I'd Walk with My Friends If I Could Find Them (15 page)

“Don't.”

“I want to go ape-shit at my grandkids' soccer game when the ref makes a bad call. I tell this to your children when you're away: ‘You get what you get and you don't get upset.' There you go. You want a thank-you?”

“No.”

“Okay. Thanks. I love you. You know that. But your uniform means nothing. No matter what you've been told, it's only a job.”

“You're wrong. Not about everything. But you're wrong about that. And people know why they're clapping as soldiers walk through the airport. They're just glad it's not them and they know that if things got bad enough it would be them. They're clapping because they know sometimes it's hopeless and we serve anyway.”

“But you're getting out. Why?”

“It's not because I don't believe in what our military does.”

“So let's say you were thinking of staying in. If they cut your pay and benefits in half, right now, what would you do?”

“That's bullshit.”

“You don't serve. You're a paid rifle. Soon to be ex–paid rifle. I love you, son, but it's true.”

“People are capable of appreciation.”

“It's fear, and fear works.”

The carpeted chapel seats three hundred, and three quarters of the chairs are occupied this Sunday morning. Armando's younger daughter, Mia, moans in frustration halfway through the hour-long service. Armando leans over Anna, squeezes Mia's leg, and whispers, “Don't make me.” She eyes him like a stranger. She shoulders into Anna's red dress, his favorite, and quiets down.

A year away and his dark suit drapes loose on his dry, thin frame. Anna tries to calm both of their daughters as a woman with heavy eye shadow cries at the podium. She struggles through a story about how tithing has lifted her soul. She gathers herself: “It's easy to die for the Lord, but hard to live for him.”

The statement settles nicely over the congregation and all the members contemplate their lives and the things they do or do not give to him. Armando glances at Anna, and he can tell that she contemplates it all, because she has her unfocused stare on the seat in front of her. She probably considers what service to this country means, with him being away so often, or maybe just the ways she lives for the Lord. Perhaps she relives Mia's birth during his previous deployment: driving to the military hospital, only to be sent home because her body had not dilated enough; then, when it was time, waiting an hour for the anesthesiologist, giving birth, and, soon after, trying to get Armando on the phone half a world away, only to be told that he was unavailable; resting and worrying, imagining the worst, and finally writing an e-mail that she hoped he would be alive to read with nothing in the body, just the subject line: “Girl—Mia?”

Armando rubs her back and she leans into his touch, rewarding him. He's unsure if God wanted him to join the military. Armando figures God is mostly hands-off, but even so, when he prays, he does so expectantly.

The speaker now rehashes the founding-of-the-church story, centering her comments on the resiliency of Joseph Smith and his early supporters, chronicling select hardships: Smith's being tarred and feathered, the lynch mob killing him and his brother, church members dodging persecution in Illinois, Missouri, making their way to Utah in a great and difficult migration, and setting up shop near a lake of salt. Armando has heard these stories many times. There is pride there, and although the worst he has experienced is soldiers questioning his underwear, he appreciates the religious lineage of tough souls.

Mia moans again, and three people in the row in front of the Torres family turn and smirk-smile. Anna places her hand on Armando's bouncing leg to soothe him, but his mind floats in a trance, now stuck on the particulars of tarring and feathering.
Pine tar? Tar we use for the roads? Hot tar? Pour it on? Why the feathers?
Mia fusses louder and Anna whispers, “I'm taking her out” to Armando, but his leg keeps bouncing, his eyes up—
How do you get the tar off? Why tar and feather when someone can put a shirt on over it? Unless you do the face. Hot tar on the cheeks. A beard of feathers. Where do you get feathers? Chicken feathers? Who brings the feathers? Of all the choices for pain and humiliation, tar and feathers?
His head clears and he peeks over at his family, but there is only Camila, sitting silently, stuffing the eraser end of a pencil up her nose.

