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jerrygabriel.net Reagan's Army in Retreat Fiction, Vol. 17/No. 2, 2002 The first sound I heard in the morning was a hunting knife-a Bowie, I knew, when I saw the too-large blade-cutting right through the top of my tent. Soon a small pile of snow fell on top of me and a bearded, barrel-chested man in a camo-jacket stood over me, silhouetted by an overcast sky. "What in the hell you think you're doing, chief?" he said. "Huh?" I wasn't yet sure if I was still asleep or not. "You best have some answers better than huh," he told me. I couldn't see the man too well, the light behind him making him mostly shadows. "Donnie?" I said. "No, not Donnie." "Hold on a second," I said, starting to get a picture of the situation. "I think there's just been a misunderstanding." "Buddy, where I stand this here's more in the realm of major fuck up." "Yes," I said. "I'll clear it all up in a sec. You won't need that thing out though." "I'll put it away soon enough," he said. "You got one minute." He pulled back the sleeve of his coat to examine a large watch. I sat up. "You live here, I guess?" I could see him now. He was not my brother-much heftier than Donnie, not at all the right demeanor. "That's right, genius," he said. "I live here." "You know Donnie Holland?" "What's Donnie Holland have to do with your butt playing Boy Scout in my wife's flower garden?" "Donnie's my brother." "Chief," he said, "that's a problem well beyond my control." "I thought this was his yard," I said. "It ain't." "I can see that," I said. "Used to be." "Yeah?" "What do you want here?" "I came into town late during the storm," I told him. "I looked up Donnie, came here, and there was no answer. I didn't have anyplace to go, so I set up a tent." "Some people work," he said. "We go to bed early." "I'm sorry," I told him. "I'll get my stuff out of here." "You're Donnie's brother?" he asked, incredulous. "That's right." "You don't look a thing like him." "We're adopted," I said. He looked at me blankly. "From different families," I added. "He don't live here no more," he said. "Got it." "I mean, he don't live in JC no more. Moved down to Texas few months back. Maybe a half year now. That's an old fucking bag there." He had bent down and was feeling the material of my sleeping bag like it was Thai silk. "What is that, Korean Era?" "Thereabouts," I said. "My father's." "You don't see them much." I was out of the sleeping bag by now and had my boots on. There was nothing left to do but stand up, right through the skylight he had created. Standing, I could see a world of white in all directions, the murky dawn behind it. In the picture window of the house stood the rest of the man's family, a youngish woman and two kids, a boy and a girl. "You get your stuff packed up and you come inside and have some food," he said. "That's all right," I said. "I need to be pushing off." "No," he said firmly. "You come inside for some eggs. I'll find you another tent out in the garage-got a box of them fuckers somewhere." I did as he said. I was cold to the bone and wasted little time being neat with the tent, wadding it up in a ball and shoving it in the empty spare tire well. The door of the small house opened onto the living room, where the man's wife was stoking a wood-burning stove, the kind my grandmother used to have-one that you can cook on and bake in. The room was already unbearably warm to stand in, and the contrast from the cold outside made me list a little. "Hello," I said timidly. "Hi," she said. "I'm Carol. This here's Toby and Netty." She pointed to two children sitting in chairs at a table in the next room. The man reappeared after just a minute, holding a brand new camouflage tent bag still in a clear plastic outer cover. He briefly observed it as if it were a large piece of rotten fruit, and then handed it to me. "What's your name?" he asked. "Nate Holland." "I'm Roger Mills," he said and grabbed my hand. "Nate here is brothers to old Donnie," he told his wife. "Thought Donnie still lived here. That's why the camp-out." Carol nodded slowly and seemed to hide a grin. "I got some breakfast on the table," she said. "Ah shit," Roger said, holding his head askew, grimacing. "I ain't got time," he said. "I forgot I got to go over to Dwight's and help him load up that bed and dresser." "Well take some bacon or something with you," Carol said. "I'll get something later," he said. He kissed her and then the kids and then made his way for the door, stopping briefly to scrutinize me again. "I reckon it's safe to leave the brother of old Donnie Holland alone with my family," he said, not really to anyone but himself, and then he opened the door to the front yard. I could see the large sheath of