The Soldier (2)
With his thumb he pushes the magazine release and catches the dispensed mag in his left hand. Quietly he hums to himself as he reloads, the ratcheting echoes of the bullets dribbling away into nothingness as he slowly feeds the rounds into place. His hands shake. As he stands there alone in the street, his shoulders hunched against the haze in the air, his appearance is a portrayal of somberness in direct contrast to his surroundings. A man alone in enemy territory, silently loading a weapon while humming the theme song from Hogan’s Hero’s. He imagines that the War Gods are smiling down upon him from up high. They notice these things, he knows, a soldiers ability to react without thinking, to take up arms against the dark face of the enemy and to smite that enemy with as great a force as is at his disposal. The soldier reflects on the fact that he’d killed a curtain and decides that the War Gods are okay with that. It’s not the event that takes precedence, but instead the act itself that garners their satisfaction, not unlike the giving of a gift. It’s the thought that counts. Reloaded, the weight of the rifle comfortable in his hands, the soldier listens as the keening of distant bombs whiz through the air like kamikaze yellow jackets mad with the lust for killing. Men are dying. Good men. The soldier drops his head for a moment, giving silent thought to those who are burning. He imagines that their flesh is smoldering. So many are dead now, his list only a small portion of those who will be remembered by the delivery of a flag to their families. It’s shallow recompense for the lives war takes. In his mind he sees his own wife, or, more to the point, he sees what he remembers of his wife. How long has he been gone? How many months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, seconds, has he been away from his wife? Long enough, he surmises, to only remember her smile. Her face is there too, only not her face. Instead he sees a blank slate where the eyes should be, and in place of her cute little button nose that crinkles when she smiles, there is smooth, plastic skin, like doll skin. But her smile is there, something so perfect that he knows, he just knows that no artist could ever recreate its beauty. Paint and brush would never be enough to do that justice. But she is gone, like so much else since this war began. Why can’t man learn to live in peace? Why must they be trained to scoop up what’s left and shovel it into bags to be carried home? And if there isn’t enough goop to scoop up, they just leave the mess there and send home the dog tags, don’t they? But that’s why he has the list, isn’t it, to take something else back home, to show the families that someone cared enough to take notice? The list is his deliverance. An explosion tears through his memory, ripping the fragments into even smaller pieces to be picked up later, like a jig-saw puzzle strewn about by a bratty child, and he covers his ears and screams the scream of dying men, wounded children, and the deep, hollow wail of widow’s left behind. The soldier trembles uncontrollably now and his chest suddenly feels very heavy, his breath escaping him out of some sort of fear that the body will soon burn. It’s another enemy come to haunt him and he calls the enemy fear. Behind his tightly scrunched up eyes a smoldering fire begins to glow, fueled by the terror that laughs at him. The fire blossoms and grows into a white hot, searing furnace that scorches his brain and melts his resolve. With hands still pressed tightly over his ears, the soldier drops to his knees, tears shamefully slipping away from his eyes, and it’s only then, through the pain, the fear, the smell of burning bodies in the street, that he realizes that the sound of the men he hears dying is coming from his own lips, and he fears that the War Gods will be angry with his pathetic groveling. With that realization, the soldier stops crying. He refuses to show the War Gods that he is anything less than a true warrior, and although he can still hear the distant tha-whumpf of mortar rounds exploding, and although he can still hear the sound of weapons being fired as though every trigger being pulled, every bullet fired, every target that’s found, is his hand doing the pulling, firing, and killing, he listens to the odd sound of silence that comes from within. The intemperate motion of time gives in to awareness of self. For the first time in a long time the soldier grieves for himself, his actions, for the very reason that he’s been placed here in this graveyard. Action, he knows, requires reaction. With each push there follows a shove, with every step another one mimics the last. War entitles men to causes that they’ve never realized before and clarity of accomplishment enacts those causes. The soldier fears because fear is what drives men It’s an epiphany of sorts, something the soldier has never experienced before, and like the excitement of that first quick-kiss in the back seat of his father Buick, he’s suddenly in awe of its simplicity. That’s the reason for the list. Life bequeaths