Chapter
ARCHIE STANDS IN the twilight of his bedroom. Alone, he watches the hated clock’s numerals shining the time.
11:59.
2359 hours.
One minute to midnight.
Archie crosses his arms, grabs the hem of his T-shirt, and yanks the material straight up and over his head. He drops the shirt to the floor. He stares unseeingly across his bed at the wall with its horizontal bars of artificial light shining in from outside against bars of darkness within. With his left thumb and forefinger, he pulls at the little points on the top and bottom of his belt buckle and releases the fabric belt from the buckle. Archie whisks the fabric from out of the grip of the buckle, and the belt dangles from its confining loops on his pants’ waistband. He unbuttons his pants, drags the zip down, and shoves the material down toward the floor. He steps out of his pants. He tugs down the tops of his army-green socks and pushes them off his feet, first the right foot, then the left. He leaves his socks crumpled on the floor. Only his grey boxer briefs still clothe him. He leans forwards until his hands touch his bed and crawls himself onto it. He curls into the fetal position, rumpling the Arctic sleeping bag and white sheets beneath him.
The seconds tick on.
Slowly, he uncurls himself and pulls the sleeping bag and top white sheet out from under his legs and up and over his body. Archie rolls over onto his back, straightening and angling his legs and arms away from his body. He sucks in air and releases it in one push as he stares up at the ceiling, faintly lit by the white streetlights. He pushes the sheet back down until each damp molecule of air nips his pectorals.
A questioning meow sounds faint through the worn, thick wood of his old door between him and the questioner.
Meow.
Archie holds his breath; he perks his ears. A paw pats his door gently.
He blinks.
Rufus’s cat has not once paid him any attention. Questions groove lines across Archie’s forehead: Why is she paying attention to me now? Has she gone blind?
Archie contemplates this strange turn. But no, she saw him almost 24 hours earlier today, saw him well enough to trot by him without bumping into him as he stood dead centre at the top of the stairs. Worry over what to do contracts his chest. But then he hears the soothing tones of Rufus’s wounded voice coming down the hall, an answering happy meow, and a short while later, the pressure change of Rufus closing his door.
Archie remembers the dogs galumphing on the beach, their happiness infecting the group, even himself. He and David had left soon after Cyndy and Matt had lead the final prayers for each of them and those they’d left behind on the battlefields. Exhaustion had descended like wet smog upon him suddenly, and David had said, “let’s go,” and steered him to the street and a shared cab.
He thinks about how he’d escaped his planned escape from life because two Canadians had searched for him and had not given up on him.
He thinks about the sensations of life fresh and anew to him as he’d walked away with David and Andrew from the statue of his planned death.
Archie’s lungs forcefully expel the air he’d trapped in them. The sound alerts Archie to begin his relaxation exercise, starting with his forehead. Archie frowns until he feels the ache down to his skull. He releases his frown. He grimaces until his cheeks tighten up and his eyes squeeze shut. He releases the grimace. He tightens his jaw and compresses his lips until the tension aches his ears. He releases jaw and lips and ears. He flattens his neck into the pillow until the tension pains his ligaments. He releases his neck; relief flows downwards towards the ground. He hunches his shoulders up to his ears, up and up and up. His neck objects. He releases his shoulders back down. He fists his hands, fingertips drilling into palms, and anger floods him. He closes his eyes and focuses on the feel of his muscles and slim bones. His anger abates as he unclenches his hands. He tightens his forearms and upper arms. He cannot tense them apart from each other. They are one in tension. He lets them go.
Archie blinks slowly as blood returns to his arms and head and brings the first stirrings of sleep into him.
Archie closes his eyes and moves his mind to his chest. He feels the strength of his pectorals as he inhales into his upper lungs and stretches his chest up and out as far as it can go. He releases his chest. His heartbeats slow. He contracts his stomach down towards his spine until it feels like there’s nothing between his abdominal muscles and his vertebrae. He relishes the strength it takes to suck in his gut and keep it sucked in. Bit by bit, he releases the tension in his straining muscles and moves his focus to his buttocks. Archie squeezes them together until the pain makes him gasp. Faintness assails his head. Archie sinks into it like letting a vortex pull him down into unseen watery depths until an internal alarm far away flashes him louder and louder to release his powerful gluteal muscles. He relaxes deeply into the thin mattress beneath him. Sleep gathers in.
Alone.
No sound surrounds him, not even cars exist.
The silence crushes Archie; he opens his eyes in fright.
The flakes of peeling paint on the yellowed ceiling greet his sight. Archie lets his eyes roam around looking for something: a person, a framed print, a door, a ceiling light unlit. But there is nothing he can see. He reaches out with his ears, but no late-night footsteps echo on concrete, no car races along his street to an unknown destination, no door slams or floorboards creak in this old house in the middle of Canada’s biggest city. It’s like the entire city has fallen asleep, and he’s the only one left awake, left to guard, left to protect all the somnolent civilians out there and in here, in this refuge he’d found while he mothers his courage.
Archie flings his hand out blindly to the nightstand on his left. He touches metal. His hand recoils; his breath breaks molecules apart, scattering them into screaming objection. He sends his eyes this way and that, all relaxation, all sleep gone. With hesitation, Archie stretches his arm towards his nightstand, bit by bit, until his fingertips tap the cold gun. He lets his fingers tip-toe along the handle’s warm side and across the gun’s gelid chamber. The barrel announces itself to his seeking fingers, and he lets his fingers rest in place for a moment as his mind stops thinking altogether.
Glowing numerals change, and Archie doesn’t notice. Absentmindedly, he caresses Pawpaw’s faithful companion. The gun’s hard metal surfaces comfort the touch of his fingers. He retracts his fingers until they touch wood; he grasps the handle but doesn’t let his forefinger thread its way around the trigger. Archie pauses, and his fingers flatten under the gun Pawpaw had given him. The blankness that consumes his thoughts and emotions widens until, suddenly, Andrew’s words echo around in the belfry of his mind.
