Let Us Know When You Want To Be Killed

“I was always embarrassed by the words sacred, glorious and sacrifice…I had seen nothing sacred, and the things that were glorious had no glory and the sacrifices were like the stockyards of Chicago if nothing was done with the meat except to bury it”.

Ernest Hemingway : A Farewell To Arms.

I started out burning the candle at one end, and then the other, but my troubles didn’t really begin until I decided to torch it in the middle. After that it wasn’t long before the combination of sleepless nights and maudlin self-pity began to define my very existence, like a shroud of darkness encircling my soul. In short, I had no one but myself to blame for the predicament I presently found myself in. No siree. No one but myself. Oh, and a country I had staked my very life on.

After my last tour I came home and I told momma “Mom, it won’t wash off “ as I scrubbed my hands for what seemed like the fiftieth time.
“What you talking about, hon?” she replied, a look of bemusement tinged with fear flickering behind her tired eyes. She’d always called me ‘hon’, ever since I was knee high to a bullfrog.
“The blood momma. I’m talkin’ ‘bout the blood. It just won’t wash off”.

Today my seemingly obsessive quest for both a physical and spiritual cleansing has finally come to an end. This is it. The final solution.

It’s Sunday, a little after eleven, and most of the folks on our street are in the chapel singin’ songs of redemption and praisin’ the almighty for the bountiful gifts he has so selfishly bestowed amongst his flock for which, I am in no doubt, they will be eternally grateful. All except me. Now don’t get me wrong. I’m as God fearin’ as the next man, but it’s just that presently I’ve got a few things on my mind. Things that can’t wait for no breakin’ of bread or singin’ of hymns. So I’m not there. Then again, come to think of it, neither are momma and my kid sister Hattie. They’re outside the Subaru, screamin’ and a hollerin’, beatin’ on the windshield and poundin’ on the roof. I can see them. Hell, I can even feel ‘em, what with all the rockin’ ‘n rollin’ this old heap is doing. But I can’t hear ‘em on account of I got the radio tuned into the twenty four hour non stop golden oldies weekend with Rockin’ Reggie Regis on good ol’ WXKY, Creedence blastin’ outa the tinny little mono speaker I bolted under the dashboard after some punks down Gainesville way jacked my twin Bose blasters. John Fogerty laying it down like a hellfire preacher, somethin’ ‘bout one eye getting’ taken for an eye. Very Old Testament. Very old school. Very appropriate. A great record to blow your head off to. Don’t believe me? Just ask old St. Christopher hangin’ on in there on the passenger side, swaying to the motion of my kin as they desperately try to gain access to the vehicle. You should go give it a try some day. Only make it sooner rather than later. Don’t end up like me…

In many ways I suppose I was what you’d call an archetypical soldier; obsessed with war toys as a kid, army cadet at thirteen, fully fledged conscript at seventeen. It was all I ever wanted. I wasn’t one of them so called normal teenagers who spent the week asleep at their desks then went out and partied the weekend away. Don’t get me wrong, ‘cos I ain’t sayin’ I was abundantly blessed in the general knowledge department. Not me bud, no siree. Just some ordinary Joe who just wanted to be somebody, go somewhere ‘n do somethin’. Bust outa the small town goldfish bowl, cash in my one-way ticket to the line down at Union Carbide and get the hell outa there ‘n go see somethin’ of the world. As it was I got a whole lot more than I reckoned for. Saw way too much for my own good. Saw things no one in their right mind would ever want to see. Did a whole lot of stuff too. Bad stuff. Stuff that’d keep you awake nights if you were that way inclined. Stuff I can’t even tell Pastor Henry down at the chapel. Stuff I don’t ever want momma to hear. Stuff I can’t even bear to tell myself, let alone you.

See, four months after I enlisted I got shipped out to Afghanistan on the first of what would be three year long tours. I was part of an elite unit, or at least that’s what the brass behind the counter of the recruiting centre told us. Elite my ass, although a guy like me who never really hit it off with the locker room jocks couldn’t have wished for a better bunch of buddies. We were tight – real tight, just like some deep fried Southern soul band from back in the day. We were young, free, and fireproof. But best of all we were American, representatives from God’s own country, beamed down from the land of the free to bestow some good ol’ peace and love amongst the heathen tribes. Oh, ‘n kick some butt in the process. I was back in the high life, livin’ the dream, right there in the middle of the moment, ‘n boy did it feel good.