killing. Killing hastens life. Either can exist alone, but neither can stand-alone. The soldier smiles, as he understands the paradox. The list represents life and death and it’s an almost completed circle and one he must carry to complete. Quickly, the sound of bombs forgotten, the soldier runs through the list again to make sure that he’s got it right. Mcgoff wore glasses and had long hair despite the code, a guitarists from Oklahoma, dead from sniper fire. Alexander, older male who liked country and western music, dead from wounds sustained from a land mine, and on and on until he’d remembered all eighteen who had died in his arms. To complete the circle. He screams over and over in his mind, anxious to please the War Gods who obviously gave him this duty, this sacred charter to carry through to the end. I’m the rod that connects beginning to end. Without me nothing exists anymore. I am God-like, the Soldier God, far surpassing those few who command from on high with barely spoken words forged from fires of hate. His mind is freshly poured concrete spider webbed with ever widening cracks due to faulty workmanship. Not enough sand in the wheelbarrow. Too much concrete and not enough water. Fragile designs are often crushed beneath the unexpected weight of newfound responsibilities, and the soldier feels as though his body has become nearly electrified with tiny particles of energy coursing like racecars through his veins. Even Gods experience vanity. Mostly Gods experience vanity and the soldier is suddenly riding a wave so high that he can touch the stars if only he would extend his arms to the heavens. Transformed, the soldier stands, his body a new tool of war encumbered by the cloth of mortals. Realizing his uniqueness, he tears the clothes away frantically, as if to break himself from the quaint qualities of man and their ever increasing penchant for humility, and soon he’s standing as a God rather than as a man, with his skin exposed, glistening from the exuberance of being reborn into the wonderful skeleton of divinity. He is now, totally and forever, Soldier God, and his undertaking is one of completion: the keeping of The LIST so that the circle can be absolute. Through eyes now burdened with objective, the new Soldier God inspects his sphere of influence like a warrior evaluating an enemy. There are the skulking burned out buildings with their accusing eyes so inflamed with the heat of indictment, and the tangled growth of the triangle that would never again hold the laughter of children now dead. The street, cobbled and broken, stretches like so much gray taffy extending into a narrow and unending strip of decision as it meanders craftily both into and out of the village proper, sighing with barely audible whispers of come hither promises of redemption. The Soldier God laughs to show that his concerns are really no concern at all for his surroundings. Bending, he stretches out a new God-like arm to grab his weapon from the ground, not surprised as his fingers encircle the barrel without having to look. After all, they are great friends, the weapon and he. Born of necessity and delivered by the hands that move the world, the two have become as one as they methodically carry out the demands of the men-who-wear-the-ties, so the possibility that he could have become interconnected with the weapon so much to the point of having a type of mental connection with it, is not something that the Soldier God dwells on. It is as much a part of him as is the fingers that pull the trigger, or the hands that feed the bullets, or the eyes that guide it’s killing. In return, the rifle provides security, and the partnership is a working one. Stripped of the fear that he’d felt before, the Soldier God strides purposefully, magnificently, and yes, even beautifully, down the road towards the end of town. The finishing point for his undertaking lies beyond the edge of urban sprawl and in the shifting sands of the desert where the chattering monkey men have assembled for war. There, dug into the sand, he knows—somehow he envisions—the agony of men being carried out with dedicated exactitude. Death is a stink that Gods can smell and the Soldier God can smell the pong like slow cooking meat being stewed in a pot. In his mind, a cognitive working part of his existence, the Soldier God feels a sensation like ants crawling around. It’s as though many thousands of tiny firecrackers are exploding at once and the electrodes that fire abstract thought are thumping with the beating of his heart. A collage of images so inflamed with agony that the Soldier God actually feels their pain, spin and collapse so fast that new images even more disturbing and threatening are created before the others vanish. His blood nearly boils in his veins and his body seems to grow with each step. So ensconced is he in the newly formed throes of God-hood, that the war around him has become peripheral, it’s existence waning as he narrows his thoughts into a pin point of light solely focused on his mission. THE LIST. His shoulders squared, his jaw set in steely determination, the Soldier God