Hear Me If You Can

The ringing would not stop, Commander James Turner could feel the blood oozing down his left ear to his neck, it was warm, like it was in the morning when he started this wretched tour, of course he was incognizant of this wretchedness then, he probably doesn’t know it now, all he can register is the incessant ringing, yet the bleeding is none of his concern at present: it’s the bloody ringing! He lifts up his hands and covers his ears in a futile attempt to block a phantom external source from transmitting the ringing to his ears, he crumbles to his knees, then he surrenders his body to his reflexes, he writhes in pain as he tosses and turns on the bare ground… then, silence.

He joined the military because he wanted to fly, fly while serving, maybe he should’ve been a flight attendant in hindsight, it would have saved him his left ear, which he lost on a tour in Afghanistan 5 years ago when an IED exploded on a routine transportation from one base to another one a couple of miles away. He now had a prosthetic earlobe, it passed for a real one, and that pleased him, but the doctors were clear on the precariousness of active combat on his hearing—he could lose it, the plastic surgeons were basically like “slay!”, little did they know that he no longer could. And thus Commander James Turner became a trainer pilot, it was bland, for a junkie like him… a junkie of adrenaline for clarity, the rote and mundane business of teaching was not what he signed up for, but he chose to settle for this since commercial flying would, to him, be even more bland, and for a man of his rank, all he knew was the military life… oh, and the IED also cost him his manhood, his insurance deemed a prosthetic “inessential for [his] service”, and it was therefore amputated. He would relieve himself as an invalid—through a tube— until the day he would breathe his last; so he had no wife nor children nor family and the dating scene was now ever so daunting to him.

James was affable since his youth, a “people’s person”, his home life was shrouded in mystery—even to me—he enlisted as soon as he graduated high school and he never looked back. He was in Africa for a joint military exercise with the Botswana air forces, and this day found him deep in the Kalahari. He hated the transportation phase of any operation ever since the incident, but he had to contend with it. The journey was tumultuous, the roads were dilapidated and they were deep in tribal land, the native officers warned against unmediated contact with the tribespeople for they were not welcoming to uniformed officers—God knows why. Five miles in, and the run-down Toyota cruiser they were in broke down, the mechanic-cum-officer on site attempted to revive the dead beast with no success, they had to call for a tow and an additional vehicle to complete the journey, and thus the waiting began.

Efficiency in this part of the world was no virtue and neither was camaraderie from the look of things. The other officers were quick to deplete an already dwindling supply of water. He was thirsty, thirsty for water and something else that crossed his now idle mind—adventure. He waited and waited, hours of blood-boiling heat, he needed to relieve himself, but he only did so in absolute privacy. He informed the other officers of his urges and they were swift in dismissing it “No man, you’ll regret it, hold it like an airman, or do you have bathrooms in those tiny cockpits?” the officer-in-charge said amid hysterical laughter. He could feel his incontinence get the better of him, he alighted in a rush abandoning his weapon while ignoring the shouts from the other officers. He ran into the bush, moving branches with his forearm, crouching when the bushes got thicker, until he found the perfect spot. He retraced his steps to the cruiser after he was done, Commander James Turner could now notice the beauty of this desolate—or at least so it seemed—land the canopy of baobab and the breeze that felt more like nature had directed a flamethrower at him, it was hot and humid. It was late in the afternoon and he could hear the laughing of what seemed like hyenas from a distance, the chirping of birds of whom he did not know the names but wished he did. Turner was getting closer to the vehicle when he heard gunshots, his training kicked in, he reached for his weapon and… snap! he had forgotten it! He mumbled some heartfelt expletives that will not be mentioned here. He approached with caution, occasionally looking back and around in case he were followed or surrounded, when he was closer he heard a piercing wail then the revving of an engine, he could finally get a look at what was happening. There was a cloud of dust—the only thing he now knew for certain was that the cruiser and its inhabitants had abandoned him.

When the dust cleared, he saw a body lying on the ground—the body was saying the world was flat from its perspective maybe?—he walked toward it with caution, he saw the shell-casings then he saw a three-quarter-naked man clutching at what he presumed as an empty pistol. A leather cloth covered this man’s privates, he was bleeding profusely; instinctively, Turner applied pressure on one wound on the man’s abdomen as it bled the most, he left the others unattended as he focused on the that wound, Turner reached for a lighter and some gunpowder in his pocket poured the gunpowder on the wound and quickly cauterized it then he proceeded to do the same for the others. The man was surprisingly quiet and unflinching throughout the ordeal, was the wail really from him? Turner was no detective, so he shrugged off those thoughts, he tried talking to the man who just stared back at him in bafflement. Then there were screams and in seconds he was surrounded by machetes, rifles, and pistols wielding men who were definitely in the same party as the injured man—he could see ¾ of their skins too—one of the men, presumably the leader, walked to the injured man and whispered some clicks to him, the injured men whispered back in faint clicks, their whispers went back and forth for a couple of minutes until the injured man pointed at Commander Turner, the presumed leader keenly inspected the man’s wounds then walked up to Turner. In what seemed like milliseconds he saw the man clench his left fist then open his palm wide and wrench his hand back and lift it in a forceful slap to Turner’s left ear.

Commander Turner woke up to the men surrounding him still, but they were closer, concern written all over their faces, he saw their lips moving but he couldn’t hear a single thing, then the men held him and raised him to his feet, the presumed leader cupped his prosthetic earlobe which was now detached, they were now smiling in child-like curiosity looking at Turner’s prosthetic, Turner saw his window of escape. He freed himself of the grip of the men who were holding him, and ran, he ran like the quarry he thought he was, the hunters—and gatherers, those History classes did pay off after all—chased after him in a frenzy, the distance between him and them was quickly closing, he looked back and in so doing he stumbled over a rock and fell to the ground.

Turner thought this was it, the men surrounded him again, the leader, in a tour de force, asked for a pistol from one of the other men. He thought of closing his eyes, but he would only die brave and with a fight, he stood up and clenched his fist, the leader, in a puzzling turn, slapped the man who gave him the pistol, then the other man slapped the leader, he instructed something in clicks and Turner saw the other men exchange weapons, on every exchange, harder slaps were exchanged. Commander James Turner understood it now.