by Jason Kasper
“But we’re not. I’ve been around a few more years than you. Get used to this. With as much as we jump and the risks we take, just finding someone who will fuck you regularly for a few months at a time is a victory. You remember how I kept blowing you off after you got back from your first BASE jump course a couple years ago?”
“Yeah.”
“I thought you’d lose your drive to do it until you bothered me to the point that you were about to start climbing shit and jumping on your own. Know why I took you out to Ma Bell the first time?”
“Because you cared about my emotional well-being?”
“Fuck no. I didn’t know who you were and didn’t give a shit. But you were going to bounce at some point doing a local object on your own, and end up burning it for the rest of us. That’s your problem—you’re persistent about things even when you shouldn’t be. You’re in a school you hate because they said you couldn’t go there when you first applied. You didn’t leave Sarah, even when she turned into a fucking cunt and started treating you like shit. And let’s tell the truth—that happened a long time before you found out she cheated on you. Can you blame her? You’d been seeing her once every few months for almost five years. And now you’re clinging to the memory of a girl who literally ran out the door the second she found out who you are. Let her go, man.”
“I’m just fucking broken right now, Jackson.”
“We both are.” He slid a hand across the back of his neck and then straightened in his seat, his forceful stare upon me. “Let her go.”
CHAPTER 7
I pushed open the glass door and stepped into the colossal lobby of the Association of Graduates building. A sunroof in the high ceiling shone natural light over a marble floor lined with walls bearing framed West Point prints of every variety: cadets marching in step, gray stone buildings, a freeze-frame of uniform caps suspended in midair over a graduating class, and cadet portraits of alumni who had gone on to the general officer ranks, the presidency, or both. Lee, Grant, Eisenhower, Patton, MacArthur, Schwarzkopf, and a slew of others I didn’t recognize gazed hollowly upon me as I came to a stop in the center of the room.
“What can I help you with, son?”
I turned to see a broad-shouldered man with immaculate silver hair approaching me. He wore a navy blazer with a nametag bearing the subscript, Colonel, Retired.
I cleared my throat. “I just found out I’m getting kicked out of the Army, and I don’t have a job.”
“I see.” He nodded. “What happened, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“The EKG results from my commissioning physical just came back. They diagnosed me with supraventricular tachycardia.”
“What is that?”
“I stopped listening after they said I was medically non-commissionable.”
“And you’re graduating with your class in a couple weeks?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Not to worry, son. We’ll get you straightened out. Let’s go to my office.”
I followed him down the hall and into a room decorated like the lobby, albeit with scattered pictures of an infantry platoon in Vietnam. I took a seat across from his desk.
“Are you an engineering major?” he asked.
“No.”
He frowned. “Telecomm and corporate sales are pretty hot right now. We’ve also seen a rise in manufacturing and logistics hires as of late.” He began sliding papers across his desk. “You can fill out this questionnaire to rank order your career field and geographical preferences. Also, here’s a guide to creating your résumé. Once you get all of this done, bring it back with a copy of your transcript and we’ll help you get everything in order before the next hiring conference.”
“Thank you.”
“You’ll have to dress the part, obviously. Do you have a good suit?”
“No.”
“Of course not. You’ve been wearing cadet gray. I’d recommend either navy or charcoal, and pinstripes always go over well at interviews. Make sure the leather on your shoes and belt matches. Antonello is the best tailor in the Cadet Store—ask for him by name, and tell him I sent you.”
“Outstanding.”
“And, son,” he lowered his voice, “this can be a difficult transition when you’ve been expecting to be a lieutenant for so long. But remember, you’re still part of the Long Gray Line. No one can ever take that away from you.”
I angled my head to the side and felt my neck crack. “No, they can’t take that away. Sir, thank you. This has been incredibly helpful.”
We shook hands and I stood, neatly stacking the papers and taking them with me. As I passed through the lobby, my phone began to ring. When I saw that it was Jackson, I dumped the papers into a nearby wastebasket and stepped outside to answer.
“Are you ready for this?” I said. “I’m getting kicked out of the Army because of a non-terminal medical condition, so the past five years have been for nothing. You want to jump up here or do you want me to come to the city, because if I don’t get a BASE fix there’s not enough alcohol in the world to drown this one.”
An unknown and tentative voice asked, “Uh… is this David?”
Fuck.
“Yes,” I answered. “This is David.”
“I’m Jackson’s brother-in-law. He asked me to call you. He was in a motorcycle accident this morning.”
“What happened?”
“He didn’t remember much, but the police said he was hit by a car that ran a stop sign. He asked me to call you and Andrea, the girl he was supposed to go out with tonight.”
“Sounds about right.”
“Well, there are four different Andreas on his phone.”
“Call them all. Which hospital is he at? I’ll be down there in two hours.”
“David, Jackson passed about an hour ago.”
“He… passed?”
“He’s dead.”
I paused. “When will his services be?”
“They’re working that out now. I’ll let you know.”
“Okay.”
“And David?”
“Yes.”
