Kevin Powers - The Yellow Birds

Small lines wound their way up and down the surface of the stump on which I sat. They were intricate and sort of gouged out or termited into a pattern that struck me as oddly orderly. Luke and the rest of the boys and girls still splashed in the water, taking turns diving from the broad gray rocks into a little draft of current that swept them ten or twenty feet downstream like an amusement park ride. They were beautiful. I had to resist the urge to hate them.

I had become a kind of cripple. They were my friends, right? Why didn’t I just wade out to them? What would I say? “Hey, how are you?” they’d say. And I’d answer, “I feel like I’m being eaten from the inside out and I can’t tell anyone what’s going on because everyone is so grateful to me all the time and I’ll feel like I’m ungrateful or something. Or like I’ll give away that I don’t deserve anyone’s gratitude and really they should all hate me for what I’ve done but everyone loves me for it and it’s driving me crazy.” Right.

Or should I have said that I wanted to die, not in the sense of wanting to throw myself off of that train bridge over there, but more like wanting to be asleep forever because there isn’t any making up for killing women or even watching women get killed, or for that matter killing men and shooting them in the back and shooting them more times than necessary to actually kill them and it was like just trying to kill everything you saw sometimes because it felt like there was acid seeping down into your soul and then your soul is gone and knowing from being taught your whole life that there is no making up for what you are doing, you’re taught that your whole life, but then even your mother is so happy and proud because you lined up your sight posts and made people crumple and they were not getting up ever and yeah they might have been trying to kill you too, so you say, What are you gonna do? but really it doesn’t matter because by the end you failed at the one good thing you could have done, the one person you promised would live is dead, and you have seen all things die in more manners than you’d like to recall and for a while the whole thing fucking ravaged your spirit like some deep-down shit, man, that you didn’t even realize you had until only the animals made you sad, the husks of dogs filled with explosives and old arty shells and the fucking guts and everything stinking like metal and burning garbage and you walk around and the smell is deep down into you now and you say, How can metal be so on fire? and Where is all this fucking trash coming from? and even back home you’re getting whiffs of it and then that thing you started to notice slipping away is gone and now it’s becoming inverted, like you have bottomed out in your spirit but yet a deeper hole is being dug because everybody is so fucking happy to see you, the murderer, the fucking accomplice, the at-bare-minimum bearer of some fucking responsibility, and everyone wants to slap you on the back and you start to want to burn the whole goddamn country down, you want to burn every goddamn yellow ribbon in sight, and you can’t explain it but it’s just, like, Fuck you, but then you signed up to go so it’s all your fault, really, because you went on purpose, so you are in the end doubly fucked, so why not just find a spot and curl up and die and let’s make it as painless as possible because you are a coward and, really, cowardice got you into this mess because you wanted to be a man and people made fun of you and pushed you around in the cafeteria and the hallways in high school because you liked to read books and poems sometimes and they’d call you fag and really deep down you know you went because you wanted to be a man and that’s never gonna happen now and you’re too much of a coward to be a man and get it over with so why not find a clean, dry place and wait it out with it hurting as little as possible and just wait to go to sleep and not wake up and fuck ’em all.

I started crying. Through my tears night had fallen. The girls in the hot summer night were toweling off and laughing, standing on the darkening rocks beneath the soft light of the lampposts on the nearby train bridge. I got up and followed a path that skirted the banks of the river and I followed it aimlessly. At the edge of the river, I waded in. It was hot then, but the river cooled me, and the moon above the trees on the hilltop, blocking the streetlights, kept the river flickering softly, and I felt myself calmly fading in it. As I leaned forward and floated, I drifted a little, a little down, a little to sleep.

The river had a dream in it. I faced the opposite bank and stood there naked in the water. I saw a band of horses in a field dotted with dogwood and willow. Each was like the others in temperament, all roans except for a single old palomino that looked at me as the others grazed in the thin moonlight. It was bloodied on its hooves and carried the marks of both lash and brand on its haunches. Ducking its head sweetly, it entered the shallow water. As it walked toward me the blood washed downstream and the horse left a little red wake as it walked. It stepped lightly, but bore no grimace on its face, and was only tentative in its step. I stood, still naked, and softly splashed the water around me with both hands. Not hard, just back and forth through the water with my hands in semicircles. It neared and I watched it snort a little and as it neared it shook its head, once, twice, calmly. It stood before me, old and worn from the lash and it bled into the gently flowing water and stood tall despite its wounds. It leaned in and nuzzled me about my shoulder and neck and I leaned in too and nuzzled back and put my arms around it and I could feel the power in its bruised old muscles. The horse’s eyes were black and soft.

This was my vision as I woke. Goddamn the noise. The yelling closed in. Them yelling, “Get him out. Goddamn it, get his ass out.” I shocked awake and spat up water from the river and they banged on my chest until I spat out more and I lay on the bank, drunk and smiling, looking out at the strange faces gathered there. I lay for a little while half in and out of the water and it ran over my feet, lapping up and down and cooling them, shallow enough to be safe where I lay. I smiled absently and thought of the old palomino nuzzling me as I came around. Whatever. They called me in the lamplight. Night now.

Luke had seen me floating and called 911 from one of the girls’ cells. The cops didn’t make me go through the motions of any kind of psych evaluation out of respect for my service. I’d given them my military ID when they asked for one and they said, “All right, soldier. Let’s get you home.” When they dropped me off at my house one of the cops looked at me with a pitiable concern and said, “Try to keep it together, buddy. You’ll be back in the swing in no time.”

When I opened the door my mother was waiting. She grabbed at my face and began kissing my cheeks and forehead. “I thought I’d lost you.” she said.

“I’m fine, Momma. Everything is fine.”

“I don’t understand what’s happening to you. I’ve been worried half to death.” She stood there, then moved to the counter and started shuffling the letters nervously where they were stacked. “You know I’m getting calls now too, on top of this,” she said.

“Yeah? Who from?”

She turned to look at me and I saw in her eyes all the pain and horror that I had given her. “Some captain. He said he was from the C.I.D.” She mouthed the words slowly. “The Criminal Investigation Division. He wants to talk to you.” She paused and moved toward me again. I moved away and went into my room and closed the door. Her voice came through the cheap layers of artificial wood. “What happened over there, Johnny? What happened, baby? What did you do?”