Roy Scranton - War Porn

“Oh my God,” Rachel said.

“I slam on the brakes. But it had just started raining, right, and you know how all the oil on the road floats to the surface after a dry spell, and the car skids, slips sideways, and I panic. My foot’s jammed on the brake and all I can think is ‘They say steer into the skid but who are they? What do they know?’ My mind is just whirling, right, but my hands do it, steering into the skid and I pump the brakes and the car slows and I pull over and stop. I’m like, shaking. In the rearview I’m so white I’m like dead and I remember thinking maybe I am, and then I felt like throwing up but just sat there, waiting, on the shoulder by the median—the wrong shoulder, you know?—and this Captain Beefheart song comes on…”

“‘Clear Spot,’” Aaron said. “I put ‘Clear Spot’ on that tape.”

“Yeah. ‘Clear Spot.’ I was like, wow. And the squealing fading in my ears and the shaking calming down and I think—what about the coyote? So I get out and walk back and I remember the sun going down, right, and the storm, and it’s sprinkling rain like any second now the sky’s gonna unleash the deluge and I walk back to where I started braking, and then I go back a little further and look and there’s nothing. No coyote, no blood, nothing, and I climb over the median and check out the other side because you know, I thought, maybe the force of the car threw him clear but still nothing. So I run across the highway and check the other shoulder and there’s still nothing, so that’s when I think, oh my god: he’s under the car. He must be jammed under the frame somehow. Maybe still alive. So I go back to the car, walking slow, trying to get hold of myself, and as I walk I watch the car and the road, looking for signs, drops or smears of blood, fur, anything. I get to the car and I so much do not want to look underneath… but I work up my courage and squat by the tire, sort of so I can hide behind it if he jumps out at me, and I look underneath and there’s nothing. I can’t believe it. I cannot believe it. Fender, grill—no sign at all I hit anything, no contact with anything, no remnants of flesh or blood, only the idea.”

She paused, sipped her beer.

“Wow,” Matt said.

“So what happened to the coyote?” Rachel asked.

Wendy held her hands open, palms up.

“Then what?” asked Mel.

“I threw up and felt a little better, then I got back on the road. I was a few minutes late to the reading, so I sat in the back—I mean, there were only like five people there—and it was a great reading but my mind was still on the coyote, on the absence of the coyote, and afterward, I went up to thank David and say hi, and we got to talking and then, later that night, when I got home…”

“You’re leaving out the middle part,” Aaron said.

“Oh, we had a drink, you know, and talked—”

“Talked,” Aaron said.

“Anyway,” she continued, “the important part is when I got home. It was a weird night, weird energy in the air, and there’s that witchy feeling you get sometimes, that feeling like there’s a door open somewhere, right, like ‘fragrant portals, dimly starred.’ So I got home and drove up the lonely road to the driveway and came to my trailer and when I make the last turn, my headlights sweep across the mesa and I stop—because standing right there in the middle of my headlights, right in front of my trailer door, is a huge, mangy coyote, his enormous yellow eyes staring right at me. I’m so scared I almost pee myself, so I just sit there watching him and he stands there watching me. I leave the headlights on, because I’m not going to get out till he leaves and I’m not going to turn the lights off so I can’t see him, and he just stands there, and then—and this almost made me start crying—he sits back on his haunches and starts panting, still just staring. Finally I sort of come out of it and think to honk the horn, but it does nothing. He ignores it. I roll down the window and shout and honk but none of it makes any difference, he just sits there, staring. I turn off the headlights. In the dark I can still see him there. I crawl in the backseat, check the locks, and go to sleep. When I wake up, he’s gone. No prints in the dirt—nothing. Nothing but a faint smell, like an old dog, ‘the scents of ghosts, the memory of lithic days.’”

“You think it was a ghost?” Rachel asked.

“Who knows?”

“That’s really incredible,” Matt said, wondering how much, if any, of the story was true and not really caring, because her telling had given him license to watch her lips move gleaming in the torchlight, her eyelashes flutter, her delicate fingers trace gestures in the air. Wandering his gaze over the curves and hollows of her body made him feel better about the energy he felt flowing between Dahlia and Aaron that he kept telling himself he was just imagining. People look at people, he thought, and that Aaron’s knee had been resting against Dahlia’s for the last several minutes was no sign of anything, no red flag, no indication of anything other than his own weed-stoked paranoia. It’s all in your head, he thought, then again: say something.

Say what?

Dahlia felt him next to her, the pressure of his knee, the coiled power his body held, like he was about to jump on something. They’re fucking, right? They had to be, Wendy and her war hero. Didn’t seem to matter much to Matt, who looked at Wendy same as always: like he was gonna throw up on her shoes.

“Shit, babe, that’s a crazy story,” Mel said. “But what about this other wild animal you brought home? What’s with Mr. Fox here?” She pointed her beer at Aaron: “Tell us something about yourself, Mr. Fox. What’s your deal?”

His energy shifted, tensing. He smiled uneasily. “Not much to tell. I’m from Arizona, grew up near Tucson. I met Wendy in college. I’m just sort of traveling around right now.”

“Vision quest?” Mel asked.

“Yeah, sure. Taking some time off. I was staying with some friends in Arizona, now I’m visiting Wendy, then I’m going to Colorado to stay with another friend, then maybe Montana or Washington. I’ll probably head back to Tucson in December, get back in school.”

“What do you study?” Rachel asked.

“I was doing history. Now maybe poli sci. Maybe something pre-law. Not really sure.”

“Didn’t you just get out of the Army?” Matt asked.

Aaron’s smile hardened. “Still in, technically. But on my way out, yeah.”

“What did you do there?” Matt asked. “I mean, if you don’t mind my asking.”

“You don’t have to…” Dahlia said, touching Aaron’s arm. “Matt spends all his time on the computer and forgets how to talk to people sometimes.”

“No problem,” Aaron said. “I’m what you call a Nasty Girl.”

“A what?”

“Nasty Girl. It’s slang for National Guard. I wasn’t in the regular Army.”

“Oh,” Matt said. “Like the reserves?”

“Yeah, like that.”

Mel leaned in. “So what was your MOS?”

Aaron sized her up. “Thirty-one Bravo. Yours?”

Mel shook her head. “No, man, I wasn’t… My dad was in ’Nam, that’s how I know MOS. He was a Fifteen Mike—a Huey mechanic in the Screaming Eagles.”

“That’s cool,” Aaron said. “My military occupational specialty was Thirty-one Bravo. Corporal Aaron Stojanowski, 3rd Platoon, 858th Military Police Company, 850th Military Police Battalion, Arizona Army National Guard. Military occupational specialty Thirty-one Bravo One-Zero. They called me Sto.”

“Sto?” Rachel asked.

“Like a nickname. Sto.”

“Was that when you were in Iraq?” Matt asked.

“Matt,” Dahlia said.

“Yeah,” Aaron said.

“Wow,” Matt said. “That must have been intense. Well, thank you for your service.”