Chapter
ARCHIE’S IPHONE BUZZES in his pocket: three long, two short vibrations. Repeated. It’s his Do Not Disturb hour; he’d switched off his ringer a second before at 2000 hours. But the vibrations persist. Reluctantly, he extracts his iPhone from his pocket and unlocks it with his forefinger. Misgiving burbles in him at Nadine’s rare use of iMessage. His thumb hovers over the iMessage app. With a sudden downward thrust, he launches the app and sees Nadine’s name again. His mind hesitates as his thumb quickly presses on her name to read her message. It’s a long one, and it begins with an “I’m sorry.”
Archie’s heart rat-a-tat-tat-tats. Blood swells his arteries in his ears and pounds in concert with the rapid-fire beats in his chest. He doesn’t want to read. He reads:
“I’m sorry, guys. I shot him. There, I wrote it, my secret. I had to out it. It was best to put his suffering down. I won’t be court-martialled for it. It’s Man-Love Thursday, and he pleaded with me. I saw the fear in his eyes. I saw the anger and sadness. I saw his desperation. He pleaded. The owner had sodomized him again. There was blood everywhere, trailing from his ass in a stream of never-ending horror. Why do they call it Man-Love Thursday? It’s night. It’s Friday before Friday. Remember, remember, they say. Why? Why remember? Why not end it? Why not call a halt and say this is not correct. CoC doesn’t want to know. I tried, you know. I did try. I talked to my NCO, but he said it was wine I saw. Down his legs??? I talked to my commanding officer, and he yakked about cultural sensitivity. Do they fuck men in the ass in Afghanistan instead of women? All of them. It’s like Sparta, my Classics teacher said boys left their mothers at 7, joined the military to become men. Is it manly to man-love on Thursdays? But he wasn’t a man. He was a teen. A boy. A. BOY. A. BLOODY. BOY. AND. MY SERGEATN. DIDN’T. WANT TO. KNOW. MY NCO. DIDN’T. WANT TO. KNOW.”
Archie’s eyes defocus. His head moves without thought, and he’s staring in horror at a brushed-clean brick wall. Where did the brick wall come from? He doesn’t remember moving after he began reading Nadine’s message. Shock has frozen all perception outside of her words.
The Canadians had whispered to him about Man-Love Thursdays and warned him to stay away from the APN. I was convoy duty, patrol duty, not training duty, not any other duty. Why did they warn me of something that wouldn’t happen? What’s Man-Love Thursday? What’s Nadine talking about? Who’s the boy?
Archie shudders
Chills race down from his scalp’s hair follicles, over the cords in his neck, along the dermis of his skin, shivers into his arms, and shudders his entire self. He doesn’t want to read her message, but he must. He doesn’t want to think what she meant by “I’m sorry.” And who did she kill? Or did she just shoot him? Maybe she shot him, and he’s wounded and in the hospital. “Him” can’t be the ex…
Archie’s mind trails into nothingness. Time stops in moments that continue on inexorably. Rough brick scrapes his forehead. He opens his eyes. Grey mortar and clay bricks stare mutely at him. It’s a quiet street. He strains to listen. No people are walking towards or away from him. He lays his palms against the bricks and feels their ridges and grooves imprinting themselves on his flesh. A breeze lifts fresh rain scents into his nose. Archie pushes against the wall and turns around. He collapses against it. The wall of mortar-bonded bricks supports him as he scans the street. Cars are parked on the other side, nose to tail, devoid of human life. No car moves.
He’s alone.
His heart thuds against his chest wall as he drops his eyes back to his iPhone screen. It’s black. It’s off. He unlocks it and continues to read Nadine’s message, like a moth inexorably drawn to artificial light in the night:
“MY NCO. DIDN’T. WANT TO. KNOW. Neither did the captain. Andrew wasn’t my captain then. Andrew was heading up another platoon. My captain transferred me. He said I’d become a liability to my platoon. He said boys like giving their asses at night. It’s their custom before Friday. Their day of rest. I couldn’t train the APN. I was the best damn trainer. EVER.”
