by J J Miller
“Medic!” I scream, but Shaw waves me off saying he’s okay.
I keep crawling again, now toward Blanchard. He’s a bloody mess. Half his face is gone. It’s as though some ferocious beast set its jaws into the side of his face and ripped off everything to the bone. I actually see the flecks of white bone within the red mess of flesh and blood. A chunk of his skull is gone. His right eye is protruding from its socket, forced out by sudden, violent pressure. Somehow, he’s alive. But all he can do is writhe and moan on the ground, his legs bending up and down, his bootheels scraping channels into the dirt in a macabre jig.
“Medic!” I scream again. “Medic!”
I kneel beside Blanchard and rest his deformed head in my lap. I talk to his good side, as if I know that that part of him can still hear me, understand me, believe me. He is just nineteen years old, this Blanchard kid. He is something else. Smart, funny, empathetic, he is one of the most popular members of our unit. And he has become a hell of a soldier. Born and raised in Ohio, he is grounded in that good-stock, rural-family way and has an old head on his young shoulders. We are two weeks from tour’s end, and he has plans for when he gets back home. Now here I am, holding what is left of him as he lies dying in some shitty war in a shitty town that has not changed since Attila the Hun passed through.
“Medic!”
Where’s the damn medic?!
“Mom! Mom!!” Somehow, with half his head gone and his mouth choking with blood and dirt, Bingham can still form the word.
“Mom?!”
As I look into his clear blue eyes, they go still on me, never again to be lit by ambition, humor, desire, or good news.
I feel him draw one last heaving breath.
I look up and see a small figure walking towards me. A young girl shuffling quickly through the dust cloud. She is carrying something. She walks straight up to me and stops. I realize the thing she’s carrying is her own arm. Blood is running freely down the side of her face, a face wet with tears and smudged with dirt. The blood flows faster and thicker.
She looks at me and her eyes roll to the back of her head and turn white.
“Salaam alaykum,” she says. Peace be with you.
She says it again, and again. Faster and faster. First her voice is trance-like, but then it gets louder and louder until she is screaming, high-pitched right into my face.
“Salaam alaykum! Salaam alaykum!”
✽✽✽
I woke up bolt upright and cold from drying sweat.
It was four-thirty.
I hadn’t expected to sleep at all. When I got home after dropping Bella off, it was hard to put my mind at ease. I sensed the VidCon shooting could be a PTSD trigger. I’d had enough whiskey and beer to get me drowsy, but sleep remained elusive. Yet I must have dozed off. And that was the kind of shit that awaited me when I did.
There was no way I was getting get back to sleep now. I didn’t want to. Not after that lurid regurgitation—albeit distorted—of my Afghanistan experience.
And there was no way I was going to work. That was partly why I’d set out on my own despite several offers to join large law firms. This PTSD thing only came occasionally, but when it did, I’d rather not explain why I was playing hooky to co-workers and partners who considered fourteen-hour days to be the bare minimum.
This dream was one of a few packages my mind had edited for me to remember—a kind of sick playlist that provoked me in various ways. Ripping the bed covers off, hitting the deck, reaching for weapons or ammo to kill an imaginary enemy that felt so real in my warped headspace.
I had my coping mechanisms. Hitting the bottle hard was not one. I knew where that path led: alcoholism, misery and a gun barrel in the mouth. I kept it at a half-bottle of scotch plus whatever beers were on hand to chase it down. But my real battle buddy in this war of unwanted remembrance was cannabis. At home, I always keep a vape pen and a stash of Blue Dream cartridges on hand. I didn’t vape every day, but it sure as hell beat the useless pills—the anti-depressants, the anti-anxiety drugs—that the Veterans Association threw at you.
I got out of bed, grabbed a beer from the fridge and pulled out my vape pen. I settled down in front of the TV and inhaled. For whatever reason, getting stoned was a good transition from nightmares to normality, at least for me. It enabled my mind to dislocate itself from a riptide of horror that could easily suck me into madness and dead-end despair. The worst things I’d seen during combat could be put where they belonged: in the past. It allowed me to relax, to regain a sound, rational perspective. Hell, it even made me laugh.
