part0011

Walton sat at the window of the shuttle bus and watched the Washington Monument pass by under a midnight sky. The world was speckled with lights and activity and he regretted that the first sight of his country had to be one of modernity. The neon, and the concrete, and the billboards; there was something about it all that seemed foreign and garish.

However, he was home. And he was high. He smiled at the hazy feeling of the Morphine and surrendered to the sense of floating that the shuttle offered. There were other wounded soldiers with him and they talked about their injuries and how good the States looked and what they were going to do first, but he didn’t listen to them or even care about the fact they existed. He just wanted to float.

The shuttle stopped outside of Walter Reed Army Medical Center and he got off. He wore the track pants and sweater that he’d received in Landsthul, Germany (the latter he’d had to cut up to get his hand through). He could feel the cool of the pavement under the thin disposable slippers and found the sensation very appealing. He was tempted to open up the box of complementary Girl Scout Cookies in the Red Cross plastic bag, but decided it probably wasn’t the best time for it. He really wanted those Tagalongs, though.

A nurse welcomed him to the hospital and directed him to a lab where an X-ray technician took pictures of the bony pulp of his hand. Afterward, he walked to another room where a tall young doctor with glasses had him sit, and then began cutting off the dressing.

As the doctor removed the layers of cloth, Walton smelled the clammy combination of disinfectant and wound that came from his swollen hand. When the doctor freed the last layer of bandage and moved to throw it away, Walton began peeling yellow strips from off of the wounds themselves.

“You’ve done this before?”

“Yes, Sir,” Walton answered. He winced as he continued to pull the strip away from the gash. “This ain’t my first rodeo. I used to help my nurse clean my wounds when I was in Germany.” He then remarked with a grin, “Didn’t hurt quite this bad, though.” Of course, he supposed he just might not have noticed on account of the nurse from Germany having been so cute. She had given a mean sponge-bath. The spanky, brown-haired slip of a girl had no earthly business being single, and Walton had offered up a prayer of thanks that they still cranked out Wife Material every now and again.

The doctor finished removing the yellow strips himself then cleaned the wound. After he redressed it, he said, “Let me see your bicep.” Walton complied, and the doctor lifted the sleeve of the sweater to expose two lines of torn skin, both running lengthwise across Walton’s upper arm with stitches crossing them like train tracks.

“Those stitches should be ready to come out,” The doctor observed. He produced a small pair of scissors and went about cutting and removing them. As he worked, he told Walton, “I know it looks like the scar cuts through your muscle tissue, but with time and scar massage, you’ll have a normal bicep again. You could even do weight training and make it as big as you want.”

“What about the hand? Will I get to keep it?”

“It’s still too early to tell. Dr. Jones will see you soon and he’ll assess the wound and decide what to do next. You will probably have a debrisment in a few days where we’ll go in and clean it up from the inside some more.”

A nurse took him to a room where she started a fresh IV and left him to sleep. He drifted off, but four hours later another nurse came in to wake him up to take his vitals. When she did, he struggled not to throw something.

A few days later he sat across from his family for the first time in over a year. It felt odd being around them at first. He heard himself speak to them, but it seemed like it was someone else using his voice. However, this didn’t stop him from appreciating the way his brother Mike had gotten a Pass from the Navy and turned the hospital room into a party, even going so far as to smuggle in a Playboy and some books. His other brother Joseph looked taller than he remembered and had begun growing his first beard. His mother caught him up on family gossip, but his dad just sat there staring at his son’s hand.

Walton was soon on a bed in Pre-Op. He absently listened to the doctors explain the details of the procedure they were about to perform, and warn him of the usual possibility of death and infection. When the anesthesiologist injected the knock-out juice into the IV, Walton smiled. He would soon be enjoying a nice break from the world.

He stood near the ramp of the Shithook as she lowered to the ground like a giant beast outside of Miam Do. The prop-wash blasted the dirt on the ground and the bird danced under his feet like a boat on water. She touched down and he heard, “Go!” He sprang forward…

And was restrained by a nurse. He struggled against her, but as he looked around, he finally ceased. He was on a gurney, staring up at the ceiling with people and lights all around. Words like confusion and fear didn’t exist for him, just their meanings. He didn’t know what was real and began to cry.

Reality eventually found him and he calmed down despite the insubstantial feeling of the world around him. He missed the oblivion, but he resolved himself to his surroundings. He looked down to find a grotesque collection of rods and pins drilled into the bones of his hand and forearm.

“What’s wrong, honey?” asked his mom as he lay back in his room, hours later.

“It hurts.” He saw his mother’s brown eyes take on a pained, knowing expression and he said, “Could y’all please leave? We’ll talk tomorrow, if that’s alright.”

There was a look on his dad’s face that Walton hadn’t seen since his mom had almost died in a car accident a few years prior. “No, Son. We want to stay.”

“Kenny, he wants to be alone,” his mom said gently, and Walton almost smiled at his mom’s uncanny grasp of hospital etiquette. She knew more about hospitals than she would have liked. “Son, we’ll come back tomorrow.” They hugged him and left.

Walton pressed the call button as soon as they were out the door and waited. No one responded. The pain blocked out everything, and went into the core of the mess of his hand and wrist, evolving and picking up intensity with each second. It somehow managed to be sharp and dull at the same time. He closed his eyes and pressed the button again in vain.

Time slowed down to a long infinity and the ache that gored into his bones violated his mind as if the doctors were still boring into his hand and arm. He writhed slowly away from, then back toward his elevated arm in a futile effort for anything resembling comfort. It was the worst physical pain he could remember. He made low guttural noises in anger at a world where such pain was possible. Again and again, he pressed the button and tried to breathe.

An Age of the earth came and went before a nurse stepped in, her dark skin contrasting with the bright pastel scrubs. “What’s wrong, baby?” she asked comfortingly.

He croaked with a pained voice, “It hurts, Ma’am.”

She recited the litany. “On a scale of one-to-ten, ten being the most intense pain you can imagine, what is your pain rating?”

“‘Bout an eight or a nine.”

“I’ll go see what the doctor has for you.”

She left and returned moments later, wasting no time in injecting something into his IV. She bore an apologetic expression and said, “I’m so sorry. They forgot to schedule any follow-up meds for you after your surgery and you caught us at shift change. This won’t take long to take hold.” She smiled at him and patted his hand. “I’m Ms. Burmingham and I’ll be your nurse for tonight. If you need anything just press the call button. Okay?”

He smiled with hope at the liquid that coursed through the tubes leading to his hand.

For the next few days, Walton faded in and out of sleep. Every now and again he shot a glance at the wound-vac that drew corrupted fluid from his wrist. The nurses continued to annoy him by checking his vitals every few hours, but most were pleasant, so he chatted and flirted with them when they came around.

He had forgotten just how good women smelled. It made him want to put his hand on them when they got near him with their crisp white uniforms. However, when they moved the things on his bed-tray to set down medicine or a bit of equipment, he had to restrain himself from yelling at them. The bed-tray was his, and they had no right to disturb his things so carelessly. When his IV beeped, he would almost lose it completely and want to break whatever was near, and from the corner of his eye, he wondered why his mom looked like she didn’t recognize him.

She sat in a chair next to him and watched the small TV that hung from an arm above the bed. Walton had made it a point to spend a portion of each day watching the news, or reading a paper or magazine to catch up on the world. He also wanted to keep his mind busy so he didn’t wind up sitting around and feeling sorry for himself like the clichéd “wounded vet” that seemed to be a staple of modern war movies. His mother, however, couldn’t be bothered with listening to a bunch of eggheads rattle on about “how they have a magic solution for other people’s miseries,” as she put it, but she loved her boys, and had learned to put up with Walton’s tendency to rant over current events long ago.

