No Pistol Tastes the Same

Chapter One

To Feel Alive

No pistol tastes the same.

Mine

is a bourbon-muzzled truth maker;

as bitter

as those night terrors

of a columned world around me

exploding;

as real as self-inflicted regret;

so familiar in my hand,

and cold on my tongue;

It burns

on the way down.

No pistol tastes the same…and mine…is a bourbon-muzzled truth maker.

His grandfather’s Vietnam era M1911 trembled in his crusty hand, and both heavy across his muddy lap. JP’s forest eyes, encrusted with dirt and dried blood, fixated on the gun­––a charcoal chunk of steel with dark brown and checkered grips. Two pounds of metal and shame was a sharp boulder pinning him to the V-shaped trunk of that tree.

Beads of rusty sweat rolled down his bristled face. His dirty blond hair waved with the breeze as he sat, defeated, in his farm clothes under the old oak shading his grandparents’ gleaming headstones. A faded American flag, stabbed into the grass between them, fluttered and whipped in the wind. The calloused bark scraped at his sticky back on a steaming spring day. But what he felt most was repentance…and that cold, loaded shackle chaining him to his past.

No, mine is bittersweet and savory.

His grandmother’s strawberry rhubarb pie, fresh from the oven and steaming on the stovetop, flashed into thought. How fitting. His chest shook as he exhaled, glaring at her shiny gravestone at the far reaches of the shadow cast by the tree his grandfather swore he planted at the top of that ridge the day after he got home from the war in ’69. The same ridge and the same tall oak that JP would ask his grandmother to picnic under on those hot summer days. Even then, her sweet smile and playful hesitation would spark the begging and pleading of a small boy and an old man until she gave in with a chuckle and announced, “I guess I’ll have to make some sandwiches.”

The crest of the ridge stood just a few hundred yards from the farmhouse. It proved to be an adventurous climb. One best traveled on his grandfather’s lap in the buggy or giggling and bucking in the back of the dump-bed Grandpa used for hauling. But on the days they walked, JP took a stick—his walking stick, ninja stick, bazooka, rifle, magic wand—because, without it, he might not have reached the top. When they did, the reward was great: a cool breeze and a view ripe with rolling hills and sagging power lines that cut paths through green woods and waving fields.

The hill on his grandfather’s sixty-acre farm was the perfect place for a boy with a wild imagination to explore. A place to play army on his belly, peering through his camouflaged binoculars at his grandfather tinkering in the barn or his grandmother sweeping the porch. A place to wait on her famous strawberry rhubarb pies as they baked in the oven, while he bang-banged at crows in the corn with orange-tipped toy guns and tree limb missile launchers.

As a kid, he snuck through the rows of corn with his stick tucked under his arm as a rifle, sweeping the muzzle back and forth as he crouched along the narrow pathways and gunned down the bad guys from row to row. Back then, his grandfather would bellow from the barn to stay out of the corn. But with his cornball hair, muddy war paint, and a missing-tooth grin, he’d be swaying the stocks again sometime later. Because some kids have imaginations too big for rules.

On extra brave days, after one of grandpa’s war stories or one of the X-Men movies, he tip-toed and belly crawled into the cow field and ambushed the small herd until they ran to the far corner of the barbed wire fence. His grandfather hollered about that, too. And JP, in full retreat, bounded back to the hilltop to snipe the distant army marching through the tall, golden grass and over the belly of the land his grandfather called ‘Paradise.’

It was a paradise for an only child left orphaned by a holy war and taken in by his gracious grandparents. And that spot under the bushy arms of the towering oak on top of that little knoll was his paradise. That chosen place his grandfather planted the tree so many years ago was more than just his favorite place to play or picnic. It was special: a shared spot, “their spot,” that belonged sweetly to his grandparents before he made it his own. For Grandma, it was a magical peak in her very own fairytale, with a green castle, backlit by blue skies, whose leaves flashed in the breeze. A place where, long ago, her noble knight reached deep into the pocket of his greasy jeans, pulled out his folded knife, and carved out those still prominent and beautiful, jagged letters: CLG LOVES BRG.

