Dwelling (15 page)

And then she stopped. The quaking ceased. Her eyes shut and when they opened again her green irises returned. Sweat rolled down her dark arms.

“Jesus, Luna! What the hell was that all about?” Bobby asked, feeling a bit relieved it was over.

Luna said nothing, at first. She looked down at her hands and then back at Bobby, as if struggling to find words for her thoughts.

“Bobby—I saw something,” she started.

“What do you mean you
saw
something?”

“A house. A white, two-story house with a ruined porch and glass and bones everywhere,” she said.

“What house? What are you talking about? You
saw
something, what does that even mean?”

“I
saw
. I—I have a gift. I can
see
things, if I want. I can
see
people in a way no one else can, well…at least in a way no normal person can.”

“What are you saying? You’re—
psychic
or something?” Bobby knew he sounded ridiculous. “Look—Luna, I know your
New Age
and all, but come on.”

“You don’t have to believe me, Bobby, but give me the benefit of the doubt,” Luna said, desperation leaked past the pain and fear in her voice.

“Look—” Bobby started to say.

“Just promise me something,” Luna interrupted.

“What?”

“Don’t go inside that house.”

“What house?”

“Just don’t go! You’ll know it when you see it, Bobby. Do not go inside.”

“Okay—I have no clue what your babbling about, but sure, okay, I will not go inside the house.”

Luna slumped. She looked tired and still obviously upset about something, something she supposedly
saw
. Sweat glistened off her dark skin. The two sat together on the floor in a strange silence.

“Hey, Luna?” Bobby said.

“Yes.”

“What does
‘Kay la se lanmò’
mean?” he asked. “You were jabbering about it before you woke up.”

She looked at him without saying a word. Pain and fear stained her face like watercolor.

“Seriously, what does it mean?” he prodded again, curiosity taking hold.

Luna looked at him,
really
looked at him, and then turned away. “
Kay la se lanmò
is Haitian,” she said.

“For?”

“The house is death.”

CHAPTER 14

FREAKS

Johnathan

When there is no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth
.

Johnathan wasn’t quite sure why he was thinking about Ricky’s second-favorite horror movie, but the thought was with him all the same as he pushed through the front glass doors of the Washington D.C. Veterans Affairs Medical Center. In front of him, a sea of service hats, pins, and rainbow and purple badges glowed in the strangely dimmed lights of the large hospital lobby. Navy, Army, Marine Corps, Air Force, even a few Coast Guard service ribbons could be counted among the rank and file. The older among them, the WWII veterans wore embroidered hats radiating with a sense of approaching death. Vietnam patches were in the majority, a rainbow of duty etched across the brim, obscuring faces marked by prolonged suffering. And the youngest among these aging rabble-rousers wore OIF and OEF patched hats, the Afghanistan and Iraq War veterans, in which he placed membership. Of these Gen-Xs and Millennials a fair share matched mutilated scars with dark juvenile eyes. It was a familiar image, one he had seen countless times at the VA hospital in Houston.

Quickly, Johnathan found the information desk and made his way to where he needed to be. Peering inside the room, he had no idea so many people would already be waiting in Auditorium C, waiting to hear him speak, to yarn about their grotesque commonality. He watched from behind the curtain as a gang of wheel chair bound veterans squeaked by on newly rubbered tires, parking in front in the section designated for handicapped parking. Others shuffled in with the assistance of orderlies or on sturdy crutches. A mass of gorged eye sockets, mortar chewed cheek bones, and amputees taking their seats beside one another. Arms, legs, nuggets of discolored purple and bluish-bruised meat torn away by IED’s or RPG’s or perhaps the always
Hollywood
-popular small arms fire.

Those from the burn unit at Walter Reed were in attendance as well, their cooked and shriveled faces took up most of the center row, as if at the very heart of the audience, the fires that had consumed their flesh cauterized into ash and soot rained down from the overhead sprinklers in grey flakes. They were skeletal watchers, black bones with the eyes of children. It all seemed too surreal to him, like some Otto Dix painting come to life, slithering into reality. Behind the curtain, he gazed at his own deformity, the pain of loss and the rejection of normalcy was ever so prevalent, the pain every so close to his heart. He wondered if perhaps they were all really dead, living out some make-believe existence in some bloody trench gouged out in the fiery pits of hell, a brimstone hearth filled with the rotting disgusting hearts of humanity.

How many have wet the bed? God knows I have.

Could they admit?

Would they?

How does that old bible verse go? Jake would know it. From Ecclesiastes, right?
‘Rejoice, O young man in thy youth…walk
(walk!)
in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes; but know thou, that for all these things God will bring thee into judgement…’
or something to that effect.

