The burden of truth
May 30, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 10 Comments
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Memorial Day has always been a special time in my life. For a lot of reasons, some of which I’ll admit really don’t have much at all to do with the meaning of the holiday. As a child, that day meant the end of school was near. Hang on just a little while longer, that day told me, because it’s almost over. Thinking like that got me through school. And in a somewhat convoluted and beautiful sort of way, after all those years I find myself working at a college and thinking much the same way.
But of course I understand much more now than I did at eighteen. About life, yes, but also about things like Memorial Day. About what it symbolizes. There are holidays that are the domain of the religious among us, no matter how deep secular society tries to sink their teeth into them. Christmas isn’t about Santa, Easter isn’t about a rabbit, and Thanksgiving isn’t about turkey. There’s something about those days that whispers to us that we should spend some time looking inside ourselves rather than around.
Memorial Day is unique in that it is a secular holiday with almost religious connotations. It’s a day to commemorate values like honor and sacrifice, virtues that for many now seem archaic. It is a day to say thank you to those who willingly put themselves in harm’s way to protect our freedom. Who whisper to us in the darkness that we may lie down and rest, because they stand guard in the breach. I can think of few things more worthy of pausing in the grind of our daily lives.
Nowadays the military is a revered institution, trusted more than our government, our judges, and our financial giants. I believe that’s a good thing. It hasn’t always been that way. There was a time in our history when our soldiers were punished in the court of social opinion for the deeds of our leaders, and in a time when it seems as though we’ve screwed so much up, it’s nice to know we’ve at least righted that. We can vent our rage and frustration with the policymakers all we want, we can call wars illegal or unjustified, but we will support our troops.
That’s what Memorial Day is about.
As I pause today to remember the fallen and the ultimate sacrifice they gave, my thoughts turn to the fallen of other countries as well, whether allies or enemies.
The history of mankind is a dichotomy marked by seemingly impossible advances and abhorrent violence. Our hands have tilled the earth for food to sustain us, and those hands have also soaked that very earth in blood. The depths to which the human spirit can rise are matched only by the depths to which it can descend. We are at once noble and ignoble, at times good and other times evil, and all together broken.
You can tell me otherwise, but I’ll never believe it.
I will honor our brave men and women today. I will think of them, I will thank them, I will pray for them. But I will also fight the urge that sits deep within me to glorify the wars they fight and the blood they spill, however necessary and right and defensible it may be. Because in the end our soldiers protect more than my freedom and my safety, they also protect a truth that burdens them so it will never have to burden any of us, one that has been found on the battlefields of Europe, the jungles of Vietnam, the streets of Baghdad, and the mountains of Afghanistan—a man doesn’t have to die to go to hell. They’ve been there.
What happiness requires
May 25, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 24 Comments
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Before I tell you about Mark, let me talk about trash. Or rather, let me talk about how much I hate to take out the trash.
In our house, that’s a blue chore (blue meaning a job for the guys, as opposed to, say, washing the clothes, which is a pink chore). Nothing irritates me more than hauling two bulging bags of garbage out to the cans. It’s done twice weekly and takes all of five minutes, but it’s an eternity to me. It stinks. Literally And it’s messy. Though far from a germaphobe and even though I often use gloves, I still wash my hands afterward. Usually twice. And then I’ll take a shower.
I know, I know. But deep down, we’re all weird in our own ways.
Mark, on the other hand, doesn’t mind trash. At least that’s what he says. I would imagine he would have to say that, given his job. He doesn’t have a choice. You see, Mark picks up our trash every week.
He’ll be the first to say his is not a career to which most aspire. Mark himself never expected to become a garbage man. But when your formal education stops just south of eleventh grade, your options are somewhat limited. It was either trash man or cashier down at the 7-11, and Mark says he’s never wanted to work with the public.
And besides, it isn’t all bad. Sure, some days are worse than others. He’ll say the weeks after Christmas are really bad, what with all those boxes and such. Halloween is no picnic, either.
Yet for the most part, the work is as enjoyable as it can be. He gets to ride around hanging from the back of a truck, which I admit I’ve always considered cool. And it’s outside work, which I admit is much better than being chained to a desk. Yes, it’s smelly. And many times it’s disgusting (I won’t tell you about what Mark has to go through during hunting season).
