Blister in the Sun
Chapter 2 from Still Come Home, a novel by Katey Schultz
The call center on base is nothing more than a dented doublewide lined with makeshift cubicles and a few wobbly folding chairs, a fine coating of sand over everything. Second Lieutenant Nathan Miller walks to the back corner and sits down. A boxy, push-button phone and dusty desktop fill the narrow space. He dials the unending stream of numbers for home and waits. On the computer screen, a cursor flashes in the blank Google search field, keeping time. A framed photo of President Obama hangs on the wall above, but it might as well be Aries, these Middle East wars so unending that entire generations have already come of age.
Tenley’s voice crackles across the static of 7,000 miles, delayed. “…and then the school counselor called after that, and I just—Nathan, I just. I don’t know what to say. Cissy’s angry.”
He waits, absorbing. Their daughter is only six-years-old. Tenley is a good mother, but lately her phone calls have turned into emotional rants and Nathan resents it. Resents the resenting. Then feels like a dirt-bag husband and absent father and before he knows it, all he wants to do is hang up because it feels like the most loving thing he can do.
But Cissy? Angry? He sits up in his seat, tries to think clearly.
“What did the counselor say?”
“The counselor said if Cissy bites another child, the school will be forced to expel her. It’s district-wide policy. Nathan, where else is she going to go? We’d have to move. We’d have to sell the house. We’d have to…”
“Bites another child?” And then he remembers the emails he hadn’t read all week. The ones he thought were school newsletters and auto-messages about attendance. The ones that should have caught his attention, but it’s a joke these days, trying to complete a single thought without interruption. His mind hops, jackrabbit style. Add in his other life, his other self, the other side of the globe? Forget it.
“…and then there was this thing about host nation trucking and they had this talking head on C-SPAN who said the Americans are straight-up giving cash to the Taliban in Afghanistan.”
“Who? Who said that?” Nathan reaches for the keyboard, types a few search terms into Google.
“They’re setting you up to fail. Just get yourself home. Come home. I love you too much for this.”
“It’s going to be ok, Tenley. Ten? Try not to worry.” A page of links appears on the screen the same time static cuts him off. The phone line goes dead. He scrolls through the pages. The Guardian. NBC. The Nation. CNN. The headlines send a spike to his gut.
How the US Army Protects Its Trucks—By Paying the Taliban
US Trucking Contracts Fund Taliban, Source Says
It’s all over the news, and isn’t it just peachy when the military screws itself, then tops it off by stealing the ten minutes Miller has to talk with his wife about his homecoming, their dream vacation in the Keys, Cissy’s favorite bedtime story, the latest episode of Breaking Bad. Anything. Anything but this.
The trailer door kicks open and Private First Class Folson enters. “Yo, LT Miller!” he says, pointing to a clock on the wall beneath Obama. “Game time!”
“Be there in a few,” Miller calls, “don’t wait on me.” Folson closes the door and Miller is alone again. He looks up at Obama. As much as he’d like someone to blame, the only common denominator in war is a string of impossible decisions. There’s no God of War presiding, no black and white definition of good and evil, either, and it strikes him then that if anything can be called “commander in chief” of these 21st Century wars, it’s the almighty dollar.
He reads the articles in a rush. Of course his country is double-dealing. Of course he’s a pawn. When has he ever really believed otherwise? Proof doesn’t change the fact that he’s still in Afghanistan, decidedly not home, not with his wife or daughter, not even sure what family should feel like anymore. He’s had enough—of news, of sand, of failure, of phone calls, of himself—of whoever that self is these days. He closes the web browser and heads out the door. Gotta sweat this one off.
~
It’s all in good fun, these pick up games on Forward Operating Base Copperhead on the outskirts of Tarin Kowt, Afghanistan. By landscape and amenity, the multi-national base could almost be in southern Nevada, eastern Oregon, any place dry and bleached and American with too much of what you don’t want and not enough of what you need. Taco Bell? Check. Burger King? Check. Tube socks, Kraft Mac ’n’ Cheese, Facebook, double-stuffed Oreos? Check. And football, of course.