I went searching for news channels. I was always interested in news from Afghanistan and Iraq. Watching reports from the war was never a trigger for me—it was more a reminder that my experience was real; an affirmation that I’d been there, that what I did had some purpose. But as to what the overall game over there was, who knew.
I mean, if we wanted to beat the Taliban, Afghanistan wasn’t the place to be. To win that war we’d have had to invade Pakistan—that was where their headquarters were, where their madrassa or training schools were, where they radicalized young men into fundamentalist robots. Half the time the enemy fighters I’d faced were just plain insurgents, some Joe Blow Afghan out for revenge after his brother or entire family had been killed by a mortar we accidentally lobbed into a wedding party. He could be someone who just hated the sight of foreign soldiers running around his neighborhood telling him what to do, pushing him off his roads, pointing guns at him and yes, telling him he shouldn’t grow opium, the one crop he knew he could make money off amid all the hardship and uncertainty that went with living in a war zone.
There was nothing on the news about the Afghan war. Hardly surprising, since it was again fading fast from America’s conscience, even though we’d been fighting there longer than Vietnam.
I aimed the remote at the screen. But then something stopped me from touching the button. A headline scrolling across the bottom of the screen caught my eye. It was about the VidCon shooting. The text said a seventeen-year-old male had been charged. I stuck around to see if there was a story. Sure enough, it came within a matter of minutes.
An anchor introduced the piece, detailing how YouTube sensation Luke Jameson had been gunned down at a concert where he was about to perform before saying a young man from Pomona was being held in custody. The reporter said the alleged shooter could not be named because he was a juvenile.
I continued flipping through the channels and stopped when I landed on the movie Moneyball. It had only just started. I hit pause, got up for another beer, and returned to the sofa and movie. It was going to be a chill kind of day.
From my bedroom came the sound of my phone buzzing with a message. I was in no mood to engage with anyone, but curiosity go the better of me: who would be texting me at five in the morning?
When I picked up the phone, I was surprised to see the name “Jasmine Torrell” as the sender.
Last time I spoke with Jasmine, it was the hardest call I’d ever had to make. I rang her from our base in Jalalabad with the worst news. Her husband, and my dear friend, Sherman “Tank” Torrell was dead. He’d taken four AK rounds to the chest. He’d have taken more if he hadn’t shot and grenaded the five insurgents that had ambushed us from the top of an escarpment. Until that day, we had thought the giant of a man—the finest physical specimen I’d ever seen and the most courageous, selfless fighter—was indestructible. But we’d tempted fate. I covered him as he scaled that escarpment and hit the enemy on their flank. I thought he was unscathed because he was still standing after the insurgent guns fell silent. But by the time I joined him he’d collapsed, dead. Later, I’d listened to Jasmine’s untold shock and grief as I relayed the news she’d hoped would never come.
Her text read: “Hi Brad. Sorry to bother you out of the blue, but my son Demarco has been arrested. Police say he killed someone. Please help.”
I called the number straight away. Jasmine answered, but the connection was
so poor I couldn’t hear a word she said.
“I’ll come see you!” I shouted.
My plans for the day changed in an instant. Up until now all I had in mind was more Blue Dream hits, more beer and the movie followed by a long session of Red Dead Redemption on the PlayStation. The only foreseen interruption would have been the pizza delivery boy. Well, that was out the window now. The wife of my old friend needed me and I was heading to Pomona to see her.
To help clear my head, I walked to the pull-up bar I’d installed in my bedroom and pumped out thirty. I followed that up with eighty Marine push-ups and a hundred crunches. Then, I hit the shower, shaved, and headed for the door.
Yeah, I was still a little stoned, but otherwise I was good to go.
