CHAPTER 53
One morning after physical therapy, the nurse gave me a note for an appointment with a new doctor. When I found the office, it was in the Mental Health Ward. I had to force myself to knock.
“Enter,” came a female voice.
When I opened the door, a dark-haired, blue-eyed lady navy officer sat facing me. The nameplate on the desk read Lieutenant Heaney. Not knowing if I was supposed to salute or not, I raised my right hand to my brow. “Corporal Hurley reporting, ma’am.”
She smiled. “No formalities necessary in my office, Corporal. Have a seat.” She nodded toward the chair. A file was open on her desk. She opened it and looked at me. “My name is Lieutenant Heaney, and I’m a psychologist. I see you were in a scout sniper unit. That must have been pretty dangerous duty.” Her voice had a scratch to it.
I eased into the chair, suspicious. “Sometimes.”
“How are you doing with your recovery? I understand you have a chest wound. Are you in pain?”
My hand moved to my left side. “You know what the marine corps says, ma’am: Pain is just weakness leaving the body.”
She smiled. “I also know marines can be full of shit on occasion.” She was a little bit of a woman from what I could see; her face, nose, cheekbones, and chin were sharp, accented by the way the sides of her brown hair swept behind her ears. I guessed her to be in her early thirties. “How about your mental recovery? Combat troops don’t often come home without bringing some of it with them. How are you doing with that?”
I didn’t say anything.
She waited until the silence got uncomfortable. Lieutenant Heaney closed the file and pushed back in her chair. “How about we go get a cup of coffee?” We walked to the twenty-four-hour canteen on the lower floor of the hospital. She paid for the coffee. I held a plastic red chair for her at one of the blue Formica-topped tables. “Your file says you’re from North Carolina, Corporal. How’d you come to be in the marine corps?” While her lips smiled, her eyes searched.
“It’s Lance Corporal.”
“Sorry. Why the marine corps?”
“Wanted to meet John Wayne.”
She chuckled. “Still want to meet him?”
I watched as a marine private cleaned a tall window along the far wall. He used a long stick and spray. “Not so much.” The private had only one arm.
“In your file, nurses say they’ve found you sleeping under your bed. Any particular reason you do that?”
“Need a vacation sometimes.”
“From what?”
I spread my fingers on the tabletop, then flexed them into fists. “Everything.”
Lieutenant Heaney sat back. “What kind of everything?”
“Seeing faces in my sleep, hearing stuff that isn’t there. You know, everything.”
“Soldiers often don’t get to see the faces of the enemy. I guess it must have been different in your work, huh? I would imagine being a sniper is more personal.”
“Some.” Huy’s face appeared in my mind.
“Why did you become a sniper? I’m pretty sure you had to volunteer for it.”
“Extra pay.” I set the coffee cup down too hard.
“Did you like it?”
I stared at her. Was there something in that file from Snake? “It was a job.”
“So is shoveling horse shit. You’re not answering my question.”
“Sometimes.” I pushed my chair back from the table.
She laid her hands out flat. “You always talk so much?”
I sipped the last of my coffee. “Not always.”
She waited for more, holding my eyes, then let out a breath. “Listen, Ray, I can try to help. But all I can do is help you help yourself. You’ve got to want to come back from where you were.” She started to fold her arms, but stopped and leaned across the table. “Let me put it to you this way, Corporal Hurley—sorry, Lance Corporal. War doesn’t end with a period, just a comma. When you survive, demons often come to live with you, and it’s possible many won’t go away. You can learn to put them in their proper place, find a way to cope when they haunt you, and if you’ll give me a chance, I’ll try my best to help you.”
This little woman had no idea what she was asking. But maybe she was the log I had been waiting for. We met every morning at eleven o’clock. I told her about Snake and Mo. I told her the story about Snake getting his boot caught on the trip wire. I told her all kinds of stories.