One would perhaps think that a man whose occupation revolves around the thing I hate to do most would be a man I’d pity. I will say I do not. Well, not anymore. I once pitied Mark as I pitied the downtrodden or the lame. He was the sort of person I’d look upon and wonder if God had somehow overlooked him. He was an example of the inherent unfairness of life.
But then I got to know him, and I discovered otherwise.
For instance, Mark is a family man. Has a wife and three kids. Mrs. Mark works at the Family Dollar and teaches Sunday school at a little church one town over. The kids, two boys and a baby girl, are the pride of his life. I’ve seen pictures that prove his pride is not the sinful sort. The clan lives in a single-wide trailer that backs up to the national forest. It’s a peaceful place, Mark says. The sort of place where a family can put some roots down.
Despite the perceived shamefulness of his job, Mark takes his work seriously. Someone has to clean up, he said to me, and it might as well be him. It’s a public service, and an important one. What kind of town would we have if no one picked up the trash?
So he works and his wife works, and together they spend what they have to and save what they can. Mark has big plans. So far his family has managed to squirrel away almost five thousand dollars to put toward a new double-wide, one that has a fireplace and even a Jacuzzi tub. He says his supervisor has noticed his hard work and attention to detail. A promotion may be in order in the coming years. He’s prayed for that and keeps his fingers crossed.
It’s difficult in this life to define happiness. Sometimes I think we attribute too much to it. We think we need money or education or fame to have it, but we don’t. I’d even be pressed to say such things often get in the way of happiness rather than provide it.
It’s not ironic then that the secret to happiness isn’t found in bound volumes of experts or esoteric writings of sages, but in the life of one single garbage man named Mark.
Because he’s happy, and I know why. Mark has the three things happiness requires.
Someone to love.
Something to do.
And something to hope for.
What I was doing when the Rapture didn’t happen
May 23, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 10 Comments
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Saturday, May 22, 5:50 pm.
I could tell you the reason why I’m presently walking the widow Pence’s dog has nothing at all to do with Harold Camping’s promise that the Rapture is mere minutes away, but I’d be lying. The truth is that I’m doing this precisely because we’re all going to die.
You’ve heard of Harold Camping, yes? Me neither. Not until this week, when the Drudge Report got hold of his story. Seems Mr. Camping, who runs some sort of religious broadcasting network in California, fancies himself a bit of a math whiz. He’s crunched the numbers and decided that according to the Bible, Saturday is the beginning of the end. Better hang on folks, he says, because this ain’t gonna be pretty.
This is what I’m thinking about while walking widow Pence’s dog—Buttercup is her name, a white poodle who looks like the business end of the mop I use on the wood floors in the house. She’s a happy dog, unlike her grouchy owner.
The problem with Buttercup in general and the widow Pence in particular began a few Saturdays ago. Ms. Pence had moved into the house down the road and minded her own business. There was no neighborliness about her. Rumor on the street was that she chased away a few neighborhood kids whose kickball had strayed into her front yard. That seemed to be the sum total of her social interaction.
She’s a non-waver too, which does not help her case. Neighbors wave to one another. It’s common courtesy. Ms. Pence was not interested in waving, much less saying hello. She walked Buttercup nightly around the block, their heads both high and pompous and their eyes fixed straight ahead.
So, Saturday a few weeks ago.
Busy day, lots to do, the first of which was to pile a load of trash and brush onto the back of my redneck hoopty truck and haul it all to the dump. I pulled out of the driveway and turned left—why it was left and not right I do not know, I can only assume God decided to teach me something—past the widow Pence’s house.
I assumed the white mass in the middle of the road was a bit of discarded trash whipped there by the wind, but then it moved. Wagged, actually.
Buttercup.
She did not move, merely sat right there where she was and looked at me. I stopped ten feet in front of her, the hoopty’s engine growing, impatient, as if asking me what was going on and hurry up already because we had a lot to do that day.
I put the truck into neutral and gunned the engine, thinking that would be enough to scare her out of the middle of the road. No such luck. Tried the horn. Same result. She just sat there with her tongue out, which was likely because she was hot but I nonetheless took for mockery.
I couldn’t pull around her to either side; a boat and a car were blocking the way. So there I sat, my Saturday and my pride in peril because some little pansy dog wouldn’t get out of my way.
I stuck my head out the window. Said, “Hey dummy, get outta my way.”
Nothing.
So I tried louder, “I’m gonna squish you into a fluffy white pancake.”