Two plays after kickoff, an Alpha Platoon linebacker slams into Miller’s ribcage and it feels like a blessing. A crisp smack and thud. Miller falls to the ground the only way gravity allows. His side hurts, which is good, because if it hurts he’s alive, exactly what he must be in order to keep everyone else alive. He lets loose a grunt as the play moves past, then presses his palms into the grit to get up.
This is what he does; try, try again.
He’s the leader with a reputation for meticulousness, effective decision-making. Nearly everything his career has brought him to so far has given him the chance to prove himself in this way. But what if perfection is its own kind of failure? He’s so close to finishing the tour and getting back home; a muddy centerline, the cool slap of cleats on wet grass, the freedom to fuck up. For now, home is miles out of reach, light years. So when Miller rises from the makeshift field and feels a heat-laced head rush pulling him down as though someone roped sandbags over his ears, he knows this is all that remains: to stand up anyway, even as his own country tries to push him back down.
The game is in Spartan Platoon’s favor now, PFC Folson hustling downfield with the ball clutched to his chest in a manner not unlike the picture pinned above his bunk. Miller’s seen it: twenty-two-year-old Folson cradling his infant daughter right before their first goodbye, the wife frozen sternly in the background. The photo appears both unique and unoriginal; a sad foreshadowing played out more times than Miller can count. A letter addressed to Folson is waiting on Miller’s desk right now with a return address that suggests divorce. Folson might have some clue of what’s coming—he’s acted lackluster lately; slacking on weapons maintenance, missing meals, even turning up late once for a division-wide meeting with the company commander. But Miller can’t be sure how Folson will react, and the Spartan platoon sergeant has been too fed up to bother dealing with Folson’s misdeeds as he should.
Twenty yards downfield, the Alpha linebacker sacks Folson and they tumble into the dirt. Miller hustles to catch up, tornadoes of dust rising with each step. If a devoted father like Folson is screwing up, what might be said about Miller? He and Tenley already worked through one scare, shredding divorce papers together over a toast to new promises. He’d stop trying to protect her from the details of his experiences on tour. He’d answer her questions straight, he owed her that much. She’d stop blaming him for being gone, stop being coy as he tried to find his way back into routines each trip home. That was three years ago. Now it’s 2009 and he’s four tours into this mess. No one would guess he stockpiles pills just in case he can’t hack it anymore. That the letter’s already printed, one for Cissy to read when she’s older, and one for Tenley that, he hopes, explains about losing Sergeant Mercer and why everything changed afterwards. This tour is Miller’s final chance to find his cool again, forget he ever drafted a suicide note and land softly back home, back into marriage; composed and capable as ever.
Blind spots. That’s what Miller heard someone call those unforgivable missteps from the past, once. Like thinking you can see the folds of your own asshole simply by turning on the high beams. But nothing works that way this tour, what with his National Guard unit attached to a bro-bra Army Division that has bigger things on its mind. Nothing ever works—not night vision goggles, not spark plugs, not good luck charms, and certainly not high beams. Even the interpreters supplied by an on-base branch of the Afghan National Army seem to come up short—if the Spartans are lucky enough to get one for a mission. Miller simply hasn’t found a way to fully see what’s coming yet, and today’s headlines about US funds are just one more example. Abdul-Bari Gawri, the Oruzgan district chief Miller’s negotiated with for the past six months, has been rolling in U.S. dough all along. Now, Miller knows Gawri’s cash supply directly correlates with the unending stream of trucks delivering to FOB Copperhead. The soldiers on base have clean water, electricity, PlayStations—freaking Facebook out here—and all of that’s because no one’s blowing up Afghan supply trucks contracted by the US Department of Defense. Yet anytime Miller’s platoon tries to bring aid to people in need, they’re at risk of getting shredded by a roadside bomb. This week will bring what Miller likes to think of as final harvest: a trip to the remote village of Imar and back, Spartan’s last mission outside the wire. Then, blind spots or not, Miller can call it done. In the bag. Trimmed and tied. All the Spartans can, every last one of them rip-roaring ready for home, alive and lusting for the long legs of a woman who loves them.
