Atticus Lish - Preparation for the Next Life

Women and children, the old man said beseechingly. Women and children. I couldn’t understand it.

Skinner looked for the bartender.

Gimme another, dude.

As many as you want, guy.

There was no spout on the bottle and Skinner watched the clear liquor run back on the bartender’s knuckles when he poured. Then he drank it and tried to watch the blurry game. The players ran back and forth like herds of deer in a hunting program, like civilians in a hamlet. They fled across the court and then they stopped and smelled the air. They never knew who was going to hit them with the ball.

The commercial came on, the game having ended, and Skinner found himself alone.

Where’d he go?

Who, Johnny?

Yeah, him.

He had to go home, guy.

Skinner tried to stand and fell off his stool and hit his head on the bar. His cell phone and keys fell out of his jeans.

Shit, the bartender said. I thought you guys could hold a lot. I didn’t think you really had that much.

He was worried that the owner would see what was going on or, worse still, that they would have a cop come by. Looking over his shoulder, he came around the bar and helped him up.

Hold it. My keys.

I’ve got your keys. Let’s just get you on your way.

As the bartender was supporting him out the door, Skinner’s cell phone rang on the floor.

My phone.

The bartender went back and picked it up.

Hello? he said. Just a minute.

He gave the phone to Skinner.

Baby? He brought the phone up to his ear and heard her tiny voice against the sound of traffic. His eyes were closing. Zooey?

She said she hadn’t seen him, she had waited, and then had headed home.

Where are you, baby?

At home, she said.

There was silence on the line.

I was waiting for you, he said. That’s what I’ve been doing this whole time.

SKINNER THREW BACK A double and did his sarcastic dance. He had been drinking since noon, having taken the subway into the city to drink in the bars over by the Port Authority. Later he couldn’t dance. Now it was night and the traffic streamed by down the avenue into the glowing purple black between the buildings.

He went to the strip club on the billboard, not remembering how he navigated there among the theaters and bars, neon rainbows in his eyes. Security let him in, and in the light, the orange light, the waitress who came to get his one drink minimum could not get his attention. She touched his shoulder. Skinner startled. He stared at her narrow-eyed with condemnation. At the next table, he saw a little girl in nunlike habit screaming at her mother’s headless body.

What’s wrong? she said. I thought you were partying.

The lights went down and the dancer came out and Skinner left. The pill he took was medically not advised with all the alcohol he was consuming. Let me pick you up, he said to a guy with his two friends in the middle of Times Square.

Go fuck your mother, you fucking faggot.

No, not like that. Like this. He held his arms out. Fireman’s carry. Come on.

Somebody pushed him and he fell in the street and a cab almost hit him. He got right back up and did not seem to hear that anyone was laughing. This was outside another bar, a Con Ed truck nearby, compressor running.

Finally a teamster let Skinner lift him up, and Skinner ran down the block with him, then did a squat, then ran back, then walked. His breath was rising in the darkness. The teamster ordered Skinner to put him down and Skinner didn’t want to do it. The man shifted his weight, which was considerable, and forced Skinner to put him down.

I’m two thirty-eight. You all right.

Skinner tried to pick him up again and the teamster didn’t let him. He pushed him down. Be cool. Skinner tried to lift him again. There was a scuffle and other guys got between them. He’s strong, the teamster kept saying. A little mofo like that. I don’t want to kill him. The fight got broken up. Skinner was gone, they forgot him. The other teamsters started playing fireman’s carrying as a game, picking each other up and dropping each other. How much you weigh? How many wings you eat?

Skinner went back to the strip club and, at the door, security told him: Take your hood off. Lose the hood. The camera’s gotta see you. They wouldn’t let him in. He wandered back and forth in front of the doorway of the club, a black hooded figure, security ignoring him.

There were beginning to be news stories online — interviews with military wives and so on — about returning soldiers, which Skinner watched. And he watched videos uploaded by disaffected soldiers, in which his comrades-in-arms gave testimony about the folly and evil of what they had been a part of.

A National Guardsman who used to be a purchaser for Home Depot had been sent to Iraq as a logistics specialist and his convoy had struck an IED. Now his skull was partly missing. When he turned his head sideways, you couldn’t believe he was still alive. His nose and ears were gone. In his interview, he recalled a bad time just after his eighth surgery.

I was suicidal because I thought my daughter would be afraid of me.

Struggling not to cry on camera, he raised his hands to wipe his eyes and you saw his pink charred wrist bones and a finger-like appendage instead of hands.

Sometimes the interviewee was wearing a prison jumpsuit. Skinner watched video after video. He heard:

Scanning. Aware. Symptoms. Whenever I leave for somewhere, I check for guns.

Photograph of self after writing suicide note.

Losing balance. Getting angry. Trouble sleeping. Sleep two hours, stay up 48 hours. Sleep three hours — etcetera.

I took stimulants in Iraq that are illegal in the States, and when I got home the army took them away. There was no logical transition. Drinking took over from there. This is my only friend, I thought. I’ve had medical problems. Thrown keys through walls. Kicked in windows. Pushed her.

Triggers: door slam, someone yelling. Pins and needles of fear.

Self-isolation. Guilt. I can’t get this image of this child out of my head.

Antipsychotics, sleeping meds, tranquilizers.

Tattoos of M16s up and down his arms. Killed child. Killed spouse. At nightclubs. Rapes on base. Said I’m a nice guy with a gun. He put the cabdriver in the trunk of the car and burned him alive in North Carolina.

No one knows what the families get dragged through. An army shrink told my husband that she couldn’t treat him for his nightmares. So I called his CO and was told the army doesn’t give out hugs to crybabies. And this was after he was already hitting me and had threatened to kill me once.

Traumatic brain injury. They still deployed him. I know I’ll never get him back. Our daughter’s, like, that’s not my father.

I’d say hopeless, lost, depressed. Beheadings. Monster. Laugh at overwhelming violence. Leg blown off.

I pushed her. She jumped away. Fell in the shower. When she stood up she screamed. Her hair was covering her face. It reminded me of things I had seen, of the screams of fear of being attacked, and I reacted. I had my hand over her mouth. This is the mother of my children (voice breaks). She wasn’t moving when I got off her (begins crying).

I tried to bring her back, but she was gone.

He came out of a bar and tried to remember where he was. The passenger door of a black sedan parked against the curb popped open and someone called to him.

Hey, guy.

Skinner peered at the vehicle.

We want to ask you something, guy.

What do you want to ask me?

Come here for a minute.

Why can’t you ask me from there?

A shadow moved in the front seat and a different voice said, When did you get out, brother?