Just birdshot he'd loaded. In case from the pickup he might see a flock of mallards or snow geese and have the opportunity for a good clear shot—this was a wish of his.
In the TV version Maudie Skedd would arrive in the house on Magnesium Street. Maudie crying and her crimped yellow hair in her face. Maudie on her knees begging forgiveness. Maudie shamed, for all of Ashtree Junction knew of her betrayal. And the Lance Corporal said calmly All that is past Maudie. I am in love with my wife who is the mother of my son. I forgive you Maudie this is my new life now.
In the TV version, a handsome actor like the young Brad Pitt would play the Lance Corporal. For you could not portray the Lance Corporal as the Lance Corporal's actual self which no TV viewers would wish to see and the truth is, the actual Maudie Skedd is twenty pounds overweight and not so great-looking any longer.
If there was the TV version, there would be the Lance Corporal/Daddy with the beautiful little boy too. A little boy not so fretful always sucking his snot forefinger so you wanted to slap him.
The Lance Corporal loved his son more than his own life. The Lance Corporal played video games with Dennie Junior, watched TV cartoons, and repaired his broken toys. The Lance Corporal spent time with his son for the wife was working at Pennysavers at the mall where employees are offered such discounts, you'd be a fool not to take advantage.
Momma-Jeanne came over, also Aunt Sadie, Aunt Bessie, and Grandma-Jeanne. Helping the Lance Corporal with his little boy, for there was the realization This is a transition time for all.
Sometimes they prayed together. The Lance Corporal came to believe that he could sleep a purer sleep after prayer.
The Lance Corporal had killed in the war. The Lance Corporal had no idea how many of the enemy he had killed in the war. Though some of the enemy he had seen die—he had seen actual heads explode—so there was no ambiguity. Civilians he had seen, children and females of all ages he had seen, and these were bodies he could not recall having been upright and living before they'd become bodies. It was easier to recall them as bodies. The Lance Corporal had followed orders given to him by his superiors. The Lance Corporal had followed orders without regret or reproach. In the dark half of the Lance Corporal's brain figures were gathering. There was whispering, muffled voices. There should be a balance they were saying. The Lieutenant realized It's in their language. For this was the other language, of the enemy. The sinister guttural language no one could speak nor even comprehend. Saying If you give us yours.
My what ? Give you my—what?
Yours.
Waking tangled in sweaty bedclothes or sprawled in sweat-soaked T-shirt and boxers on the couch and the TV on mute a few yards away in the night the Lance Corporal groped in panic for the box cutter he kept by his side at such times, carried in the pickup and Pa's old Remington 1100 in the back seat (of the pickup)—a man had to be armed at all times. This was post-9/11 U.S.A. This was a time of terror stalking the land. The Lance Corporal with the shunt in his vena cava wakened with the knowledge that the enemy dead had not said If you give us your son you will be forgiven. They did not say that. He did not hear that. For these were but civilians and not empowered to make such proposals. They did not say If you give us your son as you have taken our sons from us you will be forgiven but the Lance Corporal understood, that was the promise.
Where is Dennie Junior? In sudden fear for the child the Lance Corporal woke the snoring woman and stumbled into the child's room where the child had wakened in fear of him and he saw—it could not be for the first time he saw—that this child was not Dennie Junior but another child, scrawny, undersized, with deep-socketed, slightly crossed eyes. These eyes shone with feral cunning like a creature's eyes glaring up beside the highway in headlights. Where is Dennie Junior? the Lance Corporal demanded, and the woman said, This is Dennie, this is our son, and the Lance Corporal said, This is not our son! This is not my son! Where have they taken my son! And the woman comforted the crying child, saying that Daddy was having a bad dream, Daddy did not mean what he was saying, and the Lance Corporal backed off in fear of the misshapen child with the large rat-head and staring eyes in which there glared that look of recognition, of the damned. And the woman said, Of course this is Dennie Junior, don't scare us like this, honey, please, it's one of your nightmares, and the Lance Corporal said hesitantly, Is it? That's what it is? A nightmare, and the woman said, Yes, it's a nightmare, now come back to bed.
Twice weekly he was driven to therapy in Grand Forks. More frequently now his brother Mack drove him, for other relatives had ceased volunteering. The Lance Corporal did not now have a driver's license for his license had been taken from him, for "disability." The Lance Corporal yet persisted in driving the Dodge pickup into the countryside when he wished, making his frequent stops at taverns where the Lance Corporal was likely to be known and drinks bought for him, and if the Lance Corporal required assistance out to the Dodge pickup, there were volunteers to assist him. If Yelling County sheriff's deputies sighted the disabled war vet driving his Dodge pickup on local roads they were inclined to look the other way, but there was no question the Lance Corporal dared not drive on the state highway to Grand Forks where vehicles sped at beyond eighty miles an hour and eighteen-wheelers careened heedless and headlong through the waste landscape like banshees.
