Veteran's Day

Something was happening inside the little house, a noise of some kind. Mike opened his eyes and tried to focus. Alarm clock. It was 9:55am and the alarm clock was doing it's annoying thing. Interview, I've got the interview for the job today, he thought. He got out of bed. The ground felt a little shaky under his feet. Maybe sleep a couple of more hours, Mike thought. But he needed a haircut before the interview. It was still short, a close crew cut, but to Mike it felt long. He liked his hair short. He got up and the ground felt fine. It was solid.

       He went into the kitchen and noticed the light blinking on the answering machine. He punched a button and listened to the voice. It was the guy from the job, the interview. He was saying not to come in to the interview. He was saying something about a background check and prior arrests. Arrests for violence, or something. Mike wasn't sure. He tried to concentrate on it, and thought he remembered something. But he was fuzzy today, more fuzzy than normal. Mike went over to the coffee pot, poured and drank some black coffee, and decided to go to the interview anyway. He'd just talk to the man, explain to him, calmly. It would work out. He'd be fine. Then he headed out the door to the barber shop. It wasn't very far. He saw the pole from the street.

  He opened the door to the barber shop and went in. 

  "Hey Mike" said a guy seated in the little square group of chairs that served as a waiting area. Mike recognized the guy who spoke. There was another guy sitting there that Mike didn't recognize.

  "Hey", he said.

  "Good Morning, Son" the barber said. The barber always called Mike son. Mike liked that, but didn't know exactly why. He walked over to the chairs and took an empty seat, so that he was directly across from the guy he didn't recognize. The guy Mike knew said, "Hey Mike, Happy Veteran's Day, man" and raised his eyebrows as if to indicate something, maybe.

  "What's that?" Mike said. He thought he'd heard the guy, who had blond hair, but he'd been looking down at his hands and studying his fingernails, little white crescents with smudges of something dark at the base.

  "Happy day, Mike." the blond guy said, and his eyebrows went back down. "You're a vet, right"?

  "Oh, yeah." Mike said. "Yeah." and nodded, and went back to looking at his nails. He had to clean them before the interview. 

  "Donald" the blond guy said, in the direction of the barber. "It's Veteran's Day. You should cut Mike's hair for free." His eyebrows went up again. Why the fuck does he keep doing that, Mike thought. The barber cocked his head, as if tallying the hit to his income, and said finally, "That's a great idea, Dean. I hadn't even thought of that before." He cocked his head some more. To Mike, it looked very odd. "Probably shouldn't advertise that, though." His head uncocked, and Mike thought he looked a little more normal. The blond guy, who the barber had called Dean, lowered his eyebrows. It made Mike feel better. Calmer.

  "Which war?". This came from directly in front of him. It was the guy he didn't recognize. He looked tall sitting down and thin and his dark hair was a little long in the back, came over his ears just a little. It looked pretty messy. Mike thought of what he would do if he were a barber, and saw a head of hair like that. He'd say something funny to the guy about it, for sure, before he cut it.

  "First Gulf War" Mike heard someone say, and looked around  to see the blond guy looking at him expectantly. His fucking eyebrows were up again. Why do you keep doing that with your face, Mike seemed to say, but the guy didn't react, and Mike realized he hadn't said anything at all. 

  "Right." Mike said finally. 

  The guy Mike didn't know made a small gesture with his hands, sort of raised them and pointed over in his direction. It was a weird gesture, Mike thought. Why are his hands going up like that? The guy finally said while pointing at Mike: You see any action over there? Mike was watching the guys hands, waiting for them to drop, but they just hovered there, pointing. They stayed like that for what seemed like a long time. 

  "Huh"? Mike said to the guy's hands.

  The guy made a face. "You know, combat". His hands finally dropped. Mike let out a slow breath. He ran his hands through his cropped hair, felt the stubble at his temples. Maybe he could afford to go another week or so without a cut. His hair was in pretty good shape. Before he could get up, the blond guy said "War stories. Let's hear some war stories!" The guy the barber called Dean seemed to perk up, shifted in his chair, and settled back again. Mike thought it was good that he didn't do that thing with his eyebrows again.

  "Don't really have any," Mike heard himself say. "No combat. I was a helo machanic."

  "Choppers?" the guy across from him said. Mike smiled. He rememered something.

