Chapter
ARCHIE CALLS OUT goodbye as he turns left away from the other three, who are turning right. After Archie had revealed the details of his righteous shoot, the others had sat with him in silence and then…
Archie doesn’t remember what happened next. He grasps at tendrils of memory drifting into the soaked clouds of his mind. David had finished his beer and texted them all a short story about his first day in Afghanistan. He and the troops he was with had driven straight from the airport to the base, listening to warnings about IEDs. The ones who’d already done one tour related to the new troops the fears they’d have to learn to live with: the fear of being blown up at any moment, without warning, without a siren or whistle to tell them what was about to happen. Andrew, Nadine, and Archie had nodded in recognition of that experience. “Kaboom!” The word showing up on their screens simultaneously had made the three jump.
Kaboom. The word reverberates in Archie’s mind. It won’t leave. It repeats over and over and over like a mental bad burrito that won’t digest itself. Like a burrito that sits in his gut waiting for what he doesn’t know. Archie refuses to eat burritos anymore. Ever since that day, the day of—
Archie shakes his head. He’d told his story. He’d told it to his family, his VA counsellor, and now his Canadian platoon. But he doesn’t want to remember it, think about it, or feel it anymore.
Archie stretches his neck up and inhales noisily through his nose. The rain has stopped. Sun gleams feebly on the puddles in the road. A car hisses by, its tires surfing the water, throwing a wave that catches a woman, head down over her smartphone, unaware. The water splashes the left side of her black puffy coat with its belt cinching in her tiny waist, but she keeps walking, her back screaming how intent she is on the phone in her hand as the water drips off the hem of her coat, like the blood dripping off the man as he carried—
A sob grabs Archie’s gullet, and bile retches his throat. He struggles not to vomit all over the black road next to him shining with the fresh water that had poured from the sky and pooled over the asphalt. He wants to ruin its transparent clarity with the puke of his memory. Archie swallows and keeps walking, stuffing his hands into his pockets to bring them comfort, to feel with his left the hidden protection of his Sig.
Andrew had spoken his story next. Andrew’s resilient, tough and resilient, like many of the Canadian officers he’d met over there. None of them shouted, their vocal cords stiff with fear and loathing like his Combat Team commander had in that nightmare LAV for mile after mile of pale sandy ribbon in that rocky, mountainous landscape. Andrew’s story was like a soothing balm on them all. Yet Archie was aware that Andrew feels responsible for all three of them. Andrew’s grief at failing his troops who’d died was palpable; grief had flowed from his eyes and dripped down his cheeks. Andrew, a big man with broad shoulders and a thick neck, with an open face and a wide smile, with a straight stance and trunk-like trees, had no shame in crying openly in a pub where anyone could see him.
Archie envies him his grief. Andrew’s grief sits there like Lake Ontario, so enormous, it cannot be denied, so easy to see that he can ask for help and receive it. Andrew’s in counselling. He wants them all to be in counselling. Only Archie isn’t. Counselling is helping Andrew, but the others…
Besides, he revealed it all to his VA counsellor, even more than what he’d told them today over beer. And then his counsellor had left. Just like that. Not a word, not a warning. All bared; gone.
I won’t do that again, Archie vows. I won’t share my shame and then be left standing there, alone again.
After Andrew’s story, the four veterans had pushed back their chairs, the scraping noisy in the small, separated area; had buttoned up their jackets; and marched out. Andrew and David were taking Nadine back home. The two men are concerned about her, as is Archie. But he can’t support anyone right now. Archie’s frozen within himself in his thoughts and emotions. Andrew and David had wanted him to accompany them.
Archie wants to be alone.
Archie knows alone.
Alone comforts in familiarity and no expectations of support.
As he walks forward, hunched into himself, his eyes scan the people strolling, walking, hurrying towards him, away from him. Archie’s senses stretch around him on either side as his peripheral vision takes in those who pass by him too closely. His ears hear the pounding of many feet behind him and the splashing of cars as they speed towards and past him on his left.
Archie’s vigilance doesn’t falter.
