Sandbox Blues

This was written in 2006 before me and my cousin were about to join the army. Our papers fell through and I ended up being a firefighter with another government agency, I guess for the best. This is about my friend who came back from Iraq in 06.

 

I stopped my friend Dave outside of Bakers Square, the restaurant we’d just come out of, and put my hand on his shoulder.

 

“Hey man,” I said, “I’d kinda like to talk to you about something. You mind if we get in?” We got in his car and sat down in silence for a second before he finally said “so what’s up?”

 

I paused for a moment and stared at the floor, I wanted to say this right.

 

“You seem like you’ve been in a really good mood for the past few weeks, and that’s really great. But…” I didn’t quite know how to say these next words, “how come we can’t have a conversation on the phone anymore without one of us hanging up on the other?”

 

“I’ve been busy,” he said, knowing I was talking about something else.

 

“No, it’s not that.”

 

“That time you called me and I was at Drill, yes I was busy with the Army.” He knew what I was talking about, and it wasn’t the last few weekends I’d accidentally called him at Drill and he had to hang up.

 

“What I mean is…It seems like I can’t call you up on the phone anymore without one of us getting angry and hanging up. I want you to know that I don’t call you up to start a fight, we used to be able to talk about anything.”

 

Right then his demeanor changed from sidestepping the inevitable to facing the music, and even though he wasn’t looking at me, I knew he understood. He didn’t attack me, he seemed to be talking to his steering wheel.

 

“It’s because you hit landmines,” he said, an uncanny calm lingered in his voice. “We end up talking about subjects that just hit a nerve, and I try to back out of them but you keep pushing and pushing.”

 

“I don’t mean to do that,” I said matching his calm, “ever since you came back from Iraq, you’ve been…different. I’m having trouble understanding.”

 

“That’s the whole thing,” he interrupted, “I know you don’t understand, no one understands. No one understands what it’s like over there.”

 

I sat silent then, feeling that the next things he was about to say were far more important than any complaint I could ever have.

 

“You didn’t see PFC Rojas drop,” he tapped the roof of his car and let his hand fall with “drop” and all of the sudden I was sitting in a Humvee with a weapon at my side and a dead soldier across my lap. I heard an IED go off somewhere outside of where I was sitting. That’s what killed him, Dave had told me the story. A young Private whom I know only as “PFC Rojas” was killed when a vehicle-bomb exploded near Dave’s Humvee, everyone else was okay. I stayed in that Humvee for a while until Dave’s voice brought me back. 

 

“It’s not just you,” he said still staring his steering wheel, “I’m having trouble keeping my cool around everyone. Even at work one guy said something about the war and I felt like saying to him ‘you’re a f*****g idiot,’ but I just had to walk away.” Now his tone changed a little bit, and his voice got a little higher. “Even my own grandmother, she says ‘oh I saw the news and it doesn’t look that bad,’ as if she suddenly knows everything that’s going on.”

 

Dave’s Grandmother once told him that he should take karate lessons to learn how to defend himself because his 2^nd degree black belt in Judo didn’t count. I could imagine her saying something like that to him. 

 

“I can’t drive in a car with the windows down anymore.” This surprised me, and I looked up. What did driving with the windows down have to do with the war? “I can’t drive with the windows down because I’m too afraid of getting shot at from outside.”

 

I was confused. “But this is Downey, California, not Iraq.”

 

“It doesn’t matter, the other day Vince was driving with the window down and I had an anxiety attack.”

 

An anxiety attack. Dave? This was a side of him I hadn’t seen before, and I was concerned. “What happened?”

 

“Nothing. Vince was driving and I noticed that the window was rolled down, and I just got very anxious and panicky and my head started to hurt,” he stiffened up then, his back straightened up against his seat and his hands clutched its edges. His eyes closed for a moment and then opened again, his sigh came out heavy and pained. “One time Mike had to turn off the news because I just got so emotional over it.”

 

“What was on the news?”

 

“I think it was some program on the Military Channel or something, but Mike just got up and turned it off and said ‘you’re not watching this anymore.’ It was about Al Sadr and all the trouble he’s causing over there right now. That was my AO (area of operation), Sadr City, I should have shot the b*****d while I was there, I had every reason to and I didn’t. D****t, I should have!”

 

I shook my head consolingly. “Dave, you can’t save the world by yourself.”

 

“But I could have kept more people from dieing, I could have saved lives.”

 

“Well, people are dieing everyday all over the world, look at what’s happening in Africa.”

