Port Townsend, Washington
and dropped Hank off a block away from the boarding house. He studied the neighborhood to see if anything was amiss or if a suspicious van waited for him. He approached through the side door and tested his new hip up three flights of stairs. His door had a keyhole for a skeleton key, but a key-locked deadbolt provided security. The original glass-knobbed door handle was long gone and much of the charm of the old house had faded. A solid, textured wall divided the original bedroom into two smaller ones. Inside Hank’s half was a single bed with a side stand and just enough floor space to do a push-up. On three walls hung wallpaper. The repetitive print of fleur-de-lis was skillfully applied. It may have dated back to when the house was new. Someone less skilled had framed the dividing wall and painted it in a greenish-blue high gloss. They had taken no care to trim the edges where the wall pressed against the frame of a tall, double-hung window with weeping glass.
He had told Susan the truth. The room did have a view up the hill, but the tall window mostly showed fissured bark and bright green leaves of an ancient live oak. To see anything else, he had to stand on the bed and lean his head against the window frame. He would miss the window with its rain drenched appearance and the oak’s many moods.
A light backpack was one advantage of having lost everything he owned. And now it was even lighter than when he abandoned his sinking boat. It was missing items, including his .45-caliber Colt 1911 pistol and his twenty-gauge flare gun. When he signed up for the program, he relinquished his second amendment rights. After the government nationalized ammunition manufacturing, made pistols illegal in cities, and enforced firearm registration, the old gun was just dead weight, anyway. Flares were a hassle to buy, and he justified the surrender, thinking he was better off without the liabilities. Still, the pistol hurt the most—it had been his great-grandfather's.
He reached under his mattress and pulled out a twelve-inch Ka-Bar knife. With a slight hesitation, he slid the immaculate blade out of its sheath. He admired it quizzically. They took his sextant but never asked if he had a knife. An oversight that worked out. He no longer needed the sextant, but found he slept better with the blade close to him. The knife slid easily into his olive drab seabag, and he spun around and saw his shaving kit. It hung from a nail driven into the threshold. He crammed it into his backpack and strapped it facing forward, against his chest. Besides some thrift store bedding and the laptop, the room was empty. With the indifferent seabag slung over his back, he bolted through the door. He turned down the stairs and with a controlled fall onto the handrails, he swung his body downward with a swinging motion that denied the stairs any significance. He covered the distance to the ground floor like a gymnast on parallel bars.
As he limped down the hill toward the waterfront, he felt exposed. There were people walking, but most drove slowly by in cars. A couple walked side by side, struggling to push two kids in one stroller up the residential sidewalk. Hank stepped to the side, letting the young family pass, and took the opportunity to scan up and down the street for anybody looking for him.
Muttering, “This is normal.” A guy carrying gear bags wasn’t enough of a sight in Port Townsend to attract attention. There’d be no neighborhood-watch-goody-two-shoes calling 911 and reporting him. And if a Public Safety drone buzzed by, it wouldn’t be tasked to ID a vet who failed his psychological evaluation… he hoped. Soon he’d be in Canada or far out to sea. He was fairly sure nobody was looking for him yet. Even though paperwork had become lightning-fast, bureaucracy was timelessly slow. What nagged at him was the discovery he had made soon after signing up for the program.
Local law enforcement actively helped the Department of Defense with monitoring vets. They came together as a mutual response effort to act on tips and threats. Civilian law enforcement always took advantage of military hand-me-downs and paramilitary training, but the new partnership blurred the lines further. Armored vehicles worked their way into law enforcement motor pools across the country. It took a few years of methodical introduction onto the streets, but eventually routine patrols of the war machines could be found in the quietest of precincts of the safest cities. The arrangement allowed congressional representatives to help their constituents by spending federal funds on regional law enforcement. As a result, US police officers were better trained and had more light weapons and ammunition than most of the world’s armies. The Military Police stretched their legs deep into veterans’ affairs. It became an alliance which allowed civilian and military to combine forces, share intelligence, and work together on US soil. A handful of extremists made a fuss, but as long as the bad guys were in jail, most Americans didn’t care.
Weeks ago, Hank had been one of those Americans. But when it got personal, he did his research and was rewarded with doubt and foreboding. It’s impossible to un-know something, so he ignored the conflict in his mind, until now. The memory of the website called Self Help for Dead Vets, forced its way to the surface. After a hard day of work, on a lonely night, he logged out of the device given to him by Operation Blue Skies and let himself into Joan’s office. He began his investigation on one of the charter company’s laptops. Hank stayed up all night, gaining more doubt and more foreboding. The number counter on the site claimed over ten thousand cases of tragedies and the page’s byline read When America’s Finest Die by Friendly Fire. Hank made it through a hundred stories before he had read enough. Along with the sadness woven through each catastrophic account was another troubling theme. Every dead vet had been enrolled in at least one mental health program. Re-published local news accounts told about a hometown hero and how something went wrong—each story ended in the death of a veteran. “Shot by an officer responding to a domestic dispute” led the stories as the most common cause of death. “Shot by a SWAT sniper” was next and five separate accounts of veterans dying from injuries after being hit with a patrol car mopped up the statistics.
The Dead Vet site died before Hank could stomach it again. Someone with power had scrubbed it off the internet, so he did the smart thing and left it in his wake. It had been a passing curiosity and had nothing to do with him, but now, he wasn’t just leaving the program but running away. And the ghost of the Dead Vet’s site seemed to speak to him out of its grave. He reasoned that those types of sensational news stories always show up online. Shock-of-the-day, independent journalist, cherry-picked news to further their agenda or to make a name for themselves. Anyway, he wasn’t suicidal, had no domestic partner, and would not get in front of a patrol car.
His eyes widened as a police cruiser turned onto his street and came up the road toward him. The hairs on his neck pricked outward and his heart recoiled in his chest. Sweat pushed out of his pores and sat cooling on goosebumps. Like a ship striking an iceberg head on, the chatter in his head stopped dead. One thought replaced the noise—I’m going to hell. It came from nowhere—he had never considered his life after death. Dead is dead. There is no hell. John Lennon said everything Hank needed to know on the subject. No hell, no heaven—nothing!
Acting like nothing was wrong is the best approach to minimize threats. He needed to be nonchalant. Nonchalant like that exploding guy. The horrible memory could not have come at a better time. It was as if a video clip ran through his head. A young man, still a teenager, approached the checkpoint, singing in a sweet voice, brandishing a brilliant smile and soft deer-like eyes. He strolled easily up to the barrier, vaulted over—boom!
A bead of sweat dripped off Hank’s brow and, as if rolling in slow motion, crossed the path of his gaze and landed hard on his cheek. Now was the time to act like that young suicide bomber—not a care in the world. Sing. But he wanted to run, not sing. He thought, Just fake it till you make it. He managed a smile, and a tune flowed. Clumsy lyrics filled the awful void as the black Dodge Charger rumbled closer.
—la, la lah
No hell—la, la lah only sky
No cops, la, la lah
No guns, la, la lah
No bombs, la, la lah.
And no religion too…”
Hank managed a casual wave, and the cop waved back, speeding up as he passed by.
Sweat stuck cold against his shivering body. The tune playing in his head came to a stop. He glanced behind him. Not a car in sight. Hank’s expression of triumph ended before it formed. He spoke without conviction. “I am going to hell.”