“He said everything would be okay, and not to forget the loops. He was adamant that I tell you that. Everything will be okay, and don’t forget the loops.”
* * *
It used to be nothing more than a novelty thought, an occasional glance into what it would be like. Then I found my mind continually drifting back to that gleaming silver revolver—first dozens of times a day, then hundreds. Now, it’s a natural mental turn at the end of each thought. The symbol that came out of nowhere one day, a perfect vision of the barrel of a .454 revolver sliding into my mouth. Flawless. Unprovoked. Why that gun, that caliber, that finish? I have no answers, only thoughts. They swarm into my mind like bats flapping into the crevices of a dark space, filling every void as soon as a distraction isn’t there to push them out.
Perhaps my clouded mind, growing increasingly serious about its own annihilation, has simply presented me with its weapon of choice.
Who am I to deny it? Things have been getting perpetually worse for years. Every few months, there’s a new plateau lower than the last. Each night turns into a sudden wake-up in the darkness, and I open my eyes in a gray, hollow room. Alone. My whole life is encompassed in this setting, one way or another. Am I in a barracks room at West Point, in a dark tent nestled in the mountains of Afghanistan, on the couch at Jackson’s apartment? Only opening my eyes will tell me. Surroundings, the placement of objects in my immediate vicinity, distinguish that for me. The rest is the same.
That gray, hollow room of my mind, aware that I’m not asleep and on a bed, a couch, a cot, awake but not really awake, wanting to be one or the other but getting neither. I occupy the same gray, vacant space that I’ve found myself sitting in, lying in, standing in, at various hours of the night or morning—my whole life—alone. I don’t need to open my eyes to know that. My stomach is nauseated. I want to either throw up or not feel sick, but I can’t. The purgatory in between has
set in like the space between being tired and falling asleep, the fog that I slide my feet through with my hands outstretched, not sure what I’ll run into and finding out there’s nothing.
There is no return from where I’ve been going ever since the war, combat that I have been banished from by yet another arrow of fate, another meaningless blow to increase the bleeding. Drinking more, eating and sleeping less as the emptiness is replaced by a darkness that grows inside me, the emptiness replaced by something worse.
Once only an inconvenience, being alive has now become the outright denial of a death sentence for a crime that I deserve to hang for, and not killing myself is a coward’s way out that I have shamefully continued to take despite every possible indication that I shouldn’t. I hate the liquor even as I drink it, knowing it has done nothing but delayed the inevitable through an illusion of normalcy, and yet I keep embracing the façade of comfort rather than feel reality as it is, find it unacceptable, and remove myself from its boundaries forever. It’s a hollow substitute of the same: the bottle a gun and alcohol a bullet, pouring it into my head to end it for now.
My cell phone rang on the desk beside me.
I stopped typing and leaned back in my chair. The glowing phone pierced the darkness that outlined the crisp, white rectangle of my computer screen. Pushing my glass aside, I reached for the phone.
A low voice said, “How’s my bitch doing, faggot?”
“Peter,” I replied. “You haven’t killed yourself yet. How have you been?”
“Didn’t think you’d be hearing from me again, did you?”
“To be honest, I’d almost forgotten about you entirely.”
“Well I haven’t forgotten about you, David River.”
“Rivers.”
“Whatever, douchebag. It doesn’t matter, anyway, because I’m talking to a dead man.”
“You are?” I leaned forward and propped my elbows on the desk.
“Yeah. I am.”
“Sure you’re not talking to someone who’s going to teach you a lesson about fucking with people you don’t know?”
“You stole my bitch, and now you’re going to get what’s coming to you.”
“What’s coming to me, Peter?”
“Revenge, motherfucker. I’ve got a bunch of friends who want to meet you.”
“You sound drunk. Are you going to remember this tomorrow?”
“We’re going to find your ass.”
“Peter, you really should kill yourself. This is getting embarrassing.”
“Fuck you.”
“I recommend doing it while you’re drunk so you end on a high note.”
“It’s going to happen soon, David. I’m coming for you.”
I leaned back in my chair, smoothing my shirtfront and crossing an ankle over the opposite knee. “Peter, I’m glad you called. You couldn’t have picked a better time.”
* * *
“Cadet David Rivers.”
Walking across the stage as the voice over the loudspeaker called the next name, I shook hands with one general, and then another, and then some political authority who handed me a cardboard tube encasing a diploma. After descending the steps on the far side, I stepped onto the artificial turf of the field and turned to see the interior of Michie Stadium, brightly lit under a cloudless sky. The bleachers were packed with civilians in colorful clothing and rose around a focal point of seated cadets dressed, as I was, in white pants and gray dress tops that were neatly divided at the waist by a maroon sash. I marched along with the procession of diploma-carrying graduates to my front, each of them ecstatically waving at family members in the crowd.
Returning to my seat, I waited for the remainder of the class to receive their diplomas. More formalities were spoken, culminating in a single cadet taking center stage.
“Class dismissed!” he shouted. Everyone around me threw their hats into the air and began cheering wildly. I stayed in my seat, my eyes locked in front of me as classmates embraced each other amid the hats crashing down on top of them. A moment later, small children came scrambling over the chairs like gremlins, trying to collect cadet hats in search of the traditional cash hidden inside.
