4

3MAY2010

Woke up drunk; didn’t know that could happen. Went with it, packing two coke bottles, mixed. I didn’t like driving to work. It’s literally down
the street.

(at work, inebriated) It’s like I’m doing something for myself. Even though I’m at work and am practically owned for the next eight hours, by
being drunk it’s like I’ve put myself first. They’re accustomed to me driving the cargo van at lunch time.
They’re used to all of us eating at the same restaurant. I have to be focused to drive well so no one will suspect; before lunch I went to the bathroom and rubbed toothpaste over my teeth and swished some over my tongue, then swallowed, figuring that was better than nothing. After lunch I felt impressed with myself, how focused and present I’ve been.
It’s really my day off. I’m only here to cover the phones while the others do some training I’ve already accomplished. I red back over Real, part 4, then went back to Real, part 2.
I hated Iraq. I didn’t realize it until I got home. It’d be different if there had been some purpose for us to have been there. I red back over the days when I first remembered. I wish I could go back to those days. I was living something extraordinary, shifting that vividly.
I’m glad I wrote them down. There’s no reliving them. It was just a one-time thing. It makes me sad in a way, reminds me how important it is to live in the moment, to stay Him, to stay present, instead of a ghost.
I keep thinking about Rob___. When I was a teenager I worked during the day with a little wiry black guy in his thirties. He was like a live version of Walter Mosley’s Mouse character.
He would go to the corner store and get a beer, and always come back with a Snapple for me. He always acted like he looked out for me. Back then I couldn’t understand how anyone could be a
drinker to the point where they had to be drunk at work. Drinking like this makes me feel like I grew up to be some kind of loser. You’re twenty seven and just back from Iraq, I tell myself, not some old alcoholic like the ones you used to work with.
I guess there’s no such thing as growing up to be anything. You just grow, like a tree. I didn’t know that’s how everyone else experienced life, just
a little bit at a time, year by year, not stuck for years in memories from before I could even understand English good.

Because I’m drinking I have to be very present to make it without getting caught. So aware of even my smallest movements. It’s triggering, this
presence. I’m having memories, not whole ones, just little glimpses, like R__ just inside the door of my parent’s bedroom, saying lowly, angrily,
leaning down so his face was closer to my little boy face: _You little sh_t._
This is why I get high, drunk, etc. If it wasn’t illegal and wrong I wouldn’t do it. This is why I liked criminality back in the day, my third
plane of existence, my safe place - it forces me present. Maybe that’s why criminals are criminals. I could never see that before.
All I have to do to get off the drugs and drink is to learn to be this present without being absolutely forced to. That’s how normal people live.
Normal people don’t have such a strong tendency to go ghost. Normal people, like K__ and W__, are so easily Him they’re bored. Maybe a brave life is more rumor to them than anything else.
When I first arrived in the morning I walked in and saw the dog lying on the bathroom floor and felt something strong. I asked a bit and turns out he’s been lying on that floor for several days except to go out to pee sometimes. I felt power in my fingertips as I insisted to my colleagues I was shooting the dog.
The boss did finally agree on a grave site. The colleagues were up in arms. The dog had always been the responsibility of certain people, people the dog seemed to like best. The dog didn’t seem to like me that much.
Back before I deployed he’d run along side the Kawasaki mule I used at work. He’d play fight with me, he’d perk up and walk up to the Jeep
whenever I arrived at work. Now he’s acts lethargic, his movements slow. I hadn’t wanted to step on any toes, hadn’t wanted to imply the ones who claimed to love him were being abusively neglectful.
But when I felt that gut feeling I didn’t care. I don’t know if people at work have really heard my real voice, have ever met the steady oncoming train I essentially am, even unto myself.
These grown folks have been walking by this dog all this time, and no one did anything. The dog looked at me as if he were saying: please kill me.
I asked SSG H__ for his M9 pistol. I dug the grave and earned two blisters for it. Digging the grave killed whatever was left of my drunkenness. I
sweated as if I was back standing in the middle of Arabia. I tried to respect him by digging it deep enough. There’s no worse insult than a shallow grave.
I made two grown men cry, one a retired Colonel, the other a retired Sergeant Major. I didn’t care. I insisted my regret that I hadn’t already killed
him. Every hour that went by while they kept not making a decision the dog was lying on the bathroom tile in what seemed to me to be pain.
Even the workplace bullies knew not to mess with me, to stay out of it. There’s only about a dozen people who work here full time. Some felt that I had no right, since I’d just come back from deployment, they felt I had no right to make
decisions for the dog.
I said I ain’t walking past something that needs to
die and not kill it. I insisted on taking it to the vet, paying for it, and making the decision myself what was best for the dog. They all balked, except for certain few who had had reservations about the dog’s treatment - or neglect - by certain co workers but had been unable to change things.
They still had reservations about me suddenly taking charge of the dog and making such final decisions. I showed them the grave, argued with them that that dog needed to be dead - now. That I didn’t care whose fought it was, or what crime of neglect, etc. had been committed. I wasn’t waiting, I didn’t care.
They all finally agreed to take him to the vet and hear what the doctor had to say. That was four o’clock in the afternoon. I loaded Scruff into the SUV of another coworker who would go with me, SFC Mc___.
I’d never seen so many grown people cry. I was the youngest and the lowest rank and didn’t cry. I felt the need to be tough enough to pull the trigger
without him knowing something sad was happening. I felt the need to be a calming presence, like I had everything figured out and everything was going to be okay and that’s right when I would pull the trigger.
Then I would take his body to the grave I’d dug. I’d have explained to him that shooting him was the best I could do, that it was a harsh world full of ignorant civilians instead of people and this was all I could do but it was done with love - Real
love, thick love, not the kind they had where he ended up neglected and dying on the bathroom floor.
SFC Mc__ was one of those animal-lover types. She drove like a maniac. Her phone rang and she answered it. I looked back at Scruff as if to say: it’s gonna be the both of us going to eternity.

