F.N.G

Chapter 1 – Present Day-3

The next room is where he lives. A big dirty window with basketball-sized spots where he wipes a hole through the grime. Another barn chair's against the wall, the phone beside it. I go outside and dial 9-1-1. A woman, clear voice, answers. She tells me to slow down, tell her about it.

“Hunting accident. Not hurt bad, but bleeding pretty good. He's in a field. I can't drive to him.”

Other voices in the background. The phone reflects my breath. She's typing something. The old man limps to the door, watches me pace in little circles. The hawk flies high, big circles, over where Seth would be.

He is sitting up when I get back, turned around from how I left him, shivering. The b****y sock is lying on his other leg. The foot is mutilated: white again, the dried blood on his pants leg a black knot. I faint. Come to right away, and I hear a helicopter far off. It's a forty-year-old sound; I always hear them before anybody else.

“What's wrong, Gramps? You having a heart attack?”

“I'm okay. You weak?”

The helicopter's a moving speck.

“That's your bird, Seth. They're coming to get you. What happened to your foot?”

For an instant he's confused.

“I was tying my boot and you tripped. Your g*n went off.”

He lies back and I clean his face. The dollar is on the trail. The helicopter lands about fifty yards away and a man carrying a suitcase gets out. A blonde woman follows him, with a black stretcher, folded in half. The bird throttles down and the blades stop. When I stand up Seth pulls on my pants leg.

“Thanks,” he says.

She holds his ankle and the guy wraps the foot, then they put it in a brown Velcro bag, load him onto the stretcher.

“I'm going to get his mother. We'll be at the hospital in an hour.”

They both look at me like I'm stupid.

While they're dressing his foot, I go back for the dollar and when I put it between his teeth the medics look at each other. The jet engine takes a big breath out of the field, there is a high whine, a beautiful sound, and they lift off, swoop immediately and are gone, soon a throbbing spot headed towards the distant amber clouds. The hawk, low over the wood is as big.

~ ~ ~

The town is small. I drive slow, looking for a phone, before I remember payphones are gone. I notice the inside of the windshield blue from cigarette smoke; the town sidewalks broken up like they haven't been repaired in fifty years; broken glass in an empty lot with three dead trees; heavy womp womp of speakers in cars that pass; smell from a gray factory, like burned toast, hanging in the street.

At a d**g store a skinny girl tells me there's a phone at the fire station two blocks away, hanging on a rough brick wall. There's a carload of kids at the edge of the parking lot. Our number rings four times.

“Mary?”

“Daddy? What's wrong?”

“Listen ….” My mouth is full of the bottom of my throat.

“Why did you call? Where's Seth?”

“He's in the hospital. I tripped…my g*n went off. It got him in the foot. He's not bad Mary, not bad.”

I expect her to be hysterical but she sounds calm. I can see her leaning against the wall.

“How are you? Are you all right?”

“I'm okay. I'll come get you and we'll go to the hospital.”

~ ~ ~

She is small, good-looking enough to turn heads in the hospital lobby when Mary walks ahead to the information desk. Veteran's hospitals are always full of men waiting. For appointments, prescriptions, test results, a ride, a woman like Mary to walk through. Waiting is a habit bred in the military. I stand behind her looking at everybody else.

“He's in surgery, we have to wait here,” she says.

“He'll be okay.”

“Daddy, why were you walking with your g*n loaded?” Her hazel eyes roam around my face.

“It's a habit, honey. Something I brought back with me.” It's all true.

“He was supposed to leave next week.”

A stocky man comes out a door behind her and calls a number. Then a guy in a wheelchair that squeaks raises his hand and rolls by us. Two short legs, no knees, pants legs pinned shut, draped over the chair's arms. He's young. The stocky guy greets him and rolls him through the doorway. I hear the chair squeaking until the door shuts itself, then I hear the breathing of the guy sitting beside me. He's asleep and smells like booze. Mary rests one elbow on her leg and holds her head with that hand, holds my hand with her other one. Her hand is tiny. She wraps it around three of my fingers, rubs them with her thumb.

I don't know what I've gotten us into, or out of… He'll be okay. Maybe not play basketball, but even amputees play, on fake legs. Special shoes. He'll get used to lying about it.

The guy beside me is sleeping, boozy breath. He pisses me off, but I envy him.

Mary's grip loosens and she leans against my shoulder. I kiss the top of her head and clench my fists to stifle a sob. I'm going nuts, right here.

He's awake, doped up, face white. I expected the foot to be wrapped in thick bandages, not just looking like it's taped up for a sprained ankle.

Mary takes his hand and kneels beside the bed.

“Daddy told me how it happened.”

She says it like I'm not here. He glances my way, but I can't tell anything by his look. He stares for a long time at his mom. Like there's a secret between them. Some smell in this white room reminds me of my own stink. On my way down the hall I begin to wonder what they'll say while I'm gone.

Mary and I sit in the black chairs. Seth sleeps. I wonder if he dreams about it. There's guilt from being close to something big, and there's more guilt from being in the middle of it. Maybe I'll never be able to die, now. I am scared of being an old man scared of living with himself.

Usually, Mary talks a lot, but she's silent now. Sitting with her ankles crossed, her elbow on her knee, chin in her small hand, she looks like she's studying the tile floor. It seems she knows something I don't, when it should be the other way around. She's wearing a necklace of ceramic butterflies and the way it swings from her neck, the butterflies are airborne.

I remember the Monarchs in the valley below us. Our LZ the highest point around. Four companies and Artillery; the mud turning into dust. It was morning. Migrating through the jungle, as if a truce had come, were thousands, hundreds of thousands, tiny agents: orange and black flags, flying across us, through us, everywhere. The fluttering, noisy, cloud of them draped all the way to the valley floor. Everything seemed to stop. So quiet we could hear their wings paw through the mountain dust. Sound like feather-plucked guitar strings.