I have a girlfriend now. She’s smart enough not to ask much, to listen when I need to talk, and to shut me up when I don’t. I told her about most things—about the war, my family, me—in the weeks after I said “I love you.” The honesty seems good for us.
The night at the church was over a year ago. The dead are buried, the fingers long gone, but I haven’t told her about it. It’s not that I don’t want to, or that I don’t think she’ll understand. I just can’t lie. Not to her. If I start to tell her about the church I have to tell her about the morgue, and if I’m talking about the morgue I have to tell her about the bodies, about how soft the skin looked. I’d have to tell her how delicate it felt, the flaps and strips of epidermal evulsion, about how the skin, pulled tight, had the taut strength of a canvas tent, but was little more than shredded silk when loosed.
I would have to tell her that all bodies are the same. I would have to tell her that the chubby corpse slumped over a pew, the terrorist bits rotting on a blue tarp, and the naked girl in my bed are no different. Whether frozen in the rictus of death or gasping in ecstasy, a body is a body is a body. When she lays beside me I’m back at the morgue, piecing together what-ifs. Hers are comforting curves that remind me what flesh has to offer: thighs for my palm to follow, hair to be bunched and tugged, hands to hold and knead and trust.
My finger traces lazy circles around her navel, with every touch and tickle confirming that her body is complete, her skin without tear. I try to forget but I know too much, know what lies beneath. Remembering that subcutaneous surprise, my pulse races in charnel anticipation. It begins this way, now. Soon my nails will be digging in, riding the fine line between rough and hurt. She’ll hiss when my scratch becomes a cut, shake her head, No! when my fingers are too tight around her throat. My hands will obey because they know it’s not the time.
I have a girlfriend now. We know the rainbow she’s hiding inside.
WE PUT A MAN IN A TREE
by Matthew J. Hefti
We are all ghosts.
We all vie for attention in different ways, but one thing is common among us: we cannot speak unless we ask questions.
Nadir is seven. She wears a white nightgown with a darkened red tummy. Elegant, like the flag of Japan.
Ray is eighty-two. Three grey hairs are combed over his splotchy forehead. He never stops smiling with gritted teeth. No one came and saw him in the home.
We all carry scars. We all have burdens. We are all bitter and unforgiving.
I, for my part, am heavy laden. I’m the one stuck in this kit, in this thirty-seven pounds of body armor, ammunition, and pogey bait. My eye pro is cocked halfway on my face, shards still stuck in what’s left of my bad eye. My helmet strap is still cinched too tight. But the worst part is this: I can never close my good eye.
We are all seen in the light of our last moment. We swallow families, and we eat lives, and we crush dreams, and we eat the fire that lived in the stomachs of our youth; because for those things to live, we need answers. But not one of us has the answers. We have only the questions.
JJ, our protagonist, was a war veteran. He got out after a relatively long and regular career in the infantry. Four tours, two each to Iraq and Afghanistan, each relatively undistinguished, despite what his medal citations say.
We have always existed for him. That’s part of what’s so sad.
Tonight we chase him. When he has nowhere else to go, JJ stands at the foot of a tree at the end of the forest sniveling and whimpering, “What have I done?”
Blood covers his blue and white striped button up. The backs of his hands are covered in slick, cold blood. His right elbow is particularly bloody. By the time he is three branches up, his finger pads are as chewed and bloody as his knuckles.
Spatters of glistening red reflect the shimmer of the moon in his greying beard. We mock him. We call out, “Did you think it could be that easy?” and “Did you think we were gone for good?”
Earlier tonight, he sat at the Wichita Brewing Company at a high table near the bar with some guys from his new church. The chairman of the board of elders, a nice enough guy, cracked a lewd joke. He said, “Bet you heard a lot of that in the army.”
