Story Sampler
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The next day, I boarded the Odysseus’ Spirit, bound for Indus Planet Three. The captain and crew—and passengers—were quite pleased to see a Washishisha Grandmaster aboard, particularly one of my standing. Word was left that I was “going out” and could be reached by Vid-link if necessary. We were already in deep space when the message came.
“Heartland harvested. Excising Homer’s Ghost in one hour.” Code. Simplified and cryptic. I shrugged, despite the uncanny itch at the back of my neck.
Ten minutes later, the captain’s voice—solemn and shaky—echoed through the passenger compartments. “This is the Captain. It is my sad duty to inform you that the Farmland Express has been reported as missing and presumed lost. It is the first incident in over four years. She, like us, was an uncommissioned passenger craft. Fortunately, we have the protection of the Grandmaster on board.…”
I quit listening—my itch had exploded into a burning fire. Homer’s Ghost?! That was the code for—
There was no way to stop it. In forty-one minutes, Odysseus’ Spirit would meet with a little accident. A carefully masked meteor on collision course? An ion storm (mechanically generated) to fry organic matter? Perhaps it would be a bomb—simple, crude, effective. I started laughing.
Eighty-three years for this?! To give the order which would ultimately be my death—how utterly ironic! My amusement grew alarmingly as I shouted, “WASHISHISHA!” slapping my thigh. “WASHISHISHA! WAHSHISHISHA!”
Five minutes later—just a half-hour to live!—I called a friend in the media to explain what was about to happen and why. Given time, I might even be able to tell her what destroyed the ship.…
Mock Turtle
Slithering across the horizon, at least three miles away, was a large shadow. Every now and then, it darted this way or that, or disappeared altogether. “Well?” Squire Hibbard, the youngest of the three observers, asked.
“A young one by the look of it,” Sir Garamond replied. The wing-span is scarcely more than twenty feet.”
“It will do, though, right?” Hibbard asked.
“Do? As an initiation, perhaps, but not for you. It isn’t every day that the Briar Circle considers a candidate for Knighthood. That,” the older man said, pointing, “is your dragon.”
The young candidate looked in the direction indicated by the older man but could see nothing; a small hill was in his way. “Where?” he asked.
Sir Reginod chuckled. “It is a bit larger than the young one,” he said.
Squire Hibbard, shaded his eyes, and looked more closely at the hill. It undulated. The hill was the dragon. His dragon, all curled up upon itself, snoozing.
Sir Reginod laughed heartily and slapped the candidate’s back. “Don’t worry; the size of a dragon is of no great consequence—for a Knight.”
Squire Hibbard puffed up his chest, raised his blaster, and stepped forward to do battle with the dragon, trying to ignore that it was as big as a manor house.
“Whoa, there, Squire! Not so fast.” Sir Reginod said. “We must warn the dragon, first, so he, too, can prepare.” As Sir Garamond walked toward the dragon, Sir Reginod finished, “Besides, it isn’t at all Knightly to sneak up on a sleeping dragon. Where’s the honor in it?”
Sir Garamond reached the dragon, paused for a few moments, then started back. The dragon rose, stretched its wings out and fluttered them, casting a shadow around them as if they were a huge canopy of leather.
“He is prepared,” Sir Garamond reported upon his return. “Go present your challenge and commence the duel.”
The candidate, dressed in the uncomfortable, bulky armor of a Wannabe Knight, thumped his way forward as the dragon did a series of simple calisthenics that shook the ground. It took five minutes for him to reach the dragon—far too much time to realize how big the dragon really was. Far, far too much time.
“Hail, O’ Mighty Dragon,” Squire Hibbard squawked.
“Eh?” the dragon replied, looking down. “What was that?” It asked, lowering its enormous head to snort.
Squire Hibbard cleared his throat, “Hail, O Mighty Dragon!” he bellowed, his voice ringing out in a rich baritone that floated just above the plain.
“Well-met!” The dragon puffed. “Are you here to challenge me?” The dragon chuckled, sizing up his opponent with brisk dispassion. “Aha! Anti-inflammatory shield and non-corrosive body armor. A wise precaution. Of course, you do realize they will provide you with little protection from my teeth, don’t you?” The dragon grinned, showing precisely what it was that the Wannabe Knight would have no protection against. “Perhaps it would be best if you decided not to challenge me? Perhaps you could leave the Knighthood, instead?”
Squire Hibbard was thinking much the same thing but said, “No. I challenge you in the manner and fashion of the Knights of the Briar Circle. Prepare to defend yourself.” He lifted his blaster and fired—where the dragon had been a moment before.