On their way home from church Anna balls her fists and eyes the horizon. Armando focuses on the oncoming traffic, trying to push away the thought of one of the cars abruptly turning in to them head-on. He pictures the collision, beautiful and choreographed, all of them in the sluggish lean mid-contact, a crash-test-dummy commercial. He hears “Hello” and “Hey,” and Anna waves her hand at him and brushes her thighs.

Five blocks from home Anna apologizes, says, “I have to ask. Did you kill anyone this time?” She wants to understand what she is dealing with. The children wear headphones in the middle row, watching
Shrek 2.
Armando thinks of the checkpoint girl, his bucking gun, the bullet that missed everything and saved him. Then, reaching down after the Kabul bomb blast, touching the young girl's arm, grabbing the limb, pulling, her arm sliding free from her body, him holding her dangling arm by the wrist.

“No,” he says.

She asks if the redeployment program on post helps at all. He opens his mouth but blanks on the answer. They have counselors, sure, but he's been through the routine before. Everyone wants to get out of there, get home, and deal with it on their own. He has plans to leave the army anyway; no need to open up new files about stuff that they have no clue how to diagnose or treat, if there is even something to diagnose. He sleeps decently enough, and his dreams of a future without bomb-planted streets arrive in comforting color. The rumor is that the VA clinic lines and the wait time for benefits are insane, but he's not worried about that yet. He still relishes his easy pleasures, how they are more than just pleasures, simple spaces where he can place hope and faith without any wounds: in his Denver Broncos, how they win more than they lose, how Jake Plummer will never get them to the Super Bowl; in Tiger Woods, how he will break out of his current slump any week now; in Green Day's new
American Idiot
album, how it plays on repeat during his morning runs.

Armando is realistic. He doesn't expect blanket immunity from his combat time. While he knows many soldiers who deal with combat seemingly well, who move on after their service to years of success and fulfillment, he's also familiar with the stories of good men and women, many of them friends, who go sleepless for days, play metal music at 3
A.M.
, use drugs, experience perpetual sedation. Worse yet are the many others sticking guns in their mouths and pulling the trigger, wrapping belts around their necks and teetering off the chair, the unfathomable pain trapped in those that do, the unfathomable pain left in suicide's wake.

In comparison he diagnoses himself fine, at least fine enough. He makes love to Anna. He takes the sacrament at church without anguish. He recognizes there are issues with being “fine.” What does it say that he's not jacked up? Should he be different, jittery? Two deployments and he waits for the consequences of Afghanistan, confused. In an inexplicable way he wants the shakes for a day, an hour. When will he feel the pain of shooting at the checkpoint girl? When will he suffer the guilt of masturbating during the prayer calls? Will his minor yearnings for the amplified voices from the minarets stop? For the Afghan streets' smell of crap, dust, and rot? Already tiny but manageable itches arise for the chaos that greeted him each morning and made him feel like he could die at any moment, and for other times, when the occasional blood moon out his window convinced him that he would live forever.

Anna's voice lifts him out of the daydream. She reaches to hold his hand over the center console.

“I want to know how I'm supposed to talk to you.”

Armando hears Anna, but washed once over—a memory speaking to him—and he waits to hear how he'll reply. He grips the leather-wrapped steering wheel and stares down the blue Toyota truck approaching fast, left tires hugging the double yellow. The truck's chrome grille sparkles at him.

“I want to know how to talk to you,” Anna says again.

“Be thankful I'm not hurt. I'm not limping. I can play with our children.” He pauses and smiles as they turn onto their street. “And I've never been right up here.” He taps his head, already aware of and disappointed by the gesture. Anna goes silent, and he sees her hands squeeze her thighs. They pull into the garage, and Armando lets Anna lift the kids out of the car.

The Torres family settles into the early Sunday afternoon, and he unknots his red tie and unbuttons the top of his dress shirt. He helps feed the girls grilled cheese and remembers that Camila no longer requires a peanut butter dollop.

Anna bought their new house while he was overseas. The stucco rancher feels tight for their family—room walls crowd the beds on both sides. After lunch, the hallway floor creaks as his daughters skip to their rooms.