At which point Buttercup sauntered toward her front yard. Not because of me, mind you. Because of the widow Pence. Who had been standing there watching and listening the whole time.
“You have some nerve, young man,” she said. “How dare you speak that way?”
What followed was not among my brighter moments. In deference to space and time, I’ll skip over that. Suffice it to say that by the time I pulled away, the widow Pence and I did not like each other. At all.
And that’s how it stood between us until this week, when I read about Mr. Harold Camping’s math skills. The truth is that I fully expect this world to chug on as it always has in the next ten minutes. If Jesus doesn’t know when the end is going to come, I doubt some guy with a pencil and a piece of paper does.
But still, the end will come. Sometime.
We don’t know when or where, but it’ll happen for each of us. We’d better be ready. Say the things we need to say, do the things we need to go. Love and make amends.
Which is why I walked over to the widow Pence’s house and apologized. Why I talked her into letting me take Buttercup for a walk. And why she is at this moment two steps in front of me on the leash, no doubt relishing in the snickers I’m getting from the other people on the street.
But that’s okay. Because if my end doesn’t come in the next few minutes, it will eventually. At least I’ll have one less thing on my mind when I go.
The weight of worry
May 19, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 16 Comments
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To say my daughter is a worrier would be an understatement. She worries about everything. There are the normal worries of a nine-year-old—Do people like me? Am I going to get an A on my math test? How do I fit in and stand out at the same time? But there are also worries no nine-year-old should concern herself with—What if I don’t become a doctor? What if the whole world blows up? What if God isn’t real?
This has all been going on for a while, and many times I fear it’s getting worse. The world expands when you turn nine. You’re right on the cusp of young adulthood. Things get scary. I understand that. Which is why I’ve gone to great lengths to calm my daughter’s fears and ease her worries.
But lately I’ve noticed a shift in the way I act towards her. I’ll see my daughter coming into the room and know by the way she walks—small steps, head down—and the way she whispers “Daddy?” that something’s on her mind. Something pressing and important.
I’ll say, “Yes?”
And she’ll relay that day’s fresh worry. Whether small or large, warranted or not, doesn’t matter. There is no distinction between important or not. All worries feel the same.
And yet while before I would patiently listen, now I find myself cutting her words short. And while before I would give her the best advice I could, lately I find myself giving her subtle variations of, “You worry too much, and you need to stop.”
It hasn’t worked. My daughter has now gone from worrying about the whole world blowing up to worrying about worrying.
It’s frustrating. For her and for me. This is perhaps the first time I’ve realized that the parental reach extends only so far. At some point, one’s children must act on their own. Nothing I can do can assuage my daughter’s worry. She must do that on her own. And that she can’t—or rather won’t—makes me angry.
It makes me angry because I know what harm constant worry can do. I’ve done it all my life. Like her, they started both small and normal. Also like her, they soon magnified themselves into large, dark shadows of very small and light things. They became like boulders I carried on my insides and refused to put down, dragging me along to the point where steps seemed as miles and the horizon ahead never moved nearer. I was stuck, imprisoned not by life or the devil, but by my own self.
That’s what I fear for her.
That’s why I’m angry.
I see in my daughter my younger self. I want her to be more than her father, and I’m mad that she doesn’t see that she can.
It hasn’t taken me long to realize what an ass I’m being, though. Here I am a grown man, and I still worry about things I shouldn’t. Why should I be angry with my daughter for doing the same? Better, I think, to show her the love and understanding I’ve always refused to show myself.
I can’t be angry that I cannot make her what I wish her to be, because I can’t make myself what I wish to be.
Jimmy’s long road ahead
May 16, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 29 Comments
There are fewer places more depressing to be nowadays than at the gas station. Especially around here, where those tiny hybrid cars are known as “roller skates” and spoken of in the same mocking tones reserved for liberal politicians and terrorists. Everyone has an SUV here. Or a jacked-up truck. Or both. Having to spend close to a hundred dollars to fill up your tank does not make for a pleasant experience.
It also invites certain periods of discomfort and outright sadness when waiting in line at the cash register. Which is what happened to me the other day. And strangely enough, it had nothing to do with gas.
