Brothers in Arms
by Katie Trescott
We stand in the center of waves upon waves of headstones. They go on forever. A wreath is propped up on each stone, left over from the holidays. Slip and I are the only ones alive in this sea of the dead. I consider throwing my arm around his broad shoulders, but we’re both in our dress blues. I can tell he needs a hug. Instead, I reach over and fix the collar of his peacoat that flipped up in the wind. He bends his knees slightly so I can reach it more easily but otherwise, he doesn’t acknowledge my touch.
We just buried his pal. A Marine killed when they were on tour together overseas. Slip gave the ceremonial flag to the Marine’s mom, tightly folded into a thick woven right triangle and held between his immaculately white gloved hands. Afterward, I heard him whisper “Til Valhalla” to the coffin as the cemetery workers lowered it into the dark, hard dirt that held so many already.
I’d felt a wisp of desire to make fun of him. “Til Valhalla” was something he learned from his Marines, no doubt. And the idea that this Baptist from South Carolina who had Bible scriptures tattooed on his shoulder blade intoned a Norse blessing on a Texan Catholic who’d named his first and only son “Jesús” was a bit too much. But I’d clamped my mouth shut. Discretion being the better part of valor and all that.
Slip didn’t cry when he handed over the flag, or even when the casket was lowered into the ground, but it looks like he wants to now. His amber-flecked brown eyes are glassy, but the wind whipping over the graves is like ice, a prelude to the cold gale of death, so it might just be that.
“Slip, you good?” I ask, wondering if I should have used his real name. Immediately following a burial doesn’t feel like the right time to use a nickname born of a bout with an STD. But it’s too late now and anyway, using his real name would feel even worse: distant, detached.
“Jamila broke up with me, Glue,” he says, straightening to his full height.
The moment I’d earned that nickname couldn’t be more different than the current one. We were practicing casualty carries with a 200-pound dummy, sweating through our NWUs under the huge San Antonio sun, when we’d finally gotten a break. I’d split my protein bar in half and shared it with Slip. One of those all-natural things made mostly of dates and chalk.
“What is this shit?” Slip had asked, after several minutes hard chewing. “It nearly glued my jaw shut.”
“Give the rest back then! I’m hungry, asshole,” I’d said, reaching for the gnawed brown piece he still held in his hand.
Slip had snatched it away, grinning with some of the bar wedged between his normally perfect white teeth. “It’s kinda good actually. Glue.”
The memory of that smile doesn’t keep me warm in this graveyard. I pull myself out of his space and away from his body heat reluctantly. Even with my heavy peacoat on over my jumper, I’m freezing. I want to keep moving, suggest we go get a drink in a warm bar. I don’t want to rush him either.
“She say why?”
“Something about different paths.”
I grunt acknowledgement. Jamila’s the type of girl that causes traffic accidents. Beside her, especially in uniform, I feel like a different gender of human being. Everything swings with intention when she moves, from her gaze to her hair. Grace, that’s what it is. She’s a nice gal, whip smart and studying International Affairs at Georgetown. But not the type you can really burp around.
To me, different paths sounds like some vague excuse for something bigger, like Slip being in the Navy, or the particular brand of friends that comes with that. Or it could be his inability to keep his toenails clean or all the money he spends on supplements. More likely, she might have been trying to tactfully negotiate her way out of a tough situation. I didn’t know her too well, but I can guess she was afraid of the version of Slip that returned to her. And I can understand why. This distant cold statue of a man beside me is intimidating.
He holds his dixie cup cover to his head as the wind picks up but otherwise stands stock still, looking away from me.
“It’s been off since I got back. But I can’t tell if it was my fault or hers,” he continues.
“How was it off?”
“At first, all we did was fuck and it was great. I told her about Lopey,” he shrugged.
Lopez-Aguero. The Marine.
“And she was supportive, listened and you know, let me… cry,” he quickly mumbles the word and then pushes on, “but after a while, it was like she got tired of hearing about it. She’d say she needed to go study or had to get some sleep. I know she works hard, and I probably talked about it too much. But then she told me I should go see someone.”
“Therapy?”
“Yeah. But I can’t do that. You know I’m up for this award and I put in a package for OCS, and I don’t wanna fuck it up.”
He looks at me directly for the first time that day. His forehead crumples like he’s looking at me for answers, desperation woven into the light crinkles around his eyes. I don’t know what to tell him.
The whole world seems to want to send the military to a shrink but getting it done is something entirely different. No one sees how it can sidetrack your career or turn your peers away from you. It’s hard to escape the label, even thrown out as a joke in the smoke pit or after a long night of studying for the advancement exam. I should feel honored Slip is sharing it with me, trusting me with his honesty, but it feels like a burden I’m ill-equipped to carry.
