Something Like Normal(24)

It’s me.

That day, we were out on patrol and we got mobbed with kids. Little boys mostly, but there was this tiny girl who was knocked down in the stampede. Their grubby, greedy hands waving at me, I pushed my way through the boys to the girl. She was crying—and I hate to see little girls cry. Women, too, but little girls just kill me. When I squatted down, her eyes went huge and afraid, like I was going to hurt her. I guess I can see how she might have thought so, considering I was holding an M16, but instead I gave her a beanbag giraffe. She cradled it in her arms as if I had given her a real live baby, and when she smiled at me, she had a missing front tooth.

The caption turns me into the poster boy for winning the hearts and minds of the local population, but it doesn’t talk about how the Taliban would spread flyers in the night threatening to kill the people if they helped us. Or that a lot of the local population was Taliban. The caption makes it look like we made a difference, when I’m not sure that we did.

I’m staring at the picture of myself when the nurse at the checkin desk says my name. “Stephenson? Travis Stephenson.”

That Marine right there in the magazine doesn’t belong here—at a veterans’ clinic with old guys and liars addicted to prescription painkillers. That Marine is hard. That Marine is tough. That Marine is not crazy.

I don’t want to sit in some counselor’s office every week and talk about how I feel, and if Staff Sergeant Leonard, my platoon sergeant, were here right now, he’d tell me to unfuck myself and get over it. Guys coming home from France and Germany after World War II, guys coming home from Vietnam… they didn’t talk about their wars. They didn’t see therapists. They filed it away in some tiny, dark corner of their brains and moved on with their lives.

I don’t need this.

I roll up the magazine, tuck it into my back pocket, and walk out of the building. Behind me, I hear the receptionist calling my name.

“So, Trav.” Eddie takes the AK-47 from its case and a feeling of cold dread crawls up my spine, freezing me where I stand. I know with every rational bone in my body that my friend is not going to shoot me with that rifle, but my palms are damp and my pulse is racing. My fingers curl into fists, in case I need to punch him, and I wish I had my M16. “I hear you’ve been hooking up with Harper Gray.”

The dread drains away, leaving me nothing but aggravated—at myself for panicking and at Eddie for saying such a stupid thing. “Where’d you hear that?”

“Paige told me you tried to pick up Harper at the Shamrock,” Ryan says. “And I saw her come pick you up the other night.”

I shrug. “We’re friends.”

Michalski laughs his big dumb laugh and sticks his face over my shoulder. “Well, she is a very friendly girl.” He pumps his fist in front of his mouth, simulating a blow job, and I jab my elbow back into his gut. He doubles over, coughing. “Jesus, man, what was that for?”

“Your mouth,” I say as Eddie clips a loaded magazine into the rifle and flips the catch. “Keep it shut.”

“What is your problem?” Ryan complains. “Everyone knows Harper is a—”

“A what?” My tone is knife sharp, and there is no good answer.

“You ladies mind if I go first?” Eddie interrupts, leaving my brother and me glaring at each other. Ryan’s fists bunch as if he wants to hit me. As if I’d let him. “I haven’t had a chance to fire it yet.”

“It’s all you,” I say.

With Michalski as a buffer between my brother and me, we give Eddie room at the shooting table. I watch through a pair of binoculars as he fires half a magazine at a man-shaped paper target set on a stand about a hundred yards away. Crack. Crack. Crack. The sound—sharp and distinctive—is one I heard day after day in Afghanistan and I have to remind myself again that no one is shooting at me.

No one is shooting at me.

Out of fifteen shots, maybe six hit the paper, mostly at the edges. Nothing that would do any permanent damage.

“Damn.” Eddie hands the gun to Michalski. “I’ve heard these things aren’t very accurate, but that’s just crazy.”

I don’t point out that it’s probably operator error. The insurgent who put a bullet in my best friend didn’t seem to have trouble with the accuracy of an AK-47.

Michalski steps up for a turn and empties the remaining fifteen rounds in the magazine, hitting the target only a handful of times. Wounding shots at best. Definitely no fatalities.

“It gets easier,” I offer, taking the AK from him. I unclip the empty magazine and replace it with a new one. Ryan flashes me a dirty look, like I’m showing off or something. Like shooting people isn’t my job.

“So what’s it like?” Eddie asks. “In Afghanistan, I mean.”

“Hot and dirty in the summer, cold and dirty in the winter.” I can’t tell them the things they really want to know. How it feels to kill someone. It’s different for everyone, but I felt a rush of adrenaline. A fleeting triumph. And later, in the night when it was quiet, the guilt hit like a sucker punch. Because, even though he was trying to kill me, I’d taken someone’s life. These are things I’ve tried to leave in Afghanistan. Otherwise, how am I ever going to live with myself? “It’s a never-ending camping trip from hell.”

“Do the chicks really go around completely covered up?” Michalski asks.