T. Johnson: Hold It 'Til It Hurts

He patted the pack. She squeezed his hand one last time. “You don’t have to do this.”

But oh how he wanted to do it, to get out of that bedroom, that house, that town, to have a mission again. The route out of town scaled the eastern hills, offering a view of the valley and the endless identical carport subdivisions built during his early childhood, and outside of that, the ring of two-car garage developments from his teens, and outside of that, the mini-mansions that appeared while he was on active duty. From most angles, the roads resembled a random sprinkling of commas and parentheses. His favorite view was from the zenith, where he could see how the highway carved a semicircle, and that highway, taken together with all the looping and whirling roads inside that half-moon, resembled a sketch of the brain. When he was a kid he told himself the design was intentional, and he took comfort in a grand designer.

He’d promised his mother that he’d be careful, drive no more than nine miles over the speed limit, stop when tired (and let her know where), avoid sleeping in deserted rest areas, wouldn’t eat much fast food, and was doing this because he wanted to. He’d sworn that he was. He did want to. What other choice did he have? On his eighth birthday he’d been promised a big surprise, expected a golden Labrador retriever, and received a brother. His mother said, “You’ll never be alone.” His father said, “Don’t need blood to be brothers.”

THE WINDOWS WERE UP, UNLIKE ALL THOSE HOURS WITH GUN BARRELS resting on the doorframes. Troy had grown increasingly sullen the closer they came to home, his face set in the scowl he usually only wore after losing — a game, a bet, a race, a woman. He perked up when a dump truck with DC plates cut them off, snapping, “Rock’em sock’em, two-o-clock!” laying on the horn and swerving across three lanes onto the rough while Achilles barked, “Got it!” as he planted both feet on the floorboard, pressing his back into the seat to steady his aim while reaching for the weapon he didn’t have. Achilles had expected that sooner or later they’d get zulu-foxtrot. It was the kind of shit they saw in old movies, salty vets tensing up if someone so much as snapped. They’d laughed off their Deer Hunter moment, each claiming the other would play Christopher Walken’s character, and Troy went right back to sulking as if drunk, his head lolling back and his words garbled like he was forcing them out to keep from choking on them.

For the last few months everybody had talked about nothing but home, until the final weeks, when no one mentioned home at all, but Achilles knew they thought about it. Everyone wore a faraway look — not the kind that settled over them like a shroud after the first firefight, not the triumphant glare that was a shield, not the inward gaze they wore after Jackson died, when they avoided each others’ eyes for the ride home, as Troy now seemed to be doing. It was another look, like quiet embarrassment, like they were each watching a film no one else could see, some romantic comedy they were forced to endure but ended up secretly enjoying. It was then that they redoubled the promise to stay in touch, start a Myspace page, have an annual reunion. Achilles knew the desperate promises wouldn’t hold, not with everyone already retreating into the past. Merriweather stopped playing rap, opting again for the gospel that had shaken their tent the first few weeks. Wages started writing Bethany more, scribbling every night by the glow of his flashlight, or clicking away on his laptop, depending on how the day had gone. “Some shit’s just easier to type.” Troy had found a battered Kama Sutra in a raid and immediately loaned it out, because it was “too much like window-shopping.” He reclaimed the book not long before they left, openly studying it at dusk and dawn, reading and rereading like it was a newspaper and he had to catch up with the rest of the world.

Achilles’s short list: food, sleep, Janice, a run through the creek behind his house. He knew the land inside and out, the shady grove that separated his house from Happy Garden, the trailer park where Janice lived. On hot nights, he’d often dreamed of those sweet-smelling woods, and the cool, clear creek that ran through them swashing about his ankles. He hadn’t seen a frog in almost a year. He thought he might even go hunting with his father, which he hadn’t done since high school. He still wouldn’t shoot anything, but he now understood his father’s pleasure at being in the woods away from the concrete and congestion. Hunting had never been about the animal, only the single-minded stalking of worthy prey. He didn’t know what he’d tell Janice, but they could go to the quarry, walk through the woods like they used to. Maybe they’d get serious.

Troy’s list: the PBR on tap at the VFW, a giant roller coaster, and women, “Anyone would do right now.” The roller coaster surprised Achilles. His brother had explained, “I want to know if they still scare me.” When they passed the amusement park, Achilles jokingly jerked the wheel toward the exit. Troy shrugged. “Does it matter? We have nothing but time now. Nothing fucking else.”

“Whatever.” Achilles couldn’t remember being so excited. From the DC townhouses to suburban track homes, from scattered subdivisions to the rolling hills and farms: every familiar sight made him giddy as his birthday. The license plates, in English, all thrilled him, but he really felt at home once they were far enough west on I-270 that DC’s Taxation Without Representation gave way to Pennsylvania and Maryland plates.

Achilles always paid close attention to plates because his father said they indicated who was a real Pennsylvanian and who was one of the capitol-city carpetbaggers who moved for the cheap farmland or to live in one of the subdivisions he called human kennels. Most importantly, he warned his sons, beware lady drivers with old DC plates or new Pennsylvania tags. When he was in high school, Achilles pointed out that everyone who bought a new car received new plates regardless of where they were from. Smiling, his father said, “Son, I only give the advice. Whether or not you take it is up to you.” Achilles grew less certain about how serious his father was but he remained vigilant about reading plates.

They switched places near Monocacy and Achilles drove the last leg to the outskirts of Hagerstown, from the evergreen-lined interstate to the two-lane highways banked by mounds of red and yellow leaves, to the crisp black roads that fed the new developments and the last few original freestanding five-acre plots, one of which their parents lived on, stopping at last where the arteries of commerce died out at the foot of the unpaved drive that wound through the wooded lot and ended at a cement stoop. The house sat atop a slow rise, commanding a view of the surrounding area, but the lot was so heavily wooded that not even the chimney could be seen from the road below. Achilles had felt isolated in high school, but now he appreciated the seclusion.

The old Private Property sign at the edge of the lot had been repainted, and next to it three more signs planted: Private Drive! Keep Out! Not for Sale! When the building boom started, barely a weekend passed that someone didn’t tool a fancy sedan up the drive to make an offer on the land. Their father refused to sell because, first, they couldn’t afford to move anyplace better, and second, he wasn’t going to help any big-city scam artist cram twenty-five houses onto land meant for one—“People aren’t meant to be that close together.”

They crept up the driveway, stopping when they could see the house and the six cars parked around it, which they recognized as belonging to family members. They agreed that the re-up bonus was tempting, but neither could see volunteering to eat any more shit; however, Troy, fingering his Bronze Star, now looked uncertain. Achilles punched his brother on the shoulder, urging him out of the car.