Life During Wartime
My phone buzzed. I checked my pocket. Actual phone call, not a phantom vibration. It’s Rick. Ricky. I flip the phone open. Don’t call him Ricky. Don’t ask what’s wrong or tell him my insides jump when his name comes up on the display.
“Rick! Hey!”
“Hey big gringo what’s the good word?”
“Not much man. Kids. Job hunting. Winter. What’s with you?”
“The same. The usual.”
“The same? You got winter down there in the south?”
“Oh yeah. It was down in the 40s the other night.”
“Fuck you.”
“I even had to put on a jacket.”
“Fuuuuuck youuuu.”
“How’s the job hunting?”
“It sucks. Where you working these days?”
“Still welding at that metal shop.”
“The one you were at last Christmas?”
“Yeah.”
“Still thinking of quitting?”
“Yeah. Any day now. Sick of breathing the fumes and shit. That shit fucks you up.”
“Makes sense.”
“And sick of the red necks. Some of these motherfuckers say the most ignorant shit.”
“I hear you.”
“Hey that’s why I’m calling, I wanted to tell you.”
“About what?”
“You remember Darren Greene?”
“Oh yeah. That motherfucker.”
“So you remember?”
I got home after ten. The door was locked. I’d knocked quietly. Mom had answered, holding a bag of ice to a swollen lip. She wouldn’t look at my eyes. I ground my teeth and followed her to the kitchen. Ricky sat at the table with his head in his hands, a five gallon tub of ice cream and a bowl and spoon on the table in front of him. Mom took off the tub’s white plastic lid, dished up the ice cream, handed the the bowl to Rick. He took a bite without smiling. I described how play had been sparsely attended. I guessed that the war had kept people at home. “Will you guys come see the show before it ends?”
Mom patted Rick’s head. “How’s your eye, honey?”
“Better, a little, I guess. It still hurts,” he mumbled.
“What happened?” I asked.
“A seventh grader poked him in the eye with a pencil.“
"What? On purpose?”
“Yeah. The kid called him a camel jockey.”
"What the fuck? Jesus, like a six year old has anything to do with the war. And anyway Ricky’s not even fucking Arab, he’s Mexican. These redneck idiots don’t even know who they want to hate. Oh god. What did Dad say?”
My dad had been former a minor boxing champ, liked to tell stories about beating up redneck assholes who had fucked with his younger brother and about knocking out other construction workers who had disrespected him on the job. He’d recently split my cheek open for cursing when I’d slipped and fallen while walking up the back steps. I could imagine my dad taking a hammer to some white hick kid for something like this. I wished he would; two birds with one stone.
“I didn’t get a chance to tell him. We got into it about something else first. He went out.” Mom picked up the bag of ice and turned away from me. Ricky’s spoon scraped the bottom of his bowl.
“Who was the kid who did it?”
“Darren Greene.”
“I know his brother.”
Mom patted Rick’s head again. “You can sleep in my bed tonight.”
She put the ice bag in the sink, then lifted Ricky up out of the chair. “We’re going to bed.”
“Okay. Good night. Good night Ricky.” I kissed the back of his head.
I went into my room, wanted to scream and shout. I turned on the radio to distract myself, lay down on my bed. I fell asleep listening to a journalist in Baghdad describe what anti-aircraft fire looked like.
“Darren died,“ Rick said, "Did you hear about it?”
“Yeah.”
“You hear how?”
“I did actually. Matt emailed me when it happened. You remember Matt? We were in that band?”
“I remember.”
“Matt was tight with Darren’s older brother Daryl. They both played trombone. Daryl died in a car crash in our junior year.”
“Yeah.”
“Matt emailed me a newspaper article about it.” The article detailed that Darren had walked through the front door of the home of a retired couple and stabbed them both. No one knew why. Their son woke up and shot Darren. The older couple died from their injuries. “I thought of you when I read it but I wasn’t sure you’d wanna talk about it.”
“Makes sense.”
“It’s fucked up.”
“We knew he was fucked up.”
“Yeah. So how you feeling?”
“Me?”
“Yeah.”
“About what?”
“This. Darren dying.”
“Feeling good. Great.”
“Really? Feeling great?”
“Yeah man, feeling great. I feel bad for the old people and their son but man, fuck that guy, I’m glad he’s dead. Got what he deserved.”
“I hear you.” I’d been reading a horror novel at the time. In it a character duct taped another to a chair, poked pins in his eyes, then set him on fire, then threw him in a swimming pool to drown. I wanted someone to do that to Darren.
“At least this proves he was a psycho,” Rick said.
“We already knew that.”
“No. I mean, yeah. We knew, but no one else ever believed me.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean not the bus driver, the teacher, I had to stay at school all day crying and then I had to ride that same bus back home. And mom and dad didn’t do shit.”
“That’s fucked up too.”
“Yeah. I tried to tell mom about it but she went on some trip about Jesus and forgiveness.”
“What?”
“Said I shouldn’t carry grudges.”
“Oh when you told her about Darren dying?”
“Yeah.”
“I can imagine her saying that.” I don’t mention that when I read the newspaper story my first thought was about the Greene boys’ parents. I’ve got kids now. I’ve got friends who’ve lost a kid. I can imagine my kids dying, not knowing how to live anymore, not knowing how to want to live anymore.
“She’s hard to talk to.”
“Yeah.”
“I been trying to text her instead of calling. Anyway that guy’s parents must have done some fucked up shit for him to turn out like that.”
“You think?”
“Yeah. You don’t do stuff like that if you’re normal.”
“True.”
“And if somebody turns out all fucked up like that then there must be something fucked up in their childhood.”
“Could be. I mean, lots of people have fucked up shit in their childhoods.”
“Yeah. And that shit, it fucks you up.”
“Yeah.”
“Well hey El Gringo I gotta run, my girl just came over. We’re gonna watch a movie and I gotta be up early for work tomorrow.”
“Sounds good little bro, I should get dinner on the table here anyway. Love you.”
“For sure. Love you man. Talk to you.”
“Yep, talk to you.”