extends his stride purposefully, being sure to keep his rifle at the ready. His new body, filled with the breath of the War Gods, moves around the cold and the rain, his bare feet hardly notice the small rocks and broken bits of glass that litter the ground. His vision is breathlessly clear and his mind refuses to allow him any autonomy as he sweeps left to right, his rifle now jabbing angrily at the shadows that line the street. He feels an impression of togetherness and inside him his inner frequency is tuned in with his surroundings like a radio stations signal skipping across other signals. It’s at this moment, this particular instant of time where his every body hair is standing on edge in anticipation of—something, that the Soldier God catches a blur of motion near the corner of an abandoned building. Along the street, near a storefront whose windows have been shattered, he sees movement and stops. His eyes narrow, the death taste creeps up once again in the back of his throat and it’s like acid and lemonade, sharp, acidic, with the odd flavor of lemon a sort of curious by product of the taste. He frowns as he tightens his finger around the trigger of his weapon and waits, because even though he isn’t a soldier any more, he still remembers his training and waiting is part of being a soldier. So he waits, and he frowns some more, and his trigger finger tightens, and the movement he saw before moves again and the soldier fires, his trained instincts allowing him to fire in three round bursts only. And when he’s through firing, when the smell of gun smoke permeates the area immediately surrounding him, the Soldier God sees a young woman stumble from out of a doorway clutching a ratty old wooden basket to her breasts, as if she’s protecting her last known possession. The Soldier God once again offers a frown. The woman walks unsteady, her legs heavy, and she seems to pantomime stepping into postholes that are not there. Even from this distance the Soldier God can see the red smear of blood across her dirty white blouse. After so much war, after so much killing, he can recognize deaths fluid when it flows from a human body, and this woman is leaking crimson. Nineteen, he thinks, and he crosses to her and catches her in his arms just as she collapses. She is older than he thought, her skin the color of burned chocolate, and her eyes so black they are disquieting. Her hair, jet black and oily to the touch, hangs to her shoulders, slipping down her blouse like spilled coffee decorating her body. There are three bullet wounds, all of them life threatening, across her breast, and the Soldier God suddenly damns his own efficiency. What God would kill an innocent woman? The wooden basket, now discarded to the side, also has bullet holes, a condemning reminder that nothing can hold back the need of a God: Wood, flesh, bone, or even the cracked and drying timber of a wicker basket carried by a blameless girl in the middle of a war that no one remembers starting. For the first time since his awakening as the Soldier God, he feels his skin split slightly. He cradles her, encourages her to speak, to say her name, and what he gets back is an unintelligible reply that he can’t understand. Their language is so difficult. He thinks, and then tries again. For the list, he tells her, I need your name for the list. Her eyes flutter open to stare into his and they are filled with sympathy rather than accusation. “You…killed…me!” She accuses, her voice so pained the exertion itself is filled with tiresome effort. But the Soldier God notices that in her voice there is simple amazement rather than abject blame. The fact that she speaks clear, understandable English is not surprising, as the Soldier God knows that many of these people, the enemy, study in American schools. Her body is feather light. “Yes.” His voice is aged with the weight of his deliverance. “I did. Now I need your name for my list. Do you understand, for the list?” But she only stares at him, the life in her eyes turned to embers of the flare that had burned there before. “Why?” The question is asked with such sincere interests that at first the Soldier God doesn’t understand, but then he nods, accepting her curiosity. “Because of the ghosts.” He tells her while glancing quickly towards the shadows, and then a shudder runs through her body, a convulsing so charged with energy that he almost loses his hold on her, and then her eyes die and she is a limp waste of flesh slumped like putty in his arms. Slowly, carefully, he lowers the dead woman to the ground. How God-like am I now? He demands to no one. What passion does it take to shoot down a woman in the street? Mentally he ticks off the list in his head. Nineteen: Pretty young girl with dark hair and dark eyes who asked the right question at the wrong time, dead from gun shot wounds fired from my own rifle. He reaches out a killing hand and smoothly caresses her hair from her face, and then, acting very un-God like, he begins to mumble a prayer to her God on her behalf. He doesn’t know their language, he doesn’t understand the difference between