The Sandbox (27 page)

82

Hours pass. I
sing to keep myself company. Hank Williams and Kool and the Gang and Donna Summers. I’m working through the final verse of “You Are My Sunshine” when the door shrieks open on its crooked hinges. It’s Sergeant Guzman. An unlit cigar wobbles between his lips. He looks me over grimly.

“You’ve got this whole damn base turned upside down. I bet you’re proud of yourself, too.”

“You overestimate me, Sarge.”

“Want something to eat?”

I hadn’t thought about it until now, but food seems like a very good idea. As if in answer, my stomach growls. I smile at it, give it a pat. I’m astonished by my unnatural cheerfulness. Sergeant Guzman seems mystified as well. The muscles in his face shift from expression to expression, never quite settling. It reminds me of how Rankin looked in the Humvee this morning. Like he didn’t like what he thought or know what he wanted to believe.

“All right,” he says, “well.” He passes the cigar from one corner of his mouth to the other. “Foss said you like the Salisbury steak and mashed potatoes.”

“That I do.”

“Good, ’cause that’s what you’re getting.” He steps back into the hall and picks up a tray. “I also brought you a Coke.”

“I thought we were out of Coke.”

“There’s one or two still sitting around. Tucked here and there.” He pulls the can from a cargo pocket. “It’s warm as dog piss.”

“Your own private stash?”

The sergeant is known to be a dedicated lover of colas. I’ve even seen him drinking the local brand, which is similar in texture to carbonated pancake syrup. But this is the real thing. Coca-Cola. He cracks the top and sets it by the meal tray.

I raise the can in toast.

“God bless America.”

The sergeant rolls his eyes. “Shut up, Durrant, and eat your food.”

I pick up the plastic fork and eat with an appetite that amazes us both. If he handed me another tray of food, I could down that too, no problem. Sergeant Guzman leans against the doorjamb, arms folded. Watching me eat seems to satisfy him in some way, as though he’d cooked it himself.

“He’s not what you think,” Sergeant Guzman says, after I swallow the last bite of mashed potatoes. Foss has swamped them in so much gravy, it’s more like eating soup. I’m impressed and—yes, I’ll admit it—touched that Foss paid such close attention to the way I like my food.

“Who?” I ask. “The lieutenant?”

“No,” he says, dead serious. “Lopez.”

“How do you mean?”

“He takes all that Stars-and-Stripes stuff seriously. Howley told me he says the pledge of allegiance each morning after he does his prayer and push-ups.”

“Prayer and push-ups?” I lick the last drops of gravy off the tray. “You’ve got to be shitting me.”

“He’s just trying to be a good soldier.”

“A little too hard.”

“Maybe,” Sergeant Guzman says. “You see, he don’t understand that you can tell a joke every once in a while and still be a good soldier. For him it’s just yes or no. Nothing in between. No gray.”

“And it’s just my tough luck he decided I was a ‘no,’ is that what you’re saying?”

Sergeant Guzman frowns. “Hey, look buddy, don’t tell me you didn’t know what you were doing, going out there like that.”

“No, Sarge,” I say, “you’re right. I take full responsibility. I’m just saying, he’s a little bit tough on the boy is all. That’s it. I’m not laying blame. All this shit is on me. But what happens next?”

“There’s a chopper coming tomorrow at 0600. It’s taking you back to HQ.”

“Is that the same one the MI guy is taking out?” I stand and stretch. A belch comes rippling out of me. “Excuse me,” I say.

“I don’t know nothing about that.” But I see something pass across his face, a sort of anxious recognition. He chews on his cigar.

“Do you think they’ll let me make a call home?”

“Doubt it. Who you want to call?” He takes the cigar out of his mouth, looks at the wet black stump, and sticks it back in.

“Fiancée.” Or whatever she is now.

“H’mm.”

I hand him my tray, and he steps into the hall. I point to the Coke can.

“Thanks,” I say.

The rush of air when he shuts the door makes the cobwebs in the corner flutter like streamers. I stare at the dark Judas hole, listening. A lizard darts across the mildewed stone above the door and disappears into a hole in the corner. Its feet make no sound. The sergeant’s footsteps are swallowed by an enormous gray silence.

83

An hour later,
Sergeant Guzman comes back. He glances behind him and steps in.

“Make a fist,” he says quietly, holding out his own.

I do.

“Same stakes?” I ask.

He holds my gaze for a spell before saying, “Nope. You’ll be gone. Just give me that book you’re always reading.”

“Sure.”

“One, two, three,” he says, knocking his fist against mine.

