His voice was raw and lurching. Wait! I’m over here. This is Dennie here.
Except the actor or whoever it was had taken his place. So the Lance Corporal got drunk, sullen in a corner of the bright-lit living room beside the Christmas tree they’d been saving, they said, till he could see it. Not a real tree like you’d cut down in the woods but a Wal-Mart tree, “syntheesic,” some soft white fluffy material like fur, shiny red bulbs that sent slivers of light like glass to hurt the eyes and a sparkle angel at the top—one of the fat women smelling of her body was earnestly explaining to the Lance Corporal tearing sparkle wrapping paper from a present to reveal to him plaid flannel pajamas. See Dennie, we waited.
We knew! You’d be back.
We knew! We prayed! We prayed so hard!
It was a long time since he’d been hugged like this. Kissed and clawed at and tears splotching his shirt front and the fly of his khakis. He had to resist the wish to fend them off.
The Lance Corporal wasn’t sure if he was hearing these people speak to him directly or if the words were being channeled/monitored through the titanium implant in his (right) inner ear/cochlea. For it did seem to be—he had to concede—if he could not see the mouth, or if the mouth was contorted or mumbling, or a soft sunken mouth lost in fatty jowl ridges or obscured by straggly whiskers, he could not decipher the words and he was left resentful and anxious and alert to being mocked.
He was the sole bearer of the title Lance Corporal in all of Yelling County, North Dakota. He had served three tours of duty in the war. He had been honorably discharged. You can bet his hometown was damned proud of him.
By a special request of the Lance Corporal’s family the local media was to respect his privacy. There would be no front-page photographs in the Ashtree Junction Gazette or on local TV. He had the ID on his (left) wrist. He had the dog tags. If he’d been shipped here this must be the address they had for him, in their records. Another proof of identity was, the Lance Corporal had been driven past the old high school on their way to the house. In his mangled right eye the Lance Corporal had been ingeniously fitted with an interocular implant lens of plastic guaranteed to withstand melting at temperatures below 1000 degrees Fahrenheit and through this minuscule lens the Lance Corporal saw vividly and in quivering color. Not just the crummy sandstone facade of the high school they’d all gone to but beyond the high school the gouged mountains and the abandoned blast pits and the open-pit mine filled with red-glowering dark water they’d all gone swimming in—these “familiar sights” were glossy and one-dimensional like magazine illustrations. What the hell, the Lance Corporal said. That’s really something, the Lance Corporal said uneasily, and Mack who was the Lieutenant’s (older) brother said, Yeah, Den, thought you’d like a little detour.
There was a test here, the Lance Corporal supposed. One of them instructing, Shut your eyes son. Tell me am I lifting your arm or lowering it, and he’d concentrated with all his strength, not wanting to give in, to peek through his eyelashes, saying firmly, Lifting. And the doctor—if it was a doctor—said, And now what am I doing, lifting or lowering, and he’d said less firmly, Lowering. No—lifting.
Later he’d realized it was a trick: whoever it was had only been taunting him, neither lifting nor lowering his arm as there’d been the trick with the pin in his big toe—was it pricking? Or not? Or—which toe? The Lieutenant’s feet were obscured from him, he couldn’t have cheated if he’d wished to cheat.
So at the high school, some kind of vision test. Or the high school had been physically altered, repainted (but subtly, in a color near identical to the old) or (more ingenious yet) the building he’d been taken to see had not been crummy Ashtree Junction High they’d all gone to but an entirely different building on a different street; as the gouged mountains in the near distance hadn’t been the old familiar Humpbacks mined to exhaustion by Delphic Ore, Inc., but photo-projection of some kind, triggered into “virtual” existence by the approach of the Lance Corporal’s brother’s Bronco pickup. So shrewd was the Lance Corporal, he’d conned his brother into believing that he had been taken in by these tricks, he’d reacted exactly as a normal returning vet would react in such circumstances.
So long as the Lance Corporal took his meds. In particular the chalky-white Zomix tabs. And the red-jelly capsules that went down smoothest with cold Coors.
Dennie, look at you! Oh, honey.
