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CHAPTER 1
That evening after his father's funeral, once the last mourner bid solemn farewell and vanished into the foggy grove separating his childhood home from the nearest neighbor, Achilles's mother summoned him into the kitchen, the only room free of streamers and balloons, and handed him a big blue envelope that bore no return address or postmark, only his name spelled out in his father's heavy-footed block print. They sat opposite each other at the small oak table, bare save for the mail stacked in the shadow of an empty chair, far beyond reach of the day's last rays sneaking through the vertical blinds and fanning across the tabletop in fat sandy bands the color of his father's coffin. He handed it back. She pursed her lips and drew her shoulders out as she often did before a big announcement, but said nothing, for which he was grateful because he didn't want to have this conversation again. He'd always insisted that he had no use for his adoption paperwork. She'd always insisted that he would regret never meeting his black blood relatives.
"None of us is here forever," she said, as if that statement alone explained everything. Her tone had been equally matter-of-fact when relating the circumstances surrounding his father's death: killed instantly in a head-on collision while giving an employee a ride home. Even in moments such as these, his mother was steely as a sergeant, beyond surprise, never even commenting on why his father had been halfway across the state, driving an employee home at midnight on a Saturday. She'd scowled during the eulogy, and now looked again on the verge of anger. When Achilles didn't respond, she continued, "I don't want you to regret leaving this undone."
He didn't like the idea of being undone, but didn't see how crawling back to someone would make him done. Regret? He didn't think so. Having been to DC and seen how they lived, he couldn't care less about his birth parents. Even if tracking them down wasn't treasonous, what good could come of crisscrossing the country to confirm that his biological mother was a junkie whore and his sperm-donor dad an ex-con? And other than the occasional elementary school joke because he'd been short, black, and chubby while his parents were tall, white, and thin, race had never been an issue in his neighborhood or his school. "Burn it."
He'd hoped she would finally accept his decision, feel cheered by his fidelity, but instead she cringed. Her lips pulled tight, her head dropped a notch, and her expression passed from reserved and proud to stricken and mournful, and then, for the first time since he'd arrived home, to pained. Achilles moved his seat closer and clasped her hands in apology, though he didn't know what for. Why should he track down people who obviously didn't want him? Achilles didn't grovel.
"I just don't want it, or need it," he said. Accepting that paperwork was like pulling the pin out of a grenade.
"Think about it ..."
Achilles excused himself, turning on the light as he left. He passed his brother in the hall and warned him away from the kitchen. Troy shrugged, offering his usual response to the topic: "Fuck it!"
Yet barely fifteen minutes later, Troy strode into their bedroom holding a blue envelope. Their parents' house was a two-bedroom ranch, so the brothers had shared the same room since Achilles's eighth birthday, when his parents first brought Troy — then six years old — home. Refusing to budge, Achilles sat on the edge of his bed as Troy stepped over him and ducked into the closet, tucking the envelope away behind the loose baseboard where they'd secreted their prized Matchbox cars, the shiniest samples of mica and quartz, and the porn magazines traded for pilfered cigarettes.
Troy avoided Achilles's eyes as he stepped over him to get back to his bed, which was so close to Achilles's that they couldn't sit facing each other without their knees touching. Troy flopped down and the mattress sank to the floor with a thump. In that room, they were like Gulliver in their favorite bedtime story. After reading to them, their mom had coaxed them to sleep by promising that dreams were real and that in them they could do anything, even fly, and they could be anyone, princes or kings or warriors or magicians, or ghostbusters as Troy had demanded one night. They could make up imaginary villages, design spaceships and castles, construct entire cities — tiny towns, she called them — secret places they would always carry with them. With him and Troy and the blue envelope in the room, it felt literally like a tiny town.
"Ass."
"She wants us to have them," said Troy.
"You believe that?"
Troy busied himself shuffling the DD214s — discharge papers — and other forms scattered on his desk, which only came up to his knees. He was a giant in a funhouse, his arms thicker than the desk legs. "It's like money. Just because you don't need it right now doesn't mean you shouldn't take it. Did you ever turn down your biscuit in Goddamnistan because you didn't need the money?"
Achilles shook his head. That was typical Troy, defending bullshit decisions with bullshit excuses. Couldn't he wait another week, a day even? It was a breach, a leak, inviting a ghost into the family. And biscuit? Troy sounded stupid using slang. "We have direct deposit."
"What? You don't know everything," said Troy. "Just because you take it doesn't mean you'll spend it. You never know when you might need it. You wouldn't dump all your rations just because you're full. Besides, give her a break. Be responsible for your own shit." He was fidgeting now, picking at the calluses on his palm as he did whenever someone demanded to see his aces. Troy pointed around the room, his arm long enough to reach most of his possessions from where he sat: the children's books, action figures, Black Sabbath and Public Enemy posters, roller skates; the rucksack, desert boots, flak jacket. "This is my home. Biops? Fuck 'em eight ways!"
