The wood shelf jutted out of the living room wall right where Dave wanted to hang the flat-screen TV. It looked sturdy enough to hold some serious weight, but not quite secure enough for a $2,000 HD plasma television. He glanced over at his new housemate and former battle buddy from Iraq, Skeet.
“We’re getting rid of this thing, man,” Dave said. “I’m ripping it out.” Skeet had just dumped a beat-up green duffel bag on the floor and was surveying its contents: camouflage uniforms, body armor, combat helmet. Hands on his hips, forehead creased in confused contemplation, Skeet reminded Dave of their old lieutenant in Iraq, poring over his map at a dusty intersection.
“Bro, wait,” Skeet said. He took the helmet, brushed off a thin film of dust, then brought it to the shelf and set it carefully in the middle. “There. Where else are we going to stash our old gear?”
Sewn into the side of the helmet’s cloth covering was a black heart-shaped patch, which had been the insignia of their regiment. To Dave, it represented a powerful contradiction. The shape signified love, but the color was dark, nihilistic, evil. Dave had always thought the symbol was badass but college was supposed to be a fresh start, the next chapter of his life. Decorating their house with all the crap they’d had to hump around the desert felt like the wrong message. Why not stick to putting up band posters and whatever else normal college students did?
“Let’s just throw all this stuff away, man. Get rid of it,” Dave said.
Skeet’s clear blue eyes widened. Dave knew that look well: disappointment.
“Fine,” Dave said. He pulled his body armor out of a plastic crate, and lifted it up onto the shelf next to Skeet’s helmet. “Guess this goes here?”
“There you go, buddy!” Skeet said. Dave would have been jealous of Skeet’s Chicago accent if there hadn’t been so many reasons to be jealous of Skeet that there was no point to zeroing in on any particular one. The accent made him seem tough and uncomplicated, more authentic, less vulnerable. And then, the blue eyes. Guys with big muscles and deep blue eyes got blow jobs. Dave had brown eyes, and acne. All the punishing physical training he’d endured had put mass on his shoulders, but Dave didn’t feel comfortable with his new army-issued body.
By midnight, trinkets bought in countryside bazaars and snapshots taken during their year in the desert lay interspersed with the military gear on the shelf. To Dave, the photographs were like fragments of a master image that had once captured the whole experience but had since been lost, leaving only these clues behind. One picture in particular made him pause, an image of Skeet, Dave, and Blake—their squad mate who was killed about two months after the photo was taken—next to a camel they’d run across while out patrolling. Dave had been thinking that Blake was more Skeet’s friend than his, but there was the picture, with Blake proudly wrapping his arm around Dave and smiling for the camera, a clear sign of brotherhood and approval. Skeet and Blake had been more “squared away” (meaning confident, one to whom things came easily, in military parlance) than he was, but here was proof that he had stood with them, had been in their league.
As Dave returned the photograph to the shelf, Skeet tapped him on the back.
“Time to check out the town before the bars close,” Skeet said, and adjusted his baseball cap.
Dave smashed two Vicodins with the bottom of a glass and separated the powder into lines. After a roadside bomb had gone off under Skeet’s truck, and he’d limped away with a concussion and a banged-up leg, an army doc had written him a prescription for these little pills. Later, as Skeet and Dave were waiting on their flight home, they’d pop pills in a container yard filled with giant metal boxes stuffed with equipment worth tens of millions of dollars and zone out, listen to music. Following a year of excitement and danger, the opiates transformed the bleak stasis of the dust-filled container yard into something tolerable.
“I’m on point for the recon,” Skeet said, crossing the street as Dave double-locked the door behind them, then rattled it to make sure it was secure. “It’s in transition, a pre-gentrification phase,” the rental guy had said of the neighborhood. They walked along a cracked sidewalk as the Vicodin kicked in with a rush of confidence and detachment, the same feeling of invincibility Dave had sometimes felt while out patrolling with his weapon locked and loaded. A haggard woman yelled at a drunk man leaning against a boarded-up corner store, and further on, a group of young thugs were closing some kind of deal underneath a sodium-vapor streetlamp.
