Death by Facebook (2 page)

Her
yawn caught my attention as well, not so much by itself, but that she
stopped and held her head in both hands as she did. It looked a lot
like that famous painting by Munch, the one Andy Warhol copied.

Suddenly,
just as what must have been the next moment in that painting, she
fell to her knees, still holding her head and moaning loudly. She
fell to her side, curling up in a ball and crying now, loudly.
Screaming and crying.

I
looked around, from my outside perch. The place was practically
deserted. Most of the military guys were deployed in faraway places,
unable to take enough leave to enjoy these distant mountains.

Looking
back in, I just caught a glimpse of her moving into the restroom, and
before I could move closer I heard her throwing up. For a long time.
Horrible sounds, like demons barking from hell itself. I moved
through the wall and to the fireplace and waited. Patiently.

After
a while, I heard the sink running and then a curse or two mumbled
from in front of the mirror. Soon after that, she emerged, rubbing
her eyes. Her hands looked injured as well, with scratches, fresh
from some kind of fight. What had happened there? I was really
starting to worry now. Certainly worried as she stopped and looked
right at me. Stared at me! Her stare was blank, though, as if she
was looking right through me. I had to laugh a little at that. Of
course, she would be looking right through me! My laugh was short
lived.

“
Jimmy?”
she whispered.

I
remained where I was even as I looked to see if I had suddenly
reappeared, or had suddenly reincarnated. I had not.

“
Oh
Jimmy,” she moaned and looked at her hands. “I'm so
sorry Jimmy.”

I
found myself focusing on her now, trying to read her. The static was
gone, but the haze was thick and I could only sense confusion.

She
turned away from me now, and sat heavily at the small round table,
sweeping three empty beer cans off to the floor. I watched them
fall, all of them, bouncing off the floor once and then rolling
contently against the wall. I heard more static as I watched them.

Janet
was obviously distraught, and injured. I couldn't remember much
about what must have happened to me, but it looked like she got hurt
as well. She had her head down on the table now, brought her wounded
hand up to her mouth and began licking it, like a dog would. I felt
like a voyeur suddenly, watching a stranger. A stranger in her own
personal, strange land.

Watching
her finish licking her wounds I found myself remembering when I would
do the same thing, as a kid. I had even licked that bullet wound
before the medics got to me in Kandahar. The blood wasn't the main
attraction, though. It was the soft torn flesh that felt good
against my tongue and between my lips. Janet seemed to have that
same fascination.

Suddenly,
she stood up and took two quick steps to the small refrigerator,
flung it open and grabbed two more beer cans. Sitting back down at
the table, letting the refrigerator fend for itself, she pulled her
laptop over.

Opening
its lid she waited to turn it on, watching the blank screen for
minutes. She drank the first beer slowly as she continued looking at
the darkness. Finally, she crushed the can empty and closed her
laptop. Reaching over to the far side of the table, she pulled my
laptop over to herself.

Quickly
she booted it up, the false light painting her face a ghostly sheen
which broadcasted the redness in her eyes obscenely. Why would she
use my computer? I checked what memory I could and wondered at what
I might have on there that she would be interested in.

I
had no old girlfriends, no bones in my closet, no pornography even.
No banking records, she did all that anyhow. She managed all the
number stuff.

My
view from the fireplace was getting stale, so I moved. Moved over to
her shoulder, her right shoulder, where I might have smiled once.
Here I could see her open the web browser. My homepage tabs all came
to life. CNN.com, MTV.com, TheParrotTalksinChocolate.com and, of
course, my favorite, Facebook.com.

I
did love my news and music videos! The parrot that talked in
chocolate was one of those light-hearted tiki culture blogs fashioned
after a favorite book. I loved that stuff.

She
clicked immediately on Facebook, where I was automatically logged on.
Over her shoulder I saw the latest news feed. I read it all
immediately, soaking it up.

Jim
Cannon
“
When
the call goes to voicemail and the voice of your friend asks you to
leave a message after the beep and you are all prepared to talk THEN
the automatic cell phone lady follows this with "if you would
like to leave a message, blah blah blah, when you are finished, blah
blah blah, to leave a callback number press 5, …”

That
guy Jim was some kind of master piano tuner in Texas but had found
his comedic genius nested somewhere between original posts and clever
responses to others. I had stolen many of his posts when I couldn't
come up with anything on my own.

My
favorite tiki parrot had a recent post as well.

Tiwaka.Tiki
“
the
Tiki bar is rocking tonight! People are dancing and drinking and
falling all over each other...it looks like a bunch of drunk
pigeons!”

And
finally Mom had a post! It must be like her second one only, and I
felt a twinge of pride. She could do it, I'd known she could!

