The Hero Train

***discussion of suicide****

You have to be completely dead to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery, not just mostly dead. 

 But I went anyway, figuring I could kill off the rest of me easy enough on the cross country trip with whiskey, or if desperate, my Sig Sauer.  

What had been saved after the surgeries, the best bits, I had secured in a box. Army hospitals don’t have much in the way of ceremonial boxes, so I used what I could find. I thought about using my Silver Star presentation box, or the Purple Heart, but what was left of my balls fit better in the Altoids metal tin. 

Wintergreen, though no longer curiously strong

 The berries of the wintergreen plant, Gaultheria procumbens, have a mild mint taste and a notched pucker on their underside. 

I do too, so I kept the box. 

I felt the tin in my open bag on the train seat next to me, a soft brush of a finger tip on the metal lid. It comforted me to know we were still together, for a little while longer. 

I gave it 27 taps, one for each of the marks against my soul. 

Lord, I’ve got hell to pay. 

The conductor didn’t give me a break on my ticket, no war veteran discount. I tried to explain I wasn’t even a whole person, no more than three-fourths at best, but that didn’t work either. 

Not much in being a veteran these days. 

No one on the train was going all the way to Arlington, Virginia. It didn't make much sense from Sacramento, California, to take three days to cross the country, who has that much time to waste?

Unless you want to hide. The news article, a hagiography, said too much of the wrong things, and not enough of the truth; of the blood, gore and death. 27 telephone poles go by, then 27 more, and 27 after that. 

Without the army, without a purpose, without anything between my legs, time is the only thing I did have. 

I met Sarah and Marcus in the Café car; they had eggs benedict and potatoes with their coffee, while I had whiskey. They were going to Chicago to visit their dying Uncle, a military veteran too, of Vietnam, another honorable war. 

“Ask him where he served, and who with.” I said when Marcus didn’t know. “It’ll cheer him up. 

 Marcus looked young, fit, and at least 10 years older than me. I had to look away from his easy smile and relaxed pose, the similarity to Sergeant Francis hurt my heart. 

Sergeant Francis’s face took over Marcus’, but without a jaw, without an ear, charred from the explosion. My friend, who I could not save.

“I envy you,” Marcus said. “A war hero, a real man!”

“I’m no man, no one to envy.” I said, turning away, my face hot with nightmares. 

Their daughter, Anika, barely spoke at all, her trapped anger released in mad typing on her phone. 

  “We coulda of flown.” She hissed through metal braces as she snuggled against her father. The eternal Sierra mountains didn’t care as they flew by outside the windows.

“We recognized you from the Times,” his wife Sarah smiled. “You saved your whole squad, risked your life to kill so many of the enemy!” She gushed at the deaths. 

 Sarah, thin, and dark haired, reminded me of my mother, or would have if my mother was thin, dark haired, and alive 

 “Is it true about…?,” her eyes flicked over and over to my pants, searching my crotch like a rubber-necker at a car crash for the gory scene, the gap in my body and my soul.   

I counted 27 clacks of the wheels before I spoke. “A funeral.” I said in response. “I’m going to Arlington to honor what was lost in war.” 

 I didn’t explain how it was going to be my own, but they stopped asking when their eyes caught the glint of light off my prosthetic, peeking out from under my left pant leg. 

 I wanted to shout, to stand up, to pull down my pride and my pants to show off what I really was, nothing but a black hole, but at the pity in Sarah’s eyes, I slapped my lips closed. 

I hated pity, but disgust was worse. 

“Afghanistan.” I shook my head. The word tasted of dust, and pain, so I took a sip of the last of the whiskey. “War is hell.” 

And that, like it usually does, shut everybody up. 

That might have been when Anika snapped the picture, posting it on the internet and changing everything. In the picture my eyes were still clear, and my lip wasn’t split, yet.

I remember being around her age, 17 and pissed at the world. I wanted to play football, like my heroes on TV. I wanted to crush running backs like the linebacker Von Miller, or fly through the air catching touchdown passes like George Kittle, the 49er tight end, who wore glasses just like me. But I was too small, and too weak. 

I wanted so much to be a Man. From my Dad I knew that involved violence, and beer. He would get drunk, and take out his rage on me. His love had the iron taste of blood. From TV I learned being a man meant sex and guns. I understood that, but the girls at my school made no sense. 

