by Susan Thornton
The phone rang as he was getting ready for work.
“Randy?”
As soon as he heard her voice he knew what it was.
“It’s Bill. He did it.”
“Tell me.”
“The shot woke up Linda.” A pause. “He used his service pistol.”
“I can’t come over till after work.”
“It’s OK. I know. Come over when you can.”
Randy worked as an aide at Riverview nursing home. They were short staffed. There was no way he could get the day off.
“I’m sorry.”
“We all are.”
“I meant that I couldn’t come sooner.”
“That’s OK too. Nothing else is going to happen. Come when you can,” she repeated and hung up.
He checked that he had his badge and his lunch and got into his Nissan Sentra. The PT cruiser had begun to bleed oil and he had sold it for $25 scrap at Gary’s U-pull it just before Christmas. This Nissan was a little less old and cost just over 3 grand. He was financing it at $64.17 due on the fourth of the month. So far so good.
As he turned the key his hands started to shake. “You can do this,” he told himself. He was speaking out loud. A new habit. “You just have to get through work. An hour at a time. You can do this.”
When his hands quit shaking he started the car, looked over his left shoulder, and drove to the nursing home.
That evening Linda’s mother’s house was crowded. No one wanted to be at Linda and Bill’s. He wondered if Linda would go back there. It was only an apartment. If it was his decision he would call a cleaning service and movers and get the hell out. But that took money.
Brenda met him at the door. He hesitated, then reached out to her. She grabbed him in a fierce hug. “He was my little brother,” she said into his neck “My little brother. Why couldn’t I save him?”
“He was my brother in arms,” Randy said. “Why couldn’t I?”
She pulled him into the house. The place smelled of food: noodle casserole, beef stew. Linda sat on the sofa next to her mother. She clutched a handkerchief in her hand.
Randy forced himself to go over to her.
“Linda.”
She looked up. Her face was a mask of anguish.
“What the shit,” she said. “He just got his ninety-day chip yesterday. The blood chip. He even showed it to me. What the shit did he have to do this for? He was gonna be all right.”
“I know.”
“What have you got? Three years?”
“Just about.”
“He wanted what you had. He told me. He was so sure he could get it. He loved you so much.”
“I loved him.”
Linda’s mother came over. She was wearing grey slacks and a blue blouse. She’d started wearing the cream colored turban when the chemo took her hair. She was halfway through her treatment now. “Randy.” she said. “Brenda said you’d be over.”
“I came as soon as I got off work.”
“Are you hungry? We’ve got food.” She gestured to the trestle table at the side of the room. It was jammed with casseroles and crock pots. He was hungry but the smell made his stomach turn over. “Maybe in a few minutes.” A man with brown hair and a white moustache was standing by the table talking to Linda’s father.
“Have you met Father Glenn?”
When he heard his name the man with the moustache turned. Now Randy saw the clerical collar.
“This is Randy. He also served. In Iraq.”
Father Glenn held out his hand and looked at Randy.
As soon as Randy clasped the man’s hand and looked into his face he felt safe.
“Father Glenn is the supply priest at All Saints Episcopal.” Linda’s mother said. “The meetings where Bill got sober.”
Randy nodded. “I don’t get to those nine o’clock meetings much since my schedule changed.”
“It’s OK,” said the priest, “We get to the meetings we can.”
“You’re a friend of Bill.”
The priest smiled. “I was Bill’s friend, and yes, I’m a friend of Bill.” It was a joke, and also code. It meant that the priest too understood alcoholism and sobriety. “You served with Bill?”
“I served, but not with Bill. I’ve been stateside three years now. Bill’s only back, was only back” he corrected himself. “Eighteen months.”
He looked over at Linda. She was gripping the hand of an older woman, looking fixedly into her eyes. Her face was contorted so that she looked like an old woman, with her nose and chin drawn together. Tears were sheeting her face. He wondered what the woman was saying to her. It really wasn’t any of his business.
“I’m the reason he went into the military.” Randy said. “This is all my fault.”
“Stop that,” Brenda’s mother said. “It was his own decision. You just went first, that’s all. After Kuwait, it was all he talked about.”
“So you weren’t in his unit,” Glenn said.
“No,” Randy said. “Thank god.”
Brenda looked at him. “What do you mean by that?”
“Nothing.”
Brenda was still looking at him.
“When did all this happen?” As soon as he asked, he wished he could call back the words. He had only spoken out of nervousness.
