The Long Walk: A Story of War and the Life That Follows (23 page)

I’d just as soon forget it all. Replace a dead body or two with a birthday party. But I can’t, not while I’m surrounded by the war every day.

When dressing my son before his hockey games, I am always careful with the gear, with each legging, each strap and buckle. But today is special, and I am particularly deliberate for the big game, the championship in Mite Hockey.

First, the cotton socks and undergarments. Then the padded shorts, plates covering his thin thighs, and his skates, extra tight, around the back of his ankle, double-knotted in front, just as he likes. Next, the large, bulky goalie pads, with their complicated laces around the skate blade housing. Then a series of nylon braces and clips along the back of his leg. He looks so skinny, patiently lying on the locker-room floor while I meticulously check each fitting point. Not only are his slight legs swallowed by the wide pads, but his chest and arms are covered only by a tight shirt, accentuating the contrast. Next the puffy upper-body protector, insulated sleeves, and jersey overtop. The final step is the helmet. I start crying as I place it on his head, cinch down the chin cup, and close the cage over his face.

The tears come all the time now. Bedtime stories, movies, the Olympics, news events, and long-form NPR radio pieces, a discordant and unassociated conglomeration of triggers. But those tears are usually in private, in my home, my car, in my son’s bed, snuggled up with his back to me so he can’t see. These tears, on the other hand, the ones currently blurring my vision, are in the locker room at the arena, and in front of the other children, parents, and coaches, with no filter of privacy. My Crazy is running down my face for all to see.

I’ve developed some strategies for this kind of moment. You can rub your nose and pull out your handkerchief like you have allergies or a cold. That sometimes works. Or you can make a show of cleaning your glasses, and try to throw in a discreet wipe of the eyes. But under no circumstances can you speak, because your voice will catch and the game will be up. You will be forced to explain why you are crying while putting on your son’s goalie equipment.

I just put my seven-year-old son in a bomb suit and sent him on the Long Walk.

Everyone deals with it differently. Many of my brothers that have come home get angry. Angry at themselves. Angry at the world.

I can see it on Bill’s face as we stand in line together at the grocery checkout. The store is crowded and busy, and the consolidated feeder line wraps back on itself twice before arriving at our place in the queue. Children cry and tug at their mother’s sleeve to buy them a candy bar. A teenage girl talks loudly on a cell phone about some upcoming event and which of her friends will be attending. At one nearby register, a retiree has created congestion by asking the checkout girl to call a manager regarding the use of a particular coupon. The line has not moved in four minutes.

Bill’s jaw is set, his knuckles white on the shopping-cart handle. I can see the rage behind his eyes. How can everyone not realize all of the time we are wasting here? Just tell your kids to shut up! They don’t need a candy bar. They should be happy there is food on the table. And who cares about the coupons? Are these the problems you have in your life? Candy bars and coupons and who is going to be at the school dance?

The line is a target for a suicide bomber. The line is sucking precious minutes away from his life. All of these little people and all of their little problems. They don’t understand what real problems are, or how precious are the minutes that they thoughtlessly dribble away.

“How can you be so calm?” Bill asks as we stand unmoving.

“Why shouldn’t I be? It won’t make the line move faster,” I respond.

“Don’t you get angry at how fat and ignorant they all are?” Bill presses.

“I’m not angry. I’m jealous,” I say. “I remember when I was ignorant. That was better.”

I admire Bill for being angry. When you’re angry, you still care. You’re still passionate, and engaged, and find meaning in righting a wrong. The line reminds Bill that life is too precious to waste in trivial things.

Not me. The incessant chattering and self-importance of the line reminds me of the priceless ignorance I lost. It reminds me of what I previously considered a problem. Would I graduate from EOD school? Would I get a chance to go back to Iraq and redeem myself? The line reminds me that now I’m just a stupid Crazy vet with a blown-up brain. I’m jealous of the unaware masses I stand with.

When you are Crazy, it’s not the war movies, or fireworks, or the nightly news that bother you, as the unafflicted often think. It’s the thoughts that come unbidden from grocery lines.

When I get sick of standing in a grocery line, I make a detailed plan to kill those I am surrounded by, allowing me to leave the store.

