Everything It Could Steal
It's hot and it's humid and beads of sweat stick to us like condensation on a glass, then roll down our necks and arms in thin dirty rivers of salt and dust, pooling in the creases of our elbows. Doug is sitting on the ground, his back to a tree, scraping some sort of sh** off the bottom of his boot. The rest of us are off in a group, eating bruised mangoes and laughing with our guns slung across our shoulders. We don't talk about why we're here or what's to come or anything with truth, we just shuffle our feet, kick up dust and lie and tell stories about girls we had back home and laugh with everyone else cause we know it's not true.
There was never an Ashley, at least not the one in Tim's story and I had never even met an Asian girl till I came over here. We do it to pass the time and our lies and laughter drift away, getting trapped in the branches above us that are locked together, tight as praying hands. Doug never really looks up, he just digs the point of the knife into his sole and scrapes away in the dim jungle light.
I talked to him once about coming over and telling us the story he had told us when we got here, about the night in his Bonneville with, what was her name, Amy, Kristi, Claire? He told me simply he had never owned a Bonneville, that he had a truck with rusted door handles and a cracked windshield and dirty rubber floor mats that he never cleaned. I told him none of our stories were true and he said he knew but that the stories reminded him of the truth and he couldn't listen to them anymore because everything was starting to get tangled together, the truth and the lies.
I walked away after that and I knew he was doing the same thing we were all trying to do, to hide the truth from this jungle and this war. I knew Doug was trying to push it all to the back of his head, maybe out entirely. I knew he had a wife and that he didn't want to think of her and then shoot a man an hour later. I knew he had a kid, just a baby, and he didn't want to go to sleep one night thinking of his family and end up having a dream; a memory of his kid walking unsteadily across the floor, just to be woken up by machine gun fire.
I knew he didn't want that to happen, that he needed to keep them apart, because if he didn't then the next time he had that dream each shaky baby step would sound like a gunshot when it hit the floor. It's things like this that keep you from sleep, thoughts like that and knowing there are silent panthers stalking invisible through the night.
The mangoes are our last meal (we hope just for a while) and when we're done I call Doug over and he picks up his rifle and falls in line as we walk through the jungle, half a click maybe, to a small river. We spread out, following the dog leg of the bank, forming something like an L. Jake stays on the shore and buries himself in leaves, the barrel of his rifle sticking out three or four inches; in the dim light of the jungle it is just a small branch, an unusually smooth twig laying in a lumpy pile of leaves. This is where we're meeting Charlie. Half of us are waded half way into waist deep water, hidden in vines and reeds while others crouch or lay in the shallows.
We don't talk anymore or even move, no one turns their head to see if the others are there, you just have to listen for their breath on the wind to know. Ted and Chris, to my left, have a steady whisper of an exhale, the kind that barely moves grass but I swear Theo only starts to breathe when it begins to rain, he breathes heavy and loud like the storm. His breath is thunder.
Hours go by and we still wait and I can't help but think of forgotten soldiers, Japs stuck on dirty little islands no one remembered after the war. Soldiers, men who held their posts and their rifles 30 years too long after Nagasaki. I know we haven't been here that long but I can't help but think about it still. Hours go by again and we're still hidden, still quiet, and my pants and boots are soaked with this muddy leech water that pushes slowly around me.
I start to think about home, small things, like how different the rain was there, but then I push it back down. My forearms burn from holding my rifle and there's a deep ache in my shoulders but I know that it's a weight I have to bear, that's it's just the burden of my survival. I focus on the grass in front of me and, just moving my eyes, I look down and try to concentrate on the vines growing through the water. And I start to worry, that if we sit here long enough then it will all just grow around us. How long before the vines start to crawl up my back and twist around my arms? How long before this muddy leech water becomes my blood, before the bats start spending their days upside down on my arms, before the grass grows so thick that all I can see is a greenish gold sheet, shown in the dim light?
The light. It's getting darker, we've been here for some time and I want to shake my head but I know I shouldn't so I just stay still and watch as the day trips, stumbles and falls out of the sky. The jungle goes from dim to black and it is as it was in the beginning, only darkness, not even stars. It is the kind of perfect darkness that only God has seen.
