Manhattan always needs a good wash down, to help
us forget it's rather dirty underbelly. Today the rain gods most have
realized it had been awhile since the last scrubbing, because the rain
was falling the size jawbreakers, and just as hard. It didn't help
matters I didn't have an umbrella, especially since I was grabbing a
quick smoke before I had to sit threw a coming four-hour meeting about
the color green. Being a designer is hell.
Or so I thought.
I always wondered when I would see him, knowing that it was going to
be sooner more than later, but I didn't expect him to be so young. See,
I have two soft spots when doling out change in my privatized social security program, old ladies and veterans. When I see
either asking for change, they always get whatever is in my pocket.
Like old Captain Jack back in Austin, I had to have given that dude
and his friends at least a cool thousand over the years he sat at the
corner of my street. But since he did his time for our flag and nation
over in Vietnam, I made sure he had some running money, even if the
government that sent him didn't care.
But this dude was different, he couldn't have been in 'Nam, not even
as the drummer boy. I had finally came across my first Iraq War
homeless veteran.
"Bum a smoke?" he said.
"Of course," I replied giving him a cancer stick. I noticed his
fatigues were distinctly different than that of the older set, being of
the digitized style. He had ripped off all the badges and nameplates,
all the signs of when and where he served.
"Missed the rain," he said staring right past me, as we shared the
awning of some boutique that sold only shoes. "Hey, can you spare some
change?"
"I only give change to veterans and old ladies, and you ain't the latter, where do you serve?"
"Iraq, two tours. Got sent home with these."
He pulled out his dog tags with two bullets from an AK-47 hollowed out and placed on the same chain.
"Bastards shot me in the back, never saw it coming. Didn't hear it
either, but that's the way it always is, you never hear the one that
gets you. But I got lucky, mostly flesh, missed anything important."
So I gave him all my change. He still had that military physique,
and wondered why he wasn't working, at least a construction gig, I had
to ask why.
"Can't sleep," he muttered, again with the stare, this time past the
cigarette and straight to the ground. "Can't sleep, I don't know if
it's the nightmares, because I refuse to remember later. Hell, I can't
remember right now. It's just this growing horror, like something
horrible is about to happen and I can't see it coming."
"I mean, I tried, back home, a little truck driving gig, all local,
no long hauls," he said, finally looking in my direction. I smoke, but
he was inhaling his, the ember crawled quickly toward his lips. "But I
couldn't do it, I found myself pulling over and just staring for hours
sometimes. They finally fired my ass because I couldn't keep the
schedule. Fuck it really, so I came down here to the City to see a
friend from back in the Company, but he wasn't there, and the next
thing you know I am here."
"How long ago was that?"
"I don't know."
"Days or months?"
"I don't know, seriously. I got back last fall and everything since
then has been kind of a blur. Like fragments, hard to put it all
together. Like fucking humpty-dumpty and shit. I don't expect you to
get it."
I gave him the pack of cigs and told him, "Good Luck."
He nodded and went back to staring, and I will never get it, but I
got where he was coming from.
Captain Jack use to give me the same
speech.
Every Saturday afternoon, on repeat, about trying to reconfigure the
broken fragments of life shattered by war.
I just can't believe I am
going to be handing money to a whole generation of humpty-dumptys who
were sent to sit on the wall, like their fathers before them, all based
on lies of the king, and all the king's