Grenade? the cop holding me said.
I didn’t say anything, listened to him breathing hard against me, my chest heaving. You were yelling “grenade.”
I didn’t say anything.
Your bumper stickers, Operation Iraqi Freedom. You a vet? he said.
I didn’t say anything.
I was in Afghanistan, he said. Tenth Mountain Division, Khost Province.
I heard the rush of bodies running, descending on us. I felt them collecting in a huddle behind me, heard them blabbering haji mumbo jumbo. I tensed but the cop held me, his weight against me a kind of assurance. He told everyone to back off. He pressed me against the car for a long while, just the two of us breathing. Then he eased up and pulled me back. He gripped me by my right arm and stood beside me and we walked together to a squad car. I didn’t try to run. I was not there, not anywhere. I watched myself from a great distance.
The cop opened the back door and put a hand on my head, guiding me inside. I liked the touch of his hand, the firm grip of his fingers in my hair. He closed the door. The AC blew cold air, covering me like clean sheets. When he got in, I asked him where we were.
I had a roadside bomb blow up eight feet from my face once, Jay said.
Remember when it was?
No. I was on foot patrol. Shook up my head too bad. I wish I did remember. People ask me stuff and I can’t tell them. I can remember the kids I killed, but people don’t want to hear about that. It’s like saying I killed puppies. Three of them. I’m not proud of it, but I killed as many of them as I could.
It was them or you. Rule number one, Jay, come home alive.
We were getting supplies from one base back to our base. I forget which one. Not even a half hour out and we got ambushed. About seven, eight roadside bombs. The first one hit our truck and I blacked out for a couple seconds. I came to and pulled myself together. It was like Star Wars behind the truck. Firing on both sides, bombs going off, and our guys firing back. Jesus, it was loud. I spun the .50 cal in a circle toward the flashes of gunfire. When I got done firing, I looked at the side of the road. Four kids were connecting wires to set off the bombs. Ten, eleven, twelve years old, I don’t know. I know I shot three of them. They kind of exploded from the .50 cal. The fourth ran away. I didn’t get him.
What I remember of hajis dying I don’t remember as good as Jay does. I see snapshots but details are missing. Like that kid and his mother near Tower Three. One day when I was returning sniper fire, I saw them take cover in a ditch. Then they were dead, blown to shit. Cut down just like that, and I didn’t know what hit them. I want to say the sniper shot them but I don’t know. Maybe it was me. I see them now bursting like popped water balloons. I think I’d remember if I shot them. But I don’t. I don’t remember. I just see them pop.
The cop took me straight to the VA. I don’t know how long I stayed there, but it felt like hours. I had a CT scan and an MRI. A neuropsychologist asked me questions: Had I been injured in Iraq? When? Had I lost my ability to concentrate? He read something to me out of a magazine about a woman shopping. It wasn’t long and I swear I listened but when he finished and asked me questions about what he had read, I had to admit I couldn’t remember much. He kept on asking me stuff. I told him I needed a break.
Roger that, he said, and left.
Seconds later, the door opened and a shrink came at me: Did I get upset when I thought about Iraq? Did I get angry? Did the thoughts come out of nowhere? How did I react physically to those thoughts?
I don’t remember what all else he asked me but it was a lot and I got pissed. Of course thinking about Iraq upset me, what kind of thing was that to ask? And how do I react physically? What does he think? I shit myself? But I kept myself in check. I didn’t want to do another two-week stretch on the ninth floor.
When he finished, I sat by myself, exhausted and ready to sleep for days. I must’ve given someone my number and they called Katherine because she showed up out of nowhere to take me home. Before we left, the shrink and neuro guy compared notes in the hall. I watched them through a glass square in the exam room door. I closed my eyes, felt myself drifting, Katherine’s hands on my shoulders. I heard the door open, heard their approaching footsteps. Then they stopped. I opened my eyes, looked at them standing above me. They said their preliminary diagnosis showed I had traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder.
Preliminary diagnosis, shit. What did that mean? I didn’t know and didn’t care. I was beat down, exhausted, and I didn’t ask questions. They told Katherine I needed to make an appointment for more tests, more questions, their voices rolling in and out of my head like remote thunder. They gave her prescriptions to fill. I heard the paper crinkle in her hand and make a sharp sound as she folded it. She squeezed my shoulder when they said we could go.
Every morning in the weeks and months that followed, Katherine would remind me to take my anxiety, blood pressure, and headache pills. At night, she gave me a sleeping pill. Katherine was my rock, the left side of my brain. But when she asked for the divorce a year later she said it was because she couldn’t rely on me anymore. She was never sure what I’d do. She understood it wasn’t my fault, but still . . . The meds didn’t seem to help my memory or calm my nerves. I saw a rehab counselor but Katherine didn’t see me making much of a difference either. She felt alone. So she decided she might as well live alone. I told her I’d try harder, but I knew it was too late.
