T. Johnson - Hold It 'Til It Hurts

Jackson thought otherwise and waited outside. Both times they’d arrived in the early morning hours, like this, right before sunrise when it was the darkest, when those winking mesmerists, the stars, dazzled like fires in the night, like looking at the sun through a coffee can with holes poked in the bottom. The sky was silver at the far rim, like someone was peeling back the top to take a peek inside this bowl of stew.

A Hummer drove by, bumping a rap song he didn’t recognize. They’d fought to protect that driver’s right to buy that car and pump it full of big lizard. His right was his right. Another car rolled by, windows vibrating, the radio surprisingly loud given the hour; Wages’s neighbor stood on the porch and lit three matches before his cigarette flared; the paperboy cycled by, each delivery a flashing white arc; the woman in the red dress staggered around the corner; the two teens crossed the street in the opposite direction: all unaware of being watched. People in peaceful countries so infrequently looked up. Didn’t that mean he and his buddies had done a good job? Didn’t they deserve to be proud? Didn’t that make it okay that he missed it, that standing beside Wages made him yearn to be back in rotation with Troy, stacked up outside the door of some bad guy or providing cover fire in Korengal, where he knew what to expect, even if he didn’t know where it was coming from?

But that was all foolishness, wasn’t it? The land was hungry, insatiably so, and if they went back, who was to say the return trip would be a round trip? He was here now, he’d see Troy today, and after that he could worry about tomorrow. But he couldn’t stop thinking that out of all the hours he and his brother had spent together, those last few days on the way home — from the morning they packed their duffels to boarding the C-130J at the Bagram Airfield to the night they set their bags down outside their mother’s bedroom — the only thing that made any sense was when that dump truck had cut them off and he braced himself for the impact.

“If you wait, I’ll go with you this afternoon,” said Wages.

“I got it,” said Achilles. Wages looked disappointed, as if Achilles had turned down his offer to take point. But Achilles needed to do this alone.

He had often wondered if his parents would have asked him to look out for his brother if they’d known how reckless Troy would become. Troy believed his adoption was a mistake, that his own real family was wealthy, and he regarded everyone who had more money with suspicion, as if they had profited at his expense. In eighth grade, he vowed to get famous, then rich, then expose his birth parents, seeding them with shame and regret.

During their last weeks in Goddamnistan, while everyone was afraid of catching the breakup baby, Troy volunteered for missions, declaring himself immune from harm until reunited with his real family, after which he would achieve his true destiny. Achilles volunteered as well, telling himself that fidelity could be worn like an amulet, but after the convoy to Baraki, when a bullet struck the window besides Achilles’s head and he thought it was his vision splintering and fracturing, he swore he would never volunteer again. What Troy took as proof of divine intervention, Achilles took as evidence of unnecessary risk. Yet two days after Baraki, Troy volunteered for Faizabad and Achilles followed, against his better judgment, his father’s voice echoing in his ears.

Before they shipped out, his father had pulled them both aside. “Don’t come back without him,” he told Achilles, and then louder, “Don’t one of you come back alone.”

His mother gasped.

“They know what I mean,” said their father.

Achilles knew. The first weeks, possessed by cavalier notions of bravery and sacrifice, transfixed by the image of a cinematic slow-motion dive as he caught a nonlethal bullet to protect Troy, Achilles believed it would be better to die than to go home without his younger brother. After seeing what it really looked like, he was afraid to die, but he still wanted to believe he could be the hero, the one to beat, the other Achilles.

As soon as the sun was up, Achilles took Wages’s map and headed to the center of New Orleans, which to him wasn’t the Vieux Carré but the Tremé district, specifically St. Augustine Church at the intersection of Governor Nicholls Street and St. Claude Avenue, where Troy was last seen in the soup kitchen line. Even older than the church were the surrounding houses, duplexes so narrow they didn’t have hallways, each room opening directly into the next.

Wages, whose house was built in the same style, called them shotgun houses, because a shotgun slug fired through the front door would strut straight out the back. “They’re historic.” Achilles called them hovels, “Historic my ass.” Homes with cardboard taped over broken windows. Homes with no front yards, warped screen doors scraping cracked concrete stoops spilling directly onto the sidewalk. Homes too close together to ride a bicycle between. Homes with second floors only half the size of the first, the upper levels covering the back half of the house like sodden humps, tacked on as if there hadn’t been enough money to finish building.

What Achilles thought most pathetic were the coffee can planters, ashen window boxes with bright silk flowers, and herb gardens planted in old rubber tires. Above it all, water-rotted cornices splintered off and gables sunk into obtuse angles pulling apart at the ridges, pressing down on the walls, bowing them out like water balloons, as if the houses were bursting at the seams. Rent pavement, overgrown lots, gaping streetlights. Old ladies squatting on stoops. Men driving shopping carts crammed with clattering beer cans, teens posting up on the corners passing fire and spirits. DC was the same. Why didn’t they just move?

In Afghanistan, O’Ree, a career soldier, told Achilles, “People aren’t none too different, but some is smarter, and you always assume the other guy is smarter. So when we come to the edge of a town, ask where you would hide if you were the other guy.” A dormer window, the occasional large attic vent, the church bell tower? Clearly the bell tower was best. Achilles could see where a sniper would hide, but not his brother. Troy didn’t fit in here. Achilles had once complained to his mom about being the only black kid in school. She’d said, “Don’t exaggerate, honey. What about your brother?” She was right. What had he wanted her to do? Drive him to a neighborhood like this and enroll him in school? The anger he hadn’t realized he felt toward his brother for running off collapsed as he imagined Troy meeting his biops.

On foot and unarmed, he walked quickly, passing homes with fitted sheets for curtains, the elastic edges curled up at the corners. Others had no blinds at all. A mother and two sons sat on a black couch watching TV, each eating from a to-go container. In the next house, a teenage girl and two young boys sat with their heads bowed in prayer, holding hands around a small dining table piled high with magazines. In another, a young boy with braided hair teased a Rottweiler puppy with a black baby doll. Meanwhile, the praying girl looked up and caught one of the boys putting on sunglasses and a wrestling match ensued. Overall, they appeared content despite the circumstances. Still, he couldn’t imagine Troy or himself eating in front of the TV, playing with the dog, or praying at the table. It’s not called an eating room; dogs don’t belong in the house no more than the truck do; and I got a good book right here, it’s called The Shining. Their parents had run an orderly, decent home. Three teens stood on the corner, or maybe they were men. He couldn’t tell because of the hoods and low caps, but he felt them watching his every move, so he jaywalked, hurriedly crossing the street to avoid them, entering the church grounds from the rear.