When I get sick of standing in a grocery line, I’m reminded life is a futile drudgery, and then it will end.

Even now I can see Ewbank’s laughing face, streaked brown from the swirling dust stuck to his dripping sweat, as the gunfire opened up in the downtown roundabout. The whistles and pings filled the air, followed shortly by the answering thump-thump of our security’s .50-caliber machine gun. Ewbank laughed through it all.

“Civilian life, sir!” Ewbank yelled at me over the din. “It lacks punctuation!”

In World War I they called it shell shock. In Vietnam they called it the thousand-yard stare. In World War II they didn’t talk about it at all.

The name that best describes what I feel comes from the Civil War: Soldier’s Heart. In 1871, Jacob Mendes Da Costa published his report on three hundred veterans who complained of “irritable heart.” The colloquialism “Soldier’s Heart” was soon born, and remained in popular usage until the early twentieth century. Da Costa’s Syndrome, the official new name for the disease, consisted of palpitations, left-side pain, swelling of the chest, breathlessness, mental distraction, and a reduction in physical endurance and lust for life. Dr. Da Costa attributed the disorder to the prolonged wearing of heavy, restrictive gear, overtight straps on black powder bags, and packs carrying spare clothes and food. Since the Civil War, a soldier’s physical load has only grown more burdensome, though the mental toll is timeless.

Today we call it Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. PTSD. That’s what the Crazy feeling is. My Old Counselor has just diagnosed it so.

Now that I have a verdict, a documented disorder, my Old Counselor is energized. I need a shrink. I need the mental-health clinic. I need a month-long retreat in a rehab facility in the country. Most of all, I need drugs.

The wheels of the VA kick into overdrive. My Old Counselor works the phones. She has an emergency PTSD case. Can I be seen right away? Yes, an emergency walk-in. She is going to escort me now.

We rush out of her fussy closet office to the patient transport elevators segregated for hospital staff priority use. To the tenth floor my Old Counselor hurries me, arm in arm, past the check-in window, past the waiting room filled with hushed sad faces, to a back office where my New Shrink awaits.

“Thank you so much for seeing him right away,” my Old Counselor says, out of breath from the rushed transfer.

“He has PTSD and I am very concerned,” my Old Counselor repeats, several times.

The blond woman at a small desk decorated with green house plants slowly turns from the computer screen she had been reviewing. She smiles at me, a serene, reassuring smile.

“We’ll take a look at him, thank you,” my New Shrink says as she leads my Old Counselor from the office, easing her out with a slowly closing door.

A quiet stillness settles over the blue, airy office with the click of the door latch. My New Shrink, younger, calmer, gestures for me to sit near her desk. I take a deep breath, sit in the chair, and await my sentence.

“Brian,” my New Shrink begins, “why do you think you’re here?”

“Because I’m Crazy. And because my Old Counselor says I need drugs.” I thought this was self-evident.

“Do you think you need medication?” she asks.

“I don’t know if I need them. I know I don’t want them.”

“Why not?”

“I’m scared. I’m scared to not be myself. I’d rather be Crazy than be someone else.”

“Well, you aren’t Crazy,” my New Shrink gently corrects. “We don’t use that word here. Are you going to kill yourself, Brian?”

No one has ever asked me that before. I have to really think about it.

“No, I don’t think so. Maybe before, but I’m not going to now.”

“Then, if you aren’t going to kill yourself, I’m not going to prescribe anything today either,” my New Shrink says.

“You’re not?”

“No,” she says. “I’ll respect your wish for now. Until we aren’t able to make progress without them. Until there is no other way.”

She turns toward her computer, pulls up my chart, and briefly scans the various cardiac tests I’ve had, my regular visits to the ER, the months with the Old Counselor endlessly rehashing Jeff, and Kermit, and rifles, and the hole in the bomber’s head. She looks back at me with a hint of sadness.

“Tell me, Brian,” she begins, “about the day you lost all hope, saw your foreshortened future, and realized life had no meaning.”

Metallic airport terminals, a succession of fast-food peddlers and superficial bookstores, consistent and interchangeable. Dulles, O’Hare, Charlotte. Same restaurants. Same newspapers, piled on wooden stands outside the same convenience stores. Same rushing businessmen, flight attendants and pilots, young families, and visiting Chinese tourists.