There were five of us, all lined up in succession in front of a somewhat shaken seventeen-year-old high school cashier who no doubt was tired of being held as the person responsible for the $3.85 per gallon price. That did not stop the farmer at the head of the line from asking how in the world he was supposed to plow his fields with the price of diesel so high, diesel being even more expensive. The cashier shrugged, said “I dunno,” and then offered a qualifying “Sorry, mister.”
Their short conversation would have likely been an interesting one, but my attention then turned to the mother and son in front of me. Both wore the dull layer of weariness common to a hard life, she in her baggy sweatpants and flannel button-up, he in a pair of too-short jeans and a Wrestlemania T-shirt. The mother sighed often—I think it was the deep, tired sigh that drew my attention away from the farmer and the cashier—her hand gripping a twenty dollar bill as if she were trying to squeeze out the ink.
Bored with standing in line, her son wandered away to the candy aisle. Mama’s eyes followed him and then drifted to me. “Hello,” she said. I helloed back.
The boy was back—“Ma, can I have this?”
He held up a bag of Big League Chew, the grape flavored. Not my first choice, as the regular flavored was much better, but still a valid request. Every boy worth his salt is a Big League Chew fan, my own son included. I thought at that moment that maybe I should grab him a bag, too. He’d like that.
“No Jimmy,” said the mother. “That stuff’s too expensive.”
I stole a look at the tiny orange sticker that had been placed just under the batter’s chest on the bag–$1.29.
“Please?”
Rather than answer, mama gripped her twenty harder. But Jimmy wasn’t about to let silence be her final answer.
“Mama?”
The line moved forward. Mr. Farmer Guy was gone now, as was the lady behind him and the man behind her. It was now an elderly man’s turn to excoriate the poor cashier on evil oil companies and corrupt government officials. Mama and Jimmy were next in line, and the question of the Big League Chew was still in the air.
“Mama?”
“No,” she said, and with a sharpness that revealed the hidden facts she was trying to keep from her son. Just one word, one no, that really meant, “Don’t you see that we don’t have the money, that this twenty dollars will maybe get us enough gas to go to the store and back home and you to school tomorrow and then I’ll be on fumes again? Don’t you see?”
But Jimmy didn’t see.
“But Mama…”
“No” again. Then a very sad and very final, “We ain’t got the money.”
The elderly man left—“Damn oil companies” was his parting shot—and mama and Jimmy moved to the register.
The cashier sighed in a here-we-go-again way and said, “You get some gas, ma’am?”
“No,” she said. Jimmy had by then managed to sneak the bag of bubble gum onto the counter in a desperate attempt to somehow leave the store with it, but mama’s eyes caught it.
“I said NO.” She grabbed the bag and held it out. “Take this back,” she told her son. “And do it before I tan your hide.”
I could see the tears in Jimmy’s eyes and thought there were perhaps tears in his mother’s as well, and I thought then that the four of us—mother, son, cashier, and me—were being privy to yet another example that life is unfair. That no matter what we do or how hard we try, some children will always want and some parents will never be able to provide.
“Ma’am?” asked the cashier.
Mother’s attention snapped back to the moment, sighed again. She held out her twenty and said, “I need a pack of Marlboro lights and fifteen Powerball tickets.”
This post is part of the One Word at a Time Blog Carnival: Road, hosted by my friend Peter Pollock. For more posts about this topic, please visit him at PeterPollock.com
The art of walking
May 11, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 16 Comments
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I see her five days a week, Monday through Friday. Always at 10:00 or so, just as I’m dropping off mail and picking up more.
She’s always dressed the same—faded jeans, white T shirt. Always has a cup of coffee in her hand, held up close to her mouth, even if she’s not sipping. Her strides are as short as her age is long, to the point where she seems to patter along instead of walk.
There are, of course, many walkers around campus. The scenery is green and quiet and safe. But her routine ensures she stands out from the rest. She will take three steps and pause, her head down as if in prayer, then sip. Take three more steps, repeat. Every day, Monday through Friday. And probably the others too, but I’m at home and can’t see her.
I was at the 7-11 this morning, hunting for lunch, and said hello to the person in line in front of me. Turns out it was her.
“I know you,” she said. “You’re the boy who passes me every day.”
I said yes and smiled, thinking it had been a very long time since someone called me boy.
She sipped her coffee and smiled. “You must think I’m a crazy person.”
“Why’s that?”
“For the way I go about my morning constitutional,” she said. “You know.” She moved out of the line and proceeded to take three small steps toward the candy aisle, stopped, sipped. “That.”
