Tough Day for the Army (3 page)

Nelson waited for his revelation, the message that would catapult him to a raised consciousness and turn him into a leader of men and women across the plains of the country to a promised land where there were so many stars. What a place to guide your people to!

He felt capable of withstanding the skeptics, their slings and arrows —which were literal in the case of Joseph Smith—but would more likely be words in Nelson's. Nelson had withstood these things already, truth be told. Nelson's body swelled with importance as he imagined the multitudes with which he would be filled. Nelson knew Mor-mons believed that with sufficient devotion and dedication, man could become God, and in that moment, zooming among the stars above, he thought they were probably very wise.

“You're, like, super-high, aren't you?” Chelsea Stubbins said to Nelson.

“I am tripping balls,” Nelson replied. He was flat on his back on the concrete slab of the balcony. His eyes were closed, but he sensed a figure looming over him. He knew he was cold, but at the same time couldn't feel it. Maybe he was not flat on his back on a concrete slab but was still floating through space, and Chelsea Stubbins was floating with him. He squeezed his eyes more securely shut in case Chelsea Stubbins speaking to him was a dream.

“It's in the brownies?”

“And the cookies and the Krispies, and everything else,” Nelson said.

Nelson heard Chelsea Stubbins put her parka back on before sitting down next to him. The Gore-Tex rubbing was like tires squealing in his ears, and he winced.

“Things feeling a little… enhanced?” Chelsea Stubbins asked.

“I am fully alive. I extend to every corner of the universe.”

“That sounds like a lot of work.”

“I like hearing your voice,” Nelson said because it was true. It soothed. “Are you here, or am I there?”

“I'm going to take your hand, OK?” Chelsea Stubbins said.

Nelson nodded, but he was afraid. He didn't think he should be touched under these circumstances, but the warmth of her skin and then her thumb rubbing over the tendons on the back of his hand felt good. He considered opening his eyes, but then reconsidered.

“I'm filled with rage,” Nelson said.

“What does that feel like?”

“Bad, mostly. Sometimes good, potentially useful.”

“Useful how?”

“Rage has potency, at least that's how it seems.”

“You're lucky,” Chelsea Stubbins replied. “I got sorrow.”

“I don't believe you. You are sunshine.”

“It's hard to fathom, I know,” Chelsea Stubbins replied. “I didn't believe it myself for a long time.” She cupped Nelson's hand in both of hers, applying firm and even pressure. “How's that?” she asked.

It was wonderful. “It's wonderful,” Nelson replied. “There are things in this world that are full of wonder, and this is one of them.”

Time passed. Maybe eternities, maybe seconds. You can divide every moment into an infinite number of smaller moments, so both those things can be true simultaneously. Nelson concentrated on the one part of his body that felt real, his hand in Chelsea Stubbins's hands. He kept his eyes closed, but he pictured it in his mind perfectly— her blond hair brushing down along the sides of her coat, their breath clouding the air together, their fingers entwined—which felt like the kind of thing only a God could do.

“You seem to know a suspicious amount about drugs,” he said.

“Yeah, well…”

“Mormons don't take drugs.”

“I haven't been Mormon all that long,” Chelsea Stubbins replied. “Technically, I'm still a Mormon in training.”

Nelson concentrated on keeping his body still even as his heart leapt. Separating Chelsea Stubbins from the Mormonism was going to be cake; the ties binding her to the nonsense were both fresh and weak. “You're going to have to explain,” he said.

“We married into it—my mom, I mean. I'm from Jersey originally. I had some issues back there.”

“Because of the sorrow,” Nelson said.

“That was the start, sure, but then it became its own thing. A greater weight than the sorrow, even.”

“I've not experienced that,” Nelson said. “I am weightless when I'm like this.”

Because in that moment Nelson was so in tune with the world, he could hear Chelsea Stubbins's lips stretch past her teeth as she smiled. “It's different for everybody. You probably have not sucked some guy's dick outside a 7-Eleven for a rock of meth, have you?”

Nelson winced. “I wish you wouldn't talk that way. That was a violence.”

