T. Johnson - Hold It 'Til It Hurts

Republicans patted his back, hawks strutting like pigeons, as if inviting him to award them a medal. Weepy Democrats said, “You should have never even been over there,” and apologized for the terrible things “you must have been forced to do.” As if there were someplace in the world where, when people shot at you, you didn’t duck and, if armed, shoot back.

Worst were kids like Ines’s little cousin Sammy, who regarded him with such awe, when Achilles knew it wasn’t a matter of bravery, skill, or grit. He was simply lucky — lucky that Geary’s Humvee caught the IED on the Khyber Pass, lucky that Howser’s chute malfunctioned over the Kurdish airstrip, lucky that Merriweather was assigned to point that day. Lucky to have been shot with nothing more than a camera.

He occasionally looked at his old photos to remind himself that he had done something that mattered. He’d come to understand how Wages felt, how it demeaned you to take orders from a fat coward. Some days, when Ines wasn’t home, he took his old battered black ammo box out on the corner of the condo deck, where he could feel the sun on his toes and watch the ships travel their steady courses while thumbing through old photos. He had three favorites: one in the ’Stan, one in New Orleans, and one in Maryland.

In the ’Stan: Achilles, Troy, Merriweather, Wages, Wexler, and Jackson stand shoulder to shoulder in the shadow of the Herc that will shuttle them to Dubai for a little R&R. Their faces are gaunt, pants loose, smiles brazen. Even in the shade they squint, except Wexler, who, with one eyebrow raised and a left dimple deep enough to swallow sunlight, flashes the look that earned him the name Sexy Wexy. They’ve all casually slung their M16s over their shoulders, except Merriweather, who stands with his rifle butt to the ground, leaning on the barrel as if it is a cane. Troy’s face is a bit smudged, but for once he is nearly as dark as Achilles, who remembers the date and time of the snapshot; Chan, the PFC from Kansas City who took it for them; and feeling like he finally belonged.

It’s a favorite photo because Wages is sober; Merriweather is happy, eager to see his first beach; Wexler — with his long, slim neck — does look like Prince; and Achilles and Troy finally look like brothers. Achilles locks the ammunition box whenever he begins to drift upriver, following the tugboats headed upstream, wondering how different their lives could have been, and if different meant better, and if better meant normal, like life with Ines, the star of his favorite photo from New Orleans.

It’s an informal shot taken at Ines’s cousin’s wedding reception. Mrs. Delesseppes has hastily herded the wedding party into the center of the parquet ballroom at Gallagher Hall. Ines wears a strapless red satin gown and her dreads are woven into three thick braids like a gold headdress. Again, and over and over, Achilles watches other men watching Ines, window-shopping, and swells with pride. He waits until a cluster of two or three men direct their common attention at her, then walks over and runs his palm down her back, and she stand as straight and tall as if in formation. He feels equally officious in his tuxedo, the first since his prom. Ines insisted he purchase one because men don’t rent clothes. Achilles and Sammy wear matching cummerbunds. In the photo, Sammy stands between Achilles and Ines. Simultaneously, as if instinctively, as if magnetically, Achilles and Ines reach for each other to hold hands behind Sammy’s back. This is the moment the shutter winks: everyone else is staring at the camera, but Ines and Achilles have eyes only for each other.

Later, she didn’t so much as frown after missing the bouquet, but she glared when the garter dropped like a scud missile, the impact scattering men across the parquet halls, the echoes of their footfalls fading into awkward laughter, the tone of embarrassing relief surprisingly similar to the chatter in the wake of a near miss. On the drive home she said nothing at all. It was the first of three weddings that summer, and Achilles tried dutifully to appear to be dutifully trying to catch the garter at the next two weddings. Weeks passed before he finally understood that reluctance to catch a garter is considered natural, but sprinting across the room like someone has yelled “Fire in the hole!” appeared a reluctance to be with her for the duration. The duration . She often speaks of the duration. She never utters the word marriage .

Instead, she says, “We’ll be your family.”

“We’ll make beautiful milk-chocolate babies.”

“Uncle Boudreaux will gladly give you away.”

And he replies, “Yeah! The old BB is just dying to give me away. But you know, men aren’t given away. We run shit.”

She says, “You wish. You know what I mean.”

And he does, not that she ever utters the M-word, nothing closer than that Morse code, the double dashes that appear after, lost in concentration, she bites her lower lip. No, no M-word. Instead, she claps at cans clattering behind cars. Near bridal shops, her purposeful steps shorten to a saunter. And whenever a home makeover or newlywed show comes on, she yells, “Hurry honey, come here.”

He says, “Will those chocolate babies be yummy or bittersweet?”

“Will they be solid or hollow?”

“I can’t even spell marriage .”

Her laughter, ignited by a snort of disbelief, is explosive. She commands him to be serious!

“I am,” he says. He really can’t spell marriage, that’s not his name. And he leans in to taste her smile, biting at her lips, as red and ripe as plums, marking them with two short dashes of his own.

And slowly, like an incantation, she says, “IDC, IDC, IDC, Ines Delesseppes Conroy.”

Ines Delesseppes Conroy! Mrs. D would like that even less than A-sheel. “Not to worry,” she said. Her mom would come around. “I promise you that.”

FOR OVER SIX MONTHS, ACHILLES HEARD NO NEWS OF TROY. THEN, LATE one evening, while in bed with Ines watching a home decorating show, he answered his cell phone to hear Kevin Wexler say, without even a hello, “I saw Troy.”

Hearing Wexler’s voice, he went out onto the balcony, which stretched across the length of the condo and overlooked the Mississippi. Once outside, with both French doors safely shut behind him, he asked, “Are you still in Atlanta?”

“Yes.”

“At your sister’s?” asked Achilles.

“Yes.”

“You sure?” asked Achilles.

“When I called his name, he ran.”

Achilles snapped his phone shut just as Ines turned on the bedroom light, something he constantly asked her not to do when the heavy drapes were open. One night, he’d even marched her down to the street below their balcony to prove how much a burglar, or rapist, or any other psychopath would see through those sheer curtains she so adored. He stressed that any criminal of opportunity recessed in the darkness could see them, case the condo, or take a potshot. Achilles shook his head as she crossed the room, the hem of her T-shirt caught in her underwear. He moved to the dark end of the balcony.

A bellowing air horn drew his attention to the Mississippi. He heard the waters shouldering their banks, but what he could see of the river under the full moon was nearly flat, a field of shallow black bowls with silver brims. He leaned against the rail and ran his fingers across the balusters while a black tugboat with a shiny hull and one broad, chalky stripe glided by, the dark water betraying little hint of its passing, only a few silver rims of water wriggling into ribbons. The tug was headed toward Algiers, the twinkling lamps across the river. In the moonlight, the coiled chain on the aft deck was a glistening black wreath and the anchor at the rear of the boat a wink of light. Achilles spun on his heels and went back into the condo, past the waist-high vases of dried larkspur and emerald hydrangeas in the living room, past Ines’s favorite print, a life-size rendering of Kali, and stopped at the bedroom. Everything was as he’d left it. The light was off. Ines was in bed looking at television, and even Ricky, the stuffed koala, stood balanced between her feet. Achilles pointed to the phone in his hand as if it were a witness and began, “A guy from my unit … a funeral.”