Archie’s vigilance robs his energy as it hoses endless information into his brain.
Archie stumbles and lurches into an alley. He crashes against the graffiti-clad wall, floundering into boxes and wooden crates lying in the crease between the old brick wall and the pot-marked alleyway. Hands plant themselves on his back, and Archie lurches again. He falls. His fingers touch the rough broken asphalt beneath his unsure feet. His abdominal muscles clench, keep him from splatting, and he half-runs, half-crawls away from the unforeseen and unseen threat behind him. But the threat is on top of him. Something long and hard hits his back, thwacking him flat on the ground. A battered bin on wheels on one side and littered pieces of wooden crates on the other side prevent him from rolling over. How much garbage fills this alley? The threat chose well. A board slams against the asphalt next to his face, spattering his eyes and nose with dirt. Archie scrambles forward; hands and feet propel him into the space behind the bin. He half falls into paper-filled boxes, crushing them with his weight, their wet papers making him slide forwards, almost hitting the wall with his head. The threat’s angry feet dance towards him. Using his powerful abdominal muscles, Archie launches himself upright. He kicks the boxes violently to the side, clearing a square of asphalt, and turns swiftly so that he’s facing the threat. Archie plants his legs firmly apart, ready to spring at the threat, raises his fists, poises to strike, to lunge at the threat’s head. For now, he chooses to use the hand-to-hand combat skills he perfected while embedded in his Canadian unit.
Archie hasn’t forgotten his protection: his Sig Sauer P320, loaded and ready to eliminate the threat with one squeeze of the trigger, requiring no time to take a safety off. But he’s decided almost unconsciously against using the combat pistol his commanding officer in the Combat Team had handed him on his first day in his tour of duty. “Take this,” his superior had compelled. “That gun will be your best friend, the extra protection you’re gonna need in this fucking hellhole.” Archie had been unsure—surely, the army had equipped him fully with all that he needed. But the US Army’s training had prepared him to obey orders, and after a brief hesitation that had elicited a glare, he’d snatched the gun. He’d obeyed his superior in modifying the gun’s sights to suit his shooting. Obeyed him in practicing with targets until he was as accurate with it as with his other guns. Obeyed right up to ending that unarmed man’s life on the road.
Archie’s commanding officer had approved. Yet had instructed him not to let anyone outside the platoon know about his extra combat pistol, to ensure they didn’t know the man was unarmed because, his commanding officer had informed him while his eyes held his in an overbright stare, the man had concealed his weapon. Archie just hadn’t found it. The weapon had been there on the road. The other driver had spotted it. Archie had missed it, is all. “I don’t remember him doing that, sir. I didn’t miss seeing it, I’m sure, sir,” Archie had said. His commanding officer had repeated, his nose almost touching Archie’s, that the driver had spotted it, that Archie had forgotten, and that he was to tell no one outside the platoon of his doubts. “Understood, Private?” Archie had felt hypnotized, unable to nod or to say yes.
Night after night, the platoon had regaled themselves with their righteous shoot. The platoon’s approval, when he’d finally agreed with them, contrasted warmly against their hostility when he’d first expressed his regret and remorse. They’d flayed him and forced him to stay up every night guarding their position until sleep deprivation had made him hallucinate. Maybe they were right, and he was wrong, he’d begun to think.
“Was it a righteous shoot?” his commanding officer had bellowed at him in his morning ritual in front of the rest of the men. “Did the man you shot have a weapon?”
“Yes, sir,” Archie had replied.
“I can’t hear you!” his superior had bellowed, leaning into Archie’s face.
“Yes sir!” Archie had shouted back, and his heart had leadened inside him.
Archie’d slept for 15 hours, and they’d let him. The cook had made him a full breakfast with extra rashers of bacon when he’d woken up, and they’d rewarded him by excusing him from guard duty for two weeks after that and by rigging up a satellite connection so that he could speak to his family that night. Archie had related the story to his family, like a man repeating a script at gunpoint. He’d expected Sally to be horrified. Instead, Sally had said she finally had something to lord it over the other wives. Her husband had made a righteous shoot and deserved a medal. She was going to make sure he got that medal. Sir, leaning over her shoulder to stare right into the camera, had crowed over his triumph over the Tal-i-ban. The last of Archie’s doubts had drowned in their praise. Archie’s heart had disappeared behind bunkers. The pistol had transformed itself from a thing of horror to a thing of comfort. The pistol had become Archie’s weapon of experience and choice.