the knife at his side. "I hope you have some luck finding that old boy," he said over his shoulder. "He's crazy as a shithouse rat. In Amarillo or some damn place." "Thanks," I said, now at the door myself. There wasn't any need explaining that I wasn't looking for my brother exactly. "I appreciate the tent." "Late Christmas," he said, and then he was gone, and there was, in fact, something aloof and Santa-like about him. *** "Sit down there," Carol was saying. There was a large mound of scrambled eggs on the table, and a gallon container of orange juice, and some dry-looking, microwaved bacon. "You like some toast?" she asked. "That's okay," I told her. "This'll do fine." I hungrily ate all the food on my plate. The kids, who were both somewhere in the vicinity of 10 years old, were a little antsy and not too interested in their food; the boy had a book he half hid under the table and stole glances at until his mother told him to put it down and eat. I saw when he put it down that it was The Son of Tarzan. School had been canceled, Carol told me, and the kids were going to go sledding after breakfast. "Where do kids go sledding in Kansas?" I asked. The girl, Netty, giggled, whether at my accent-not too different from the ones she must have known-or my question or out of sheer giddiness, I didn't know which. "There's places," Carol said smiling a very pretty smile. "The river bluffs. There's a few big hills over there." "Which river's that?" I asked. "Three of em here," she said. "They'll be going to the Kansas, though." I nodded. There was a very long silence, in which time I knew I was supposed to ask something else, but didn't. And, for that matter, she was probably supposed to ask me something else, too-what, maybe, had brought me to Junction City in a snowstorm. And how come I didn't know my brother had moved a half year ago? She might have asked where I lived, if I was married, did I have kids of my own? But neither of us said anything and I was a little relieved for it. She did offer me some more food, which I declined. I got up and refilled my coffee cup at the counter, though, and walked over to the sliding glass doors behind the kids to take a look at the morning forming outside. From there, I could see that the Mills' house more or less marked the end of Junction City Proper. Beyond was an eternity of plains, snow-covered and still at this hour. The sun had finally shown through in earnest and made the snow glisten a little. For some crazy reason, I imagined the place full of buffalo, which was something I sometimes did when I was traveling through the Plains states. And I imagined, too, my brother standing here and observing his piece of the pie-probably even imagining buffalo himself. It was the kind of thing he was given to when he was younger-he read westerns and war novels like some kids threw tennis balls against walls, perpetually enacting the scenes in the woods around our farm. It wasn't much, what was out there on the plains: unwanted land mostly, no water, no trees, hardly arable. It stood on the edge of a whole lot of nothingness. But there was something appealing about it, too, and I could easily imagine him with a cup of coffee in his own hand before going in to the light bulb factory-his job last we spoke-and being stirred inside by what he saw there at dawn. Netty was soon at my sleeve, asking if I wanted to play UNO. She had a deck she'd gotten for Christmas, she said, and maybe we could all play a game now that breakfast was over. I was about to beg off, explain that I needed to get on the road to make up some lost time, but then, we all more or less simultaneously smelled something burning. "Mom," Toby said without looking up from The Son of Tarzan, which he no longer bothered concealing. "Toast is burning." The rest of us looked to the toaster, which sat on the countertop, empty-unplugged even. Carol got out of her chair very quickly and ran toward the living room. I decided to sit at the table and await the news. The kids did the same. Netty looked at me. "I'm nine," she said. "Yeah?" I said. "That's pretty old." She giggled. "But you're older than that." "Yes," I said. "That's true." "How old?" she said. "Too old to compare with that." "How old?" "Thirty." "Oh my god," she said. "Thirty?" "It's not as bad as all that." "Mommy," she yelled into the other room, "is thirty old?" Instead of replying, Carol was saying "shit" repeatedly in the other room. "Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit." I got up to go in and see what the problem was, and the kids followed me, Toby, I noticed, reluctantly marking his place in the book with a "Vacation Bible School" bookmark. Soon we were all standing in front of the stove, which was issuing black smoke into