But now, with his bruised back against the sharp bark and a heavy pistol in his tired hand, JP knew this enchanted place would never feel that magic again. A gust of wind ruffled the leaves as a glare sparkled across his grandmother’s name: Barbara Rose Grimm. His gaze sank to the handwritten letters and pictures of home still clenched in his left hand. Sent by mail to Iraq and brought home in the bottom of his seabag, they now fluttered and flapped with the rising gusts, reminding him of what he came to do. He slugged a long gulp from his bottle of Jim Beam, then tucked the letters and pictures under the bottle to hold them still. The corner of a colorful photograph caught his attention, and he pulled it from the middle of the stack. His heart bounced at the sight of the last picture his family took together before he left for war.

They all stood under the shade of the oak tree. Lisa, his lovely wife, stood next to him in her favorite yellow sundress. Her blonde hair pulled up into a messy bun and her blue eyes gazing at his high-and-tight haircut with a smile. His gaze was upon his seven-year-old son, Adin, who was leaning against his marine desert cammies. Adin looked at the camera with his hazel eyes and a big grin upon his face, proudly wearing dirt stains on his brand-new jeans. JP’s grandparents, Charley and Barbara, stood next to him, both fresh from church.

The day the picture was taken, they splurged on hugs, kisses, laughter, and tears. They told stories about “the good old days” and ate Grandma’s fried chicken and noodles until they had to loosen their belts. Adin ran wild with his cousins, playing army in the barn and in the mud—rendering the comment “he’s definitely your child” from his grinning grandmother. But the mud stuck to them all. While wiping his boots clean in the grass, JP had contemplated whether he should bag up a pinch of it and take it with him. He wished the same for his wife’s and son’s kisses that lingered down the road as his hand waved out the window.

Looking back, the sorrow in their proud smiles had dug into him the most. A sadness he saw again and again––a sadness of which he was always the cause. And with that anguished thought, the life slowly faded from him as he stared into his son’s fuzzy eyes. Another tear tickled down his nose and splashed on the steel slide of his Grandpa’s M1911.

His grip tightened on the .45. I don’t deserve them. I don’t deserve any of them. He bit down until his jaw trembled. Hate and rage flowed through his veins—hate for himself and for his decisions, hate for the Corps, for the war, and for all of those who took away his happiness, one disfiguring explosion at a time. That hate brought a self-harming kind of satisfaction—the kind of pleasure one gets from feeling something, even if it’s the dragging pain of a rusty blade across the skin. But he needed that kind of pain. In his numbness, he needed to feel anything. He glanced at the happy life he held in his left hand, crushed it with his balled-up fist, and tossed the photo at his grandmother’s headstone.

“I’m the worst thing to ever happen to this family.” The words stung and clung to his tongue like a canker sore. He took a powerful swig of bourbon to wash them out.

As the wind came again, it agitated the paper and envelopes piled on the ground. They buzzed until the top letter slid and lifted into the air. With a crinkled tumble, it disappeared over the edge of the ridge. But he didn’t bother to move. Instead, he just sat there holding his bottle and gun, tormented. His eyes twitched as another piece of him soared away into the clouding sky. He let the bottle slip from his hand back onto the letters without bothering to twist the cap back on.

His vision and thoughts blurred, mixing with the past and the present, with the bourbon and the pain, blending with the hum of the interstate off in the distance. Or was it a helo, or maybe air support? He scoffed at the thought as anger gripped his throat. He knew what he was there to do, and with the storm building in the westward sky, there was no reason to wait any longer.

The pistol grip was warm and sticky in his grasp. The edges glistened like the worn-out rifles issued to his reserve unit. But things that flash bring death. He thought of the snipers who painted their rifles a sandy brown to blend in with the Death Land. His death land became cozy and kind, hugging his backside like a deathbed. The cold steel shivered when he jerked it to his temple.

No pistol tastes the same.

He snapped it from his head and jammed the muzzle into his mouth with both hands. His tongue pressed against the cool, smooth barrel. He tasted the iron in the steel, the blood on his lips and teeth.

Good, he thought. Bleed, you little bitch. Bleed.

The tree creaked and groaned. The leaves sounded like water raining down to wash away his sins. A crow cawed and took flight from the wood line to his right. His determined stare at the metal in his mouth broke at the swift movement and ruckus of the black bird laughing at him. He watched it flap and glide away into the murky wooded horizon.

Not even the birds give a shit about you.

His dirty fingernail punched through the trigger guard. The curved and familiar feel of death in his grasp was a comfort he did not expect. But there it was, the answer to all his torment, the cure for his illness, the drug to put him down.

