Running on Hope.

Prompt by Jacob Getz: Write about an ex war veteran, current day stoner/father playing his young son’s video game late at night.

Life’s a b***h and she ain’t giving me no favors. Christopher shivers slightly next to me. I pull up the old afghan I smuggled back from Afghanistan around him, making sure to fold it first so’s the holes get covered up. I touch his forehead estimate his temperature. Boiling hot. I wonder whether to take off the blanket to reduce the heat or leave it on to stop his shivering. Reminds me of the war front, crazy men in turbans painted black screaming across an empty desert shooting at everything and anything the heat which stifled us, kept us hidden behind an overturned truck colliding with the icy cold that gripped my heart. You will die. Life’s funny that way and full of ironies that f**k you over. Sign up for war thinking what the hell live life to its fullest? Dying some heros death can’t be any worse than living on the edge, fearing death from some random teenage dealer after your stash who was faster much faster than you. Who was experienced enough to know death and young enough to not fear it. Whats that line.. looked death in the face and ripped his mask off. Yeah.  Looking back now Im surprised at how much those wiry doped out teenagers were an embodiment of me then and me now. 

I open up my laptop and type into the search engine “fever while shivering home remedies” because I know the medicines that’s needed and know I can’t afford none. It brings out a list, I scan it for something I actually have in the rusted out freezer. Lipton. Limes. Boil 3 bags of Lipton with 3-7 lemons cut in half. Strain before drinking. It’ll being the fever down and help with the cold. Stand up, rearrange my little ninja decked out in his black pajamas on the couch so’s more comfortable and limp over to open the freezer using a makeshift crutch I designed out of firewood. 

They say when a part of you is cut off you don’t realize it for a while. I stared at it for an hour, inhaling sharp putrid dust lying in the sand my leg blown off by some landmine I ran over had risen up into the air while I was tossed forwards, and ironically came to land right in front of my face. Slipping in and out of consciousness I stared at the foot for ages... well Tommy this sure is a predicament, you being in a war and everything with no leg. Charlie Davies said to me from the crannies of my brain... I had kept him there with his old western re-runs. There was a bigger predicament definitely, I was in the middle of enemy grounds on afghan territory unable to call for help wondering how in the name of f**k the hawk eyed brownies hadn’t spotted and shot me to pieces already. “Yessir, this sure is a predicament” I said right back to Charlie Davis. 

There are no lemons. Only little green limes. They’ll do. I cut the limes in half, toss in a pot, throw in some teabags add lots of water... says to boil under low heat for a few hours. Wonder how low low heat should be. Don’t matter no way, they’s all the same one way or another. Everything is. 

When the kerosene stove is set and turned ‘s low ‘s I can get it, I go back to the couch, raise Chris so’s sleeping on me again. Use my foot to nudge on the video game his mother brought him last christmas. Show up once in a while with expensive presents to make up for the fact you’re less of a mother to him than the f*****g Virgin Mary. The game is one of those war games. The type that make me laugh. With blood that wipes of the screen after a few seconds, nice and neat and tidy the way life’s supposed to be. 

But thats the problem. Life ain’t neat, it ain’t tidy and it aint fair. But that never mattered none as my pops used to say. He taught me the things I teach Christopher now: don’t expect nothing, do your best, think. always think. Make friends quickly but don’t expect none of ‘em to have your back. If you want something don’t let nobody tell you can’t have it. You work honest you work fair but you always win. Always. Seems like a lot to expect of a 7 year old boy. But thats you, curled up in your cozy little life, everything handed to you till you were old enough to f**k and past then. My father’s life, my life, my son’s life... they will be hard... have been hard. Not because we want to, but because it’s been decided. Life ain’t fair. Neither’s history. But You take what you got and run with it. 

He coughs, a dry hacking  cough and a fear grips me as I grab him and hold him tight to my chest letting the game’s drop to the floor. I have nothing in life but him and him hacking like this reminds me of General Soto. Old hard commander. Hacking that dry brittle cough over and over, refusing water from his lieutenant lying where he had been shot. We, the whole battalion, were spread out around him, guns cocked, Shoot those b******s on sight. Our backs to him. All we heard was that dry hacking cough. Slugged us in the gut every time. First man down. Best man down. More to come.  Hack hack hack until no more. 

It’s funny how when you love someone, really love someone, you realize how powerless you are over them and you accept it. I want everything to be the best for my son. I want for him to not make the same fucked up mistakes i’ve made.. don’t go into the army rule number 1. Don’t fight nobody’s war for them. Rich mans war. Poor man’s blood... poor mans leg. I see them vets in the subway sometimes... like me they risked life and limb. What the difference between me and them? Nothing. I got lucky. They didn’t. I can depend on disability checks and the s**t I make writing online, to keep a roof over my head no matter how many bowls I gotta strategically arrange around the house when it rains to gather he water coming in from ‘tsame roof. I can put my hope and dreams into my son cause ‘f theres nothing I learned in the army... those hours looking at my blasted off leg, is that you ain’t nobody if there ain’t nobody next to you. Our hope dreams things we want to be all stored in other people. Them vets have nobody, who stores their selves. We’re nobody without hope. Where’s the hope? I tell Chris sometimes. When i’m high as f**k and he’s doing homework or playing his damn game, I tell him, the only thing a n*****s got in this world’s hope. When thats taken away it’s mercy killin’ to put a gun to is head and pull the trigger. 

The hacking stops. My pain starts. It’s the invisible one. The one in the leg that ain’t there. It throbs like i’ve been standing on it all day. Pins an needles they call them. I pull out a joint from my pocket. Don’t stand pain that don’t need to be there. Hop over to the stove to light it, I reach out to light the joint from the fire in the stove loose balance and fall, bringing the table the stove’s on down with me. The clatter wakes Chris up and he hurries over to my side asking if Im okay, his worried self extending an arm to help me up. And as he reaches out to help his crazy old father- lying beneath a table hot putrid mixture of tea and limes, fat on tea, creeping towards him- back to his single leg, I start to laugh. He looks at me funny like maybe i’m high just now. But I ain’t high. Im just realizing how blessed i am is all. Its not luck. Its not hope. Its not anything. Its him Chris.  Right now my laughing is catching onto chris. I pull him down to me and we both sit on the floor and just laugh. Later i’ll put him back to sleep, clean up the mess, put another pot of limes and lipton on, maybe even play the bloody game to the end. But now all that’s important is laughing with my son. An’ making sure he knows, making sure someday when he makes those decisions I can’t do nothing about, he’ll remember the night he and his pops sat on the kitchen floor and laughed like crazy even though nothing was funny and his dad was probably hurting like hell, what with a table turned over him and hot water spilt all over him, but thats the point see.Thats the lesson here.  And if you in your comfy little world with an afghan that ain’t ripped to s**t, a roof that doesn’t leak and a fridge that costs more than the numbers on my disability check don’t get it, it’s none of my concern.

During a rare moment of prolonged consciousness, the soldier lying next to his blown off leg ignores the intense pain from the stump that once secured the now useless appendage. He starts to laugh.