Roy Scranton - War Porn

“I know what I am, Matt. You don’t have to be good.”

“No, there’s an order to things. There’s a map we’re responsible to.”

“Wendy, for example. She’ll give it up. You just gotta take it.”

Matt wanted to say, You need to leave now. Or: Quit looking at her like that. Or: I’m gonna kick your ass. Instead, he regarded Orion hanging overhead and tried to think of an answer. It wasn’t just stars. It was more.

Dahlia went back out back, saying to herself what an asshole. The house creaked or the door maybe or the sky on its hinges at the horizon and she was out under the black world glittering like dark mica. The grass rustled live as snakes. Wendy, Mel, and Rachel huddled over something in the yard, Xena watching.

“What is it?” Dahlia asked, thinking small and helpless.

“Mel’s making fire,” Wendy said.

Then it lit with a crackle, a small flame ringed with stones. Where’d she get stones? Where’d she get fire?

“Where’d you get that?” Dahlia asked.

“Me pray Goddess Moon, call up spirits from stone, make fire,” Mel said. “I can put it out if you want. I just thought it’d be nice. There isn’t a burn ban on or shit, is there? I don’t wanna bring down the fuzz.”

“It’s cool, I think,” said Dahlia.

Wendy leaned toward her. “Did you see the way the stars are behind the trees and inside them at the same time? I mean the branches. Like they’re caught.”

Dahlia laughed. “Damn, y’all couldn’t wait for me on the next bowl? Buncha weed-bogartin’ bitches. Listen…” Dahlia sat on the ground by the fire. “I talked to the boys out front. Soldier boy said he’d apologize. Says he just wants peace.”

“We change like chameleons,” Wendy said. “Inside, outside. Skin on skin.”

“You do,” Dahlia said. “I don’t.”

“No,” Wendy said. “We all do.”

“So who’s Dahlia then?”

Rachel said, “She’s the one who fed us tasty tofu.”

Wendy said, “She’s the one who has what she wants.”

Mel said, “She’s the one who knows what’s enough.”

Dahlia lay on her side. “Enough is enough.”

“This is fun,” Wendy said. “Who’s Wendy?”

“Wendy’s a bitch,” said Mel.

“Fuck you, Mel.”

“Wendy’s a self-centered, self-quoting bitch,” Mel went on.

“Seriously, fuck you.”

“Wendy’s too smart and too pretty but she’s crazy and fun, so that makes up for it,” said Dahlia.

“Wendy’s a cat,” Rachel said. “One of those little jungle cats, like an ocelot.”

“I’ll be an ocelot.”

“What’s your animal, Dahlia?” Mel asked. “A fox?”

“Me? I’m a moth. I’m a swallow. A crane maybe, some kind of migratory bird.”

“I’m a coyote,” said Rachel.

Wendy laughed. “You’re no coyote. You’re a poodle that thinks it’s a coyote.”

“You’re mean.”

“I’m, uh, what’s that dog from that old beer ad?”

“Spuds Mackenzie? He’s a bull terrier.”

“I’m one of those,” said Mel.

“I’m not a poodle,” Rachel said. “I’m a heron or an egret, like Dahlia.”

“You’re a cuckoo,” Wendy said.

They lapsed into silence. Dahlia lay on the earth, watching Wendy, thinking of the way Matt watched her. The sense of fear. The rush when the dog leaped. Aaron. Mel broke a stick and threw it in the crackling fire. Rachel cleared her throat and began to sing in a low, nasal lilt, a voice like reeds and red thread and honey, tapping her knee with her palm:

Rachel let the last note fade and the hush that followed broke like waves washing hard against clapping, sharp, at the door. They all looked up at Aaron applauding, his eyes bright in the glow of the fire.

“That was just lovely,” he said.

“What do you want?” Wendy asked.

“Sorry?”

“How long were you there?”

“I’m only passing through, Chief,” he said, coming toward the fire. “I left Major Tom in orbit, and if I don’t get back we might lose him in the Martian time-slip. But listen, it’s totally aces, we’re solving the mysteries of the universe. One thing I wanted to say: Mel, I hope we’re cool and I’m sorry for calling you names and overreacting to your—how you say—interrogation. We cool?” He knelt and offered Mel his hand. Xena watched nervously.

Mel observed him, turning her head this way and that, then nodded. “Yeah, we cool,” she said, giving his hand a firm shake. “Sorry for calling you a Nazi.”

“No problem,” he said. “It’s not the worst thing I’ve been called.” Then he offered his hand to Xena. “Cool, doggy?” Xena hugged the ground and licked the back of Aaron’s hand. “Great. So we all cool.”

“We’re not all cool,” Dahlia said, sitting up.

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. You and me ain’t cool.”

“Well, I am heartsick to hear that, sugar, and steadfastly resolved to make things right. What could I possibly do to rectify this situation?”

“What are you two talking about?” asked Wendy.

Dahlia felt her face twitch. “You bring violence into my home, you fuck up my party. You owe me.” Her eyes reflected flame. “Put your hand in the fire.”

The other women watched, waiting. Aaron smiled and took a drink of his beer, then gazed around the circle. “What are y’all up to out here besides singing campfire songs? Some witchy coven shit?”

Dahlia glared at him.

“We’re just talking,” Wendy said.

“Sweet. I’ll work on getting Major Tom down from orbit, and maybe then we can resume our explorations. In the meantime…” He leaned forward and passed his hand through the fire, slowly side to side so the orange heat licked along his hand and singed the hair on his wrist, then pressed his palm to Dahlia’s cheek. They looked at each other, faces close, then he pulled away and kissed Wendy on the top of her head. “I shall return,” he said, giving a sloppy salute, and disappeared through the gate.

Matt looked over at Aaron’s face, washed blue in the moon’s light. He was pushing a bottle at him.

“You got beer?”

“Yeah. Take one.”

“How long were you gone?”

“All your life, sweetheart. You want a beer or not?”

“I don’t know what you’re here for.”

“Same thing we all are: kill, fuck, and die.”

Matt took the offered beer.

“Strange trip to the backyard,” Aaron went on. “The ladies have gone native. We talked some. Everybody groks now. Why don’t we take a ride in your time machine, Matthew?”

“The machine’s broken.”

“Show me.”

“It’s sludge. It’s like a rollercoaster that won’t come down.”

“So show me. Invite me in. I got something to show you in return.”

“Yeah, what?”

Aaron grinned, pulling from his pocket a silver thumb drive dangling on a gray cord. “Some real war shit. You show me the future, I’ll show you the past.”

Matt thought for a moment, then nodded. “Okay. Come on.”

He stumbled up and ambled into the house, Aaron following through the dark to Matt’s work zone. Through the window, they could see the girls spread out around the fire, talking and laughing, their hands framing forms in the air. Matt sat at his desk and jiggled his mouse, waking the machine.