 

“I, I know,” he stopped me, “but it’s different.” He looked up from the steering wheel then, our eyes met somewhere in the middle of the place he was struggling to flee. I sat attentive and willing to listen, but something about his eyes bothered me. They looked like marbles in a glass jar…glazed over, clouded. Just moments ago when we were inside the restaurant, he’d been smiling and laughing like I’d never seen him smile before, and I thought everything was okay. I thought he had finally come home and the Sandbox Blues were long gone, abandoned on the unmarked lines of a foreign war. Looking at his eyes now though, one would think that a few moments ago never happened. I wanted to reach out and touch his face, but I couldn’t find it in me to move, he felt so far away. He spoke, that haunting calm ever present.

 

“There were these two Iraqi girls who scrubbed floors at the Army base,” he continued. “We talked to them a few times, all these two girls did was scrub floors at the Base. One was 18 and the other was I think 19.” Girls my age. I shivered thinking of teenagers in Iraq. He paused for a second, as if reflecting. 

 

“Do you know what ‘mewling’ is?” He spelled it out for me, “like a cry a cat makes when it’s in heat?” I affirmed that I knew what he was talking about, “until you hear a human make that sound, you have know idea what real horror is. Those two girls were kidnapped at gunpoint and executed on videotape, and it was delivered to the Army Base. I will never forget the sound that those girls made.”

 

It got cold in the car then, the freezing night draft outside had managed to wreath its way through the thin armor of our car walls. The breeze outside seemed to pick up and blow bits of newspaper around the sidewalk, headlines declaring terror attacks in Iraq have gone up and naming off soldiers who had lost their lives that week, tossed by the wind like tumbleweeds. I didn’t realize there were goose bumps all up my arms until I shivered, and didn’t stop. Outside there was war.

 

I saw myself standing on a dusty side street in full body armor and military fatigues. In front of me was an unmarked, beat up compact car full of Hajjis with black face masks and AK47’s. They dragged two hostages from the back seat, spit on them, stomped on their faces, kept kicking them and kicking them. In that culture, to kick someone is to make them sub-human and take their honor. Their hostages—two girls with flowing black hair sticking out all over the place from their hijabs.

 

I reached for my weapon but found that I had none. I was unarmed, yet I seemed to go unnoticed. I saw the faces of the two young girls. They were screaming, their mouths gaping wide in inaudible prayers to the same god whose name their captors were shouting, but no sound came out. Their screams were muted to me, I did not hear their “mewling.” But I saw the execution, and I will not describe it here. When I came back to the car, I looked at Dave, and had no words, and was still cold. He was trembling.

 

“When you came back,” I nearly whispered, “I felt like I didn’t know you. I hadn’t heard your voice in over a year, emails just didn’t feel real. You came back on leave and I didn’t know how to reach you. You were desolate and despondent, spouting hate, I didn’t know what to say. I don’t know what to say now.”

 

“There’s not much you can say. Not many people can understand what’s going on over there. People are dying in bloody heaps. I didn’t understand a lot of things about that place until I got there.” I felt like he was telling me that I’d understand someday.

 

“When I came back,” he continued, “you misinterpreted what I said about your friend, and that’s why we fought the first time.”

 

“You said my friend deserved to get thrown out of his house for being gay—“

 

“—but I said that because a lot of the soldiers who were being raped on the base were men. One attack we had was where one guy was attacked by 8 men, all soldiers! I was bitter when I came back, but I would have said the same thing about any other teenager who was over 18 and wasn’t paying rent, their parents aren’t legally required to be nice to them, I don’t want to discuss it right now.”

 

I didn’t want to argue about it either. This was where our fights usually started, about my gay best friend or my stance on women's rights, he'd say something like that and it would set me off. Sometimes young girls and old-boys don't mix. I bit my tongue there and held my cool.

“Ever since you came back from Iraq and started snapping at me, I’ve wanted to tell you so bad ‘Dave, it wasn’t me.’ I wasn’t one of those female soldiers who slept around at the base and made your team short of people the day that PFC Rojas was killed, I wasn’t—“

 

“Please! I know!” Right then Dave snarled under his breath to imaginary demons, “f*****g b*****s! Goddamn f*****g b*****s!”

 

“Okay, okay! It’s okay!” I put my hands up to grasp the situation, “it’s okay, really, I didn’t say anything, don’t worry just pretend I didn’t say anything.” Dave wasn’t even speaking to me, he was really cracked up over this. I’d never seen Dave lose it before, this Ranger with broad shoulders and a joke to make about everyone had always come off as cool and collected, but tonight I saw that it was all fake. Dave played us all for fools about how he was really handling being home. I guess I was wrong about everything being okay, though his body had come home, it seemed like his spirit was still fighting a war somewhere far away, lost in the sands. When it would start making its way back home I doubt even Dave knew.