A faint rumble came from beyond the hills and flickering canopy of the horizon. The air—a warm stew of sorrow and blunder—hung onto him like a sweat suit in the summer. Above him, the leaves and branches waved, distracting him from his mission. To the west, the sky boiled, bringing in another pop-up storm to soften the hard humidity. But it was too late to soften a thing. Only the pricks of memories and regrets were there to coddle him.

A gust blew up the hill in waves through the tall grass, and JP wobbled as dust and debris peppered his face. The sting in his eyes was gritty and sharp, but a welcomed pain. Louder and louder, the leaves shook. They felt bigger than they were, hovering over his head like the palms along the Euphrates. Those palm trees, with their sharp, jagged tips––like the dagger on his flak jacket––were such a conflicting contrast to their comforting tropical feel. His squad would take shelter from the sun under their pointy tips, and he’d drift off in thought to the last beach vacation with his parents—back before the planes took down those towers, and their business trip ended in flames and rubble.

He pinched his eyes tight, and the sound of the leaves took him back to that desert sand and tropical paradise by the river in a place of death and destruction. He saw the palms waving in the shadows of his warm eyes. He saw the young, dirty faces of his squad smiling and scarfing down Slim Jims sent with love from home. He felt them there beside him, joking and snickering, making fun of the gun in his mouth.

“What is that, a paperweight?”

“Is that from the civil war?”

“It looks like you’re trying to swallow your boyfriend’s cock.”

“You just gonna sit there all day and cry about it or what?”

“Do it, ya pussy.”

Thunder grumbled from his left and rattled his thoughts. The earth beneath him shook and shuttered his spirit. Like a great quake through the crust, he wobbled and wondered if his world was splitting open. Or was it rockets launched from the back of a black Nissan truck?

Incoming?!

His anxious eyes popped open, but the desert wasn’t there. His marine brothers were not with him. No bombs or explosions fell from the sky.

Jesus! Get it together, man!

A small branch cracked behind him and flipped across the ground. An eerily familiar sound, like a rifle round snapping by him.

A sniper?

His breath came faint and quick. His chest, tight and flexed. He ripped the pistol from his lips and scanned the hill behind him.

No. No, just a branch.

It tumbled and rolled until it met the edge of the hill and disappeared. The damp muzzle, splattered with blood and spit, fell back into his lap.

The clouds grew in the sky like dirty bubbles in bathwater, dulling the scenery. Flashes of light flickered toward him. He blinked at the sparks in the power lines on the next hill over.

What the hell?

Thunder roared up the valley. Lightning seared in the darkened sky. Bright bolts slashed the faded horizon. He shielded his eyes with the back of his hand and forearm. Both began to shake. His will began to falter. A streak of jagged lightning sparked down to the ground just past the next wooded hill, immense and brilliant, bigger and brighter than JP could ever remember. It was a storm like no other. The buzz and fizz in the air was electric. The lightning zapped across the sky and stabbed at the fluttering hilltops. The deep growl in the sky lingered like that of a snarling dog at the end of a thick, tight chain. Reds and greens flared in the black, bubbling mist flooding out the sunlight above him. Strange hums and horns echoed through the valley. It was clear to JP and all witnesses soaking in its wrath––this was no ordinary storm––this was the sky tearing open to the ashy depths of the Hellish void above them. This was the apocalypse. This was the end.

His teeth clenched until they hurt. “Good! Go on! Go on and end it all while it’s all ending, anyway!”

A tree snapped and crashed to the ground, and a faint black trail of smoke lingered in its place. Then, like a smack on the face, a large raindrop popped him in the forehead. It startled him, pulled him from his daze. He gazed down at the pistol with contempt, lifting it from his lap to examine it like it was broken.

Come oooon! Do it! Pull the trigger! Pull the goddamned trigger!

His finger twitched and rubbed across the curved trigger. Raising the firearm to his mouth again, he wrapped his lips around the muzzle.

A tremendous boom roared across the sky, a noise so loud his teeth rattled. An explosion that shook him from the ground into his chest and deep into his shaded memories. It threw him to the grass, where he squirmed and thrashed, tearing at the ground as he tried to crawl for cover underneath the soil. Another monstrous boom and blinding flicker curled him into a fetal position, where he covered his head and neck with desperate hands.

