Taking A Stand

Sometimes they come home, bedraggled and dragging their feet. They kick in the door and weld themselves to the couch.

“Would you like a drink?” you say, but they only grunt in response, eyes fixed on the pictures in their head.

Fifteen years in prison is enough to institutionalize anyone. Only a piece of Andrew came through my door.

He was a soldier and a good one until they blew off his arm. Until the voices in his head got too loud to ignore, for him and for those around him. Maybe he was schizophrenic and none of it was real, but it felt real. Too real. Especially at night.

The desert got cold at night, so cold you could see your breath whisked away in the wind. The worst was when it stormed. Sand rolled under your pinched eyelids until your irises scraped off. Everyone’s eyes were bloodshot and scared, but scared wasn’t allowed, so most of the time a curtain of death metal set faces to hollow angry mode. Nobody screamed except to sing along.

Andrew saw death every day. Not his friends, for the most part, though there was an abundance of that too. Mostly he watched strangers clubbed and cuffed, hounded and hooded, carried off to foreign countries and airborne torture chambers that recognized no laws or conventions.

He didn’t know them, so it didn’t matter. Instead of dwelling on it, he slipped smoke into his lungs where it shimmered, damp like the illusion of a blanket in the spring. He slung his weapon over his shoulder and went back to his driver’s seat.

The couch develops a groove and the TV burns its consumer goods into the spaces inside their brains where they’ve been eroded by sulfur and commands from above. Andrew stares through the obscene jingles that advertise plastic figurines of politicians, and toothpaste that will make teeth glow like nuclear power. His toe taps. He speaks in whispers to the ghosts of the living. For all I know, they whisper back.

I remember Andrew as a kid. He tickled me a lot, with sharp nails and rough fingertips. He didn’t know it hurt because I was too proud to tell him. He was four years older than me, a lifetime of wisdom beyond me. He joined the military, all he’d ever wanted to do. They put him through school and paid for his health care. Then they sent him overseas, proud to wear the uniform that represented his patriotism, courage, and loyalty.

“We’re loyal to the wrong cause.”

Davis and Policki squinted through the sun at Andrew’s face. “You’re right,” Policki admitted. “Now what?”

Silence answered the question. Now nothing. They were loyal to the wrong cause, but they were loyal to it. And to each other.

Andrew became a conscientious objector. He never found religion, but the voices in his head told him he was sick. Everyone was sick: the leaders, the soldiers, the terrorists, the child beggars on the street… everyone. Reality was sick. He withdrew his membership.

While his application wandered from office to office, his commanding officers treated him differently. They knew he was sick, and they knew his disease was contagious. Sparks of peace could set the whole war on fire. Everyone knew that, and they were all afraid of fire.

A bright red stamp rejected his CO status. They deemed him insincere in his objection to reality. Insane, perhaps. You had a hard job proving your beliefs had changed since you signed up, and if they hadn’t, you were just a coward.

Andrew was a sick coward who ran away from the war. He abandoned his comrades in arms. He lost an arm. Then they threw him in and out of a series of jails: army, hospital, prison, psychiatric ward.

When they finally kicked him out for good, he landed on my couch where he lost all his benefits. He never fought for them, not like some of those poor ex-soldiers who spend their days sending up smoke signals in front of the VA. Andrew knows where he stands. He stands in the shower so the burning water can pound away the voices, and sometimes he leans over the toilet and purifies the devil out of himself. The devil tastes like stomach acid.

The rest of the time, he sits on the couch. Life is easy, without decisions or dilemmas.  One day, he’ll decide to stand in front of a car.