One September Morning

by Rosalind Noonan

  Dismissed…just as the truth had been dismissed.

  A man killed in cold blood, and damned if the army would do anything about it because, if the truth got out, they might look bad.

  The stain blurs and moves before his eyes, and Emjay crawls on his belly to the edge of the platform, staying low in case another phantom bullet flies through the dark warehouse. His fingers dig into the dusty wood of the platform of the warehouse that used to hold dates. Canned dates, it seems. Which led to the usual wry comments from jokers like Lassiter, who made cracks like, “Now there’s not a date to be had in Iraq,” or “This building couldn’t get a date now if it were the last warehouse on earth.”

  This dark, dismal place. Nobody would have figured John’s life would end here. A life so huge isn’t supposed to fade out in a dark dead end like this. John was a freakin’ football hero back home, a rising star on the Seahawks. Even Emjay had seen him play once or twice on television.

  Not that John ever allowed anyone to grant him special perks. “I played football,” he used to say. “Big fucking deal. It’s inconsequential compared to what American soldiers have been doing to protect our country from terrorists.” John hated to be pumped up or given special treatment. He often took the night shift, which nobody else wanted. He was always good that way, volunteering for the shit no one else would do. A team player, a good guy.

  Those bullets that took him out nicked the heart of this platoon.

  Emjay stares down at the spot and wonders if he did the wrong thing. Maybe he shouldn’t have applied pressure to John’s chest. The head wound might have been the thing that killed him, but Emjay hadn’t seen it, with blood everywhere, everything so dark. Or he could have gone to get Noah—get real help instead of trying to stop the bleeding himself. And then there were the seconds wasted when he scrambled for John’s NOD to get a look at the shooter. What a boner move! He could’ve saved Stanton.

  Instead, he did the unforgivable…let his partner die.

  The silence of the warehouse says that he’s alone, but Emjay stays low and crawls closer to the edge so that one arm can dangle over the site. Letting it drop down to the pull of gravity is somehow freeing. He watches the brown skin on the back of his hand swing to and fro, a dark pendulum in the darkness, ticking off the seconds until eternity. Resting his jaw on the edge, Emjay watches the patch of blood and fantasizes about flying down to it. Splat, right on top of it.

  A one-way ticket home sounds sweet right now.

  You are not supposed to kill yourself in the U.S. Army. The officers got in hot water for that one, and if the public found out about it there was hell to pay in the public relations office—probably bad for recruitment. Rumor has it that a marine committed suicide, right here in the Al Anbar province back during the first invasion. That’s why most companies have a shrink like Doc, tagging along to help them with their problems.

  So Emjay is supposed to talk to Dr. Jump if he has any thoughts of suicide. Which would be great, except that Emjay does not talk to anyone but John. He doesn’t trust Doc. Doesn’t trust Lassiter. Noah Stanton is totally closed off. Gunnar McGee is a moron and Hilliard is in love with himself and Spinelli is just a scared kid who wants to run home to his mama.

  John was the only person who made the days bearable, the nights peaceful. Once, when Emjay asked him how he could shut his mind down and sleep at night, John just said: “You gotta sleep, buddy. Regenerate. Tomorrow’s trouble can wait till tomorrow.” Somehow Emjay had found his words soothing. John could convince you of just about anything. And Emjay had started finding a way to sleep with John around.

  But no more. Never again. Can’t sleep or eat. Can’t even breathe half the time. His heart thuds in his chest, his breath burning. Christ, why can’t he breathe? Can’t get air and can’t move from this spot. A panic attack, something no soldier is allowed.

  But it hurts to breathe.

  He tries to distract himself, focus on the bloodstain. Lose himself in the dark abyss of the warehouse—four stories of half-empty shelves and pallets that hold a sickeningly sweet odor. He leans over the edge, feeling gravity pull on his thudding heart. From this height, what kind of damage would he do?

  Broken bones, maybe. The right break could get him home, in physical therapy. It needed to be bad, because after an incident like this he was going to be marked within the platoon as as a malingerer, a loser faking an injury to avoid duty.

