The Way Things Are

Flash fiction

We knew what we were getting into. It would be tough, sure, but it was better than working at a fast food joint and living in your parents’ basement. We didn’t get into it for any noble reasons. Idealism doesn’t usually survive through Basic anyway.

It was physically and mentally exhausting, but we were better off than some. Four years of band class made marching easy, and the uniforms were about as comfortable. While the other soldiers were struggling to keep in step, we could let our minds drift to more amusing things, like Sarah Taylor, or that time me and Swift crashed my dad’s Jeep into that llama farm. We’d laugh about it later, sharing a smoke.

When I first told my parents about Swift, they didn’t believe me. They didn’t want to. No one wanted to, but I didn’t have that option. “How could you?” they asked. Swift was like a second son, the charming and capable kind you’d brag about at work. He was tennis team captain and a soloist in our church choir. He wasn’t the kind of idiot to detonate his own HC smoke grenade while in cover.

I stopped talking to my parents. I moved in with my buddy Ryan from back in high school. His girl dumped him over the phone. I bought cigarettes and cheap booze instead of food. I threw away my phone and left the calendar where it was. I couldn’t bring myself to x out that square.

Swift’s parents wouldn’t let me go to the funeral. “It was your fault,” they said. I promised them I’d bring him home safe. I promised everyone, and I let them all down. Most of all I let Swift down. But there’s only so much you can do; there are only so many holes you can plug up while your best friend lays there, bleeding out into the Afghan dirt.

Me and Swift knew what we were getting into. We knew that some days you’d dodge bullets, laugh about everything and share a smoke. You’d play mostly harmless pranks on the other guys and get extra cleaning duties. Some nights camel spiders would crawl into your post. And some days the enemy would shoot at you and you would die.

I got a fast food job, like that could turn back time. I said I loved a girl I didn’t and drove my car into a few more fences. All horses; no llamas. I didn’t go back to church and I don’t pray to God because he doesn’t bother to listen to me anymore.

It should have been me on the ground instead of Swift.

Swift hadn’t made any promises.