Then things finally smoothed out for me around the time I got my degree. I never told anybody, not even Cindy, but that graduation meant a lot more to me than being out of college. It was a turning point, I guess. I walked across that stage, then down onto the floor, then outside into the cool spring air, and I felt like I was finally back. Like I had left all that awful loneliness behind.
But it’s been pounding me a lot lately, and at the oddest of times. I’ll be watching TV in the living room with Cindy and the girls, all of us snuggled up together so close we’re half on top of each other, and out of nowhere it will hit me like a shock wave, how all alone I really am. It will be all I can do at those times to keep the tears out of my eyes. At times like those, all I want to do is crawl off into some dark corner and hide.
Does that make any sense at all, feeling so miserable for being alone that I want to hide from everybody? It makes no sense to me.
Back in Iraq when the loneliness got to me, there were always my brothers to turn to, you most of all, but even the ones I didn’t particularly like. Even they were my brothers. We ate together, slept together, shit together, whined and moaned and bitched and sometimes even cried together. We were a fucking unit, you know?
I’m in another unit now but it’s different. I’m the one the girls all look to. The one who’s supposed to provide everything they need and keep them safe from all insurgent forces. I have to keep secrets from them. I have to hide my emotions sometimes. I have to sugarcoat all the ugliest crap going on outside our FOB. And I’ve got nobody but you to unload on.
Truth is, it’s not a very satisfying communication when it only goes one way.
Which makes me realize how you must’ve felt back there. You didn’t sugarcoat anything but you were the point we all turned around. You were the source of our faith and our strength. You held us together and kept us going. But who held you together?
I’m sorry, brother, if that responsibility ever made you feel as alone as I do now.
I wouldn’t wish this feeling on anybody.
Is it possible to hate something you did, and to hate yourself for doing it, yet still be glad you did it?
Iradat Allah. I bet you remember that phrase, don’t you? How many hundreds of times did we hear that? Iradat Allah. The will of God. Then they’d sit down in the dirt beside the bloody bodies and commence into wailing and tearing at their clothes.
It always seemed like some kind of contradiction to me. First acceptance, then grief. I don’t know, maybe it’s not a contradiction at all. Maybe it’s the natural order of things.
What made me bring it up now is a dream I had just a few minutes ago. I’m still fucking shaking from it. Thing is, I can’t remember if it really happened or not. I mean that guy on the bicycle, he was real, I know that much. I know you ordered him to stop and he didn’t, and you told me to take him out, so I did. I know that happened. But a minute or two later, after we’d checked him over and found he wasn’t carrying anything, just my bullet in his chest now. Was there really a little girl who came up to me then and took my hand and told me, “Iradat Allah”?
That part’s not real, is it, Spence? How could that have happened?
It just seemed so fucking real is all. I mean I can still feel her hand slipping into mine. I can still see her eyes staring into mine.
And even if it is just a dream, aren’t dreams supposed to mean something? On one hand she’s sort of forgiving me by telling me what I did was God’s will, right? But on the other hand, what does that say about God? How’s that make Him any different from the assholes who sent us over there in the first place?
I want to go back to that night now, the night after that hour or so up at the plant with Pops. Cindy got a call from her mother. It must have been around three something. Of course when the phone rang I jumped like a cockroach hitting a hot skillet. Luckily Cindy’s phone was on the table on her side of the bed, so she rolled over and grabbed it, and that’s how she found out her father was dead. Janice wanted Cindy to come down to a funeral home where the bodies had been taken. All I heard though was, “Where is he?” Then, “All right. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
She climbed out of bed, then said to me, “Cover up your eyes. I need to turn on the light.”
“What’s wrong?” I said.
She went to her closet and started pulling out clothes. “I’m not sure anything is.”
“What do you mean?”
“Donnie was in an accident. In a truck with that woman Shelley. They’re both dead.”
I sat up. “What?”
“I need to go be with Mom. She’s barely coherent.”
“Why would Donnie be in a truck with Shelley?”
“I wouldn’t put anything past him,” she said.
After she had on her jeans and a shirt, she sat on the bed to put her shoes on.
“Where’d you leave the keys?” she said.
“On the hook. Where they always are.”
“I’m probably going to have to stay with her all night.”
“As long as it takes,” I said.
Before she left she asked me, “So what do you think that was all about?”
“What?” I said.
“Him and her together in that truck?”
I tried to look as surprised as she was. “Whatever it was, I guess neither one of them can cause any more trouble for anybody.”
“No but those other two can.”
No they can’t, I thought. But I didn’t say anything out loud. I tried to think of something to say, but then I remembered something else more important.
“You might want to take a towel with you to dry off the seat in the truck,” I said. “It might still be wet.”
“Wet from what?” she said.
“I tripped outside after leaving Pops’ place,” I told her. “Was more or less soaked by the time I got back to the truck.”
“Tripped over what? Did you get hurt?”
“My own stupid feet. Naw, I landed in the grass. Just glad it was too dark for anybody to have seen me.”
I guess that answer satisfied her, because she gave me a nod, then a peck on the cheek, and she headed out and switched off the light.
That next day, the only thing in the paper was a story about the pickup overturned along the side of the road. Skid marks indicated the truck had been speeding when the driver lost control.
Cindy spent all that day with Janice. Called me a few times to say hello, and probably to get a breather from her mother’s grief. Cindy, for her part, only wanted to know why I thought Donnie was in the truck with Shelley that night. Wanted to know what was going to happen next, what the McClaine brothers might be doing or thinking right now. Janice had told the police that Shelley had lived with the McClaines, so now the police were trying to locate Phil and Bubby, but so far they were still whereabouts unknown.
It wasn’t until middle of the morning on Monday that Cindy started breathing easier. She called me from work to tell me everybody was talking about the McClaines being found up at the crushing plant. “Both dead,” she whispered into the phone. “Shot to death. Can you believe that?”