  Or there could be spinal damage. A wheelchair for the rest of his life. That’d suck.

  Could bust his head open. That would probably kill him.

  And maybe that wouldn’t be so bad, to end the fear. Take out the unknown.

  Kill the pain and go home a hero.

  He shifts his weight closer to the edge and lets his head dangle, free.

  Free.

  Just push away from the side and you’re free…

  Chapter 16

  Fort Lewis

  Jim Stanton

  A whimpering sound wakes Jim Stanton, and he’s not sure whether it’s the weary sob grinding in his own throat or the cry of one of the guys sleeping nearby. Although they have huddled in the dried reeds in an attempt to take cover, they know that no amount of camouflage can save you from the skilled eye of a sniper or the determined stealth of a night patrol.

  “With my bad luck, I’ll wake up dead,” Riley had joked as they settled in for the night. Although Riley had a joke for every occasion, none of the men laughed or even cracked a smile. What used to be funny now yawned painfully in the dark, a grim reality.

  Because how can you wake up, when you’re already dead?

  Jim rolls over onto his side, adjusting the helmet on his head. His shirt is damp with sweat, and there’s moisture in his eyes. Perspiration or tears? Before ’Nam he’d been sure a real man never cried.

  He flops onto his back, shuddering as sweat runs down the center of his chest.

  Above him, the singular tree looms, listing to one side in the mist.

  The tree is the only sign of life in view, the last tree standing, just as he is the last man alive in this desolate jungle.

  “Hello?” he calls out.

  But there is no answer.

  “Is anybody there? Someone…Riley? Where the hell are you. Shroeder? Report!”

  Silence.

  There is only desolate silence, isolation.

  “No!” he shouts. It can’t be. He can’t be back in Vietnam, surrounded by death. After the injuries he sustained in the ambush, the docs said it would be his last tour of duty.

  Why was he back here, goddammit? Paralyzed in the jungle, soaked to the bone in sweat and dread. His heart pounds painfully in his chest, a dark pulse thrumming in his ears. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. He was never going back. Never!

  He pounds a fist into the ground beneath him.

  It bounces back, the earth spongy beneath him as he yanks himself up…

  And finds himself sitting in his bed.

  It was the dream again, the nightmare.

  Ever since troops were deployed to Afghanistan in Operation Enduring Freedom, Jim suffered from the recurring dream, the sinking vision of himself back in the game, back in ’Nam, exposed and scared shitless.

  Each time he’s in a panic over being deployed again.

  Each time he jolts awake soaked in his own sweat and tears.

  This time the pounding beneath his ribs is disconcerting. He presses a hand there, as if to control the wild rhythm as he glances over at Sharice, who sleeps soundly, her silver-and-gold hair still, her shoulder rising and falling gently under the sheet. A heavy sleeper, thank God, so she didn’t have to know about his weakness.

  Then again, she took a sleeping pill tonight. She had to. Sharice is a high-wattage lamp, without the turn-off switch.

  The reality of it hits him again, sitting there in bed, and he pushes the sheet away and slides to the edge of the mattress, head in hands.

  His boy’s gone. Killed.

  An
d it’s all on my shoulders.

  He never wanted to put his kids out there in harm’s way. Never. Other soldiers were so proud to have their sons follow them into the military, but not Jim. The eerie sense of responsibility and dread that pinched him since the boys enlisted came to a head yesterday when his commander called him into the office to tell him about John.

  Killed in combat. All because his old man was never quite man enough to speak honestly about military service.

  Jim tosses back the sheet and slides around, bringing his bare feet to solid ground. No use trying to go back to sleep. Once the dream tears through your night, he’s found, there will be no rest, at least not in the dire hours till dawn.

  Stealthily, he makes his way through the dark to the door of the master bedroom and closes it quietly behind him. At times like these, he’s found the mindless chatter of the boob tube to be the most reassuring company available in the middle of the night. The blanket on the couch and the sound of a human voice sometimes make him feel human again, even if that voice is Rachael Ray telling him how to make spaghetti squash from the gourds in his own garden.

