Chapter
“TELL ME,” SAYS Archie’s VA counsellor as he leans forward, elbows on his thighs, hands between his knees.
It’s a dream, a voice somewhere in the distance, says into the deceiving reality gripping Archie. The repeating dream-distorted memory obliterates the voice, and he’s immersed in the past, in the dream, believing the past is happening now.
Archie slides his hands down his face and slopes down into his chair. His heart lurches into his stomach. He closes his eyes and searches for the courage. “I…,” But he can’t tell his counsellor what happened. Sally is there before his eyes, her face taunting him as she upbraids him: “What’s wrong with you? We need the money, and you’re spending it on beer with your buddies!” Sally’s clutched hand with its stretched-out forefinger grows large in his eyes until her finger’s point pierces his forehead and slides through his brain like an arrow through whipped cream. Archie gasps for air. “What’s the matter with you? Can’t you take a little criticism. Baby.” That’s Sir, his father, speaking. Archie swivels his head to look at his father’s scowling face, the lines in his forehead like furrows in rich red PEI soil ready for planting.
Potatoes, Archie thinks. Suddenly, fries cut in thin strips frying in hot oil assails his nostrils. Acrid smoke from burning oil as the base’s truck burns in the burn pit flies into his face along with the sand that the wind whips up from the desert.
“Tell me about it,” intones his counsellor, his solemnity like church bells calling parishioners from the killing fields to confess their sins to their God.
Archie sweats blood. Sickly, salty red drips into his eyes, shading all that he sees the colour of death. Blood is everywhere. It’s spattered all over him.
“Why did you do that?” Sally yells accusingly.
“Do what?”
“Spend our food money on your booze.”
“I don’t drink,” he says, confused.
“That’s the problem with you,” Sir accuses him from behind his head. “You’re not a real soldier. Real soldiers aren’t health nuts,” he spits contempt, and honey hits the floor in sticky drops. Archie watches honey ooze towards his naked feet, morphing from blonde to rust to bright crimson, pulsing with dying life as it touches his toes, crawls onto his feet, burns its way up his ankles, his shins, his thighs. The metamorphosing goo screams: “You’re not a real soldier. You’re not a man. You’re useless.”
“Tell me about it,” his counsellor asks kindly. Archie swivels his head back around, all the way around to face forward. His counsellor’s head explodes. Brain and guts and slices of skin spatter him like grease spitting from a smoking pan.
Archie sits up screaming, ejecting the dream and throwing himself back into the present, the mundane present of his nightly changing-the-sheets ritual and the wall behind his head pounding like a rhythmic nail gun. “Shut up!” the wall screams in concert with Archie’s vocal cords. Sweat spews out of Archie’s scalp, soaking his hair. Sweat cascades down his face and drips off his chin to join the flood wetting his skin and stinking up his sheets.
Archie stops screaming.
“Every fucking night!” the wall shouts. “I’m gonna talk to the landlord about you. He’s gonna kick you out, and I’m gonna get my sleep.” A last bang on the wall punctuates his threat.
Archie pants into the resounding silence. Sleep. He shuts his eyes, desperate for dreamless sleep. Nightmare-less sleep. Dry sleep.
Archie opens his eyes and lifts his head. His sopping wet sheets and boxer briefs greet his sight. Archie swings his legs out from underneath the cooling top sheet and plants his feet on the old wooden boards of his floor, wrinkling his nose at the pungency steaming from his body. He must attend to his ritual. He must slow his heartbeat, as his VA counsellor, the one who’d helped him, had advised.
“Ritual, Archie,” his counsellor had said, leaning forward and capturing Archie’s darting eyes with his own steady ones. “Ritual, Archie, is the key to a steady rhythm of your heart and your life.”
Archie pushes himself up by his fists and stands there, swaying from tiredness, his head drooping. Where is my sleeping bag? Archie sucks in a lungful of air and lifts his head. Shoving out all thoughts, he turns around to strip off his sheets and pull the beaten-up pillow out of its case. He lobs them into the hamper sitting beside the distressed dresser. After a moment, he pads to his dresser, strips off his briefs, and tosses them into the hamper on top of the bedding. He pulls out a fresh pair of grey boxer briefs from the dozen filling the top drawer and pulls them on. He glides over to the cedar chest at the bottom of the bed. The chest is his one indulgence. As he reaches it, he spots his sleeping bag on the floor on the other side of the bed. Ignoring the bag for the moment, he raises the lid of the chest and, holding on to the lid with his left hand, with his right hand he lifts out a bundle of two sheets and a pillowcase from the pile of bundles of sheets and pillowcases sorted and ready to make the bed. He carries the bundle of sheets and pillowcase to the nightstand and drops them there. The bundle covers the nightstand’s metal possession. Archie swiftly takes hold of the bottom sheet to remove it from the bundle and snaps the sheet over the mattress, yanking it straight. Archie tucks the sheet under each corner with hospital corners. Grasping the top sheet, he whips it loose of its folds and lets it float onto the bed. He tucks in the two bottom corners, turns down the top of the sheet, turns the pillowcase inside out, slides his hands in to the corners of it, grasps two corners of the pillow through the pillowcase, and expertly pulls the pillow into its case. He drops the freshly encased pillow onto the head of the bed, walks round to the side of the bed opposite the window to pick up his sleeping bag, and whisks it over the top sheet. Archie’s heart settles down; his breathing slows; his shoulders drop; and his hands uncurl. The ritual has done its work. Its boring sameness had protected him from the chaotic entwining of his memories and dreams.
Archie walks back to the window side of the bed and stares down at his gun lying on his nightstand.
His grandfather’s gun. Pawpaw’s companion.
Bits of brain fling themselves into his eyes; blood spatters his nose, his cheeks, his chin; and the distant roar of gunfire, punctuated by exploding IEDs, rushes toward him from the street outside. Archie vacuums air deep into his lungs. He’s here in Toronto. Not America. Not Afghanistan. Canada. Peaceful Canada.
The gun is by itself again, its coating of brain and blood gone.
Archie stares at it, reaches out a tentative hand, snatches it back, and collapses on his bed, his head falling between his knees. Tears slip down his face and plop between his legs onto the cracked wooden floorboards.
Archie does not sleep.