“I don’t think that makes you a crazy person,” I said.
“Yes you do.”
I paused. Said, “Though I’ll admit it has upon occasion made me a mite curious.”
“Ha!” she said, stepping back into line. “I knew it. You know how many people think that? That I’m crazy? I get that all the time.”
I nodded, not sure of an appropriate response.
“But I’m not,” she said. “Not crazy at all. I’m smart. Smarter than all the other walkers.” Then she leaned in close and whispered, “Wasn’t born that way, though. I got smart the way you’re supposed to—by screwing up a lot first.”
The man at the cash register finally bought his lottery tickets. He left, the line moved up.
“Makes sense,” I said. “If that’s true, then I’m going to be a genius one of these days.”
“Wanna know why I do that? Why I walk that way?”
“Sure.”
“I forgot how to walk.”
I looked at her, this woman who said she wasn’t crazy at all but sure did seem like she was.
“I was a lawyer in a former life,” she told me, the line moving once more. “That’s a horrible existence. Always running around, always in a hurry. Know what happens when you’re always in a hurry? Life passes you. I got rich, but I lost entire years of living. Isn’t that horrible?”
“Sounds like it,” I said.
She laid her coffee on the counter and smiled at the cashier, a tired-looking young man who would rather be somewhere else.
“I retired last year and decided I was going to learn how to walk again. Not like the other people who parade around on that campus. They’re always out there with some intention. Shape this or firm that. Not me. My only intention is to feel and listen. When I’m walking, I’m feeling. But I always stop, because the only time anyone can listen is when they stop.”
She paid and left. I sat my lunch on the counter and watched her go. She paused at the edge of the parking lot and sipped her coffee. Stretched out her arms. Then she walked three steps and stopped.
Feeling and listening.
I like this lady. She’s taught me much.
Like how sometimes we have to slow down so life doesn’t pass us, and how we can live entire years and yet lose them just the same.
A love without end, amen
May 9, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 26 Comments
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I blame the wedding for all of this. The royal one, I mean. William and Kate, the Duke and Dutchess of…something or other. Yes, it’s all their fault.
I share part of the blame, of course. I didn’t have to record their nuptials, even if my daughter looked at me with those pleading eyes and asked me to do so. And I didn’t have to let her see the ceremony. Or the pretty white dress. Or the fancy church or the waving crowds and the first kiss.
Didn’t have to. But I did.
Those pleading eyes are going to get me into trouble someday.
Now I have to deal with the aftermath of all this. Since then, my little girl (MINE, mind you) has been all atwitter about her own wedding.
She’s made lists. Many lists. What kind of dress she will wear, where the ceremony will be, what sorts of flowers, what colors. She even told me I should go ahead and put in for vacation now, just in case I won’t be able to in fifteen years or so.
My answer to that—all that—was the sort of “Humph” that is code for “You better start talking about something else in the next five seconds.”
Because despite race or age or ethnicity or faith (or lack thereof), all fathers share this one thing in common—they will always see their daughters as little girls. Their little girls.
Yesterday:
Daughter and I are in the truck, on the way home from a stop at Lowe’s. Conversation is both light and shallow, touching upon school and work and writing.
Then, “Daddy, when I get married I think I want it to be outside.”
“Humph.”
“What?”
“Nothing,” I said.
I looked at her in the rearview mirror. Her eyes were thoughtful. “Do you think that’s a good idea?”
“What if it rains?” I asked.
“I hadn’t thought about that.”
“I don’t think you need to be pondering such things. Plenty to do between now and then.”
“But I ponder it a lot,” she said.
I looked away and through the windshield. Fiddled with the radio. Rolled the windows down a little more. Anything to distract her, to get her mind off a subject I had no desire whatsoever to elaborate upon. And, truth be known, I thought that maybe it would have been better if my son were sitting in the backseat of the truck and not her. Because we would be talking about baseball and dirt and mulch. I understood those things. Those things, I could freely talk about.
“I wonder where he is,” she said.
“Where who is?”
“The boy I’m going to marry.”
I doubt I can fully describe the magnitude of what she said. Suffice it to say it was enough for all the blood in my body to succumb to dread and pool in the toes of my boots. My arms went numb, my vision fuzzy. And I swear my heart stopped beating.
I’d never thought of that. I’d never paused and considered the fact that the boy my daughter will someday marry is alive right now. Growing up, just like her.