But Brenda seemed to want to talk about it.
“At four this morning. Just before dawn. He was in the living room. Linda was asleep in bed. She must have been just about ready to get up because she’s usually up by 4:50, 4:40.” Linda drove a school bus for the local district. “She heard the shot. At first she didn’t know what it was. But she woke up and realized Bill wasn’t in bed, so she went looking for him. He was on his side on the floor; he’d fallen off the couch. Then she smelled the cordite and she knew. She called the police. They came right away. There must have been a patrol car in the neighborhood.
Then a second car came. So there were two cops, a man and a woman. She said they were really great, really helpful. They called mom. She called me. I called you.” She laughed, a false sound. “I’m rambling.”
“It’s OK,” he told her. “I asked.”
“I keep thinking, what did I miss? What did we miss? What triggered this? I mean, why now? He had the job offer from Maines, he was going to start next week. He was 90 days sober. He and Linda were in couples counselling. He had just told me, ‘Sis, it seems like I got all my ducks in a row now. Things are good. Things are stable. Things make sense.’ And now this? What the hell was he thinking?”
“Was there a note?” Randy asked at random. It seemed like something you would ask, like in a made for TV motion picture, a drama of some sort. He wasn’t even sure he wanted to know.
Brenda bit her lip. “Not a note exactly, but there was a piece of paper on the table by the couch, and he’d written something on it. But it wasn’t quite a note.”
“What did it say?”
“It was weird. Like I said, it wasn’t a note. It was a sentence. It said, ‘she was bringing us groceries.'”
Randy’s knees gave way and the room turned black.
The priest was suddenly at his side; Randy had swayed to his right and leaned into the man, who reached to support him with his free arm. They pulled him into a straight backed chair away from the couch.
“It’s OK. Put your head between your knees.” The priest’s hand was warm on the back of his neck. “Do you want some water? How long has it been since you ate anything?” A confusion of words and voices. He let himself go limp, let himself be ministered too.
Brenda was right next to him. He couldn’t look at her. Her hand was insistent on his arm. “You know! You know what that means!”
He shook his head. “I’m just dizzy. It’s hot in here. I haven’t eaten”
“I know you know.” She wouldn’t leave him alone. “You know.”
“I don’t know,” he lied. “I don’t know anything.” He bit his lip before he could say anything more, something hurtful. He wanted to say, “Leave me alone, for Christ’s sake!” Instead, he said, “Can I have some water?”
In a minute the priest was giving him water and Brenda’s mother pulled her away.
Two days later was Sunday and he had the day off. All Saints Episcopal Church had a ten o’clock service and a noon hot lunch for the homeless. After lunch as people were leaving, they could pick up a bag lunch to eat later for dinner. It was a lunch Randy went to often. Fifty-three percent of his take home pay went to consolidation loans for the credit cards he had run up before he got sober and to the student loan for the fly-by-night college that had promised him vocational training and had fleeced him of $4600. Today he didn’t want lunch, but he knew Father Glenn would be there. He showed at 12:50 to find him at the cart handing out the bag lunches to guests who were leaving. The two men looked at each other. “What’s up?” the priest said.
“I was hoping we could talk,” Randy said.
“Of course. Sally, can you take over here?” he spoke to a dark haired woman with a pretty face but a sad expression. Her look brightened just a bit as he spoke. “Of course, Glenn.”
“This way.”
Randy followed Glenn down a narrow corridor with a woman’s bathroom on the right, and the door to the basement steps. They passed the street entrance of the church, turned left through the gymnasium, up four stairs, crossed a formal sitting room, empty and quiet after the bustle of the kitchen and dining room, and then were in a quiet corridor with a glass door. Glenn opened the door to his office, a big square room with a brown leather couch and an arm chair opposite with red leather padding on the arms. Next to the window looking out onto Main Street was a large oak desk. On the edge of the desk was a china mug filled with pencils and a small potted jade plant.
As soon as Randy sat down on the couch he felt himself breathe out. The sense of safety that he had had the previous evening when he and Glenn shook hands came over him again.
Glenn sat in the leather chair opposite Randy. “That was difficult Friday.”
“It was.”
“You knew Bill for a long time, I take it.”
“I’ve known Billy since he was a little boy. Brenda was my classmate at school. Billy was her little brother.”
“And you were both in Iraq.”
“But not at the same time. I had a different experience from Billy. I was in tactical, in an office mainly, in the green zone, in Baghdad. He was on patrol in the streets in Fallujah. He saw some hairy stuff.”