“Ha!” The dragon cried from above—and behind—him! He twisted around, just in time to throw up the flame-retardant shield to absorb the dragon’s fiery breath. A question rushed through his head: Why did it breathe when it knew it would do nothing to my shield? As the smoke began to clear, the answer quickly followed: A diversion! Squire Hibbard raised his blaster and pulled the trigger. He didn’t even try to aim, the dragon’s gaping maw was so close.
The dragon’s head snapped back and it gasped, spitting out great globs of red dye.
“O Mighty Dragon,” Hibbard said when it had recovered. He bowed graciously and added the ceremonial words: “You are dead. This duel is over, and I have vanquished you.”
After the dragon spat out the last of the red dye, it bowed its head and replied with formality, its voice scratchy and harsh. “Very well, Wannabe Knight, I concede to you your victory.”
“Thank you,” Will-be Knight Hibbard bowed and walked back to the two Knights of the Briar Circle.
“Well done, Would-be Knight,” Sir Garamond said.
“Well done,” Sir Reginod echoed with a heartfelt, heavy pat on his shoulder. “Meet us at noon tomorrow in the Briar Patch garden. Have you a name?”
Squire Hibbard nodded. “I shall be Sir Winniferd.”
Sir Reginod raised his eyebrows and said, “Strange name for a Knight of the Briar Circle,” he said.
Squire Hibbard nodded. “It was my mother’s.…”
Resurrection
Three weeks is a long time. It’s even longer when you’re used to being on edge 24-7. War is like that. You never know when some nut-case is going to try to get past the checkpoint with a bomb strapped to his chest. Fucking fanatics. The war would’ve been over years ago if it weren’t for them. But this story isn’t about them; it’s about me.
My name is Corporal Henry Miller—scratch that, former Corporal Henry Miller recently discharged from active duty. I did two tours in Afghanistan and called it quits. Then I had the bright idea of going home to the panhandle of Nebraska. It’s a bit like Afghanistan: hot and dry. Not as much sand though. And no IEDs. No Taliban or Al-Qaida either, just rolling-on-the-floor-speaking-in-tongues Christians. They think believing in a different god makes them different, but I’ve got news for them: it doesn’t.
I met a lot of Muslims in Afghanistan, and most of them were just like us: rural farmers trying to make a living from the land, hoping for grace, praying for rain. Some of them didn’t like us, but that’s okay; I didn’t like all of them. Still, most of them are pretty decent folks.
Anyway, after three weeks of being idle, I’d had enough. But I didn’t want to go to work, yet; farming doesn’t cut it for me anymore. I’d seen too much to settle for that kind of life, again. It’s not a bad life; it’s just boring. I couldn’t sit at home any more. Too much time to think about what I didn’t want to think about and couldn’t stop thinking about. So, I bought a Schwinn Meridian 26” Single Speed—it’s a tricycle with a basket between the back wheels. Let them laugh. I could have bought a ten
speed, but that would have been counter-productive: I wanted—needed—to burn off some energy. So, I filled up my duffle bag with about a week’s worth of civvies, bought a few bottles of water, and started off in a random direction. It ended up being east.
Nebraska, in case you’ve never been there, is about as flat as a crew cut and as boring as television snow. Mile after mile of farmland, mostly corn, a little milo, soybeans, and pasture. Same-old, same-old. Once in a while, you get a whiff of hog shit, and if you’ve never smelled it, you don’t know why people get pissed off when a new hog lot comes to town. It stinks. It’s worse than three-day-old corpses. Well, almost. That’s a smell you don’t forget. Once in a while, there’s a stream or river and a few trees. It doesn’t take long for the novelty to wear off.
Anyway, I’d been riding my bike for three days when it happened. I say “it” because I don’t know what else to call it. It might have been a vision. It might have been a hallucination. Hell, it could have been a dream for all I know. It wasn’t drugs. I don’t do them. Whatever it was, it changed my life.
I’d been riding for three days, and my legs were sore, my ass was chapped, and I had found out what hemorrhoids are. I was beginning to wonder why I was riding a bike across Nebraska, but that just made me pedal faster. About noon on the fourth day, I came to a T intersection. To the left, the asphalt continued, and to the right was hard-packed gravel. I decided to take the gravel road. If you’ve never ridden a bicycle on a gravel road, it isn’t easy. You can lose traction in an instant, spin out, and get a face full of gravel if you aren’t careful. I wasn’t careful. Fortunately, it didn’t matter. The Meridian has three wheels, which makes it a lot more stable, even with poor traction, and I didn’t quit flip it over. Maybe I should have turned left, but that’s beside the point.
I was limping along at an embarrassing, doddering speed and noticed a dirt road branching off from the gravel. I’d seen a lot of dirt roads in Afghanistan, but this one was different. The dirt roads in Afghanistan have a lot of traffic, and sometimes they have IED’s. You’ve heard of that “road less travelled” poem, right? Well, Frost could have been talking about this road. It looked like it hadn’t been used in years. It wound its way into a small wood about a quarter mile away, and since I needed to take a piss, I decided to ride down it. It had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I felt like the road had invited me to follow it.