I hold out paper. He holds out a rock.

“You got five minutes. No more.” His expression is as blank as an Easter Island head. You can say whatever else you want about Sergeant Guzman, but he’s not a poor sport.

“Thank you, Sergeant, thank you.” I walk toward the door. He grabs me by my shirt front and pulls me back.

“If you get me caught, I’ll personally pound your head out your asshole.”

“Yes, Sarge,” I say, cheerfully. “I wouldn’t expect any less.”

And I don’t.

84

The phone rings
six times and then the answering machine picks up. I prepare a message in my head as I listen to the recording. This is the worst connection I’ve ever had. Her voice bobs on a sea of static. I can barely make out what she’s saying. If it were any other fucking day, I’d just hang up and have Sergeant Guzman give it another shot. But I’m afraid to ask and have him tell me I got my one chance. The answering machine beeps, I say hello, and then, miraculously she answers. For a moment, I’m actually disappointed. I didn’t know how hard this was going to be until she picked up the phone.

“Clarissa,” I say.

Now, with a bad line, this will be extra hard. My words have a full second delay. Static blows along the line. Dead dust drifting between stars. I try to picture her face. I get an earlobe, a wisp of hair, a tooth. She refuses to be summoned. Without meaning to, I make a soft sound.

“Oh, shit, if it isn’t old Toby, calling for his pound of flesh. Not five minutes after my sister.”

“Clarissa, come on. Don’t let’s start. I haven’t even said hello.”

“I knew you’d do this. I knew it.”

“Do what?”

She puffs in a disgusted way.

“I need to talk to you. I only have a few minutes.” I glance over at the office. Sarge fiddles with something on the desk.

“Well, whatever load of guilt you planned to lay on me, just let it go. I don’t need it. It’s over. The whole shitty thing is over and done with. So if that’s why you’re calling, then you can just go—”

“Wait, Clarissa, slow down.”

She clears her throat. “You got the letter, right?”

“Yeah, but—”

“Then that’s all you need to know.” Her voice rises in pitch again. “It’s all in the letter. Read it again if you have to, but leave me alone. I don’t want to go through this whole thing again, especially not now and not with you.”

“Why are you so angry at me? I’ve barely said a word. I don’t understand what—”

“Because every time you call it’s always me, me, me. Why would I think today would be any different?” Her words distort as they get louder. “You think because you’re over there you’re the only one with problems. Well, you’re not. Try being alone, pregnant, not sure if the father of your child will live to raise it, working a shitty job for sixty hours a week. So if you’re calling to tell me how bad my letter made you feel and what a bad person I am for having an abortion, then go to the back of the line after Mom, Dad, my sister, Dr. Andrews, Pastor fucking Keebles, the Goddamn mailman—”

“Stop,” I say, louder than I meant to. “I read the letter. That’s not why I’m calling.”

“What?” This seems to take her aback.

“I need to talk to you about something else. I—”

“What do you mean, that’s not why you’re calling? I don’t fucking believe you. You’re just waiting until I’m not expecting it, and then you’ll lay into me. Just like everybody else.”

“Why are you cursing so much, Clarissa? I thought you hated when—”

“Why the fuck do you think?” She says something else, but I can’t understand it because she’s speaking through sobs. Huge gulping sobs. I imagine her bent over her knees on the cracked leather couch I found for her on a sidewalk up on 61st Street and Abercorn, shoulders shaking, long hair sticking to her wet cheeks.

“You’re talking like I know what’s going on, but I don’t.” I feel oddly detached, as though I’m looking down on some other version of myself, a very confused one. Who is this guy? What does he think he’s trying to do?

“I had a Goddamn abortion. What the fuck do you think is going on? My head hurts, my belly aches, I’m bleeding more than—” She goes on, but her voice becomes garbled, a series of digital bleeps. Even so, the anger carries through the noise.

“I mean, why are you—wait, Clarissa.” I press my forehead against the trailer’s fake wood paneling. “I thought that’s what you wanted.”

“That doesn’t mean it was easy. That doesn’t mean I liked it. Do you know what happens to you when you have an abortion? What actually happens? What they do after you go into the clinic and put on the robe and they clamp your feet into those Goddamn stirrups?”

“I don’t want—”

“I didn’t fucking well think so. Why don’t I let you in on a little secret, then? Just between us girls.”

“Why are you shouting at me? I never wanted you to do it in the first place.”

“No, but you had to tell them about it, didn’t you? You had to go and spill the fucking beans. I thought I could trust you at least that much. What did you think was going to happen when you told them? Did you think you could reach them before I went to the clinic? Maybe the sheriff would gallop in on horseback, scoop me up and save me. Tough fucking luck there, Toby.”