“Hey, hey, hey,” somebody shouts. “Chill out, Folson.”
Miller closes the distance on the huddle of shirtless bodies centered around Folson and the linebacker. The heat of the day almost immediately suffocates him, the sun pinking his skin into a perma-burn. It’s as though he’s a lobster, the light a buttery condiment of death. Is there any relief on this tour? Miller would be hard-pressed to say yes. Except, perhaps, in moments like this next one, where he’ll get a read on Folson and try to help fend off the quake. This is what he does best. All of them, even the opposing Alphas, would give him that. He elbows his way into the middle of the pack.
“The hell?” the linebacker says. His voice squeezes through blocky muscle and bone.
“You heard me,” Folson says, and slams the ball into the ground. It bounces off the dirt and pings into someone’s shins. “Tackle me around the neck like that one more time and I’ll stuff your nutsack down your throat!”
“Dude, it was a fair tackle. All shoulders,” one of the Alphas offers.
“Just drop it, Folson, would ya?” Specialist Rachmann says. He’s with Spartan, a know-it-all; the kind of Guardsman that makes it easy for Army fuck-sticks to poke fun at Miller’s unit. If it were possible, Miller would have duct-taped Rachmann’s mouth shut for the duration of their tour.
“Hey, Folson?” Miller says. He gives Rachmann a stay-out-of-this look. “PFC FOLSON!” And there it is—that brash confidence, that heady bellow. Miller’s voice makes for an odd pairing with his creaseless skin and boyish, button nose. He’d have laughed out loud if someone played a recording of this to his teenaged self ten years back. Now, it’s a voice that upholds his standing, embodying the dependability everyone counts on. “Private First Class Folson, you’ll respond when I address you.”
“Yes, Lieutenant. However, I’ve got a problem here.” Folson waves his hand in the direction of the linebacker, as if shooing a fly. For a moment, the sun catches the glint of his wedding band, though everyone’s warned Folson he’s better off noosing it around his neck with his tags.
“We do, too. We’d like to keep playing,” Miller says. “So cool down or walk off.”
“And what problem is that?” the linebacker asks. He squares his hips and shoulders to face Folson, a pit bull reflex.
“The problem is, I’ve promised to stuff your nutsack down your throat, but…studying you now…” Folson scans the linebacker one more time. “It’s not clear you really have one.”
The linebacker lunges and the two momentarily vault, then hit the ground.
“Tackle low enough for you, shitbag?” the linebacker asks. They grapple chest to chest and he pins Folson into the dirt with admirable efficiency.
“Get off of me, you faggot. Get off!” Folson bucks in useless defense. Pressed into the ground, he appears utterly small and flailing, his sunburned face reminiscent of a newborn’s—scrunched, helpless. In one humph and exhale, the linebacker rises to his feet. Both teams stare for a moment as Folson writhes in the dirt.
“Who’s the faggot now, Spartan?”
Miller moves in, offering Folson a hand up. Face-to-face, they could be sunburned siblings at a beach party, matching brown buzz cuts and blistered ears, the booze and heat getting the better of them. But of course there’s rank. There’s experience. Miller has both. He’s also got bad news to deliver to Folson and there’s no more putting it off. “My office,” he spits. “1900 hours.”
“Yes, Sir,” Folson responds. His affirmative sounds like defeat. Typical, for this half bro-bra/half teddy bear soldier whose personnel file reads nothing like Miller’s three years in the Army after high school, including two deployments. When Miller got out, he joined the National Guard to pay for college—not that he graduated—and now, with tour three under his belt and number four almost wrapped up, he’s the 2LT every grunt dreams will take him outside the wire. More experience than his rank suggests, without the ego, which is why he knows its best to give Folson the letter from the divorce attorney privately, sparing him the humiliation at Mail Call.