Andrew had caught up to him and David as David and he had exited the cab in front of his rooming house. Exhaustion had leadened all three, but Andrew had tarried long enough to speak words he believed Archie needed to hear.
“Everyone has a purpose, Archie. Your job is to find your purpose. No one can tell you what it is. They can tell you what they see, but your gut knows. Listen to your gut. It will tell you what’s right for you. Your purpose is here. Train for it, like we trained for combat. Be ready for your purpose.”
Archie’s eyes flicker, his mouth convulses, his lips suck in and push out. He moves his head in the murky dark to the left, to the right, to the left, to the right, chanting in his mind: No, no, no. The waiting is long; it’s hard; it’s tiring.
I’m so tired.
Archie’s fingers flex and grip the Outdoorsman’s handle. His forefinger naturally folds around the trigger. Archie rasps. He sucks air in through his nostrils noisily. The sound bounces off the stained, painted drywall and finds its harmony in an old car with a cracked muffler rumbling on the wet road below his window. Archie forcefully releases the air from his lungs and loosens his grip.
“You have a purpose, Archie. Train for it.” Andrew’s words replay in his mind.
In all these long years, he thought he’d had one. He thought his purpose was serving his country, fighting for Americans, protecting the land and her people. And then they’d tossed him.
He whips his head to the right and to the left, mouthing, “No, no,” his head pushing into the worn-out foam of his pillow, his buttocks pushing down into the flattened foam of his mattress as his back arches. His fingers clutch the gun and pull it towards him. Pawpaw’s faithful gun, the one that had shot his grandfather’s brains out the back of his skull. The uncaring weapon lies in his hand on the mattress near his hip. November air smothers him. The bodies of soldiers and Taliban and Afghan civilians pummel his remembrance. Expectations from Americans, from his family, that he and the US Army will protect them in a desert land, scour his eyes. Remembered acrid burning of endless pits eats into his nostrils.
Expectations without comfort.
Responsibilities without relief.
Burdensome memories without sustaining support.
From the time he was born, Archie had thought his purpose was his family, being with Pawpaw, defending his country, marrying, starting his own family, and supporting his wife and children and aging parents. And always Pawpaw there with him. And then they’d left him; they’d tossed him and blown his brains into bits.
The dampness of the November night caresses his bare chest, whispering, “let go.”
He lies there awhile, hearing the emptiness murmur, waiting for him to move.
He moves…
…his left hand.
He moves…
…his left forefinger into trigger position.
He tightens his forearm…
…and tightens his grip on the gun.
He flexes his elbow…
…and raises his forearm and hand high into the air above his head until he can see his Pawpaw’s Outdoorsman’s dark body emerge out of the shadows of his room, its edges glistening in the streetlights filtering through the single-paned window and bent blinds. He stares at the gun’s blued and wood beauty. The gun becomes lighter than the air feeding his blood oxygen.
He gradually twists his wrist until the firearm is pointing at his forehead.
He bends his elbow more…
…and lowers his forearm until the barrel’s point stares straight into his staring eyes. His brain is not worth saving like Nadine’s.
He shifts Pawpaw’s death instrument slightly to his right until both of his eyes come together to look right up into the empty barrel. He cannot see into the chamber with his eyes yet sees the bullet at its other end, waiting for him to release it.
He cocks his left forefinger steadily…
…and hears the chamber pull itself around and lets slide the bullet into its firing position.
He pulls his left forefinger hard…
Bang!
The wall shakes from the force of a flattened palm.
“Shut up in there! Some of us are trying to sleep!”
Thump! Archie’s heart slams against bone. Thump. Thump. Thump.
Bang!
The someone shouts in unison with a palm slamming the other side of the bedroom’s far wall. “Shut. The. Fuck. Up!”
Archie hears himself screaming and sits straight up like a zombie reviving.
Archie gasps and squeezes his eyes shut. With his mind, he feels his feet and legs and arms and chest, and then, fearfully, Archie raises shaking hands to his head and touches his hair gingerly, feeling its cut ends spiking against his tough palms.
It exists.
I exist.
I, Archie, am still here.
Breath leaves Archie in a great whoosh.
Where is Pawpaw’s gun?
Archie opens his eyes carefully and swivels them around, searching for his Outdoorsman. His pistol, his Sig, announces its hardness beneath him, underneath the mattress. Cautiously, Archie twists his head to the left until his eyes catch sight of his nightstand. There is Pawpaw’s death. The gun is lying in its usual place on its accustomed left side.
Grief wrenches Archie. He sobs into his hands, huge lungfuls of tears and cold air, gasping relief in time to the beating outrage from the other side of the wall. Slowly, slowly, Archie quietens.
It was a dream.
A nightmare.
Acting out his deepest desire, the desire he fears and doesn’t want, but a desire that doesn’t let him go. “My story’s not done,” Archie whispers to himself. Yet there desire in the shape of a gun lies beside him, a promise of escape to come, the demand to end his story.
Archie lowers himself backwards, stretches his feet towards the bottom of the bed, and stares up at the ceiling, feeling the reassuring outline of his Sig through the beat-up mattress. He remembers his relaxation exercise. He tenses his forehead and releases its ache. He grimaces. Archie tightens his cheeks and releases them. He presses his lips together until bone jabs delicate tissue. Archie releases his lips. His body relaxes. Archie turns onto his left side with a view of the instrument waiting in Canada to kill him.
Not yet.
Tomorrow.
After he fulfills his promise to Andrew.
The clock’s numerals brighten. Archie reads them. It’s long after midnight.
Today.