the room. "Jesus," she said. "What's the matter with it?" "Maybe the flue's shut," I suggested. "I'm pretty sure it's not." I reached down and turned the lever, and a huge cloud of smoke puffed from it before I could turn it back. We all coughed, and the kids ran out of the room, screaming, half-playing. "What do you got in there?" I asked. "Wood," she said. "Paper, to get it going. A little trash. Toilet paper rolls, cereal boxes, a milk carton or two. Should I try to put it out?" "Yes," I said. "Put it out." She grabbed a fire extinguisher from the kitchen and fired it into the belly of the stove. In the meantime, I went out into the yard to check to see if anything was coming from the chimney. Flames, in fact, were coming from it, as was black smoke. I scuttled back through the yard, up to my knees in the snow. "Looks to be in the chimney," I said. Smoke still filled the room, and Carol held a blue phone receiver in her hand. The kids were standing there in the living room, watching with something like excited interest, like they might be waiting their turn to bat at softball. Fear had not yet taken hold of them as it had for Carol, who was now talking to the local emergency dispatcher. What I felt was something slightly more complicated. I had the benefit of not being involved; I had just met these people not a half hour ago. This house and a hundred others like it could burn down. Entire cities in Kansas or California could get swallowed up by earthquakes or tornadoes; what did it matter to me? I was the dispassionate observer, transmitting everything into neutral and innocuous language in my head. Then the thought crossed my mind to just leave. I wasn't up for being bothered by the tragedy I foresaw. It wasn't like they were asleep and in much danger; they would get out. And so I did. I left the camo tent where it rested on the floor and walked out the front door, as if I were going to go check on the chimney again. I didn't say anything to the family, and they were already deep enough into the event not to notice my comings and goings. *** Outside, it had turned into a bright, cloudy day, and the tons of snow lay brilliant over the yards and cars and rooftops. Fire came from the chimney in droves now, spitting wild flames upward which then disappeared and seemed to have been altogether suppressed before even higher flames replaced them. I was very near my car when I noticed an elderly man approaching, walking very slowly with a poodle on a leash. He was in the street, which had been plowed at some late hour-I'd heard the truck from my tent in the night-but there were still several inches of snow on the ground and his feet made dense, crunchy sounds in it. He came right up to me like he knew me. We stood quietly for a moment, observing the chimney. "This don't look good," he said, shielding his eyes from the rising sun with his arm. "No," I confirmed. "Not good." "You live here, do you?" "No. It's the Mills' place." "Mills?" he said. "They come and go so damn fast anymore, I can't keep up with 'em." He observed his dog. "Digger," he yelled. "Get away from there." Digger was inspecting the front driver's side tire of my car. "For years a family named Blankenship lived in this here house," he explained. "Lifer over at Fort Riley, of course. Drill sergeant the likes of which you won't find anymore, I imagine. Served overseas twice, et cetera." Then he began pointing to each house with his cane and naming the families he associated it with. "Colsons there. Martins. Funks. Dells. Timsons." He went right down the block. "Uh huh," I said. "All gone?" I didn't really know why I was even in this conversation. But he seemed to have lost interest in this train of thought. "Chimney fire, ain't it?" he said. It felt like we might be observing children ice skating, such was the casualness of his tone. "I think so. You know what to do about that?" "Nah," he said. "Call the fire department. That's why we pay taxes." "Yeah," I said. "Sure." "You visiting here from Ohio, are you?" he asked, pointing to the license plates on my car with a wooden cane that seemed purely ornamental. "That's right," I said. He nodded. "Excellent football in Ohio. What was it, Hopalong Cassidy. Woody Hayes. That there Archie Griffin. Long history of excellent football." In another manic shift, he looked around abruptly and got a sour look on his face. "Jesus," he said. "Look at this goddamned place. You got Coloreds and Hispanics all up and down here now." He was shaking his head. "Hell, I don't know. I ain't got nothing against any honest folks. But it just makes me sick to see everything go the way it has is all." Something about this sad man bothered me a lot more than it should have. "I should check on the house," I told