Collateral Damage

            Lon thinks he’s dying. They thought they had it. They said they had it, but then they had to start radiating his colon again. Going to zap him four times, two weeks apart. They’re sure they’ll get it, but then, they were sure they already got it, until his last check up.

            Maybe he shouldn’t have a woman doctor. Maybe a man doctor wouldn’t show it in his face when he walks in. Lon sees it in Dr. Cantell’s face the instant she walks into the room where he’s thinking, God, couldn’t they put something in these rooms to put your mind on, spend some time while you’re waiting?

            Doctor Cantell walks in the door, and she doesn’t have to say anything. He says it for her, “You didn’t get it after all. We didn’t get it all.” He’s trying to say “We” all the time, now. Calderwilder, last time he saw Calderwilder, Calderwilder said, “It’s us, all of us, you especially. We’re not fighting it for you. We’re fighting it together. We’re helping you fight it. Your attitude means everything. Want to beat this thing, you’ve got to get right into the center of the battle, fight to win.”

            Lon thinks, Me especially. So, if we don’t get it, it’s me to blame, never did get my attitude right. Attitude caused the problems with my heart too, the problems with my back.

            So Lon says, “You ever been in the armed forces?” He doesn’t think so. Calderwilder looks too young to ever been in Vietnam, but then, shit, there’s lots of places since then a man could go shoot up some foreign outfit.

            Calderwilder says, “No. I never was. I went to college, then I set up my practice here.”

            “My attitude never has been right,” Lon says, “I sure as hell do know that.” Lon gets excited about it, starts pounding the arms of his chair, jumps up, paces as he talks, throws his arms and hands around as he talks, hollers, prays, angry, beseeches the sky above this beige office ceiling as he talks, and Calderwilder tries to show his bravery, stay steady, but he rolls his chair back, and his laced fingers across his abdomen turn white with gripping tightly. “When everybody was winding up to send me to Vietnam, I whined about it, didn’t want to go, and I had a really bad attitude about that. They sent me off anyway. It come to killing all those Vietnamese human beings, human beings, you understand, no matter what the fuck they tried to tell us, and I whined about that, and I didn’t want to do that, either.

            “They know how to push you into following orders. They know how to get you where you pull the trigger or you die. Worse, your buddy dies, guys in your crew die if you’re not fast and willing to kill, so I did it, I killed all of em. I messed up their habitat, but I didn’t like doing it. I didn’t like doing it so bad, it gave me nightmares while I was still over there doing it. It made me so god damned mad at everybody who put it together and myself for going along with it. I did whine about it. Some of my buddies got killed even when I was squeezing every fucking trigger I could find, and I had a bad attitude about my buddies around me getting killed, blood and body parts everywhere, and I admit, my attitude was really fucked up. I was unhappy about the whole shitaree, and I whined about it.

            “The boys in airplanes got their timing mixed up or maybe didn’t give a shit, how do we know? Everybody different says something else, and maybe they all lie. They dumped that chemical shit all over us. I whined about that. Try that sometime, a shower in chemical shit, you don’t even know what it is. Sticky shit comes down, probably already starting to kill you when it hits.

            “We come back and people scream at us and call us baby killers and throw garbage all over us. I whined about that. Fucking had fits all along the way, and it never did me no fucking good at all. I still had to do all that shit, and I was mad all the time. At everybody who existed wherever I could see them or hear them or smell them.

            “I know I got a bad attitude. That’s why I’m here, talking to you. You’re a professional make good money at it, so now I got cancer, worn out heart, fucked up back, can’t work, probably I’ll lose my house cause my country says fight and die for us. You survive war, walk away from that, but nightmares rip apart every fucking night, night after night, every fucking night, but you need any help, go sit in the gutter. My friends who survived Nam die now about one a month, cancer or heart, or overdose, usually cancer. I know I got to get so I don’t whine about this stuff, or I won’t beat this cancer. Whining causes cancer everybody says now, so you show me how to do it right. Nobody ever showed me that. Can you just get your wise professional ass out of that god damned padded chair and show me how to do it?”

            Lon figures that’s what led to the shoot-out. Not exactly, but they’re telling him now his attitude sets up everything around him, causes all the trouble he’s ever had, causes all the trouble he ever will have, and his bad attitude adds to everything else going on, so it happens. Finally, when the shoot-out comes at him, he doesn’t really give a shit anymore, it comes down on him faster and faster, and nobody’ll back off and find out what’s real, and he’s just curious, who’s deadliest, Vietnam Vet, trained by the best fighting forces in the world, or country boy, come up from south, living til now in back country cause he can shoot the eye out of a running squirrel?

