Stephen Wright - Meditations in Green

“Part of the disguise, new life civilian identity.”

“I don’t know.”

“Look at that walk, that cob-up-your-ass strut I’d recognize anywhere.”

“I don’t know.”

A nondescript man in a gray high school janitor’s windbreaker turned up a set of clean concrete stairs, braced the door open for the animal with a canvas-shoed foot, then man and dog disappeared into the pink brick building.

“His ass has gotten bigger.”

“I don’t know.”

“Imagine what we could have done with a pair of scopes. Bam, bam, both kneecaps simultaneously.”

“I’m afraid my hands aren’t too steady. My meditation hasn’t been going well.”

“You could use a sandbag.”

“It’s not him, Trips.”

“Of course it is. The name on the box. The dumpy wife in lavender tights. The teenage daughter I watched the other night undressing for bed. Yum, yum.”

“Coincidence.”

“Try this.” From his jacket pocket he extracted a hand grenade, one shiny chrome-plated hand grenade. The top flipped open and out popped an orange flame.

“What about it?” I asked. The lighter wouldn’t work for me.

“Look on the bottom.”

Engraved in Gothic letters were the initials M. A.

“Ma,” I said. “So what?”

“M. A.,” said Trips. “Millard Anstin.”

“Sure. Where’d you get it?” I was certain he’d had the lighter engraved himself.

“Through the bathroom window. Tore the place apart. Looked like a DEA raid by the time I was finished. I even took a piss in his fish tank.”

“But, listen, it’s not even him.”

“The next time there will be two rifles, one in each corner, we’ll triangulate the bastard. Maybe I’ll rent a helicopter for a stylish getaway.”

“Will you listen to me for a minute?”

“Don’t pull out on me now, Grif.”

“Slow down. Think. Look this guy over again. Look hard.”

“I’d counted on you, buddy.”

“Then pay attention to what I’m saying.”

“Friends.”

“There when you need ’em.”

“A circle of hands around a casket.”

Two hours into the all-night frolic of drinking, arm wrestling, and war-gaming that was Captain T. Hewitt’s farewell party, Major Holly suddenly realized he could not remember what his wife looked like. He could picture her face easily enough but that specific arrangement of specific detail distinguishing her exact face from all others remained vague, indecisive, as if viewed through a sheet of frosted glass. No doubt she worried about him, about his health, his safety, his intimate proximity to girls like Anh. Excusing himself, he left the O club for his quarters. He would write a chatty letter to reassure her.

Outside the night was warm and peaceful. Up in the black sky the red lights atop the signal antennae winked languidly on and off like the warning lights on a pier. At the end of the dirt road running past Officer’s Row he could see the gate guard lounging against a telephone pole, probably asleep. He’d let the OD handle that. He walked to his hootch down a sidewalk (the only one in the compound) almost completely buried in sand. Note: tell First Sergeant to have it swept daily. As he fumbled through his pockets—Where the hell were those keys?—there was a whirring in the air above his head and something went thwack against the planks of his door. He turned around. The guard had not moved, the shadows were still, there wasn’t a sound. He found the knife under the steps where it had fallen, and, cradling it in a handkerchief, he carried it inside to his desk. The blade was huge and extremely sharp gleaming there under his table lamp as he dialed Captain Rossiter’s number. He hoped there were fingerprints all over it, big as moons.

Then the rains ended and the dry season began. The sun, its brass nozzle aimed directly downward, burned away the overcast, baked the sky to a glossy enamel blue. The ground, its glue of moisture evaporated, came quickly apart, concrete solidity crumbling to slippery sand. Somewhere a furnace grate had swung open and all the cellar doors and windows were locked tight. The office air conditioners stopped working, the showers ran dry, there was a shortage of ice for drinks. The buildings were kindling for the carbonization to come. It looked like a long summer.

On duty all night, Griffin would waken less than an hour after he had fallen asleep from dreams of suffocation and premature burial to sweat-slick face, arid throat, head stuffed with straw, and the big floor fan in the corner of his room spewing jet exhaust across his tired, hot vibrating body. Struggling to his feet, he’d pull on his damp uniform and stagger bleary-eyed about the compound—movement seemed somehow preferable to wilting in place—until the sun gave out and hell cooled sufficiently to permit sleep in the few dark hours before work. But as the days built up like a pile of coals and the temperature settled into a fixed variation at the upper limits of human habitability this schedule of steady work, inescapable heat, and intermittent sleep started to have an effect. Beneath the moist rapidly browning skin his nerves were disintegrating into particles as fine and as irritating as the sand whose progress he noted dully from his hootch steps. All objects, outdoors and in, seemed to be breaking down into this basic granular stuff. Every available surface displayed its own thin coating of sand. It was everywhere. There was sand in the orderly room, sand in the food, sand in the telephones, briefcases, classified files; it collected in crankcases, engine housings, rifle chambers, and handcuffs; there was sand under the beds, in the sheets, between the pages of unopened books, piling up in the dark corners of closed lockers, hiding inside the CO’s safe. It jammed tape recorders and typewriters, clogged shower drains, and scratched reconnaissance film. It got under clothes where it chafed against sticky skin; it got inside boots, rubbing sores into sweaty feet; it got in the ears, under eyelids, between the teeth. The sun made the sand sprout from the ground and there was no escape from either this mineral crop or that ball of molten lead dripping out of the sky.

Marijuana, happily, elevated tolerance levels and seemed to produce a beneficial air-conditioning effect on the body—whether psychological or organic he couldn’t decide—but still, sometimes when he was quite stoned, the light itself would shatter into particles, glittery grains of falling sand. The world sparkled like a freshly split rock. And him without the vaguest comprehension of geology.

Seated on the hootch steps, he leaned over, scooped up a handful of warm white clean sand, and let it trickle slowly onto the hard round black toe of his boot. The separate grains bounced off the leather like tiny rubber balls. Down in the hollow behind the EM club, washing laundry with the other maids, Missy Lee was carefully ignoring his stare.

Occasionally there were brief sandstorms when the wind would quicken, the light darken, and everyone scurried inside. Sand blew against tin roofs with the sound of snow brushing a windowpane. Inside, tongues of sand crept under closed doors, drily licking the smooth wooden floors.

Griffin scratched his head, sand rolling up under his fingernails, mineral dandruff.

He’d lie, eyes closed, in the shade of a bunker, and hear it hissing out there in the sun. He saw ribbed dunes, sculpted shadows, glaciers of sand sliding down valleys into secluded hamlets. Deep inside his powdered nerves set up a constant itch where he couldn’t reach to scratch. He figured he probably was going mad. He rolled over, glanced at his watch. It had stopped.

“Let me take you away from all this.”