4
The late-January day was cool, but the sky was as clear as cut glass. To be moving felt good, but to be flying down the freeway in my Mustang GT felt even better. It was a glorious way to put distance between me and the headspace I’d awoken to earlier that morning. I was grateful to Jasmine for giving me a purpose outside of myself, forcing me to abandon my planned isolation.
It had been about eight years since I’d last made this trip out to Pomona, a few weeks after we’d buried Tank. We’d spent almost eighteen months in Afghanistan together. He died just a couple of weeks before our second tour was due to end. Through Tank I’d learned Jasmine hadn’t been in good health back then: diabetes had struck in her early thirties and there’d been complications. I wondered if she’d improved.
Her home, like most others on her street, was small: single level, two-bedroom, driveway up the side, single garage, cement path from the sidewalk to the front patio, no steps, and two camp chairs where you could take in the view of the street whenever the urge struck you. I knocked on the door and heard the volume of a television drop.
“Is that you, Brad?” Jasmine’s voice was shaky. She sounded older than I knew she was.
After I hollered back, she told me to let myself in. Once inside, I turned left to see Jasmine sitting in an armchair in front of the television. A small table to the side held a jug of juice, an empty cup of coffee and a box of Kleenex.
The house was untidy. I could see dishes in the sink and spent fast food bags on the kitchen table.
“Sorry not to get up,” said Jasmine. “It’s my heart.”
I was shocked at Jasmine’s appearance. She was obese—no other word for it. She hadn’t always been that way. Tank had shown me photos of when they were dating and just married. Back then, she’d been fit and radiant.
I bent down, kissed Jasmine on the cheek and gave her a big hug. Her arms held me tight for a few seconds.
“Lovely to see you, Brad,” she said. “Please, have a seat.”
As I lowered myself into the armchair opposite, Jasmine reached for a pill container, opened it, took two or three out, placed them in her mouth, and swallowed them with some water from a plastic bottle.
“My heart. It’s not going so well,” she said.
“I was about to ask how you’re doing, Jasmine. But it seems you’re having a hell of a rough time.”
Her eyes filled with tears, and she reached for a Kleenex. She dabbed the corners of her eyes and her nose. I pulled my chair closer and took her hand.
“I hate to see you so upset,” I said. “Please, tell me about Demarco. What happened?”
She took a deep breath, withdrew her hand from mine and began folding her Kleenex.
“They say he killed a man in Anaheim. Shot him point blank in the chest.” Just saying the words led Jasmine to break down. I waited a few seconds before replying.
“Jasmine. Was this the shooting at the Anaheim Convention Center?”
“Yes. Yesterday afternoon.”
“I was there.”
Jasmine looked at me, puzzled.
“I was at VidCon, a YouTube expo, with my daughter,” I said. “I took her to see this singer she’s obsessed with, and all of a sudden all hell broke loose.”
Jasmine listened intently, hoping that whatever I said was going to bring her some relief, that I’d somehow know more than the police were telling her and could reassure her that Demarco was innocent.
“Jasmine, do you have a photo of Demarco I can take a look at?”
“The most recent one is up there,” she said, pointing to a shelf beside the television.
I stood up and picked up the framed photo of a smiling boy aged about twelve. Unfortunately, I was sure it was this boy’s older self that I’d seen the day before.
I returned the photo to the mantle and fell back into my seat.
“Jasmine, let me tell you what I saw. We were waiting to get into our show when we heard gunshots. I ran towards where the shots came from, hoping I could stop a mass shooting.”
“What about your daughter?”
I felt a stab of guilt but decided to speed on through the story.
“I hid her. When I reached the theater, I saw a man’s body on the ground and, I’m afraid to say, Demarco was standing over him.”
Jasmine began rocked back and forth gently and put a hand to her mouth.
“My son is not a killer,” she said with defiance.
“I’m sure he’s not, Jasmine. I’m sure there’s some reasonable explanation. And I’m going to find out what the hell it is. But first I need you to tell me about Demarco. Has he ever been in trouble with the law?”