            Country boy harvests his life from the land around him, farms, gardens, puts wild animals on the table. At first, Lon predicted the Vietnam Vet’s deadliest, cause the southern country boy, he ain’t used to killing people, just food, but it comes to, if he don’t care no more about life or living than the vet, then which side you place your money comes to other stuff, like attitude. So, anybody’s bet. Probably you have to watch it happen to know which way it goes. Legends, myths don’t add up to shit till it comes to pulling the trigger. And the country boy’s used to using a rifle, but he goes all citified and uses a pistol, so that’s stupid as hell, but probably nobody ever claimed he was smart.

            All the time Lon’s raving, pacing, throwing his hands and his head every which way, Calderwilder laces his fingers together, his hands on his stomach, leans back in his chair, little paunch there to rest his hands on, not much, less than Lon, Lon knows that and doesn’t give a shit there either. Probably one time, somebody told Calderwilder, “You can’t cross your arms over your chest and listen to a client. Crossed arms over the chest, that’s body language for resistance to what you’re hearing. You’re not here to resist but provide a sympathetic ear and guidance. Not resistance.”

            Calderwilder paid attention and tried to change his approach. He wasn’t staying busy enough counseling to keep up with bills, so he knew he needed to improve.

            Now, Calderwilder’s talking, but Lon doesn’t hear what he says, because Lon’s looking more than listening and thinking more than listening and god damn it, back into remembering. Remembering nightmares or real life, and how do you tell the difference?

            Lon figures, Well, Calderwilder got over crossing his arms over his chest, but he had to do something. He tried to leave his hands on the desk, inert, relaxed, or on his knees, palms turned up, quiet, but he couldn’t do it. Without his hands doing something, he got so nervous, he didn’t even hear what his client said, found himself wondering what in hell the person in the other chair was talking about, and why?

            Calderwilder laces his fingers, white-knuckled, together over his abdomen. He protects his guts. This way, he doesn’t resist what his clients say, but he tries to protect his guts from damage what his clients say can bring him. Lon talking about shooting, all those bullets from memory fly wild, protect your guts.

            If they see it’s going to happen, when you shoot people, they throw their hands up, like they think hands are strong enough to stop bullets. They throw their hands up, like they can catch bullets, or like they can’t look at what’s happening, shit. One time, Lon killed a Vietnamese soldier, just a boy, really, but a boy in uniform with a rifle, the soldier saw Lon point, pull the trigger, and the boy spent that last second composing himself, didn’t even throw his hands up, because he knew, just a boy, but he knew.

            Lon says, “Shit. Now I’ll have nightmares about that again. Why fucking remember anything?” He says that out loud, and it doesn’t have anything to do with what Calderwilder is saying, as far as Lon knows, which isn’t very far, because he wasn’t listening to Calderwilder. He was remembering, trying not to, but remembering, wishing he wouldn’t but no way he can quit, once he starts.

            Calderwilder unlaces his fingers, puts his hands on the arms of his rollable chair and sits up straighter. Lon looks up at him, tries to look away from a pit of memories, of nightmares. Lon says, “So the nightmares come sometimes in the daytime when I’m wide awake, but I try not to make a fuss about it because I’m getting pretty fucking tired of hearing how my attitude isn’t right and caused me the problems I got. Nobody else carries any responsibility, and they just go on, drive on by, leave me sitting in the gutter, don’t even notice me enough to get embarrassed about everything that happened to put me there and their part in the whole shitaree.”

            Calderwilder helps Lon get disability payments, because Lon is crazy as hell, can’t work anymore, because he falls apart about ten times every day, but the payments haven’t started yet. Everything will be okay in a while, 30 days, maybe 90 days, next year, whenever they get all the paperwork done. If he lives that long. Whenever they get it together, Lon’s not going to have anyplace to live anymore, join all them guys standing on corners with cardboard signs begging for help. Shit, he’ll go ahead and die before he’d ever get out there and beg.

            Doctor Cantell says Lon needs to do chemotherapy. “The radiation might work, but if it doesn’t, chemotherapy is the next step, so you need to think about chemotherapy.” Think about it. Think about it, but one thing he won’t go through is chemotherapy. He knows what that’s like.