“Shit man, this place reminds me of Iraq,” Skeet muttered.
They found a bar around the block. Green light from a neon sign reading “Jon’s Tavern” reflected off of freshly painted white concrete walls. Two men smoking near the entrance respectfully flicked their butts into a sand-filled bucket before heading back in.
Jon himself was behind the bar. He was wearing a piece of clothing that identified him as a Vietnam veteran, a well-worn denim motorcycle vest festooned with patches. His clean-shaven face harbored a gaunt, intense energy—not the bearded and overweight stereotype Dave had come to expect from biker vets.
“What can I get you kids?” Jon was asking them when Skeet noticed a black heart patch on the vest.
“No shit, buddy? You were in the Black Hearts?” Skeet asked.
“Yeah. After I was drafted I figured, what the hell, and I went airborne. What does it matter to you?” Jon said. Skeet put his arm around Dave.
“Dave here and I just got out. We were with them in Iraq,” Skeet said.
“You’re shitting me,” Jon said.
“No, sir.”
“Hey, Carl,” Jon said, turning toward a beefy guy at the end of the bar, one of the smokers from outside. “These kids were in my unit. In Iraq.” A wallet-chain attached to Jon’s trousers knocked against the bar. “Here’s one on the house, soldiers.” Jon poured bourbon into three shot glasses. “Wait a minute, are you guys twenty-one?”
“Just barely,” Skeet said, without hesitation. Dave kept silent—his driver’s license had a big red warning on it saying he was under twenty-one until a date that was still a few months away. Jon narrowed his eyes, but then nodded and raised his glass.
“All right. Welcome home,” he said, making a point of looking at them directly in the eyes before drinking. Dave managed to suppress his gag reflex as it went down his throat.
“Whoa, Jon, when did you start drinking again?” Carl said.
“Special occasion,” Jon said, and turned back to the two young men. “I know a guy who’s hiring. Construction. You boys looking for work?”
“Thank you, sir,” Skeet replied, his Chicago accent more pronounced after the whiskey. “We’re starting up at the college next week. I’m gonna do economics.”
“Good for you. What about you, Dave?”
Dave started sweating as the booze hit his system. Skeet seemed to have it all planned out, as usual, but while Dave knew this was supposed to be a good time at college with Uncle Sam footing the bill, a dark cloud hovered over him, a sense of impending doom he couldn’t shake.
A year later, Dave and Skeet were back at Jon’s. Skeet had surprised everyone by getting better grades than Dave. After all, Skeet was the one who had been busted for drunk and disorderly conduct within a week of returning from Iraq.
“Now you’re the guy who was great in Iraq but can’t handle life back in the rear,” their lieutenant had said while lecturing Skeet in front of the platoon.
“I know I fucked up, sir,” Skeet had said, but nobody’d thought he really did.
Now Skeet had cleaned up his act, and had even been elected vice president of the college’s Business Club after arranging internships for several of his classmates through Jon and Carl’s friends in the community. Meanwhile, after Skeet’s prescription ran out, Dave had been buying pills from a retiree named Elaine who was hooked up to an oxygen tank. She counted out her extra meds slowly, one by one, with her shaky, mottled hands. Dave had been the one with the book smarts in his platoon, and he’d been able to coast through his first year of college in a haze. Lately, though, Skeet had begun worrying about him, and Skeet wasn’t a worrier. He’d almost called Dave’s parents after finding him passed out on the lawn one morning, and Dave wouldn’t tell him where he’d been or what he was doing.
“Use your smarts for something better than being a wise-ass,” had been their first sergeant’s parting advice to Dave. Good thing he can’t see me now, Dave thought.
“Hey Jon, can I get a single?” Dave asked, ordering a whiskey the way he’d heard regulars do it.
“No way. You look terrible, kid,” Jon said to him, noticing the red circles around Dave’s eyes. “Go home and get some sleep.” Dave looked at Jon’s vest and saw the black heart in the collection of patches.