“I don’t know, honey.”
We drive home in silence, each of us staring out the nearest window. Thinking about him.
For my daughter, I have no doubt her thoughts revolved around how handsome he was and how kind. How he was perhaps a farmer or a scientist or a teacher.
For me, I thought more of who he would be than what, and what his parents were doing about all of that right now. Were they teaching him about honor and respect? Responsibility and hard work? Were they instructing him of the proper way to treat a woman? Were they slowly indoctrinating him to the truth that life is a hard thing and that love is a fragile one?
I hoped so.
Because one day the little girl in the backseat of my truck—my little girl—will be shared with someone else. The heart she has given me will be his. She will lean on him and love him and trust him, not in the same way she does with me now, but in a way similar.
The radio station went from commercial to a song we both knew. George Strait is a favorite in our home. He sang, I hummed. My daughter hummed, too. And when he reached the chorus, we both sang.
And I said, Let me tell you a secret about a fathers love,
A secret that my daddy said was just between us.
He said daddies don’t just love their children every now and then,
It’s a love without end, amen.
Amen.
Ricky’s scars
May 4, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 14 Comments
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Even today Ricky is wearing long sleeves, though these are the three-quarter kind that end just before his wrists. It’s hot—the thermometer on the bank flashes 85 between the time and the interest rates. Very hot for early May in Virginia. And I can tell Ricky’s feeling it. Sweat has gathered on back of his shirt, turning it a darker gray. I see it and think of a Rorschach test. I see a dragon breathing fire. I wonder what Ricky would say if he could see it.
He turns as I pull on the door and tips his beer to me. As he does, I can see the jagged scars in his arms, twisting like dry riverbeds in a forgotten canyon. I look up to his face. Ricky says hey, and I hey back.
Saturdays at the 7-11 are what Friday nights at the VFW once were, a chance for townsfolk to gather and gossip and try their hand at lady luck. The lottery has replaced bingo, it promising a larger if more far-fetched payoff in tough times. Me, I’m not here to play the lottery. The kids just wanted Slurpees.
I stand in line waiting my turn, my eyes moving from the people around me to Ricky outside. He’s still leaning against his old Ford truck, still talking to Ralphie Cousins and Ernie Lambert, two local farmers. Ricky nods as he’s told all this rain’s good but it better slack off soon so fields can be dried out and planted. He nods, but I wonder if he’s really listening. Ricky’s not into farming. To hear him say it, he’s “Semi-retired.” That’s okay. I expect he deserves a bit of rest.
The cashier rings up my Slurpees (plus a newspaper, some beef jerky, and a can of Skoal) and tells me to have a good ’un. Ricky’s finishing the last of his beer as I push through the door. Ralphie and Ernie have retreated to their trucks.
“Hey man,” he says. He tosses the empty can into the bed of the Ford. “What’s up?”
“Slurpee run,” I tell him. “You?”
He nods and scratches at a canyon in his arm. Ricky says it still itches and likely always will. The beer helps. He says that, too. But then he’ll say he reckons the beer is like a Band-Aid over a mortal wound.
“Runnin’ around,” Ricky says. He scratches again, this time higher up on his arm, and when he does the sleeve rises a good two inches. A knot forms in my stomach at the sight. “Pretty day.”
“It is. You doin’ okay?”
“Yeah.” Ricky smiles as he says it. The knot in my stomach loosens, and I smile back. There was a time not long ago when most folks thought he’d never smile again, and for good reason. Not me. I knew he would.
He looks out over the mountains, the budding trees, the flowers across the street. He asks, “Know what got me through over there? Memory. All that sand, all that…tan. Everything’s tan, you know. Just the dirtiest, saddest tan you can imagine. I just kept remembering these blue mountains and green grass. Got me through.” Ricky reaches for another can, holds it, then puts it back. I can almost hear his thoughts—Just a Band-Aid. “Thought about them when they’s putting me back together, too. Memory. Folks say they’d like to forget a lot of things, but not me. Remembering’s important.” He looks at me and says, “We’re all a story, you know that?”
“I do,” I tell him.
Ricky scratches again and says he should be going, that there’s grass to cut. Ricky loves cutting the grass. Loves the smell. A year in Afghanistan makes you miss little things like the smell of a fresh-cut lawn.