  "Nah, we didn't call them choppers. They drilled that out of you pretty early in basic mechanic school. If they heard you say it, they would really fuck with you. You learned to call 'em 'Helos', or lots of times we called them 'birds'"

  That seemed to hang in the air for a while. Then the guy across from Mike said, "Not much combat in the first Gulf War. Not like what's going on now in Fallujah." The guy nodded in the direction of a nearby chair. Mike noticed there was a newspaper, half-open, resting there.

  "Yeah, that's some shit going on there now." the guy called Dean said. "But I bet Mike's still got a story or two. Right Mike?" Mike knew the guys eyebrows were going to be up, just by hearing the inflection in his voice, so he forced himself not to look at him. 

  "Mostly just couldn't sleep." he said after a time. "That was the worst. I was on night crew, so we worked all night on the flight line. Then we'd come back to the hooch, exhausted, but you know, kind of wired." He paused, something was happening in his chest. It was getting tighter. He took a deep breath. "We'd be up, all night, come back to the hooch and try to sleep in the daytime heat. Try to sleep in hundred degree heat sometime. You can't do it." Mike breathed again. "I mean, some guys did it. They didn't all have trouble sleeping. Some guys slept fine. But the heat, and  those SCUD alarms would go off every couple of hours, and you'd have to get in this gear that was..."

  "SCUDs!" The guy called Dean said. He seemed agitated. "That's a word I haven't heard in a long time. We used to hear it all the time on CNN." Mike stared at the guy called Dean hard, and the guy seemed to shrink a bit.

  "We'd get in this fucking gear." Mike continued. "It was called MOPP gear, and it was a bitch to get on and off. Everytime we'd hear an alarm we'd have to put it all on. Even though we never got hit with anything, because of the Partiots, they'd fire them off and anytime there was a launch detection, we'd hear the alarm. All the time." Mike squinted at Dean, who seemed to want to say something really badly, but kept quiet.  "Come on up here, Mike," the barber said, and slapped the chair with a white rag. "Let's get you cleaned up. On the house, for Veteran's Day." Mike didn't move. He didn't seem to be breathing. "Mike?" the barber said. 

  "I've got money." Mike said, finally. "You don't have to do it for free."

  "Well, it's on the house, Mike. Like Dean said. It was a good idea."

  Mike didn't get up. He didn't want to get up from his chair. He wasn't sure if the floor would still be under him if he rose and tried to walk, so he just kept sitting. The barber said, "That's fine. Take your time." The guy who was sitting next to him got up and went to the chair, without anyone seeming to tell him to do so. But a minute later, Mike heard the scissors clipping, and knew without looking the guy was getting his hair cut.

  "And the ground would shake." Mike said to his hands. His nails had run together into one large white splotch in his vision.  "From the ten-thousand pound bombs. Daisy cutters." Mike turned away from his nails, which were looking very strange, and toward the large window in front of the shop. His vision cleared a bit. He could see a car pass. It was a bright, sunny day. He breathed. "We dropped them around the clock on Iraqi positions. Day and night."

  "Shock and awe" the guy called Dean said quietly. Mike didn't hear him. 

  "And I'd just lie awake, thinking, man am I glad I'm not over there, getting those bombs dropped on me. I mean, the ground is shaking over here, like ten miles away. What's it like over there? And I think, you know, it's just dumb luck that I'm on this side. The side with all the bombs, you know, the Americans. It's just dumb luck that I was born here and not there and I was lying there trying to sleep and the ground would shake all day and night. Guys would be walking around, joking, cutting up. Fucking with each other. I'd look around and want to scream: Can't you feel the ground? It's shaking. Does that seem normal to you? What the fuck is wrong with everybody?" Mike realized he wasn't breathing and took in a breath, quick. It made a little gulping sound.

  The guy called Dean seemed to be very far away, and the clipping sounds had stopped. 

  "Another time I was on a listening post, out in the desert, away from our camp. They'd put us out there for a week or so, even though I was a mechanic. The post was along a dirt road  that was used to bring stuff back and forth to the front lines. I'd see these buses come in loaded with POW's. I mean, loaded down, standing room only. They were packed in there. Me and the other Marine on the post heard the buses coming. When they passed us, the light was on inside. It was night, did I say that? The ground was still shaking, just like it did all the time." His feet twitched a little and he sat up in the chair just a bit. "And the light was on inside the bus and these guys, these Iraqis, were smiling like it was graduation day. I mean beaming. When they passed us the POW's inside gave a big cheer. They all kind of jumped up and down in the bus, when they passed us. Except it looked funny, because some of the guys had these handcuffs on and were tied to each other. So when they tried to jump, it just looked funny, with them tied together like that." 

