T. Johnson - Hold It 'Til It Hurts

On the walk home, he saw the postman again at Lee Circle, and they hugged like old friends. He learned that the postman was named Chester, had two children who were both safe, and that his parents had been lucky enough to evacuate early. Though it was only the second time they’d exchanged more than a nod, Achilles and Chester chatted at the base of Robert E. Lee’s statue until its shadow passed them, and for hours after, leaving only when the curfew approached. Even then, Achilles was sad to see him go.

NO DILBERT CARTOONS HERE. THE MOST COMMON SIGN READ MORTUI Vivis Praecipant: Let the dead teach the living. The slogan was found in mobile refrigerated trucks, tents, walk-in coolers, and airplane hangers throughout the Gulf region, as well as over doors throughout the entire town of St. Gabriel — once a leper colony, and again a destination to be avoided at all costs. Often, there were more people attending the dead than helping the living. At each location a hodgepodge staff was assembled: coroners, pathologists, forensic pathologists, medical records technicians, forensic anthropologists, fingerprint specialists, funeral directors, medical examiners, crime scene investigators, forensic dental experts, dental assistants, x-ray technicians, mental health specialists, computer professionals, administrative support staff and security, all wearing badges reading Morgue Ops.

They worked out of warehouses, hangars, gymnasiums, schools, tents, and refrigerated vans. Webs of orange and yellow extension cords connected humming diesel and solar-powered generators, and one lot even had three kids running a hand crank. At some remote locations, autopsies were conducted outside, the sun being the only available light. Achilles had never been anywhere where there were so few families available to claim their dead loved ones. It was a massive effort to identify people whose bodies were often damaged beyond recognition, and often far from home. How had Mabel found Dudley? Achilles found himself wondering about Levreau, Detective Morse, Bud, Lex, Blow, and the Harpers. No one deserved this.

Ines and Achilles’s first stop was a temporary morgue in an old basketball court. Ines was reserved, her eyes darting at the tables for quick peeks and then back to the floor. After each table she shook her head slightly and breathed No, the surgical mask bellowing. Remains were arranged in descending order of completeness. The first few rows had entire bodies, then torsos. The last two rows held hands, feet, a head in a Styrofoam cooler. There were binders with photos of personal possessions. Ines flipped through them quickly, not knowing how Paul usually dressed or if he always wore a pocket watch or what his wedding band looked like. Achilles expected to make quick work of this, planning to cover one side of the room while she covered the other, but Ines held him back, squeezing his fingers numb. Other people, individually and in groups, moved about the room with the same slow shuffle, as if they had to will themselves to take each step.

The next two morgues were the same. People were slow to enter and quick to leave. Afterwards, clustering around their cars, some huddled in prayer. Others whispered and smoked, sighing between puffs, guiltily relishing the temporary reprieve. At the end of each stop, Ines bummed a cigarette. Achilles offered to buy a pack.

“I don’t even like the taste. I’m just doing it because … it makes me cough.”

Their fourth stop was a former convenience store, the large glass refrigerator doors suited for this new role. Of the overhead signage, only the billboard frame remained, but the name was clearly stenciled on the gray stucco: Victor’s Bait, Booze, and Beer. A few feet from the door, Ines vomited into her hand, retching loudly. People passed as if nothing was happening.

Rubbing her back, he suggested they stop. He was hungry anyway.

Ines shook her head. “I promised Mother.” She repeated it several times as he led her back to the car, bearing her weight. He bummed a cigarette and they sat on the hood, sharing it. They were only a few blocks from the point where the industrial canal levee had failed. In some places the land was flat, as if nothing had ever been there. On one block, two rows of houses remained facing each other, the fronts of the homes intact but the backs gone, like false fronts on movie sets. Bulldozers pushed houses out of the street, in the process sometimes damaging houses still on their foundations.

“If Katrina didn’t get you, Nagin will,” said Ines, referring to the mayor. “I don’t want to do this. I wouldn’t want anyone to see me like that. Just an arm. A leg. Your head in a fucking Styrofoam cooler, the cheap kind, not that you need a Coleman if only your head is left. Listen to me. I sound like you, don’t I?”

Achilles didn’t see any way to answer that safely.

“Afghanistan was different,” said Ines. “I once walked into a house to meet a group of women about to start a school. They were all there, all five, but dead, shot where they sat, except the leader. She was raped and strangled. I cried over that for a long time. But this is even worse, to enter each room hoping not to find what I’ve been sent to look for.” She ground out the cigarette. “Oops, littering,” she chuckled morbidly. “Let’s get this over with.”

“I’ll run in.”

“You don’t mind?” she asked.

He walked off. She looked surprised when he returned so quickly, and he made sure to shake his head as soon as she saw him.

“It’s not a big place,” he said.

“Are you sure? I should have gone with you. I want this to be done.”

“There’s only so much you can do in one day. Just because he’s not here today doesn’t mean he won’t be here tomorrow.” He searched for the word to describe it. It wasn’t a mission, or recon, or a task. It was a process. “It’s not like a job. It’s a promise, but not one you make or break in one day.”

She leaned against the car, glum and listless, tracing the air around the hood ornament with her fingers.

“If I were in there or there,” she said, pointing at the morgue and then at the river, “all I’d want is another cigarette, a beignet, a bad joke, another five minutes with you.”

“I’d want to be with you too. Cold dead fingers, remember, cold dead fingers. That’s what I want now, and I’m not there or there,” he said, pointing as she had. “I’m here, and I’ll go to every morgue in the Southeast for you.”

He reached for her hands, and she pulled away the dirty one. He held out his palm and waited.

“That’s gross.”

He waited until she offered her other hand, then pressed them both to his face and kissed every fingertip, watching her eyes. He recalled the movie screening, when he had first noticed how beautiful her eyes were. His stomach flittered, then grumbled.

“Was that?”

He nodded.

“Are you hungry?” she asked, looking baffled.

He took a chance. “Very!”

“Oh my god, Achilles,” said Ines, collapsing in laughter. “Actually, me too.”

As he was nodding off that night, she led him to the bed, where they slept together, too tired to do anything else. But to be in her arms, to hear her breathe …

He awoke the next morning as he had the past few weeks, tired. The dreams were vivid, bigger than memories. He could deny memories, ignore them, like running with a sprained ankle, or how you sometimes shit yourself but kept shooting, or held your breath while searching a dead guy’s pockets. He tuned memories out as he had tuned out the pleading.

Almost everyone they had dropped off for interrogations pled for release. Merri said the more they pled the guiltier they were. Wages said the opposite. Either way, you didn’t need to be fluent in Pashto or Persian or Arabic or what-fucking-ever to know what they were saying: Allah, love, please, kids, wife, daughter, mother, father, son, brother, cousin, please, please, please. Cousin, no! Brother, no! They would say when they saw Achilles or Merriweather. No, Cousin! No, Brother! Sincere, imploring, beseeching. Sheepishly acknowledging the wet crotch, sweat, red eyes, pointing to the sky, especially the dark ones, as if their common skin was a badge of kinship.