He’d noticed a reoccurring argument that kept insinuating itself into many of the media pundits’ narratives that disturbed him; namely, that the wars downrange were the result of Christians in rural states. The assertion that people like his parents were to blame disgusted him, and as a man who’d been wounded in his country’s service, it felt like a slap in the face.

Having spent the first nineteen years of his life deeply involved in the Church, he had never once heard in a prayer meeting, worship service, or even on a Wednesday night business meeting, anything whatsoever about putting the Middle East to the sword. No deacon had ever made a motion for the congregation to pressure elected officials to have the U.S. blow up Muslims. No preacher had ever said that he felt like The Lord had laid it on his heart to make the streets flow with the blood of the nonbelievers. No youth minister had ever told them that the greatest thing they could do for God was to kill Haji.

That there were adults who made a good living manufacturing such rubbish, and didn’t get fired for passing off such a shallow analysis of international affairs, was beyond the pale. They needed First Sergeant Wade in the worst way. They were ate up with The Dumbass. None of this really surprised him, though. People like his folks had been one of the country’s preferred whipping-boys since before H.L. Menken.

What Walton did remember from those years in the Church was a lot of people who were barely getting by, scraping together what money they could to donate to orphanages for children they’d never even met. Or they’d occasionally get together a group of volunteers to travel to some impoverished village on a mission trip to build a clinic or a bit infrastructure to help out the poor.

As far as the Middle East was concerned, Walton had the impression that the churches he’d grown up in had more or less adopted the foreign policy of the Governor from The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas , who’d said “that it behooves both the Jooz and the Aye-rabs to settle their differences in a Christian manner.” Other than a loosely-defined commitment to Israel, that was about as far as they went. Of course, there was also the constant praying for peace. No doubt in part because it would be their sons fighting in whatever war got cooked up; they were among the few remaining segments of the population that still believed in sacrificing for America.

Their yeoman ancestors, with their toughness, high degree of religiosity, and community-centered norms and values, had been handy to have around for whenever country had needed people to till the dirt, settle the frontier, bale hay, pick cotton, mine coal, turn bolts, work railroads, and fight wars. However, their decedents in the brave new world were to be fitted with a yoke of shame, and to be unofficially branded as trash or vilified in their own home. They were to be fed a steady diet of dissention, entertainment, and dependency infrastructure lest they maintain some semblance of backbone and self-reliance. Didn’t the silly Proles know that the modern nation-state was now just supposed to be a market of “human capital” and not a sovereign country of citizens?

Looking at his mother, he wondered if their loyalty wasn’t misplaced. Given the tone of the bigots who wrote articles and mocked those like his family, who had been born and bred in “flyover states,” and made them into the cause of all that was wrong with the U.S. and the world, he didn’t think such “elites” were worth the blood it took to keep them safe and prosperous. While he still sympathized with the Church in spite of his many questions and uncertainties, he no longer valued turning the other cheek as he used to. Sometimes you ran out of peaceful compromises. Some people just had to be fought. Tooth and claw. The trick was figuring out who it really was that deserved the ass-kicking.

His mother interrupted his brooding. “Germany sure looks pretty,” she said as AFN ran a commercial featuring European Posts. “Did you get to see much of it?”

“No. I was in the hospital the whole time.” He didn’t tell her about the wifely brunette with the sponge-bath skills. “They lost my records then had us all laid out in the entry way on our stretchers when we were leaving and there were all these kids and families lookin’ at us like we were in a freak show. When they finally did get us on our way, they drove us on the roads that I don’t think have been repaired since World War II. It was almost funny to see all us mangled up soldiers gettin’ all tossed about and groaning.”

She shook her head in a way that made Walton think he probably shouldn’t have said anything. “I can’t imagine. I’m pretty impressed with the hospital here, though.”

“I was too, until last night,” he said flatly as he recalled the night before. “That was horrible. Ms. Burmingham was great, though. She hooked me right up.”

“Well, Ms. Burmingham just made a new friend.”

They spent a moment watching TV, then he said from a need to converse, “I feel bad. Maw-Maw called last night and I got pissed and told her not to call me here. That I was wore out and that I’d call her. It ain’t right to talk to your grandmother like that. I think the drugs must make me cranky or somethin’. I feel sort of…angrier than I remember. And it’s like, all the time, it seems. Mom, your boy’s turnin’ all Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde on ya,” the last he said with a smile to try to put her at ease. “I should call her and apologize.”

“It’s okay, Son. You’ve been through a tough ordeal.”

The phone rang and they looked at each other. He picked it up, expecting to hear his grandmother. “Hello? Hi! How’re you doin’?”

He turned and smiled in a way that made him look as though he hadn’t been shot. “It’s Amy!” he said as he covered the handset. He entertained the notion that it was almost worth going through that whole experience if only to read the urgency and concern in her email after he’d told her, and to hear the eagerness in her calls.

His mother beamed. She wanted grandchildren and didn’t care how she got them. “Well, you tell Miss Amy I said, hi! I’m going to go get a bite at the cafeteria. Do you want anything?”

“No, Ma’am. Thank ya, though.”

Walton closed his eyes and saw Amy’s face while she asked about how he felt, and told him how much she’d wanted to hear his voice. Hearing her somehow amped up the voltage on the caveman-ish feelings that crawled around inside him. He liked how powerful he felt with the growling thing within him. The bullshit was gone on some level and the world had gotten so simple that he could hardly contain himself. “I like your voice too, darlin’. It’s the highlight of my day. Say, have you been drinkin’?”

“Yeah, I drank a little,” she said with a faintly perky slur. “I just got back from a funeral for my great-aunt and everyone got really drunk. I sat and drank Scotch and listened to my dad’s British cousin talk about how he used to say he was a member of the Rolling Stones so he could get girls to sleep with him. He’s awesome.”

“I’m proud of you. It’s still daylight and you’re tipsy. God, I wish I was there. I’d get drunk with you and we’d break shit. It would be fuckin’ awesome.”

“It would be, but I don’t know about breaking things.”

“Are you kiddin’? It’s the shit. Here, break a glass right now and you’ll see what I mean.”

A man with the rank of captain and the air of repressed hilarity looked up from the paperwork on his table with a smile and greeted, “Hey, Walton, how’s it goin’?”

“Not too bad, Sir.” The Occupational Therapy Center was dim and quiet, in stark contrast with its usual raucous atmosphere. “This place ain’t the same on Saturday.”

“Yeah, it’s a bit more relaxed. Hey, you changed your pajama pants.”

Walton looked down at his second pair of flannel pants and shrugged. “It had to be done. I could smell myself and that ain’t ever good.”

The captain wrinkled his nose. “Yeah, I didn’t need to know that. Did you bring a CD? Ah, the Stones. Excellent choice.” Captain Vertain loaded the CD player, and waited patiently to begin. When it did, he sneered rakishly and silently played air guitar. After the first few riffs, he then returned to the table and began the ultrasound massage on Walton’s hand to break up scar tissue.

“Man, with nobody here I feel like I can cuss again,” Walton confessed. “I’ve been around my folks and the nurses for so long that I hardly talk because I have to censor myself.”

“It’s totally cool to cuss here on Saturdays,” Captain Vertain said as he moved the wand in a clockwise motion on the wound. “Watch, I’ll cuss right now.” He then looked up commandingly at the empty room and yelled, “SHIT!”

Walton shook his head in a frantic fashion. “Aw man, don’t say, shit . I had a horrible episode last night. You know how Morphine constipates you? Well, I hadn’t shat in like, two weeks.”

“Exactly. At first, I figured me and my body could sort this out on our own and avoid havin’ to deal with the embarrassment of bringin’ in a third party. Call me old-fashioned, but I really don’t cotton to the idea of people foolin’ around with the workings of my ass. I’d just take the stool softeners, wait, and let nature take its course. As time went on, though, I began to have my doubts. I wasn’t in pain, but I figured after two weeks this could become a health issue. Who needs that?

