Matt Gallagher - Youngblood

The feed was grainy. She wore a pair of thin, rimless glasses and had her hair up in a ponytail, though a few loose brown strands swept across her forehead. She wore a long-sleeved shirt I recognized and a pair of conch earrings shaped like moons that I didn’t. I studied the apartment wall behind her, looking for clues, but it was blank and empty.

“ Shaku maku , Marissa,” I said. “How goes it?”

“Jackson,” she said. “What time is it there?”

“Almost dinnertime. Pretty early there?”

“Yeah,” she said, somewhere between sass and insolence. I’d always adored her temper, except when it was directed my way. “Got up for a run.”

“It’s nice to look at you,” I said, because it was. I wanted her to smile, but instead she blinked twice and frowned.

“You look thin,” she said. Her voice was raspier than usual. I wondered if she was smoking again. “Your face, especially. You eating? You and your bird belly.”

“If I wanted to be mothered…” I began, trailing off. That last word reminded me of the shot-up civilians, and the dead driver’s mom on the side of the road, but I didn’t know how to begin to tell Marissa about that. I wanted to tell her about the firefight, too, and the medal, but that all felt foul suddenly, as I realized I was just hoping to impress her. So instead I said, “I’ll be eating as soon as we’re done. Thought I’d take this rare break from war to talk to my girlfriend. That okay?”

She groaned and put her head in her hands. I watched her fingers tap her temples like little drum sticks. She’d always had such soft skin. Sometimes, on those lazy California afternoons on her front patio, I’d stroke her arms until she asked me to leave her alone so she could read. Her voice didn’t have the playful lilt to it that it had then.

“Don’t call me that, Jackson. Do not call me that. You’re the one trying to push me away. This was your idea, too, remember? To avoid becoming a cliché?”

“Push you away?” I felt red coursing through my veins and knew I should stop, but wouldn’t. “Are you retarded? You’re the one who barely answers my e-mails.”

“I just did!”

“With pointless bullshit. You’re the one pushing away. Even now, when I need you more than I’ve ever needed anyone.”

That made her cry. Even though that’d probably been my intent, something about the tears sneaking down her face filled me with regret and self-disgust. I apologized for calling the things that made up her days pointless, but that just made it worse.

“What am I supposed to say?” she asked, daggers in her voice now. She wiped her eyes and held my gaze through the screen. She’d always been tougher than me, always been able to cut through my reckless parrying to get to what mattered. “I don’t say anything because everything I say is wrong. I don’t reply because I don’t know how to.”

“Well, try. I’m trying.”

“Bull,” she said. “You never communicate with anyone until you explode. I can’t read your mind. I won’t let you blame me for that. You know your mom had to tell me what happened to your soldiers? I’m so sorry for that, Jack. I’m so, so sorry.”

“Don’t bring them up,” I said. “You’ve no right.” I shook my head and leaned back, sneering at the camera. “This was a mistake. To hell with it.” After a few moments of silence, I pointed to my bracelet. “Remember this?”

She smiled sadly, the gap in her teeth finally showing. She tugged at one of the moons in her ears. “Of course,” she said. “That week meant a lot.”

“Where’s yours?”

“It’s here. Somewhere. I wear it, just not running.”

“Sure,” I said. “Sure.”

Her eyes filled with tears again but she blinked them away. The feed was so bad I couldn’t make out the deep blue of her eyes. I wished I could reach through the connection and seize those irises and keep them as stones in my pockets, to hold anytime I wanted.

“Why did you order my boyfriend a box of elephant dung, Jack? How do you even find something like that? It was gross. And so immature.”

I asked her to repeat herself so I could think of something.

“No idea what you’re talking about.” I sat on my hands to keep them from moving. “I didn’t even know you had a boyfriend.” I clenched my molars together, and my heart pounded against its cage. “But if it’s who I think, he’s a fucking tool. Thought you were better than that.”

Marissa closed her eyes and rubbed at her forehead. I shouldn’t have snapped at her for mentioning Alphabet and Ortiz, I thought. She’d been trying, just as I’d asked. When she opened her eyes she leaned in and kissed the screen. There it is, I thought. Two stubborn souls raised on too much reality television, our fights always ending as quickly as they began. And even though we were arguing, we were talking now. That seemed important.

I was about to return the kiss when she said, “I’m sorry, Jack. I love you. But I can’t do this. Please don’t write, don’t call. Not until you get back and become you again. I’m sorry I’m not strong enough. But I didn’t volunteer for this.”

The connection winked out and went dead. She’d logged off. As I sat there staring at a black hole of a screen, the creeping sense that something irreplaceable, something matchless, had just broken within. I realized she hadn’t asked how I was.

I hadn’t asked her, either.

Stumbling out of the cybercafé, I passed a joe Skyping with a kohl-eyed goth lady holding a toddler. The two adults were laughing together at the child’s burps. I paid the Kuwaiti employee in the front, walked outside, and found a Porta John to dry-heave into.

•  •  •

It was twilight when I came out. My hands were shaking and everything seemed fuzzy and distant, and I decided I needed something to do, like eat. I walked through the gray dusk to the chow hall, passing tents and warehouses and clusters of soldiers in workout clothes talking softly. A dark melody had filled the desert, a blend of finches, seething air, and helos slicing through the sky.

The chow hall was a big white magnet north of the shopping gulch, a massive canopy that seemed to hover over the pale sands. Part circus tent, part martial pretense, it was ringed by blast walls and protected by counterbattery radar. It could serve over a thousand soldiers at a time and up to fifteen thousand a day, not including the ones who gorged at the nearby fast-food shacks.

As I replayed my conversation with Marissa over and over again, the shock and hurt wore off. My steps turned to strides. I pushed up my patrol cap high so the back was on the crown of my head and the brim pointed to dull stars. It was more comfortable this way, and it identified me as a field officer who didn’t give a fuck. I held my rifle from the rails, not bothering with the sling. In the land of fobbits, I was king. No one approached or even gave me a sideways look, which made me angrier. More than anything, I wanted a fight. I needed a fight.

I found one at the chow hall entrance.

To the side of the snaking line stood three of my soldiers, Washington, Batule, and Doc Cork. Washington was arguing with a soldier whose back was to me, his face contorted. He took a step back and started to raise his fist before Doc Cork grabbed it with both hands and held it down. In response, the unknown soldier shot a wagging finger into Washington’s face, cursing. I moved between the bodies like mercury.

“Corporal Washington! Chill.” Doc Cork squeezed Washington’s forearm and whispered “The LT” in his ear. Washington exhaled slowly and his shoulders drooped.

“Sir,” he said. “Me and the chief here was just discussing what he meant by ‘you people.’ As in ‘You people never know who’s boss.’ ”