It almost seemed like a dumb question. Tank had told me years ago that Demarco had been a bright but troubled kid. That was when Demarco was about eight years old. He just hadn’t coped with Tank being away and Jasmine becoming more and more debilitated. He’d been increasingly disrespectful towards his mother. After Tank’s death, I’d thought about offering to help try and keep the kid on the straight and narrow, but I never acted. And Demarco had strayed as Tank feared he would.
Jasmine told me that the boy had always missed his dad terribly when he was on tour, and the distance between her and her son had only grown. When Tank was home things were better, but his presence never really settled Demarco. Besides, the Tank who came back from Afghanistan was not the same man who had left. He didn’t spend much time at home, always finding some excuse to be out. Sometimes with his buddies, but most times just by himself—at the gym, the shooting range or out hunting. He didn’t seem inclined or equipped to steer his relationship with Demarco to a better place.
Demarco had been a promising student, but in the year leading up to his dad’s death, he became defiant and disinclined to apply himself to anything. After Tank died, the counseling he had failed to overcome his anger and confusion. What the kid had desperately longed for—a present father—had been cruelly yanked away.
With her own health problems, whatever strength Jasmine had to reach the boy steadily faded. From the age of ten, the two barely conversed. She just got grunts in reply to her questions.
At school, Demarco got into too many fights and acquired a reputation as not only a tough kid but a bully. He missed classes, and at age thirteen was expelled for smoking pot. That same year, he began running with the Sintown Crips, a black criminal street gang from the west side of Pomona. Soon after he left home without so much as an angry word.
That had been two years ago, and Jasmine hadn’t seen or heard from him since. Well actually, she had once. After her repeated appeals to police, they brought him home one night. He’d walked out again the same night.
It was the saddest of sights to see this good woman detail the pain and suffering that had befallen her.
There was nothing I could say to ease her worry, except that all the details about the Anaheim shooting were not yet known.
“Please, Brad. My baby sure ain’t no angel. I know that. But he ain’t a cold-blooded killer either. I know that, deep in my heart. There must be some mistake.”
It was going to have to be some mistake. For the life of me, I couldn’t begin to fathom what a street kid would be doing at a convention like that, let alone killing
a man there in cold blood. I had to speak to Demarco.
“Jasmine, I’ll go see him. Right now.”
“You have to clear this up. Please, Brad. He doesn’t belong in jail. He’s just a boy. My dear boy. You’ve got to save him.”
Her pleading eyes flooded with tears.
“I’ll do my best, Jasmine. I promise. But Jasmine, I need to know as much about Demarco as possible. Do you have anything you can show me—you know, what he excelled at, awards, school, reports, anything and everything.”
Jasmine nodded.
“In my bedroom closet, up high on the right, there’s a box I keep everything in. It all seems like distant memories now.”
“Great. I’ll just go get it.”
Armed with the box, I made to leave. Jasmine looked a little embarrassed not to stand and see me to the door. Suddenly, she broke down again. But, after a moment, she rallied to speak to me.
“Brad. I have to tell you. I don’t have long to live. The doctors say I’ll be doing well to last another year. Please, don’t let them take him from me. Just one more time, I want to see him walk through that door and give me a hug. Just like he did when he was little.”
I crossed the room and hugged her. She was now sobbing, her body trembling. I gave her once last squeeze and made for the door.
“I’ll do my best, Jasmine.”
5
I walked into the meeting room at Juvenile Hall to see Demarco Torrell leaning up against the corner wall in blue short-sleeved overalls. He was tall and athletic, leaner than his old man but still an imposing physical specimen. It was incredible how much he looked like his father. But while I felt I knew him, he was eying me coldly.
“Hello, Demarco. You may not remember me, but we’ve met before.”
I put out my hand. He kept his in his pockets. Apart from following me with his eyes, he hadn’t moved an inch since I’d entered.