Yesterday I asked you to go to the Safeway and you drove to your mother’s, she said, standing across from me in the kitchen. You sat on the swing set in the backyard and she had to persuade you to come home.
I didn’t remember. Maybe I just needed to be alone. The distant roar of an oncoming headache came on full bore up the back of my neck, getting louder and louder. I reached over the pile of dirty plates, pots, and pans in the sink and shut the blinds to block the sun. I closed my eyes because of the headache. I turned the faucet on and began washing plates as fast as I could, water splashing onto the counter and me, thinking that would make her happy. She stepped beside me, dried the plates I’d cleaned, and put them away. She put a hand out to slow me down. She turned off the water. Neither of us spoke. We had Post-its on the cabinet doors with reminders about what goes where so I could have shelved them myself, but she was done giving me chances.
A sparrow lands on the picnic table and hops toward the wafers. Jay reaches out with a finger and tries to stroke its head but it flies away. I catch the plastic bag before it blows off the table.
I can’t believe we ate all this shit, I say.
Yeah, Jay says. Have to see a dentist, I guess.
Go in and say, Here we are, doc.
Here we are, Jay says.
He smiles. I don’t expect a laugh and he doesn’t give me one. I get up, take the torn cellophane wrappers, put them in the bag, and toss them into a trash can. I’m tired, wrung out. It’s time to go home. I’ve got Katherine’s number if I get lost, if I remember to look for it to call her. She let me keep the house. That was good of her. Finding a new place and dealing with the unfamiliarity of it, well, I’m glad I didn’t have to do that. Yes, I am. Katherine’s a good person, I know that. She got tired. I get it. I try to. I can’t forget her. I’m not saying I want to necessarily, but given I’ve forgotten so much else, why not her? It’s a little unfair, I think.
I slap crumbs off my hands, watch some guys cutting the grass. They kneel, pull weeds, stand, and clip dead branches off bushes. Everybody I know works. That’s how a guy defines himself.
What do you do? people ask.
I’m a disabled vet, I say.
I walk back to Jay. He stares at me with a look that says he’s not seeing me or anybody else. I notice some doctors standing around in a group. I guess they’re doctors. I hope one of them’s a shrink and sees Jay. I wonder what they’re saying. Sometimes I overhear people talking about the war. Should’ve done this, they say. Should’ve done that. Had I been in charge this, this, and this would have happened.
Had I been in charge, shit. Let them talk. It’s a free country. Everyone’s entitled to an opinion. If they were to ask for mine, I’d say life is full of surprises. Then I’d walk away and leave them to whatever surprises might await.
Walter
I wake up with the shakes, my throat dry as sandpaper, my tongue pasty tasting. Kicking out of my sleeping bag all kinds of jittery, I reach for my plastic jug with one hand, uncap it, and tip it over my other hand. Water spills onto my palm. I splash my face and rub my beard, flicking drops into the air. Drag my hand across my T-shirt to dry it. Then I drink, gripping the jug in both trembling hands. Swallow. Fill my mouth again, gargle, and spit. I drink some more, the shakes extending into my arms. I spill water down my chest. My blue pants feel like weights on my legs.
A few suits on Clay Street walk past my alley. Well, not mine. The police remind me of that at least once a week when they tell me to move. Last month, they said I could stay but I couldn’t keep my tent. They put on plastic gloves, broke it down, and threw it in the back of a pickup. I got to keep my blanket and sleeping bag. That’s enough, I guess. I put the blanket inside the sleeping bag and some cardboard beneath the bag so I don’t get chilled from the pavement. It gives me a little cushion but not much. I’m pretty stiff when I wake up.
I roll my neck, hear the joints make cracking sounds. Squeezing my arms against my sides, I feel a chill run through me. The suits don’t spare me a glance. I hear cell phones ring, voices raised but not clear enough for me to understand what they’re saying. I make out only a few words. Some of the suits pause to look up as if they worry it might rain but only a thinning layer of fog lingers above all of us. We share the weather. We have that much in common. I watch pigeons flutter to get out of the way of guys from other camps maneuvering shopping carts loaded with blankets around the suits. They too don’t look my way. I know some of them, but I won’t share my site with them. They’ll want what I have. I don’t know what they’ll take when I nod out.
Twisting the cap back on my jug, I stash it, my sleeping bag, blanket, and a baggie with a spoon and a can opener beneath a dumpster across the alley from the back door of an Italian restaurant. One of the cooks comes out with an aluminum-wrapped sandwich and offers it to me. His schedule changes every week. I never know when he’ll be on, but when he is he always gives me food. I unwrap the aluminum. A meatball sandwich. Probably left over from yesterday. A little hard on the stomach this early in the morning, especially the way I’m feeling. I can’t imagine eating it. The thought turns my stomach. I need a bottle. I wrap it back up.
I shouldn’t do this. You need to stop expecting handouts, the cook tells me, the same thing he always says each time he gives me food. I don’t know where he gets off with that. I’ve never once asked him for anything.