him. He looked up at me. Was it disgust he had for me or some other emotion I hadn't yet seen or felt? "You ought," he said, apparently calm again. "Probably a chimney fire, though. Can't do much but wait on something like that." He seemed like he'd been walking around looking for the opportunity to have this conversation, and now that it was over, he was spent for the day. "Come on Digs," he said and turned back in the direction he'd come from. I walked back to the house then, no more aware of a decision to do so than I was of the day of the week or what exactly my purpose in the world was. *** Inside, I walked through the living room to find that the rear sliding glass door was open and Carol and the kids were piling electronics on the deck, in the snow. I could see that all of it was junk, nothing newer than a decade old. There was a monitor and disc drive of an early Commodore computer, a Panasonic component stereo from when stereos were all encased in flashy aluminum. A microwave and toaster oven and a dated boombox with all sorts of useless graphics on the front. The kids struggled into the kitchen, together hauling a large-screen television; it was far too big for them to carry and they swayed under the weight. I took it from out of their hands and, looking over my should at them, I told them to go around opening all the windows. I didn't know if this was any sounder a plan than starting a back-fire on the couch to combat the blaze in the chimney, but it seemed right, and they disappeared into the back rooms again, seemingly glad to be helping. The stack of belongings on the back porch was already significant. I stepped over a hibachi grill and another television and gingerly sat the TV down on the crowded deck and turned to go back inside but met with Carol carrying a half closed suitcase of clothes. She marched right past me and flung it out like it was an unwanted viper. The jettisoned case twisted through the air and then hit the deck banister, spun over the top, and released all its contents like paratroopers before it finally landed in the soft snow itself, more or less empty. It was then that we first heard the sirens echo through the otherwise silent dawn. Carol looked up toward the sound for a moment, but almost immediately turned on her heel and re-entered the house, saying over her shoulder, "Would you pull out the kitchen table?" Before I could respond, Netty was again before me, this time hauling an aquarium with a lizard inside from inside the kitchen, which was getting clouded with smoke. "Jesus. He'll freeze to death out here," I said. "He doesn't have blood like us." She just looked up at me like I was the crazy man who inhabited their back porch. "He was Winston's lizard," she said. "Who?" "Winston Holland," she said, pointing at the lizard. Winston, I remembered, was my brother's youngest son. "His name is Gordon," she said. "Why didn't Winston take him to Texas?" I said. She seemed overcome with some horrible thing, something she'd been fearing somehow, but holding at bay by sheer force of will. Her lips turned downward, but she did not cry. "Winston got that disease in his spine," she said. "What?" She seemed uncomfortable in her body, like it wasn't the right size. "Winston died, Netty?" She nodded. "Put Gordon there, inside the door," I said. "Leave the door open. He'll be okay. The fire department's almost here now. It's all going to be okay." She did as I said and then started to go back in. "Ah no," I said. "You stay right here. You've got to promise me you'll stay right here. Promise?" "I promise," she said. "It's okay," I told her. "I'll be right back." I went inside and saw that the fire had finally burned through the chimney and had spread into the roof. You could see the flames right there in the living room; it was really going now. I pulled out the small kitchen table, like Carol had asked, and the four chairs, and then I went in again. The smoke was dense and watered my eyes. I yelled for Carol. "Here," came a reply from the basement. I stood at an open door off the kitchen that looked down a flight of stairs. "You've got to get out of there," I said. "It's going to be okay. The fire department's going to put it out. But we got to get out now." "There's some stuff down here Roger'd die without." I quickly lowered myself down the steep steps into the room. It was a half-basement, nearly full of motorcycle equipment-including the rusted bodies of two old Harleys-and faded army gear, some furniture. "So stupid," she said. "So goddamn stupid." She was sobbing now, nearly ready to crumple into a ball and give in. "This stuff will be okay, Carol. Smoke damage isn't going to hurt this stuff. It's all okay. Help is here. Where's Toby?" She shrugged. "I don't