Ten minutes? Twenty? Maybe this means I’m finally in the moment, he thought merrily, buoyed on pheromones, but then he noticed, just up the roadbed, near the edge of the commercial district, an arch-backed dog rummaging in some Dumpster overfill. He stopped, feeling his lungs constrict. Shortly, the frame confused him, a line of towering dusty palms, a sagging concrete wall, a roadside bag of trash, then impulse threw him to the ground, locked up in a fetal curl, burying his head in his arms. Seconds warped around his brain as he waited out the blast. Rather than the dust-scattering concussion he was expecting, though, he felt instead a gentle prodding kick to the sole of his shoe.
“Listen, I don’t mean to keep bringing this up-”
Godo’s eyes shot open. The light was gray, not ocher, the air wet and cold, not parched.
“-but if you need help, or I should get you to a doctor-”
Godo scrambled to his knees in a panic, combed the grass with his hands, searching out the spider device-two batteries, the curving wires, the unspent shell.
“-you gotta let me know, okay? Otherwise I’d just as soon-”
Jerking his head up, Godo fixed the man in his eye. McBee. Hillbilly stock, grip like a pipe wrench.
“-not impose on you. I’ll just head on downtown here, if this is the way.”
A station wagon had pulled to the curb a little ways on. A broad-faced man in a ball cap stared back over his shoulder at them.
To McBee, Godo said, “Don’t look at me that way.”
McBee took a clumsy step backward. “I didn’t mean-”
“Who the fuck are you, look at me like that? I served for you, asshole.”
McBee put up his hands, another step back, quicker. “Look-”
“Fuck you, white trash.”
McBee dropped his hands, now clenched into fists. His crabbed eyes turned fiery. “You go ahead and wallow around on the ground there, piggy. Go on. I did your uncle a favor, I lost half a day’s pay for the privilege. I’m done being nice.” He spat, then stormed off.
Godo struggled to his feet, bellowing, “I don’t owe you, honk. I paid. I paid big.” Turning toward the man in the station wagon, he reached to the small of his back, gripped the gun, and held it up above his head. “You feelin’ me here, Elmer?” The fat-faced man jumped in his seat, threw his car in gear and sped away, tailpipe belching smoke. A Latina dragging a pigtailed child on the far side of the street stopped to stare until her eyes met Godo’s, at which point she scooped up the toddler and hightailed off. Godo glanced over his shoulder, trying to get a better look at the skulking dog. But there was none. The palms remained, the listing wall, the Dumpster dripping trash bags. No dog.
God help me, he thought.
He put the gun away, then began plodding home. Within twenty steps the fluidity of time failed him, the seconds like daggers, every footfall an ordeal. The pain in his leg shot down into his heel and up into his spine and he gritted his teeth, clenched his fists, closed his eyes, walked.
As traffic passed, he tried to let the whisking hum of the tires against pavement lull him into a trance. Every now and then, though, peeking up, he saw drivers staring, passengers too, gazing at the pock-faced stumbling madman and he wondered: Who are these creatures? What world do they come from? He laughed. That was it-they came from Mars or the moon or MySpace, instructed by their overlords to annoy the fuck out of anything that moved. He could hear their voices tripping away inside his brain, beamed in by radio wave, echoing things he’d heard before, things other creatures, all heartfelt eyes and misty smiles, had said when he’d ventured out.
Things like: “Welcome home.”
Things like: “Thank you.”
Things like: “Support the troops!”
Except the troops don’t need or want your support, thank you very much. They don’t want the bumper-sticker bravado, the teary moms sporting Yankee Doodle ribbons on their watermelon tits, the brainwashed kids with the scrubbed little grins and roadkill eyes. The mascara wives bearing heart-attack casseroles and lukewarm beer or shag-assing off to bed for a little marital poon that can only go screamingly haywire. One trip to the VA, listening to the other guys rotating back, taught you that much. The troops respectfully request that you and your gung-ho support kindly fuck off. The troops do not recognize you as human.
Better yet: “Bring the troops home!” Yeah? Permission requested to saw off your head, the better to shit down your neck. What the fuck do you know about it? You know nothing-because you don’t want to, you want to wax indignant, you want to blame the same old crew, the greedy preening stuffed suits you blame for everything. You want to say the magic word: peace. Well fuck you. Fuck peace. Fuck a home that has to be shared with the prissy likes of you.
Someone called his name.
He turned toward the sound. A vintage Impala, tricked out like a showpiece, had pulled to the curb, passenger-side window rolled down. A pair
The voice conjured a name: Chato. The other one, behind the wheel, was Puchi.
“Need a lift?”
The next thing he knew he was in the backseat, the black vinyl upholstery cool and tight. A whiff of reefer, sweat disguised with Brut. He could make out Puchi’s eyes in the rearview. He wore an A’s cap with the brim cocked up in front, a gray hoodie. He seemed bigger, bulkier than Godo remembered. Weights, maybe. Prison?
Chato, a few years younger and riding shotgun, turned around in his seat so he and Godo were face-to-face. An angry whitehead wept pus just beneath one heavy-lidded eye. He wore a hairnet, his coif meticulous, black and sleek and combed straight back, while on his neck three tattooed letters appeared: BTL. Brown Town Locos. It was the name of the
Chato held out his fist till Godo bumped it with his own. “My brother from another mother. Long time.”
True, Godo thought. Two years at least. An eternity, given what happened in between. Chato had been a mere
“Iraqistan. Musta seen some serious shit. Bet you waxed your share of raghead motherfuckers, am I right?”
The kid was wired and his breath smelled and Godo had to resist an impulse to reach out and rip the hairnet off.
Puchi chimed in, “Wondered when we’d see you around, man. Heard some things, didn’t know what was true, figured we’d wait till we caught you out and about.”
Godo waved his hand idly toward his face, as though to conjure its pitted ugliness in a gesture.
“Yeah, but you’re not all
Godo tried to picture what that meant-The Way It Is-wondering if it bore any resemblance to Some Serious Shit. The effort to make more sense of it foundered as they passed the fenced confines of a vast construction site, rising in tiers up a broad bare hill. Baymont, the neighborhood was called, that or Hoodrat Heights, depending on who you talked to. Boon-Coona-Luma. Ho Hill. At least, those were the names thrown around before Godo left for basic.
He’d heard the story in bits and pieces after that, following the hometown news from afar, how some developers had wanted the whole hill condemned, war-era federal housing never meant to be permanent but grandfathered in, city council deadlocked on eminent domain. So a local fixer, former honcho with the firefighters union, hired some bent ex-cop to torch the whole neighborhood, burn every home to the ground. The plan was to blame it on some arson freak, this patsy they let die in the fire, and for all practical purposes it succeeded, though the players turned on one another when the bent cop got exposed. Not that that stopped anything. What was left of the neighborhood wasn’t worth rebuilding. The condemnation vote finally passed and the developers lined up like trick-or-treaters. Then some of the local stakeholders, good old boys whose families ran things here, they began wrangling over secondary spoils; the construction unions demanded a local-labor rider in any contracts; the town’s