Agatha
Anne Turner
“
off
to play a little bingo with Jessie and the girls.”

Most
of the rest were old posts, before we had left for Hawaii. Janet
scrolled down the page, looking for something. She clicked on my
Friends list and spent a long time looking at the few girls there.
Most of them were simply Army buddies, the only people I had ever
really spent any time with.

She
seemed to get bored after a moment and opened her second breakfast
beer. Tipping it high it looked like she downed half of it before
slamming it into the table and burping, burping loudly like I might
have. I was a bit shocked, but what got me was her next move.

Janet
clicked in the text entry box near the top of the page, where it said
“What's on your mind?” Immediately those words
disappeared, awaiting some clever or more likely inane post. I
couldn't quite figure it out. Why was she going to post under my
profile?

I
pulled back a little from her, in fear mostly, but a fascinated fear.
Like the fear I had in Afghanistan when our foot patrol moved into a
quiet neighborhood. A neighborhood with no kids playing in the
streets, no women carrying bags of who knows what on their backs, no
old men sitting around doing nothing. The fascination that comes
right before danger, right before a bullet.

Even
this far behind her I could see her type the words. Words I can't
believe anyone would ever believe I would say, certainly nothing I
believe I ever could say. She clicked on
Share
and there it was for all the world to see.

Jimmy
Turner:
“
I
just wanted to let you all know that I am dead.”

4

I
remember how happy I was to rediscover my older brother Frank. It
had been some years of trying but nothing had worked. Until the Army
had been looking for bone marrow donors up Pennsylvania way. Some
might have called it destiny. Me? I just call it as I see it: pure
luck. I had been up at Tobyhanna Depot training on sniper rifles and
Frank had come on post to give a blood sample.

Some
young dependent kid had the bone cancer, and every military family
east of Mississippi had heard the call. Lucky kid too, both Frank
and I matched him. The nurse gave us both a funny look when we
showed up for a consult on what they intended to do with us, like we
should know each other. Of course we didn't. Mom and Dad, our
biological ones, were gypsy souls, drinkers and the world's worst
parents, except that they did manage to feed us, occasionally.
Apparently Frank wasn't the only one the State of Pennsylvania had to
raise.

The
nurse finally told us, that we were related. The doctor who came in
later, a rusty old guy made no bones about telling us we were
brothers. It was earthshaking, at least for me. I had no idea there
were any siblings in the family. No one had ever mentioned any.
Frank, however, knew better. He just didn't know much where to look,
or maybe just wasn't that interested. After all, those had not been
happy years for him. I guess I got lucky, with my adopted Mom.

Frank
had just returned home from the tire shop where he did it all: fix,
replace or rotate. The early winter cold was already invading
October in predictable ways. His old F100 had trouble starting in
the mornings; the summer's cracked kitchen windows now demanded
repair and the light grew shorter on each passing day.

But,
that first beer from the twenty year old Maytag tasted as good as it
ever had, right there on the round, white Formica kitchen table. The
same that held his computer and his bird watching manual and
sometimes a newspaper.

Facebook
had become a lifeline out of Cold Hollow, PA for him, a link to the
rest of the planet outside the narrow slice of humanity he had fallen
into. I thanked all kinds of lucky stars when I convinced him to
give it a try. “Older folks are signing on faster than the
kids now,” I had promoted. “But, be careful,” I
warned. “You might hook up again with an old girlfriend or
two.”

He
looked at me kinda of funny like, a band-aid still on his arm at the
donation center. “That might not be too bad,” he had
mused. Then he had asked the classic question: “No one needs
to know what I really do, do they? I can post any profile picture I
want, right?”

I
laughed out loud, not at his questions but at my first opportunity to
tell that joke I had seen so many years earlier.

“
Frank,”
I said, putting my arm around his large hairy shoulders. “On
the Internet, no one knows you're a dog.”

Now,
in a chilly late afternoon light, on an even colder kitchen table he
was reading the post that Janet had made under my name. However many
thousands of miles away it was, I could still hear him cursing at me.
“What the hell kinda comment is that? For God's sake Jimmy.”

I
knew he would be taking a big swig of his second or third beer by
now, scratching his leg and kicking the dog out from under the table.

“
Where
the hell is that dislike button anyhow?” He swore out loud.
Loud enough for anyone out in the world to hear if they cared to. No
one did.

5

Janet
was still on my laptop and watching the comments come in from my
post, well,
her
post.
Frank, my brother, was one of the first.

Benjamin
Franklin Turner:
“
that
ain't funny Jimmy. Your gonna hurt someone's feelings if they
believe you. Look for that delete button and erase that shit right
now.”

Frank
was right of course, it wasn't funny, even if it was true.