“You know, I used to think that black heart was hardcore. Now it only reminds me of the bad shit.”
“Lighten up. And show some discipline,” Jon said as he walked to the other side of the bar and started wiping it down.
“You’ve got to let it go,” Skeet said, also fed up with Dave’s dark moods. “Whatever it is. Move on already. And you’ve gotta stop taking those pills.”
Dave’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out and read a text message. We’re on for Friday!
“Amy’s definitely coming this weekend,” Dave announced, cheered by the news. Skeet raised his eyebrows.
“Hey, Jon, her husband Blake was the guy I told you about, the one that didn’t make it home,” Skeet said. Jon nodded in acknowledgement while painting wet circles of cleanliness on the bar.
Dave had first seen Amy in a photograph at Blake’s memorial service, a small gathering of soldiers held at a chapel built of plywood that stood in a corner of their base. Dave headed out on a patrol after and couldn’t stop thinking about her as he walked through the sour-smelling streets of Iskandariyah, eyeing piles of garbage for bombs. Blake came from one of those parts of the country where people still get married before they’re twenty, and it had seemed very adult and impressive that Blake had a wife. She looked great in the picture, tossing her blonde hair around, playing it up for the camera. Obviously, it had been taken before she got the bad news. Exhausted after the long patrol, everyone else feel asleep while Dave stayed up and wrote her a letter by the light of his headlamp. Blake was a great soldier, he wrote. We all loved him like a brother.
Amy wrote him back right away, saying how much it helped, reading a letter from someone who was actually there. She sent him a poem she’d written, and it made Dave’s eyes water when he read it in his bunk. A tear slipped out, and he wiped it away before anyone in the busy squad tent noticed.
Two weeks after the platoon got back from Iraq, Amy came down with Blake’s parents to visit the base in Kentucky. It was a sunny day. Most of the platoon was still in a rowdy mood—this was one week after Skeet had gotten arrested for trying to steal a cop car—but Amy made the soldiers feel comfortable by patiently listening to their stories and in-jokes as she circulated around the picnic tables that had been covered with plastic tablecloths for the event. Todd, their medic, told her about a decapitated Iraqi policeman they’d found with a dog’s head sewn onto his shoulders, apparently a sign of disrespect in Iskandariyah. Todd then cracked up laughing as if it were funny. Dave yanked him away before he could do any more damage, but Amy was unperturbed, taking it in like another piece of some puzzle she was putting together, her own master image of the strange place where her husband had died. Blake’s mom kept crying, which made Dave extremely uncomfortable, but with Amy, it seemed like she was able to maintain a peaceful state of tranquility after all the shock, agony, and despair. Dave was humbled when Amy corrected his claim that Kentucky had been part of the Confederacy during the Civil War. It made Dave feel guilty to think it, but Blake hadn’t been the deepest guy in the world, and, after getting to know her, Dave couldn’t help but wonder what Amy had seen in him.
His phone buzzed again. Can I bring Tabby? Dave sighed, and unconsciously clenched a fist.
“She’s bringing a friend,” Dave said.
“Ugh, that Tabby girl?” Skeet said. Dave had forgotten about her, Amy’s ostentatiously supportive friend who showed up right after Blake died and then never left. Dave and Skeet suspected that Tabby was mooching off of Blake’s life insurance payout, although they couldn’t be sure. Sounds great. Can’t wait to see you, Dave responded.
“Can I ask you guys for some advice?” Dave asked.
“Are you going to listen?” Jon asked, putting down his rag and walking back over to Dave. Jon had fired Dave just ten days after hiring him earlier in the summer, but he had been fair. Dave hadn’t been showing up, and Jon still paid him through the end of the week.
“Amy and I really get each other. Do you think it would be weird? I know it’s probably too soon.”
“Aren’t you playing with fire, buddy?” Skeet said, giving Dave a knowing glance. Dave looked away while Jon folded his arms.
“You’re thinking about dating your dead buddy’s wife? Have some fucking respect and clean up your act,” Jon said. “You’re a shit show.” Dave sat up straight and backed away.