But the next morning, only two days after they returned from active duty, and only one day after their father's funeral, Troy was gone.
He should have stopped him. Achilles had heard his brother get up and thought he was going for a jog. Alone, they jogged. Together, they ran and usually ended racing, as had happened the first day back as they neared home, Achilles's shorter strides almost doubled to keep pace with Troy's long legs, kicking the air, their noses pushing into the wind, chest to chest and neck to neck until Troy stole a strong lead by nodding toward a leggy brunette and puffing, "Janice," sending Achilles ducking behind a car until he could confirm there were no dolphins tattooed on the ankles or hearts behind the knees, by which time Troy was so far ahead that Achilles didn't catch up until he was already crunching up the gravel drive. Achilles wasn't trying to avoid Janice in particular, he just didn't want to see anyone else he knew until the funeral, where circumstances would demand brief condolences and he wouldn't be expected to endure stories about a father whom everyone suddenly seemed to know better than he, or to suffer such pity he would have thought himself the dead one.
All the while they were growing up, their father's motto was "be the ones to beat." So they had been competitive, especially with each other. But when Troy distracted him on that run, Achilles sensed something new was at stake, something he didn't want to win, but he couldn't run without trying to win. So as Troy dressed the morning after the funeral, Achilles remained motionless, holding his breath for the long moment when the room grew still and he felt Troy standing above him deciding whether to call Achilles's bluff of slumber and kick the bed, the floor squeaking as he shifted his weight from leg to leg, grinding the grit underfoot, before at last creeping out.
There wasn't a single store within walking distance of the subdivisions that had sprung up around his parents' house, so when he heard Troy's old Beetle coasting down the gravel drive, Achilles thought he was going for cigarettes. When he wasn't back at noon, Achilles assumed he was out sniffing around, or maybe up in Chambersburg, where Mrs. Bowler lived. Troy thought that was still secret, but word spread when someone slept with his high school algebra teacher.
Later that afternoon, Achilles discovered that Troy's blue envelope was gone, as were his watch, locket, and pistols. He searched behind the closet baseboard, and in another cubbyhole where Troy hid candy as a child, pot as a teenager, money as an adult, and, most recently, the photos from their tour. Empty. On a whim he checked the Teddy Ruxpin cassette player, where Troy used to leave notes in which he'd written what he couldn't say. Empty.
Achilles wasn't surprised by the desertion. When they were kids, Troy, who had lighter skin than Achilles, would cut pictures of celebrities out of magazines, hold them next to his face, and say, "Doesn't this look like me?" within earshot of their mother. Sometimes Troy was just an ass, and selfish too. As a child, he frequently squirreled food away in that closet cubbyhole. He ran away twice in middle school and once in high school, always returning before anyone noticed his absence, which had really jerked his chain. So Achilles didn't bother to call him now. It was his father's funeral too.
Nonetheless, Achilles couldn't help but feel a burn in his chest, an unspeakable fear that threatened to shake his bowels loose every time he stumbled over what Troy left behind: his boots, folded BDUs, and the helmet with CONROY written in permanent marker, all coated in the fine layer of dust that had followed them home. He knew it was irrational, but the sight of that equipment gave him the shakes, so he packed it all away in a trash bag, double-bagged it, and stuffed the bundle into the back of the closet under the cover of two blankets. Back in rotation, when someone died his gear remained hanging up as a memorial. The last three weeks of active duty, he'd used only the back flap of their tent to avoid passing Jackson's bunk and seeing his uniform laid out on the bed, the helmet set neatly on top.
He considered making a dental appointment, solely for that moment after the cleaning when the hygienist flossed his teeth. Routine, sure, but it felt so damn good, almost self-indulgent, so indescribably delicious that he'd never admitted to anyone how much he enjoyed the sensation. They would surely think him mad, but he'd missed it all — the sound of unseen cars on wet roads, burning leaves in the fall, sleeping late, his own bed, familiar faces at every corner, silverware in a drawer instead of a bin. Before his eyes though, every image he'd recalled in detail over the last few weeks — those shimmering fantasies he'd counted in place of sheep — faded like apparitions, none being as he remembered. Seinfeld reruns, Marvel comics, his rock collection, Penthouse Letters, James Bond novels, Austin Powers 1 and 2, butter pecan ice cream, Schoolhouse Rock: he flitted from activity to activity like a starving mosquito. Being home alone felt cowardly, like he was one of those FOBBITS who never left the Forward Operating Base. George was always whining about dilemmas of his own design. Comics were for kids — who else believed in superpowers? Austin's accent grated now that he'd met real Brits. Sugar had faded out of his diet. "Conjunction Junction" sounded like Army slang forFUBAR or gangbanging.