“I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about. Whatever it is you think I’ve done, you’re wrong. I live in a tent in the middle of the desert. I’m sure you’re having problems over there. I never thought you weren’t, but guess what? Over here people are shooting at me.” My eyes throb. My mouth tastes like blood. At some point I bit my chapped lip so hard it started bleeding. Stop, I tell myself. Remember why you’re calling. You’ve got, like, a minute left.

The line clears briefly. Somewhere far in the background, I can almost swear I hear an ice cream truck. A jangling version of “Pop Goes the Weasel.” The sudden jolt of homesickness this sound causes takes me completely by surprise.

“Did you hear me?” I ask. “I don’t know what you think I’ve done.”

A lighter scratches. She inhales, exhales. “Well, when you
didn’t
call and tell my parents I was having an abortion, they somehow magically appeared at my apartment an hour after I got back from the clinic. My dad said—get this, you’ll love it—he said, ‘The next time I talk to you, Clarissa, it’ll be in hell, unless God has mercy on my soul for killing that little shit who started all this.’ In case you wondering, you’re the little shit he meant. After he stormed out of the apartment, my mom said, ‘Let’s hope for all our sakes some little brown man gets to Toby first. It would be a mercy.’ And then, just in case I wasn’t feeling bad enough, she gave me the little white caps she’d knitted for baby. Seven of them.”

“Jesus.”

I see her father then, another uninvited guest in my head, certainly an unwanted one. I see him standing in the doorway of Clarissa’s new apartment on the day I left. Filling up the entire space. A thick neck and eyes the loud artificial blue of Kool-Aid. Smiling at the shabby furniture like he had a stomachache. Dressed in his Saturday uniform. A short-sleeved button-down shirt and gray polyester slacks. Clarissa’s mom stood behind him, literally in his shadow. A pink smudge of color on her lips. Mousy, in a brown dress and thick-soled nurses’ shoes. Each time I caught her eye, she winced in an odd, apologetic way.

“And the fucker who paid for the operation,” Clarissa says, speaking faster with every word, “the one who told me I should just clean the slate and start over—that’s what he actually said, clean the slate— where do you think he’s gone?”

“Jack?”

“I knew you wouldn’t forget
that
name. Well, then, you’ll be pleased to hear this next installment of
Days of Clarissa’s Life
.”

“I didn’t mean it like—”

“Oh, you never mean shit, do you? Shut up and listen for a second. After Jack’s check to the clinic bounced, so did he, along with all two of my credit cards, my grandma’s cameo brooch, and, let’s see, what else did he take? Oh, yeah, right, my fucking car!” She takes another pull on her cigarette and speaks as she exhales. “Don’t worry. They found it in a rest stop outside Jacksonville. Just to set the record straight, the police told me his name isn’t really Jack. It’s Frederick Vander-something or other. They told me I’m lucky. The last woman he did this to got a broken arm in the bargain.”

“Jesus, Clarissa, I’m sorry.”

“Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry,” she says. “Sorry doesn’t count for shit.”

Neither of us speaks for a while. As if to make up for the awkward silence, the phone fills with a rolling hiss of static that sounds like breath exhaled between teeth. Please don’t let me get knocked off the line now. Please.

When the line clears again, Clarissa’s voice sounds calm, steady. “It’s odd. We’re talking right now, but you could be anyone. We’re basically strangers. You know that? What’s the longest time we spent together? A week? Two weeks? All right, you’ve told me what you
haven’t
called about; so what the hell
do
you want, then?”

“Want?”

“If you didn’t want something, you wouldn’t have called. What is it?”

“I’m in trouble.”

“You’re in trouble?” She laughs, an ugly brittle sound. “What’d you do? Punch somebody again?”

“No, it’s not like that.”

“Hey, if you’re lucky, maybe they’ll send you home. God knows the Army hates violent men. But don’t come sniffing around here if they do. No drunken midnight booty calls. No surprise Sunday visits. I don’t want this any more. I don’t want any of it.”

Sergeant Guzman chooses this moment to step out of the office. As he passes, he taps his watch. “Forty-eight seconds.” His cigar trails a thin stream of blue smoke. He cracks the front door and peeks out. If he’s surprised by what’s being said on my end of this phone call, it doesn’t show on his face.

“Maybe I shouldn’t have called,” I say.

