A Hard and Heavy Thing (12 page)

The sparkle of light that had been dancing on the spiked wrist stopped. The smoke that had been drifting toward the ceiling from endless cigarettes stopped. The hand that triumphantly held a gray nylon guitar pick in the air stopped. Levi's thoughts stopped. In the silence, he locked eyes with Eris, who stood alone in the corner. Only the hum of the amplifier tubes remained, nearly indistinguishable from the hum of silence, until the weight of all that hope and desire and youth and angst and sweat lust fire idealism freedom longing potential independence difference confidence became so much to bear that the music came crashing down once again so they could all move, unsure of how to live, or be still.

[When my turn came to stand on the stage, emote until my throat was raw, and jump from my half-stack like a madman; when our turn came to keep perfect rhythm during improvisational key changes simply by making eye contact with each other and with Jesse behind the drums; when our turn came to sweat under the lights, to announce our penultimate song, to flow seamlessly into our finale; when my turn came to fall trustingly into the crowd, it was finally a time in which I could forget myself.

That's only one kind of release that I miss.]

Long after the lights had come up, after the crowd had dispersed, after they had finished carting their amps and drums down forty-nine stairs to Jesse's van waiting on Pearl Street, they shook hands with the owner of the club and said goodbye to an era. They gave Jesse casual, choreographed handshakes, and he was off. For Jesse, the end of the band couldn't have come too soon; he was newly twenty-one, and now he had other opportunities for mayhem. His mind hadn't been in the music for weeks.

Nick and Levi sat at the top of the tall staircase leading down to the street from the first level of the club, and they smoked one last cigarette in silence, not wanting the night to end. Finally, they walked down and out together.

Eris sat on the sidewalk, her back against the building. When they opened the door and walked out onto the street, she stood up and brushed the dirt from the back of her jeans. “Took you forever,” she said.

“Hey, hey,” Nick practically shouted. “You waited.”

“Just cuz you're leaving doesn't mean I have to.”

Levi shrugged. “Fair enough.” He looked over at Nick, who was beaming.

Eris folded her arms over her chest and kicked at a rock on the sidewalk. “Is there a big after-party you have to go to? Some big goodbye bash?”

“Nah,” Nick said. “We figured it'd be depressing.”

“Well,” she said, looking up and making eye contact with both of them. “Wanna maybe at least have a small goodbye bash with me?”

Nick put his arm around her. “Depends. Will you give us a ride?” They walked off toward the alley. Levi followed, steps behind.

Three hours, nearly a handle of rum, and four liters of pop later, Nick lay passed out on the living room floor, a sweatshirt for a pillow. Levi and Eris looked down at him and giggled.

“One second,” Eris said. “He was out in, like, literally one second.”

“No kidding, right?” Levi said. “One second he wants to go steal a keg from downtown, the next: boom. Down for the count.”

“Let's go soke,” Eris said, leaning into Levi.

“Soke?”

“Let's go soke a smigarette.”

“Okay.” He put his arm around her. “We can go soke a smigarette.”

“Shut up,” she said. She hit him in the chest with an open hand and let it linger there. “Know what I mean,” she said. Or commanded. Levi wasn't sure which.

Levi let go and led her outside where they smoked one cigarette in silence. They sat near the top of the stairs, Levi on the landing and Eris three steps below. When Levi snuffed out his cigarette on the bottom of his shoe and made like he was going back inside, she said, “Just one more. There's nothing better than smoking when you've been drinking.”

Levi lit the cigarette dangling from her lips. She looked at the cherry of it as she smoked. She blew her smoke on it with each turn. Levi watched her lips purse, and he watched the cherry glow brighter with each of her breaths before it faded again.

Wanting to break the silence, he said, “Thanks for throwing us this party. I, for one, think it turned out pretty great.”

She brought a hand up and wiped her eye.

“Are you crying?”

She shook her head and sniffed.

“Hey, hey,” Levi said. “Why are you crying?” He paused but she did not answer. “I wasn't being ironic or sarcastic or anything.”

She turned her head away.