JJ smiled and sipped his beer. He was often uncomfortable around people he didn’t know well, and since leaving the service, he was plagued by doubts that he’d ever know anyone well again. The new terrain was unrecognizable. His girls had left. One in college. One watching kids at a home for the disadvantaged. Another an attorney who cut him off with a restraining order. His wife began pursuing her career for the first time in fifteen years. Dental hygienistry. JJ had just moved for the sixth time since getting out. He had been following his girls and wife around, trying to patch things up. Roots were impossible.
He left the men at the table to go to what he now thought of as the pisser, what he once knew as the latrine. We pestered him as he washed his hands. It was Grandpa Ray who asked the questions, always with that loony smile on his face. “How long can you keep faking this?” and “What are you doing with your life?” and “Do you even like these people?”
JJ wiped paper towel over his beard. “Good Lord,” he said. “It’s like I’m having an identity crisis every time I look in the mirror.”
It’s always easier for us when he’s alone.
Take, for example, how he treated those kids of his when he was younger. He’d walk up those creaking stairs from his basement study, lay eyes on those girls cuddled on the couch under the same blanket—nothing but blond hair and blue eyes peering back at him, giggles muffled underneath the fabric. While the two youngest were mimeographs of their mother, the oldest was a mirror: eyebrows, nose, teeth, questions, cynicism, and not a small bit of despair. And she was only eight at the time. We knew she’d be the first to cut him off.
He would drop to his knees in front of them and stare, tears welling in his eyes. He would say things like, “You itty bitties. You three little old biddies will love each other, want to kill each other, grow old together, and drive your husbands batty together. And I won’t get to see any of it.”
Yet it was as if, for those moments, he was living in the future. The problem was, of course, we didn’t know if he liked how that future looked or not. We doubted ourselves back then, but in retrospect, it seems as if he knew all along that we’d win. It was almost as if he welcomed it.
Even after he got out, he was fine for a while. He had his own schedule. He did whatever he wanted, and what he wanted to do was what he did for a living back then. A little writing, a little editing, some extra schooling. He still had those three teenage itty bitties, of course, who still kissed him on his now thickly bearded cheek in front of their friends. He had that lithe and driven wife, who would still take showers with him, purposefully rub her nipples against his arm, and laugh when he reached down to touch her. The two would have a few drinks and smoke a little weed on the weekends, and they never laughed so much together.
But, of course, we saw him all the time. We saw him when he took showers alone. We saw him when he took six hours to do something that should have taken two. We saw him sit in his car for ten minutes in every parking lot before he’d take three deep breaths and plunge into the store like it was the cold ocean. It was evident to anyone who looked closely that his seams were quaking.
We didn’t understand him, but then again, we have all lost our capacity to empathize. We decided to wait and watch. Surely, we thought, he will at some point have his legs hacked out from under him. It happens to everyone.
The wait has been long. We didn’t mind until now. After all, a quick bloody battle is better than no battle, but a slow bloody battle is best.
But now, we have grown too hungry.
Without answers, we all have someone for whom we want to be a long and enduring portrait of guilt.
When he left the bathroom, X stopped him. X was a kid at his new church, maybe twenty-one years old.
X is what he called himself with no hint of
irony. It was a name that fit his face and the sparse goatee he liked to stroke. The free black hair on his head that tumbled to his shoulders.
X was drunk, and he patted JJ’s chest. It took JJ a moment to recognize the belligerent youth, but when he did, he invited him to the table.
“After I empty the snake,” said X, pointing to the pisser.
Later, he swaggered up. Although uncouth, he was chummy. He said hello to everyone, shook everyone’s hands, got some more names wrong, but then he said them aloud so as not to forget in the future.
The rest of the men left because it was awkward on account of how X was so wasted. They patted on their bellies, and they said things like, “Moderation in all things.”
We all hissed. How dreadfully boring of them.
When only JJ and X remained, the kid spilled his guts. He told JJ how much he admired him, his unassuming manner, his ability to command respect, and then he started apologizing.