Archie nods. Nadine was the best superior he’d ever had. She’d taught him how to patrol, how to eat, and how to relax when they were off duty. She’d organized mock hand-to-hand combat fights regularly. Her only rule was to not actually land blows. She wanted her men ready to fight, not recovering from a fight. That didn’t go down well with the men, but rumour had it Nadine’s punishments were worse than any drill sergeant’s. We were hyped up, ready to roll, but no one dared cross her, Archie remembers. But he’d acknowledged her wisdom when, the day after an exhausting no-blows-landed-else-Nadine-would-make-you-pay training, they’d been patrolling a quiet area when suddenly bullets had sprayed them from overhead. One had zinged the very top of one soldier’s helmet. They’d all dived for cover. The firefight had lasted hours. They’d begun to ask each other—“How many enemy? Are they rotating in new numbers like some fiendish never-ending escalator?”—when, as suddenly as it had begun, the barrage had stopped. Men had materialized around them, so close that they’d instinctively engaged in hand-to-hand combat, ripping AK-47s out of enemy hands, punching vulnerable temples, slamming bodies into the dusty ground, twisting knives into soft stomachs, as the enemy tore off their helmets, dislocated shoulders, lacerated uniforms, broke noses. Later, Archie had mused that Nadine’s rule meant they hadn’t started combat with welts and bruise-sore bodies from training. To a man and woman, they’d neutralized all the men. Nadine’s training had given them survivability.
Nadine was an excellent trainer.
Is.
She is, Archie says to himself, moving his lips soundlessly. “She is,” he repeats out loud, emphasizing the present tense, “She is a good trainer.” He unlocks his iPhone and continues to read:
“I was the best damn trainer. EVER.”
“Yes, you are,” Archie agrees.
“And they moved me. Man-love loves man’love. Men love boys, boys love men, and I can’t train. Cause I’m a girl. And men don’t love women.
“They moved me. His trail of blood followed me to Andrew’s platoon. But she was dead still.”
Archie blinks. Who’s she?
“He head blinks at me at night, you know. Every fucking night. The therapist says to take my pills, keeps asking me if I take my medications. Like a good girl. Like she was. She doesn’t have medications, you know. She didn’t have anything to keep her from nightmares, only her Dad. And he did it. He didn’t like her. She was in the way of his man-love. But he wanted someone else. Not the man who was a boy, now a man, and trails blood everywhere. He spread it around. I couldn’t follow it. It made no sense to me. NOTHING. MAKES. SENSE. LIKE EVER.
“My shrink says to take my medications. I did. He ups the dose, because you can never have too many. I counted my pills. He has no pills either. Blood follows him everywhere like an anal stream that doesn’t want to end. It wants to go round and round. Blood doesn’t spin. That doesn’t make sense, does it? It mixes with her blood and streams onto my pillow every fucking night. My shrink asked me if I’m taking my meds. I’M TAKING MY FUCKING MEDS. I counted them. I have pills to sleep, to wake up, to make me happy. Why aren’t I happy? I’m never happy. Her eyes are wide looking up at me, you know, from her throat slit right to her spine.”
Stomach acid burns his throat, and Archie mashes his lips together to hold it back, to keep it from streaming out all over the concrete grey. The screen blurs, his knees buckle, his back scours the wall. He catches himself. With a herculean effort, he drives himself upward to a standing position and locks his knees straight. Archie’s finger has remained on the screen, and he reluctantly moves the text upwards.
I can’t read this!
He lifts his finger off the screen to rub his eyes with all the fingers of his right hand. His hand drops. I can’t read this! Why am I looking at it? The text clears up, sharpens into individual letters. The screen dims. He puts a finger on the screen. It brightens up again. Archie removes his finger. He cannot read. He reads:
“her throat slit right to her spine. Her vertebrae glisten at me EVERY FUCKING NIGHT. Who did that? Don’t ask, my interpreter told me. He looked at her like he sees this all the time. It’s man-love. She was in the way. She kept him from the boy because the young man had become jealous and beat the boy senseless then beheaded him too. So this was vengeance. But the young man did what his owner wanted. He’d married his daughter. He told me as I tried to push his bowels back in, his wife was infertile. She couldn’t have babies, they tried all the time. Maybe she was too young! He hated it. He wanted his owner. He pleaded with me to give him back to his owner. The blood doesn’t stop streaming out of my hands. It drips from my fingers every morning as it pools on my floor. I drag it everywhere in my boots. How can he want to go back?? He beheaded her. SHE WAS 6! What kind of people behead a girl? I saw her playing, you know. I saw her playing the first day I got there. She ran up to me in the compound because I was a girl like her. I gave her candy. We all gave them candy. The boys got first dips. But I looked for the girls so they could share too. She had the widest smile. And her laugh chimed off the mud walls of her compound. I could hear her giggling when I was allowed to enter and talk to the women. Then I didn’t see her no more. And her eyes won’t stop staring up at me.
