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.