  The room had gone away. Mike was talking to himself. That was OK, Mike thought. That's Ok. 

  "They were just so happy to be away from those bombs, I guess. I mean, they're fucking Prisoners or war, and they're jumping up and down, they're so happy. And I was exhausted from not sleeping. The other Marine said I had these rings around my eyes, he thought it was funny. But I remember as the bus passed I could see this one guy, this prisoner, he wasn't smiling or cheering. He was the only one. As the bus passed, he looked right at me. I saw his eyes. They had rings, too." 

  There was a noise, some noise around him. He was gone, he was just a voice, and that was OK. That was good.

  "I wanted to know what that guy was thinking. Right then. But I think I already knew, you know? He was thinking, it's just dumb luck that I'm over here and you're over there, you fucker. Just dumb luck. Except he was on the wrong end of the luck." Mike chuckled, or tried to. There was no moisture in his mouth. His chest had a million pounds on it. He couldn't believe he was talking, but he heard the words, so there you go. He heard a noise from what seemed like far away. His vision was dark. But the weight was coming off his chest, and he had remembered to breathe. 

  "Mike, you know what?" Mike heard someone say. It was the barber. Mike felt the ground under his feet. He could feel it under his feet. It was solid. "I think your hair is fine. It looks just fine. Why don't you go home, get some rest? Come back tomorrow. I'll still cut it for free. No charge, OK?"

  Mike felt his face. It seemed wet, which was strange, because he wasn't crying or anything. He was here to get his hair cut before the interview. Simple as that.

  "Go on, Mike. Go on home now." 

  Mike looked around the room. It was just he and the barber. He didn't know how long he'd been sitting there. The light streaming through the windows looked different than before. It was really kind of beautiful. 

  He got up. The ground was under his feet. He got to the door and said, "I've got money. You don't have to do it for free." He remembered to breathe again, which was good, then he opened the door and walked out onto the street.

FIL

Hospitals are white. That's what I remember most. We spent a lot of time in the cardiac ward waiting room, Mary and I. The whole family, really. People would come in, an aunt, an uncle, their faces like masks. Why aren't they happy to see each other? It seemed kind of nice to me, in a way, having the whole family together like this, but I didn't let my face show it. I made my face like theirs. 

The first time I met the father, Mary and I had been dating for a couple of weeks. She was still married, but separated. It was only a matter of time for her and the other guy. We knew we were going to get married. We were crazy in love. I wanted to live with her but she wanted to be divorced first. She led me into the house and I couldn't believe seven people grew up in such a small house. I had met the mother once before, so when I saw her and I told her hello, I hugged her. She seemed surprised. How are you, she said. I was smiling and kept hugging her. Finally I let her go. Mary showed me around the house, the three small bedrooms. This was my room, she said. I shared it with Linda and Catherine. I couldn't believe three girls lived in that small room together. My sisters my mom and I had that whole giant house, each with our own bedrooms, and still went at each other all the time. My sisters would pass me in the hallway and just sneer at me, in that big house. So when I saw the little room, I was amazed.

We got to the room where the father was and he was seated in the middle of it, in a small, hard looking wooden chair. In his hand was a cup of coffee. Steam was rising from the cup. He didn't get up and we walked over to where he was. It was like approaching the pope or something. Mary said an introduction and I held out my hand. He took my hand in his. His hand was huge, which was strange because he wasn't very big. I was much taller than him, I figured, but I couldn't be sure because he just kept sitting. That was the first time I met him.

I started going over there every Sunday for lunch. The whole family, all seven of them, would get together. Every Sunday for lunch, I was amazed. They were all grown, all the kids. The brothers liked me and I liked them. The sisters told Mary they thought I was very good looking. I thought that was kind of funny, but Mary loved it. I had convinced her to move in, even though she was still technically married. Funny thing, she got pregnant. She told the father at one of those lunches. I was staring down at my mashed potatoes when she told him. I'm going to have a baby, she said. The father just kept looking forward. He didn't say anything. He just kept looking. I was just sitting there, sweating like crazy. It felt like the room was closing in. It wasn't very big to begin with. Finally he leaned over to the mother, who always sat by his side at the table. He said something I couldn't hear, then he just kept on staring. He didn't look at me. Mary was beaming. She was happy to be pregnant. She miscarried later on. 