They were proud of him. The females wiped at their eyes. The men tried not to stare. Noisily they passed around the medals, the citations. The stained and dog-eared photos. The Lance Corporal hoped to hell the animal-head photos weren’t in that batch.
There was Maudie, his young wife. He’d been crazy for her in high school. There was Sadie, and there was Bessie, and there was Momma-Jeanne, and there was Grandma-Jeanne, sag-faced teary women in puff perms to make their small heads appear larger on their bulky bodies in J.C. Penney stretch Orion pantsuits observed from the rear you could not easily distinguish between those fat asses.
There was his brother Mack. Or whoever they’d gotten to play Mack—shit-colored goatee, hair beginning to thin at the crown of his head, the identical Harley-Davids on cap he’d been wearing since the Lance Corporal had seen him last, as if the Lance Corporal even with a steel plate in his (shaved) head was such an asshole to fall for that. There was the old man with the sour sag-face splotched with liver spots like dirty rainwater. There were his uncles. His brother-in-law with the beer gut. Guys from Ashtree High he’d swear were dead, like him. Blown up like him. But he’d been the Jokester and a Jokester doesn’t stay dead.
Daddy! Dad-dy!
Trembling little four-year-old kid scared to death of the Lance Corporal, blinking in awe and fear of the Lance Corporal’s skin-graft face and glaring plastic eye and the shaved head with the glinting steel plate in like a sliding slot of bluish hue. Poor pathetic kid sucking his snot forefinger urged by the shiny-faced woman with the great-looking boobs falling out of a scoop-neck peach-color Orion sweater sprinkled with seed pearls—this wasn’t Maudie, was it? This was the other one, not Maudie Skedd he’d been crazy for. But the one who’d been so sweet to the Lance Corporal after he’d been ditched by Maudie. The one who seemed to know a lot about him, laughing and excited in a way to put Momma-Jeanne’s nose out of joint, the Lance Corporal knew. This one was so hot, she displayed her wifely right to touch the Lance Corporal, kiss him wetly and streak his graft-skin face with lipstick to prove I am not disgusted or revulsed, I am the most loving wife as I am the most faithful wife and a damned devoted mother. Many times in the course of the afternoon this one confirmed her wife status by running her redpainted plastic fingernails along the Lance Corporal’s shivery neck, along his wasted arms and along his wasted thighs, and by whispering in his ear to provoke him to bare his teeth in a slow smile. Saying Dennie Junior had not seen his Dad-dy in XXX months and every night he’d prayed for his Dad-dy and been such a good little boy, his Dad-dy had come home at last and forever.
There was something about this statement that pissed the Lance Corporal, he wasn’t sure what. In the war the Lance Corporal had assisted at interrogations in which enemy insurgents were closely questioned by the Lance Corporal’s superior officers and the formerly naive Lance Corporal had acquired a bullshit detector suspecting now that no four-year-old could have uttered Daddy! Dad-dy! in such a seeming sincere manner without having been coached.
Say hi to Dennie Junior, Dennie! He’s just a little scared, it’s been so long.
So long was being put to him as a reproach—was it?
These tours into combat, the Lance Corporal had been serving his country. The Lance Corporal had been serving in the War Against Terror. The Lance Corporal took pride in this, and it would piss him grievously should his mission be challenged.
Sure he loved Dennie Junior. Just didn’t know what you did with a kid so young yet not a baby, that can’t talk to you or ask questions. People seemed to be waiting, watching. Like a spotlight making the
Lance Corporal anxious. Not enough red-jelly capsules to make the Lance Corporal steely-calm. And the kid’s slightly crossed eyes were freaking him. The pale blue-shale color of the Lance Corporal’s own eyes in some long-ago time when he’d had what you would designate as normal eyes. That age, you want to crush them in your arms. You want to shield them from the hurt and evil that awaits them. You want to explain to these staring people, Know what?—this was a mistake. None of this I actually meant.
Not his life in the war was the mistake. But his life here. His personal life. His post-Lance Corporal life. That was the mistake.
Still—he was the Jokester. The wild things he’d said, crazier and cruder than the other guys and still the girls had been hot for him, a bad boy from Ashtree Junction.
All that was past now. They’d shoveled him up in bleeding steaming parts. They’d dumped these parts in Ziploc baggies labeled DONOR ORGANS. The bones were of no use except the marrow, said to be priceless on the Saudi black market.