Yet, despite all the suffering, there were no languished sobs or bitter reunions from the crowd. Not a soul wailed or gnashed their teeth. There was nothing but the dull buildup of excitement, whispers in the dark places of the auditorium. Most were young, but there were older veterans in attendance as well. None from the
Greatest Generation
though. There were so few of them left in the world. Watching the assembly, Johnathan felt as if he was watching himself, or maybe half expecting to see Ricky out there somewhere in the crowd, but Ricky was dead.
Wasn’t he?

Johnny-Boy recalled, as memories often came when triggered by some wandering thought, of his dad during a Fourth of July celebration, years ago. Kids were chasing each other around with plastic nerf guns, the ones with the large plastic balls, not like today, today they’re made of foam and don’t leave a sting when you get hit. He pictured how the parents segregated in groups of gender. Fathers near the grill, drinking beer and belching laughter. The mamas circled a picnic table and gossiped about odd folks they met at the store. Occasionally, the roar of high altitude jets would deafen the merry conversations.

By nightfall, the darkness was consumed by artificial explosions and Americans craning their necks upward with amassed jubilation.
Oh, to be an American!
And Johnathan remembered how bright the colored flowers bloomed in the night’s sky, and how when he happened to look his dad’s face was wet with tears.

Why was that?

Johnathan could taste sulfur from those fireworks on his lips as he stood on the stage, behind the curtain, waiting to be called. He could hear the crackle of gunfire overlaid with the roar of engines from some far unseen place. He shut his eyes tight, fighting off the memory.
You’re not wanted here. Not now. Go away.
And then, as if by will, the terrible remembrance retreated, blessedly.

Breathing deep, he checked himself over as the Veterans Affairs liaison walked onto the stage to introduce him. It was a nervous habit, making sure the lower button on his polo tee shirt was buttoned. A gold tattooed pair of boots and a cross bearing the name
‘
Ricky, brothers forever’
made itself visible just underneath the cuff of his sleeve. He knocked lint to the floor, adjusting his dark grey khaki pants. Hidden beneath, a tattooed hand pointed to Johnathan’s severed leg with the words etched in flesh:
‘
One foot in the grave
.’
He smiled, remembering how Karen had reacted. She’d understood the memorial ink for Ricky, but when he had come home one evening with the one on his leg freshly done, she had rolled her eyes, but said nothing.
“What? Karen? Don’t you think it’s funny?”

Johnathan shifted his weight onto his prosthetic, testing his ability to stay on it for however long it took him to say whatever it was he planned to say here in front of these men and women, soldiers and Marines, some of whom had given so much more than he.

What am I supposed to say? How can I motivate or encourage or empower? What pithy, uplifting thing can I spit in the face of so much pain?
His throat left dry as bone. Thoughts of scotch floated from somewhere in the back of his mind. He looked at his phone and thought about calling Randall and canceling the gig.
This was supposed to be his show after all. Why did it have to be me?

Another memory resurfaced.

He was in the gunner’s seat, sweat poured from under his Kevlar helmet, rolling down, stinging his eyes. The trifecta of sun, dust, and heat. He recalled thinking of home, as he often did, when suddenly, a small sedan broke free from a herd of drivers keeping their distance from the convoy. The rusted yellow wagon galloped forward. No sign it was ever going to stop. His fear took the reins. He pressed the butt of a M4 5.56 rifle against his shoulder. Taking aim, he yelled. The warnings were of a profane dialect only common to soldiers, but it mattered little, nothing could be heard above the growling of those engines. The car kept coming. He pulled the trigger. Screams and burning rubber were well known in Tikrit and it was reckoned to them as malcontent. The sheep lay motionless. Tiny bloated skeletons playing on the street were quickly scooped up by their hooded mothers as people fled for safety. The sedan was left smoking on the side of an unnamed dirt road.

And I won't forget those who died…

He recalled how the convoy never missed a step as they drove away from that haunting scene.

We ought to have desiccated our Declaration, masticated our Independence, and set the refuse of our bugle out to sea on a scow. Why am I here? Why did I survive? The crowds of our beloved, our family, and friends, they kept on waving and chanting ‘
Hero…hero…hero,’
yet my heart weeps for absolution.

“And it is my great pleasure to introduce to you a soldier, much like many of you, who overcame great odds and has worked to bring hope to the lives of others around him, who has worked tirelessly with veterans in Houston. Please join me in a round of applause for Corporal Johnathan Steele!” the announcer cheered, flapping his hands together like some bird with clipped wings.