The girls nap, and Anna asks Armando what he's thinking about while he relaxes on the couch watching golf (the Tour Championship, the fairy-tale green fairways, Retief Goosen going low). He really wonders how they grow and cut the grass in diamond patterns so perfectly for the golf tournament, recalls that when he used to play the Broadmoor course with his mother the grass was cut the same way, but he can see that Anna wants something more. He notices the hope in her elbowed lean across the laminate counter, in her slightly raised eyebrows, so he tells her that he often contemplates who's going to win in the end, Allah or God. The sentence comes out a little sarcastic, but he sells the question with eye contact. He expects some ribbing or a frustrated shake of her head, but Anna glides from the kitchen to sit next to him. She turns off the television without asking.

She says that America is blowing it because there are not enough real Christians, that the Muslims have nothing against Christianity, that if Christians actually practiced their faith, were as devout as the Muslims were, most would get along fine.

“Some of the blame is ours,” she says. “America's. We're strong in all the wrong ways. We call ourselves Christians, but we're something else.”

“Muslims can't even get along with other Muslims. It's not that easy.”

“I didn't say it was easy. Anyway, you're not going back. You're here. That's all that matters. And you weren't thinking about Allah versus God. Talk to me like you care what I think, because I worry about you. I can't help you if I don't know anything. And if you want me to leave you alone, just tell me that. But it kills me when you don't say anything or make stuff up.”

“I don't want to invent things. If I need something, I'll take care of it or tell you or both. Assume I'm fine unless I tell you. I'm tired. I feel like I've just got home.”

Armando takes in the living room, still new to him, the fifty-inch flat-screen too big for the room. He's disappointed he opened his mouth about the Allah-God thing. This isn't where he wanted this afternoon to go. He wants to see if Tiger can catch Goosen at the Tour Championship, wants to bask in a clear, unburdened mind, wants to consider telegenic lawn-mower patterns. He moves Anna's voice to the background and notices the crown molding where the ceiling and walls meet and follows the line across the wall.

“You've been home two weeks. You're getting out. I'm not trying to pile on here, but you're somewhere else. I'll give you space, but you have to talk to me. Your kids miss you. You're not playing with them. Be their dad.”

Armando inspects a thin space between the molding and the ceiling. The work is shoddy, and the separation spells trouble elsewhere for a house this new.

“It's a big deal. I'm speaking to you,” she says, and he hears her.

“Everything's always a big deal. Relax.”

“Promise me that much. You'll tell me.”

Armando nods along, the single physical movement he can muster, and when he doesn't respond Anna reaches out and takes his hands in hers. He looks at his wife, her hair still pinned up nicely for church. He knows she wants to heal something in him, and as they sit there together he wonders if she is disappointed that he is whole.

An hour later Armando lounges on his front porch bench, reading old Calvin and Hobbes comics. An incredibly warm day for November. He watches the Front Range of the Rockies to the west, late-afternoon thunderheads instead of snow-filled clouds cresting the peaks. He considers waking the girls from their naps and heading up to Gold Camp Road, or for an ice cream at Michelle's downtown, or maybe for a stroll around the Broadmoor's pond, but he listens to the quiet peace in the air and closes his eyes and smells the almost-rain and stays put.

He'll have to start applying for civilian jobs soon if he wants a smooth transition from military to civilian work, but he doesn't yet know what jobs to apply for, where his skills align, what he would do if he had a choice. He has an army veteran friend making good money on the motivational speaker circuit. He's told Armando there's a place for him, that you keep the speeches to smaller venues, a twenty-five-minute routine—two war stories, wear your uniform, and include the words
honor, courage,
and
sacrifice,
and you're set.

“There's no scam here,” his friend tells him. “You tell the truth. The emotional truth. The World War Two, Korean, Vietnam, even Gulf War One folks want to know. They want to compare stories. People leave motivated. They appreciate service. They want to hear from someone that's been there. The story is the hero. You're just the teller. Up to a grand a speech for the truth. No one's doing this. No one. If we don't tell our stories, someone else will.”