Archie blinks.
The threat is spitting on Archie’s lips, he’s yelling so hard.
The threat is the ex.
Nadine’s ex.
Archie frowns. He’d gotten rid of him.
Apparently not.
Nadine’s ex is here.
Archie’s failure at eliminating this threat confuses him and makes him drop his hands.
The ex leans into Archie, his face almost nose-to-nose with his face. Somehow, his hands pinion Archie’s upper arms against the wall, and his right leg inserts between Archie’s own two splayed-out ones. The ex’s knee hovers in a dangerous position. Archie stills himself, sends his rage and eternal memories into a far-off place, and focuses on the threat in front of him. Archie curses himself for allowing his memories to drown his awareness, for letting his vigilance grow into ineffectiveness.
Never let your guard down.
Not even in civvie land.
Discriminate between priorities, and eliminate from vigilance what’s not important.
Archie hadn’t, and now he could die.
Archie isn’t sure that’s not a bad thing.
Death would release him. And the ex would get the rap, he’s so sloppy.
Visual, auditory, olfactory senses vibrate him with information. They’re in the alley alone; his stumbling momentum had taken them halfway down. Clouds drip onto them. Archie shifts his gaze to the grey-lit rectangle at the end of the alley. People are lifting their collars, popping open their umbrellas, not paying attention to the two men in the alley as they hurry to their destinations. For them, the two men between the two walls, surrounded by filth and litter, are just another fighting couple, nothing to do with them. But her ex will leave clues all over the place, Archie muses, and the police will find him soon after they find my body.
A two-fer, Archie thinks.
Win-win.
Archie relaxes at the thought. His muscles flab into softness underneath his jacket, under the ex’s hands.
The ex frowns. Nadine’s ex is sober now, but his fury of revenge flames on. He must blame someone else. He must punish this man who’s responsible for this intolerable failure with Nadine. And suddenly this man doesn’t care?
Outrage bellows out of him. Incoherent words lash Archie’s cheeks.
Archie isn’t listening. His mind floats backwards, away from the alley and the rage. From his peaceful place of detachment, Archie regards the ex’s bulging eyes, their whites ribboned with red, his cheeks flushed purple through veins that brighten then darken as more and more blood course in. Anger intensifies his irises’ colour. Archie wonders what colour they are. Archie retreats farther; reality becomes a far-off play of shadows.
The ex slams him against the wall’s age-roughened bricks, screaming, “You poached my girl, you filthy American! I’m going to give you what you’re owed. You can’t do nothing about it now because I’m the one in control now, see?! I won’t let you get away with cheating, right under my nose! I’m going to make you pay! You thought you were so clever. You think you’re stronger than me. Look at you now! Who’s got the upper hand, huh?”
Archie’s left shoulder drops further, his arm slackens, and his hand brushes against the grip hidden underneath his jackets. The polymer composite hard grip stuns his palm.
“I have you right where I want you! You can’t do nothing, you lowlife American punk!”
Messages from his palm collide with messages from his ears. Nerves carry the ex’s screams and the touch of his pistol into his brain. The pistol’s hardness slingshots Archie back into present reality and the ex’s saliva decorating his face. The pistol is who you are, his Sig seems to declare.
Archie thrusts himself upright, raises his hands upward and inward, and powers them outward with a great roar from deep within his lungs. The ex’s eyes widen, his hands lose their hold. He’s flying backwards. Archie grabs the ex’s throat with his left hand and spins him around so that the ex is now the one against the wall. He hoists Nadine’s ex up against the wall until the ex’s toes wobble against the littered, broken asphalt. Archie reaches for his Sig with his right hand. Enough. I’m going to solve this problem the American way. My way.