Now it must’ve been a TV special, the young Marine Lance Corporal had been shipped back home to the (mostly ex-) mining town Ashtree Junction, North Dakota. To the modest asphalt-sided ranch house at 89 Magnesium Street. Whoever was playing the Lance Corporal was fumbling his lines and sick-looking like he’d made the worst mistake of his dumb-prick fucking life only hasn’t figured out yet what it is.
In the storage closet at the back of the house, his old twenty-two deer rifle. That was a solace. He knew the rifle was there, last time he’d come home he’d checked. But the stock was cracked, he seemed to recall. His own fucking fault he’d been impatient slamming the stock against a tree when he’d missed an easy shot at a buck. It was Pa’s shotgun he was thinking of. The Remington 1100 twelve-gauge double-barrel with the bolt action, which felt so good in the hands. Birdshot was the ammo he’d use, not buckshot. Birdshot is small, you could say dainty. Birdshot will not cause the target to explode in guts, feathers, flying skeins of blood.
He’d had to turn in his own Marine-issue firearms. These had been taken from him.
Who they’d got to play the kids he could not guess. Maybe the kids were actual? The little boy bearing the Lance Corporal’s old name and the little girl who was his sister Michelle’s child, his niece? They’d coached these kids to call him Dad-dy and Uncle Dennie. It was sweet and cute and the love came so strong in him like that sensation before puking—“nausseous”—that left him weak, unmanly. And he thought This is where the Lance Corporal is known and loved. This is where the Lance Corporal can be forgiven.
Still he was not certain if this was an actual thought of his or a TV thought beamed to him through the titanium implant.
Sometimes through the implant, speech was provided him. Though it was not the Lance Corporal’s native speech yet he had to be grateful to have such speech at all, for there were “misfirings” in his cerebral cortex as in the “brain stem” it had been explained to him. Saying Proud to serve my. Sickness unto death. In Jesus’ name. Will not die in vain.
This was embarrassing! This sucked! How the fuck had it happened, the Lance Corporal was still wearing his ID bracelet from the hospital? Remembered clearly they’d cut the damned thing off his wrist, or he’d torn it off his wrist with his teeth.
Dad-dy, what is this? Dad-dy!
Wouldn’t you know the kid would discover it. TV kid this had to be, following some sinister strip—script?—the Lance Corporal had not okayed.
So much of this, confused to him. In the dark half of his brain where things got lost.
One of the women was fussing, helping the Lance Corporal remove the telltale hospital ID. Eight-inch sewing shears, cutting through the plastic. If you try to tear the fucking thing off your wrist, you can’t. Also there was secret code, to trip off security alarms if you tried to walk out of the ward. Burn Ward, Psych Ward. Orthopedic. Surgery. They’d deactivated the Lance Corporal’s ID for the Lance Corporal was discharged now from the VA hospital as from the Marine Corps “with valor.”
Time to eat, Dennie! C’mon, let me help you.
Need some help, Dennie? Look here, son.
Your favorite pie, remember? Banana cream.
On the couch he’d been half asleep, the tall lukewarm Coors tilting between his wasted thighs, about to tip over and leak liquid onto him like warm piss. Shit-faced drunk on no more than three or four beers with the meds. Not supposed to drink with the meds but fuck that, the Lance Corporal was home where they respected him. Ashtree Junction where they knew the Lance Corporal from birth onward and must’ve said they’d forgiven him, or the charges were erased—“zonerrated”—and the records sealed. The Lance Corporal was mistrustful of this but would not dispute it. The Lance Corporal was a father here. Must’ve been, there were special dispensations for fathers, husbands.
He was nuzzling the little boy’s neck which was hot and smelled of something sweet like soap and the little boy was becoming uncomfortable in his daddy’s arms, maybe his daddy’s stubble-jaws against the little boy’s soft skin, or some chill chemical/metal smell of his daddy’s numerous implants and shunts, and therefore the kid began to become restless and squirmy and panting through his mouth and to tease him the Lance Corporal tightened his arms around him holding him captive Gotcha! making a sucking noise sucking with his lips against the blue-pulsing carotid vein in Dennie Junior’s neck, thinking This is my son! My life that has been given back to me.
