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It begins as a low rumble in the distance, as darkness beds down for night. The clouds infiltrate the purple sky in shredded silver columns, preceding the massing bulkhead. The clapboard house across the street lights up in the flash of God’s Instamatic. ”One one thousand, two one…” My count is interrupted by thunder like fireworks exploding in the upstairs room. Then sirens, first a fire engine, then an ambulance. Cop cars and taxi cabs are all that I can see drive past.
Another flash. ”One one thousand, two…” Another round of fireworks, just a little louder than the last, and I feel the first droplet, on my right ankle, exposed as it’s crossed over my left thigh. I look down at the suicidal raindrop on my ankle and a second droplet shatters on my nape. I drag on my cigarette. I exhale a cloud just thinner than the approaching thunderhead and toss the butt into the street. I stand up. I pick up my aluminum and nylon lawn chair and fold it up. I put the folded chair under my arm, and walk up the steps. I knock on the heavy steel screen door and look up into the mirror above the door. I hear a loud buzz and the door comes open with a thud, like dropping an aluminum baseball bat on a linoleum floor. I open the unlocked wooden door behind the screen. I bring myself and my chair inside, and close the wooden door behind me. I lean my chair just to the right of the door jamb and sit on the sofa under the stairs. I hear the heavy steel screen door thud shut and lock again.
I lay across the couch, my head on the armrest farthest from the door, my knees hooked over the other armrest, feet hanging over the side. I interlock the fingers of my hands and put them behind my head. I swing my feet in gentle alternating rhythm against the couch’s vinyl upholstery. I drum the pads of my interlocked fingers against the knuckles opposite. The couch is too short for my whole torso, so I’m bent at the waist and the hammer of my pistol is poking into my gut. I take the gun out of my waistband and set it on my belly, on top of my shirt. Another roar of thunder, the sound of God hitting a broken bat home run. It sounds so much farther away through the heavy wooden door. The cold seems so much farther away. The storm is here but I am warm and dry. My eyelids weigh a kilo each. I close my eyes.
I dream I’m in the home dugout of my high school baseball field. There’s a game going on, but I’m in the dugout. Coach has me by the lapels of my blue and silver varsity jacket. He’s yelling at me. He’s throwing me onto the field. I’m taking off my jacket and grabbing my glove and I’m running out to right field. The grass is dried yellow green and the sky is cloudless white gray. The batter seems a mile away. The pitcher winds up and delivers. The tiny batter swings, and connects, and the ball is flying towards me, its creamy white leather invisible as it rises against the milky sky. The crack of the bat reaches my ears.
I’m awake and the heavy wood door is splinters flying at me. I cover my face with my forearms and roll into the back of the couch. The gun slips from my belly and is pinned against the sofa. I turn my head and see black helmets and black machine guns and black gloves and black boots and black flack jackets. I’m torn from the sofa, my pistol falls to the floor. I see shag carpeting and feel those heavy boots on my back, on my arms: pinned behind my back. I feel cold metal around my wrists and the hot friction of the marbled brown shag against my face. Upstairs, another crack of the bat, and another and another, closer and smaller than the thunder, sharper, like m80s, like gunshots. I close my eyes.
January 11, 2009
“This is what I wanted. This is where I want to be. I am not afraid.
This is what I wanted. This is where I want to be. I am not afraid.”
I repeat it, again and again as I march. The metal treads of the tank next to me clatter and clang so I can hardly hear my mantra. My pack feels lighter than it did in training, my rifle heavier. I wish it weren’t winter. Why couldn’t we have done this last spring? ”Then I wouldn’t be here,” I think. The wind howls down the street, channeled by columns of empty buildings.
I don’t know how far we have to walk, or where we’ll be when we stop. I know I have to stay next to the tank. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. The tank is American, built like a, well… When shooting starts, I will be safest by the tank.
I think there is a pebble in my right boot. I shook my boots out and ran my hand all along the inside lining before we left. They’re tied so tightly, almost halfway up my calves, how could it have fallen in since? I must have missed it this morning. I was so sleepy, and it was still so dark, I’m lucky I remembered my rifle. My rifle. I look down at it, away from the rooftops of the empty buildings, for just a moment. It is beautiful, the precision of its machining, the ruggedness of the dusty aluminum receiver, the smooth modernity of its plastic stock, the straight, perfectly-round steel barrel… I wish my washing-machine at home was this well-made.
The washing machine leaks. I haven’t done laundry since I got married, but Rachel says it leaks and that she hates that machine, so I have to fix it, so I hate that machine. I don’t know how it leaks, where it comes from. I’ve replaced every gasket, reclamped and checked every hose, it makes no sense. After every load of laundry, there’s a puddle underneath the machine. Rachel forgets and steps in the puddle, and then she yells at me to fix the washing machine.
I exhale and see her in the wisp of steam escaping. Then I hear the sound of the earth opening and the tank is gone and I am prone in a pile of dust and rock and it is raining pieces of the empty buildings and I am deaf. I feel the earth shake again behind me and I turn and see the tank, rocking forward with the recoil of its soot blacked cannon. Another building comes raining down. Now people, running. I see screaming, but I don’t hear anything. Men with guns are taking positions in the rubble opposite, among the girls and kids running away. Positions. Shit. Little bursts of orange fire from the barrels of the men’s guns.
I scramble to my feet, concrete and sand and blood shifting under me as I do, and run ducking to the tank, to shelter. My commanding officer is waiting behind the tank already. He’s yelling at me, but I can’t hear what he’s saying. I point at my right ear and shrug. He understands and tells me in slashing hand-signals to take the alley on our right and flank the next street. I nod.
Leaning my back against the back of the tank, I slide to my left, keeping my head low. I reach the tank’s right tread, squat and turn around. I peak one eye around the tread. They’re gone. Where’d they all go? Shit. My CO looks at me and I shrug. ”Nothing.” I say. I can feel myself talking, feel the vibrations in the bones of my skull, but I don’t hear it. He repeats his slashing hand gestures and shoves me from behind the tank.
I run crouching to the alley. Once there, I move slowly, but purposefully, the sight of my rifle at my right eye, that plastic stock buried in my right shoulder. I sweep the perfectly-round barrel from side to side as my eyes trace the same pattern. I aim at the sky as I look up to check the rooftops. I lower the barrel, my eye still on the sight. I near the end of the alley and press my back up against the far wall. I creep left along the wall like this. At the corner I stop. I lean my head ever so slightly past the safety of the wall. My left eye strains at its peripheral extreme. Another empty street.
I swing the barrel of my gun around the corner. My head follows, attached at the rifle’s sight. My chest and shoulders and right hip come around the corner, exposed. I look up into a face, centered in the sight. A boy’s: wet with tears, muddy in this dust, but not crying now. In the reticule, I see the tiny muscles of his face tighten, his delicate jaw clench. I see his lips move and I hear his voice and he says, “I am not afraid.”
