T. Johnson - Hold It 'Til It Hurts

“Oh no. Who?” asked Ines, turning down the volume on the TV.

He thought about it for a moment before answering, “Kevin Wexler.”

“Were you close? What was he like?” asked Ines.

“He was fine. I told you. We don’t have a pack of secrets about some crazy mission where we slaughtered a village of retarded babies or something and ran around with their heads on pitchforks. We don’t know all the secrets the news doesn’t tell you or the government keeps away from you.”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” said Ines, turning the volume back up.

“I don’t mean that you did. I’m sorry.” Achilles sat beside her on the bed, taking her hands in his. They’d never had a major argument, and he wouldn’t be able to leave if he thought she was upset with him. All the stares she got. What might she do for revenge? “We got a shitty hand. It’s like you said about your three months in Kabul. ‘The crazy thing about a war isn’t that none of the stereotypes are true, it’s that all of them are.’”

“I understand.”

Achilles patted her hand, but knew she didn’t. She couldn’t. She was the most intelligent person he knew, and it was true she had, in her words, a heart the size of the Hindenburg. That had taken some research to confirm, but he knew it to be true. Nonetheless, volunteering in the ghetto wasn’t the same as being from the ghetto. Volunteering in Goddamnistan wasn’t the same as being posted there. What would she say if he told her about Jackson, or that Afghan kid defiant to the end, smiling as he hit the ground clutching his neck, or Merriweather, putting his blade away without even wiping it off, as casually as zipping up? Would she think he had deserved to lose his foot? What about Wexler running into a minefield, and Troy going after him?

He was on the road within an hour. He carried little: the carry-on Ines had loaned him for the suit he’d almost forgotten, a rucksack he kept stuffed with a few pairs of underwear, and the black hooded sweatshirt he wore as urban camouflage. Ines had packed almond butter and honey sandwiches, pomegranate juice, a gift for Sammy the Stargazer — whom she foisted on Achilles whenever Sammy came home for a three-day weekend — and a card addressed to Naomi Wexler in perfect script, the letters as fluid as water, cursive that belonged on the Constitution.

He was on the twin spans, just beyond the New Orleans city limits, when the rain struck, sudden and vengeful like a prophecy, and he hydroplaned. He drove slower after that. He had promised Ines he would drive carefully and call her when he arrived, no matter the time. And before that, that he didn’t scare easily, and after that, that he wouldn’t fuck other women. His father had made him promise to look out for his younger brother. And before that, that he wouldn’t cry when he was lost, and before that, that he would take a punch from someone else before kicking himself for running away. His mother had made him promise to return alive, at all costs, telling him squarely, “Son, don’t be a hero.” And before that, “Never go into Pennsylvania without an adult.” And before that, “Hold his hand and look both ways.” And after that, the army made him promise to support and defend the Constitution of the United States of America against all enemies; to bear true faith and allegiance, etcetera, etcetera; to obey the orders of the president, etcetera, etcetera, et-fucking-cetera. He had promised Wages to deliver a package to his mother and Bethany, if circumstances warrant. And after that, after Merriweather overdosed on crunch, Achilles, Wages, and Wexler stood in the ratty linoleum hallway of Walter Reed Memorial Hospital, somber as pallbearers, and declared that if any of them saw any one of the others going down the slippery slope of addiction, they were to forcibly intervene, no questions asked. Their hands clasped, his arm one of the three spokes in that wheel, itself a silent promise. They hadn’t survived all that shit just to come home and get hooked on this shit. Still, Achilles felt odd about showing up at Wexler’s house at four a.m. Surely Wexler had expected this when he called, but during the drive from New Orleans to Atlanta, Achilles’s fear that he wouldn’t find Troy, now missing for almost a year, was slowly eclipsed by the fear that he would.

He made good time, pushing himself, driving like he was on convoy, moving at a constant speed and stopping only when necessary. Finding his way through downtown to Grant Park, where Wexler’s sister lived, was easy. Barely a month had elapsed since he and Ines drove to Atlanta to visit her nephew Sammy the Stargazer, but the city seemed taller, surging skyward in a frenzy of construction. Cranes perched over skeletal skyscrapers, their pulleys lost in the mist. Downtown, a web of repaved roads: slick, black tongues of tar studded with orange barrels. In the rain, expansive concrete foundations gleamed like giant slabs of melting ice. Even in Wexler’s neighborhood, new brick homes with antique touches dwarfed historic clapboard duplexes, and mere blocks away a glassy new midrise condominium sparkled like a gem. The city was shedding its skin.

Wexler lived with his sister in a craftsman-style bungalow in Grant Park, a historic neighborhood, according to the sign. The house was old but well maintained, a row of potted sunflowers standing sentinel over the porch. Even at night, the mustard trim around the windows and the violet balusters lent the house a warm, feminine air. Achilles parked in the driveway behind a fancy four-door sedan. Before he had extinguished the headlights, Wexler was clomping across the porch like those G.I. Joe action figures Achilles played with as a child, articulated only at the hips and shoulders. A thick scar ran across the side of Wexler’s neck where the landmine had lodged a children’s toy, one of the die-cast ambulances passed out to establish rapport with the local kids. Achilles had expected that by now, over a year later, Wexler’s movements would be natural. Watching him lumber down the stairs, gripping the handrails and almost imperceptibly feeling his way with his feet, step by step, Achilles told himself, again, that there was a difference between bravery and stupidity, and that running into a minefield was stupidity. He quickly grabbed his bag, wanting to meet his friend halfway.

Wexler was slight, shorter than Achilles, and his skin was much lighter, almost the color of pale cedar, like Troy’s. Before their tans had set in, people had thought Wexler and Troy were brothers. Wexler had the light step and braided muscles of a runner, which he was, but he looked thinner, if that was possible. His face was drawn, cheekbones sharpened as if by hunger, and when he raised his arms to give Achilles a hug, his shirt rode the waves of his ribs. But when Achilles felt Wexler’s forearms press against his shoulder blades, he knew that his friend’s strength had not faded one bit. Wexler squeezed even tighter, and Achilles’s eyes began to swell, so he dug his chin into Wexler’s shoulder until Wexler pushed him away.

Wexler clapped him on the shoulder. “Ape arms.”

Achilles pointed to the fancy black sedan. “You’re coming up in the world.”

Flashing his Love-Sexy grin, Wexler said, “My cousin’s. It’s in the witness protection program.”

Achilles was puzzled until Wexler explained, “He’s hiding it from the repo man.”

The laughter felt like a release valve, felt like the good old days when they would drink down a weekend of R&R without sleeping, felt good enough to ignore the shallow creeks running across Wexler’s cheeks, and Achilles’s new habit of averting his eyes.

“Where’s Chief?” asked Achilles, surprised that Naomi’s beagle wasn’t yapping at their heels.