Charlotte Rogan - Now and Again

“In here?” asked Penn, picking up the volume with the warrior on the cover and weighing it in his hand.

“Yes, but also in here.” He tapped his head. “Man is capable of nobility and high achievement, but the very same man has primitive impulses that can never be eradicated and will emerge full-force under the right conditions. It’s useless to ask yourself if human beings are fundamentally good or not. They are fundamentally a lot of things. But death is the thing that gives life meaning. By extrapolation, then, war intensifies life and gives it meaning too.”

A librarian rolled a reshelving cart past and peered at them over the tops of her glasses. “Excuse me, Professor,” she said, “but you and your friend are in the way.”

“Professor of what?” asked Penn.

“Ha!” said the professor. “Life, I guess.”

Penn rolled the foil into a ball and lobbed it at a nearby trash can. “Three points,” he said when he made the shot.

“You owe me more than half a bagel, seeing how I’ve saved you years of trouble,” said the professor when he had finished eating.

Penn dug around in his pocket for his wallet. He took out all of the money he had and held it out to the professor, whose hand reached for it and then disappeared into his pocket with astonishing speed.

“Thank you,” said the professor, saluting with fingers that wouldn’t straighten. “Now, do you want to know what I learned in the next fifteen years?”

“Sure,” said Penn. “Lay it on me.”

“I learned that the system is designed to preserve itself, even if it has to grind you and me up into little pieces.”

“That sounds bleak,” said Penn.

The professor picked up a walking stick that was lying on the floor and started to get to his feet. “They don’t really like me in here,” he said. “The mayor is cracking down on homeless people. We give the city a bad name.”

“Where will you go?”

“There’s a shelter a few blocks from here, but they don’t open ’til five. A better question is, why am I homeless?”

“I’ll visit you again,” said Penn, but he knew he probably wouldn’t. Man was warlike. How could he have been so naïve as to think he had been fighting for peace? It was only the terms of the next war that were being decided. Everything had happened before. Everything would happen again.

Unless, he realized, someone did something to stop it.

6.7 Danny Joiner

The doctor at the clinic abruptly changed Danny’s diagnosis from post-traumatic stress disorder to personality disorder. “What’s the difference?” asked Danny. “Why the change?”

“I’ll give you this brochure to take home with you,” said the doctor. “It should answer all of your questions, but if it doesn’t, please don’t hesitate to call.”

When Danny called, he was informed that if he wanted to talk to the doctor, he would have to make another appointment, and if he made an appointment, he’d have to make it quickly, before he was discharged from the outpatient program and his benefits were stopped.

“Why would I be discharged? And why would my benefits stop?”

“Don’t you have a brochure?” asked the pleasant female voice. “I can send you one if you want.”

“But the doctor was already treating me. I’d like to speak with him.”

“Hmm,” said the voice. “They were already treating you? That would be unusual, given that personality disorder is a pre-existing condition, but give me your name and I’ll see what I can do.”

Danny told her his name and she relegated him to hold, where a British voice was announcing the news. Just when he was about to find out whether or not the trailers that had been donated to house refugees from Hurricane Katrina were toxic, another voice came on the line to tell him that in cases of personality disorder discharge, benefits were always discontinued.

“Discontinued!”

A broom handle was sticking out of one of the garbage cans that had been set out for morning pickup, and now he used it to whack at the lid of the can. “We’re just like one of these garbage cans,” he said into the phone.

“What?” said the voice on the other end of the line.

“We’re not as useful,” said Danny. “We’re like the garbage in the cans.”

— Don’t take no for an answer, said the voice of the old drill sergeant.

“I’m not taking no for an answer,” said Danny.

“I’m sorry, sir. It’s Regulation Six-thirty-five dash two hundred, chapters five to thirteen. There’s really nothing I can do.”

— So you’re quitting? I think you should march yourself back to that doctor’s office and demand your rights. A soldier never accepts defeat.

The doctor had a bristly mustache and a black Mustang. “Do I know you?” he asked when Danny, who was holding the broom handle as if it were a rifle, stepped from behind a line of parked cars and said, “Hey, Doc.

“Apparently you know me well enough to tell me I have personality disorder.”

“Oh, yes, yes.” The doctor seemed defenseless without his white coat and hospital badge.

Danny’s arms were nearly as big around as the doctor’s thighs. If he and the doctor had met in a parking lot in downtown Baghdad, Danny could have ordered the doctor to drop his weapon and put his hands in the air. He considered doing it now, and then he did it. What the fuck? he thought. “Drop your weapon and put your hands in the air,” he said.

“What? What are you talking about?” The doctor looked like a beaver. Behind the mustache his teeth were an unprofessional yellow. “I don’t have a weapon,” he said.

“Hands up,” said Danny, moving in closer and tensing his biceps and causing the doctor to take a step backward until he was leaning against the faded fabric top of the Mustang.

Slowly, the doctor put his thin white hands in the air, dropping his keys to the pavement as he did so. “What do you want? Money? I don’t have much, but you can have it.” He was wearing a light blue shirt and a striped tie. His sleeves were rolled to show pale forearms and a gold wristwatch. It all made a nice picture against the black car, pleasing somehow.

— What do you mean “nice”?

— It’s easy to distinguish the details, that’s all. The black sets everything off.

— Then say that. Don’t use some mealy word like “nice.”

— Vivid, then. The black-as-petrified-shit background enhances the vomit-and-blood colors of the tie.

When Danny’s eyes lingered on the watch, the doctor seemed relieved. “Do you want the watch?” he asked. “Do you want the car?”

“I want to know the difference between personality disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder,” said Danny. “I want to know why you changed my diagnosis.”

The doctor let his hands drop to his sides. “The medical review board is pressuring us to give lesser diagnoses,” he said.

— Tell him to put his hands back in the air.

“Put your hands back in the air,” said Danny. And then he said, “Shut up!”

“I didn’t say anything,” said the doctor.

“What’s a lesser diagnosis?”

— Tell him to look you in the eye when he talks to you.

“What’s a pre-existing condition?”

— Tell him to lie on his belly. Tell him to eat dirt.

“Lie down and eat the dirt!” shouted Danny.

The doctor dropped to his knees, hands shaking. “It means that you were already damaged when the army got you, so you’re not their problem anymore. It means that every dollar they spend on you means less money for bullets and able-bodied soldiers.” The doctor squeezed his eyes shut after he said it, as if Danny was going to hit him with the broom handle, but Danny figured that’s what they wanted him to do. He might be damaged, but he wasn’t a fool. He knew the rules that allowed sending someone off to war and then failing to help him didn’t allow hitting a doctor. He knew that because one of the voices was shouting at him.