He said, “I just can’t shake it. I feel so guilty all the time.”
“First of all,” JJ said. “I’m nothing to look up to. I’m nothing more than a drifter who can’t command the respect of his own family.”
“Yeah, but people are scared of you, dude.”
“Scared? I stock shelves at a Home Depot. What’s there to be scared of?” JJ frowned, as if this was a revelation.
“Like, I feel guilty now because I was drunk in front of all those church people, and I’m drunk in front of you. And you’re probably all like, ‘Yeah, this drunk kid is weird. Really weird.’ Right? But I ask you this, Mr. J—can I call you Mr. J?”
“Call me JJ, please.”
“How about Sergeant J? I should do that. Thank you for your service. Let me buy you a beer.”
“That’s not really necessary.”
He ordered two beers.
“Sergeant J—JJ, I’m sorry. I’m really sorry to be wasted in front of you. It’s like, I know I have to be better, but I’m so bored. And I know, I’m weird.”
“Stop apologizing to me,” JJ said, growing a bit exasperated, even annoyed. “And how are you weird? You seem like every other twenty-one-year-old kid I’ve ever known.”
“Twenty-two,” X said. “And I don’t feel I can tell you.” He looked down into his beer for a long time. “But then again,” he said. “I feel you’d understand. The thing is, I still have my V-card. That’s why I’m weird. I’m twenty-two and still have my V-card.”
Over and over the kid apologized, and JJ said, “Stop it. That’s great. I stand in awe of you. You really don’t have to apologize. I’ve been there.”
We jumped in, of course, and asked, “How is he not weird?” and “How can you really say you’ve been there?” and “What exactly was he insinuating when he said you’d understand?” and “Did he really just say that to you?”
The next thing JJ said was, “But like, you’ve at least gotten a blow job, right?”
“Oh yeah,” the kid said. “Yeah, of course. I’ve done stuff. And it’s not like I haven’t had the opportunity to do more. Trust me, I have. I’ve had lots of opportunities. But I’m dealing with a lot of guilt here.”
“Sure, I get that. You should be proud of your discipline.” JJ said this last line with a raised eyebrow, as if he didn’t believe it himself.
X said, “It’s like, all I’m trying to figure out is how to have fun, be a good guy, and not be wasted all the time.”
JJ cracked a smile. “Dude. I’ve spent the better part of two decades trying to figure that out. Trust me; I don’t judge.”
“You might not judge, but you also won’t help.” The kid put his head down on the table. “Oh, what am I doing?” he moaned.
“Let me give you a ride home.”
We could all tell by the way he said it that JJ didn’t really want the kid to accept the offer. Pro forma is what that was.
“Yeah. That’s a good idea,” X said into his arm.
JJ sighed. “Up and at ’em. Let’s go.” He left enough cash on the table for both of them.
“I was supposed to go home with a buddy.” X stumbled over to a table near the wood burning oven, and he bent over to talk to a pale kid with sharp features and red hair.
We call him Ginger.
JJ went over to the bartender as he waited. Without equivocation, the bartender said, “They are not okay to drive.”
JJ walked over and told X that he’d give rides to both of them. “You hear that, Ginger? I’m sober. I’ll give you both a ride.”
The kid nodded. “Sure, pops.”
In the parking lot, JJ pointed toward his own beat up minivan, in which he had been sleeping more nights than he would have liked. Ginger kept walking.
“Hey, what are you doing?” JJ shouted. “You can’t drive. Let me help you.”
By then, Ginger was in the driver’s seat of his Pontiac Firebird. X was trying to get to the passenger door, and he almost made it. He got the door open, but Ginger squealed back, not bothering to stop for X, who tumbled to the ground.
JJ ran up. “Are you hurt?” He pulled out his phone. “Did you get his license plate? What kind of car was it? At least give me that.”
X was hurt, but not badly. “I don’t know, man. I can’t tell any of those white trash cars apart.”