“They’re green. Dead green. Bright green. I see her laughing under the sun and her staring up at me, and the man-teen crying for his owner because he has a new boy, and his bowels are staring at me, as I’m trying to stop the bleeding, and none of it will stop. The shrink says I have to put him out of his misery. So I did. He wouldn’t stop crying, ketp saying he was soryy. Ept saying he didn’t want to leave me. He has to leave me. I can’t be in my nightmares anymopre. He’s gone now. He’s at piece. And so amy I awhen si top writing ht-s to I wanted you guys to knw. Cus you’re my platoon my back have and you gusy mean weveything to me. You’re the sane onews who kno what to do to keep me sane the meds aren’t worksing anymore. They never did . I just want people to talk to me to listen to me not to keep interrupting me to tell me to be in the present ain’n tot in the past, notw tevey wagin in the past, stops eltting me I’m ok cause I’m not. And to come back in a week whe at do I dod in the weekg. The therapist wants tme to wotkr again and gets this haunted look in her weyes when i tell her stuff. She nodded liek she totally gets rape, but when she realized not me but him, the boy-teen-man who trails blood out his man-love thursdays and the girl who throat slit in relationsat ofr the boys who died cause he ottok the place of the man, she spat out all thise phrases they learn like robots . She didn’t know what to do. She didn’t know how to handle it. She got this wooden look of caring. She watned to help but she can’t, and the shrink he says ocmeb aci n a week ang do toalk to your peers, but what wyou you guys says if you know the horror?”
Archie’s stomach heaves. He clutches his abdomen and averts his head from his iPhone. Vomit stains yellow and green the cleaned grey of the sidewalk. Chunks of turkey and digested lettuce glisten in the stain. Archie closes his eyes and leans back, uncaring about threats nearby. Why hadn’t she told Andrew? Andrew could’ve handled it. Andrew can handle anything. But not this. Archie squeezes his eyes as his imagination chucks full-colour visuals at his inner vision. Blood and remembered screams join the images. He squeezes his eyelids one into the other until stars spurt into the red-blackness of his vision. Therapy doesn’t work. Pills don’t work. Only the kindness of her platoon. But we weren’t there for her. I saw but didn’t want to see. I should’ve said something. Archie becomes aware that he’s hitting his forehead over and over with his fisted right hand. He halts his fist mid-air and drags in a ragged breath. I won’t say it, I won’t say the S-word, but I must honour her. I must honour her by reading her message. They’re her last words. A sob blocks his windpipe, and he struggles against it. At last, he manages to finish reading her message.
“I couldn’t tell you the horror. The shrink only listened you know. He let me vent for his 15 before med check. FUCKIN MED CHK! He didn’t say anything. Did n’st say one word that mead esense onlyt that I’m not there. But I ma. Every fucking night. Everyt god-damn awulf horrible night. And every fucking day. I had to shoot him. So he could stop crying, and I could stop his bleeding. I had to. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, gyuys I siwh I could bestreonger but ai can’t . I want to stlak to somebody who doesn’t nod and listen but holds me and lets me cry and soggy his shirt and tells me it’s going to be okay then lets me to doi tall over aign the next day. I waltn to alk to somebody who doesn’t get that glazed, horror look on their face and spouts automatic phrases that mena nothing but they’re taught in school to say to someone when they’re hurting because tTHIS IS NOT HURTING. THIS IS PSYCHIC PAIN THAT WON’T STOP. It’ wont’ stop. Why owont’ it stop.
“If onl yp ople whant eod be my friends and weren’t afraid o my pain. If only my shrink would let me atlk to him every day, at least he isn’t afriad of hearing my nightmares. My truth. Nut he says he has nother patients, he can’t see us all every day. He has no time. There aren’t anough o fthem to go around. DND won’t pay , the fucking government won’t pay. No one wants to pay to help us. I wasn’t raped. They wnat me to be raped to help me. But it was n’t me it was her head and his anus and the boys’ intestines falling out. THE OWNER PULLED THEM OUT WITH HIS PENIS. And ican’t talke about it because I’m in the present and must remember I’m here in Toronto. An things like that don’t happen to normal people who don’t wnt ot be my friens because they know the horros I’ve seen and they don’t want to catch what I hv. Youg uys don’t wither .I don’t blame you. I DON’T BLAME YOU. IT’S NOT YOUR FAULT. I’M AT PEACE NOW.”
A scream wrenches out of Archie’s throat. “Noooo! No, Nadine, No!” He doesn’t care if anyone is around to hear him. Salty tears waterfall over his lashes; his nose clogs up; and he cannot swallow against the lack of air. His eyes itch. He doesn’t want to know. He covers his face with his right hand then quickly touches his iPhone so that the screen will not go black.
He wipes his eyes hard as he cries loudly, fresh tears replacing the obliterated ones. He drags his hand down and across his eyes, right to left, left to right, so that he can read her last words. “I used my gun. I know how to gain the system and took it home instead of leaving it in the armoury. I’m calm now, guys. His blood is a pool under his body, but his eyes are closed in peace. Peace at last for the boy, the man, the girl. I’m going to shoot myself in the heart in case they need brains to study. They want to study hockey brains so why not army ones too? Bye guys. You are the best men a gal can have. Don’t forget my training.”