I doubled down on video games; Fortnite, Call of Duty, Counterstrike. In the online world, I had real friends, who cared if my character lived or died- in the real world I had no one. 

 When the football players kicked my ass afterschool, I kept egging them on, because at least they saw me for who I was, acknowledged I existed.  All of it was training it turns out. I wished my talent was in catching footballs instead of shooting people. 

“Is it Veterans Day?” Sarah asked looking at the window as the train whoshed us to a stop. Four hours into our trip we pulled into the Biggest Little City in the World, Reno Nevada. 

“I just want to get off this fuckin’ train” Anika snarled. 

In Reno, it’s illegal to curse in front of a dead body, but I didn’t tell her that. 

 A few men stood around, holding cardboard signs.

‘Suport our Veterans!’

‘Screw the V.A. they screw us!’  

The signs read, littering the empty train station with typos and bad grammar. 

“You’re a hero!” The men shouted at Marcus, his thick muscles and crewcut belying his years holding a beer bong in college instead of a M4 machine gun.

As Marcus took the time to explain his muscles were gym -built and not battle- earned, I slipped through, ducking into the small station like the shelled building in Kabul, my narrow frame ignored by snipers. ‘Cant hit what they can't see’ Sergeant Francis used to say.

I step through the men, ignoring my brothers at arms. I’ve paid my price, I’ve fought my war, I only need another bottle and more cigarettes to get me through. A bottle of Jim Beam fit my pocket, and budget. Called ‘Old Tub’ before Prohibition sent the distillery underground, it became Jim Beam just in time to blot out the nightmares of the veterans coming back from World War 2. I’m just keeping up tradition.

I recognized the familiar look in the veterans’ eyes, looking back for what they lost on a battlefield. I’ve given up looking, my loss too big to see. The thousand yard stare is not long enough. It is 2,700 miles give or take from Sacramento, California to Arlington, and I turned away to stare down the tracks diving deep through the Sierras. There was no light at the end of this tunnel. 

Back on the train, the movement jostles my belly, swishing the coffee and liquor into an uncomfortable itch. I sway against the moving train toward the restroom, large and spacious. I push the seat down, and sit ignobly on my notched pucker.

“The train is moving too much to stand,” I say under my breath to no one. To myself.

Marcus and Sarah brought me a box of Oreos. Do they know I'm soft and gooey in the middle? I twist off each cookie to get at the cream filling. I wish I could twist off my own shell and let out the goo filling me up. I dip each cookie into the coffee and Beam. 

Whiskey and chocolate Oreos don’t go well together. I try to eat 27 cookies, but only get to five. 

I offer the half-eaten box over to Anika. Her sneer of disdain reminds me of who I am, what I have done.  

I stretch my legs in Utah. A larger crowd of veterans stood waiting for us at the station, muttering to themselves, drinking coffee as if there was an AA meeting nearby. I heard it called the ‘The Hero’s Train’ for the first time.

I turned back, excited to learn what a hero looks like. I glanced at the other passengers, but no superhero capes, no spandex tights. Maybe Marcus, I thought. A man with a job, a wife and a daughter who loved him; he was the most heroic man I had ever met. 

 I push past them to find the liquor store. This station is out of Beam so I have to upgrade to Jameson. I feel my Irish heritage leaking out of my pores, along with whisky sweat.  

A loud crack! echoes off the hard floor and walls. 

Without thinking, my body reacts, flying down to one knee, ducking behind a wooden bench, my M4 rifle trained on the enemy. I look down the barrel, take aim and-

Crying. A small, brown haired boy begins to wail, his Tonka truck lost a wheel in the crash onto the hard cement floor. He’s the only one who sees me, our eyes catch, as his parents turn to comfort him. ‘Boom’ I whisper, my trigger finger tightens.

Reality roars back, I'm in a train station, not a battle; in Utah, not Kabul. The dry, hot air smells of sweaty bodies and old wood. The memories flareup in my brain, enemies I can't fight off no matter how many bullets I have. Or maybe just one bullet would work, but I'm saving that one. 

I turn what I used as a rifle, my whiskey bottle, back upright, struggling to get off the ground. This gun won’t kill anyone but me. My instincts won't leave me, my fear won't leave me. Useful once, now I am ‘maladapted for civilian life’ as Dr. Thornton said.

