T. Johnson - Hold It 'Til It Hurts

“My captain used to say that in Korea. I believed it too, back then. But you’ll tell yourself anything to stay afloat on a river of flaming shit.” He found the log and waved it triumphantly. “I’ll tell you what’s a shame. It’s a shame what these kids are doing to each other out there nowadays. Animals. Those dealers are animals. Someone should line them all up and shoot them, and their dogs. Civilians shouldn’t be allowed to carry guns. That guy was burned up by his dealer. They even poured alcohol down his throat so he couldn’t scream.” His toned changed and he hunched his shoulders like it was campfire story time, like he was on Scared Straight, that old TV show that tried steering bad kids in the right direction by taking them to prisons and morgues, the eternal message always the same— This could be you!

“Imagine that! Alcohol in his throat so the minute he yells, the flames are in his mouth and neck, and he’s ripping his own skin off trying to make it stop.” The attendant beat at his chest, openhanded, pantomiming fruitless efforts to douse a flame. “Ever seen anything so gruesome? They call it baptism. Baptism!” He crossed himself twice. “Can you imagine hating someone that much?” He was still clutching the log, awaiting an answer in exchange.

Achilles shrugged again and shook his head. For all he knew, they did it to themselves. D-794 could have been one of those crunchers Wages had talked about, someone who burned himself up trying to light a pipe, like that old comedian Richard Pryor. “Yeah, it’s terrible,” he said as he reached for the clipboard. He listed Wages’s address as his own, noted himself as next of kin, and marked their parents as deceased.

“Good luck.” The attendant stared hard.

“What?” asked Achilles.

“I’m just wondering, do I want to see the other guy? Or have I already?”

“I don’t know.” He’d forgotten about his bruises and sore muscles, as he’d been trained to. The implications of that answer dawned on him. “I mean, of course not.”

“Never mind.” He clapped Achilles on the back, as if he understood his plight, as if something had passed between them. “Good luck.”

There was no use saying he didn’t believe in luck. There was no use explaining that Achilles’s reserve wasn’t luck. He’d often attended the sifting of the dead. Not even the first ones had been shocking: a cluster of civilians, a wedding party charred beyond recognition, only vaguely human in shape, and most importantly, absent familiarity — he couldn’t have possibly known any of them. They were, as someone said, the only Gannies it was safe to turn your back on.

He reminded himself of why he was doing this. Troy had prints on file, and when they were run, their mom would be called. She would have to answer when the phone rang in the middle of the night because it could be Achilles with news of Troy, if not Troy himself. Too old-fashioned to have a phone in the bedroom, she would feel her way to the living room, her left hand grazing the wood-paneled wall and her right holding her reading glasses. Once seated in the green chair at the roll-top desk where she writes out the bills and reads the Bible — which she never even looked at when their father was alive — she’ll turn on the lamp, pick up a pen, and put on her glasses, behind which her eyes float in the air like two blue globes. Then she’ll answer the phone. After hearing the news, she’ll call Achilles and apologize.

That was why he must be the first to know. But if he found Troy on a gurney, what could he really do? Apologize for letting her down? Again? When Troy first talked about signing up, his mother pulled Achilles aside and said, “Only you can talk him out of it. He’ll listen to you.” He’d expected Troy — who hated authority, listened to no one, followed no directions but his own — would be phased out within weeks. A drill sergeant would give him an order and he would walk off, like he did on every job. There was no way that Achilles, who thought his own cautious but easygoing nature perfectly suited for the military, was going to talk him out of it. How could he have expected that Troy, the free spirit, the wild card, the deck with three jokers, would fit in like he’d been born into chaos? “Every deck needs a joker,” Troy always said, though he was anything but a joker, throwing himself into his duty as if all he’d ever wanted all his fucking life was for someone to be man enough to tell him what to do and have the balls to back it up.

“His heart is set on it,” Achilles had told his mom. “You know how he gets.” She’d nodded knowingly, sighed, as though she’d wished for anything except that answer, but expected it. He couldn’t forget what she said when they shipped out: “The loneliest person in the world is a mother who outlives her children.”

He sat in his car, on the top floor of the parking garage, watching two pigeons fight over a hamburger patty. He could just barely see the tip of the church steeple at the center of the French Quarter and a flashing red light that might have been Jax Brewery. The lot was at least two blocks away from the hospital, but he swore he still smelled D-794, and along with him gunpowder, rifle oil, garbage, diesel fuel, body odor, roasting lamb. He shoved three pieces of gum into his mouth. The rush of peppermint burned his tongue, and he started breathing through his nose again.

Later that day he was at Seaton’s Diner, across from St. Augustine, when his mother called. She sounded hesitant when he answered, as if she thought she had the wrong number. After some small talk, he took a breath and asked, “Do you know any of these people he might be looking for?”

“No,” said his mother.

“Isn’t it in the envelope?” he asked.

“I never opened the envelope,” she said. “Your father sealed them.”

“Really?”

“We talked about this already. Yes, you’re both Conroys. Troy Magnus Conroy and Achilles Holden Conroy. You’re your father’s sons and mine. Always.”

“Geez.” Achilles exhaled sharply. “That again.” Hadn’t she signed court orders or birth certificates? He wanted to scream, Don’t you even know their names? How could you possibly not know their names? His sandwich arrived, a chicken club held together by toothpicks. The waitress regarded him strangely every time he ordered it, rushing it to the table like she didn’t want to be seen with it. He’d forgotten why he called his mother in the first place, or if he was even the one who had called. “I gotta go.”

“Wait. Your father left you some money, a lot of money. Seventy-five thousand dollars.” She was gleeful, sounding like she had after discovering petroleum jelly was the antidote for the dry skin that afflicted him every winter. “I meant to tell you before, but I didn’t know how much, and everything went so loosey-goosey with Troy leaving and all.”

Where did his father get that kind of money? That was almost two years of net pay from a man who’d wanted to move for the last ten years but said he couldn’t afford it. How he wanted to retreat farther up the mountain, complaining constantly about the city roping him in, the noose of new developments driving up property taxes. “How much?”

“Fifty thousand from his life insurance and another twenty-five from his pension. But if you need more, let me know. You’ll get the rest when I go.”

“Why are you talking like that? Where are you going?”

“I’m still going on my trip. But anything could happen, even here. Look at your father. You need to know how these things work. The papers are in the roll-top. Everything goes to the surviving heir. The lawyer can give you the details. Chuck over in Mercersburg. You remember him? He handled Troy’s accident.”