know," she said. "Let's go," I said. "Get a coat on." I guided her back up the stairs and outside, where she picked up Netty and the two of them were frozen there in time for a moment, part of some awful painting of tragedy or defeat, like some artistic critique of capitalistic society with all their possessions behind them. I found Toby in his room looking at the top of his closet, which was full of board games. There was nothing in the room for him to use to reach them. "Come on, bud," I said. "Get a coat on and get outside. I'll get these." I reached up and brought down as many as I could hold. We were both starting to cough now from the smoke. "It's all fucked, ain't it?" he said. It seemed an awfully perceptive question to me just then, one that might have crossed my own mind. "No," I said. "Not all of it is. It's never all fucked." *** Outside, the four of us congregated on the large porch, standing among the articles of their lives. The sirens were loud now. "It's going to be all right," I repeated, this time to them all. "Everyone's okay. They're going to put this out in a hurry." "The hell they will," Carol cried. "The whole thing is going to burn." "They're here," I said. "They're right here." I didn't even know how to try to make it okay. And she was right; the place was probably going to go up. The roof was already in flames. I saw then that this would be the end of it for the Mills in Junction City. There was nothing keeping them here anymore. Roger, like my brother, was no longer in the army-probably hadn't been for years. Likely, he did plumbing or brickwork or something else that other places needed just as bad, and they would be flung to some other place now, drawn by necessity from the Plains, back to Kentucky or New Hampshire or California-wherever they'd come from back then. There were tens of thousands like them, I knew, perhaps hundreds of thousands, brought here to serve during the height of Reagan's Army. There was nothing unique about the Mills in this, except they would be merely the latest in a long series of victims to suffer at the hands of calamity, natural disaster, disease, economic failure. At about the time the trucks barreled into the yard out front, something next to Toby's foot caught my eye, sitting there half covered in snow: it was a small plastic toy like one I'd once had. It was called 2XL, I remembered, a robot my brother and I had owned when were little. It was not really a robot, but an 8-track player that was meant to seem robot-like. It was a trivia game. I picked it up and turned it over. There in faded black marker were our names: Donnie Holland/Nathan Holland. Of course it was ours-how many of these things could have been made. But it still startled me, like I'd dug down in the snow and found my brother himself there. Donnie never cared much for 2XL, but I had sat for hours on end with it in a small cubby hole in the bedroom he and I shared, eventually memorizing all the tapes that came with it. "Who was the first man to walk on the moon?" 2XL would ask. "Press A for Buzz Aldrin, B for John Glenn, or C for Neil Armstrong." When you gave the right answer, 2XL-speaking in a faux computer voice not unlike R2D2's-said, "Correct. Would you like to hear Mr. Armstrong's famous words?" If you hit A then, Neil Armstrong's distant, staticky voice came on, repeating his wisdom for the millionth time. I was lost for just a minute, holding the thing. The family was rushing toward the road, where the fire fighters were already digging out buried hydrants. I put 2XL down where I'd found him and observed him there amidst the detritus of the Mills' lives-a collection of things not terribly different from what I would have to show were my life laid bare this way. Minutes passed. The fire seemed on the brink of being completely out of control, and when the first water finally hit the flames, they were all huddled together, watched with some mix of hope and despair. I wanted to mourn with them, to feel something profound for them. But I couldn't help, instead, missing my brother, a man of thirty-four now, living under his own dark cloud who knew where. I felt ridiculous for having forgotten about 2XL, because in that dumb piece of plastic junk I had found myself in an entirely other life I had lived, and there was my brother, leading me through multiflora rose next to a snow-covered creek, guiding me through the imaginary world he inhabited of SS troops and landmines. I was happy then to be back with him, before every inevitable thing that came to pass afterward. He was pressed against the white earth just in front of me, long weeds popping through the snow around him. "Stay low, Nate," he was saying. "We're surrounded. Repeat: you've got to say low and move."