I take my Slurpees and head to the truck. Ricky waves as he pulls away, his sleeve now caught by the wind, pushing it up to near the shoulder. The IED killed three in his squad and nearly Ricky himself. It took the doctors nearly three hours to put his body back together. It’ll take longer with his heart and his mind.
Ricky said they offered to do plastic surgery on the scars that litter his arms. He said no. Leave them. The doctors didn’t understand that. I do.
Because the truth? Ricky’s memories will always be with him, just like ours will always be with us. They’re like those empty cans rattling around in the bed of his truck, always following him. The good and the bad.
“Shouldn’t we be sad when even the bad man is killed?”
May 2, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 24 Comments
photo credit: theatlanticwire.com
The weekday morning routine begins with a cup of coffee and the news, that latter of which is turned off when the kids wake for school. They don’t like the news, they say. And I tell them I don’t like it much either. Those few minutes before our days begin and we are all on the sofa are usually spent watching something else.
But not this morning. This morning was different.
Perhaps I was just lost in the story, my eyes locked on the bold words in all caps at the bottom of the screen—BIN LADEN KILLED BY US FORCES. Or maybe it was the fact that my mind was divided between May of 2011 and September of 2001, leaving no room to ponder the blond-haired little girl who entered and sat beside me. Her eyes were puffed, sleepy. She yawned.
“Who’s bin Laden?” she asked me.
I remembered asking myself that very question almost ten years ago—Who is bin Laden and what has he done and why Jesus, why?—sitting on the edge of my bed in my bathrobe, just sitting there. Staring at burning buildings and soot-covered people who were bleeding and shaking and crying. I knew they were the lucky ones. The ones jumping from the upper floors of the Towers, choosing death by gravity over death by fire, they were the unlucky ones.
“He was a bad man,” I told her.
“Is the bad man dead?”
“Yes.”
“Who killed him?”
“Remember those men we see at the beach sometimes?” I asked her. “They killed him.”
She yawned again, a high-pitched, little-girl exhale that ended with, “What did he do that was so bad?”
I saw those soot-covered people again, the bodies falling. I remembered the panic that day, of fear and uncertainty so overcoming it could only be expressed in silence. The little girl beside me was in her mother’s womb then. Sitting on the table beside me were her first ultrasound pictures. I remembered looking at the screen and looking at the pictures and—God help me—wishing she would not be born into such a world. That she would be spared of such evil.
“He killed a lot of people.”
We sat in silence as the people talked on the television, relaying the events, the soldiers involved, the particulars of the raid. When they described the death, my daughter asked, “What’s a double-tap?”
“Nothing,” I said. She was too sleepy to notice my smile.
The picture on the television changed to scenes from the night before. Crowds outside the White House and in Times Square. People chanting and singing and laughing.
She asked, “Why are those people happy?”
“Because the bad man is dead.”
Another yawn, this one smaller. She put her head on my shoulder and I wished it could just stay like that forever, us there and the rest of my family close, the birds singing outside and the sun rising over the mountains.
“Is God happy, too?”
I didn’t know how to answer that. I told her so.
“Are you happy, Daddy?”
“Yes. If I could, I’d shake the hand of the man who killed him.”
She didn’t know how to take that, this little girl, who’s world is small and bright and populated by fairies who alight around her room nightly as she sleeps.
“Shouldn’t we be sad when even the bad man is killed?”
I wondered, my mind divided again between the present and the past, between feeling the little girl’s head on my shoulder and seeing her still-forming head in a grainy picture while the planes fell and the people cried and the whole world seemed to end. I wondered what has become of us since, of those who wish nothing but death on our enemies and those who would rather bow than fight. I wondered of those who believe it wrong that Gandhi should reside in hell, and I wondered if they believe it equally wrong that Osama bin Laden should reside in heaven.
“I don’t know, honey,” I told her.
And I still don’t.
But I know that my daughter will grow up. Her small and bright world of fairies will one day become a big and dark world full of monsters. Monsters like him.
She yawned once more, her hand now in mine. I thought of these words from George Orwell: “We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.”
I don’t know if God expects me to be sad, but I know I am not.
And I don’t know if He expects me to make peace with the monsters, but I believe He would rather we fight them.
Author of Snow Day and Paper Angels (November 2011), both by FaithWords. But don't let that fool you. I'm just as confused as anyone.
And that is fine with me, because the great thing about wandering around in the fog is that you never know what you might run into.
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