Re-Up

 
       A picture of us from a couple years ago, at the park. Nikki had just gotten a new camera and demanded we go out and use it. She took pictures of the trees and a squirrel, kids playing on swings. I watched her run around. Before we left she set the camera on the hood of her car and ran to meet me. We posed, smiling, arms around each other. It was a good picture. My hair was a little shaggy. She turned the picture black and white to class it up and she must have planned it because the picture went from the white of our outfits to the dark trees to the white of the sky and from across the room the picture was small enough to look like a tiny painting. The picture was the thing stuck in my head as I went downstairs from the apartment, Nikki closed off inside.
       It was almost 11:00 and I was almost drunk and out of alcohol. The streetlights were a little blurry, maybe from the humidity, maybe the beer. Heading to Main Street I saw the police cruiser head off toward the school uptown and was glad, thinking I wouldn’t be stopped for one reason or another. The sidewalks were empty and most of the town at that hour closed, the Village Inn and the gas station at the edge of town about all to be had. I didn’t really feel like the VFW. I turned at the only stoplight and went down the street, tree-lined and dark. A car passed, rumbling over a pothole, and the brakelights went up. It was a Firebird, Jimmy’s, and I thought of turning into someone’s yard to hide but didn’t. The door opened and out he came, heaving two cases of Natty Light onto the roof of the car.
       “Hey Geier!”
       “Hey what,” I said back.
       “What’re you up to, man? I haven’t seen you in forever.”
       I waited until I caught up to him. Jimmy owned the stoner house, the place where the town dregs partied, where I used to party. He was looking at me, arm over one of the cases. “Nothin’, just went out to grab something to drink. How you been?”
       “Alright, alright.” He slung his hand out and we shook, over thumb, not the normal way. “It’s Friday night, you wanna come in? Party startin’.”
       I shrugged. “Okay.”
       There were only a few people in the house besides Jimmy, no one I really knew. The folks who came here revolved, they grew up and out, were replaced. The few that stuck around weren’t people to know. Old beer bottles stood and lay fallen throughout the living room and kitchen, rows of green and brown and clear. The rooms hadn’t changed much. Same two sofas sinking deeper in their middles, same stains on the carpet, new holes in the drywall. There was a baby monitor on the corner table. That was new too. Jimmy put his arm on my shoulder and handed me a beer, pushing me on.
       “Siddown, stay a while.” He went by me and turned the stereo up. I took a seat near the door and nodded at the others sitting across from me, a stringy blonde girl and a couple of guys who looked like they’d be doing meth in an hour. I raised my beer to them. One I knew was a local dealer, Lonnie, and I knew he recognized me from a few years ago. The music broke in, death metal or some other kind, and I drained half my beer. Lonnie leaned forward and stuck his hand out to get my attention.
       “Where’ve you been, Geier? How do you live in town and I never see you?”
       “How’re you so full of shit and your eyes aren’t brown?”
       Lonnie’s head jerked. I gave a little smile to soften things, let him think we were friends.
       “Nikki keepin’ you on a short leash?”
       Something about him knowing I was with her made me livid. It wasn’t a secret. We’d been together nearly three years. “Yeah, and she’s got an electric fence rigged up, too.”
       He grinned. “I know how that is.”
       “I just quit working for her dad today.”
       “Oh yeah? How long you been doin’ that?”
       “About eight hours.”
       He busted out laughing. The girl beside him snapped out of a daze and joined in. For a moment I could feel good about it, let it just be a joke, something insane to do, not something real. Two guys walked in from the kitchen and one of them slapped my hand, grinning and saying my name. They pulled a wooden table across the room to sit beside us.
       “What made you quit?”
       “Couldn’t do it. Boring as hell.”
       Lonnie nodded. “I hear that. I think I’ve had an honest job about two weeks total my whole life.”
       “Lonnie’s been in the back of a cop car longer than that.” The guy who slapped my hand said that. I couldn’t remember his name—just knew his face.
       “Yeah, well. Keeps life interesting,” Lonnie said.
       Jimmy came downstairs with his girlfriend. Hair dyed deep red, shirt loose, probably to hide her belly. I finished my beer and Jimmy saw and pointed at it, eyebrows high. His girlfriend turned the music down. Jimmy came back with two beers necked in his fingers and a Black & Mild between his teeth. He sat down beside me and handed me my beer, lighting his smoke.
       “So tell these boys about your roadtrip.”
       “That was years ago, man.”
       “Tell ‘em.” He waved his cigarillo around.
       “I really don’t want to, Jimmy.”
       “I’ll tell ‘em, then.”
       I sat back on the couch and drank. I had no watch and there were no clocks nearby. I wondered if Nikki was still crying.