When I reached the wood, I took the time to take a piss and drink some water before mounting my Schwinn again. I intended to turn around and go back to the gravel road but found myself pedaling further into the woods. I still don’t know why I did that. About half a mile later the dirt road turned sharply left and passed under a large metal archway. You know the kind—black paint, calligraphy letters. I skidded to a stop when I saw what was beyond it: a cemetery. It took a moment to decipher the metal latticework of the archway, and when I did, it didn’t make sense. It read: The Poet’s Plot.
Now, I’ve seen my share of death—and yours, too, probably—and I’m not at all keen about cemeteries. I’m not afraid of death; when your number comes up, that’s it. But cemeteries bother me. They bring back too many memories of too many funerals for too many dead comrades. It also reminds me of the enemies I saw through my gun sights. I don’t know if they had funerals. Funerals are a luxury in war.
Well, for some reason, this cemetery didn’t bring up those things. Instead, I found myself getting off my Schwinn, grabbing a water bottle, and walking up to the gate. Beyond were carefully manicured rows of death’s evenly-spaced teeth. No cavities. I stepped across the threshold, and everything changed. Well, not literally, not all at once, but it’s as good a point to say everything changed as anywhere else is. After all, what happened next transformed my life, and if I hadn’t walked under that archway, it wouldn’t have happened. But then, again, if I hadn’t bought a Schwinn Meridian—it’s forest green, by the way, a nice contrast to the brown and tan of my desert cammie fatigues—it wouldn’t have happened either. I could have said that everything changed at that point, too, but I didn’t. Deal with it. It’s more dramatic to say everything changed when I walked into a cemetery than to say everything changed when I walked into Wal-Mart.
The first thing that caught my eye was the orderliness of the place. All of the graves seemed to have been placed in precise, evenly spaced rows. The plots were big, about four feet wide and seven feet long with plenty of walking room between them. I’m good at judging things like that. Each grave had a tombstone carefully placed at the head of the grave. Or the foot of it, for all I know. Probably the head. Most graves are like that. Maybe it was at the foot of the grave, instead. It would make sense, in this cemetery. The tombstones were six-inch slabs, two feet wide and three feet high. They were all smoke-colored granite. It was like they had been chiseled from a giant stone slab and placed there by a machine. Or by the military. If you’ve ever been to Arlington, you know what I mean. I’ve been there. Most of my platoon is there, planted in a nice straight row, like peas. Their markers were white marble, though. These graves were like corn rows planted horizontally. There was one exception: a mausoleum at the back of the cemetery commanded everyone’s attention. Everyone in this case was me. A cobbled walkway led to it, and I found myself quick-marching down the walkway before I even realized what my body was doing. I watched my body walk that walk. The shrinks call it disassociation.
I’ve experienced dissociation a few times in combat. You detach yourself from your body and let your body do its work unimpeded. No thinking required. My body was trained well. I watched it do some amazing things the day I got the Purple Heart. It was hit in the leg, but it didn’t let the bullet stop it from slitting those Taliban throats. I didn’t feel how much it hurt until later, when I was part of my body again. It took a while to heal up. Riding the Schwinn brought back the pain. My point is this: I disassociated when I saw that mausoleum and my body acted on its own, and I’m not responsible for what my body does when I’m not in it. No, I am not in denial—unless I’m in denial about my denial, but that’s something the shrinks would say. Screw ‘em. Anyway, I don’t really remembering walking through the cemetery; I just remember being at the gate one moment and then being at the mausoleum the next. In-between is like a dream that happened to someone else; it was like walking through the open jaws of a shark, with its rows on rows of teeth ready to grind off large bits of flesh. Only, this wasn’t a shark.
I looked back, longingly, at the gate of the cemetery, but I knew I wouldn’t be going back there any time soon. I had to find out what was in the mausoleum. The way it compelled me to move toward it, I wouldn’t have been surprised if a vampire or mummy was lurking in its grim shadows, waiting for me to let down my guard. But, that wasn’t what happened, was it? After all, if I had been sucked dry by a vampire, would I be here writing this crap? Art therapy, my ass. What the hell does my shrink know, anyway? She’s never been in combat. But that’s a different story, and she’d get pissed off if I wrote about that. Probably call it transference.
The mausoleum was large, a little over thirty feet in diameter, and it had a domed roof. The walls were gray granite carved smooth and masterfully set. Bland. Peaceful. It reminded me of a mosque I saw in a little village south of Kabul. We’d heard there was an Al-Qaeda cell hiding there, and we—well, I don’t want to talk about it; that’s a different story, too. Let’s just say the mosque was more ornate and a lot more colorful. It was made of sandstone, the tiled floor alternated black and white like a chess board, and long, heavy, flowing curtains split apart the male and female areas. They were burgundy. The stains didn’t show as much on them as they did on the white tiles. Both buildings were architectural masterpieces in the most unlikely of places. Both were on sacred ground. Both housed the dead.