After a week, she held up her hand. “Enough with the bullshit, Ray. It’s not that I don’t enjoy your little war adventures, but they aren’t why we’re here. We’ve got to get down to what’s in your head, what scares the shit out of you so much you want to sleep under your bed, what makes you wake up screaming. So, stop with all the extraneous crap. Horror doesn’t like the light of day, Ray, and if you’re going to get better, we need to put some sun on it.”
I felt like a kid whose momma had spanked his ass good. It made me mad. If she wanted it, I’d see how she liked it. I intentionally tried to shake her calmness. I put it all out there: the gore of up-close killing, what a man’s face looked like when you shot his eye out, what a rush I got hunting other men. I even told her about Huy, and what a child looks like with his arms severed and insects are crawling in his mouth and eye sockets. I expected her to curl up and cry. But she never budged. She wanted it all and she wanted it out loud, refusing to let me have any silent gaps, even when I needed them worse than she did. Lieutenant Heaney insisted it was important that I speak the words. When the ice started to thaw, the spigot opened, and it poured out.
A few weeks later, she surprised me. “Your file says you have no next of kin. How come?”
The war was one thing, but my before life was something else. “Just worked out that way.”
Lieutenant Heaney picked up an orange ball she kept on her desk and threw it at me. “Don’t even try it. We’re done with that Silent Sam stuff. I want to know what happened to your family.”
I got up and left. It was two days before I went back.
She folded her hands on the desk, the look on her face unsympathetic. “Are you ready to talk to me, Ray?”
I glared at her. “My granddaddy’s dog, Grady, got run over when I was six. Grady was crying from the pain, so my daddy shot him in the head while I watched. That was the last time I cried around my daddy.”
Her face scrunched, but she quickly caught herself. “I’m sorry, Ray, but what’s that got to do with your next of kin?”
“I ain’t finished. When I was eight, my parents were killed in a car wreck while my daddy was hauling a load of moonshine whiskey. The car caught fire and burned him and my momma alive. I guess he wasn’t satisfied with just killing the dog.”
I could see a hint of color change in her eyes. She blinked a couple of times.
“Then, when I was fourteen, my granddaddy died, and I was left to look after Grandma.” I let the silence sit between us. “Two years later, my grandma died because I didn’t have sense enough to understand how sick she was.”
Harder blinking. She intertwined her fingers. “Is that it?”
“No. I killed two men in a drug deal when I was sixteen.”
Lieutenant Heaney made no move to say anything. I wondered how she liked me now.
“The only other person I’ve ever cared about is a black girl. I can’t be with her because of the hate it’d bring. Plus, I killed her brother and she don’t know it. That’s why I don’t have any next of kin.” I got up and left.
* * *
I went to Lieutenant Heaney’s office on the last Friday in December. When I entered, I sensed something. “What’s wrong?”
“Lance Corporal Hurley, I’m sorry to tell you this, but I’ve been transferred.”
“When?”
“I leave Monday.” She was all military business. “You’ve done so well, Lance Corporal, I’m sure you won’t let this stop your progress.”
This was the person I’d trusted with my soul. “So now it’s ‘Lance Corporal’?” The window slammed down; I’d seen this movie before. I stood up and saluted. “Well, good luck to you, Lieutenant Heaney.” I turned to leave.
I heard her chair scrape. “Wait.” She came behind and grabbed my elbow, pulled me around, and put her arms around my neck. “Don’t let up, Ray. Make your peace.” Her eyes were wet on my skin.
For three days, I refused to do anything but sit on my bunk. Once again, it was up to me to root hog or die. The flashbacks were regular. I found myself unable to stand in long lines or be in the middle of any kind of crowd. Certain smells, like wet ground or fishy food, could put me right back in the jungle. Anger was quick to come, and when it did, my first reaction was to punish the offender. I trained myself to, instead of wanting to hurt somebody, go to the physical therapy lab, work myself into a sweat, and drive out the poison. Peace was a hard place to find.