Page 51 of The Burning
I wondered the same.
“Martin’s,” Fischer said, seeming to realize that I was still here. He seemed overwhelmed, but didn’t want to be in the middle of conflict. Basic training would beat that out of him. I hoped he kept some diplomacy to him. It would help him in the future as a leader if he stayed in and stepped up.
“Let’s go. I’ll take you both. The party’s over anyway.” I looked around the mess of the yard, glass shards, chip bags, paper plates everywhere.
“We’ll take Mendoza first, then you,” I said to Fischer and Elodie.
“You can leave the gifts here and I’ll bring them by later,” Toni said, motioning toward the table. There weren’t many gifts, and none were too big. Just a few bags and one box wrapped in polka-dot paper.
“We can take the gifts,” Fischer said and started collecting them.
Elodie was quiet as she hugged Toni goodbye and she grabbed two small gift bags to carry to the car. Toni apologized, saying how she would have driven Elodie home, but couldn’t because the kids were asleep—not because she had had at least a bottle or two of wine to herself just since I’d arrived.
The boys dispersed, saying shit under their breath. I didn’t give them attention. I’d go to their commander and tell him how shit his soldiers were. That was the way to really fuck with them. My heart was beating violently, and an unfamiliar feeling sat on my chest. Was I afraid of these boys? It felt like I was, but I had no reason to be. Was it embarrassment because of my injury? Fuck this.
“Let’s go get more booze before the PX closes,” one of them said as they walked past. I tried to calm the racing inside my chest and stared them down to appease my pride as they left.
“Fuck them. I’m sorry, Toni, but fuck them.” Mendoza hugged her and I followed both of them inside, Elodie and Fischer behind me. I looked at Toni, her makeup smeared now, her hair frizzed and wild. I felt bad for the woman. She had a part to play, and she was trying. Her husband couldn’t care less about her most of the time, and I knew he’d fucked a medic during our last deployment. More than once. I’m sure she knew what kind of shitbag her husband was. It was so obvious that she was absolutely suffering. I wondered if he was suffering like the rest of us. Like her, like Mendoza, like me. Hell, like Fischer, even if his trauma wasn’t from the Army yet. Tharpe was no angel, but we’d gone to hell twice together and that changes a man.
His wife stood there, staring at him, her eyes heavy and tired. She’d made a life out of being a military spouse, from Family Readiness Group meetings to cookouts to play dates with the other wives. I was a single soldier, and even so I still knew she was a busybody who liked to gossip and buzz around. But she did a lot for us, always sending care packages and making sure our company had the best cookouts and shit. Her husband was right on the fence between being a total prick and not. He wasn’t my favorite, but he wasn’t the worst. We had lived together with six other guys during the first deployment. I didn’t have a lot of one-on-one time with him since there wasn’t much free time during war; he spent his with a group of medic girls who were usually average-looking, but, in a desert, while you were trying to stay alive, they were suddenly the hottest women on the planet to a group of horny men. Phillips, Mendoza, and I stayed out of trouble and out of the medics, literally. Of all my boys, only Phillips was left in Afghanistan. Damn. It was wild to think of him over there, starting over, working with a new group of people like nothing had happened. I hoped he was behaving, especially while watching his pregnant wife struggling to try to carry what was left of her cake to the back door.
The rest of us came home after the last mission. The one that not only wiped out half of our guys, but most of our minds.
And my body.
The mission we weren’t supposed to think about or speak about.
The one Karina was entangled in now, no matter how hard I tried to keep her away from all of it. Her dad’s mistakes were chasing both of his kids down.
“Let’s go. Cab’s leaving!” I told them as Elodie one-arm-hugged Toni for the third time.
Fischer grabbed the rest of the bags and followed Elodie out the front door. He was clueless about the shit his dad was covering up and I was done meddling in the Fischer family’s drama and needed to get as far away as I could. I lifted up the polka-dot box and tucked it under my arm. I wanted to get the hell out of there and into my bed. The day had gone on for too fucking long.
“See you around. Thanks for having me,” I told Toni as I passed her.
She sighed. “Thanks for coming.” Her hand lifted halfway into the air before she gave up, sensing mydo not touch mevibe, dropping it to her side.
It was almost ten, and I had an appointment in the morning. Fischer was due to demo the bathroom of the other side of my duplex while I would be at a discharge meeting where they taught a group of us soldiers how to fill out job applications. Lowe’s. Home Depot. Local police forces. Security jobs. Those were the options they gave me for my future. At just twenty-one and with a heavy diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder and a fucked-up leg, not many places would jump at the chance to hire me.
The back of my truck was partly full again with the gifts. Mendoza was standing by the open trunk.
“Sorry, hands are full,” he said as I approached.
He had taken a bottle of Maker’s Mark from the table without my noticing. He took a swig of it.
“You’re putting that shit away while I drive or you’re not getting in,” I warned him. I wasn’t about to get arrested or assaulted by the MPs—again.
Elodie told us that she wanted to sit in the backseat in case she got motion sickness, and Mendoza wanted to sit up front so he didn’t have to contend with a pregnant woman who might get carsick. Fischer slid in next to Elodie and I turned on to the street that would take us to the other side of post, a short drive to Mendoza’s housing village.
“What a bunch of douchebags,” he said when the four of us were in my truck.
“On the floor,” I told Mendoza, looking at the liquor still in his hand.
“Okay, Jesus. You’re worse than my old lady,” he said, groaning, but obeyed.
“They weren’t so bad. Just toward the end,” Elodie said, trying to make the best of her ruined baby shower.
I knew that Karina should have been in charge of it.