“Look, Eris, I'm sorry about—” he looked down at his hands. “Look, tonight, this right here. Being with you before we leave. This was perfect.”

She wiped her eyes and said, “Stop talking already.”

Then quietly, “Is this because Nick's asleep already?”

She turned and looked up at him with something like disgust on her face. Her tears had moistened her eyes and had made them shimmer in a way that caught the light from the naked bulb hanging in the landing. “Why would it be?”

“Aren't you two . . . you know.”

“No, I don't.”

“Aren't you two, or weren't you two like, sleeping together?”

“Ha,” she turned away from him again. “You really are dense. You live with the guy and don't know that he hasn't slept with anyone? Let alone me?” She took a deep breath in through her nose. “He doesn't want damaged goods.” She put her elbows on her knees. “I can't believe how stupid you are sometimes.”

Wounded and confused, Levi sat in silence. Should he leave her to be by herself? Should he console her? Should he apologize? And if he did apologize, for what would he be apologizing? Finally, he scooted down two steps and put his feet on each side of her so he sat behind her. He put his hands on her shoulders. He did it with caution, not knowing how she'd react. “You're not damaged,” he whispered. To his surprise, she leaned back into him. He held his breath.

She turned slightly to the side and rested her head on Levi's thigh. “You have no idea,” she mumbled.

“I don't care.” He took a finger and brushed black hair over her ear so he could see her cheek and the contour of her chin. He bent down to kiss her head, in a manner that he could pass off as paternal or brotherly if she balked. He barely noticed how uncomfortable it was to lean down so far. When she did not turn and slap him, when she did not rear back to elbow him, he breathed. He leaned over further to kiss her cheek, and as he grew close, she turned and arched her neck so her lips met his. They kissed. She reached a hand up and touched his face. She turned completely around so she was on her knees on the stairs. She put both of her hands on his cheeks, and she kissed him. And she kissed him. And she kissed him.

At first he was blinded by the brilliant flashes of light behind his closed eyes, and the blindness was water, and all his thoughts drowned. Then every thought in the world went through Levi's head. Memories of high school, of how he had longed for this moment and for a million like it. He pictured himself sulking as a third wheel as Nick and Eris developed such a close friendship. Now, as he kissed her, Levi laughed at being jealous about it all, knowing that what he had wanted—and was now getting—was something Nick had never had or even wanted. He thought of Nick on the floor upstairs alone.

[Everything I thought back then was foolish, and shallow, and sad.]

Levi thought of how he no longer had a bed, only a few pillows and blankets on the floor of his room. He thought how she must be getting uncomfortable on her knees for so long. He thought how in just a few hours he'd be getting on a Greyhound bus to Minneapolis. He'd get on an airplane for the first time and hold his breath as the plane accelerated and left the earth in the same way that he had held his breath before he kissed her. Then he thought of how he should be thinking of the kissing instead of buses and plane rides.
Think of this kissing, he thought. You'll want to remember this kissing forever.

She pulled away, and he opened his eyes. She stared at him with wide eyes, surprised. She shook her head, almost imperceptibly. She stood. “It's getting cold,” she said. “We should get inside.”

He followed her in, wondering where she'd lead him. She walked to his bedroom, and he held his breath again. She stood in the middle of the empty room and crossed her arms over her chest. “I'm cold.” She shivered.

Levi picked up a rumpled blanket and shook it out over the floor. He did the same with a folded quilt. She got on the floor and climbed under the blankets, and Levi followed suit. He leaned in to kiss her again and he embraced her, but she held her elbows in close to her abdomen. She balled her hands into fists under her chin, keeping her forearms as barriers between them. She shivered. After the blankets trapped their body heat, after Levi had let his hands wander on her back, her legs, and other places, she rolled onto her back and took off her shirt. Levi hurried to take off his own. They explored each other's bodies, but they did not make love.

When the aching became too much, Levi stopped moving. Eris rolled on her side and faced him. He searched her face, but she closed her eyes. In that moment, he felt his entire life rested in the hands of that girl, and he was helpless. He thought he saw a small smile play at her lips. He took his finger and moved hair behind her ear again. He watched her for a while. “Eris,” he whispered. “Just tell me to stay.”