“Anyhow, I ring for the nurse to explain my situation and get some relief, and since I’ve had a semi-regular diet of porn since I was like, twelve, I was naturally hopin’ for some cute little doe-eyed bubbly thing that wouldn’t compromise my pride too much if she handled my ring-piece. It’d be embarrassing as hell, and it wasn’t exactly my idea of how to spend a Friday night, but I’ll take gettin’ touched by a chick over not gettin’ touched by a chick, any day of the week and twice on Sunday. Might even be kinda kinky. It’d stay just between me, her, Jesus, and whoever does the laundry ‘round here. After all, there was this one NCO in my platoon from Michigan, Sergeant Sandlin, who was the most awesome-est dirtiest dick dog you’d ever hope to meet, and he said a chick once surprised him by stickin’ her finger in his ass when he was in mid-hump with her, and he said he’d never came so hard in his life. He said it felt so good that he was tempted to do it to himself one day when he was beatin’ off, but didn’t, because that was just him being a good Catholic.

“But noooo , they send in a dude . A fuckin’ dude! In walks this big damn male nurse I’ve never met before who says he’s Nurse Smith, and he’s carryin’ a suppository that looks like one of the Lone Ranger’s silver bullets. Half a month’s worth of shit in my intestines and I’m feelin’ okay, but the second this motherfucker walks in with somethin’ he’s supposed to put in my ass, I’m suddenly sick. I ain’t gonna lie; at this point, I’m kinda freaked out. I’ve got myself a bait-and-switch on my hands, Hoss, like you ain’t ever seen.

“I told him, ‘Look, I’ve never had one of those before and I’m not sure how it works,’ and he explained that it goes in the ass and breaks up the shit, then a half-hour later, you’re in business. I asked if I put it in, or if he does, and he replied that it didn’t matter, but that if it didn’t go in far enough, we’d have to try again.

“Sir, if you’d have put a gun to my head a week ago and told me that you were gonna kill me unless I got a suppository in my ass forthwith, but I could choose whether it would be me or a stranger who inserted it, I’d have told you to go piss up a rope, I’ll do it my goddamned self. But now that I’m findin’ out that if I ain’t a first-time-go I have to go through the ordeal of doin’ it all over again, I’m startin’ to have second thoughts. I could just see me spread-eagled on my hospital bed with one arm covered with all these rods and pins and IV’s ‘n what-not, and the other halfway up my ass tryin’ to plant the charge. Then, only to find out afterward that I had to repeat the process. I thought about it for a bit, then decided to swallow my pride and let a professional do it. ‘Get it right the first time,’ and all that. Like I know how far up my ass I’m supposed to go with that thing. I’ve read Field Manual 7-8 cover to cover, and I assure you, there ain’t nothin’ in there on breach-loading an asshole.

“I had to roll off onto my side and bare my ass, and I’m embarrassed as hell. I’m embarrassed for me, ‘cause shit ain’t exactly goin’ according to plan and now I’ve got some strange guy who looks like he plays professional football about to put somethin’ in my ass and I really ain’t crazy about my life at that point. After being shot, that kinda thing is just addin’ insult to injury. Literally.

“On top of that, I’m embarrassed for Nurse Smith. He seems like a good dude. He ain’t hurtin’ anybody. He probably got into this gig to save lives and help people and maybe hump some nurse chicks. All that shit they put in the brochures. But you know they’ve got this poor bastard out changin’ bedpans, and havin’ to clean up God knows what, and dealin’ with freaked out soldiers havin’ crazy dreams, and I don’t know what-all. If that ain’t enough, he’s gotta make the rounds puttin’ shit-bullets in a bunch of dudes’ hairy assholes. That’s a tough row to hoe. I ain’t ever had to deal with that sort of thing, but I’ve changed my share of diapers, so I think I understand that this kinda shit can really fuck with your day.

“To try to hold on to some shred of my dignity, and out of respect for our mutual humanity ‘n all that happy horseshit, I figured I’d make small-talk. You know, like that sort of a situation wasn’t weird at all. ‘Wit is the denial of suffering,’ says the Freud.

“So we began talkin’ about his previous experiences in administering Silver Bullets. All of a sudden I thought he was tryin’ to put a model train set up my ass. I just about climbed up the motherfuckin’ wall tryin’ to escape. It was traumatic, ya see. Fortunately, it took only a split second and he said he thought he got it in far enough.

“I kinda felt violated, you know? Seriously, we have global wireless communication systems facilitated by satellites in a geosynchronous orbit IN OUTER FUCKIN’ SPACE, but we’re still puttin’ stuff up people’s asses to help them shit? Fuckin’ savages!

“Anyhow, soon I feel the shit brewin’. I call him back in and he unhooks me from my IV so me and the Jungle Gym I’ve got drilled into my arm can go drop a deuce.

“So I’m there on the shitter with my PJ’s around my ankles, three gunshot wounds from an AK-47, a Silver Bullet up my ass, and two weeks’ worth of compressed shit headin’ for daylight, and I swear, I had to have been dilated to like, a twenty, or somethin’. The situation was backfiring on me in every conceivable sense of the word. I’d try to let it out, but then it all tried to come out at once, and I thought I was gonna rip my fuckin’ O-Ring. Like I don’t have enough goin’ for me already.

“On top of all that, I’m makin’ weird noises whether I want to or not. This beast is a DEFCON-1 level growler. And it’s mad as hell. It wants to fight, I can feel it. God only knows what someone would’ve thought if they’d passed by. I’m in there wrestlin’ with this thing, and gruntin’, and bearin’ down, and I’m gettin’ light-headed. The Lamaze Breathing ain’t gettin’ me anywhere. Trouble is, I know that if I let myself pass out, then it’ll get the drop on me and do somethin’ horrible. Maybe remove my organs while I’m unconscious and sell ‘em on the black market.

“But then, I’m also goin’ through this and I’m laughin’ my fool head off. Partly ‘cause toilet humor was always hysterical to my brothers and me, but also ‘cause I’m thinkin’, ‘This is what I get for laughin’ at Sergeant Sparn.’ He was one of my old platoon sergeants and he had to go around with a feminine hygiene product in his asshole on account of a boil. We saw Doc pull it out once and reload a fresh one, and the whole damn platoon almost died laughin’. So there ya go. If there’s a moral, I guess it’s, ‘What goes around comes around, so be careful about laughin’ at people havin’ to have stuff done to their ass, ‘cause you could be next.’ Then again, maybe there ain’t a moral. Maybe The Bad Man is just a dick.

“So anyhow, I’m in the shitter havin’ a significant emotional event. The situation is getting out of control. I then thought, ‘Hey, I’m a sergeant, I should be tactical about this. Maybe with a little courage, discipline, and patience I could squeeze it out into passable chunks. Attack the shit asymmetrically. Divide and conquer.’ But that just pissed it off. And anyhow, the contractions were killin’ me. ‘There is nothing more powerful than a shit whose time has come.’

“Eventually, I had to give the Suppository Devil his due. A piece, no, an Ass-Asteroid like a VW Bug finally entered the splash-down phase and I had to double-over and grab the handicap rail like I was givin’ birth in the shitter.

“Now, I gotta admit, Sir…I was kinda curious about the fruit of my labors. You know it had to be huge. It certainly felt like a monster. Like a Toilet Kraken. But that could’ve been a subjective analysis. Maybe it was normal size, but had been hard like a stone and my body hadn’t been prepared for that kinda threat level.

“But, I also kinda didn’t want to know. There’s some things that ain’t healthy for the human mind. Like maybe if I dared to peer into the bowl I’d wind up lookin’ into the face of evil. ‘Look not behind thee…lest thou be consumed.’ That’s what my Bible says.