Oh, God! Here they come! They’re walking the mortars in on us!

“Take cover!” He yelled, clawing his way deeper into the earth.

The storm was upon him. Leaves and dirt, twigs and pebbles pelted his skin. Limbs cracked and snapped. A flash to his left, and the Iraqi rooftop ledge appeared. AK-47 and RPK automatic fire blasted the surrounding concrete. Chunks and dust splattered his face. An RPG swooshed by the building and exploded into the next house behind his squad. Fragmentation rounds from his team leader’s grenade launcher thumped and exploded into the windows ahead of him. Another RPG ripped from the rooftop diagonally to his right. It shook the two-story house they took cover in. Black smoke billowed up from the hole in the wall. His ears rang; his body was numb. He looked around in the chaos as his squad returned fire. Brass casings pinged onto the concrete.

Thump! Thump! Thump! The mortars came in threes, exploding closer and closer and closer. He shut his eyes as the rocks and pebbles rained down.

CRACK!

A thick branch above him split and fell mere inches from his face. The leaves slapped him on the nose, snapping him back to reality. Stunned by the fog of it all, he sat up and pressed himself into the trunk of that mighty oak.

A thin mist sprayed his face while the letters of his family and friends danced around him. They swirled with the leaves, tumbling in the breeze. Those not secured by the weight of water, mud, or the bottle of Jim Beam fluttered away in a blur. He sobbed and shook in defeat. Then he lifted his head and watched the arms above him whip back and forth, like hands frantically trying to get his attention. Crimson streaks rode the rain down his face. He slapped himself on the cheek.

Stop it!

Again, but harder.

Stop it, right now! You know where you are! You know what you came to do! It’s just a fucking storm!

He squinted up and hollered at the sky. “You’re just a storm! You ain’t nothin’! I’m not afraid of you!” His pistol stabbed at the air as he shouted. His chest puffed and rocked with a deep, shaky breath.

The rolling black clouds churned above him. He looked beyond the branches at the different swirls of gray, black, and blue. He felt connected, like the sky was a mirror, and he was staring at himself.

“I can’t live like this! God? Do you hear me?”

The thunder rolled across the farm, dampening his cries above. Or was it a reply?

“I can’t fucking live like this,” he confessed, defeated, to the damp tombstones.

The pistol slowly shook back toward his temple. He pressed it hard into his skull.

“You feel that, don’t ya?” He pressed until his neck slanted to the left, until the muzzle dug into his skin. Its pressure biting down above his jaw, throbbing and ricocheting through his head.

“Good. Cause it’s the last pain you’re ever gonna feel!”

The click of the safety sounded exactly like his M4. His gut turned as he blew rain from his lips. His finger trembled with the thunder on his trigger. He closed his eyes one last time to think of anything worth living for, anything he hadn’t already lost or damaged or hurt—anything he hadn’t pushed to the edge of hating him.

Then, in the buzz of the wind, something wet and flat slapped against his face, sticking there. He flinched, growled at the interruption, and snatched it—one of the pictures from the letters scattered around the tree. The photo felt heavy and awkward, like an unfulfilled promise.

He smeared the water drops from its color and shook it before bringing it closer to his face. He gasped at the image of the hill and oak outlined by a sunny sky. He remembered the picture well. Flipping it over, he read what his boy had written in orange marker on the back.

Don’t forget about me and your favorite spot! Come home soon, Daddy!

Love,

your best buddy Adin

Chapter Two

Rockets like You

How strange a sound

ripping through

this “love songs to think about me”

mixed-tape cd,

that you scribbled half-shaded hearts

and I love you’s upon,

before you sent it out to this desert death land;

a sound roaring to life from afar and dreamy,

dragging jumping Marines

from their lover’s arms

to this concrete floor

of filth and care packages.

Their presence is shaking.

And I have to watch the freeing grit

rush out like South Carolina waves

through the sunrays

gushing in from the sandbagged windows

just to know that I am still alive.

Just as alive as I was with you

while pretending to be a shark

grabbing at your ankles

in the salty tidal pools

of a past summer’s vacation.

Now, the air-raid siren sounds,

blasting validity through the barracks

of sober faces.

It should have been a warning well received,

about the woman that you would become;

of how you would make that rumble

in the yard become the roar inside of me;

how your uncertainty and unfaithfulness,

your fire and your shrapnel

left me charred and dying

in a world of new beginnings.

