T. Johnson - Hold It 'Til It Hurts

That night’s advice was, “Keep your head down. You’ve done something wrong if the drill sergeant knows your name. I mean it, Troy.”

Troy stared at his father with a mouthful of food, giving him a look that said, Just wait. They had been clashing all month, all summer really, ever since Troy graduated and demanded his adoption paperwork. Troy later said he only wanted to piss off their father. But really, both boys were ready to go somewhere.

Between meeting Janice at the quarry, his English class at Shippensburg Community College, and his part-time job at the lumberyard, Achilles was bored to tears, literally, one afternoon the drops collecting in the bottom of his goggles, blurring the edges of the two-by-ten he was ripping and then dotting the sawdust and woodchips along the rim of the table saw after he pulled off the safety glasses thinking he felt blood on his cheek.

His supervisor Kent, who had once worked for Achilles’s father, rushed over and hustled Achilles to the eye-wash station, reminding him to wear eye protection always; he could be blinded in a second. Blinded! Could Achilles imagine that? A young boy like him without any vision, nothing to see, no future, no women, nothing of the world to be? It didn’t sound fair, but it could happen. Kent had seen it. Could Achilles imagine that? Achilles could, which was exactly why he found himself in tears over the forty-fifth piece of wood that day, one more in a long line of lumber that had started his junior year in high school and had no foreseeable end in sight. Troy was threatening to go away to college, but all Achilles could see was one eternal line of timber. The world ended where 1-80 intersected with 1-74, just dropped off, and so when Troy stuck his DD Form 4/1 on the refrigerator without a word, Achilles went straight into Hagerstown and signed up. Here was a chance to serve country and family.

“Talk Troy out of it,” his mom had said, cradling Achilles’s face in her hands but holding his attention with her eyes.

“O.K. I’ll try.”

Three hours later, wearing the smug grin he’d worn all the way home, Achilles stuck his contract on the refrigerator next to Troy’s and said, “Check that, bitch!”

“I’m gonna take a dump. Want to join me?” said Troy.

Their mother ripped the contracts in half and called the recruiter. Their father took Achilles aside and said, “It’s good that you’re going with him, but it would have been better if you had talked him out of it. You have no idea what you’ve signed up for.”

And they didn’t. Basic training was a breeze, infantry school a gale, and jump school admittedly a squall, but nothing — no berets, no blue cords, no silver wings — prepared them for the actual devastation on the ground in Afghanistan: the odd children’s sandal amidst the rubble, the leveled towns, rank subterranean jails, marble-eyed refugees, the constant odor of death. Goddamnistan, however, adequately prepared Achilles for the Gulf Coast. They had both been visited, as Merriweather would have put it, by Old Testament — style devastation. “What you alone witness, you alone bear,” Wages once said. Achilles had raised his beer in happy accord but secretly laughed it off, eyeing that African mask on his friend’s mantel with suspicion, as if it were the font of the new Wages’s steady supply of aphorisms. But now, Achilles understood, there being no one to nod when he nodded, whistle when he whistled, sigh when he sighed at the towns completely razed from end to end, every tree naked, every building again a blueprint; yards where trees stooped under great metallic nests, the trunks sometimes hunched as if weary, as if exhausted, surely thinking that now that the waters have receded, they have paid their dues; the lot where the house was nowhere to be seen but a sofa, love seat, and chair remained neatly arranged around the coffee table, as if the occupants had just popped into the kitchen during a commercial break. As he neared New Orleans, law enforcement waved his military ID through roadblocks where civilian volunteers towing boats and campers were turned away. He wondered how Ines had gotten through.

A THIN LAYER OF SLUDGE COVERED THE LOBBY FLOOR, BUT THEIR CONDO had suffered minimal damage, aside from the odor. There was no sign that Ines had been there recently. The surrounding streets hummed along their gutters as if in heavy rain, pooling in some areas. He half walked, half waded to the higher ground in Uptown, which had fared rather well. There was the usual storm damage: missing shingles, trees stripped bare, signs in the street. But most homeowners in that area had boarded up their windows, avoiding the worst of it. The flooding wasn’t as bad either; many roads he could walk instead of wade. Every half-mile he was stopped by Army National Guard troops and subsequently released with a warning to beware looters and snipers. None of the soldiers knew what condition the Delesseppes’ home was in, which was surprising because when Achilles reached it, there were a lot of people in the front yard.

The house had suffered little damage. Most of the roof shingles had been blown away, as had the shutters and part of the porch railing, but at least the house was standing, and it didn’t look like the water had reached high enough to damage the main floor. Mabel was in the yard wearing a big smile on her face, directing everyone to form two lines, one for food and one for the phones. She greeted him with a hug, wrapping her arms around his waist and pressing her face into his stomach. She looked up at him, dropping the smile like it was a tiring act, but said nothing.

“It’s good to see you, Mabel. Where’s Dudley?”

She squeezed tighter, pressing her face harder against him. Voice muffled, she said, “We got split up. They put me on a handicapped bus and him in a cargo van. He’s gone home.”

Achilles hugged her back, bending to press his cheek against her gray hair. He waited until she let him go, which seemed like a long time, long enough that he melted into the embrace and the now-familiar scent of cocoa butter.

“She’s around the corner.” She jerked her thumb over her shoulder.

There stood Ines on the side porch handing out cups of juice and water to the people lined up in the yard, graceful as a queen bestowing favors. The line wound around the house and to the garage out back, where Ines had set up a mobile and satellite phone bank. Achilles watched, stunned as always by her grace. Ines laughed with the men, joked with the ladies, and hugged the children. Each time she smiled at someone or grazed their hand, they stood a little taller. Wages had the same touch. Giving that man a fork had been like giving him a hand. A little girl tripped in front of Achilles. He helped her up. She dusted herself off and the doll she was holding, comprised only of the torso and one leg. She held it by the foot, wielding it like a hammer. A few feet away stood another little girl holding the other leg with the foot jammed into the head. She held it by the leg, waving it like a mace. Achilles called her over and handed them each five dollars. The girl who had tripped took hers, but the other glared. “There ain’t no stores open,” she said before snatching the money from his hand. “This won’t even buy a bottle of water.”

Achilles gave her a few more dollars, and when he looked up, Ines was gone, the screen door rattling in the doorway. He followed. Inside was lit only by candles, but intact. All the paintings and books had been packed up and moved to the attic. Moving from foyer to living room to hall to dining room to kitchen, as he turned each corner, Ines vanished around the next like a ghost.