“In the end, I figured the best thing to do was clean up, flush it, and get the hell out of there before it decided to come after me. You know, like in a battle drill; ‘Shoot, Move, and Communicate.’ As mean as it was, I wouldn’t have put it past the thing to have vengeance in its heart and try to launch a counterattack.

“By the time I come out of the latrine, I’m punchy. Gettin’ shot was one thing, but now I’m stackin’ trauma on top of trauma, and I feel like a broke-dick dog. I barely had the strength to wash my hands. Finally, I made it back to bed, closed my eyes, and just tried to put the whole ordeal behind me. No pun intended.

“I swear, Sir, after havin’ to pass a Lincoln Log like that, I don’t see how chicks and the gays can handle anal sex on a regular basis. That sort of thing can’t be healthy in the long run. You watch, in fifty years there’s gonna be a lot of old people runnin’ around with fucked up assholes.”

From behind a plate of chicken strips, French fries, and a Cherry Coke, Walton surveyed the people in the D-Fac alongside his trusty IV-on-wheels while carefully avoiding eye contact. People saw a wounded soldier sitting alone and felt compelled to join him. He appreciated the gesture, but it always left him feeling sad.

While sitting in the same chair a few days prior, a kind elderly man had asked to sit down and Walton had given him a smile and offered a chair. As the old man chatted with him, Walton had got caught up in his story.

The old man had ran away from home when he was seventeen, had been drafted into World War II, and went into communications, at one point even working for Patton. He had married, gotten out of the Army, and earned a degree in Art History. Together, he and his wife had quietly loved each other through the decades as the world changed. His wife had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and it had taken her away from him three years ago after it had slowly killed her mind. He’d told Walton that he had just turned eighty-nine years old, and a week ago he had been asked by the authorities to surrender his driver’s license. He’d come to Walter Reed to see his doctor. Walton’s heart had gone out to the old man as he’d thought about how heavy and oppressive his loneliness must be.

He soon lost interest in the world of the D-Fac, and replayed in his mind the conversation he’d had with Amy after he’d watched To Catch a Thief the day before on the classic movie channel. They had almost burned up a phone card talking about how cool it would be to live in the south of France like Cary Grant had and the things they could do there. Inspired by the channel’s line-up for that week, he had then told her all about the virtues of High Noon and sang her the theme song over the phone.

Lost in his musings over Amy and the possibility of life as an expat, Walton let his guard down and didn’t see the woman with the grey-flecked blonde hair until she was already at the table. She gave him the smile that women reserve for children who remind them of their own, and said, “Hi. I noticed you were alone and I was wondering if I could join you?”

Walton repaid her with a smile of his own and said, “Yes, Ma’am. That’d be nice. My name’s Tom.”

“Mine’s Leanne. It’s nice to meet you, Tom,” she said as she sat down. “I have a son named Jonathan about your age. He was in Iraq.” Like the old man, Leanne would ask him questions and answer his own, and sometimes they even managed to find a laugh.

However, as the conversation continued, Walton picked up more pieces to work with and noticed something that seemed peculiar. Though she had said she has a son, everything else about him was in the past tense. He then realized what it was she wanted.

“He’s gone, isn’t he, Ma’am.” It wasn’t a question.

Walton then saw one of the saddest smiles he swore he’d ever seen in his life. Looking at her face, he saw Leanne as a wide-eyed young woman living in the world-changing moment of just finding out that she was carrying her very first baby and knowing life was intimately connected to her and growing within her as the product of her and her husband’s love, and that it completely depended upon her for its survival. He saw the months of pregnancy that wouldn’t end, the first time she held him, the late night feedings, the joy of his first steps, the heartbreak of sending her young Jonathan to his first day of Kindergarten, and the pride of seeing him go to proms and graduate from High School.

She had probably felt that pride again when his drill sergeants had awarded him the infantryman’s Blue Cord he’d earned at Ft. Benning, but it must’ve been laced with the fear of the possibility that he had set his feet on a path that would put him in danger. Living with that, and trying to hide it for his sake, had no doubt gone against her every instinct as a mother, but she had done her best.

Beneath her pride in her son, Leanne’s face bore the haunting sorrow belonging to those who have poured their very soul and life’s blood into their duty of doing everything they could to see another life grow strong and healthy. And then had lost it forever.

“He is. We just lost him a couple of days ago. He died from wounds from an IED in Iraq.”

Walton did his best to swallow emotions for which there were no words and said as reverently as he could, “I’m sorry, Ma’am.”

“It’s alright, Tom,” she said bravely. She looked down at her plate, seeing things Walton wanted to stop imagining. “He was a good man. A good soldier. My husband and I are just happy to have had him in our lives at all, even if it was just for a little while.” She looked back up at him fervently. “He died protecting his country. I have to believe that.”

Lounging at a table in the bar at the Malogne House, the outpatient hotel on-Post reserved for wounded soldiers and their families, Walton drained his beer with an almost orgasmic expression and wallowed like a pig in shit at how good it was to taste booze again. It was another one of those little things that made it feel odd to be back.

April drew to a close and he wished he could speed up the healing process. The days had become a dull endless cycle filled with therapy, formations, boredom, and soldiers spilled out of a walking horror movie, the monotony of it all leaving him feeling like he was getting absolutely nowhere. The doctors refused to be anything but vague when he asked them when he’d be able to take Leave, which only served to make him more irate. He looked around at the soldiers in the bar with their families and their prosthetic legs and arms, and eye patches, and livid scars, and he took solace in the fact that things could have been a damn sight worse.

He thought about the soldiers’ lives. They had been babies once. Like Leane’s Jonathan. They had been children and teenagers with hopes and dreams, and had been through variations of the same frying pan as he had been (and worse, from what he saw of many of their wounds). He wondered how things would play out for them. He was awed by how many still had so much fight in them. They were magnificent sons ‘a bitches. A guy who could go around without a leg or half his face after all hell had broken loose and had taken a chunk of him with it, but still kept his head held high, inspired Walton. Haji didn’t have shit on them.

Still though, the sight of them left him wondering what it was that they had bought. No doubt they had fought for their buddies and their platoons the same as him. Battles were sacred, and they belonged to those who’d fought them. However, they had bled in those battles as the result of orders that ultimately had tricked down from on high. In the grand scheme of things, what was the significance of what went on downrange? What did it all mean?

Something was wrong. It wasn’t merely the wounded and the hospital; it was war, and that was to be expected. But the country, the world…the whole spirit of things was shot through with vileness and confusion. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but he sensed its presence nonetheless.

The more Walton thought, the more he wasn’t sure what the hell it was they were doing. He didn’t know anyone in the national security establishment personally, and he was aware that there was a hell of a lot going on above a sergeant’s pay grade, but it seemed to him that coming up with a coherent strategy was really kicking their ass. He had no problem with the U.S. coming down on terrorists like the fist of an angry god. It behooved America to keep its Pimp Hand way strong. However, fighting an open-ended war on multiple fronts as a part of an effort to flip the Middle East for its own good, just over a network of Haji’s who’d gone off the reservation, struck him as excessive. Walton believed that further destabilizing foreign countries by trying to overthrow their political, cultural, and economic structures was a good way to make a bad situation worse. He didn’t think The Brass had thought that one through. It was like no one read the classics anymore. As Sun Tzu had written, “There has never been a protracted war from which a country has benefitted.” Fucking savages.

In every op-order he had been to there had been things like a statement of the commander’s intent and a list of their objectives. That made sense. If you were going out on a mission into Indian Country, you needed to know what the hell it was you were supposed to do.

Evidently, the people in charge didn’t have to do that. One of the biggest things that pissed him off about the “War on Terror” was that there didn’t seem to be a clear objective. How could you score without a goal? None of The Brass, military or civilian, really talked about what victory was supposed to look like. Whenever they tried to, they sounded like a bunch of privates trying to explain why they were all fucked up; they didn’t really know, but they were willing to gamble that if they just kept talking, the words would eventually start making sense.