One Year Earlier

“Hello?”

“Hey, baby.” JP turned his back to the long line of marines stretching outside the concrete room of the call center at Forward Operating Base Hit, Iraq. They all looked the same: perpetually dirty in their sun-faded, salt-crusted desert cammies and tan faces with sweat streaks from their temples to their necks. Their black rifles were slung against their backs and across their chests, slapping against their backside when they walked.

Young faces, chiseled and hardened by the hacks of war, filled the line. Yesterday, the two-days-late resupply finally brought down three landline phones from Al-Asad—only slightly better than the few SAT phones they had to share and recharge. Now, twenty Lance Corporals waited to make their third or fourth phone call home to their cheating girlfriends and sleepless mothers.

This war was different. Technology had become a weapon of the enemy. No personal cell phones or computers were authorized. Instead, they had to do it the old-fashioned way––three wall phones for the whole company to use. Brilliant. Good intentions, but poor execution. And Sgt. JP Grimm learned quickly that only two of them actually worked when he had picked up the receiver, and the line was dead. Yet another FAIL! by the higher-ups. Something they were used to by now. What a shitshow.

The line of marines extended out the open door, curving between the concrete wall and earth-filled Hesco barriers. The peppered Forward Operating Base was not much more than three two-story concrete buildings forming an ‘L’ in the desert sand a thousand meters from the Euphrates. The base had been captured by ISIS after the second war, and his company had to retake the FOB, the city, and everything else in their Area of Operations. But just like everything else, ISIS destroyed it all before they were destroyed themselves. The marines had to rebuild it, rewire it, reinforce it, and yet it was still so far from satisfactory. FOB Hit was an easy target for rockets and mortars due to its proximity to the main highway running Northwest through Baghdad and because the pockets of defilade bumped and swallowed the surrounding desert.

JP’s head hung low while he leaned beside one of the orange operations security informational posters plastered around the room, dubbed The Emotional Clinic, or EC, by some annoying marine who thought he was witty. He pushed the receiver to his ear, plugging his other with a scratchy finger. The chatter behind him—marines trying to talk over top of other marines—made it difficult to hear.

“JP! Oh my God! Is it really you?” Lisa’s high-pitched squeal cracked through the static line. She almost didn’t answer the unknown number. Another robocall, she thought. But her pleasant surprise didn’t lack any emotion or volume.

Sergeant Grimm’s body warmed while he tried to hide the huge smile tugging at his crimson cheeks. It had been over a month since he last heard her voice, and only now did he allow himself to miss it, to miss her. Her contagious laugh, slender waist, and sunshine hair kept eyes glued to her halo and made young men’s hearts thunder, especially his. What he loved most was her youthfulness, her playful, free-spirit, and pure, overflowing heart. Finally, he allowed his mind to drift back home, back to Lisa, to their bedroom, where they would spend lazy Sundays wrapped in each other’s arms. He dipped his toes into those warm waters of his memories, but covered his beaming face by turning away from the nagging eyes and teasing banter of his brothers behind him.

“It’s me, babe. I promise,” he said over the crackling connection.

“Ahh, I’m so excited! And surprised! When did you…how did you…? It doesn’t even matter! Oh my God, I’ve missed your voice! I love you, baby. I love you so much! I got your letters! I read them every night to Adin. Well, most of them, anyway. Of course, I leave out the good stuff or the bad stuff —however you wanna look at it. Basically, I’m just trying to say that we miss you and can’t wait to see and hold you again.” Finally, she took a breath long enough for him to speak.

Laughing, he pressed the phone closer to his mouth. “You gonna let me say anything or what?”

“Shut up!” He could hear the red-cheeked smile in her voice.

And his was impossible to hide any longer. “God, I love you so much,” he said softly to the concrete wall.

“Wait. What? I couldn’t hear you. There was static.”

“I said, I love you so much.”

“Huh? What? Could you repeat that?” Her reply had a playful tone.

He stood up a little taller, still facing the wall, while getting lost in her playful antics.

“I love you.” It was quicker, but louder.

“You… glooove me?”

“Yes.”

“With your glove?”

“What? No. Lisa!”

“I’m sorry,” her playful tone melted his heart, “you’re just going to have to say it a little louder.”

He grunted in defeat. “Damn it, Lisa! I LOVE YOU!”