“Are you him? A man asked, holding up a folded newspaper, my picture stared back as I pushed back to the train. I barely recognize the young version of me in fatigues, bloodlust blazing out of my eyes. “The Hero of Kabul”, I read on the caption

“That boy died. I said. “I’m no longer a him.”    I feel relief to get back on the train.

The crowds are five people deep in Chicago. The huge banners splay out from the balconies. ‘Welcome to Chicago Hero Train!’’

I don’t want to get off the train, don’t want to be seen. The faces in the crowd warp, change into the broken and blood streaked faces of the 27 men I killed. They are here to take their revenge.  

 My heart thumps so loud I can’t hear anything else. I can’t breath, I grab the little tin, myself, holding it to my chest. “Don’t take my balls!” I scream.  

Marcus nose to nose with me looks into my eyes, his brown eyes soft with concern. He has no idea who I really am.

 “This is the last stop for this train.” He glanced back at a conductor behind him, washing his hands at my drunk form. 

 “You transfer here to your next train.”

I stumbled off the train to shouts of ‘hero!’ and ‘U.S.A!’  

A man pushes close, red-faced and bearded. ”Man, you’re a fucking hero! You fought-”

“I killed!” I shouted. “I stole lives! Get off me, get away!” The tight crowded platform squeezed in and I needed to get out, to breathe. I swung, a wild haymaker at his stupid red face, clipping his ear.

His left jab threw me back into Marcus, his right cracked my lip. The pain felt real, the blood tasted like I was alive again. He saw me.  

I didn't get off the train again on the way to Arlington. The crowds grew, the chants got louder and louder. The Hero Train whistle-stop tour. The passengers round me learned to leave me alone, to let me listen to the clack of the rails and watch the country unfold out of the windows. I wished to never stop moving.

               A marching band met me at Arlington National Cemetery. I stood and saluted, expecting a 27 gun salute. More glory for death, more recognition of my hole-iness.  

They stared back, as confused as I on what to do, they had never buried a live hero before. I left them at attention, saluting me as I turned to wander the grave stones looking for just the right place, fingering my Sig Sauer with one hand, the Altoids box with the other.  

At a far corner, another man had found beauty in the peace and quiet. The man’s shoulders shook, sobs pouring out. 

“Can’t a man exit this life in peace?” he asked, seeing me watch him. 

Maybe, I said to myself, feeling the metal in my pocket, maybe I can atone. 

“Where did you serve?” I asked.

“Iraq. Desert Storm, 10th Mountain Division Artillery.” He stood up, pride straightening his spine.. 

“Kabul. 2-87th Infantry.” I offered the last of the Jameson. “My name’s Tommy. Sorry for your loss.” 

“They were better than me.” Shaking, he swiped the back of his hand across his eyes before finishing my bottle. 

“Better soldiers, better men. He had a wife.” He pointed to a gravestone. “How come I’m here, and they’re six feet under? I don’t deserve to live!”

“What’s your name” I asked.

“Sam.” He said, looking up. His eyes narrowed. “I’ve seen you- on the news- the Hero Train. The ball-less hero!”

“No. Just a guy. Well used to be a guy. Just a person." I tried to see this man in front of me, the strengths, and the flaws. He was just a person too.

"Sam, none of us deserve anything. We get what we get. There are no heroes, except the dead.”

I look up into the gray clouds, passing by oblivious to us both.

“I came out here to bury my past. But maybe you can’t, maybe it stays with you forever.” I turned to Sam’s dark brown eyes. “We owe it to the dead to live, and to remember.”

Sam turned toward me, a question in his eyes. 

The gun slipped from his hand, an old and rusted Sig Sauer. 

I picked it up. 

 “The only thing I was ever good at was killing.” I looked down the barrel.  

“This is in bad shape, more likely to blow your hand up than hit anything.” 

I unloaded the bullets on the grass and then tossed it down. My own Sig Sauer followed.  

I placed my Altoids tin on the grass, where they belonged with the other dead heroes.

“Come on with me. Let’s go get something to eat, figure out what tomorrow looks like.

I grabbed his shoulder. ”Tell me about the men you served with. Let's remember them."

As we walked off, I counted steps.  

This time I stopped at 26.