On TV these trips to Grand Forks would be deeply moving for the intimacy springing between the Lance Corporal and his brother driving alone together to Grand Forks and back in Mack's SUV, but in actual life the brothers did not much speak. There was so much to speak of! and yet the brothers were frequently at a loss for words. Mack wore his grimy Harley-Davidson cap pulled low over his forehead, sucked at cigarillos with a clamped jaw exhaling smoke sideways from his mouth in the shape of a single errant tusk as his (younger) brother the Lance Corporal tried to summon forth boyhood memories to share with his brother yet lost these memories in the very instant of recalling them as, like the tusk-smoke drawn out the opened window of the SUV, the boyhood memories vanished. So much was shifting into the left side of the Lance Corporal's impaired brain, he wondered how he could bear it. Saying one day in a voice of hoarse raw boyish grief, Mack, they took my son from me, the one they left isn't mine. I know that I am meant to accept him, I am meant to love the little guy and I do love the little guy, but Jesus, Mack, it is so unfair. I thought I deserved more respect, Mack. Quietly beginning to cry, tears like warm pee leaking from his mangled eyes. Mack said, Jesus, Dennie, hey—c'mon. Mack was shocked, embarrassed as hell, a hot blush rising into his face, That's not so, Dennie, Dennie Junior is your son for sure. That's crazy talk, Dennie. And the Lance Corporal said, Is that so, Mack? Tell me, Mack, is that so? I will believe you, Mack, and Mack said, staring straight ahead at the state highway bland and featureless and empty as the pavement of hell and groping to lay his hand on the Lance Corporal's wasted arm, Jez-zuz, Dennie, sure, why'd I lie to you?
Because you are one of them, you bastard. That's why.
***
In the war there was not always combat. There was boredom as well as combat in the war and as danger came in streaks and streams and deafening explosions so boredom came like lava slow and suffocating and like sand filling the moist crevices of the soul. The decapitated goat, the decapitated dog. Later, there were other decapitated bodies. Exploded heads but also rescued heads. Heads in jars fitted with sunglasses and helmets and cigarillos between the jaws and the eyes glazed and empty at first until maggots began to fester and writhe with a look of inner crafty life. In the barracks there was laughter, these sights were so funny! In this recovered life back home he heard their laughter and was roused and frightened by it and fumbled for his weapon. Sometimes in the night when the child woke in terror the child's choked cries sounded like laughter of a jeering sort. The Lance Corporal took his meds as prescribed and these he supplemented with Oxies and Percs he'd scored at one or another of his frequent stops in town and along the state highway (Friday's, Wineberie's, Starburst Loung
e, Pussy a Go-Go) but after a while the Lance Corporal gave up the quest for sleep was a vanity of the long-ago life he had renounced. Upright he sat in a chair facing the muted TV. Lately he dared not lie on the couch for he'd felt the shunt inside his chest begin to shift just perceptibly from the vena cava and there was the risk of sudden breakage, leakage, and death.
This will save your life, son. Have faith.
Goddamn, he did! He had plenty of faith.
Therapy was working. There was "progress." He struggled to walk in baby steps, he lifted twenty-pound dumbbells that left him dazed and breathless and the dark side of his brain enlarged. There began to be talk of his former job being returned to him. There began to be talk of promotion to store manager. The North Dakota governor spoke passionately of the war and of those "sons of the state" who had sacrificed. The president was optimistic about the war. On TV the president was optimistic and bravely smiling about the war. The president had sent by certified mail a personal letter thanking the Lance Corporal for his "selfless service" in the war as well as a color photograph of the president with his optimistic and courageous smile and the photograph was inscribed to the Lance Corporal and signed with the president's signature. There was a gold seal of the United States of America. This the Lance Corporal presented to his parents, Momma-Jeanne and the old man, Pa, whose lungs wheezed and whistled like air escaping from a balloon from forty years in the Hump mines but the old bastard was proud of his son, and that was something. What guts he had, it was said of the Lance Corporal. What courage. Yet there were those who yawned rudely and in the mirror beyond the massed whiskey bottles and the blaring TV there were knowing smirks, winks. What a sucker to enlist. What a total fuckhead asshole sucker to enlist. Now you aren't even him. You aren't Dennie Krugg.