“I’m fine,” Dave said. “Come on, Jon. I’m depressed.”
Jon shook his head. “That doesn’t give you the right to be an asshole,” he said. Dave thought about his planned pickup at Elaine’s the next day, the dismal small talk they’d share as he stared at the floral pattern on her carpet, tapping his foot.
“All right,” Dave said, and he stood up. He slammed his fist on the bar with determination and purpose. “You guys are right. I’m gonna do it!” Skeet clapped his hands.
“Thank you!” Skeet yelled as Jon walked to the other end of the bar. “He won’t listen to me.”
When they got back to the house, Dave dumped his baggie of pills into the toilet and hesitated before flushing it. Skeet stood in the doorway, nodding approvingly as the little white circles swirled in the bowl. Dave fought an urge to scoop them out as they slipped down the drain, one right after the other. Based on what he’d heard from other junkies hanging around Elaine’s, going cold turkey was going to suck.
“You’re not gonna tell her, right?” Skeet said.
“I don’t know. No.”
“Blake’s gone. It’s not going to help anyone, dragging them through it again.”
“I said I wasn’t going to tell her,” Dave said. He tried to push his way past Skeet, but Skeet grabbed his arm.
“Do I need to be worried about you? You got rid of all that shit, right? We had our chance to blow the whistle. Now we gotta play the game.” Dave wanted to hit Skeet, hating him for being so sure about everything as the comfortable, opioid dullness started slipping away. He wrenched his arm out of Skeet’s grasp, went into his bedroom, and slammed the door.
The next day, Dave pulled his covers over his head to block out the afternoon sunshine. He waited until he heard Skeet leave the house before rising from bed and walking carefully downstairs, grabbing the banister to steady himself. Across the living room hung the shelf laden with all of the mementos from Iraq, and Dave approached it at an oblique angle, the way one approaches a pile of junk that might have a bomb in it. In a stack of mostly routine paperwork—citations, turn-in receipts he was told to keep, his jump log—Dave found what he was looking for. It was the report, not the bullshit official one telling a Hollywood tale about Blake’s clean, heroic death that saved his fellow soldiers, but the original statements from Dave, Skeet, and others from the platoon who had been there. Reading through the narratives again, Dave recalled details even worse than he’d remembered: the hours of searching before they’d realized what had happened, the fucked-up Easter egg hunt for whatever pieces of Blake they could find.
He wiped his face and clutched his head; all he wanted was a few pills to stop the shakes and sweating. He lifted the heavy plates of his body armor and they clanked together with a familiar, resonant sound as he hid the report underneath them. He decided to go for a run—that had always cleared his head in the past.
Dave jogged past the seedy street gatherings, feeling good as he stretched out his legs and ran to a wooded trail around a nearby reservoir. Each footfall on the pine needles seemed to bring him one step closer to Amy. It was dark when he got back, but he couldn’t fall asleep after showering and forcing down a sandwich. He imagined Amy’s firm, athletic body underneath the jeans and t-shirt she’d been wearing in Kentucky. There was maybe a birthmark somewhere, and a tan line on her thigh. A serene tuft of blonde hair between her legs.
By Friday, Dave’s sweats and shakes finally began to subside. He knew that Amy had to be weary of being treated like a victim of tragedy. Dave planned a fishing trip for Saturday, hoping to do something new, something free from the pain and misery of Blake’s death. Blake’s death—Dave wasn’t going to confront Amy with the pointless facts. Everyone in the platoon knew that Blake would have taken a bullet for him, and it had been the right thing to do, letting the hero-story stick so as not to taint others’ memory of him with a conspiracy. Now, they all had to stay the course, especially Dave.
Dave was sitting on the couch when the doorbell rang. He jumped up, unconsciously fixing his hair before opening the door. When Dave saw Amy, his heart started beating faster. With the door light shining on her corn silk hair, she was even prettier than he remembered. Dave stood back and let Skeet greet her first so as not to seem too eager.