Family and friends poured onto the field to find their proud new graduate, to celebrate their moment of great triumph. I took off my hat and dropped it onto the ground, then rose to leave.
Laila walked up to me. She was wearing a thin sundress that wrapped around her body. She was too nice to let me leave alone.
“Hey, David,” she said.
“Hey, Laila.”
“I’m sorry to hear you couldn’t stay in the Army. Do you have any job interviews lined up?”
“No.”
“So what are you going to do now?”
“Start over.”
“Well, let me know if you need help, because my cousin started working for—”
“I appreciate it, Laila, but I’m going to be just fine.”
She looked past me, and then locked her green eyes with mine. “Do you have anyone here for graduation?”
“No. One of the many joys of growing up in the foster system.”
“What about Jackson?”
“Jackson’s dead.”
“Oh my God, I’m so sorry—”
“Laila.” I put my hand on her shoulder. “I appreciate the concern. And I love you. I wish you all the happiness in the world, I really do. But right now, I’ve got to get the fuck out of here.”
I kissed her, and her eyes began tearing up. I turned and walked away, crossing to the edge of the field and entering a concrete doorway, where I deposited my diploma in a trash can. As I ascended the stairs to the upper decks of the stadium, the newly-minted sophomore class was coming down.
“Congratulations, sir!” they called.
“Thank you, kids,” I replied, arriving at the first landing and continuing to climb. Eventually I reached the top, emerging into the sunlight on the upper bleachers. Some of the new sophomores lingered in their seats.
A young black cadet asked, “Don’t you need to change into Class A’s before your commissioning ceremony?”
“I’m not commissioning,” I said. “Medical.”
“Oh, shit, I’m sorry.”
“It’s going to be okay, brother.”
I climbed the outside stairs between benches until I reached the top rail, then leaned against it and faced east as a warm breeze washed over my face. Michie Stadium was surrounded by gray stone buildings, and the ground dropped sharply toward the gleaming, choppy Hudson River. Past the far shore, rolling green hills rose out of the water and extended for miles into the distance. Beyond the closest peaks, scattered hilltops emerged along the horizon. On one of them, a red and white antenna blinked.
I sighed, watching Ma Bell for the last time.
Then I began the long trip to Illinois, and to Peter.
PROPHETS
Contra felicem vix deus vires habet
-Against a lucky man, a god scarcely has power
CHAPTER 8
June 1, 2008
Unknown Location
I awoke from the attack with my head throbbing in an intense pain that was only slightly more prominent than the sharp crick in my neck. Opening my eyes to discover that a blurry shield of rough cloth had been placed over my face, I tried to pull it off, but my wrists had been tied to the arms of the chair where I was now seated. My legs were likewise restrained at the ankles. I turned my head as far as I could in both directions, sensing nothing.
“Anyone there?” No response. A moment passed, my breath hot and trapped to my face. I rolled my neck and flexed my back, feeling a sharp pain radiate outward from my spine.
Someone behind me said, “A .454 revolver seems like overkill for suicide, don’t you think?”
This was not the voice from the hotel; it belonged to a different man, older, less intense, but more calculated.
“That’s a matter of personal opinion, my friend. I hope you saved that fucking bottle.”
“Why did you kill Peter McAlister?”
“Listen, I appreciate the friendly banter, but if you’re going to blow my head off anyway let’s just get on with it.”
“You’re on borrowed time already. I asked why you killed him.”
“Tell me who you are and I’ll tell you all about it. Or you could threaten to kill me and see how that works out.”
“Why would I threaten to kill you?”
“The guy who put a gun in my mouth seemed pretty excited about the prospect.”
“Of course he was. That’s why he’s the guy who puts guns in people’s mouths. But I call the shots here.”
“Why should I tell you? You’re going to kill me, anyway.”
“Killing you won’t benefit either of us. There’s something that matters more to you than living does, and if I like what you have to say I might offer it to you.”
I snorted to clear a blocked nostril, swallowing as my mouth filled with mucus and the rusty taste of stale blood. “I don’t care about money.”
“You’re an Afghanistan and Iraq vet who just graduated from West Point. You murdered a man and were about to kill yourself. I’ll bet planning Peter’s death has kept you going for weeks, and now that he’s gone you’ve lost your last distraction from an almost overwhelming urge to commit suicide. I know you don’t care about money, David.”
“Decent thirty second psychoanalysis,” I conceded.
“Now tell me why you killed Peter.”
“Have you ever talked to him? I’m surprised no one shot him before I got around to it.” I heard heavy footsteps begin pacing the room behind me, but when the voice spoke again, it remained stationary.
“As a matter of fact, I haven’t.”
“The man in the hotel said he was there when I killed Peter. Said he stood over the body before the brains had dried.”
“He did. So did I.”
“Where were you?”
“On your way out, you stopped for a second and listened, like you heard something in the trees alongside the house. You were looking right at us.”