“Shit, Slip, you can talk to me. I’ll be your therapist,” I find myself saying, trying to infuse some humor into our conversation to get us back on familiar ground.
“Well, Doc. Where’s your couch?” He gestures loosely out to the graves.
I cringe and turn away from him to look out across the field.
“Do you think for each one of these guys in the ground there is a brother who thinks he died for nothing?” Slip asks in a low voice that cuts through the ghostly wind.
The wintery air blasting my exposed face and hands is nowhere near as harsh as his question. Hearing his comments makes me uneasy. I swallow a couple of times to get the lump out of my throat.
Slip’s the guy that gets teary-eyed during the National Anthem. If he could carry a tune in a bucket, he’d volunteer to sing it at every possible venue in the world: NFL games, Presidential inaugurations, Veteran’s Day Parades, even NASCAR. I’ve heard him sing it in the shower while me and another buddy played Call of Duty in the other room. We laughed so hard we dropped the controllers. “You need a drink, dude,” I say, shoving him into motion with my numb hands. A drink might be the very last thing he needs but it’s the only thing I can think of. He shouldn’t be alone, I know that much and maybe if we relax a bit, he can get some perspective.
We make our way out of the cemetery. I’m trying not to think of each stride, each line of headstones all adding up to a tally that can’t be a real number. Slip doesn’t speak at all.
I find the nearest bar on my phone, just five minutes away. It’s a sports bar with decent draft options but more importantly, it’s warm and not too busy. The D.C. crowd is certainly more accustomed to seeing people in uniform but still, eyes turn to watch us as soon as Slip and I walk in. In identical movements, we whip our covers off with our right hands as we pass over the threshold. Usually we’d laugh about it, make a joke about brainwashing, but Slip doesn’t even look my way.
I head to the end of the bar, a little out of the way so we won’t draw much attention. The barman, a tatted-up guy with an oiled beard and studs in his ears, nods at me. He recognizes my control of the situation as Slip stares off into the middle distance. Usually, I’d give Slip shit for being dramatic but not today.
“Two Guinness. We’re getting a head start on our St. Patty’s Day drinking,” I say, hoping it makes Slip laugh or at least smile.
Neither Slip nor the barman’s face change. The barman just turns around to begin the slow pour at the tap. Slip fiddles with his phone. I’m losing my touch.
I set my cover on my knee under the bar and look over at his phone screen. It’s not a picture of Jamila that he’s looking at, it’s a picture of a group of Sailors and Marines. I can’t pick him out at this range but I’m guessing Lopey and Slip are in the cluster of dirty men.
“Hey, Slip, man, you’re gonna be okay.”
He grunts and slides his phone in his coat pocket.
“Tell me about Lopey,” I just go for it, my usual brash approach to problems.
“Fuck,” he mumbles, his chiseled jaw muscles working under his brown skin.
The barman sets coasters and two tall glasses of Guinness before us. I watch the foam settle, the darkness coalescing like a storm cloud. Before Slip gets his next words out, I want to chug the whole damn thing but even that wouldn’t prepare me.
“One minute you’re laughing about porn or something stupid, trying to pretend like you’re not going to piss yourself, you’re so scared. And the next, it’s so loud, you can’t hear anything and body parts are raining down from the sky.”
His heel taps a staccato against the rung of his bar stool. He swallows, eyes zeroed in on his beer as if he’s talking to the brew and not me. For a moment, I’m worried about him crushing the pint glass in his hand. The smooth brown skin is pale with tension that radiates up his arm, through his entire wool-swathed body.
“Lopey had this epic Chesty Puller tat on his calf. That’s how I knew the leg next to me was his. The hair was singed off, so it looked like one of those dummies we practiced on at Corps school.” He tips his Guinness back and his Adam’s apple bobs as he drinks it almost halfway down.
“Fuck me,” I murmur, taking a big swig of my own beer.
“I go for my tourniquet, that’s all they tell you to do, right? Get cover, return fire, throw tourniquets on any bleeders. But there wasn’t enough leg left to wrap the thing around. I just crammed my hands in there but…”
He clears his throat and shakes his head. I teeter on confirming he followed the right procedure. I decide to keep my mouth shut.
“Excuse me, guys.”
A voice cuts across the bar at us and it takes me a moment to tear my eyes off Slip to see who’d spoken. Some man, not much older than us, wearing a blazer and scarf knotted tightly around his neck grins our way. I look up expectantly, annoyed and feeling Slip pull away.
“I just wanted to say thank you for your service,” he says, looking pleased with himself.
I stare at him. This certainly isn’t the first time I’ve heard this. Usually, I shrug it off with something like “Thanks for your support” or another equally trite phrase. But today, all I want to do is smash my beer glass over this guy’s head. Accessing some rarely used diplomatic part of my brain, I nod to acknowledge him and turn quickly back to Slip.