“And you know what his note means.”
“I know what his note means.”
“And Brenda wants you to tell her what it means.”
“How do you know that?”
“She told me after you left. She said it over and over. ‘He knows. He has to tell me. He knows.'”
“I won’t tell her. I can’t tell her.”
“I see,” said Glenn. “Can you tell me?”
Randy leaned forward and put his head in his hands. “The ROEs went out the window when Bill served.”
“ROEs?”
“Rules of Engagement. They govern, or should govern, what soldiers do in the field. Specifically, the point is to stick to military targets and leave civilians out of it.”
“And in modern urban warfare where you’re in a city and civilians are all around that’s hard to do.”
“Did you serve?” Randy looked at the priest with more interest.
“No, but I’ve talked to guys who did.”
“In Iraq in Bill’s unit, the commander had only one opinion.”
“And what was that?”
“The only difference between an Iraqi insurgent and a civilian is that one was living and the other was dead.”
“So as soon as someone was dead, he became an insurgent.”
“He or she.” Randy looked away.
“Oh.”
“That about covers it.” Randy looked at the jade plant on the desk.
“I read something about soldiers carrying ‘drop weapons.'”
“You read a lot.”
“Not a lot. Just some.”
“Bill told me they had a policy in his unit of carrying ‘drop weapons.'” Randy stood up, paced the room, sat down again. “Shit,” he said. “I wish I could still smoke.”
“So if they killed a civilian and a question might be asked, they could ‘drop’ a weapon on the civilian and make it look like he was an insurgent.”
“Yes”
“And this bothered Bill.”
“This bothered Bill a lot. He wasn’t cut out for this sort of thing. He really thought the military would be like, be like . . . like Luke Skywalker, you know? Like the good guys.”
Glenn nodded.
“After he got back he told me it was more like he was a soldier for the Empire.”
Glenn nodded again. “We are part of a big empire here.”
Randy was silent.
“And the note?”
“The note said ‘She was bringing us groceries.'”
“The note that Brenda wants to know what it means. And you can’t tell her.”
“And I can’t tell her.”
Randy stood up and walked across the room to the window.
“One night after Bill came home he came over and got drunker than usual. I wasn’t drinking then, you know, but. . .” he waved his hand. “He had a bottle of Jameson’s with him, and he got pretty near to the end of the bottle and he told me this story.”
Glenn waited. Randy touched the window pane. The glass was cool. Across the street from the church a skinny man in a black hoodie was pulling a shopping card and following an older woman in a blue raincoat. She had a plastic rain hat on her head and was looking down, watching her footing.
“Bill was with the Marines. They were on a street in Fallujah, on patrol. They were suspicious of everyone. They had an automatic grenade launcher with them, a Mark 19. It was four in the afternoon. A woman was walking towards them, carrying a big bag. One soldier said, ‘What do you think she’s got in that bag?’ another said, ‘Weapons?’ The first guy said, ‘She’s getting pretty close.’ They got suspicious, so they, they . . .”
“Go on.”
“They lit her up.”
“They lit her up?”
Randy raised an imaginary rifle and looked at Glenn.
“They shot her?”
“With the grenade launcher. They not only shot her, they tore her to pieces. Bill told me . . .” Randy stopped, took a breath. “Bill told me he saw the severed hand lying in the dirt, still holding the handle of the bag.”
The priest shook his head.
“They investigated the bag, that they had convinced themselves was concealing a weapon, and there was no weapon.”
“What was there?”
“There was groceries. Bread. Vegetables. Flour of some kind. A small bottle of olive oil. A packet of salt. She was bringing them something to eat. They were Americans. She wanted to welcome them; she was grateful they were there. She was bringing them groceries. And they lit her up.”
“And that’s the note? That’s what Bill saw?”
“Not only that day but over and over. He saw men from his unit kill two farmers who were working in their fields at night. They only had electricity for irrigation after dark. They wanted to grow their crops. The commander said, ‘They’re out after curfew. Wax them.’
“His unit fired on taxi cabs—all the taxi cabs in the city––because one day the lieutenant colonel said, ‘The insurgents are using cabs for transport. Kill all the cab drivers.’
“He said, ‘We were told just to shoot people, and the officers would take care of us.'”
With the fingertips of his left hand, Glenn began to rub the carved wood of the armrest of his chair.
“And he couldn’t tell Linda any of it. And he got sober and he couldn’t live with it and I couldn’t help him.”