This is my son, I can do any goddamn thing I wish to do for which of you sonsabitches is going to stop me.
Halfway through the meal the nausseousness came over him, he had to lurch from the table. And in the bathroom puking into the toilet. Okay he’d flush the toilet. Still more puking, then flushing. The more you heave up, the better you feel. Except the Lance Corporal had a taste of panic in terror of dislodging the shunt in his chest a thing like a catheter in the vena cava the large vein that returns blood from the body back to the heart. He’d seen diagrams and he had seen the actual shunt (steel, plastic) and he’d signed the papers he was okay with this for it had been explained This is a medical miracle to save your life but if something happened to the shunt, if it was dislodged by a sudden spasm of vomiting, coughing, convulsing, it was two hours to the nearest VA hospital, in Grand Forks. Thinking maybe it was a mistake to let them remove the ID bracelet how’d he get readmitted? Your ID is white/plastic/computer-generated. Your ID contains all vital information about you. Your ID contains surname/forename/initial/patient account #2938826-I822/date of birth 4/21/81/sex M/date of admission 8/19/07.
A rage came over the Lance Corporal at the need to be grateful for such shit. The need to crawl like a kicked dog licking the boots of “superior officers.” Or, grateful at these people—“family”—fussing over him calling him Dennie like they had some claim on him. Like they knew him. Thinking of his old man’s Remington 1100 in the back closet, the sight of which would calm them down quick.
No he was okay. This was a “transition time”—he knew and he was okay with it. Just very tired, sulky, and bored. Nausseous so much to eat heaped on his plate. Drinking, time to drink. Then there were the tricks.
How after supper there were these new people in the house with faces that resembled faces he’d known. Except the names were lost, like lost coins he’d hear rattling inside the lining of his fleece jacket. Keys too, slipped through the holes. These were “neighbors,” saying his name like they knew him and had the right, but that wasn’t the trick, the trick was how they disappeared right in front of him, in an instant. One of his uncles crossing in front of the Lance Corporal past the TV where the football game was on and in that instant the uncle was gone, vanished; then a few minutes later the Lance Corporal sighted that same uncle just a few feet away.
Where were you? the Lance Corporal asked. You—where’d you go? I’m talking to you. Couldn’t remember the uncle’s name or even if for sure this fat bald guy was his uncle. The Lance Corporal spoke hoarsely and not altogether coherently so there was difficu
lty in comprehending his speech but the Lance Corporal took care to smile to show that, hey, he was okay with this kind of weirdness, this tricky shit, maybe they were all drunk and that was the circumstance so they could laugh at it but the Lance Corporal did not want anyone laughing at him. Sure he could take a joke. He was the Jokester. How’d you make yourself disappear like that he was asking the fat bald guy. All of them were looking at him with uncertain smiles. It was well known the Lance Corporal had been the Jokester but that was a long time ago and they could not be sure if the Lance Corporal was joking now. How the hell d’you make yourself disappear, he asked. He was asking politely. Civilians tended to be fearful of the Lance Corporal and his kind. In uniform they were a sobering sight! They could be hotheaded. They could be cruel. They could be inventive, impulsive. The goats they’d run into on the road, that first full day when the Lance Corporal had been new to the war in the time of his first tour of duty (in fact not a lance corporal then but only private first class) some of them—the goats—they’d decapitated. For the hell of it. So nerved-up, and they hadn’t yet engaged the enemy. The thing is dead what’s the difference. Also a dog, which had not been completely dead though run over by Jeeps. Not people, they had not cut off any human heads in the Lance Corporal’s battalion, though there were rumors. The goat or maybe two goats and the dog with mange all over his body like scabs.
The goat with the deep-socketed eyes like female eyes brimming with hurt and reproach and just slightly crossed. The dog with doggy mongrel eyes. Coarse sand-colored fur but the fur of the insides of ears was silky fine, feathery. Eyes that were opened wide in terror and astonishment and something like recognition. These they’d brought into the barracks. Not the Lance Corporal but some of the others. These were slightly older guys of whom the Lance Corporal was fearful but knew he dared not reveal it.