            Three days after Lon sees Cantell and then Calderwilder, Larry and Clive and two other guys, Lon never caught their names, or he lost them, but Larry and Clive and two other guys come by in a white Ford pickup crew cab, big pickup with four doors. Three doors swing open. Three guys get out. The driver sits tight, doesn’t open his door. Clive , maybe 25, 28, no shirt on, kind of fat, tanned walks up, arms hanging down. He says, “Who’s Lon?”

            Chris, Lon, Dale, sit in chairs on the lawn close by the deck. Lon says, “Who wants to know?”

            “My name’s Clive. You said you’re gonna kill me.”

            Lon says, “I never saw you before. I don’t even know who you are. You don’t know me, either, or why ya ask who’s Lon when you walk up? Who said that?”

            “I ain’t sayin his name, but that’s what he said.”

            “Why would I threaten to kill someone I never heard of till now?”

            If you watch Clive you can tell he’s listening. He thinks about what Lon said, ready to hit him, but he’s got a minute, because what Lon said makes some sense and hadn’t occurred to Clive before. He never heard of Lon before, never seen him, that’s right. Now Lon says he never heard of Clive, and maybe that’s straight. Lon looks like it is. Clive figures, hard to tell, anymore.

            Larry, Clive’s dad, leans across from the driver’s seat, yells, “Come on, Clive, punch him, and let’s get out of here,” but Clive still hesitates, so Larry slides across the seat, exits the open passenger door, walks across the lawn, shirt tails flying, tall, thin man, long grey hair, loose, but combed back, blowing in spring breeze, ashamed of his son. Shit, you send the boy out to do his job, he can’t even do it, the old man’s got to do it for him.

            Clive grabs Larry, tries to stop him, because Clive’s thinking he might believe what Lon says, but it’s too big an adjustment to make that fast, so he isn’t enthusiastic enough about stopping Larry to actually stop him, and Larry busts Lon in the jaw with his fist.

            Lon thinks, Shit, this guy hits like a fucking woman, raises his fist up beside his ear and swings down, like throwing something, doesn’t punch straight like a man, but it still hurts, punched in the jaw. Lon doesn’t believe any of this so much, he doesn’t even put his guard up. The Vietnamese soldier jumps up in his memory again, not even trying to catch the bullet, just composing himself to die.

            Lon’s got plenty of time to catch Larry’s punch, push it off to the side, but Lon just stands there in spring sunshine and takes the punch to his jaw. Once, that’s it. Clive drags Larry away because he’s willing to be dragged away. Maybe he finally looks at Lon close enough to realize he’d better let Clive drag him away.

            The other young guy, dark hair, thin, small beard, he’s so pissed nobody’s fighting anybody, he starts toward Lon, but he turns away, runs over, grabs the aluminum supports for the awning, yanks on them, bends them so the awning hangs down at a crazy angle, one end toward the center.

            Everybody exits. Into the white Ford pickup, and the unnamed young guy who pulled the awning all cattywampus yells, “You owe the drug guy, big time. A drug deal gone bad.” A thundering V8 roars them toward the setting sun. Can’t even hear the big V8 anymore when Lon finally says, “What the fuck was that all about?”

            Nothing. Nobody can think of anything. Chris straightens the awning, but it still isn’t right. Chris might be mulling over, wondering if Lon really is involved in dealing. I mean, he knows Lon, but now he’s wondering, because with Lon, Lon doesn’t really know what’s real and what isn’t, anymore, so can anybody standing and watching be sure?

            Lon says, “More than two years since I did any dealing, and when I was dealing, I was generous with everybody, and I paid as I went. I never owed anybody.”

            About midnight, all alone again, Lon gives up being astounded by what happened. He talks to his bedroom. “Well, shit, ain’t that the fucking world? None of it makes any goddamned sense. I grew up, went to college, maybe stuff made sense. They yank me out of college and throw me off in a war that makes no sense, and I come back to a world that makes no sense, so why the hell should Clive and Larry and that other dumb fuck make any sense at all to me?”

            He’d think about it more, but midnight, time for the fucking nightmares to start, sweat and scream his way through the rest of the night. Could take prescription drugs, sleep deeper, dream dreams that are even harder to escape, have a damn drug hangover all day tomorrow. Takes nothing. Tries to sleep. Dreams.