 

He calmed down after a moment, and then spoke again in the same uncannily calm tone he’d used all night.

 

“I’m acting different because I am different. I’ve never had 20% hearing loss from an IED blowing up a few feet away from me. I’ve never seen the corpses of a dozen children dead on the ground because of the frags I ordered my men to throw over the wall. I’ve never had to shoot 14 and 15 year old kids because they’re throwing grenades. I’ve never had to deal with these kinds of things, and sometimes I just can’t take it. When you talk about certain things, it just backs me up into a corner and I can’t stop.”

 

“…I don’t want you to feel that way, I want to help, I feel so helpless.”

 

“I know how you feel, and as long as you let me back out of subjects I can’t deal with, you’ll be doing all you can. I don’t know when it will get better, I don’t know when I’ll be okay. But, there are things I just…can’t support you on right now.”

 

“I understand.”

 

He didn’t realize that that was my landmine, the subjects that he didn’t support me on. A few weeks ago, Dave said something to me that I just couldn’t take. He said to me, “Nicole, the day you get your Ranger Tab is the day I rip mine off.” That conversation ended with shouting and a click. Maybe if I ever get to be a soldier like Dave, I’ll learn how to keep my cool like him, but maybe he just couldn’t support me right now, and maybe that’s okay.

 

Before I got out of Dave’s car, I leaned over, gave him a hug and held him for a minute. I hugged him similarly before he left for Iraq, and that day he said something to me that I’ll never forget.

 

“Nicole,” he said, “don’t let anyone tell you you’re incapable. You do what you have to do for you, and don’t worry about what anyone else says.”

 

I remember spewing some sappy speech about how he was my hero and I admired him, and told him that if he came home on his shield, I’d kill him. “Good God,” he’d said to me, “did you rehearse that?”

 

“Actually no,” I said proudly.

 

“Well you really should rehearse it next time, it sounded thrown together.” Sometimes I love that guy.

 

As I hugged Dave in his car, he put his hand up and touched my elbow that was around his neck. A classic “Dave hug,” And even though I’ll hold him tight and squeeze the air out of him, I know he’ll hug me just like that in July, when his year of stabilization is up.  

 

“I’ll seeya later okay.”

 

“k.”

 

“bye.”

Reviews

[yinseriv]

From the first to the last word I found the story real and compelling. The segue between his words and her imagination was an effective buffer that allowed a glimpse of the horror without slipping in the blood. The study of the defenses both physical and psychological was dead on. The write allowed me to be a backseat witness. Good work.

[SR Urie]

Hi Nicole.
What a privaledge to read this story. It's been said too many times, but it's funny how people get redundant facts explained to them over the news or some 'military' documentary, and then they're experts on the subject of war, of standing watch in a foreign country, or how a returning veteran is supposed to feel about everybody around them. After 911 and uncle GW declared 'war on terror,' it seems that our society was pidgeonholed on the two towers and how many Americans died that day, not having any idea what it's really like in places like Iraq, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. To go into detail about social differences would be inapropriate, but make no mistake that this war is going on for good reason; there are some very evil sovereinties in the world who'll happily kill all infidels. I didn't mean to get secular on my political soapbox, but the thing you've gotten at that is crucial is our responsibility as a society to take care of our returning vets the best that we can, and that sometimes means leaving those individuals alone when it's time and being there when they reall need us.
Great work, darlin'. Keep it up! BZ

[Tony]

Nicole, this is excellent work and the subject matter is of the utmost importance.
You have obviously had an interesting life and you put it down quite eloquently.
I hope you will continue to share your unique perspective for the world to see.

[Robwills]

I served in the navy, that is how it is, what is there to explain.If you haven't been there, how will you know?
But you wrote your knowledge well,a good job.

[Nicole Hellene]

True Story, he's been back for a while now, but he came back, lost his regular job, lost his friends, pretty much lost his grip. Another girl came back and killed herself. We're all from the same town.

[Raef C. Boylan]

Is this a true story?
I kind of hope it is; I don't want you or your friend to have suffered like that, but it would be good to have this knowledge of how it is over there. People are either apathetic about Iraq, or angry about it because their kids are fighting over there. I'd like to form an objective stance based on knowing the situation, as opposed to empathising with the Middle East because of what we've done to them for years...hell, centuries technically.

It was really well-written. I know that's a lame critique, but can I come back after you've said whether it's a true story?

Seems you're cursed with writer's imagination - we experience living through more things than people realise because of it.

p.s. one typo spotted:
"But I could have kept more people from dieing" [dying]

p.p.s.
Have you heard of a performing poet called Andrea Gibson? Her 'poem for Eli' is on YouTube; it's about the Iraq war, and is insanely moving.