T. Johnson: Hold It 'Til It Hurts

There wasn’t a single store within walking distance of the subdivisions that had sprung up around his parents’ house, so when he heard Troy’s old Beetle coasting down the gravel drive, Achilles thought he was going for cigarettes. When he wasn’t back at noon, Achilles assumed he was out sniffing around, or maybe up in Chambersburg, where Mrs. Bowler lived. Troy thought that was still secret, but word spread when someone slept with his high school algebra teacher.

Later that afternoon, Achilles discovered that Troy’s blue envelope was gone, as were his watch, locket, and pistols. He searched behind the closet baseboard, and in another cubbyhole where Troy hid candy as a child, pot as a teenager, money as an adult, and, most recently, the photos from their tour. Empty. On a whim he checked the Teddy Ruxpin cassette player, where Troy used to leave notes in which he’d written what he couldn’t say. Empty.

Achilles wasn’t surprised by the desertion. When they were kids, Troy, who had lighter skin than Achilles, would cut pictures of celebrities out of magazines, hold them next to his face, and say, “Doesn’t this look like me?” within earshot of their mother. Sometimes Troy was just an ass, and selfish too. As a child, he frequently squirreled food away in that closet cubbyhole. He ran away twice in middle school and once in high school, always returning before anyone noticed his absence, which had really jerked his chain. So Achilles didn’t bother to call him now. It was his father’s funeral too.

Nonetheless, Achilles couldn’t help but feel a burn in his chest, an unspeakable fear that threatened to shake his bowels loose every time he stumbled over what Troy left behind: his boots, folded BDUs, and the helmet with CONROY written in permanent marker, all coated in the fine layer of dust that had followed them home. He knew it was irrational, but the sight of that equipment gave him the shakes, so he packed it all away in a trash bag, double-bagged it, and stuffed the bundle into the back of the closet under the cover of two blankets. Back in rotation, when someone died his gear remained hanging up as a memorial. The last three weeks of active duty, he’d used only the back flap of their tent to avoid passing Jackson’s bunk and seeing his uniform laid out on the bed, the helmet set neatly on top.

He considered making a dental appointment, solely for that moment after the cleaning when the hygienist flossed his teeth. Routine, sure, but it felt so damn good, almost self-indulgent, so indescribably delicious that he’d never admitted to anyone how much he enjoyed the sensation. They would surely think him mad, but he’d missed it all — the sound of unseen cars on wet roads, burning leaves in the fall, sleeping late, his own bed, familiar faces at every corner, silverware in a drawer instead of a bin. Before his eyes though, every image he’d recalled in detail over the last few weeks — those shimmering fantasies he’d counted in place of sheep — faded like apparitions, none being as he remembered. Seinfeld reruns, Marvel comics, his rock collection, Penthouse Letters, James Bond novels, Austin Powers 1 and 2, butter pecan ice cream, Schoolhouse Rock: he flitted from activity to activity like a starving mosquito. Being home alone felt cowardly, like he was one of those FOBBITS who never left the Forward Operating Base. George was always whining about dilemmas of his own design. Comics were for kids — who else believed in superpowers? Austin’s accent grated now that he’d met real Brits. Sugar had faded out of his diet. “Conjunction Junction” sounded like Army slang for FUBAR or gangbanging.

The only pleasures that retained a spark were Penthouse Letters, of course, and the Midnight Special: egg, mayonnaise, mustard, relish, and onion on a Pennsylvania Dutch roll. Also known as the Bedeviled Egg Sandwich, according to his mother. It was the Devil’s Egg Sandwich according to his father, who’d invented it and therefore insisted that naming was his domain, as were all things egg. Wearing his plaid wool hunter’s cap and a pencil behind his ear, their father helmed the stove every Sunday morning, crisping potatoes that Achilles and Troy had grated in a cast-iron skillet, frying thick slabs of bacon and scrapple, scrambling eggs in the bacon grease. Occasionally he fried apples or bananas as a treat. Though he never referred to it, the Betty Crocker cookbook always lay on the table open to hash browns, like a map kept nearby in anticipation of a detour. Nearly six foot four, his father’s wingspan allowed him to shake the Jiffy Pop on the stove and grab a beer at the same time. But confining as it was, he always had his sons at his side in the kitchen.

After he discovered what Troy had taken with him, Achilles made a sandwich, but found he wasn’t hungry. There was a limit to the number of times he could masturbate in one day, diminishing the pleasure even of Penthouse, so he spent several hours using the weight bench in the barn, working out until his arms were numb. Still he couldn’t sleep.

Neither could his mother. At two a.m., he found her in the kitchen filling trash bags with food. The refrigerator, which that morning had been laden with the neighbors’ Tupperware, was empty. His mother grew up on a farm and insisted that a woman who couldn’t grow her own tomatoes wasn’t worth her weight in lipstick. He shouldn’t have been surprised that she threw the food away: she had long been suspicious of the neighbors she called beltway bimbos, the smug professional women who considered themselves more modern and feminist than housewives because they commuted to DC, made-up like two-dollar hookers. They filled their shopping carts with frozen organic vegetables and relied on landscapers to nurture their lawns. They used microwaves and pizza delivery services. “Think about that,” his mother always said. “Someone else brings food to your house for you to eat. When I was coming up, that only happened when someone died.” She also said, “A woman can do what a man does, but a man can’t do what a woman does, so if the wife works outside the house, the house won’t work,” even though she’d held a job for thirty years.

After the food, they took down the decorations, the only sound that of the balloons being popped one by one, until birdsong announced sunrise. When the decorations were all bagged, she brought out a backpack, thrusting it into his hands. She asked if he liked it, if it was sturdy, reliable, dependable. The clerk had assured her it was the next best thing to military issue. Achilles didn’t tell her that even though the tag listing all the features was the size of a greeting card, “near military specs” was no reasonable assurance of quality. If anything, it was cause for concern. Humvees that splinter on impact and sever limbs, mounted guns that stovepipe and blind the operator, defective body armor: no big deal as long as it wasn’t a class-A accident, meaning costing over a million dollars. There’s so much the recruiter doesn’t tell you, and you can’t even blame him, because if he did …

“Is it everything he said?” asked his mom, tugging at the zippers. She put on a black poncho. “It has matching rain protection.”

“Sure. What’s it for?” he asked, trying not to laugh. With the backpack on, she looked like a turtle.

“Training,” she said, as if the answer were obvious. Made of black ballistic nylon, with red tags on each silver zipper, the modern design would have been out of place in their house, even if it weren’t for the fact that she started wearing it all day, every day.

After a few days without hearing from Troy, a few days of not mentioning him while playing cards with his mom — especially blackjack, which he always won — of fighting the urge to search his gear for clues, of keeping the phone on and ready even when showering, Achilles left him a few messages ranging from “How’s the ten-gallon?” to “I’m just checking in” to, finally, a long voice mail advising Troy against being such a dick at such a time, ending with the reluctant admission that even though Achilles had no desire to meet his own birth parents, he would gladly have gone along to meet Troy’s. He so badly wanted his brother to answer, and not just to ensure that he was okay. He needed his brother to ask about their mom, to give Achilles an excuse to mention the backpack. Troy would know what to tell her. She spoke often of this trip she and their father had planned, a trip she’d wanted to take all her life, but the details were fuzzy. She made vague references to the East, which he’d initially taken to mean New York or Philadelphia. Sometimes she said Nepal, sometimes India. If asked for more details, she’d only say, “It’s up in the air.” It was puzzling because, as far as Achilles knew, she’d never been on an airplane.