The mausoleum had an opening the same size as the graves: six feet wide and eight feet high. There was no door. The interior was shadowy, cool. The only place someone could hide was behind—or in—the sepu
lcher in the center. It was precisely placed. It grew from the floor to a height of four feet, and the lid—if that was what it was—was the same size as the graves outside. I took a breath and cautiously stepped forward—and everything changed. Again. A part of me wishes I’d never gone into that mausoleum, never looked at the sepulcher lid, never read those lines.… But I did. Three long, crouching strides brought me up to the sepulcher, and two more convinced me that no one was lying in wait behind it. A key difference from the Mosque: they tried to hide behind everything. Once I was satisfied I was alone, I looked at the sepulcher, expecting it to have some poor bastard’s name, birth date, and death date. It’s routine. Almost every grave I’ve ever seen has the b and d dates on the tombstone. This one didn’t. No name was given. No birth date. No death date. Instead, etched into the granite cover, each letter about half an inch deep, was a poem.
I’ve heard of epitaphs before. Famous people have them. Rich people have them. Poor people can’t afford grave markers like that. The dirt poor can’t afford grave markers at all. Anyway, this guy must have been pretty well off, judging by the length of the epitaph and its content. Here it is:
In this grave I do bequeath
my body to the ground,
But all the earth that lies beneath,
I donate to this town
to be used by other souls
so I am not alone;
But on their graves I do request
an epitaph in stone,
A verse or two that speaks of life—
whatever life they’ve known—
‘T would be a kindness to their soul
for them to have a poem.
Okay, so it’s not dramatic. So what if there was a poem carved into this slab of stone. It’s not even that good of a poem—the “own” sound drowns me. But, it changed me. I mean, it’s such a simple thing, such a practical thing, such a considerate thing to do, giving people a place to be buried. So why did he have to screw it up by making them put poems on their tombstones? Especially trite little poems like—
“Hello—
If I’d had a gun with me, I’d have shot him. Who the hell is he to sneak up on me like that? But I was unarmed. I swung around, poised for mortal combat, and found a wizened old man leaning against the mausoleum entryway. He was wearing blue coveralls, and a rake dangled from his hand. “Who the fuck are you?”
Okay, in hindsight, it wasn’t the most appropriate thing to say in a mausoleum, but I hadn’t felt a rush of adrenalin like that since my last mission, the one that gave me the Purple Heart and sent my buddies to Arlington. It took a moment to remember I wasn’t in Afghanistan, and it took a lot longer than that for my heart to stop racing. Maybe it was his blue coveralls that kept me from killing him. Anyway, there’s nothing quite like that mad rush of adrenalin, and for the first time since I got back, I felt alive and ready for action.
He shrugged, cocked his head to the side, and said, “Call me Ishmael.” His eyes twinkled as he said it. “I’m the caretaker.” His voice was a wispy baritone. He nodded toward the sepulcher. “That’s the founder’s plot, one of the oldest graves in the cemetery. They say his name was Alfred Fennicore, but I wouldn’t place much stock in that. He didn’t have any family, and there aren’t any surviving records. All we have is hearsay from the grandchildren of the grandchildren of the people who knew him. If their accounts can be trusted, he died of stubbornness in 1831.”
“Stubbornness? How the hell does someone die of stubbornness?”
Ishmael shrugged. “Like I said, hearsay.”
“Well,” I said after a moment, “it doesn’t matter. He’s dead either way.”
“True,” he agreed. “I suppose it doesn’t really matter how one dies, after we’re done dying.”
“Wait a minute,” I said, “1831? I thought Nebraska wasn’t settled until the 1850s.”
He shrugged. “Parts of it were. Small settlements. Are you going to be here long?”
It was a good question. I hadn’t thought about it. It was my turn to shrug. “I saw the dirt road,” I said, not really answering him. “I was curious.”
He half-smiled and tilted his head again, “Have you checked out the headstones? Some of them are quite poignant. You can learn a lot about someone from an epitaph.”
“No,” I said. “I wanted to see what was in here, first.”
He nodded. “You should read a few before you go.” Then, still leaning against the entryway, he pivoted away. A pair of soft leather, brown gloves flapped in his back pocket as he disappeared around the corner. I stood there, absentmindedly running my fingers over the smooth-edged troughs of the etched lettering of the sepulcher cap. Perhaps a minute passed while I stared out the empty doorway, wondering if he was going to come back. Then I decided it was time to leave the mausoleum.