We asked JJ, “Are you sure you really want to call the cops?” and “Aren’t you secretly glad he doesn’t know what kind of car it was?” and “Isn’t it enough that you tried?”
JJ slipped his phone back into his pocket. He put his hand on the back of X’s neck, a fraternal gesture. “You’re coming with me.”
X gave him directions to the place, which was all the way on the other side of town. “I’m sorry it’s so far,” X said.
“It’s okay, bud. I really don’t mind.”
For the whole drive, the kid talked about joining the military. “I think I want to go spec ops. I can almost pass the swimming test. What do you think?”
“What do I think about what?”
“I dunno. Anything. What do you think about what I’m doing with my life? I mean, I’m like in my twenties. I don’t have college, and I don’t have a girlfriend. All I have is a job that sucks.”
“And a V-card,” JJ said.
“I knew I shouldn’t have told you.” The kid flipped down the visor and looked into the mirror.
“Can I talk you out of all this?”
“So I know I’m not supposed to ask this,” X said. “But like, since we’re talking about all this—and I really do know I’m not supposed to ask this, so know that I know that—but have you ever killed anyone?”
We don’t know why JJ chose to answer the question that time. Maybe he wanted to look cool. We debated it for a while and determined it was the same paternal instinct that had driven him to give the kid a ride home. Perhaps he thought he was imparting wisdom.
“Yes.”
“For real?”
“Yes, I’ve killed someone. Someones.”
“Oh shit,” the kid said. “Oh, I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m really really sorry. I shouldn’t be swearing like that in front of the guy from church. Pardon my French.”
We don’t know if X was listening to him, but JJ began saying stuff like, “You’re forgiven,” and “Don’t be so hard on yourself,” and “Please stop apologizing,” and “You really don’t want to kill anyone. I promise it’s not that special.”
We don’t really know if that’s all he said. We weren’t really listening either. We knew better.
“But did you like it?” X asked. “Do you miss it?”
We all thought these were very penetrating questions, necessary even. We would have asked them ourselves if we would have thought they would do more harm than good.
“Yes. I liked it. Yes. I miss it.”
“So then why’d you leave?”
“Maybe I only like—or liked it in retrospect, because we don’t know the good things in our lives until we experience something worse. Then we’re reminded o
f how good we had it then, back then when then was the present and now was the future. Perhaps I didn’t like it after all. But I do miss it.” JJ lit a cigarette and cracked the window.
“Shit. You smoke? The church guy smokes?”
“It’s a difficult thing to sort out. It’s more complicated than most people think, this choosing to fight in a war.”
“Well, tell me why. Tell me what it’s like. Tell me how it feels. Tell me what you do every day, or what you did, anyway. Like, was it fucking significant for you?”
“Yes,” we cried out, not as an answer, but as the prelude to a leading question. “Yes, because aren’t you anything but significant now?” and “Do you affect anyone anymore?”
“Was it significant?” JJ asked himself. At this point, with nothing to show for any of his time since he had left the army, and with the news from overseas getting bloodier and more depressing every day, he had no answer. “I don’t know,” he said truthfully. “At the time I thought it was significant. It still feels like it was significant.”
“So then why’d you leave? What does anyone want besides that?”
“Because I don’t think it was significant. I guess I just felt something that was something like disillusionment. And back then, it wouldn’t have mattered what anyone said. I could not be talked out of leaving.”
“Kind of like for me now?” X said as he flipped the visor back up.
“Yeah, I guess,” JJ whispered. He put his cigarette out in an empty pop can.
He pulled over across the street from where X was staying.
“Now, I want you to call me anytime,” JJ said. “If you need a ride, if you need to get bailed out, if you need anything at all, give me a shout.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”
“Don’t yeah, yeah, yeah me. Just do it. Now, everyone needs help sometimes, and I’m reaching out to help. Don’t be so dismissive.”
The Road Ahead Page 22
