Claudia Casper - The Mercy Journals

Leo and I swore, Dad docked our allowance and went around looking disappointed. Leo never did stop. In fact, he swore extra around our father until the day our father died. After I graduated from the Royal Military College in Kingston I got posted immediately to Afghanistan. Over there I noticed the difference between our troops and the Afghani people. We were vulgar and crude, almost pornographic, while they were polite and gracious. I realized my father had been right and stopped swearing.

My buddies found it insufferable. They thought I was acting superior. A fellow officer went after me one night on leave. He was drunk and one of his buddies had recently been killed by an IED, so because it was the booze more than rage I was able to let him punch himself out on me. He threw one last wild blow, fell back on the banquette, lifted his beer off the table, and slowly let it sink back down as he blacked out.

At first it was hard to articulate myself without swearing. It took me forever to find the right words, and I sounded prissy even to myself.

I looked up. Mercy was my army nickname. I called back, Lola? Is that you? What are you doing down here?

He crossed the street. His head was shaved but he had a five o’clock shadow. He was still solid, almost as broad across the shoulders as he was tall, though he looked like he needed a good chiropractor — one of his shoulders was low, and his trunk was torqued to the right. He was wearing his old combat coat.

Yeah man, it’s me. Visiting my kid. How the fuck are you?

I have my days. You?

He looked twenty years older, which was about right since it had to be twenty years since I last saw him. Now that we were face to face we were having a bit of trouble with the proximity. He looked at the wall over my shoulder and I looked at the curb to his left.

Never better. Never better. Yeah. Not bad for a fucking old guy.

I switched to looking at the curb to his right.

You seen Mixed Nuts? he asked. I shook my head.

Still dumb as shit no doubt. Fuckin’ hell. I’m doing the work a machine should be doing — digging, hoeing, loading. At my age. No one knows how to do anything anymore. My back’s fucked. They’re going to put me on record keeping. Old lady fucked off.

Yeah, well. Join that club.

Saw Randy about a year ago.

Of all the guys I knew, only one of them was still married. Randy. I mean, what are the odds with a name like that? But he was the real deal. Get the job done, move on. Never hopped up, never in a rage, no overkill, just did his job and let it go. We didn’t make the world the way it is, he used to say. No second thoughts. He was just as happy pushing a pen as throwing grenades. He tried to mother-hen us all at first, keep us in touch with each other, help us out, but I guess he got tired.

Some of the guys still hang out, from Kandahar, but none from that last group in Mexico. We’re not like the vets from the old days. We don’t march in parades or drink together at the Legion.

He still doing okay? I asked.

He looked fine. I was in a hurry you know, so we didn’t hang. Lola tried to look me in the eyes. I appreciated the effort. He managed for the count of two then looked up the street.

Gotta run. Let’s have a beer, eh? Next time.

He pulled me in for a hug and we gave each other backslaps.

Yeah, absolutely. Good seeing you. Take care.

Sure. You too.

The only hurry Lola was in was to get away from me. But that’s all right. We understand each other. We’re all like that. It’s not a problem. We’re like a family who has buried a murdered child.

Seeing Lola might have set me off, but I was lucky that day because I was so focused on finding the woman from the day before. I watched him hurry down the road and went back to my wall, looking up at the clouds. I saw her this time before I heard her, or rather, the second I set eyes on her I heard the distant clack-clacking.

She seemed taller from a distance, but it must have been the way she held herself because as the distance between us shrank, she seemed shorter. The scent of freshly turned mossy earth preceded her.

I pulled away from the wall and held my hand out.

Hello, I’m Allen Quincy.

Hello. Ruby. Just Ruby.

Since Jennifer died I’ve heard plenty of women’s voices, but this woman’s voice — warm, with the grainy hint of a growl of laughter at the beginning of each utterance — made me feel like I hadn’t heard one in years.

I fell in beside her but had to work to keep up because of my peg leg. I was looking at her face: crow’s feet on the outside corner of her eye, a brown eye with a shot of green; the redness of her lips, not particularly plump but not thin either, with perfect peaks where the trough under the nose makes a wave; her cheek the colour of milky tea — all of it imprinted on me right away. I wasn’t looking where I was going and stepped onto a huge shelf of broken pavement that tilted upward.

I fell back against the building to my right, face up to the sky, and slid to the ground. Although I was sitting I felt as though I was swimming through the city, but with no idea what was up or down. My endocrine system fired up, adrenalin poured from a gland near my recovered liver, my chest tightened, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up like mowed hay, and my testicles moved up and down like a pair of marmots.

Since the die-off large shelves of concrete have broken from flooding and from fallen trees, and the sidewalks often look like a madman took a jackhammer to them. Normally I keep my eyes glued to the ground because if I step unknowingly on pavement that tilts, even as little as twenty degrees, I can be catapulted into a state of extreme vertigo. Then I have to crawl home dragging my prosthetic leg behind me and pressing my shoulder against the façades of buildings for orientation. At intersections I pray that a vehicle doesn’t hit me. If a passerby offers help, I ask only that they accompany me across the street without touching me because physical contact can trigger extreme nausea, which makes further movement impossible. The whole scene is hard on the dignity and on my knee. Usually by morning, after a hard-fought night’s sleep, the vertigo will have receded.

You don’t ever want to meet a woman for the first time in a state like that. She must have continued a few steps, then turned around and come back. She crouched in front of me and I could feel the heat coming at me from her open jacket. I prayed she wouldn’t touch me.

I’ll be fine in a while, I said. Please, for my sake, go where you were going. I’ll see you tomorrow. Same place.

Other people came over and two men started to help me up, lifting me under the arms. Let me lean against the wall, I ordered. It will pass. It just takes time. I turned away from them, spread my arms out, and gripped the cement of the wall with my fingertips. I pressed my cheek against its cold stable surface, willing my nausea to pass, willing the world to stay still. My hands tingled. My chest felt too full. I focused on breathing, not deeply, but regularly, regular in, regular out. I waved them away but no one wanted to leave me alone.

In the end I had to let them take me home. Two men put their necks under my arms and carried me, my head flopping left and right because I couldn’t keep track of which way was up. I told them where my key was, and they got me in bed and insisted on programming their numbers into my mobile. I asked them to get me a damp towel and a glass of water before they left.

I heard the door to my apartment close. I lay the back of my hand across the bridge of my nose, breathed out, paused, then slowly let the air return. I opened and closed my hands to relieve the tingling. The nausea eased. Then I heard breathing.