       “Bobby here comes back from Iraq in oh-six.”
       “Oh-five.”
       “Oh-five. So he gets back and meets up with Derrick Jones,” Jimmy stopped and looked around to see if they knew him, and there were nods. “They become best Army buddies, and they decide they’re gonna pull a full on Fear and Loathing, drive out in Jonesy’s Caddy and drink and smoke and fuck their way across the country. They wind up lost in a desert in Arizona, outrun some cop in, what, California?”
       “I think it was Nevada.”
       “Whatever. They outrun this cop on the way to Vegas, then Jones goes on this weeklong tear where he just drinks at every bar they see on the way east.”
       “Then what?” The blond girl said. There was a long moment where Jimmy didn’t know what to say, and he glanced my way.
       “Then Jones came home and blew his head off,” Lonnie said. I started to lean forward to throw my beer at him, but Jimmy cut me off.
       “Fuck you, Lonnie. Get the fuck out of here. Jones was a friend of mine.” He stood up. “Seriously, fuck you.”
       Lonnie put his hands up in defense. “Sorry, man. I’m just saying.”
       “Shut the hell up.”
       “Sit down, Jimmy.” His girlfriend stared him down and he sat, turning to look at me. I sighed and waved it off. The music had switched to some rapper. Jimmy inhaled hard on his Black & Mild and blew the smoke up to the ceiling. I finished my beer. Someone handed me another. The party went on for a little while, people tiptoeing. Jimmy’s girl sat on the arm of the couch and leaned over onto him, put her arm on his shoulder and kissed his face, the scruffy growth of beard covering it. I didn’t even know how you trimmed a beard like that.
       I got up and went into the kitchen. It was too hot and too loud. There was a bowl of dogfood on the floor but no dog, old cases of beer stacked, waiting to be taken out. I stood by the little window over the sink and watched the dark, the yellow light on the alley behind the house. The fight with Nikki echoed in my head. Jimmy’s girl came and stood beside me.
       “How’ve you been, Bobby?”
       “Not good.” I couldn’t remember the girl’s name. I couldn’t even feel bad about it.
       “What’s the matter?” She put her back to the kitchen counter, facing the party.
       “I’m just goin’ a little crazy being here. I can’t find a job and if I do I hate it. Nikki’s tired of me just hanging around the house.”
       She nodded.
       “We got in this fight this evening.” I lifted a shoulder, almost wincing. “I told her I wanted to go Guard.” I drank my beer, looked at it, and finished it off. I could feel my fingers start to tingle.
       “Well that’s something, isn’t it?”
       “I thought so. She didn’t.”
       The girl frowned.
       “She doesn’t get why I’d want to re-enlist. I had a hard time over there. I’d probably get diagnosed with PTSD if I let the docs look at me.” I paused. “I freak out every now and then. I almost did tonight just looking at the TV, watching some reporter in Afghanistan. I dunno.”
       Someone yelled from the living room and the girl turned to see.
       “Go party. I’m alright.”
       She smiled softly. “Then come on.”
       I went back with her after getting another beer. One of the guys had taken my seat so I leaned up against a wall. The girl was sitting in Jimmy’s lap, the blond and Lonnie were getting up just as I opened my beer. I was drunk enough now to not see things, people were there and gone. After a bit I noticed the baby monitor squawking, the light blinking. It took a long time before Jimmy heard it and told the girl to go. She stood from Jimmy’s lap and went upstairs. The guy who slapped my hand pointed for me to sit and started grilling me about fighting, trying to get stories out of me. I was sinking deep in myself, in the couch, the noise getting no quieter but fuzzier, less distinct. Lonnie and the blond came back at some point and were gone before I managed to really notice. I was thinking about Nikki, about having a kid with her and living like this, almost like this. Working a normal job like most of the people here and doing this to vent, spending life, grinding at it. Eventually the guy wore at me until I told him a couple stories, light ones, funny ones. There were a few of those. Somewhere in the telling I started to feel a little better, remembering the sensations that you wouldn’t really call good but were thrilling, the ones that you heard vets talk about all the time, saying you only felt alive during them. War highs. Jones had done heroin the once or twice, and he said it was about as close as he’d ever come.
       Jimmy shook my shoulder. “You with us, bud?”
       I nodded. “Yeah. How’s the kid?”
       “She’s fine. Needed a little attention is all.”
       I looked around, a little surprised to find the party hadn’t ended. It felt like a long time had gone by. The guys were still across the room, passing a joint, and Jimmy’s girl and some other were off in the corner by the baby monitor. I heard people in the kitchen.
       “You’d think you were coming down off something, man. You want a beer?”