When I got outside, I glanced around, but the cemetery was deserted. There weren’t any vehicles by the archway. I sniffed the air: if he’d left by the dirt road, no dust cloud had followed him. It was as if he had never been there. Maybe he hadn’t. Regardless, I decided to take a look at a few of the tombstones to see how “poignant” they were. I picked the first one at random, mainly because it was near the mausoleum. My curiosity was rewarded with the following verse:
Epitaph to a Whore
Herein lies Miss Jamie Beck,
naked to the last;
We buried her upon her back,
in tribute to her past.
I don’t know about you, but I think it’s poignant. After all, do you know anyone who wasn’t buried on their back? We’re all whores, in the end, aren’t we? Whores to money. Whores to time. Whores to governments hell-bent on killing each other. But this little lady—yes, lady—practiced that age-old art of selling her body to service men’s needs. And men do have needs. I know, when I was in Afghanistan, I had a few. Whores, that is. Those hijabs cover up a lot—literally, they were fat, ugly whores. But I didn’t mind. I was horny. I needed it. Besides, I could have died the next day, the next minute. But I didn’t. It was cheap, too. I made sure to step around Miss Beck’s grave when I moved on to the next one; she had had enough men on top of her when she was alive.
The tombstone beside hers was for the undertaker. It’s an important job. If you’ve ever been around unburied, rotting corpses, you know what I mean. Here’s the epitaph:
The Undertaker’s Plot
His duty to this tiny town
was done with joyous sorrow:
Embalming all the dead around
and digging every barrow.
Now we’ve placed him in the ground—
the new man comes tomorrow.
Sad, isn’t it? It doesn’t sound like he was very much appreciated. Look at how easy it was for them to replace him. Men should not be replaceable. I had a professor, once, who used the word fungible in philosophy class. I had no idea what it meant until I looked it up later. It refers to two interchangeable commodities of equal value. Fungible things can be replaced without loss. Light bulbs are fungible. One burns out, no problem: put in a new one. Fungible. I hate that word. Soldiers are fungible. Blow one up, and there’s another one ready to take his place. Shoot him, and here comes another tin soldier ready for target practice. That’s what we are: tin soldiers. Toy soldiers. Commodities. There was another poem in the graveyard that was like that:
Sally’s Place
Her diner fed a million men
with meals too hot and salty;
Though we’re sorry that she’s gone,
the new cook is a beauty!
At least they were sorry she died. At least they noticed her. But it didn’t take very long for them to get a new cook, did it? Poor Sally. Poor fungible Sally. She got replaced by a brighter light bulb.
I was too angry and disgusted to pay much attention to the next few epitaphs I looked at. They must not have been very good, though, or I would have remembered them. Fungible epitaphs. But, near the end of the row, I was brought up short by this
sad little poem:
May 3, 1895
A baby, dead before it lived,
encased in knotted pine;
A nameless boy for which we give
as only marks in time.
My anger dissolved into tears before I even realized what was happening. The tears streamed down my cheeks as if I had been sprayed with mace. It doesn’t make sense, does it? I mean, I didn’t know this baby, so why was I crying? Sure, it’s sad, but I’ve seen death up close and gory without flinching. So, why did this headstone, this poem, this sad little verse hit me so hard? I kneeled down, put my hand on the smooth granite surface, and gently traced the date over and over again. I don’t know how many times I did it, but eventually I pulled myself away and moved to the next one. My vision was blurry. It was difficult to read. But at least it didn’t strike any more raw nerves. Maybe it should have been titled “The Poet’s Plot” instead of the cemetery, but it wasn’t. It was a lonely little quatrain waiting for attention. I tried to give it mine.
I was the poet for this tiny town,
commissioned every time they broke the ground
to write a verse or two for everyone,
but now I guess my writing days are done.
I wrote poetry, once, a long time ago, in the time before the war. Most of the poems were silly, the kind of things children do. I thought about being a writer back then, but boot camp cured me of that idea. Boot camp, bullets, and IEDs. How can I write good poetry when all the imagery dancing in my head has bits of flesh dangling from it? In Afghanistan, I tried to write an uplifting verse but a suicide bomber took over and blew it all to hell. Who’s going to print a poem like that? Blood flows through my poems, now. The blood of the dead. The blood of the dying. The blood of the innocent. The blood of the guilty. The blood of a nameless two-year-old boy.
I almost left the cemetery at that point but stopped just before I got to the archway. I was being stupid. I was getting all worked up over epitaphs. Bad epitaphs. I had a teacher in high school who said good poetry was like a painting without a frame: the words are static and the reader provides the context. Without the context, all there is is an image lost in space and time. I think he meant poetry was relative and that each person brings something into the poem that isn’t really there. Take this one:
A Stranger's Grave
A stranger rests with troubled soul,
his name unknown to us;
He wandered in one rainy day
and got hit by a bus.