Glenn nodded. “Because he shot mom.”
“He shot mom. The men shot mom. They shot someone’s mom. Someone’s mom who was bringing them food. She must have been someone’s mom, someone’s grandmom. How am I supposed to tell Brenda that?”
“Let’s not think about that right now. Let’s think about what this does to you.”
“What this does to me?” Randy raised his voice. “You mean what this did to Billy.”
“No, what does this do to you.”
“I told you. It didn’t happen to me. It happened to Bill. What does this do to me? What does this do to anybody? It drives them to kill themselves, obviously.” Randy wiped at his eyes with his sleeve. “What is it, twenty-two of us kill ourselves every day?”
“But you had a desk job in the Green Zone.”
“I didn’t see what he saw.”
“You think he left the note for you?”
“Think? I know he left the note for me.”
“He knew you would understand.”
“He knew you would understand.”
“Of course he knew I would understand.”
“He loved you very much.”
“A funny way to show it.”
“No, I mean it. It’s an amazing tribute. It’s a message. It’s a love letter.”
Randy was quiet, looking out the window.
“What do you think Bill would want you to do with this knowledge that you have?”
Randy stared at Glenn. “I came to you for help. You think I know that?”
The priest stopped rubbing the arm of the chair and looked up. “Yes, I think you know that.”
Randy looked out the window. A man in a wheelchair was pushing his wheels forward with his hands. His greying reddish brown hair flowed over the shoulders of his army jacket and his beard covered his chest. He made good time, pushing himself with his hands.
Randy spoke without turning around. “If it’s a love letter, like you say, it’s private. Brenda doesn’t need to know. Linda doesn’t need to know. Linda’s mother doesn’t need to know.”
“But shouldn’t they know? Shouldn’t people know the truth about what happens? About what people like Bill bring back? About why people like Bill decide they can’t go on living anymore? I mean, my grandfather served. He died before I was old enough to ask him much of anything.”
“And he wouldn’t have told you anything if you had asked.”
“The reason this insanity goes on is that no one talks about it.”
“See this guy out here?”
“Who?” Glenn came over to the window.
“The guy in the army jacket. The guy in the wheelchair. Is he a veteran?”
“Vietnam. A bullet in the spine. He usually comes to the lunches. Today he must have been at the Salvation Army.”
“When I came back from Kuwait Bill was at loose ends. I told him a few stories about the deal I had in the service. How cheap stuff was at the PX. He wanted to enlist. The main thing he was stressing was the basic training. I knew he worked out, was in good shape. I told him it wasn’t so bad. Reassured him he could do it. Quite the sales pitch I guess I gave him. He would have been better off with a spinal cord injury like this guy. Then he would have gotten some help.”
“Charley there doesn’t get much help.” Glenn remarked.
Randy bit his lip. “I can’t tell them. I can’t tell Linda and Brenda.”
“Bill didn’t do those things. He was a witness.”
“How do we know he didn’t?”
“We don’t. The question now is: Why are you helping them?”
Randy stared at the priest. “Helping who?”
“The lieutenant colonels who tell the men to fire on farmers. The commanders who carry drop grenades. The generals in the Pentagon who give these guys free rein. Why are you helping them?”
“I’m not helping them,” Randy shouted. “I hate them. I hate the lot of them.”
“If you let what Bill saw die with him, you’re on their side. You’re following orders. The order not to talk. It’s the most powerful order of all. If you’re silent, you agree.”
Randy clenched his fists, stepped forward. Glenn didn’t move. Randy reached past him, seized the small potted plant and hurled to the floor. “Christ Jesus!”
The pot shattered, sending earth and shards of red ceramic across the oak floor.
Randy collapsed into the leather couch and put his head in his hands.
“An effective prayer,” Glenn observed. “Often it helps to call on a powerful presence.”
Randy’s fingers were tangled in his dark hair. “So how do we tell them?” His voice was muffled.
Glenn sat again in the chair opposite the couch. He drew in a breath, let it out. “We set up a time. We ask them to come. We could do it here, if you like.”
“OK. Will you help?”
“I would be honored to help in an act of such courage.”
Susan Thornton lives in Binghamton, New York. Her memoir, On Broken Glass: Loving and Losing John Gardner, was published in 2000 by Carroll & Graf, New York. Her work has appeared in Blackbird, Puerto del Sol, Seattle Review, and The Best American Mystery Stories 2016.