Jaym Gates - War Stories

Vague things. A vague future but at least it’s a future and you’re here. Just give it time.

We all have our mantras.

I fell into the trap. The door in the floor opened up and I dropped in. It had your name on it, that was the problem. You didn’t want to hear it but I would’ve followed you into space.

Instead I followed you into the hole, into the dark.

Same thing, maybe.

In the light that came through the window, sunlight or moonlight, I traced the curve of your spine and marveled at the technology that gave you to me.

Vanity is the other side of love. Of course it was all for me.

The hands that used to set off grenades and fire weapons now handled drinks at the bar. We met at odd hours but they worked for us. Other people didn’t work for you though. Too many people. Every time the vid cycled the news you switched it to sports.

At first you tried. You came to my races. You read books while I worked on my bike, music threading between us on the driveway. You learned to cook stir fry, made me a birthday card from scratch like we were in fifth grade. Fixed the misaligned window so the rain didn’t leak in.

But the other window cracked.

Little things frustrated you.

Then you didn’t want to get out of bed.

Then you just kept saying, Tell me another story.

I ran out of stories.

We tried running away for your birthday, took a road trip to the mountains but the silences stretched. They became barriers. You didn’t want to celebrate. You gripped my hand until I no longer had feeling in my fingers.

Please talk to me.

Don’t tell me a story, just talk to me.

Or write it down if you can’t say it out loud.

Just something.

It was winter again and I felt futile. The frightening part was how much you loved me without saying a word. You turned your body to the shrapnel in order to protect me. You lay down on top of me when the tanks rolled over. You gave me your last tube of oxygen and with my last breath I yelled at you, I said, I just want you to live.

Dear Tuvi.

Please don’t die.

Just come back.

I miss you.

I had a dream the night before you told me. We were climbing a sloped road and it was winter. Wolves paced behind us but they just followed our tracks. At the top of the hill lay bodies in black open bags. We walked right by them and entered a bar; the Olympics were on TV and everyone looked at us with vague suspicion. I tried to order nachos and eventually you had to flag down the waitress and repeat it three times. For some reason we were lodged into a table with three other men, all older, who stared at us with the blank looks of the lobotomized. They were locals and we weren’t.

We ate our nachos and left the bar. The wolves were gone. More bodies had collected on the hill. At the bottom of the hill, at the side of the road, a child was digging ditches. I asked you if you recognized any of the dead and you said no.

The dead lined up outside our door.

They wouldn’t let us in.

We couldn’t go home.

So I started to zip up the body bags and you churned the dirt and snow together with a shovel until it looked like cake mix.

The world was quiet and the air didn’t bite. In any other dream it might have been peaceful.

The next morning you told me you were going back to space.

I yelled at you for two hours.

The things we say when we’re trying not to hurt.

You have a death wish.

You’re an adrenalin junkie.

You just want to kill people.

It hasn’t even been a year, you can’t give it a year?

You stood there with your hands open like you wanted to take all of my words, like you were inviting them.

So I threw them at you like knives.

And you bled. The red ran down your body and pooled at your feet, stained the floors, threw in spatter behind your head to be analyzed later by an evidence unit.

How many lives do you think you have?

Why don’t you go to therapy?

Who’s the guilty one here?

“I’m not built for anything else.” While you began to pack.

I’m not built for anything else either.

I’ve modified myself for you. I had my organs ripped out and replaced, programmed to your genetic code. I was brought down by the side of the road. I can’t scour out the scratches, can’t bang out the dents. I’m running on my last fuel cell and you’re just running.

“Better to get out now.”

Why?

“Better to only waste a year on me.”

So now it’s for my own good. Unilateral decisions for my own good.

It got down to begging. I’ve become one of those. Because in the dream I was zipping up body bags and you’re going back to war. You’re going too far and I don’t want to write any more letters.

I don’t want your cousin to call me in the middle of the night.

The things we say when we’re trying not to hurt.

I love you and I don’t want you to leave.

I don’t think I said that first part.

I won’t wait for you.

“Good.”

And you walked on out.

Do you ever want to take it back? That last word?

I lied too, you know.

I’m still waiting.

Two years waiting and Anna says no news is good news. We’ve been whittled to pat assurances.

You’ve been gone for longer than we were together. In the scale of that I wonder some days why I’m holding on.

Between the anger and the missing is some truth I have yet to grasp.

I won’t call it love.

Let’s say you show up at the garage again and yank me out from beneath a car.

Let’s say we make a scene and it’s like fighting but it’s not.

Let’s say neither of us apologize because we’re just so happy you’re alive.

Let’s say it lasts.

Let’s say you aren’t dead already, or missing, and the war will end.

Let’s say it ends and you come home for good. There are no more fronts to fight, no more rebels to put down.

Let’s run through this one more time. I’ll give you five scenarios, the only rule is you can’t lie.

The only rule is you can’t die.

Confirm or deny.

Let me tell you a story about a soldier I met in the snow.

Let me show you all the parts of him that make up the whole of me.

Dear Tuvi.

I’m sick of feeling this way.

You’re a bastard.

Love, Jake.

The truth is life happens anyway. I have conversations with it too and I’m yelling at it just as much. You’re not allowed to carry on. The air isn’t allowed to move into my lungs. The world isn’t allowed to spin. I’m not allowed to win more races. This isn’t the way it’s supposed to be. I don’t want to drink to victory. I can’t see Anna anymore. Your niece and nephew miss you. Your uncle still brings his car by. Everyone keeps asking about you.

It’s worse when they stop asking.

It’s worse when the news says the war is over and our boys and girls are coming home.

Everyone is lying.

If there’s a way for you to stay in deep space, you will.