“My therapist says it's important to name things as they are, so I try to do that now.”

Chelsea Stubbins slid her hands under the sleeve of Nelson's hoodie, rubbing his forearm. “Is that OK?” she asked.

“It's heaven.”

“You're coming home.”

“I hope not. I like it better here.”

“You're a funny kid.”

“I'm no kid,” Nelson said. “I am a man among men. I have the heart of a stallion and the courage of a lion. I am an unstoppable force combined with an immovable object.”

“Then I'm very fortunate to have met you,” Chelsea Stubbins said. She removed her hands from under Nelson's hoodie sleeve and moved to straddle him, slowly lowering her entire body on top of Nelson's; he felt the pressure of her everywhere at once, and he was warm. She turned her head and rested her ear on his chest. Eyes still closed, he breathed deeply and smelled her hair.

“Lilacs,” he said. “Just as I figured.” Nelson felt her rib cage rise and fall against him. His breath joined hers. “The universe is ordering itself around my thoughts because I am at its center.”

“That sounds interesting,” Chelsea Stubbins said. “But not necessarily unique.”

Nelson wanted to give some thought to this, but not right then.

“Why Lance?” Nelson said. “Surely Lance Riggins does not help with the sorrow. He is no lion. He is a peacock.”

Nelson felt her sigh ripple through his body. “No, not really.”

“Then why?”

“Sorrow doesn't exist in Lance's world, so I figure maybe it's worth me trying to live there.”

“I would use my rage to destroy your sorrow,” Nelson said. He was starting to feel the hard concrete of the balcony on his back. “It could not withstand my fury. I would batter it into submission.”

“That doesn't sound like a good plan.”

“Why not?”

“Don't anger and sadness seem related? Like after you're angry, don't you feel sad?”

Nelson pondered this. He thought about waking up one morning not long before he left home for good, one of the nights he gave as good as he got from his pops. He had a knot above his brow, tender to the touch. He kept kneading it all day, reminding himself it was there. For two days, his father wore a shirt crusted with his own blood thanks to a blow to the nose from Nelson, like some kind of martyr, until Nelson sneaked into the old man's room at night, grabbed it off the floor, and threw it in the laundry.

“It's the smile, isn't it?” Nelson said. “What is up with that? It seems to mean something.”

“That's Lance knowing that he belongs to the only true and living church on the face of the whole Earth. He is one of the Chosen, and that joy can barely be contained, and so he smiles,” Chelsea said.

“And you believe that?” Nelson felt another sigh, this one longer. It was the sorrow. It waved through him. It felt far more potent than rage.

“I do not, but I would like to, so I'm going to try. They say it comes to you if you let it in.”

“Are we breaking up?” Nelson said.

Chelsea laughed into his chest. Is there anything better than a beautiful girl laughing into your chest? Nelson could not think of anything better. “We were never together,” she replied.

“Au contraire,” Nelson said. He raised his arms, wrapped them fully around Chelsea Stubbins's body and squeezed her to him. “Do you feel how strong I am?”

“I do.”

Nelson held Chelsea Stubbins until his arms grew tired, his grip slackened. His whole body was tired. It had been quite a journey.

“I'm leaving soon,” Chelsea Stubbins said. “Lance ate a brownie.”

“It's not going to work out, you know,” Nelson said.

Chelsea Stubbins raised her head from Nelson's chest. He felt her chin press at his sternum and knew that if he opened his eyes, there she'd be, but he did not.

“You're probably right,” she said. “I've got my doubts, but it's the plan for now.”

“I have nothing,” Nelson replied. “I have nothing but a phone that is trying to kill me.”

“Life is a disease that only death can cure.”

“Who said that?” Nelson asked.

“I'm pretty sure I did.”

“You're not the first.”

“Nor the last.”

“I can make you laugh,” Nelson said. “Lance may be filled with joy, but he is without mirth.”

This time Chelsea Stubbins nodded into Nelson's chest, her chin digging hard. “He's going to be pissed if he figures out you dosed him.”

“I could never be afraid of Lance Riggins.”

