little tree is not about remembering, like they said. It’s about the washing of hands, putting the war and its obligations behind them. They planted this tree to forget.

  IN THE CENTER of the northwest Florida military coast that stretches from Pensacola to Fort Walton Beach to Panama City, along the inward side of Okaloosa Island, off the main tourist drag but against a dock on the water, on the narrows that connect the larger bay to the Santa Rosa Sound, there is a run-down bar named Helen Back. It is not an especially large or nice place, and the view is limited. The rock and reggae bands that play on a small wooden stage are only all right. The beer selection is basic, and to a New Yorker, the pizza is just okay.

  This dive is a dingy local watering hole in all aspects but one: the stickers that cover the glass doors and bar back, insignia that form a wallpaper of fighter squadrons, mobile units, SEAL teams, SF outfits, and EOD companies. Helen Back welcomes us all home.

  Every year, over the first weekend in May, the EOD community of all four services gathers at the EOD Memorial at Eglin Air Force Base to remember our dead. The official service is held at the memorial wall on Saturday morning, rain or shine. The unofficial ceremony, at least since the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan began, is Friday and Saturday night at Helen Back.

  Thursday night too, Wednesday and Sunday sometimes as well. My wife, Jessie, and I usually fly in Friday morning and find the party already started. One year, when we arrived and dragged our bag upstairs to our shared rented condo in a huge beachfront tower, our old friend Matty from Las Vegas met us at the door. He had a glazed look in his eyes.

  “Matty, are you drunk already?” I asked.

  “I got drunk on Tuesday,” he said. “What day is it?”

  We all hit Helen Back before the sun was even down that night. The bar was full, and loud, and the bartenders were already moving at double speed filling drink orders. Matty bought two pitchers for the three of us, and we clinked plastic cups and so the memorial begins.

  Jew, our other roommate, meets us on the deck by the water. Some people take that name the wrong way. Jew is what he calls himself. I’ve heard his mother call him that. He’s got a tattoo with the EOD badge except the stars are replaced with six-pointed Stars of David. Anyway, Jew is crashing with Matty and us, but he’s been drinking down by the beach all day with Reese, so this is the first we see of him.

  First thing Reese always does is shake your hand. I’ve decided he loves doing that because his right hand is a mangled mess; in Afghanistan an IED blew in his face while he was lying on the ground disarming it. He lost an eye, part of a leg, most of his hand. Don’t like shaking his claw because it gives you the creeps? Fuck you! He’s the one that only has three fingers.

  Matty wants to drink Yuengling because it’s cheap here, but I can’t drink that fast enough to get drunk, so I order a couple of rum and Cokes. Straight well drinks—don’t ask for anything more complicated than one liquor and one soda.

  The sun finally sets, and the bar is packed like grandma’s church on Easter morning. A congregation of EOD techs is mostly young men, though some are middle-aged and a fair number are women, not just wives and girlfriends but operators too. More muscular, not especially short hair, beards if guys are going over or just back or contractors. Lots of tattoos, on just about everyone, men and women, sleeves and legs especially. More cigarettes and dip spit cups than is currently fashionable. Only a few guys pay close attention to their clothing—who cares about such frivolities?

  Since Iraq and Afghanistan, we have a few new rituals. When we arrive at Helen Back, we usually go to the center section, between the main bar and the outdoor patio, and without asking we stack all the plastic lawn chairs and move them to one side. This creates a space free of obstacles for the wheelchairs. Many of the wounded guys are drawn to each other to catch up, relax, talk surgeries and rehab and new prosthetics. After a long day, some of the double and triple guys have taken off their legs and are resting in the chair. One is excited he is getting new lips soon. Another has a T-shirt that reads “$10 for the leg story.” A third is fending off a guy trying to ride him like the Tilt-a-Whirl at an amusement park; just because you lost a leg doesn’t mean you are given quarter from the relentless shit-talking and pranks that every other EOD guy must endure. On a bet, someone licks Reese’s fake eye. Ty is showing off his new arm, and how it can grip a beer. The old one would spontaneously squeeze and spill; the new one is as steady as the cup holder in your minivan.

  A robot finds the IED, and then you try to use a robot to disarm the IED, but the robot blows up and then you blow up and when you get home you get a new robot leg and a new robot arm and become the robot yourself. If you’re as lucky as Frost. Wars are all fought by babies, sometimes babies without arms and legs.

  Wheelchairs everywhere, but also dogs. A few retired military working dogs since adopted, most specifically trained therapeutic dogs. Reese got a dog because he lost that eye and he was sick of bumping into shit. If you lost your leg, you get a big dog, so you can lean on him for support when you tire. And if the crowds still bother you, you get a smaller companion dog, so you can just find a corner and rub his ears and stare into his eyes when needed. And if you have nightmares, you still take your dog everywhere, because that dog saves your life every night, licking your face in the worst of the thrashing until you snap out of it and wake up, and how can you leave a companion like that in the hotel room alone?

  The talk is of work and guns and motorcycles, and the sequence goes like this: take a job overseas, sell your bike before you go, come home, buy a new gun and new bike to celebrate. Everyone wants to know if you’re going back. No, I’m not. Not as a contractor, not as a writer. Not yet. I’d go back now if there was a way to ride with Matt Schwartz on patrol. All of us would, for a whole list of such names.

  And everyone wants to know about Fye, since I’ve seen him most recently. I pull up pictures on my phone and show off the new brace he has for his leg. It’s called the IDEO, and it is a sort of exoskeleton, providing support for the right leg he is trying to save. I talk about how Fye is off the narcotics, his memory is slowly getting better, he’s finally walking, and has started powerlifting to stay motivated during the long bouts of therapy that keep him from r
unning or riding a bike. In the end, Fye wouldn’t grow back all 12.7 centimeters of tibia and fibula bone that he lost. He was six-foot-two when he started, but infections and complications slowed the regrowth process. After eight months of prolonged traction, doctors noticed his new shin was growing in a curve, so Fye endured another round of surgery to break the fresh bone and straighten it. After a year of fighting, the doctors gave up at eight centimeters of reconstruction. Fye is six foot now, though he reminds me he’s taller when he wears the brace and the right sneakers. Those few inches make a difference; Fye looks slightly out-of-proportion in the photos on my phone, his torso just a bit too large compared to his lower half.

  One of the people asking about Fye is Angela Olguin, the EOD tech who originally texted me to say Matt Schwartz had died. She wants to know about Fye, but she also wants to talk about Matt, and we finish our drink and I pour another from the pitcher, and soon Angela is wiping tears from the underside of her eyes so her makeup doesn’t run. “Fuck, sir!” she says, mad I’ll ruin her mascara. So she changes the subject: “Hey, look at this. Haha. Jew balls!” She shows me the photo on her phone, and yes, there is a picture of Jew’s scrotum, shiny and clean.

  There is a shout from the bar, and the crowd pushes in and then a rush of orders. What just happened? Matty passes the word. Somebody just reenlisted, and he put a fair chunk of his bonus on the bar. It’s a race, how fast can we drink it away? We all get at least a few.

  Reese’s Alive Day is the same day his best friend Tony died. We don’t talk about that much. In the men’s bathroom, John rolls himself into a stall while other guys piss in the urinals. John’s a triple amp, got one arm left, and more. “Yes, I still have my dick, in case anyone wants to know!” he shouts from behind the door. Better than some, but we don’t talk about that much either.