“You guys are in the Navy, right?” The asshat won’t shut up. He’s got this vibe like he’s God’s gift. I look at him again and nod again, trying to make it clear he should shove off.
“Are you Navy Seals? Well, there’s no way you’d be one,” he points at me and waves me off dismissively. “But you look like you could kill somebody,” he says this to Slip. I stand, take a step toward him.
“Hey man, we’re in the middle of something. Could you move along?” I say in the assertive but not aggressive voice that the military taught me to hone to perfection.
“Jeez, ease up. I just wanted to show my appreciation.” He holds up his hands in a dramatic way that I don’t appreciate at all. I feel my temper rising.
“We heard you and like I said, we’re in the middle of something, so step off.”
“What the hell? I am trying to be nice here. What’s with you?”
I hear him mutter something that sounds like “PTSD” under his breath as he signs the receipt and puts his credit card back in his wallet. I nearly launch myself over the bar at him but Slip gently squeezes my arm. Whipping my head back around, I lock eyes with him. His face broken, looking so damn handsome it’s painful, Slip shakes his head. Clenching my jaw, I sit. Thankfully, the bartender intervenes.
“Hey man, leave them alone. It’s been a long day.” How he knows that, I haven’t the faintest idea. Maybe he’s aware of the bar’s proximity to Arlington or it’s just a line he uses to deescalate situations. Either way, it works and the dirtbag struts away. It’s hard not to grab a coaster and flick it at the back of his head.
Slip releases my arm and drains his glass. “None of them understand. How can they?”
The bartender brings us another round of Guinness, which he says is on him. At first, I think he’s my new favorite person but upon reflection, I wonder if he’s not part of the problem too. Everyone wants to buy us drinks but what good are drunken, broken people to the world?
After that, we drink our beers in silence. Slip doesn’t continue his story and I lose the nerve to ask him. I pay our tab. He calls a ride and I ask him to text me when he gets home. He never does.
*
I wake with a start early the next morning. Crashing over to the bedside table, my fingers scramble for my phone. No missed calls or texts from Slip. I call him, eyes still mostly shut but heart rate picking up. Nothing. Just his cheery voice on the voicemail message, which makes me queasy. I order a car, drag some clothes on, and whip my hair back into a ponytail. Before the driver even stops the car, I slide into the backseat and watch his body language change when I say, “I need you to hurry.”
The drive to Slip’s shouldn’t be more than ten minutes but it feels like days. Each time the driver fiddles with his phone to change the song playing or takes a sip from his water bottle, my fingers go pale gripping my knees. On the final turn before we get to Slip’s, he cautiously scans the intersection at the red light, and I have to stop myself from wrestling the steering wheel from him. Finally, the front of Slip’s building looms into view and I pull at the door handle frantically until the child safety lock goes off. I know that guy is going to give me a one-star review, but I don’t have the energy to soften my behavior. I hop out and sprint up the steps. Darting through the main door, I leap up the stairs to the second level and careen through his apartment door with my spare key.
“Slip!” I shout, not caring that it’s six o’clock in the morning on a Saturday and the walls are thin. All I can think is that I didn’t stay with him. I’ll be the next sailor handing a folded flag to a mother who has no concept of what happened to her son. All she’ll know is some invisible cloak of honor or sacrifice that lends no warmth to the frigid air of life without her child.
He’s prone on the carpet in his Gryffindor pajama bottoms. His nieces gave him those. They had decided that he was a Gryffindor because he was brave.
“Slip!” More direction to my voice this time, but no response from him.
He’s face down in a pool of puke. The smell is wretched; that acidic punch makes me want to heave up my own insides. I start breathing through my mouth as I note the empty bottle of Jameson and half empty bottle of Tito’s. What a combination, I think, even as my mind is racing. I drop down beside him and jab my pointer finger and middle finger into the side of his neck. No heartbeat. Readjusting my position, I shift my fingers over his throat like the needle on a record player, looking for the right groove. His pulse jumps suddenly under my touch.
“Oh, thank God,” I croak, dropping my head momentarily to his side and feeling his warm skin against my forehead. “For fuck’s sake, Slip.”
Tears start rolling down my cheeks, which pisses me off. To regain control, I dive into my training: listen for breathing, check for any indication that he fell, C-spine precautions as best I can when I roll him onto his back, check his airway again. Another wave of relief when I see his chest rise.
He grimaces a bit when I slap his face. “Slip, get up. Wake up, man.”
An eyelid pops. He moans and a giant relieved breath puffs out of my gut. It takes a while before he works his jaw, inhales sharply so his nostrils stretch, and a tension settles between his dark eyebrows. Like he remembers everything.
“Slip, what the hell, man? What were you thinking?” My voice quivers and I hasten to brush the tears away before Slip really comes around.