            Even, he tells himself he should clean up his language, even Calderwilder seems to wonder why he carries it so far, but he tried that before, and it didn’t go anywhere good, so he fucking gave it up. So here we go, tunnels caving in on him, small, dark-skinned men killing him slowly, over and over again, or worse, he kills them over and over again, every diabolical way you could think of, plenty you couldn’t even. They never stay dead, come up fighting worse yet, after his soul. Damn, do you believe in god? I don’t even know. Every few days I try to get straight with god, and I don’t even know. Would there even be, after what went on in those tunnels, all over the land over there in Nam, all over the goddamned world?

            Police come by about a week, somebody blew up Larry’s pickup, Larry in it. Didn’t kill Larry, but Larry probably won’t live. Clive sent the cops after Lon. Lon doesn’t even give a shit if the fat cop draws his pistol and kills him. He starts out talking, but he can’t help it, two minutes in, he’s red faced and yelling. “Look at my military record. I’m an explosives expert. An expert, you get that? I was a tunnel rat, you even know what that is? I went in the tunnels, and when I came out, everybody in there was dead, blown to eternal hell. If I blew up Larry’s truck and Larry was in it, he would be dead when the stuff went off, not lingering in this world. You got to find somebody doesn’t know shit about explosives.”

            Cop wants to shoot Lon, and Lon doesn’t even care. Instinct, he keeps his hands in sight, doesn’t get close to the cop. Mind says let him shoot me, what the hell difference does it make anymore, but instinct says survive, so he yells, but he doesn’t act totally like an idiot, and he doesn’t move close to the cop, and the cop wants to shoot him but doesn’t. He’s seen vets before.

            The cop doesn’t take Lon in. Later, Chris says, “They’re just talking, just asking questions. They know you’re not going anywhere they can’t find you.”

            Three days later, Clive screeches to a stop out front, low riding blue car, hits the ground shooting, god damned stupid kid, doesn’t get his feet steady under him, but starts pulling the trigger before the car even stops rocking from fast stop. Lon thinks, Larry died. First bullet hits the house right behind Lon. Second and third bullets hit the awning, slap the awning with sudden, tinny sounds.

            Lon rarely carries anymore, but this morning he did. Woke up sweating and dying. Nightmares, cancer, a bad heart and a bad back, and one of the voices that talks inside his head tells him, pack his pistol, or maybe it’s a new voice, he can’t tell, so he loaded the 9 mm, put one in the chamber, put it on the bench beside him when he walked outside and sat in spring sunshine.

            Mallard ducks skidded through the air overhead, wings set, skidded through the air, splashed onto the pond out in front of Lon. Way their wings cocked, body held up at a sharp angle, dropping toward the water bright in sunshine, they looked for all the world like a F-16 fighter taking off, gaining altitude fast. Geese, honking loud, eight of em, came in from south, landed on the pond, still honking. Blackbird sang a song about water. Robins hopped on the grass turning green with spring. Sunshine soaked into Lon.

            He had a little bit of time to think. He knew what was happening as soon as the blue car came screaming around the corner, and he knew he was going to die anyway, today from bullets or a month or two from cancer or from heart unable to take it anymore, and he could choose to accept Clive’s bullets, compose himself to die, and let Clive live. He did consider that, his mind working smoother than anytime since Nam, but he decided Clive was too damned dangerous to keep walking this earth, because Lon did not blow Larry up, was not dangerous to anyone but himself, and if Clive was going to shoot people because he thought they did what they didn’t do, then Lon’s last responsibility was to drop Clive, like being sure to leave the key with the desk clerk when you checked out.

            Fourth bullet hit Lon high left shoulder, messed up flesh and bone. Fifth bullet took the bottom of his heart, really tore up inside flesh and arteries, but by then, Lon raised the 9 mm, one shot, forehead. Slammed Clive back into blue car as Clive sent bullet five through spring air to Lon, and Clive’s brains and blood sprayed blue car.

            Clive was gone gone gone, gone on that midnight train. Lon saw he hit Clive just right, not that he ever doubted, and thought, Now what they tell me, there is a tunnel, I read this in a book about dying, and a light, and someone waiting for me, and I never did get it right, and my attitude has been wrong wrong wrong ever since Vietnam, but is there nothing at all, or is there loving god who forgives my fucking attitude and do I walk toward radiant light and leave all wars and all nightmares behind me forever? And he was gone gone gone, gone through bright, warm spring sunshine on that whistle-blowing midnight train.