Jack came back from Afghanistan; his heart migrated to his throat. Every time he swallowed, he tasted blood. His blood. The blood of his brothers in arms, dead men's blood, and all the blood spilled and dried in the veins of all the warriors. The veins, in vain. His pain, unspeakable, although few noticed. Because you kill a part of yourself. They didn't tell you that.The pain that contorts your face until your own mother wouldn't recognize you. Because you have betrayed yourself. That's why they would stand up in the heat of a firefight and wait to get blown away. They were the heroes. They paid for their crimes. Jack's father said "don't ever get old", "love is a terrrible thing'," I have a death wish, don't tell your mother" and "when a woman tells you she needs to pee, believe her" was he profound or profoundly stupid? Jack never knew.

      Jack came back from Afghanistan having seen one, two, three, ten, twenty too many deaths. Most of them were his buddies who saved his life, or whose lives he saved. The guys becames the reason he would stay just one more day, to hear about the latest babies about to arrive, the dreams of husbanding and loving. Night after night as fire lit the sky and the indescribable smell of death crept under their skin like the sticky syrup filling in each tiny square of a giant waffle for an insatiable war mouth.

     Bobby and he were friends since grade school. Cracked each other up with endless stupidity, goofy voices, straight man to idiot depending on theme, or sometimes with both playing educated idiots, which was always fun.They had to pretend they didn't know each other in the recruiting office to get the same assignment because they never sent friends to die together. But they got through.

     "Professor, have you have the opportunity to categorize the particular species of cru-station strolling up your left limb, hmm, hmmm???" Bobby would ask him when he saw some giant sand insect triying to eat through Jacks fatigues. "Why Dear Doctor Do Nothing, I am certain that the premeasured circumference of that very item forthwith of which I have examinth and  findth no external reason to execute an immediate retreath amen habada, habada." before swatting the damn thing off his leg in a show of great glee. That is how it was for them. Everything was fun until it wasn't. 

And every horrible thing became less horrible. Bobby was the better athlete, Jack anticipated potential risk before it happened. They dared to stay close after so many had stopped see others as individuals. The Deer Hunter stare; the vacent gaze, into that farway place where there is no feeling at all.

     One pre-dawn, Jack on point, they were ambushed. In the slow-mo warp of unimaginable danger, he heard his men calling for their mothers, their women, and he hear Bobby, calling  "Jack" like an apology that he couldn't stay. Jack rushed over to Bobby's dead body, his guts ripped open from a sucking chest wound. "I hate you!" he screamed at him. "I hate you for dying! What the fuck! Bobby! No! What!'  Pounding the sand like a madman because the best part of him was gone. His mouth was still open in amazement, his weapon dropped, arms limp. His dearest friend. Jack closed his eyes and mouth and sobbed over his blown up body. His rock. In the dead air, he could hear Bobby telling him he would always be with him. "Yeah, but that doesn't do me much good every fuckin day I'm alone out here trying to understand why it wasn't me who died" he said back to him.The first french fry. It was no longer their joke. And his blood looked like ketsup. A french fry.

     As Commander, Jack had no time to grieve Bobby. The other war dead needed attending. The guy who asked for a light and them bummed a cigarette. The American Indian who knew all these herbal remedies and spirtual chants to help the guys. The card shark who no one wanted to play cards with. And Bobby. All dead. Carried off the battlefield and flown home. Bobby's mother. Oh Jesus. She was such a bitch.Wanted him to die as a baby. She got her wish. Bet she was marching around with her black dress dress on. Bitch. The world was hard. The edges were sharp. God, it hurt.

     Jack's new second, Ken, was a man with piercing blue eyes and a sculpted jaw whose trained eye observed and assessed soldiers. He knew which men were short timers and staying out of harm's way to go home. They weren't firing weapons at the enemy, therefore endangering others. He knew who they were and how they ingratiated themselves to fool Jack. He had no respect for cowards. His face would remain emotionless as he watched certain soldiers try to befriend him. He pointed them out to Jack. "Watch how he cleans his weapon. No discipline. Putting us all at risk. I recommend him for shit burning detail. Anything to take him off the battlefield. See to it." And Jack saw to it.

     Another soldier spread word that Jack was a college boy who knew nothing about battle and ought to be taught a lesson. Ken heard this sabotaging talk and assigned extra duty to the social critics of the unit. He'd heard undermining talk too many times. Jack was still too green to have Ken's acute awareness.The guy claimed to have grown up "in the streets". "Yeah, Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-just like that-all gone!:  Ken died from a bullet to the back of his head. Friendly Fire. Probably from the ratman. With no way to prove it. Jack's fifth major loss.

     There were others, but not all of them equally anguished. But together, taken day after day, changed him. Reinforcements came and went, and with them a black officer with uncanny intuition. He told Jack that his father would come home raging for no reason, looking to beat up any family member in his way. Joe and his brother hid in the attic, sometimes for days, while his father punched through walls, broken glass,  and threw stuff at the t.v. As they got older, they learned how to call the police and finally were taken into foster care. Joe said his father never knew any better and he believed he was born to remind people they were human, especially when they felt like trapped animals. Joe said you could perserve the dignity of each person in the face of inhumanity by being the bigger person and never trying to match hatred with hatred. "We are fighting people who consider us infidels. They don't want us on their land. They see us as impure. And by what right do we have to be here? Because the U.S. says we are supposed to be here? Do you think they care? 
They would just as soon strap a bomb on their body than listen to us. They would send their children out with bombs on their bodies just to kill Americans." So Jack was left with: How could a parent do that? How much hate does that take?     