And what the hell was it that had given Haji such a case of the ass in the first place? There were as many explanations as there were eggheads. It wasn’t like no one had seen this thing coming. Haji seemed to have been pissed since those Libyans had tried to fuck with Marty McFly back in the Eighties. There was too much that didn’t make sense. He needed more intel. Then again, maybe Alexander had been right. You didn’t try to untie some knots. You had to cut them. But how did you know which ones to cut? Knots had a funny way of becoming nooses.

Walton shook his head. The world could kiss his Oklahoman ass. He had books to read, a girl to chase, and beer to drink, dammit.

He slowly ran his good hand over the cover of A Year in Provence in the spirit of a caress. Amy had spontaneously sent it in a package two days prior. Her hands had touched the novel when she’d put it in the box she’d filled with books, chocolate, and warmth.

He loved getting books from Amy. They whispered something to him about her. Something intimate. He devoured them as soon as he got them. He’d make a day of reading them. He’d throw the candy and books into his assault pack and read them one after another on a bench in the sun, or under one of the trees outside the Malogne House which had begun to bloom. They were more than books. They were windows to ideas and feelings running through her mind. Reading them was an act of sensuality. Having her books in his hands and in his brain, was a way of having her.

He opened it to the card he now used as a replacement bookmark which bore the quote from Tennyson, “Come, tis not too late to seek a newer world ,” which she had used to write him a note in her buoyant penmanship. He boiled to get out of the hospital and see her.

Though their affair was temporarily on the back burner, they still enjoyed each other’s conversations, and Amy had become something more than just a potential bedmate. She’d unknowingly helped hold him together through the worst of the past six weeks of his stay in the hospital with the ever increasing intimacy and fun of her regular emails and almost nightly phone conversations that often spilled over into the small quiet hours.

The phenomenon between them had gotten to the point where Walton found it difficult to relate to the other wounded soldiers there. He would often pass through the melancholy wards with a swagger and his IV-on-wheels to read her words in an email. Hearing her voice say, “Hello,” never failed to cause a sense of clarity fall on him, and like Saul on the road to Damascus, he felt how powerful and terrible it was to be confronted with the sorrow at the knowledge of just how lost you had been.

With each seemingly ordinary word that ranged from her mother’s kitchen redecorating strategy, to which people from any time (historical or fictitious) she’d want to have a dinner party with, her grandparents’ romance, or the fear of winding up like the people who walked through their passionless uninspired lives with the lights off inside, she left him with the impression that beneath it all, she was fighting a hard uphill scrap to overlook a lifetime of disappointments and cynicism, and was genuinely trying to open up to him. (While discussing life and whether or not it meant anything, she’d mentioned having read somewhere that it boiled down to finding something to do, and having someone to love who loved you back. Walton thought that was as good a medical prescription as any.) She may have even been listening when he’d tried to explain to her why joining the service was perhaps not what she was looking for.

He imagined what it would be like to be a normal guy. Seeing Amy would just be a matter of buying an airline ticket. He wouldn’t have to put in for a Pass or ask permission from anybody.

Walton gripped the bottle and came back to the real world. He cursed himself. Merely wanting something meant nothing. People in Hell wanted ice water and biscuits but that didn’t mean they got them. Dreaming like this was stupid and childish. Like his Grandma Gladys used to say; “Put what you want in one hand, shit in the other, and see which gets filled fastest.” He was in the hospital and he wouldn’t be out until he was better and the Army said he could leave.

He looked at the erector set sticking out of his hand and arm. He hated his wounds. They were holding him back. He wondered what it would be like to rip the hardware out right then and there. He imagined the pain and the iron-tingle of hot blood, and was unsettled by the fact that on some level he wanted to feel just how bad it would hurt.

He took a long swig of his beer. He began to read and thought that he should give Amy a call before he went back to his room and had to listen to his roommate snore.

He stood in formation the next morning and resented that the Army insisted on dragging him out of bed just to stand in a line. If he didn’t, they would drop the paperwork to take his money and/or rank.

The chaplain gave the Word of the Day and it was all Walton could do not to tell everyone to take their accountability formations and words of encouragement and go fuck right off. He would much rather just get on with his life, thank you very much.

The Med-Hold platoon sergeant took charge and Walton got ready to leave. “One last thing,” the platoon sergeant said officiously. “We need some soldiers to clean out the Sergeant Major’s office. We can do this the easy way or the hard way. Do I have any volunteers?”

Walton itched to bitch-slap him with his good hand. He fantasized about grabbing the NCO by the throat and slowly crushing his windpipe until the life bled out of the idiot’s eyes. He looked at the broken soldiers around him and wondered if the man had lost his fucking mind. You couldn’t swing a dead cat without hitting some Joe who was either missing a body part or had some form of hardware running into his bones. One soldier even had an indention in his head where he was shy a part of his skull. Walton realized he may dislike having to hang around the hospital when he was an outpatient, but he absolutely hated the Med-Hold side of the house.

His hatred kept him company as he made his way to Occupational Therapy. He’d decided to get there early and work on painting his ceramic lighthouse at the arts and crafts table until his appointment. He was mad at having been “encouraged” to participate, knowing that if he didn’t it’d probably raise a red flag with the staff or social workers. He saw it as busy work, but knew Thucydides had been right; in this world, “the strong do as they will and the weak suffer as they must.” In comparison with the mindless bureaucratic might of his Uncle Sam, he was weak, and so he would yield until he no longer had to.

A group of soldiers in civilian clothes sat at the table painting their lighthouses with a woman who looked to be in her forties or fifties. As he approached, the woman looked up from her own work, smiled at Walton, and got up to stand near the collection of lighthouses in various states of completion.

They exchanged pleasantries and then she turned to look over the ceramic cache. She stopped at one and said as she carefully picked it up, “Here we go. This one is yours isn’t it?” When he replied that it was, she stopped to appraise it. “I really like what you’ve done with this so far,” she remarked with enthusiasm, and after he thanked her, they spoke for a few minutes about technique and color, and how he envisioned the finished project.

He took a seat and began painting a blank spot of stonework on his lighthouse. As he worked, his anger continued to gnaw at him. It switched its target to his lighthouse, arts and crafts, and life in general. Here he was painting a damned ceramic lighthouse when there was a world full of things to get into out there, and a girl up north who could lose interest at any minute. He was wasting his time! With each brushstroke, the rage pulsed.

Walton looked up and surveyed his fellow inmates. His eyes met with those of the woman who led the arts and crafts table. She smiled, and in it was all the warmth, and openness, and patience that anyone could hope to see in a human being. It was free of the sickly condescension of pity or need for recognition. It simply was .

As her look of acceptance and compassion washed over him, he struggled to return it, realizing he had to fight through facial muscles contorted as he was inside. When he finally managed to do so, the tiny network of wrinkles behind her glasses deepened, reflecting a lifetime of blessing the world with such smiles.

He returned his eyes to his lighthouse and devoted every ounce of discipline he possessed to not well up any more than he was already starting to. While he had been pouting like a little bitch and feeling sorry for himself, the artist could have been anywhere else doing whatever she felt like. Yet here she was with a bunch of busted up soldiers in a hospital in a part of DC where local thugs got into shoot-outs with the gate guards, and she was volunteering her time to encourage the war-torn to develop their own ability to create beauty. There was a lot that was heroic in what she did.

