Dwelling by Thomas S. Flowers Page A

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    Beneath Mooney, Johnathan could see Sergeant Cobbett’s barreled chest and pudgy gut, with more chins than a Chinese take-out, cussing more than a sailor on shore leave. Guys like Cobbett could only exist in the Army during wartime, only when Uncle Sam needed warm bodies to swell troop surges. Johnathan watched these faces and many more floating just beneath the brim of his coffee. There were flashes of sound, as well. Shouts. Laughing. Screaming. Gunfire intermittent with small talk about home, about what they were going to do with their deployment capital, the moolah they’d earned while in theater, combat action pay, hazard pay, basic allowance for housing, basic allowance for substance, etc., etc. If you were careful , he recalled, you could blow your entire savings at AAFES. The one on Victory was like a fucking Walmart in the sand. Potbellied fobbits getting fat on Burger King and burning money on nonsense junk like basketball shorts, Slurpees, television sets, Xbox, Playstations, Tim McGraw and Cash albums, magazines, every assortment of shit to make crazed hoarders believe they’d found the Promised Land. Anything and everything they could grab up and make themselves feel like they were home, but that was the lie, wasn’t it? The desert wasn’t home and making it feel that way was dangerous. It was all junk food. And junk food kept you docile, complacent. Soon you’d find yourself on mission, with your mind far from the field and back at home, thinking about mama’s chicken dumpling soup or your wife’s soft lips and blush cheeks. You’d think of Christmas trees and caroling, even though you never went caroling a day in your life, but because you couldn’t you wanted desperately to do it. You’d sit there, swinging dick in the turret, thinking about everything but where you were and—BOOM! You never saw the IED.
    Or maybe you did. Maybe we all expected to die over there and when those of us who did come home came home confused all to hell. Like, ‘shit, what are we going to do now?’ We’re told we were lucky, brave, and heroic even, but we, I don’t fucking feel very heroic. I feel like a bastard cut loose in a world that’s hardly recognizable anymore. Is this the story I’m supposed to share tomorrow?
    Johnathan began to pray, not that he believed in such things. Why couldn’t Randall mind his own fucking business and go himself? I’m not ready for this kumbaya bullshit. This ‘be proud of your wounds’ lackadaisical baloney. The ripples in his mug ceased. And from the dark brown murky depths his heart froze. Down below, he looked into the young boyish face of his dead friend, Ricky Smith. He was wearing his Kevlar helmet, the chin strap hanging loose against his Kevlar collar. His Specialist Shield, or sham shield , as Ricky and the other E4’s had a habit of calling themselves. Johnathan watched his best friend floating in the mug, watched as his young vibrant face transfigured into molten ash. He was screaming from beneath the ripples, screaming for the pain to go away. Screaming … screaming … screaming …
    “How are you coming with your speech?” asked Karen.
    Johnathan jerked, spilling some of the coffee on the table. Karen looked at him with mild concern. Tabitha was still behind her cereal box, seemingly unaware.
    “Still working on it,” said Johnathan gruffly, wiping the brown spill with his napkin.
    “You’ll do great. I know you will.” Karen beamed. Her face, her eyes, felt warm and reassuring. Though she may worry about him from time to time, she had no doubt he would be okay, especially in a group of his own fellow wounded veterans.
    Looking into her smile, Johnathan could feel the resurgence of tears coming back up. He quickly collected his empty plate and mug and hobbled over to the kitchen sink.
    “You’ll get there, John. I know you will,” said Karen, standing, collecting Tabitha’s Cap’n Crunch box, much to her young protest, and joined Johnathan in the