Where Dennie Junior was, Lance Corporal/Daddy didn't know. The child was hiding from him beneath the bed. The child was whimpering, crying. The child's pajamas were soaked in pee. The dimensions of the house were askew and mocking, not rectangular but a parallelogram the Lance Corporal recalled from high school geometry. The bathroom faucets (sink, tub) had been switched, to confuse him. Where hot had been now there was cold. In the hospital they'd tested him: do you feel heat do you feel cold. There was never any clear answer, for whatever he said the response was Good! He could not bear it, how the child cringed and hid from him. Seizing the child in his arms that were unexpectedly strong he had no choice but to haul the child into the bathroom and into the tub making Daddy-cooing noises of comfort. On one of their drives to Grand Forks he'd begged Mack to tell him, how do you bear it, being a father, and Mack said, Hey dude—you just do. You learn, and you do.
But how, Mack. Tell me fucking how.
You learn. You get used to it. You get cool with it, see? You just do.
Mack, I don't know. I don't think so, Mack.
A baby crying you get used to it. You tune out. Worst case, you walk out. Every guy does. As long as you don't, you know, do anything. And you won't.
Okay, dude, see what I'm saying? You won't.
Every guy is scared he will. But it passes. You won't.
This night though, this was a bad night. The female had been at him and he'd had to deal with her. And the child, which was not his child (he knew) but was his responsibility. In the tub the child was screaming, the child with the misshapen head and crazed eyes. This was not a child but a goat—a goat carcass. The heads were wrapped in plastic bags from Pennysavers, he'd used double bags to catch the drippage. Such strain, and a coughing spasm he was in fear the shunt would slip from the vena cava bearing used and despoiled blood into his heart to be cleansed of impurities. He'd thought it had to be his own blood his bare feet were slipping in. On the bathroom-floor linoleum, and on the stairs. The phone had been ringing he'd knocked to the floor. The woman's cell phone he had demolished with the heel of his foot. Their noise had been silenced, the Lance Corporal was feeling good about that. The Lance Corporal was feeling hopeful about that. He'd washed his bloodied hands, forearms, and his face and he'd felt the steely stubble on his jaws. In the pickup he'd wrapped the tools—the hand ax, the saw—in garbage bags. He would carry the carcasses and the heads out to the pickup when he'd rested. He was very tired, his blood sugar was low. Dennie? Hey. Somehow, Mack was with him. Must've driven up in the SUV and the Lance Corporal had not heard for he'd dozed off Or, could be the fucking titanium implant in his inner ear had lost its charge. A tiny battery in the implant, it had lost its electrical charge. So much had been swallowed up in the dark side of his brain. He had appealed to the officer who'd dis charged him Don't send me back to them. I am not ready to return to them yet. I can't live with civilians. I am afraid that I will hurt civilians. The Lance Corporal was asked why would he hurt civilians of his own kind who loved him and the Lance Corporal said Because that is the only way to stop them loving me sir.
How was this? The Lance Corporal was unarmed. Dozing and waking abruptly and unarmed and barefoot and in his bloodstained T-shirt and boxers in his own house. Goddamned Mack was the one with the shotgun not the Lance Corporal who was unarmed. Mack had not yet made the discovery in the cold scummy bathtub water nor the other on the floor of the bedroom. Yet grimly Mack spoke, Don't do this, Dennie, back off. As in a nightmare in which you are stark naked the Lance Corporal was without a weapon. It was astonishing to be without a weapon at such a time. Sheila? Mack was calling. Hey, Sheila? It's me, Mack. You could see Mack's hands shake. You could see that Mack would not have the courage to fire. For Mack was a civilian, he had not ever fired any discharge of any weapon at any other person. The sight of his Lance Corporal brother covered in blood and barefoot and stark-eyed was terrifying to him, he could not possibly aim true. He was saying Dennie? Where's Sheila? Where's Dennie Junior? He was pleading, begging. He was holding his shotgun which had a short grip and a short barrel for bird-hunting and was not a shotgun the Lance Corporal believed he had ever seen before. His own shotgun he'd taken from Pa was on the kitchen table not yet loaded. A pack of birdshot he'd opened but had not yet loaded. Step back, Dennie, Mack was saying, but the Lance Corporal had not traveled so far, across so many oceans and galaxies, a steel plate in his skull and a miracle shunt in his heart, to be told what to do by a civilian. Calmly the Lance Corporal reached for the shotgun that was aimed at his heart and with all his fingers seized the barrel.
Give Me Your Heart Page 26