It’s a simple poem. Some anonymous vagabond gets killed, and they treat him like he’s one of their own. They bury him in the cemetery and send him off with a quaint little verse. What did I think about when I read this poem? I thought about the bus that blew up outside of a restaurant in Kandahar, killing twenty three civilians. I thought about the multitude of strangers I met, any one of which could have a bomb strapped to its chest, a gun under its flowing robes, or a crucifix dangling from its throat. I thought about the time it rained and how it sizzled in the hot, dry dust. I thought about the bus that dropped me off at boot camp, the bus that took me to the airport when I got deployed, and the bus that brought me home to Nebraska. I thought about the faces of the strangers I killed. I thought about a lot of things the poet didn’t know a damned thing about. I am the stranger. The war is the bus. The context for the imagery.
Bad poetry just sits there, doing nothing.
Most of the poems I saw in that cemetery were short, no more than a stanza or two in length. But there was a longer poem that caught my eye, and I carefully maneuvered my way around the graves so I could read it. It was surreal.
In Memoriam
His heart was calloused to the bone;
his eyes were steely gray;
His legs were stumps of knotted pine
with feet of molten clay;
His arms were hewn from granite blocks
with hands of corded twine;
His thoughts were muddy riverbeds
when he was so inclined;
His ears were molded tin and zinc;
his back was steel and ice;
And frozen blood ran through his veins
in currents of device;
He lost his tongue in battle
as cancer stole his face;
His body cried, “No more! No more!”
and left the human race.
Staff Sergeant Greer was like that. He was the kind of soldier who could stand up in the middle of a firefight, impervious to bullets flying about. He wasn’t. Impervious, that is. We all found out when a sniper’s round shattered his skull. I don’t think of people like that anymore. No one is invulnerable. No one. In the end, Staff Sergeant Greer was no different than that two-year-old boy who died during an air strike just before we went in to cancel the Taliban’s lease. He was still breathing when I got there, if you want to call it that. It didn’t last long. How could it? Half his chest was gone. Half his face.…
I don’t know how long I stood there rereading that poem. It was a good poem, heroic, hyperbolic. I liked it. Staff Sergeant Greer would have liked it. He was that kind of man. He didn’t worry about dying; he wasn’t afraid of it. “Why worry about dying?” He’d ask. “Everybody does it. It’s living that matters.” Sage advice for a soldier. We live fiercely, we die fiercely. And when I die, I want an epitaph like that one. Lie about me when I die. Make it sound like I was someone who wasn’t fungible. I don’t want a poem like this one:
The Stonecutter's Grave
His chiseled features fill this yard
with marble i’s and t’s
so firmly set in stone he carved:
May He Rest In Peace.
Don’t get me wrong; this isn’t a bad poem. I’m sure the guy would appreciate it. But a man is more than what he does, isn’t he? I was a soldier, but now, … I’m not. I don’t carry a rifle. I don’t go on patrols. I don’t have to follow orders. I don’t shoot people. I still jack off, but I did that before I became a soldier. Maybe they’ll write an epitaph about that when I die. “He was a masturbation machine” or some such. Maybe they’ll bury me with my dick in my hand. I wouldn’t complain. I’d be dead. Even if I weren’t dead, I wouldn’t mind.
I don’t deserve a heroic epitaph. I don’t want an honest one. They’d have to say I called in an air strike. Maybe I should have a light-hearted poem like this one:
One Last Toast
We’ll miss him very much indeed,
despite his vulgar ways;
So, to our local drunken bum,
a toast we all have raised:
“In the ground you’ve gone, my friend;
in the ground you’ve gone;
Let’s have another round on him—
there’s plenty going round.”
I’ve heard the stories. Soldiers come home and they don’t fit in civilized society. They can’t forget what they did. They can’t talk about what they did. They can drink. A lot. They drink to forget. They drink to numb themselves to what they can’t forget. They drink to remember the ones who didn’t come home. They drink because it’s a weekend furlough that never ends. Furloughs are like that. We don’t have a lot of time to recreate on furloughs so we pack in the fun when we get it. Drink, sex, drugs—we take what we can get, as much as we can get. But when the furlough’s over, we go back to the base. We go back to routine, to order. The routine comes back to us. Discharge is one big furlough with no end in sight. I remember reading Frederick Douglass’s autobiography, and he said the same thing about slaves. The owners would give slaves time off around Christmas, provide them with lots of whiskey, and they’d drink themselves stupid. They couldn’t deal with being free. So, when it was time for them to be slaves again, they were happy. It gave them order. It gave them structure. It freed them of the responsibility to make choices. It hits soldiers the same way. That’s why I re-enlisted the first time. But I can’t go back there again.