I swim against this sea regularly, on my way from one EOD unit to another, training another deploying crew, a repeated timeless cycle on a grueling schedule. The airports have melded into a blur; plug-and-play passengers, overpriced burritos. My layovers are on autopilot, endured to the next flight.

But once in a while, my subconscious notes an anomaly.

A tingle on the nerves that something is different, a fly in the soup of the otherwise homogeneous and busy crowd.

I’ve been walking from one terminal to the next, burning off adrenaline, bypassing the automated walkways, taking the stairs up and down, working up a sweat under my coat and flannel shirt. The Crazy feeling won’t let me sit at a gate anymore, and with a long layover, my wanderings have taken me farther afield. I pace in a cloud of my overactive mind’s self-reflections and distractions until that nerve tingle pushes aside the muddled haze. I come alert to find myself in the international terminal, at the gate of Ethiopian Airlines and a flight bound for Addis Ababa.

I scan the waiting travelers, to find the source of my unbidden arousal. Which one of these is not like the others? Dark East African families with children, lighter Somali graduate students, white European businessmen with multinational firms. Everyone and everything is in place. Everyone, except for the three trim men sitting a bit to the side, backs to the wall, trying to blend in. They may be innocuous to most, but to anyone who does the job, they might as well have a strobe light above their heads.

Their team leader is older than me by a couple of years, short brown hair graying slightly, all khaki safari shirt and cargo pants, high-end hiking boots. His Oakley sunglasses are perched on his head, his watch face covers almost his entire wrist, and the laptop on his knees came out of a black, hardened, over-engineered waterproof case. His two companions, one black and one white, share the athletic physique, the overpriced sunglasses, the choice in footwear. But both are younger, listening to iPods, assault packs tossed at their feet. Beards are starting on all their faces—the call for the job must have been last minute. All appear ready to run five miles uphill at a moment’s notice. Contractors. Mercenaries. Like me, but going overseas, for more money, most likely for a three-letter agency. Ethiopia is probably not their final destination. Somalia? Sudan?

The leader looks up from his laptop, charade put aside for the moment, and faintly nods in my direction. I nod back. Their rifles materialize at their feet, a desert mirage, propped among their backpacks and gear, pistols tucked in drop holsters on their legs. I can feel the familiar grip of my rifle in my hand. The comforting grooves on the bolt-release paddle on my left thumb, the heavy satisfying
thunk
as the spring is released, the bolt moves forward, and the round slides into the chamber. A deep breath. I wonder if they need a fourth man on the team. What’s the job? Personal security detail? Door kickers? Every stack needs a bomb technician.

I think about going back every day. Back to the job. Back to the clarity of thought, the singleness of purpose, the mundane details of the world falling away and only the essential remaining. No bills. No to-do lists. No children asking for attention. No tear-filled marital counseling with my wife. No broken lawnmower and early-morning soccer practice and dentist appointments to schedule. No clutter.

For a moment, I do more than just consider going back. The helo inserts, rifle slung and feet dangling out the side, legs kicking in the breeze. The cordon-and-search assaults, knocking on a door in the middle of the night, lighting a valley on fire with thousands of pounds of explosives. The Crazy purrs its approval.

The safe and familiar and comfortable beckon. Why not go back? To where life makes sense, and I’m good at what I do.

Maybe someday, but not today. My flight will be leaving soon. I need to get back to my gate. The man in khaki catches my eye, nods one more time, and then looks away down the concourse. I follow his gaze that has perked up, and the Spidey sense tingles again.

First a stare, from a businessman standing outside the gate. Then a watchful eye from a couple in a lounge across the way. I catch a glance. They look away. An awareness floods me, surges from my groin and drowns my brain.

I’m in danger. I’m alone, isolated, surrounded and suffocated by the crowd. I need to egress, violently if necessary. Avoid a static direct firefight. Shoot, move, and communicate. Live behind your weapon. Do whatever is required to go home.

I grasp my rifle, which has been waiting for me at my shoulder. I need to leave this airport terminal right now. I need to get out.