Walton was humbled beyond measure as he resisted the urge to weep from gratitude that she cared so much for them. What made it even harder was that she was not alone. A woman volunteering with the Red Cross had recently wheeled around a cart of books on his ward. He’d been angry and wound up tightly that day also, and had been short with her to the point that his mom had looked at him disapprovingly. The woman had let his tone slide right over her (though it had still sunken a barb, leaving him feeling ashamed at the flash of hurt he’d seen on her face), and she had then asked him about his favorite authors. The next day she had returned with a stack of books she’d raided from her husband.

Mick Foley, Melissa Etheridge, and Connie Stevens had stopped by his room when they’d made the rounds visiting the soldiers. When the professional wrestler had said he admired the toughness of the wounded, Walton had been quick to inform him that the man who’d fought his heart out in the Hell in a Cell match was every bit as salty as anyone on the ward. Melissa Etheridge had brought an Earth Mother vibe in with her and it had made him wish the two of them could sit on a porch together and talk about life. He’d known Connie Stevens from watching a bit of Palm Springs Weekend with his mom (it was one of her favorites). Though time had faded her Technicolor youth, it had been powerless against her allure. Walton had easily imagined having once stopped traffic.

The Fisher House had paid for his parents’ plane tickets and had provided them with a room at the Malogne House for free so they could be near him. Churches and classrooms had “adopted” him while he’d been deployed. They’d sent him care packages and letters of encouragement, and told him they had been praying for him and hoped he’d be safe and would come home soon. His case manager continually tried to move heaven and earth to take care of him. There was, and had been, so much uncompelled Good directed at him from a thousand different directions that the grace of it all hurt.

Walton felt a powerful love seize him; for the artist volunteering to help with their arts and crafts; for the Red Cross woman who had brought him books he hadn’t deserved; for groups like the Fisher House; for entertainers who visited not for publicity, but because they gave a damn; for the people worshipping in churches, and the school children and their teachers; for his doctors and nurses, and for all those who simply cared and tried to do something nice for others. Their kindness and strength reminded him of all things he’d been losing faith in. It gave him hope that for all the wrongness, all wasn’t lost.

That was the America he’d been taught to honor as a boy. Those were its people. They were worthy of love and sacrifice. The politicos and uppity blowhards, they were just parasites who were good for nothing but stirring up dissention and attacking the very people who made their world possible. And though such parasites were loud, so loud that the earth seemed utterly polluted with their noise and the darkness they peddled, their punishment was that they had to go through their lives as themselves. They lacked the capacity to see and treasure the silent grace of good people. They were the living dead.

The love grew into a ruthless sense of protectiveness. With it came a new and cleaner version of anger and contempt, directed not just at the military bureaucracy or the various other thorns in his side, but at the ugliness that had hit him in the face the second he’d returned to the States and offered a Death by a Thousand Cuts courtesy of the media. The cheap idolatry it pushed was a pretender culture that had been pasted haphazardly over the true one; the one that still stood for things, and was tended and handed down by a remnant of Americans who seemed to be made out of heart. They deserved a country that still cherished them.

Walton closed the door behind him and sat in front of the psychiatrist, Dr. Janik. Walton was suspicious of psychiatry. He thought it had many compelling insights to offer, however, he objected to it posing as science. He also thought its practitioners all too often served as modern day witch doctors in the service of various interests. However, he did like nice, squared-away people, and his Shrink was just such a person.

Dr. Janik was a gray-haired man of an age with his parents. He had the gentle manner that Walton had come to associate with the hospital staff, but there was a presence to Dr. Janik; a calm awareness that suggested to Walton that even though he was trying to appraise his patients’ feelings and behavior, whatever he found would be filtered through a sense of loyalty toward them. For all of that, it still seemed odd to Walton that men like Dr. Janik and old First Sergeant Wade could be from the same Army. The Shrink hadn’t made him to do push-ups once. He even permitted eye-contact. First Sergeant Wade would have killed a Joe and buried his ass out in the Ranger Rocks for that sort of thing. The old man had gone to great lengths to cultivate discipline and good morale in Alpha Company.

“Hello, Walton.”

“Afternoon, Sir.”

“Do you know why you’re here?”

“Not really, Sir.”

“Well, your social worker was concerned about you. She said you’ve been looking withdrawn lately.”

Walton shrugged with a smile. “I suppose so. I ain’t gonna jump off any bridges or anything, though.”

Dr. Janik laughed. “I didn’t think you would. You know, what impressed me the most about you was that you have a pluckiness about you. Now, though, you seem a lot more quiet. Is something on your mind?”

Walton saw an opportunity to gain some leverage and an ally and took it. “I guess a lot of it has to do with gettin’ Leave,” he replied, and suddenly wished he didn’t have to talk. He resigned himself to the fact that Dr. Janik was a genuinely good man who was there to help him. “My life is sorta on hold right now. I’d like to make plans for Leave, but I can’t because no one wants to give me a date I can lean on. Meanwhile, I have to stand around in those stupid accountability formations for outpatients. We have four a day, you know. They’re wastin’ my time, Sir.”

Dr. Janik nodded. “They used to not have those but some soldiers were getting drunk all the time and missing appointments.”

Walton leaned forward like a compressed spring. “Yeah, but I ain’t that kinda guy. I make all my appointments. I want out, and it seems the fastest way is to play ball.” He paused, looking down at his flip-flops.

“Also…it hurts to know I’ll never be a hundred percent again.” He met Dr. Janik’s gaze again and the words spilled out. “The guy who said, ‘Time heals all wounds,’ was full of shit, if you’ll excuse my language, Sir. No matter how much I heal, I’ll never be completely better. My body is about the best it’s ever gonna be and it’ll only get worse until I die. And that’s just a fact.”

“That’s a hard thing to know,” Dr. Janik said with a sad, knowing smile. “Sounds like you’re dealing with things that most twenty and thirty-year-olds don’t have to deal with. Most people don’t learn that stuff until they’re my age. When I climb the stairs, my knees kill me, and I think, ‘Damn, this sucks. I’m getting old.’”

“Yeah, that’s it.” Walton swallowed a lump in his throat. Old. “You know, my folks came up recently. They told me about my great-uncle who’s goin’ through Alzheimer’s. I think maybe the day will come when they won’t recognize me. Then there’s the business of them calling and tellin’ me things like, ‘We sure are glad you’re okay! We’re just so happy The Lord had His hand on you!’ I appreciate their sentiment and all, but what about Espinoza and Lanagan? They only want to give God the good credit, if He exists at all, meanwhile there’s this world full of ugliness and pain.”

Sadness and anger tried to overpower him in turns. Walton fought to gain control over himself by focusing on his breathing as he felt the doctor’s eyes upon him. It was all bigger than he was.

Everything changed. He couldn’t hold onto anything, even his own body. Everything he could dare to know, or have, or love, he would lose one way or another, regardless of his best efforts. It was simply a matter of time. He gave his head an abrupt shake and forced an affable expression. “Sorry, I’m ramblin’.”

“No, you’re fine,” Dr. Janik said in a reassuring tone as he leaned forward. He gave a damn and couldn’t keep it out of his voice. “Tom, those are all valid things you feel.”

Walton felt like the fracture inside him was visible and hoped Dr. Janik didn’t press the issue. To break down in broad daylight in front of someone would just be embarrassing.

Something passed across the psychiatrist’s face, and Walton thought the man understood.

“So, what are your plans after the Army?”

Walton sighed with relief at the doctor’s deft change of subject. “I think I’m gonna travel ‘round the world.”

“Ahh, that sounds like a hell of a lot of fun. How long are you planning to be gone?”

“I don’t know.”

The feeling of relief passed and Walton wanted to stop talking. However, he feared that silence would only draw more attention to himself. There were things going on inside him that he needed to explore and work out on his own. He was afraid the Army would probably try to anesthetize them away with drugs and want to hold onto him even tighter than they already seemed to.