The only pleasures that retained a spark were Penthouse Letters, of course, and the Midnight Special: egg, mayonnaise, mustard, relish, and onion on a Pennsylvania Dutch roll. Also known as the Bedeviled Egg Sandwich, according to his mother. It was the Devil's Egg Sandwich according to his father, who'd invented it and therefore insisted that naming was his domain, as were all things egg. Wearing his plaid wool hunter's cap and a pencil behind his ear, their father helmed the stove every Sunday morning, crisping potatoes that Achilles and Troy had grated in a cast-iron skillet, frying thick slabs of bacon and scrapple, scrambling eggs in the bacon grease. Occasionally he fried apples or bananas as a treat. Though he never referred to it, the Betty Crocker cookbook always lay on the table open to hash browns, like a map kept nearby in anticipation of a detour. Nearly six foot four, his father's wingspan allowed him to shake the Jiffy Pop on the stove and grab a beer at the same time. But confining as it was, he always had his sons at his side in the kitchen.
After he discovered what Troy had taken with him, Achilles made a sandwich, but found he wasn't hungry. There was a limit to the number of times he could masturbate in one day, diminishing the pleasure even of Penthouse, so he spent several hours using the weight bench in the barn, working out until his arms were numb. Still he couldn't sleep.
Neither could his mother. At two a.m., he found her in the kitchen filling trash bags with food. The refrigerator, which that morning had been laden with the neighbors' Tupperware, was empty. His mother grew up on a farm and insisted that a woman who couldn't grow her own tomatoes wasn't worth her weight in lipstick. He shouldn't have been surprised that she threw the food away: she had long been suspicious of the neighbors she called beltway bimbos, the smug professional women who considered themselves more modern and feminist than housewives because they commuted to DC, made-up like two-dollar hookers. They filled their shopping carts with frozen organic vegetables and relied on landscapers to nurture their lawns. They used microwaves and pizza delivery services. "Think about that," his mother always said. "Someone else brings food to your house for you to eat. When I was coming up, that only happened when someone died." She also said, "A woman can do what a man does, but a man can't do what a woman does, so if the wife works outside the house, the house won't work," even though she'd held a job for thirty years.
After the food, they took down the decorations, the only sound that of the balloons being popped one by one, until birdsong announced sunrise. When the decorations were all bagged, she brought out a backpack, thrusting it into his hands. She asked if he liked it, if it was sturdy, reliable, dependable. The clerk had assured her it was the next best thing to military issue. Achilles didn't tell her that even though the tag listing all the features was the size of a greeting card, "near military specs" was no reasonable assurance of quality. If anything, it was cause for concern. Humvees that splinter on impact and sever limbs, mounted guns that stovepipe and blind the operator, defective body armor: no big deal as long as it wasn't a class-A accident, meaning costing over a million dollars. There's so much the recruiter doesn't tell you, and you can't even blame him, because if he did ...
"Is it everything he said?" asked his mom, tugging at the zippers. She put on a black poncho. "It has matching rain protection."
"Sure. What's it for?" he asked, trying not to laugh. With the backpack on, she looked like a turtle.
"Training," she said, as if the answer were obvious. Made of black ballistic nylon, with red tags on each silver zipper, the modern design would have been out of place in their house, even if it weren't for the fact that she started wearing it all day, every day.
After a few days without hearing from Troy, a few days of not mentioning him while playing cards with his mom — especially blackjack, which he always won — of fighting the urge to search his gear for clues, of keeping the phone on and ready even when showering, Achilles left him a few messages ranging from "How's the ten-gallon?" to "I'm just checking in" to, finally, a long voice mail advising Troy against being such a dick at such a time, ending with the reluctant admission that even though Achilles had no desire to meet his own birth parents, he would gladly have gone along to meet Troy's. He so badly wanted his brother to answer, and not just to ensure that he was okay. He needed his brother to ask about their mom, to give Achilles an excuse to mention the backpack. Troy would know what to tell her. She spoke often of this trip she and their father had planned, a trip she'd wanted to take all her life, but the details were fuzzy. She made vague references to the East, which he'd initially taken to mean New York or Philadelphia. Sometimes she said Nepal, sometimes India. If asked for more details, she'd only say, "It's up in the air." It was puzzling because, as far as Achilles knew, she'd never been on an airplane.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Hold It 'Til It Hurts"
by .
Copyright © 2012 T. Geronimo Johnson.
Excerpted by permission of COFFEE HOUSE PRESS.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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