Scruff let me pick him up as if it were nothing. He let me move him from one place to another, his smelly coat against my calm-be-calm-dammite heartbeat. Meanwhile at the emergency hospital as soon as someone else touched him he yelped and whined in pain.
The vet checked him out, told us what was wrong, said the dog was in intense pain. He had gone septic several days ago, meaning his stomach and intestines had burst. I was one the three who made the decision. That was at nine o’clock at night.

I stepped out with my Army blouse off, I was just in my T-shirt, because I didn’t want Scruff to ruin the front of my uniform around all these civilians. I had my cap on and the brim down low, just in case I teared up a little because I didn’t want any
one to see. I stepped out of the Euthanasia room and went to the front counter to inform the woman we were ready and didn’t want him suffer any longer. When I stepped in I noticed every one look up at me, as if surprised. It’s nice being young and muscular; I know it will only last a
short while.
I wondered if I would’ve been so loud and assertive if I hadn’t had the ease and focus of drunkenness in my veins. I wondered if it was kismet, waking up drunk though I hadn’t drunk that much the night before and had gone to bed early. I had gone along with it, thinking maybe it was a challenge put on me on purpose or artful chance, something new to be experienced, realized. Maybe mine and Scruff’s troubles crossed paths at just the right moment, on just the right day.
They lied to me so much. Acting like they had it all taken care of. When really they didn’t want me to take him to the vet because then I’d find out
the long list of crimes committed against the dog while I was overseas.
The long list of evidence of sheer neglect. At one point one said he was on stool softener, at another point she said he was on anti-diarrhea medication.
All BS. It’s unforgivable that things have come to this point. That I have to go Rambo style into other people’s business all because of the way a dog looked at me.
Me and SFC Mc__ exchanged philosophies on the way home. Everything happens for a reason, she said. No matter what. But she’s the one who cried.
Tried to speak but teared up to the point her throat choked up.
I had been angry at her, for not being assertive enough. She and another had had reservations about the neglect situation this whole time, but hadn’t taken care of it.
_He’s my rock,_ she said into the phone, jokingly, to her husband. She didn’t seem to want her husband knowing she had been crying.
I winced because I knew her husband was insecure and jealous to the point of
ridiculousness. That’s all I need, I thought to myself.
I wrote this because it reminded me of something. No holds barred. What does that even mean.
Something like I would do anything when it comes down to that level. I will walk into a sheriff’s department and courthouse. I will say out loud the story of the Johnston House.
I will burn every bridge at my workplace, dig a respectful grave, scoop up a dog who shouldn’t be letting me scoop him up for all the pain he’s in, take him out to the woods and tell him I’m sorry, the world is a brutal, tough place, and this is the best I could do for him. A bullet that hopefully would kill him before it hurt him. I’d apologize for not knowing how to shoot him painlessly. I’d carry his body to the grave, I’d fill it in in the light rain we had that afternoon.

I wouldn’t feel the need to apologize to anyone,
I’d clean and tend to the busted blisters on my palms.
I’ve been that Tough before, I’ve been that Brave before. It was a new me that felt unwaveringly familiar.

__________