him and they, but in a prayer, he knows, it doesn’t matter what language he uses and so he mouths the words in English and hopes that her Gods understand his ignorance. The tired old soldier remains kneeling, his hand to his mouth, lost in the death that he has become so good at. Out of curiosity, he reaches for the wooden basket, takes a moment to finger the holes there, bloodless wounds that reached just far enough to kill an innocent young girl, and he opens the basket to see what could be so important that this poor dead girl would risk her life for by walking the streets during the day. Inside the basket and swaddled in dirty blankets lay a perfectly formed and peacefully blissful looking, pink newborn baby. The soldier stares at the infants face amazed that the three high-powered 7.56 mm rounds had not pierced the baby’s face. Instead, all three rounds had somehow managed to hit lower, in the torso, where the body had literally disintegrated. It was almost surreal looking at the perfect head, its face so serene, and yet the body was a mangled lump of meat. The soldier blanches as he looks. Gods hands, he surmises, and then he releases a long, mournful sigh as he closes his eyes and automatically, shamefully, ticks off the newest addition to his list. Twenty, he thinks. Newborn infant, age unknown, sex unknown, eye and hair color unknown. Killed by a three round burst of heavy ammunition from my own rifle. The killer kills. The God is God once again. The soldier throws back his head and howls at the windowless buildings, his frustration a thing so alive within him that his shriek is effortless. He can feel his skin split again only this time something oozes out and pours down his shoulders and along his thighs. He howls at the half standing walls, the cobbled streets and the dead girl. He even howls at the baby before turning his accusation on himself. The sound of his guilt is passionate and another epiphany suddenly fills his soul. There can be no completed circle without the carrier. Without the carrier there is no circle. With his eyes closed, the soldier reaches for his weapon and is not surprised when his hand closes on the hot barrel of the rifle with no miscalculation. It’s the characteristics of war, he knows, the familiarity. The weapon has become so much a part of him that he can no longer distinguish between it, and him. It’s like a duality, a twinning, and it no longer frightens him as it once did in the beginning. Killing, after all, becomes, after awhile, comfortable, and this blanket he’s chosen to cover himself with is one of his own creation. He realizes his nakedness and is ashamed. He grips the weapon in frustration, the knuckles of his right hand turning white with the exertion. With his left hand, he pounds his thigh hard, rhythmically, as though trying to erase the hurt inside him through pain. It doesn’t work. This kind of hurting is non negotiable. Permanent. A lifetime contract that, with the spilling of the baby’s blood, he has signed on the dotted line with ink that can never be erased. The soldier finally shakes his head to clear the dust that has settled there, (ancient cobwebs that had been gathering for some time) and he lumbers to his feet, bringing the rifle with him as he rises like a defeated gladiator, his sword broken, his shield lost and the warrior within transformed into something else altogether, something to be pitied. He does not mourn the loss of his soul. It no longer belongs to him and nor does it belong to them. His soul is lost, he knows, his body a husk, a dried out shell carrying around seeping wounds so deep that any type of damage control is way past its time. There are few alternatives. There are no alternatives. His future is laid out like blue prints on an engineer’s table. Life supports life only so long as life bequeaths life. His mind actually hurts as he ponders this imponderable. As he stands, his shoulders squared, his stiff jaw brutally determined, the soldier looks into the sky for hope, or salvation, whichever is more likely to come. But he sees only smoke as it wavers in the breeze, and on those clouds, he thinks, is human suffering unlike the world has ever known, mine included, and he knows that he will not find salvation there. Disgusted, he looks away down the street and searches the doorways and gaping holes left behind by tactical mortar rounds. Nothing. The dead baby does not cry, its mother does not protest, there is no one to help him and he is alone. Only the rifle and his list still exist and he broods over them both with equal astonishment. Both are heavy, both are dirty instruments, and both are all that he has left. Suddenly a memory of his wife floods his mind, and he is surprised that he remembers her face. Clear, beautiful, she is his wife and he remembers her as a tear slips from his eye and crawls through the stubble on his cheek. Carefully, he updates his list. Tired old soldier, dark hair, dark eyes, and memories of wife not lost, dead from self-inflicted rifle shot to the head. Number twenty-one.
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