I grew up in a big house, like I said. My dad didn't live with us. My mother and he were divorced. Since I was seven, so I didn't know him very well. Of all the strange things, his apartment was close to Mary's family's house. One day I walked in and there was my dad sitting at the table with the rest of the family. He was there for lunch. I don't even remember how they met my dad. He was just there one day. My dad was a retired Major in the Army. The father just kept calling him sir. It was weird. My dad kept saying, call me Mike. But the father said he always called his superiors sir. He was just a sergeant when he was in the service. I thought my dad looked proud, but I couldn't tell. I didn't know him very well. The father saw me  and said come in, sit down. It was the first time he had ever said that to me. My dad quit coming to lunch a couple of months later, after he had passed on.

We got the call that the father fell and was hurt badly. They found him on the front lawn. Some people passing did. It wasn't anyone in the family, I thought that was good. On the way to the hospital, the sky looked like grey marble. There was a single plane tracing its way across the horizon. It was a heart attack that made the father fall, they said, once we got to the hospital. We sat in the waiting room for a long time, that's how I know how white it is there. A magazine was on one of the tables, the page opened to a black and white photo. We sat and waited for what seemed like a long time and finally went home to get some sleep, when they told us he could be in the hospital a while.

Mary and I went home and she was very upset. We lay in bed a long time before I heard her breathing get regular. I closed my eyes but couldn't sleep. My mind kept going and going. I got up and walked into the kitchen. Everything was still. I filled a glass with water and went to the couch. My mind was racing, but I wasn't thinking of anything. I tried hard to focus on a single thought, but I couldn't do it. Next thing I knew Mary was shaking me awake. She looked agitated. We have to go, she said.

We got to the hospital and everyone was gathered around the bed. He looked white and had a shine, as if covered in oil. Some in the room were crying softly. The mother was sitting right next to the father's bed and said, It's OK hon, you can go. She was crying. I looked over at Mary. Her face was slick with tears. I was holding her hand and she was squeezing it hard. I'll be back in a minute, I said. I went through the door, into the hallway, out the sliding glass doors, into the parking lot, found the car and got in. The engine started, I heard it start. The air was on full blast, but it was hot so I turned the knob down to cold and sat there feeling the air blow over me. I pulled out of the spot and drove around the lot, around and around. I kept driving, not going anywhere but around. Finally I finished driving and pulled into a parking spot, a different spot than before. When I got back to the room he was dead. Mary came up and hugged me hard. He's gone, she said. Where were you? I didn't say anything. I looked over at one of the brothers, his eyes were red and shiny. I reached out and put my hand on his shoulder. It didn't yield at all, it was hard and tense. He didn't move.

Everyone else was hugging each other. They were all crying but me. Why am I not crying? He's not my father, I thought. But it wasn't like I never cried. I cried a lot, for a man. Some sappy song on the radio and I would just go, lots of stuff could get me going. I tried to think of something to start me crying. I thought of some of those songs. I thought of other things. But I didn't cry. Not a drop.

The Angel

As the man died, he was visited by an angel.

It came to him slowly that he was dying, like a diver coming up from a dark depth, and faint recollection of a time before teased just outside of reach.

A picture of black, grey and white, illuminated by some light behind. A doctor in glasses pointing. There, the doctor said. That's it. He was pointing at the soft white, which stood out among the black. Big and growing, fast. As he pointed, he smiled. There, among the black, the white clouds told his future.

Not much time, the clouds said. Or was it the doctor? He looks like a vulture. That's what he thought.

Now, the cords and tubes weaved in and out of his skin, itself the color of dried paper. A mask of plastic fit around his face and made a SSHHH noise every couple of seconds. More tubes, serpentine and unlovely, roped around his pillow. The sheets felt like tinfoil and his skin howled when he shifted. All at once he remembered the thing in his chest, and as if in thanks the thing beamed pain through his being. Red and hot, the pain knew where to go and what to do. It flooded his vision like bright waving flags.