Tabby entered behind Amy. After a cautious greeting, Tabby took a seat in the corner and watched the three of them as if she’d been sent to chaperone the visit. She wasn’t a bad-looking girl, Dave thought, tall and skinny, with dark hair and thick-rimmed glasses that worked with her face. Looking closer, he noticed that the glasses magnified her eyes unnaturally, and he turned away from her unblinking gaze. Amy saw the shelf.
“What is this stuff? Can I look at it?” she asked. The shelf, she was going right for it. Dave felt a flash of anxiety, but it passed when he saw that the statements were well-hidden under the plates, invisible.
“Just military gear and paperwork. Knock yourself out,” Dave said, and he felt a bead of sweat forming on his forehead. Just to be safe, he covered the plates with a set of folded fatigues, pretending that his purpose was to uncover a few small chunks of cuneiform for Amy.
“These are from the ruins of Babylon,” Dave said, picking one up. “Or, at least, that’s what the guy told me.” Dave laughed in a forced, nervous way, and out of the corner of his eye, he saw Tabby watching him. His hand started shaking, and he put the piece of clay down before anyone noticed.
“I’ll get us some champagne,” Skeet said, rolling his eyes at Dave’s joke. “You girls drink champagne, right?” Skeet asked, trying to be charming.
“Yes, please,” Tabby said. “Should I call you Skeet?” she asked.
“Yeah, that’s what my army buddies call me,” Skeet said as he walked into the kitchen. “Aaron, Skeet, whatever.”
Amy picked up one of the photographs from the shelf. It was the one showing the three of them, Dave, Skeet, and Blake, standing next to the camel and smiling.
“I have a print of this same picture on my own little shrine at home,” she said. “It makes it look like you guys were on a safari.”
“Yeah, this is kind of a shrine,” Dave said. He checked to see that Skeet was out of earshot and pointed at the black heart patch. “I really like this. It stands for the good stuff and the bad stuff at the same time. The love and the pain.”
“It does,” Amy said, into the idea. Their easy way of understanding each other relieved Dave’s tremors and sweating. She picked up a rusty knife, another trinket from the bazaars, and she turned it around in her hands, looking at its pitted surface as if it held some kind of answer or revelation. Dave knew how it was. Trying to remember Iraq was like trying to remember a vivid dream that fades away before you get a chance to jot down the details. It was as if Blake died in the dream, but when they woke up he was really dead. These objects came from the dream world, the place where they left him.
On the way to the bar, Tabby’s eyes darted around nervously. “Is this neighborhood safe?” she asked.
“Hell of a lot safer than Iraq,” Dave said. Now he was being the angry vet who couldn’t let go, and he wished he hadn’t said it.
“We’re safe with these guys,” Amy said. As they walked into Jon’s Tavern, Dave saw that Carl was there as usual.
“At last, some pretty girls,” Carl said.
“Shut up, you,” Jon said, then nodded at Amy and Tabby with deadpan seriousness. “You know what, he’s right, ladies. At last. What can I get you?”
Dave heard Tabby laugh for the first time, and her posture, normally taught and attentive toward Amy, uncoiled. Skeet was being a good wingman by talking to Tabby and getting those giant eyes off of Amy.
“Are you seeing anyone?” Dave asked Amy.
“Please. I’m a mess.” Music came on from the jukebox as Dave sipped his drink, feeling a gentle warmth radiating from Amy.
“You’re not a mess,” Dave said. Amy smiled and scooted her stool closer to his.
“Thanks for everything, this weekend, the fishing trip,” she said. “I really needed to get away from home. It’s almost as if . . .” she said and paused. Dave leaned closer, noticing the distance between their lips.
“Yeah?” he said, staring into her soft brown eyes. She pulled back and started crying quietly.
“As if Blake were still protecting me, being here with his two friends from Iraq,” she said between sobs.
Dave looked away, embarrassed and disappointed. I’m a pale shadow, a substitute, he thought. A rivulet of sweat trickled down his back as he wondered whether Elaine was still up. Amy noticed his distracted thoughts and wiped her eyes.