But then the natives got restless ‘n started to kick back. My unit came under attack constantly ‘n eventually even good ol’ St. Chris deserted me ‘n I guess my luck kinda ran out. Don’t really recall too much as to how it happened, only that I wound up coming away with a serious blow to the head that landed me in the field hospital for the best part of six months. By the time I got to rejoin my unit half the guys had either been blown away or shipped back home minus the odd limb or two. Talk about a bad moon risin’. This was some serious shit. We seemed to be under fire most of the time ‘til it got to the point where you couldn’t tell friend from foe. I’d once heard a few vets reminisce over a cold one in Delaney’s Bar ‘bout the shit that went down in Nam, ‘n I got to thinkin’ at the time that it sounded like a real ball of confusion. Until I almost got blown to kingdom come that is, when a land mine planted by some teenage fanatic dreamin’ of martyrdom and a posse of virgin pussy up there in heaven almost put me into the next dimension. Filled his family full of pride – filled me full of lead. I ended up with so much shrapnel peppered in my skin that I’d set off alarms every time I passed through airport security. Always made the good ol’ boys smile did that one, ‘n for I while I guess I just ran with it. I mean, that’s what us guys who wear the colours do. We grin ‘n bear it. So I did, although sometimes momma tells it kinda different.

“I reckon he feels like he no longer belongs here” I heard her a whisperin’ to Hattie while they were mixing up a fried fish supper one Saturday night, a few days after I’d come back from what would be my last tour, although I surely didn’t know it then. That bombshell dropped a couple of days later, after I’d finally managed to drag myself from my room in the house that had long ceased to be my home and had instead become my prison. Told my kin I needed to get out on the streets and take some air, but when I got down there on the sidewalk I just felt so ill at ease among the civilians. They weren’t my kind; didn’t look like me, dress like me, talk like me. Christ, they didn’t even think like I did! So I came home, unpacked my sleeping bag, and crawled in to the closet beneath the stairs, the place where momma kept her buckets ‘n brooms. The doc said it was my way of recreating conditions of deployment, but what the hell did he know about conditions of deployment? I just needed time to myself, some place where I could get my head straight, get my shit together. “I think it makes him feel more comfortable” I heard momma tell Hattie, but all I could think was momma, you’d hate me if you knew what I’d done out there. If she could have heard me she’d have most likely cussed me out ‘n said I was talkin’ jive, that I was still the same person I always was. But she’d be wrong. See, my buddies weren’t the only ones who didn’t make it home. A piece of me died somewhere out there.

Then they dropped the big one. Seems like the military had no use for the likes of me anymore. They pinned a medal on my chest, slipped a severance cheque in my back pocket ‘n dressed it up as honourable discharge with medical retirement. But no matter how hard you rub you can’t polish a turd. They’d yanked my chain good ‘n proper and tossed me right back where I came from. Only now I was four years older and Union Carbide had moved to Tijuana ‘n I was left to swing in the wind like some stiff straight out of one of those Springsteen songs – you know, the one where he comes back from the war to find the factory closed down and his best girl high tailing it with some grease ball from the Chevron station. The kind he sings to rich white folks in football stadiums to make ‘em feel guilty ‘bout buying all their stuff on the internet from some outfit in China. They feel the odd tinge of remorse, but they know nothin’ ‘bout what it feels like to be thrown away while you’re still alive. They think that by handin’ over fifty bucks to listen to Bruce they’re somehow gonna feel my pain. Well I tell ‘em straight – they don’t feel nothin’ ‘cept empty emotions. They might be able to spell empathy but they wouldn’t know it if it walked into their houses and hit them square across the jaw.

In the distance I can see the SWAT team descending on our quiet suburban street. There’s a helicopter floating above my head and a tv news crew camped across the street. Vultures, the whole lot of ‘em. Momma ‘n Hattie are beating their fists on the passenger door, mouths like goldfish, words I can’t hear no more. Momma is crying and Hattie is wearing a look like judgement day is just around the corner. But it’s alright. See I’ve still got my service revolver, ‘n its cold steel feels good against the underside of my chin. She’s fully loaded – six shiny shells just a waitin’ to be set free. I got my finger on the trigger, got my eye on the prize. I feel a whole lot of bad stuff comin’ on down, like a slow train comin’ on down the track. Satan’s hand is on my shoulder, his cold fingers diggin’ into my flesh, hot breath callin’ me back home. I gaze through the windshield at momma, mouth a few words of apology, and feel my finger tuggin’ at the trigger.

Kinda feels like I’m fixin’ to die.