The angel, for his part, was leaning with the flat of his back agaisnt the far wall. A tan cowboy hat befitted his head and obscured a part of his face, which was pale and serious. His lips were tightly shut against each other. His eyes were new, as if that were at all possible. They squinted toward the man in the bed.

"Get thee behind me, Satan!" He had tried to say it forcefully, but there was no air in his lungs. It came out in a hiss.

"That would be a neat trick" the angel said.

The room was all saffron and the ceiling fan ticked as it spun, counting out seconds. The man realized with sadness that this thing, this angel, was the best friend he had in the world at that moment. At various times in his life before he would, depending on the circumstance, secure himself against a tide of humanity and cling to a silence deep within, a bulwark against intimacy.

Turtles have shells, he thought. All I have is silence.

A burly male nurse shambled in and the noise of it shook him out of his trance. Something was jiggling the tubes and his head turned to snow. Cold fingers trembled through his body, his chest full of ice. Subway cars shuttled inside his veins numbly. The pain, before a live hyperactive thing, was yawning. It slept and he was comfortable in his skin for a time. His soul let out a slow breath.

"Ohhhhh" he said.

"Yeah, that's the stuff" chuckled the nurse. "One for you, one for me." He winked at the man, but his crossed eyes couldn't focus. Those that work around death have an easy fellowship with the barely living. A thick cloud encircled the nurse, and he was gone.

"Close your eyes" the angel said.

"They are closed!" he tried to shout, but his eyes so wide open, the lids spasmed. His mind was filled with the colors and images of time. Need and want and pain studded the exploding collage, and his heart went up and down like a bike on bad pavement.

"What's this?" he said, but it was flat like a statement or question about the weather.

"You see it? You see?" the angel flitted about the room, tumultous and terrible, but all the while standing with his back against the wall, his weathered hat askew.

He was stunned by the scene. He was looking at himself many years ago. The lines has been erased from his face,  The scene was at once framed but all around them, filling the hospital room and expanding out as far as he could see. His arms were free of the tubes and his skin, once wrinkled and pocked by years, was pink and taut, under green and black camoflage. Rain pelted his dusty cap and a long, black rifle perched on his shoulder. He lay flat with his face peeking out from under a great green canopy of a tree, the rust colored bark flaking off the trunk like useless burned skin. The rifle seemed as big as a cannon, though he had no  visible trouble holding it steady. Through the scope he spied the target. He lifted his head slightly and licking his lips felt the wind against them. Tick. Tick. Tick. The sight adjusted left in small increments. Steady. Hey there.

In the valley below him a short man in a threadbare grey jacket sqwauked on a phone to someone, gesticulating wildly, a dance of one. He was going to die and did not seem to know this just yet. He just kept talking until he wasn't.

Electricity  crackled inside him as the round producted the expected effect - a neat hole and pink cloud - and he was falling, falling inside himself. I killed a human being his mind screamed into the quiet of his soul, the deed expanding inside him like smoke trapped in a bottle. I killed him. Everything is different now.

At once he was back in the soft hayloft of a hospital bed, the pillow cradling his ruined head. The angel had shown him - what? A past deed to yet be undone? Some reason for something, precious enough in the flat randomness of all things? What's done can't be undone, the angel said through ages. Though the guilty are pilloried, the innocent sleep.

"Are you a demon?" the man asked no-one.

"You are a stubborn old coot" The angel said.

The man trembled. Suddenly he was afraid of what was happening. He felt doom all around, inside his shirt, hanging from his shoulders, a rock-filled pack. This wasn't like what he had read about. There was no light, no tunnel. No long gone loved ones to greet him. Only the cursed angel, grinning slightly, his eyes shaded by the brim of his hat.

He was sinking, being pulled down. there was no lightness, no relief. He felt like boulders were being loaded upon him, more and more until he could no longer stand the crush of weight. Words tried to form at his parched lips, some last recantation that would lift the weight, sling those boulders away from him, lift him up in an expansion of light and hope. But it was too late. He was was going to Hell. Not the hell of the spiritualists, or the Krishnas. This was hell with a capital H, all fire and brimstone.

And the angel, for his part, stood with the flat of his back against the wall for just another second. Then he straightened, walked to the door, and was gone. The air was a solid thing and it stood not moving in the room where the man, minus his soul, lay, while the bacteria in his gut marshalled its strength for the coming feast.