“Are you okay?” Amy asked.
“Fine,” Dave said curtly, and he took a sip of his drink. If he went to Elaine’s, she’d probably ask him how college was going while he counted out his money, as if they had some kind of real, transgenerational friendship. Fuck Elaine, he thought as he put the glass down on the bar. He patted Amy on the shoulder in a way he thought was brotherly, supportive but not intimate.
On the TV behind the bar, a news channel showed an update from Iraq.
“Geez, you just can’t get away from that place,” Skeet said.
“You want me to turn it off?” Jon asked.
“Could you?” Tabby asked.
“No, leave it on, please. I like knowing what’s going on over there,” Amy said.
“I just don’t know what to think of the war,” Tabby said in a circumspect manner, cocking her head. Dave could tell that she was trying to be polite—Amy had probably asked her not to get into politics over the weekend. He remembered her saying in Kentucky how horrible it was that all of them, the poor soldiers, had to go fight over there as part of a longer anti-establishment lecture.
“If I had to go back and do it again, I would sign up, no question,” Dave said, glaring at Tabby. “Whatever happens, I’m just proud I was there with the other guys.”
As images of violence played out on the TV screen, Dave noticed Tabby’s worried glance toward Amy, and he again wished that he had kept his mouth shut. She was just looking out for her friend. What would he do if he could go back? Maybe it would be him who died instead of Blake, and Amy could have her real husband beside her instead of his junkie friend who happened to survive. Or, maybe no one would get blown up or have his head replaced with a dog’s. It could be just the pictures with camels this time around.
Back at the house, Amy sat down on the couch and leaned forward.
“Any champagne left?” she asked.
“I gotta turn in. See you girls in the morning. We’ll leave at ten?” Dave said, heading up the stairs. Skeet noticed a tiny frown on Amy’s face as she got up and walked into the kitchen. He followed Dave up the staircase and stopped him in the hallway.
“What are you doing, jackass?” Skeet whispered.
“Going to bed.”
“No way, you’re doing great, buddy,” Skeet said. “Even you can’t fuck this up.”
“It’s over,” Dave said. “Besides, she’s Blake’s girl.”
“He’d want her to be happy. And I’ve been talking to Tabby for hours. It’s torture,” Skeet said. Dave noticed that he wasn’t sweating or shaking. It seemed like the worst of the withdrawal was over.
“I’m sorry I’ve been a drag,” Dave said.
“You remember how fucked up I was when we got back. You were there for me.”
“Alright,” Dave said, smoothing out his shirt. “Here goes.” He turned around and walked back down toward the living room.
At the bottom of the stairs, Dave froze. Tabby was standing by the shelf, and she had the original report on Blake’s death in her hands. She flipped through a few pages, then adjusted her glasses and flipped back to the start.
Amy walked out of the kitchen holding a glass of champagne, and she smiled when she saw that Dave had come back downstairs. She looked like she did in the picture at Blake’s memorial service, lighter than air. Oh boy, Dave thought, her night’s about to get ruined. For him, it was like the moment of limbo after you stub your toe, when you know that you screwed up but the pain hasn’t hit yet.
“What is this?” Tabby asked, waving the packet. “I think it’s about Blake,” she said, cocking her head and staring at Dave with her giant, questioning eyes. Then she went back to flipping through the statements as Amy peered over her shoulder.
Dave tried to stay calm as he assessed the situation. He was certain that Tabby would make a big stink about “the truth.” Amy would be dragged through a new investigation into Blake’s death, and it would be his fault for having kept the statements. There certainly wasn’t going to be a fishing trip tomorrow. Amy might never speak to him again. Skeet was probably going to kick his ass. Dave clenched his fists and braced himself for the storm he was sure was coming.
Tabby tossed the packet aside with an air of frustration. “It’s all acronyms and jargon. Tell me what it says,” she said.
Dave unclenched his fists.
“Come on, Dave,” Amy said, taking a sip from her glass of champagne. “It’s like it’s written in Babylonian. What does it say?”