“I’m not too sure I belong here anymore.” He gave himself a mental thumbs-up for his ability to make his voice sound firm and in-control, with just enough vulnerability to make the storm inside him sound like a mild thing that would casually pass. He would give them enough to know he was “self-aware,” but he’d be damned if he’d give them all the goods. A fella had to keep something for himself.

“Just talkin’ to most people on the phone makes me feel like an alien. Things seemed simpler when it was just a matter of trying not to die and lookin’ forward to goin’ home.” A wave of guilt threaded through his mind. He hadn’t even killed anybody; why was he such a pussy about this shit?

“A lot of soldiers feel that way. You know, the last time I saw you, you were reading Gone With the Wind . Are you still reading it?”

“No, I finished it.” He grinned shyly as his negativity faded a little. “I have a friend in Canada who sent me some books. She kinda has a penchant for modern Canadian literature so I’ve been gettin’ a taste of something new.”

The nurse left Walton alone in his new room a few days later after the latest in the battery of surgeries attempting salvage his hand. The room was dark, and he was relieved that he didn’t have a roommate in whom he had to pretend an interest. He liked it better when he could enjoy the isolation by himself. Sometimes the staff would round up who they could into groups to talk about their experiences, the result of which resembled the Monday morning after the fall of Troy, and it just reminded Walton of how ugly the situation was.

He felt it much more dignified to just zone out solo, and his rapidly developing sense of entitlement gave him the green light. He was tired but could not bring himself to sleep or watch unremarkable television, choosing instead to look at the street lights that glowed with a blue halo outside his window.

He felt wrung out. Body and soul. In the vague lucidity that had been dawning since he’d awakened in Post-Op, he could still feel the hazy melancholy of the anesthesia washing through his system. He pressed the button on his Morphine regulator to give him the allotted dosage and he wished it wouldn’t restrict him from having another for a half hour or so. He felt an impulse to see how much he could get in his blood. He missed oblivion. He wanted to be consumed by it.

Shortly after the anesthesiologist had injected the goods in Pre-Op, he’d felt it take hold of him and he had wanted to laugh as he’d soaked up the sensation of being gradually overwhelmed into nothingness. He’d grinned like a kid at Christmas at the prospect of becoming comfortably numb. They had told him that a part of him would be aware during the procedure but that he wouldn’t remember the pain. He’d reveled in the magic of those words. Not remember the pain .

Once in the operating room, the nurses and the anesthesiologist had been cheerful in a way that had been contagious. They had asked if he had any requests for music for them to play while they were getting him ready. Creedence Clearwater Revival soon came softly out of nowhere and he’d smiled as they had put warm blankets on him. He’d wished that he could’ve stayed in that moment with the bliss and the freedom from the tamped-down lightning that melted his brain during his usual waking hours.

The doctor had entered at some point and had begun to go to work. He’d grabbed the fixator by the rod that ran parallel with Walton’s forearm and had flung it to the side to begin work. Walton had watched his limp arm fly demonically in a long, fast arc under the efficient hands of the doctor and he’d been horrified at the sight. He’d asked them to wait until he was completely out, then he’d swallowed the shame that had pulsed through him at hearing the shadow of panic in his voice. Things had faded soon after, but in no time he woke crying in Post-Op, inexplicably and wordlessly broken-hearted by the fact of his existence.

Thoughts returned to him as he lay alone in the darkness. They reclaimed his mind and caused him to compulsively press the button on the Morphine regulator again in vain. He knew full well it wouldn’t yield a dose for another ten minutes, but that didn’t stop him from trying.

What was it about the drugs? What was it that made them better than the booze, and porn, and all the other substitutes that he’d grabbed hold of to fill the sense of waste? Perhaps it was because they stopped the part of his brain that thought, and wished, and knew deep down that there was something better than what passed for living.

In his drug-induced delirium, he reflexively reached out for a lifeline and picked up the phone, listening for the dial tone to see if he had any messages from Amy on his voice mail. The phone was silent.

Rage took him as he specifically remembered telling the nurses about his room change and requesting to have his phone activated. He feared Amy had called and he’d missed it. The room seemed to grow darker and the solitude more oppressive, as if what dragged him down inside had found a way to escape, and now sought to crush him from outside as well. It had gone in for the kill by removing the only connection that permitted him a way out of his shit life. He smashed the corpse phone unrelentingly into its cradle over and over, wishing and hoping that if he hit it hard enough it would bleed.

The noise attracted a nurse who appeared in the doorway with the stance of an angry mother, hands planted firmly on her hips. “Sergeant Walton, what are you doing?” she demanded with a faint Jamaican accent coming from her dark face.

His eyes held their anger, and though he tried to be polite, his voice came out as a hard growl. “They didn’t turn on my phone like I asked ‘em to, Ma’am!”

“I’m sorry to hear that, Sergeant, but there’s nothing to be done about it now, and breaking the phone certainly won’t help.” She was having none of his bullshit, but there was concern in her tone. Both qualities made Walton like her enough to not want to give her any more trouble. She went on to ask with a hint of Jedi Mind Trick, “Why don’t you lay down and go to sleep?”

“Because I can’t!”

“Would you like me to bring something to help you rest?”

He wanted to kiss her full on the mouth. “Please?”

Walton answered the phone by his bed at the Malogne House and bolted fully awake at the jubilant drunkenness. Fuan and Dechico were on Rear Detachment at Ft. Drum, and they were calling to let him know The Battalion was coming home. The next day, Walton bought a plane ticket for the weekend and prepared to go off the reservation.

“Holy Shit! Sergeant Walton!” exclaimed Gonzo.

“Hey Gonzo,” Walton replied with a smile as he took a seat on the CQ desk. “What are you doing here? I figured you’d be comin’ in with the rest of the guys.”

“They sent me back a few weeks ago for Pre-Ranger. What about you, Sergeant, are you back for good?”

“Goddamn! Motherfuckin’ Sergeant Walton!” yelled Dechico as he approached with Fuan. “What’re you doing here?”

Walton wondered when they had painted the walls blue. “I came to see the boys return. Y’all don’t tell anyone, but I’m kinda AWOL right now. Just for the weekend, though.”

Dechico grinned. “Proper.”

“So what’s the deal with y’all? You had your knee surgery yet?”

“Fuck no. I’ve just been pushing Cherries around and painting the fuckin’ walls.” He then elbowed Fuan, who stood with a few tender-looking patches on his face. “Fu here’s been healing after him and Carasquay accidentally almost blew themselves the fuck up while they were searching a fuckin’ room with lit cigarettes that turned out to have a bunch of gunpowder and shit for IED’s in it. Here, check this shit out…”

After a brief tour surveying the changes in the barracks, they wound up at Dechico’s room, where a fridge full of beer awaited Second. Dobbs joined them and they began drinking like it was going out of style.

“Hey, brother, you don’t know how bad me and Dechico wished we were there when you guys got into it at Miam Do,” Dobbs said as he leaned back against the futon.

Walton shrugged. “Fuck it, man. What’s done is done. Y’all did your time.”

“I know,” Dobbs replied with a face that looked in on itself. “But sometimes I feel like Espinoza took my place. I think sometimes it should’ve been me instead.”

Walton groped for words. “I had a lot of buddies who ETS’ed before we deployed to Afghanistan and a lot of them wished they had been there too. It just wasn’t in the cards. Besides, there’s always gonna be some fight somewhere.”

He got up and retrieved a fresh beer, trying to think of a way to put his fellow sergeant at ease. “You know, Dobbs, I used to be intimidated by you when you first came to the platoon. You were all Alpha Male and shit. Especially with the Joes. A lot of the NCO’s used to use you as an example.”

Dobbs left his reflections and a clarity possessed his face. “I just didn’t want there to be any confusion about who was in charge. I didn’t want them to get killed by some Haji over some stupid shit.”