Levi had been awake for nearly an hour, continuing his journey through the stack of paperbacks his mom had mailed him. The Humvees pulled up to the staging area outside their appropriated home, the old hardened ammo bunker that had been left relatively undamaged after the Americans invaded Iraq. After the gravel stopped grinding and crackling beneath the tires, the roar of the engines and the opening and closing of truck doors remained. Soon, the vehicle engines ceased. The generators continued their perpetual hum, and the scattered voices of the returning soldiers grew closer.

He stretched and slid his bare feet into his flip-flop sandals. Not bothering to put on a shirt, he pushed aside the woobie poncho liner that served as a door to his bunk. He wandered into the common area. The members of third and fourth squads stormed into the bunker as he reached the door. Someone flooded the bay with light, and Levi squinted and crossed his arms over his chest, chilled by the cold morning draft.

He stepped back so his toes didn't get squashed by their tromping. Three water bottles were strung up to the door with parachute cord to keep the door closed, and since no one bothered to hold the plywood door open for the next man, the water bottles pulled the door shut with a slam after every second or third soldier. Then the next man would fling the door open and the process would repeat, prompting the members of first and second squads to yell profanities from their beds.

Midway through the stream of men piling through the door, helmets and body armor in hand, a private dropped the Meal, Ready-to-Eat that he had been carrying between his teeth. Levi bent down to pick it up for him. “How'd it go?” Levi asked.

As he lifted an arm so Levi could tuck the MRE into his armpit, the young kid smiled. “Outstanding. We rustle up more bad guys by 9
A.M.
than first and second squads round up all day.”

“Is that right?”

His broad mustachioed team leader, Staff Sergeant Shane Havens, walked in behind the grunt and kicked him to get moving. “Hell no,” Havens said. “Most boring ten hours of my life.”

During their first few months in country, the contact had been frequent and the improvised explosive device strikes had been plentiful, but the past few months of winter had been dead. The activity seemed to die almost instantly in late fall, and as the days with no action ticked by and as the string of boring patrols grew longer, every mission felt like an odd letdown. It felt like they had somehow won the war without doing anything. The deeper into winter they got, the more inevitable it seemed that each patrol was a perfunctory exercise in pretending their presence was needed. The winter rains seemed to keep everyone down, troops and insurgents alike. Levi was glad the slow winter was now over. From his perspective, the entire platoon had escaped a dangerous few months in which they had traded their motivation for complacency, and complacency killed more than the enemy.

Rumors of the spring fighting season had so far been all talk, but the anecdotes from visitors on the logistical convoys had been enough to get them back into squaring each other away. The PowerPoints the LT showed them once a week with storyboards and SIGACTS from nearby villages had been enough to remind them of the hell of the previous summer when they had still been green and gung ho. Now that they were on the back third of their tour, they all seemed to have snapped out of their malaise, and now they were just waiting for the inevitable day when their own AO would explode again.

Levi stumbled out into the dark, and not wanting to walk the fifty meters to the bathroom Cadillac, he looked around to make sure no one remained outside before he walked around the corner of the massive concrete bunker to take a leak in the rocks. He looked up, trying to determine if it would be a dry day. In the cloudless desert sky, every star shone brighter than if he were on the bluff back home. As he looked straight up, he tried to force himself to think a pastoral thought about the stars and moon being the same no matter where you are. He tried to think of something poetic or significant, but the sting of diesel exhaust in his nose and the roar of the generators ruined the nostalgia and sentimentality of it all. He shivered and tucked himself back into his PT shorts before returning to the bunker to get dressed and supervise his truck's checkout before patrol.

The bunker had turned into a bustle of men in various states of dress. Most of the returning members of third and fourth walked around in nothing but unbuttoned DCU pants and flip-flops, towels thrown over their shoulders. The remaining bleary-eyed soldiers milled about with bottled waters and shaving bags. Nick sat on an ammo box outside his cubicle with one boot on. He held one sock and stared at the ground.