Just before I left the cemetery, I saw a simple little
poem on a corner plot grave stone. It was only sixteen words long, but it spoke volumes. See for yourself:
The Widow Granger
Surcease from the sorrow;
Surcease from the pain;
Surcease for the widow
Who never loved again.
Surcease. It means something has stopped. It’s an end of things. I like this word: surcease. I find it comforting. An end of suffering. An end of loneliness. An end of everything. It is appealing. It’s better than solace. How long did it take her to find surcease? Her husband had died. She was consumed by grief. It had to be a long time, otherwise, the poet wouldn’t imply that she had opportunities to love and passed on them. Did she find surcease, or did she make it happen? I knew three vets who made it happen. I’ve thought about it, myself, even had the pistol under my chin a few times, but I’ll never do it. Surcease from the war. Is she at peace now? I like to think so. The surcease of this narrative is coming up, but first I have to tell you about it. We haven’t gotten to that part, yet.
I was exhausted when I left the cemetery, and it took me a little while to get my balance on the Meridian. It’s a good thing it has three wheels. By the time I was back on the gravel road, I had worked through the cramp and found my stride again. I didn’t know how far I’d have to go before I found the town, but I didn’t think it would be very long. About a half hour later, I rode into a sleepy little place and found a quaint little diner named Sally’s. I felt like I knew the place. I chained my Meridian to a parking meter and went inside. It was a little after four.
I sat at the counter and a cute little thing, barely five foot tall, with brown hair and shallow blue eyes set a glass of water in front of me. She had dimples when she smiled. Her name tag jutted out from her pink blouse. Jasmine. After she took my order—steak, eggs, hash browns, toast, and milk—I watched her saunter to the thing they hang orders on and spin around to the cook. She was worth watching. Not bad for a forty-year-old. We flirted a bit when she brought my food, and I took my time eating it. Afterward, I sat and drank water at the counter. That’s when I mentioned the cemetery.
“That old thing?” she said, laughing. “No one’s been out there since they filled the last plot, back in 1960. Except the old caretaker. He kept it up until he died in ’93. The new cemetery is at the edge of town. Some of the old timers still put poems on their gravestones, but the younger ones and newcomers have abandoned it.”
“What about you?”
“Me?”
“Are you going to have a poem?”
She frowned. “I never thought about it. I might, if I’m still here.”
“What would you have it say?”
She shrugged. “I’m not a poet.”
“If you were?” I drank the last of my water and set the glass down.
She shrugged. “Refill?”
I shook my head. “I’ve had enough. I still need to find a place to sleep tonight. Any ideas?”
She paused long enough that it was meaningful. “I suppose,” she began, “you could check with Taggart. He has a spare room that he might let you use. He’ll probably charge you for it though. He’s down the street, the brown house just past the gas station. Otherwise, you can go down the gravel road until it turns to asphalt. There’s a motel about six miles from there.”
I cocked my head and asked, carefully, “Are those my only options?”
She paused, again, and wiped the counter down for the fourth time, then said, “Yes. I can’t think of anywhere else you can stay.”
“All right, then. How much do I owe?”
She told me, and I paid my bill, adding a sizeable tip in the process.
By the time I had unchained my Meridian, I had already made up my mind about where I would sleep. I rode down to the gas station and bought a notebook and pen. I don’t know why I did it. When I came out, I looked at Taggart’s place—a light was on—but turned around. I don’t sleep well on strange beds. I have nightmares. I’m jumpy in the morning. I pedaled to the dirt road and turned onto it. I would have gone to the motel, but I’ve slept outside in combat zones; sleeping in a mausoleum wouldn’t bother me. It would protect me from the elements. As for the dead, I’ve seen them. They don’t walk. They don’t talk. They just lie there in their own filth and rot away.
It was twilight when I reached the front gate of the cemetery, but something had changed. A lot had changed. Everything had changed. The archway was rusted. The P of Poet was dangling, pretending it was a d. The graves were overgrown with weeds. The gravestones were dirty, some were chipped. The dying sunlight played across their surfaces, leaving behind splotches of shadow in its wake. Dried leaves cluttered around the floor of the mausoleum. All in all, it looked like the cemetery was in considerable decay. It was nothing like what it had been before. I almost decided to go to the motel. But my leg wouldn’t have it. Besides, riding a tricycle at night on a gravel road is risky. Not as risky as driving a Humvee in Afghanistan, but still risky. I laid down on the sepulcher, thought about the waitress, and did what soldiers do. Then I fell asleep.
I slept fitfully, and for the first time since I had gotten back, I didn’t dream about being in the war. I dreamt about an old man in grass-stained blue coveralls, brown leather gloves flapping from his back pocket. He was leaning in the mausoleum entryway. He was smiling. It was an odd kind of smile, slightly tilted, amused. But the amusement didn’t reach his eyes; they were sad; they were kind. They were a bit pissed, perhaps because he would have to clean up my desecration.
