Fire and Forget Read Free Page A

“Law school sounds exciting. That helping-the-troops racket couldn’t compete huh?” I was looking for a rise, but his eyes were hard and steady.
    â€œYou know,” his head turned toward the line of taxis at the curb, “I just want something new.” He smiled and looked back at me. “After I got back from Tokyo, I actually thought about reenlisting to catch another deployment. Things were fine at first, leaving right after we came home was good, I pretty much got everyone happy to see me without too many long looks and worried questions about how things were over there . But after I’d been home a couple weeks, I just felt the whole world slowing to a crawl. I had a couple of long nights where I thought, what the hell, you know? Like if I do it one more time then I’ll be able to work things out, and when I get back then I’ll be back for good. I figured that whatever I wanted to do would be here but the war could end and it still needed me.”
    â€œThe war needed you?”
    â€œOr I needed it, but what’s the difference. It went away.”
    â€œThe war’s still there.”
    â€œThe feeling went away.”
    â€œSo it’s all about your feelings.”
    I was joking but it felt good to goad him. Cole was the last one I would have picked to go back into uniform, I thought he had figured out how make a clean break. Besides, he had things going for him when we left, the reliable kind, not the sort that could leave in the middle of the night. He had the kind where if you devoted yourself, it wasn’t insane to expect some kind of return.
    I couldn’t remember what I had going before we left. There must have been plenty, a whole life probably, but it wasn’t what I thought of when we were overseas. It shamed me to think now of what I had imagined over there. I didn’t have any real plans or ambitions for when we got back. I only had fantasies of other lives, like the fevered dreams of a sick man growing bolder and more intense the closer he gets to death.
    I dreamed of whole cities in heat. Ribald boulevards flushed with women. Greatness around every corner, New York at my feet, the buildings bowed, the whole city supine.
    We could see up 42nd Street. Movie theaters, marquees, and theme restaurants lined both sides. Crowds began to gather. Cole looked nothing like he had overseas, nothing like a soldier or veteran. It wasn’t hard to imagine him in a suit, laughing with coworkers.
    â€œWhere does that energy go?” I wanted to know. “I thought when we got back I was going to step off the plane and pounce.”
    â€œWell, what did you want to do before we left?” Cole asked. It was the same question he’d asked from the front seat of our Humvee, only the tense had changed.
    My thoughts came out half-finished but Cole understood, if not what I was saying, at least that it had to be said. I was trying to say something about being back, that it was hard, that it almost made me nostalgic. I was talking about over there , how it felt when you got everything right. You could make the guns talk. Your words hardened into instruments controlling the machine,everything moving like you told it to. When you got it right there was a pure flow, thoughtless and unfeeling, unlike anything else. That was all it took, I said, “. . . and I could hear the world blow my horn.”
    Even the tedium felt fraught with anxious purpose, the restless hours waiting for time to pass, watching the hourglass spill sand and thinking, “Now I know, now I know, get me home, get me home.”
    â€œOver there things were clear,” I said, “and they were always on the line. How could anything compare to that?”
    People were close enough to hear; I lowered my voice and looked at Cole for a sign to stop, but he gave none.
    â€œAnd after the bomb goes off and you make it out okay, what about the silence after that when it’s still