       “Nah, I’m good.”
       “Good. I thought I’d give you a heads up. Lonnie’s coming back with some coke, and I know you don’t like that stuff. Now’d be the time to clear out.”
       I nodded and looked aside. “Appreciate it. I can’t stand the fucker to begin with.”
       “He is a bit of a shit. If he wadn’t giving it away I wouldn’t let him in the door.”
       I laughed and stood up, shakily. I braced myself against the door.
       “You gonna head off?”
       “I imagine.” I looked toward the kitchen. “I got a woman to appease.”
       “Good luck with that.” Jimmy stuck his hand out. “Flowers, man. And walk in the door saying you’re sorry. That’s the important one. The woman’s always right.”
       “Oh yeah.”
       “I wadn’t being sarcastic. They just plain are.”
       We shook hands and he pulled me in for a hug, patting my shoulder. “Glad you partied with us, man. Come back anytime.”
       “Sure. Thanks for having me.” We split and I backed to the kitchen doorway. I said goodbye and went out. The night probably hadn’t cooled, but with the beer coat and all the people inside the house had been hot, and it felt good and still outside. I walked around for a while, letting the pot and cigarette stink blow off me, thinking of leaving the town again. Everything good about it was over with, couldn’t be had anymore. Memories with friends, some dead, one in prison. Others just gone. Nights running from the cops just to run from them, to give them something to chase. High off our asses, throwing a shovel at the moon. One year I played football, tight end. I couldn’t stick with it, needed to be forced into things. But it had made me happy for a little while.
       I walked to the VFW Hall, saw the chairs on the tables by the dim overhead lights. Someone’s car was left in the lot, Vietnam vet plate on it. Someone too drunk to go home themselves.
       There was no one else to run into in town, too late for anything to be done. The cop car was parked behind the station, the traffic light blinked red to green with no one passing under it. I turned onto my street and saw the light on in the bathroom window. I stopped in the apartment stairwell to see if I could smell myself, but couldn’t, and went on up. The bedroom door was open when I looked in, the bathroom door shut and light still on. There weren’t any sounds. The dishes were still in the sink from dinner, starting to smell. Nikki’d made her version of chicken enchiladas, made them in a big glass pan and poured all kinds of sauce and cheese over them. One of my favorites, for starting work with her dad. I turned on the tap and ran some hot water, started to scrub at our plates. I was mostly sober and when I moved could smell a little vanilla of the Black & Milds, and a little weed. I finished the dishes and set them aside to dry, wiped off my hands and flopped onto the couch in the living room. It was dark and the only light came through the bedroom door, from the bathroom. A few hours ago we were on the couch together, her legs crossed over mine. Then the TV showed the marketplace, dust and a burnt car. It didn’t even look like anyplace I’d ever been.
       After a few minutes I heard the faucet run and the door opened and I saw Nikki just for the moment before she turned off the light.
       “Bobby?”
       “Yeah.” I heard her stand in the doorway. I couldn’t see her very well but imagined her hand on the wood, leaning a little, trying to find me in the dark.
       “I’m gonna turn on the light.”
       “Okay.”
       She did. She was still wearing the summer dress from the evening, wrinkled now, and her eyes swollen. There were red etchings on her face from sleep, from the tile in the bathroom. I started to sweat. Then she moved her arm and I saw the plastic stick in her hand. She tried to smile, biting a laugh. “I was gonna make it a thing. Eat dinner, relax with you, watch the plus sign appear. Tell you to ask me to marry you.” She held the stick up and let her arm drop back. “But I’m not pregnant, so it worked out. I guess I’m just late.”
       I hadn’t breathed since I first saw the test. I opened my mouth to speak but there wasn’t anything to say. I sat up and moved over for her but she stayed in the doorway.
       “I don’t know how you can want to go back.”
       I shrugged a shoulder, slightly. “There’s just nothing else. I didn’t hate being a soldier so much as being in a war. And maybe if I choose to go over it’ll be different. It won’t be like a trap.”
       “Okay.”
       “I’m sorry. It’s all I can think to do.”
       She came forward. “Why am I not enough? Why can’t we work through it?”
       “It’d be just like it is now. You aren’t the problem. It’s me, me being here.”
       We were quiet for a little while, looking at the carpet, out the window.
       “There’s a lot of ways it could be years before I go overseas,” I said. “Things could be over by then. I could do something in the rear, maybe.”
       “Is that really what you want? Will you be satisfied with that?”
       I wouldn’t be.
       “I can take care of you here. I can help. But I won’t follow you around, and I won’t wait. I’m not an army wife.”
       I nodded. I thought of how it might have been if she were pregnant. Already I was jealous of that man, the one who stayed.