T. Johnson - Hold It 'Til It Hurts

The truck swayed — the drunk was leaning against it, fumbling with his fly. Achilles tapped his horn. It was broken. “Motherfuck, I’m in here!” Losing balance as he tried to wave, the drunk put one hand to the window, leaving a greasy palm print. If ever a city needed a Noah. Achilles slapped the window and the man staggered off, singing. A flock of pigeons launched from a nearby roof. Watching as they scattered, Achilles raised his hands as if holding a shotgun and drew a bead on the bird closest to his car, following its trajectory — a soaring arc of alabaster wings eating the night — and firing just as it lit on a sign that read St. Jude Shelter and Community Kitchen, under which a crowd was organizing itself into a line.

Achilles smelled it before he saw it. The green camelback was a burned-out shell, the dirt yard cracked, the walls of the adjacent houses scorched. The second-story roof was gone, as was most of the first-floor roof, leaving the house open to the sky. The sidewalls remained, but the front wall had crumbled except for an untouched area two feet around the front doors, where the mailbox hung unscathed, unmarked by soot or flame. He flipped the lid up. Joe, Angela, and Raymond Harper had lived there, along with, in incrementally smaller letters, Angie, April, and Amy. Charred shingles cracked underfoot along the alley. The back wall had fallen completely off and lay on the ground like a loading ramp leading into a trailer. The kitchen, dark as a shadow box, had suffered only smoke damage. A few bottles and the ashtray and the take-out containers and the dishes piled in the sink, all coated in black ash, so familiar a sight that he expected to see Lex seated there, coated too. Achilles put the duffle bag over his shoulder and ventured farther into the house. The stairway lay on the floor like a broken accordion. Achilles climbed the wall to the second floor, his fingers burning and twitching with the memory of the fight, his sore ankle groaning, his anger rising.

Two of the upstairs doorways were obstructed by a densely packed mass of heavy beams and charred shingles, impassible now, let alone aflame. The third door led into a bedroom furnished with bunk beds as well as a playpen that was a knot of sooty tubing. He almost lost his footing on a squeaky toy, three baby dolls gnarled by the heat, their legs melted together, two of the heads joined at the hair, forming one stiff plastic web. He stomped on it until one head popped off and bounced into the hallway, where it caught the slant of the floor and careened off the edge. He listened closely but didn’t hear it hit the ground. He set the duffle bag down and kicked the body, a Medusa with legs for hair, over the edge; he listened closely, but didn’t hear that touch down either, which really pissed him off.

Feeling sorry for himself, he catalogued his grievances: How could Troy be so thoughtless? If his mom believed enough to slip crosses into their lockets and keep Bibles tucked around the house, how could she pander to his father’s atheism all those years? And his father, for chrissakes, how could he die before seeing them again and leave Achilles holding this bag of shit? And if you adopted a kid or two, what was the point in forcing the papers on them? People didn’t need to know everything.

He was back in his car before he remembered the duffle bag, and pounded the dashboard in frustration. He didn’t want to do this anymore. He didn’t want to go back into that house. He knew burned houses. Plenty. He had been in burned houses, searched them, slept in them, ordered them razed and retorched. He had been the one to burn them. He had called down the thunder. He knew that if the right ordnance came knocking, even the stoutest building crumbled like cake. But he didn’t want to go back into that house and wonder again who had been trapped in those rooms. But that was stupid. It wasn’t like Troy could die in a fire: he had survived a minefield.

A storefront operation in a block of shops that had been taken over by churches, St. Jude was sandwiched between First Bethel Apostolic and the Church of the Almighty Congregation, all three names stenciled in cheerful colors as if they merely hawked baked goods or dry cleaning services. He peeked in the window of First Bethel, the single room with industrial carpet installed halfway up the walls and folding chairs striking him as too earnest, too impoverished, to be a sacred space. A service in a converted store couldn’t be the same as mass in a real church like St. Augustine, not that he even knew what that was like. God was blond in this part of town, both storefront churches displaying the same blue-eyed Jesus, like franchisees, the shelter’s sign featuring a sandaled brown-haired man who must have been St. Jude. For a moment, he wondered how they even knew what any of these saints looked like.

Achilles scanned the line, seeing no sign of Troy or anyone who resembled him. Ignoring the grunts and the half-hearted objections, he pushed his way through the crowd to a door marked Volunteers. Inside, two teenagers sat at a folding table. They were Blow’s age, no older than Troy at his enlistment date.

“Name?” asked the tall one.

“Achilles Conroy.”

“Where’d you serve?” asked the tall one.

“Korengal,” answered Achilles, wondering why it mattered.

“Is that federal?” asked the tall one.

“Yeah, I guess,” said Achilles.

“Korengal?” muttered an old man he hadn’t noticed before. “I had a cousin there.”

The teens scanned the sheets spread out before them, meticulously running their fingers along rows and columns as if they expected to find Achilles’s name hidden in one of the little black boxes. “You sure it’s federal? How do you spell it?”

Achilles spelled it.

“And where is it?” asked the teen.

“Afghanistan,” said someone behind him.

“I knew it,” said the old man, lounging in a corner.

The tall teen shuffled his papers. “Knew that shit didn’t sound familiar.”

Achilles turned to see a large-breasted white woman with blond dreadlocks and a red paisley head wrap. She waggled her finger at the teens. “Tsk tsk! Korengal is in Afghanistan, seniors. It’s SAT season.”

To Achilles: “Were you really in Korengal?”

“Really.”

“Doing what?”

“What else is there to do?”

Admiration shot across her face. “Really?”

“Yeah,” said Achilles.

“How can we help you?”

“I was looking for somebody.”

“Who?”

“A friend,” he said quickly.

“What’s he look like? We got a lot of somebodies here.”

He reached for his wallet, but as a precautionary measure he’d left it at home before going to the green camelback. “Five eleven, one hundred eighty-five pounds, brown skin, brown hair.” Half of the people in line matched that description. “Light brown skin and green eyes.” That described the short teenager at the volunteer table. The woman nodded, waiting for him to finish, her eyes round as quarters, focused only on him, as if for this moment he was all that mattered. Her face was bright and open, honest. Her heart-shaped lips were glossy and garnet, as radiant as her head wrap. The bright colors, the dreadlocks, the figure — she was perfect, like an anime character.

“You’re more than welcome to wait,” she said. Her voice was deep and rich, sweet too, like honey and cream. “What’s his name?” When Achilles hesitated, she repeated the question.

“Troy. Do you know anyone named Lex or Blow?”

“Sorry. You’re looking for a bunch of folks.”

“Yeah.”

“Good luck, soldier.” She extended her hand. “I’m Ines.”

“Achilles.”

“Really?”

“Who would make that up?” asked Achilles.