Will Mackin - Bring Out the Dog

It went like this: We walked uphill into a village at night. A woman ran downhill, into our ranks, and searched the troop for me. I was the one wearing all the antennas. I was the one who’d talked to the plane that had shot up her house. I could see smoke rising from her house on the hill. Inside, in the corner of a room, a dead grandfather held his dead grandson. It was the daughter/mother who’d found me. It was she who’d insisted that I come inside her house to see what I’d done.

I’d brought an A-10 down for a thirty-millimeter strafe on four enemy standing at the top of the hill. The attack had killed three and left the fourth severely wounded. The wounded man was trying to drag himself to cover. He was bleeding from an artery in his shattered leg. I could’ve done nothing, and he would’ve died soon enough. Instead, I’d brought the A-10 back for another strafe. Rounds had drifted into the house. They’d found the boy and his grandfather hiding in the corner. The woman had run out of the house to find me.

I didn’t want to go into the house because I knew it wouldn’t do anyone any good, and I was right. But the woman’s grief was so profound, it resembled joy. I couldn’t ignore her, and I didn’t want to push her away. Nor did I want to threaten her, then be in a position where I might have to carry out those threats. So I followed her up the hill, through the disintegrated wall of her house, and into a clouded room. I walked over shattered tiles toward the corner, where she pointed. There, I discovered the grandfather and grandson alive.

The grandfather brushed dust off his grandson’s shoulders. Can I help you? he asked, like stray thirty mike-mike blew through his house all the time. Then— bzzt! —the dream short-circuited, and we were walking uphill into the village again, and the woman was running downhill to meet us halfway.

Somewhere in there, Digger entered my shipping container, which woke me up. Light and heat streamed through the open door.

“What?” I asked.

“I need a pill,” Digger said.

My duffel bag lay against the wall opposite my armor. From it, Digger removed my flannel shirt. He searched the pocket where I kept my sleeping pills.

“I don’t have any more,” I said.

“Bullshit,” Digger said. “Hal says he gave you, like, twenty.”

Digger dumped the contents of my duffel bag onto the floor. Car keys chimed against the plywood. My wallet flopped open. Live 5.56- and nine-millimeter rounds rolled out the door and into the sun.

SOME CALLED THE pills “time machines”; others called them “TKOs.” They were tiny blue ovals coated in shine. Standard issue was ten pills per man, and no more, because they were addictive. But the pills helped us get over the jet lag resulting from our long trip to Afghanistan. They eased our transition to the nocturnal schedule on which the success of our mission relied. And they rendered us comatose, and dreamless, when, for whatever reason, we couldn’t sleep.

Every time we deployed a medic would issue these pills, in little plastic bags, as we boarded the cargo jet that would deliver us from our home base in Virginia to the war. We always left home around midnight. This last time, my fourth, it was March. Frost hung in the air. Stars tangled in the bare branches of the tallest oaks. Hal received his pills from the medic and stuffed them in his backpack. Digger tucked his plastic bag of pills into the front pocket of his jeans. I buttoned mine into the pocket of my flannel shirt, and when I looked up, there was Digger, looking back at me. “Here we go again,” he said, smiling. Together we climbed the stairs into the dimly lit cargo bay.

We took off, refueled high over the continental shelf, then drilled eastbound through the stratosphere. Halfway across the black Atlantic, as others slept on the cold metal floor of the cargo bay, I stood at the starboard jump door, looking out its little round window at the night.

Swells rose on the surface of the moonlit ocean. Silver clouds whispered by. I removed the plastic bag from my shirt pocket and shook out a sleeping pill. It appeared gray in the moonlight. I swallowed it, then stayed at the window, waiting for it to take effect.

Honeycombs, checkerboards, and cobwebs spun before my eyes. The moon set, the sun rose. Clouds vaporized and the sea turned red. I saw the City of Atlantis, the Colossus of Rhodes, and the Pyramids of Giza, covered in gold. I saw the Tower of Babel, its top spiraling toward the heavens. I knew these things were real because I could press my hand against the jump door and feel the cold sky pressing back.

I kept the remainder of the pills in the pocket of my flannel shirt, in my duffel bag, against the wall of my shipping container. Spring was mild in Sharana, so the transition to sleeping days was easier than it would’ve been during summer. Every morning when we returned to the outpost, however, after both good nights and bad, the restlessness was the same. I’d sit on my cot and consider taking a pill, even though I knew that I wouldn’t be able to stop. Even though I understood that after I ran out of pills, I wouldn’t be able to find any more. In the end, I decided not to take one. And I slept well knowing that I had some in reserve.

Then came that night, in April, out near Shkin, when I brought the A-10 down for a second strafe, and rounds drifted into that house. And the noise arrived after the rounds hit, like a fart in the bathtub. And the woman ran downhill into our ranks, her screams no different than laughter.

I saw her twisted face by starlight. I saw smoke rising from her house as an infrared blur on night vision. She reached out to me, which I shouldn’t have allowed, because she could’ve triggered my rifle, or pulled the pin on one of my grenades. Instead, she touched my arm, and her grief transferred wholesale. I sensed the absence of her father and son, and I felt her wish that I could bring them back. Had I wished hard enough she might’ve felt me wishing the same thing. Still, it seemed possible. The A-10 was still in the sky. We were still walking uphill. Although I knew better, I followed the woman into her house.

Returning to my shipping container after sunrise that morning, I didn’t care about the ramifications, I intended to take a pill. I opened my duffel bag, dug out my flannel shirt, and discovered the pocket empty. Ditto for the other pocket of that shirt, and all the pockets of my other shirts. I thought that maybe, in a blind fit of self-preservation, I might’ve hidden the pills somewhere so perfect that even I couldn’t find them. Then I remembered Digger, in line to board the cargo jet back in Virginia, turning around.

I walked over to Digger’s shipping container and banged on its big orange door. He answered in his underwear. “Yeah?” he said.

“Did you take my pills?” I asked.

“Your what?”

Looking into Digger’s eyes, I saw seahorse tails spinning clockwise.

“You know what,” I said.

Digger blinked, and those tails spun the other way.

“I get all I need from Hal,” Digger said. He shut his door and barred it from the inside.

I walked to Hal’s shipping container, which stood out in the wind. Blowing sand struck the broad side of it, making a noise like a finger circling the rim of a wineglass. The heavy door gonged when I knocked. Hal cracked it open just far enough to peek out. I explained my situation.

“I gave all my pills to Digger,” Hal said.

“I just need one,” I said.

On missions, Hal wore the same antennas as me. The woman who ran downhill into our ranks could’ve just as easily chosen him as the focus of her grief. She could’ve reached out and touched his arm.

“Hold on,” Hal said, and he shut the door.