I dreamt of a frumpy old woman throwing salt over her shoulder. The salt landed in a bowl of chili, and she turned around. From behind, she looked like Jasmine, which didn’t make sense, since she outweighed Jasmine by at least a hundred pounds. She turned around and set the chili on the counter in front of me, smiled, and said, “I know where you can stay tonight, sweetheart.” Her breath smelled of Tabasco sauce and rum.
I dreamt of standing in a long line of men, patiently waiting to enter a bus named Jamie Beck. We were all undertakers. We were all named John. We were fungible. When it was my turn to enter the bus, she looked like Jasmine. She charged the same price as the steak, eggs, hash browns, toast, and milk. Plus a generous tip.
I dreamt of a poet chiseling away at a slab of stone, cursing the mistakes he had made and couldn’t correct.
I dreamt of a little boy.…
When I woke up, I lay there shivering for a long time. The sun had risen, and I saw the cemetery clearly for the first time. In the full light of the sun, it was dilapidated, overgrown. I sat there a long time. When I finally moved, I took the pen and notebook out and stared at the first blank page. My fingers trembled as the tip of the pen touched the first ruled line, just shy of the center. I wrote the word Aftermath on that line, and beneath it, I penned these lines:
Death becomes redundant
when body upon body piled on
body melt into soup under
the hot tropical sun.
So what if Afghanistan isn’t in the tropics.
A Skunk’s Tail
(or The Invention of Magic)
Umfarg, who was named after the sounds his mother made when she had him, tried very hard not to pee his loincloth. It was difficult. He had drunk quite a bit of water during the night, and when they came to a stop to rest for the day, he had rushed into the brush to relieve himself. Unfortunately, when he got there, he was not alone: a skunk was also there.
Now, as a rule, Umfarg avoided skunks because they tended to make him smell bad. Of course, he’d only met a few skunks—three to be exact—and that was when he was younger and didn’t understand that they peed smelly stuff on him when he pulled their tails. Pulling tails was fun. Smelling bad was not. When he put these two together after the third time, he did his best to restrain his urge to pull their tails. He had done so well, in fact, that it took almost no effort to refrain from pulling this skunk’s tail. But—
He had to pee.
He really
had to pee. And a curious thought ran through his mind, and it was one of those rare instances of curiosity that had plagued him throughout his childhood: What would happen if he peed on the skunk?
Okay, by now, you should realize that Umfarg is not the normal kind of ogre. In fact, he was rather small for his age, too smart for his own good, and, well, curious. Ogres generally just stomped on things that puzzled them or made them smell bad, but Umfarg was different; he had to understand things. Not that he did it all that well—ogres, after all, are not too bright—but he did try. So, he lowered his loin cloth, took aim—and, well, you can guess what happened next: They peed on each other. And Umfarg, much to his dismay, smelled bad again.
Now, smelling bad is part of being an ogre, but smelling skunk bad is not. But it wasn’t the first time, and he knew what to do about it. First, he had to roll in the mud—feces would be better if he could find it—to cover up the foul odor with something more pleasant. Then he would have to find some of those funny-looking big red berries. That was a problem. The pesky humans had brought them into the area, planted them, raised them, ate them, and guarded them. Not that he was afraid of the humans; he wasn’t. Ogres don’t feel fear unless dragons were around. Those scared the pee out of ogres. But they knew where they stood with dragons: Hide or be eaten. It was better to hide. The humans, though, were mean.
Now, meanness, to an ogre, is a friendly greeting. But when the ogres tried to exchange pleasantries with humans, the humans tend to get out of hand. It was not a proper greeting to poke ogres with pointy objects (it just made them mad); proper greetings involved growls, fists, head butts, spit, pee, and other bodily functions. Maybe a little mud-slinging among relatives, if mud is handy. The best greetings were the dirtiest ones, as ogres saw it, and a little pain among friends was frequently well-placed and well-received. But the pointy things caused injuries, and sometimes even death. That was rather un-ogre-like, since ogres generally didn’t kill things unless they ate them. Or when they needing to be stomped on. Like skunks.
It was a bad smell.
So now Umfarg, his nose clogging up with the foul odor, was in a bit of a pickle. He could go back to his nomadic ogre group and try to explain why he hadn’t stomped on the skunk before it peed on him, or he could find some mud (fairly easy to do; it was usually by streams and rivers, and one was nearby) and look for some of those red berries to spread all over his body. That would be the tricky part; the red berries would be near the humans, and he didn’t like the pointy things poking him. Skunk pee smell was better.
He took a step toward the camp and stopped. If he went back, he’d have to tell them why the skunk had peed on him. He thought hard about it for several seconds (it always takes ogres time to think hard) and turned around. There had to be humans near the water, somewhere.…