  At the top of the stairs, he pauses in front of Madison’s room. Since she was a kid, afraid of being too far from her parents at night, she has kept the door open, and now he can’t resist looking in, reassured by the slender form slumbering beneath a summer quilt in the blue light from her night-light. Yes, sixteen and she still sleeps with a teddy bear and a night-light. Somehow Jim feels relieved that his daughter, who’s old enough to drive a car, sit for the SATs, and see “R” movies, still clings to some of the more reassuring vestiges of her childhood.

  God knows, she’s going to need them in this world.

  He is turning away, stepping over the threshold, when she stirs, sweeping in a deep breath.

  “Daddy? Are you okay?” she asks, her throat so tight with sleep that he is reminded of the chipmunk voice she used to have, the voice that used to croon Christmas carols and spiral up to the high notes of the “Star-Spangled Banner” in school assemblies.

  “I’m fine,” he lies, wondering if she remembers, caught in the haze of sleep. Has the pain of her brother’s death seeped so deep into her psyche that her whole being is crushed, her dreams tainted?

  God, he hopes not.

  His permission to sleep was revoked years ago, ruined, but he wants better for his daughter. “Everything’s fine.” Another lie, but a necessary one. A fifty-seven-year-old man can hardly tell his daughter that he’s exploding from within, dying of a broken heart. “Go back to sleep, honey.”

  Chapter 17

  Iraq

  Flint

  “Hello?” Flint calls through the empty warehouse, feeling like a dick because places like this scare the shit out of him.

  As they should.

  Although the soldier posted on watch outside told him that the building’s perimeters had been secured since the shooting, you could never be too sure. And frankly, a dark warehouse would be hazardous enough during peacetime, but in a war zone like this Flint knows it’s exponentially more dangerous.

  Stepping forward tentatively, he shifts his protective eye-wear onto his helmet and waits while his eyes adjust to the interior darkness. Sunlight arches through two windows high on the wall, but the interior brick seems to swallow the light in the extreme contrast of dark and light. According to the report, which Flint had bamboozled his way into viewing, those windows were shuttered yesterday, making the warehouse dark inside—“dark as night,” one soldier claimed. Now the space reeks of overripe fruit, though the shelves are empty, supplies either depleted or looted in the instability that swept over this region with the invasion of U.S. forces.

  Something scurries behind a wooden crate a few feet away. Some sort of vermin.

  Why is he here?

  Scene of the shooting. After the memorial ceremony, Flint started asking around, trying to get details of how John had been killed, and two guys from John’s platoon, Jump and Lassiter, had sent him this way. Although he can’t imagine this abandoned warehouse contains anything to assist Abby in the grieving process, his reporter’s instincts require that he return to the scene, the place where it happened.

  Danger be damned.

  Like it’s not already dangerous enough just being in Iraq. His eyes land on an unmoving shadow on the floor. Here the pungent scent of bleach cuts the air, and yet the stain remains on the porous floor.

  A bloodstain. This, he suspects, is the sight where Spec. John Stanton went down.

  He pauses, sensing a weird energy in the air. Not the sort of thing you could write into a piece, but real nonetheless.

  “John…” What happened here yesterday? How did it go down?

  Flint lowers his head, makes the sign of the cross. He’s not a religious man, but every man’s got to possess a certain reverence for death, and he refuses to believe that a man’s energy just dries up when life leaves the body.

  He is staring down at the maudlin stain of blood when something shifts, disrupting the silence of the warehouse. Flint’s shoulders rise as he braces himself and steps back, looking to take cover as something falls from above.

  Something heavy and round. It lands a few feet in front of him, bouncing on the hard-packed floor before Flint loses sight of it in his frantic scramble to take cover.

  His heart races, his pulse pounding in his ears as he flattens himself against a wall and covers his head. The explosion he is waiting for does not come, and he lets out a whimpering gasp of relief, daring to open his eyes.

  Holy Christ. It’s a helmet.