Johnathan smirked.
Couldn’t give me Sergeant, but then again, I guess going from Private to Corporal is still pretty damn good.
He cleared his throat and limped briskly out from behind the curtain. Bright and hot beams of light followed him as he made his way to the epicenter where the announcer, some civilian named Doug Sanders, shook his hand and handed him the microphone. He waited for the muffled applause to subside before speaking.

Those who could stand did. Those who couldn’t, if they still possessed them, raised their arms. Hand met hand or hand met some chunky leftover of thigh. Some did nothing but hoot, holler, or whistle. And a few remained still, watchful. Though Johnathan still felt his stomach twisting in knots, he also was overcome by the sheer bravado of the men and women before him, the sincerest form of love and adoration and respect held here for, not just him, but for one another was breathtaking. He listened silently as the crowd cheered and cheered in an uproar of blood-curdling solidarity.
Now I know why Randall does this
.

“Hello,” Johnathan started. The roar faded to a hushed rushing wind and then disappeared altogether in an eerie dull silence. “My name is Johnathan Steele,
former
Corporal in the United States Army, Eighty-Ninth Military Police Brigade, Second Platoon, Renegades, First Squad, call sign 7-Bravo-Golf. A former gunner.”

Former…though I’ll never stop being…

“I was a twenty-two-year-old grim reaper, as some of us gunners called ourselves. Twenty-two and already filling out a Last Will & Testament. Twenty-two and had already engaged an enemy. Twenty-two and already had my bell rung more than twice. Been shot at on more occasions than I care to think, and not all of that was combat related. Twenty-two and wounded. My driver, my team member, my best friend, my brother, killed in action. Twenty-two and disabled. And I survived and this is why I’m talking with you today.”

He paused. Searched the crowd. Searching the faces that had once held smiles, he watched the sunshine evaporate into dismal, stoic remembrance of their own history, their own survival, their own lost comrades of brothers and sisters and friends. The parts of themselves that they’d lost and would never get back. Johnathan had never felt so alone yet so connected in all his life.

“Have you ever heard the saying, ‘Some family runs thicker than blood’?” Has anyone ever heard that before?” Johnathan waited for more than a few responsive nods.

“I imagine most of us have it heard it a time or two. I never understood what that saying meant. I may have had a notion, a basic understanding that it was probably about biological versus spirited kinship. But I still didn’t
get it
, you know? But one day it finally dawned on me. The day I
understood
was the day my friend died and the day I was injured.”

A few more silent gestures of affirmation.

“Specialist Richard Virgil Smith had been my best friend since…since…hell, since Voltron was still on TV. Back in school we were virtually inseparable. Always together. There was a group of us, we all hung out, but Ricky and I, we were like
Abbott & Costello
. We snuck cigarettes from vending machines in this bowling alley near our neighborhood. We weren’t a bright pair, Ricky and I. One time we rode our bikes to this shopping plaza, over in Clear Lake. This was before cell phones, or at least before anyone could afford them. We rode up to a payphone and dialed 911 and when the operator came on in that hushed, responsive voice they have, we screamed bloody murder and hung up, pedaling our asses off to put some distance between us and the plaza.”

Virgil…Jesus, he hated to be called Virgil. But he was Virgil, wasn’t he? Ricky was our leader, the guy everyone looked to, the guy who always had your back.

Some smiles retuned. A few giggles from the more irreparably delinquent of the bunch.

“We pedaled fast and hid beside some house across the main road and watched as four cop cars came screeching into the plaza. I’ve never been so terrified yet exhilarated in all my life! We were really a pair of dumbass kids, you know. A couple of snot-nosed juvenile pubescents, dumb enough to sign up together. That was me and Ricky.”

Oh to have this nightmare end…Ricky, why did we join, why did we go to war? Can we be young again? Can we forget the service and just be boys?

More giggles, a few laughs.

“I want to tell you more of my friend. No shit, there we were, six months in country. We had some bad times, some bloodcurdling, shrink-your-sack-back-inside-you kinda bad days, but the worst day came after the holidays. As you all know, spending Thanksgiving and Christmas overseas is both equally depressing and uplifting, if that makes any sense. Sure, every one of us missed home, missed our families, missed our spouses and significant others, and sure as hell some of us were worried about
Jody
sniffing around base housing. But spending the holidays in country, side by side with your friends, your fellow soldiers, and everyone is dealing with the same
suck
, it just, I don’t know how else to explain it except to say it was all so strangely gratifying.” Johnathan paused, collecting the memory.