     Jack came back from Afghanistan and met with a V.A. counselor who diagnosed him 100% disabled due to PTSD. He was depressed, anxious, fearful. He had high blood pressure,was hard of hearing, limping and blind in one eye. He felt suicidal. His younger brother told him "you're living off the taxpayer dollar now" since he would never work again.  His brother said he could have the house if Jack would take care their father. Their aging father who had Alheimer's and was of no practical use to anyone any longer. Jack's  brother never asked him about Bobby even though he had known him well.  He could probably see it in his face. The devastation. The surrender to the ravages of life. He had fought and fought and fought, but no one was there to ask him about his battles, so suddenly, it seemed, and all at once, he was falling apart.

     When you are in the presence of death too many times, it overshadows life. When he first came home he met up with his sweetheart, Chris. She was a college teacher and they married. There had been books all over their house. But she died of a rare brain disease, no lie, and it sounds like some sappy movie, but it really happened, and Jack was still young, just thirty five.They were married five years and then, like everyone else, she died. Jack, by this time, was aware nothing of permanance exists in this world. It was agony to watch her die slowly and with anger as she lost her speech, sight, mobility, all her functions, until she finally couldn't breathe.That's it for me, he thought, It's just too damn risky. I don't have another chance in me. And he knew it.   

     "Why so sad, son?" his father asked. "Well, Dad It's war. Those of us with boots on the ground were in daily fire fights  There's only so much death you can witness before it breaks you in half. You go numb.Then your body start to fall apart. Like it just doesn't want to move into the future anymore. My legs don't want to carry me. My spine doesn't want to work. My memories are of those I lost, and others don't care enough to help me carry on .I believe my life's work is done. I don't make a different to anyone." His Father looked at him critically for a minute.

     "Well you don't have to worry about taking care of me. I'd be just as happy in a nursing home." This was not remotely comforting to Jack.

     "Dad? Are you serious? You'd be okay in a nursing home?"

     "Sure!"

     "I wish you knew what you were talking about."

     "I always know what I'm talking about!"

     "Do you mean it, about the nursing home?"

     "I'm not going into a nursing home!"

     "Yeah, that's what I thought."

     "Okay then."

     "You've been a great son to me. I don't blame you for anything. You've always been here for me. And I thank you for that."

     "You're welcome, Dad. I love you."

     "Oh, I know, son."

     "Lets get some supper."

     "Lets get some supper."                                                                                                                                                                                                                 Jack's father was as dependent as ever on Jack without any awareness his son was his caregiver. This was no comfort to Jack.

     Around Christmas, Jack noticed the deflated santas and snowmen on green lawns ready to be blown away if they weren't tied down. The lawns looked like battlefields with oversized cartoons. Why do people put out these godawful things? Every commercial reminder of Christmas was juxtaposed to the tragic reality of brief, meaningless life. The family home, on the bank of the Connecticut, where Jack and Bobby had become excellent paddlers as kids, was now marred by the stupid decor making a mockery of the street with those damn plastic blow up reindeer. Wheres my gun when I need it he said to Bobby, who nodded.   

     Jack and Bobby had jointly discovered a tiny island past the East Windsor Hill banks of the river. It was too far to swim, but you could paddle it, if you knew where to go, and they did. They would sit together silently, watching the water lap onto the shore, have a smoke, letting the sun warm their skin. So he had pulled the canoe from the rafters of the garage and hauled in to the riverbank to re-visit their childhood retreat.The rope was full of spiders and eggs and webs and shit but he brushed off the gunck and rolled her into the water; plouff! Same sound as always, Bobby said. Jack pulled out the paddles from the boat and got in. She felt like a hug. The paddles fanned out  plush,plush, like combing the hair of your girl. Smooth as silk, beautiful glide. Skimming over the surface of the water. This is where I want to be. Not on the ground. Not in the air. Right here. In the glide. Plush, plush.

    The canoe took him out to the island easily. The clear water fell from the paddle blades as he easily banked at the island's edge. He tied up to a nearby tree and sat on the grass just feeling clean and new, before the war, before death, when life was yet to be lived.   

    Walking into the forest, he saw an elaborate dug out. Using the higher ground as the back wall and some overhanging growth as a ceiling to extend the tarp drapped over the gorwth, he knew this could only be the work of another vet. Another vet who doesn't feel he has any home in the world so he makes one in the wild. Jack gets it.

     One side has a makeshift shelf lined with world literature. Shakespeare, the Bible, World History, Greek Comedy and Tragedy. The other side is full of  implements needed for household operations, a shortwave weather radio, and a life jacket for bailing out.      

   Jack looked at the camp with admiration and the awareness he is being seen. Without turning, he says

     "Great digs!"

     "Thank you."

     "Vet?"

     "Yeah."     

     "Me, too."

     "Figured."

     "I'm jealous."

     "Don't be."

     From behind him, a middle aged man in jeans and a casual shirt jumps across a few rocks over to Jack and extends his hand.

    " Roger."

     "Jack. My buddy Bobby and I used to come here as kids and play fort. We loved this place. He got blow away in Afghanistan. I was there when he died. Not a thing I could do. Not a thing." Roger looked away for a long moment before meeting his eyes.

     "The only cartoon I ever liked was Mighty Mouse. He puffed out his chest and he was going to save the day.  He had apparently studied opera along the way because he had one hellofa voice. Never-the-fuck-less, he was a MOUSE. So maybe, in his mouse mind, he was saying, here I come to save the day, but in mouse, it came out eee! eee! EEE! So nobody got this dude. He was honorably discharged, however. But he saved absolutely nothin."

     "I knew that guy, too."

     "I'll be here tomorrow."

     "Okay then." Jack said.

     And Jack came back.

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