“I know what you mean.” Walton grabbed a nearby towel and wound it around his head like a Haji turban. “You know, it’s funny, at one point, I actually found myself hating Hajis. I know they’re people and shit, but I resented the fuck out of them, their culture, everything.”

He flexed the muscles in his jaw and remembered one night in the hospital when he had watched the news with his mom. There had been a story of a little Afghan girl who had just lost her family and her legs to a land mine. He had then recalled the story of a young Japanese girl named Sadako Sasaki who had died on the threshold of adolescence from Leukemia brought on from the effects of the bomb on Hiroshima. From her bed in the hospital, she had embarked on a heroic attempt to try to make one thousand origami cranes in order to be granted one wish by the gods. Paper had been scarce, but that hadn’t stopped her. She’d used whatever she could fold, and when people found out, they’d mailed paper cranes to her. She had once said in her all too brief life, “I will write peace on your wings and you will fly all over the world.”

Walton had suddenly seen the faces of all the smiling children who had waved at him while on patrol and had made him proud to be a soldier and a human being trying to protect their lives and what innocence growing up in a war zone hadn’t already stolen from them.

In that moment, he’d known that somewhere out there, one of them had just lost her world. Not only would she never again kneel to pray, or run, or jump, or climb a tree, but when she became a woman she would also never know what it felt like to feel her husband’s legs entwined with her own, or to walk to a crib to pick up her baby. She would never hear her parents’ voices again. The world had robbed a child of something beautiful, and it had become a shade darker with the loss.

No matter how righteous the cause, how important the need for justice, or how glorious the triumphs, modern war meant children being broken and killed. And there was no way to protect them all.

“I hate them, Mom,” he had said as he’d watched the TV; not with anger, but rather sadness, because he’d known it was true. “I don’t hate them for fightin’ us. I’m a big boy and we’re at war and that’s how it goes. But they started the firefight in a village with a bunch of women and children around. I even heard they had a baby in the compound where they fought us. Someone told me that after we dropped a JDAM on the place it had been buried under the rubble. When they went in to pull out the bodies they found it. It was alive, but they think the concussion may have made it deaf. A baby , Mom. Who starts fights around their women and children?”

At that point he broke down in a way he hadn’t around her since he was a child. Tears smashed the dam and fell violently, not only for the nameless little girl in the news story, but at the something inside him that had died when he wasn’t looking and had left a hole where a demon supernova lived in its place. “I didn’t want to hate anyone, Mom, but it’s there…I don’t understand it.”

Walton adjusted the turban, devoured his beer, and grabbed another. “When I was at the airport, I actually found myself wantin’ to search anyone who looked remotely like one. They paged some ‘Mohammed’ guy and I almost went for my Black List.”

Dobbs stared off angrily toward the same feeling. “Fuck a Punjabi. I hate those fucks.”

Dechico played their old drinking music and they lightened up, then beat the hell out of the furniture. Gonzo and Fuan got too drunk to function and went to their rooms. Dobbs sat with a thousand-yard stare playing Toby Keith’s American Soldier on repeat in the dim, broken room, and Dechico left to use his cell phone.

Walton took leave of them and called Amy on the pay phone. He left a drunken message in which he wished her the best of luck at a film festival where she volunteered for the week. He then walked back to his room to go to bed.

A private slept in Speedo’s bunk. Walton wondered if he was in the right room. The confusion passed with the realization that his old roommate wouldn’t ever be coming back. Speedo and Lanagan had died far from home months ago. They had made their exits, leaving an empty stage where two young men had been.

Standing in the doorway, he saw the paper he had taped to the outside of his wall locker. It had been a warning for the Cherries who would be billeted in their room while they were deployed. Walton laughed at the memory of writing it with Speedo. It read:

You may be living in our room until we return, but know this: if our room is altered in any way, shape, or form, we will smoke you until you are shitting blood and seeing the fucking Easter Bunny. Go ahead and think we’re playing.

He opened his locker for the first time in almost nine months and removed the plastic baggie taped to the inside. He broke the seal and pulled out an envelope with the words, “Mom and Dad,” written boldly on the front in his old penmanship, which was to have been found by the soldiers who would have cleaned out his locker had he died. After tearing it open, he removed the two Death Letters and re-read them. One was to his parents. The other was to Amy.

Walton stood outside Cold Storage the next day and watched Alpha Company ground their gear as though they were just returning from a field exercise and not their turn in the current war. He walked in their direction and spent five minutes shaking hands and back-slapping until he was greeted by a voice outside of his peripheral vision that he hadn’t heard since Afghanistan.

He turned to look at his squad leader with a grin. To Walton, the man always seemed as if they’d just thawed his ass out from WWII. “Sergeant Bronson. How the hell are you doin’?”

“I’m livin’,” Sergeant Bronson replied. “Come here.” Walton followed him a few steps away from the formation. “So what’s goin’ on with you?”

“Not much. Just holdin’ down hospital beds for the most part. They had a fixator in my arm and when they took it out there was so much blood it looked like they blew up a small dog. Aside from that, shit’s been dull. What about y’all? What happened after I left?” Walton had heard the details of how Miam Do had played out from numerous second and third-hand sources, but he wanted to hear it from Sergeant Bronson.

A fierce light entered the squad leader’s eyes. “Sarge put some rounds downrange, that’s what the fuck happened. Smokey had to pull me back. The ANA pushed through and lost three guys. The XO, me, O’Falin, and a few others went in through the roof and got Lanagan out. Heslich’s squad got sent in and Espinoza was up front. Haji shot him through the door like they did you. The rounds hit his ammo pouch and fucked him up. Desilva got hit by shrapnel from a frag. Here, I got something for you.” He rifled through a pocket in his DCU top and produced a string of pale blue beads matching the one tied around his wrist in defiance of the regulations. “This is a gift from Mr. Kudah Nahr of the Miam Do Valley.”

“That’s the man that shot you. I took them from him when we dragged the bodies out. I thought you’d probably want to keep them.”

Walton later looked over the crowd in the bleachers at the gym for familiar faces, then heard his name yelled by a voice originating from a person he’d only seen in pictures, but who had indirectly determined the emotional climate of the world he’d lived in for years.

“Mrs. Bronson! It’s nice to finally meet you!”

“It’s good to meet you, too!” she replied with an exuberant New Jersey accent. “I’m sorry we didn’t get you the stripper-gram. Jim said to get you one, but I couldn’t find any for the life of me. I decided to get you the candy gift basket instead. Was it okay?”

“Yes, Ma’am. I’m gonna fool around and get fat off it.”

After a brief conversation, he took a seat with Dechico. Fifteen minutes later, The Battalion marched in. Tall and proud. When the band played The Star-Spangled Banner , Walton got goose-bumps. Though he had respected the national anthem in a passive way growing up, after having spent the past four years sweating and bleeding alongside American infantrymen, the song meant much more.

While some of The Brass talked briefly, Walton located Alpha Company, Second Platoon. He smiled with pride for them and the things they had done, and how he’d seen complete strangers get forged into a tribe willing to kill and die for each other. He remembered when he was a Cherry and Sergeant Sandlin would randomly stare him down in the hall and how Sergeant Bronson had called him “New Guy” for the first six months. He remembered the feeling of being a twenty-three-year-old Joe and going on his first deployment with men who at some point became his brothers; returning to watch a whole new crop of Cherries fill the ranks and go downrange, then come out the other side as battle-tested soldiers.

He watched them standing on the gym floor in their DCU’s, then noticed himself in civilian clothes. It dawned on him that the distance between him and his old unit was more than a few meters. They would continue to perform the tasks of infantry soldiers while he never would again. He was a part of a Second Platoon that was passing. He still looked forward to his freedom, and he hoped it would one day come, but he still felt a sadness from the knowledge that he was near the end of something that he had come to treasure in a way that he’d never be able to explain to those who had not lived it with him.