“
Now
you decide this.” She’s right. I don’t know her. This isn’t any Clarissa I’ve spoken to before. This is some new person who shares her name. Even her voice sounds different today, somehow lower and raspier. “Just go ahead and spit it out, Toby, whatever it is.”

“I’m being accused of treason.”

“Oh, poor Toby.”

“It’s all a mistake.”

“It usually is.”

“I mean it. I’ve been set up. It’s all a very, very complicated mistake. They’re making me out to be the fall guy.”

“Why would anyone bother to set up a lowly private fuckup like you?”

“Because I am a lowly private.”

“Well, if someone
is
setting you up, it’s only a mistake to the one taking the fall.” She lets out a breath, probably thick with smoke. “In this case,
you
.”

“Jesus, Clarissa, why are acting like I’m your worst enemy? You sound like you hate me. Even your voice sounds awful. I barely recognize it.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“All I wanted to do was see if you were all right and tell you what was happening. I thought maybe—”

“You thought maybe, what? You could win me back by telling me you’ve become a traitor? Or maybe I’m supposed to feel so sorry for you that I’ll rush back into your arms when they let you out of prison twenty years from now? Or is treason a firing-squad offense?”

“I just didn’t want you to think what they’re saying about me is true. Believe it or not, I still care what you think. Listen, I might of broken some rules, but—”

Again, that terrible new laugh. A wave of white noise crashes. Somewhere in the whoosh of static I hear another conversation. A woman speaks rapidly in Spanish.
Pendejo
,
pendejo
,
pendejo
, she yells. A man makes consoling sounds. And then they’re gone. Some other trouble, some other place. Misery is in the air all around us.

When these other voices fade away, I go on, but my voice sounds weak and pathetic, guilty, even to myself. “But I’m not a traitor.”

“Okay, you convinced me. You’re not a traitor. Is that it? Have you said everything you wanted to say?”

“I guess so.” I’m no longer sure why I called. What was it I wanted to happen? Was I really expecting her to pat my head and tell me everything would be all right?

“Well, I guess I’ll be seeing you on CNN sometime soon. Or will anybody care about this?”

I’m more than a little surprised to find that this doesn’t make me angry. Anger seems beside the point. All the words I’d saved up over the past few days to tell her, shiny and hard and mean, polished to a high gleam with spite, seem unnecessary now, ridiculous. I needed them then, but they’ve outlived their usefulness. I wish she could set her own anger aside for ten seconds or so, just long enough for me to say good-bye. I doubt I’ll ever see her again. I didn’t know this until I heard her voice.

“You don’t want to talk to me,” I say finally. “I get it. That’s fine. I’m almost out of time anyway. Let me tell you one last thing, even though it’s probably stupid to say it at this point. I am sorry about all this shit you’re going through, everything. I wish there was some way I could make it right, and—”

“Here’s how you can make it right: say good-bye and mean it. Whatever point there was to—”

“—and, listen, for whatever it’s worth, I love you.”

“I’m sorry to hear it.” She takes a ferocious drag on her cigarette. “That must suck.”

“Yeah, it does.”

Hard. Guttural. Fast. Final. And that’s that. We’re all through. My battered old organ stops thumping altogether. The blood drains. The tissue dries. The cells blow away. I’m left with a dry pink cave between my lungs. But for some reason, I keep on talking anyway. Longing moves the muscles in my mouth much the same way that, after you’ve run it down with your car, a dead deer’s leg will continue to twitch.

“I doubt if I’ll see you. . . .” I say, and then can think of nothing more.

Clarissa’s voice softens. “I did warn you. Remember that day when you were driving me home after our little adventure in the woods? I told you, ‘My life’s a slow-motion car wreck, but it’s usually the other passengers that get hurt.’ And you probably thought I was only joking.” She sniffs and clears her throat. When she speaks again, her voice sounds even lower. “I didn’t mean what I said about the firing squad. I’m sorry about that. I’m sure all this will—”

A shrill buzz blots out the rest. Buried somewhere in the squall of sound, Clarissa says something about a change of heart, or maybe she says “heart transplant”; but before I can ask her what she means, the line goes completely crazy. Bleeps, gurgles, squeaks. I think I hear Clarissa’s voice, tiny and sharp, yelling, “I’m sorry, you’re right, it’s just that I need you near me now.” Maybe I don’t hear this. Probably what she said was, “I’m sorry you have to hear this, it’s just that I don’t need you now.” But then again maybe I don’t hear that either. Maybe it’s not even Clarissa speaking. It could be some other soldier’s girl telling some other soldier the end has come. The earpiece gushes so loudly that I have to pull it away, and then the line is dead.