A Sum of Wills

   I lived on the fifth floor of the Ophelia Apartments that winter, near the rail line, and under ten more stories of brick and concrete and rebar. From the outside she was a sturdy thing, but, on the inside, there was always this terrible draft, the chill wind blew through as if the brick walls had never been there at all. I felt like they were made of paper or ribbons or flower pedals, and I’d lay awake at night, curled up as if I were in a fox hole, hoping the three tons of building above me wouldn’t some how fall down on me at once.

   My desk was a beast with paper scales that bristled whenever a gust of wind blew through the walls and into my Spartan room. On it were important things like envelopes with American flag stamps and pension checks from the military, pictures of a girl in a white dress, a girl who had a smile that looked like a promise. There were paper balls filled with the truth and well preserved notebooks full of lies, and an index card with the word “Charlie” printed on it in efficient hand writing. Usually I sat at that desk with a blanket wrapped around me for warmth and wrote in my notebooks. It was all about the war: going to it, being in it, coming back.

   One entry was dated 12/20/80.

   “Michael” he had said, and I can remember the scene now, “You read her letter, I showed it to you didn’t I?” We were flat against the ground, belly down, the earth exploding around us. “Michael, I need you to promise me if I don‘t get back...” The man’s name was Andy, she had even told him in the letter. The earth rumbled and demanded I reply. I promised him.

   A gun is easy enough to find in New York City and easy enough to shoot if you’ve been trained.

   A promise is a promise.

 

   I waited in the room for hours. All I could think of was the way my finger felt on the trigger; all I could of was all the times it had been there before. What if my father had never met my mother, what if the plane I came in on had crashed into the sea, the artillery had struck me before I fired, What if the boy I had killed had been given a different assignment, what if he had killed me first? Then I would not have been a murderer. Had anything been different, anything, anyone, then the whole and absolute truth of the matter would have been different. How cruel free will was to enslave me to this reality, If only I had been cursed by fate, would that not have been beautiful and tragic, poetic even? But it was not fate it was the sum of wills that damned me. They did not rest their fingers on a cold trigger as I did but they were criminals all of them…And yet God would burden me with their sin.

 

   There was a Bible in his hotel room; I placed it in his cold hand when I left the room.

 

   I could see the scene in my head: we were flat against the ground, belly down, earth exploding around us. Charlie was screaming at me over the roar of the guns and pounding of the bombs. I could not hear him. We were all starting to look like each other, all the guys in the platoon, there was barely any difference, with the helmet over his brow, between us, I imagine. He was barking as loudly as he could, a cloud of dirt exploded in front of me and when it settled he was gone. His face was in the eyes of a girl in white dress, who had a smile like a promise, inside of a picture that came with a letter in a bag full of mail. From the beginning, it read “I’m sorry Michael…”