But there’s more to Miller’s confidence than experience. Back in his room, showered and shaved, he thinks about the locked filing cabinet in his office. The bottom drawer of pills. Six bottles of Ritalin. Another two of Percocet. It’s comforting, knowing they’re there, like a rich man who never spends a dime. Mercer would have understood that; the dignity in death over failure. Trying to lead the Spartans has felt like reaching for something dropped into a pool, then watching how quickly it sinks away. Knowing how easily he could down those pills, Miller thinks, or how he could mishandle his own weapon, or put himself in harm’s way outside the wire to end it quick—gives him more than confidence. It gives him permission to do whatever it takes to keep his men alive and his sense of pride, at least outwardly, intact. During his third tour—the Korengals, Mercer shot dead while Miller targeted the wrong man, Rachmann served on the same fire team. Now, Miller is superior to the one person who saw just how clearly he failed. If he stayed true to his promise, Tenley would know all of that. But how could she understand? He hasn’t been able to tell her. Can’t even give her the chance to love him the way he needs it most and perhaps that, more than anything, is what makes him consider ending it all. He’d seen Ground Zero on a Debate Team trip in high school. He’d visited the Grand Canyon, the old growth forests out West. He’s a father, a husband. He’d held his daughter the day she was born. A lot for one life, if you considered the big scheme of things. Can he say he’s lived well? Would Tenley say as much? He likes to think so, and if Rachmann dares to suggest otherwise, dares to even mention Mercer, that locked drawer is within arm’s reach. Strange to realize, the last time Miller felt such desperation he’d been falling in love with Tenley, now his wife of six years. It was a different kind of desperation, but the core of it—the burning hot middle of wanting something so badly you’d hurt yourself just to get it—felt one and the same. It’s been four tours and almost as many years away since he first felt that burn for her, Miller hardly familiar with the house they bought in Tenley’s home state of North Carolina just a few months after tying the knot. Still, Tenley waits through tour after tour, tied to her Appalachian roots with a stubborness. What has Miller been doing all these years away? He can hardly name it, the war fanning in countless directions, each mission a drop in a leaky bucket. “Waiting” is about the only thing he and Tenley have shared these past years. Meantime, she’s racked up five thousand dollars in education loans (and counting), starting an online degree program in social work. “Just because you’re stalled, doesn’t mean I have to be,” were her words, and Miller had to admit, the military itself, the machine of it, had never felt like it would take him anywhere.
He remembers how good the military looked back when life growing up as an Indiana farm boy didn’t. In high school, Miller was impressed by the recruiter who came to the assembly hall and gave a presentation about signing bonuses and world travel. The bell rang and half the graduating class stayed put, lured by the idea of something bigger than all the cornfields in Indiana combined. “But you’re valedictorian,” his art teacher had said, “You got scholarships….” She wrinkled her forehead and suggested he belonged elsewhere. The recruiter’s requests felt reasonable: work hard, follow rules, and get paid. It was an equation that never manifested in farm country, where hard work and harder work meant a government subsidy, his father’s breath held as tight as a clamp over the dinner table. Finally, someone understood the injustice of that basic lie and offered Miller a way out. Seventy-eight days to graduation, a summer job in North Carolina as a camp counselor before boot camp that fall, and as the husk-scented air whisked around Miller on that graduation stage, the sun burnishing his skin to a young, hornball perfection, he grinned—button nose to the sky—and tossed his cap into the air with a fat wish and a fuck-it smile. It was very likely the last cap and gown he’d wear, the commission from National Guard Officer Candidate School his junior year of college too strong to turn down.
Eight years since that graduation stage and Miller believes that fuck-it smile will get him through these last days on the FOB leading Spartan Platoon. Through the paperwork, the homecoming. It’s a good enough smile. It’s gotten him this far. Just one more mission.
Katey Schultz is the author of Flashes of War, which the Daily Beast praised as an “ambitious and fearless” collection. Honors for her work include the Linda Flowers Literary Award, the Doris Betts Fiction Prize, IndieFab Book of the Year, a Gold Medal from the Military Writers Society of America, four Pushcart nominations, and writing fellowships in eight states. She lives in Celo, North Carolina and is the founder of Maximum Impact, a transformative mentoring service for creative writers that has been recognized by both CNBC and the What Works Network. Learn more at www.kateyschultz.com.