  Braced against the wall, Flint looks up in the darkness and sees a flurry of movement high up, thirty or forty feet, atop a wooden pallet. His jaw clenches and he pulls back, ready to retreat. It looks like one of our guys, a U.S. soldier, stretched out on his belly.

  “Sorry, man.” The soldier, an African-American man, now without a helmet, pushes himself up and shifts so that his legs dangle over the side.

  “You scared the shit out of me,” Flint shouts up at him, though in this hollow space it’s not necessary to raise his voice. “What the hell are you doing up there? The guard outside told me this place was secure.”

  “This is a dangerous place to be, sir,” the soldier answers. “If I were you, I’d leave.”

  Flint’s been trying to do that since he arrived in Iraq, greeted by an IED as he traveled the five-mile stretch along the Route Irish from the airport to the goddamned hotel. He tries to get a bead on the soldier dangling from the scaffold. “You on guard duty, soldier?”

  “No, sir.”

  “So what the hell are you doing hanging up there?”

  “It’s a personal matter, sir. You should leave.”

  Which makes Flint suddenly want to stay. “You okay, buddy?”

  The soldier’s hesitation is heavy with desperation. Flint takes a moment to reassess the man clinging to the edge, and now he gets it.

  A jumper.

  Flint knows the signs. As a rookie reporter in San Francisco, he covered the Golden Gate Bridge, where a suicide occurred just about every two weeks. This guy is a classic jumper, on the verge of pushing off and cutting it all off.

  “You hold on up there, ’cuz I got a question for you.” Flint points a finger toward the man, as if to hold him in place there. He knows he needs to engage this man, get him to talk. “You’re going to wait right there till we have a chance to talk, okay?” All caution fades as he circles the tall platform, looking for a way up. “How the hell did you get up there?”

  “You don’t need to come up, sir.”

  “Cut the ‘sir’ crap,” Flint tells him, though he knows that in the military community that’s easier said than done. “I’m not in the army. How do I get up?”

  “Over by the door. Climb the pegs.”

  Easier said than done, Flint thinks when he sees the worn, splintered pieces of wood nailed into the structure. He reaches for a handhold and hoists himself up, feeling the weight
of his flak jacket and equipment. By the time he reaches the top, Flint is sweating like a pig and trying to remember how he’s supposed to approach a person in this state of mind. He was trained to talk to people in crisis, but he’s no shrink. Aren’t you supposed to keep them talking? Engaged? Frankly, it’s the last thing he feels like doing when he should be getting his information, getting the hell out of here, getting home, but he can’t just walk out of here and leave this guy hanging, both literally and figuratively.

  “That’s some climb,” Flint says, his breath ragged as he pulls himself onto the platform at the top. The soldier remains sitting at the edge of the precipice, his eyes wide and impossibly white against his dark skin. “I told my editor I’m too old for an assignment like this.” Flint starts to stand, but his legs feel too wobbly and he doesn’t want to be a high target, so he falls back to his hands and knees and moves forward in a crab crawl.

  “Yes, sir,” the man answers.

  “Dave Flint. I’m a journalist, an embed with the 121st Airborne.”

  The soldier turns to study him, and Flint notes the hollow expression in his eyes, as if he’s staring off at a bitterly sad sight in the distance.

  “You came here by choice?” The soldier seems astounded.

  “Sort of. It was either this or finish off my career covering city council meetings and the crime beat.”

  The soldier shakes his head. “Bad choice.”

  Flint sees the name “Brown” on the man’s uniform. “So what the hell are you doing in here, Brown? Did you know a man was shot in here yesterday?”

  “Name’s Emjay, and I know all that. I was here.”

  Flint takes all this in with a deep breath. He heard the name earlier when he was asking around about John. Although John was a friend to every man in his platoon, people thought he and Emjay were close. “You knew John Stanton.”

  Emjay nods.

  “Want to tell me what happened yesterday? How it all went down?”

  “Nah.” Emjay glances down, and Flint follows his gaze to the dark stain below. The view from here gives him the shakes, a mild vertigo. How the hell is he going to get down from here?