“I'll tell him it was food poisoning. We had fish tacos before we came.”

“What kind of asshole orders fish tacos in Provo, Utah?”

Chelsea Stubbins laughed again.

“You see? See?” Nelson said. He tried to keep the pleading out of his voice. He'd removed that tone a long time ago, when his pops had told him that whiners got no place in the world. “And he has terrible taste in music, I bet.”

“Nickelback rules.”

Nelson felt some small measure of the rage return. “This is what I'm talking about. It's what's wrong with America.”

“Nickelback is Canadian.”

“We've infected them too.”

“What makes you so sure we're right?” Chelsea Stubbins asked. “Who, exactly, is on top in this world? Where do you see the rage and the sorrow? Doesn't that tell you something?”

“It's just all so ridiculous,” Nelson said.

“Isn't it?”

Another of those moments subdivided into smaller and smaller moments passed. Nelson tried to count them.

“I'm getting up,” Chelsea Stubbins said. Nelson felt her rise until she was kneeling between his legs. “I think you're OK now,” she said “You have Jürgen, and your phone that is trying to kill you. That's something.”

Nelson suspected that her kneeling that way in front of him might have been the most beautiful thing he'd ever have a chance to see, but he kept his eyes closed just in case it wasn't, because he couldn't bear to know something like that.

“Will I see you again?” Nelson asked.

“Probably Monday, right? Third shift?”

He nodded at Chelsea Stubbins and raised his hand in farewell, gesturing from the wrist like a king.

Nelson heard the balcony door open; a blast of heated air washed over him. The chant
Ko-Yaa-Nis-Qatsi, Ko-Yaa-Nis-Qatsi
reached out from the living room. Nelson knew on the screen a rocket was exploding, its flaming pieces drifting beautifully to the ground.

I've been experiencing dissatisfaction with my dog. As a dog, he's not bad—sleeps at appropriate times, fetches with moderate to high enthusiasm, never messes in the apartment except that one time I temporarily lost track of where we lived and hadn't been home for maybe thirty-six hours. When I walked in and smelled the mess and saw the stain on the carpet, and that one of the couch cushions had been disassembled, he was the one who looked pissed. I couldn't blame him. I'd dropped the ball. That was my bad.

But as a source of artistic inspiration, a muse, if you will, he's substandard. I go to the bookstore a lot, and right near the front, where you can't miss it, there's a whole section of books about dogs. Some of these books are even narrated or apparently written by the dogs themselves. I pretend to be catching up with my tabloids in the magazine aisle while I watch people approach this section with the dog books, and their faces do something really interesting, like their skin is melting off their bones, which sounds gross, but what I mean to say is that they look relaxed, peaceful.

See, if my dog were more inspirational, I wouldn't grab these wrong-sounding metaphors and make people enjoying a private moment of reverie look like ghouls.

In these books the dogs are very busy saving people. Sometimes it's a family, other times a whole town. The titles are all like
[Unusual Dog Name], the Story of a Dog That Saved [Thing That Needed Saving].
It's a formula, but it must work because just
look
at all these books.

My dog does have a good name for a book title. His name is “Oscar.” But
Oscar, the Story of a Dog That Does Just About What You'd Expect a Dog Would Do Most of the Time
doesn't have much of a hook. He does bark whenever he hears the
pchoo-pchoo-pchoo
sound that accompanies someone choosing a Daily Double square. Oscar and I watch
Jeopardy
together every single day, me shouting the answers at the television, him barking at the Daily Double sound. It's something of a highlight for both of us.

The most popular dog-centric books involve this Labrador named Marley who has inspired multiple titles, and even written several on his own for children, all this despite having been dead for quite a few years. Now that's a real trick. Apparently, Marley is famous for teaching a young attractive couple how to love unconditionally so they could be good parents and even better people. In the first Marley book, Marley's owner says, “Marley taught me about living each day with unbridled exuberance and joy, about seizing the moment and following your heart.” But I read that book and watched about eighteen minutes of the movie inspired by it, and mostly what I think Marley teaches us is that, as long as you're a dog, you can get away with being a total raging asshole.