Read The Long Walk: A Story of War and the Life That Follows Online
Authors: Brian Castner
Tags: #Iraq War (2003-), #Special Forces, #Personal Memoirs, #Biography & Autobiography, #Military, #War, #Biography, #History
The Long Walk: A Story of War and the Life That Follows (27 page)
“I don’t care if they do use human shit as fertilizer,” Ewbank said from across the picnic table. “This is the best goddamn watermelon I’ve ever had.”
And it was.
The mountain is real. And the mountain doesn’t care if I’m Crazy.
The mountain doesn’t concern itself with other mountains that lie to its left or to its right, or with the valley that lies on the other side, or the glen and wood and swamp beyond. It doesn’t care about the future because of the certainty of its present. It cares nothing for the worries or fears or bloodlust I bring to its slopes. It stands alone, a magnificent rise, outside of my head, outside of my Crazy: objective, peaceful, and real.
“Begin your flow. Begin your
vinyasa
,” says the Yogini.
Tadasana. Uttanasana. Chaturanga Dandasana. Urdhva Mukha Svanasana. Adho Mukha Svanasana. Tadasana
.
Mountain. Standing Forward Bend. Plank and lower. Upward Dog. Downward Dog. Feet forward. Mountain. Repeat your
vinyasa
.
Mountain pose.
The mountain doesn’t care if I do or not, if I approach or not, if I am or not, just as it doesn’t care what Crazy I bring to it. The slopes are just as steep, the ice just as cold, the winds just as vicious, whether I stand on them or not, whether I stand there Crazy or at peace.
The mountain doesn’t care. But the mountain is real. The mountain exists. And the mystery of its objective existence drowns my Crazy.
Why run the race? Because of the amazement that there is a race to be run at all.
“No matter how fast I run, it’s never going to be fast enough,” I tell my New Shrink.
“Do you enjoy what you are doing? How you are living your life?” she asks.
“Of course not. The Crazy poisons everything,” I say.
“Well, start over again,” my New Shrink says. “Forget everything you think you need to do. Forget what you almost did. What do you want to do?”
“I want to love my wife, and I want to climb the mountain,” I respond.
“Then why don’t you?” she says.
I walk outside of the HAS, into the deepest dark night, and feel the first drop on my hand. Then another. And a third. I look up, but the overcast sky has dropped a smothering enveloping blanket and I see nothing. Several more hit my face intermittently, then faster. First, a drizzle. With so much dust in the air, the first drops are more mud than water. Then a shower finally takes hold. The first rain in four months.
“We conclude our yoga practice by breathing the word ‘Om,’ ” my Yogini says. “When you say your Om, pull it from the deepest part of you. Your Om comes from there, up through your body, through your lungs and out of your mouth.
“Send your Om into the universe,” says the Yogini. “Your Om will join and harmonize with all that is. Then let it go.”
The Om Is and the Om Was.
I stand in the rain, in the real, and prepare my Om.
“You don’t have PTSD,” my New Shrink says.
“What are you talking about?” I am incredulous.
She turns at her desk, and reaches for a fat book on a nearby shelf. My stomach drops, fills with a nervous hole that briefly overwhelms the Crazy. My New Shrink flips through her clinical handbook, searching for the correct page.
“You don’t have nightmares,” she starts, scrolling down the list.
No, I dream during the day.
“You don’t have one incident, one trauma, that you constantly obsess over, or replay in your mind,” she says.
No, there are many.
“You haven’t blocked out memories of any trauma,” she says.
No, the war is vivid. It’s other things that I have forgotten.
“You don’t startle at loud noises, or get nervous in public, or avoid places that remind you of what’s happened.”
Of course not, that passed long ago, and my rifle is ready when I need it.
“You got out of bed this morning. You haven’t retreated into a shell and turned off your interaction with the world,” she concludes.
Don’t be scared of the soft sand.
“But what about the hopelessness … and the numbness?” I say. “What about the airport, and the chest pain, and the eye twitches? What about the hairy spider that crawled out of my head?”
What about the bodies and the smells? What about knowing I won’t live past today? What about the things I was willing to do? What about my lost faith and innocence?
“What about the Crazy feeling?” I ask. This all can’t be for nothing.
“Just because you feel all those things doesn’t mean you have PTSD,” she chides gently.
“So if I’m not Crazy, then what’s wrong with me?”
She laughs a silver waterfall of ringing bells.
“You’re human,” she says.
I send my Om out into the universe, out of my chest, out of my Crazy, out through my mouth and nose and eyes and cheeks. A vibration, a sound, a message, a messenger, a traveler, a destination. I send my Om past Ricky’s head and Kermit’s lake. I send it past Jessie, my wife, past her pain and abandonment and forgotten trials. I send it past Jeff on his boat, past the foot in the box, past the screaming women, past the children and the crowds and through the soft sand. It intermingles with burning cars and exploding robots and the smell of rotting and cooking organs. I send it through the grime and the dust, through the armor and the loneliness. It mixes with my children’s smiles and my brothers’ love. It gathers all fear and isolation and confusion to itself. My Om passes into oblivion. It dips into the river. It is a cool breeze off the alpine glacier.
The Om Is and the Om Was. It returns from the universe, with the universe, with the pain and the hope and the blood and the helicopters and the artillery rounds falling on Habbaniyah. It returns with my rifle and vest and the Hill of Woe. It returns with driven insight and unwanted knowledge. It returns with the Crazy. It reenters my chakras and fills me full again. It brings the mountain to my feet. Ricky sits to my right. The line of my grandfathers sits to my left.
The Om is my Is and my Was. I am my Om.
The next day, I put on my shoes and go for a run.
Acknowledgments
This book was written while running, much of it on the broad avenues of Grand Island, New York: Stony Point, Huth, East and West River Roads, Whitehaven, and Ransom. Thank you to those that ran with me as well, while working on the road in Texas, Washington, and Tennessee: Jimbo, Bill, Chris, and Schmatt.
I’d also like to thank several others for their influence along the way. Jaime Herbeck, for encouragement that got the ball rolling. Ben Hoffman, for being my first and best reader. Matteah Reppart, for constant love and unconditional support. LaDeane Palmar, for bravely and honestly sharing her story. Ryan Bowers, Ethan Cox, and Josh Tyler, for diligence and thoughtful feedback. Dave Pinkham, for timely input. The writer Stephen Phillips, for providing the big break. My four sons, Virgil, Martin, Samuel, and Elijah, for understanding while Daddy was locked away with the computer in the side room. My agent, Bob Mecoy, for encouragement and sound advice, and (more important) knowing when each was needed. And my editor, Gerry Howard, for masterfully helping me craft a better book.
Let me end by noting that throughout the writing and publication process of this book, my thoughts have never left the EOD brothers we have lost since the war began. When I started writing, in the summer of 2010, that too-large number was eighty. It is currently one hundred and eleven.
About the Author
Brian Castner, a graduate of Marquette University with an electrical engineering degree, served three tours in the Middle East as an officer of the U.S. Air Force—two of them leading an EOD unit in Iraq. In 2006, he received a Bronze Star for his service. Upon returning to the United States, he consulted as an independent civilian contractor, training military EOD units on tactical bomb-diposal procedures prior to their deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan. He lives near Buffalo, New York, with his wife and children.
Table of Contents
VIII The Science and the Chakras
Acknowledgments
About the Author