“Fuck,” he moans and begins to turn onto his side, to hide in the fetal position. But I pull him back.
“C’mon, get up. You’re covered in puke. Let’s get you to the shower.” I say in my best “Chief” voice. It feels wrong, used for so many jokes in our shared past, but it might get through to him.
I push my hands under his arms and start to lift.
“Glue?”
His eyes still aren’t fully open.
“Who else would it be?”
Somehow, he rises to his feet. We get him into the bathroom, and I make a fuss about getting the water temperature right so he can drop his PJs. He steps into the shower and lets out a robust groan at the warm water with me standing on the other side of the mostly transparent, a bit moldy shower curtain. Bracing himself on the shower tiles, I see him drop his head and wonder if he’s embarrassed or if he regrets failing at drinking himself to death.
“Slip?”
He grunts in response, pulling himself upright and reaching to pour some soap onto a washcloth. While I fumble with the words, he slowly starts to lather his gleaming dark skin in bright white suds.
“Don’t ever fucking do that again,” I say, trying to hide the mortifying hiccup in my voice as steam fills the room.
He pauses in his circular scrubbing with his washcloth and looks through the shower curtain at me. “What? Drink to the foam?”
He’s trying to make a joke, referencing our favorite line of “Anchors, Aweigh” and I feel the bile rising in my throat.
“You know what I mean.”
“Don’t worry, I got all those people doing twenty-two pushups a day for me, I’m all good.” His voice is savage.
“I know things are shit right now but—”
“Do you know? Do you? Because females don’t see action so how would you know?” His tone is sharp and nasty, unlike him.
His comment cuts deep. It feels like as soon as he went downrange, there was a part of him I could no longer reach. I’ve been in country. I was the Corpsman waiting at the Role III, trying to put all those bloody pieces back together. But I can’t tell him about the Soldiers or Marines that carried their buddy’s severed arms or legs back to the hospital, only for me to inform them we couldn’t sew it back on. It was too burned, too damaged, it’d been too long. For Slip, it’s not anywhere close to what he knows. Nothing compares to outside the wire, according to everyone who had been outside the wire. Guess I can’t blame him. But it still pisses me off.
I reach down and flush the toilet. The water temperature drops so fast, I can feel a whoosh of cold air cut through the humidity as Slips screams. His arms cross protectively over his body, his groin, spine curling down to conserve his body heat.
“What the—”
“Slip, I know you, probably better than anyone. I know you’d never mix vodka and whiskey. I know you don’t drink alone; you just got those bottles for when you have people over. Those Gryffindor PJs,” I gesture to the pool of scarlet fabric on the tile. “Maya and Malia gave you those. When you’re nervous you clench your jaw and have to piss every five minutes. And I’m the one with the key to your apartment, standing here yelling at you while your skivvies are on the floor and you’ve got nothing but soap on! So yes, I fucking know!”
He stares at me for a long time, shivering slightly. The water drives all the clouds of soap down his neck and chest before he turns the water off. Turning to snag a towel off the rack, I hand it to him, and he wraps it around his waist before stepping out.
“I’m sorry,” he says, humble in the misty air of the small bathroom.
“Me too. About Lopey, and everything.”
After a beat of just looking at each other, I turn to go to the kitchen. I get him some water and poke in his fridge to find he has a pack of sports drinks. Wrestling one out of the plastic collar, I take it and the water into the bedroom where I find Slip has put on a fresh pair of basketball shorts and a ratty Gamecocks t-shirt.
He gingerly crawls onto the bed that smells like the linens could do with a wash, but the overwhelming smell of the room is Slip, a bit his cologne, a bit the smell of his skin.
Handing him the cold sports drink, I sit next to him on the bed. He chugs all of it before placing the empty bottle on the nightstand and dropping back against the pillow.
“Don’t you dare clean up the other room while I’m asleep,” he says from beneath the heavily muscled arm that he’s thrown over his face. “It’s my mess. I’ll deal with it.”
He closes his eyes and I look down at him. Shifting his arm to the side with a grunt, now his face is on full display in the dim morning light. Even hungover, in desperate need of a saline drip, he looks beautiful. The smooth deep brown color of his skin reminds me of warm coffee. We’d lost so much sleep together, standing watch, studying, partying, working nights at the hospital, that the comfort and kick of coffee was a real, palpable thing. It was always our lifeline to making the day or the night or even just the next hour possible. The number of times I’d brought him a cup, or he carried one to me, I couldn’t even begin to guess. But we’d always stand together, clutching the cups like our lives depended on it and spare a smirk for each other even though it felt like every choice we’d made up until that point had led us to a pretty shitty place. But even a shitty place was bearable with him there beside me.
I wonder if I were the woman that could fall in love with him, could do anything besides throw an arm over his shoulders or wrestle him to the ground, could I do what Jamila could not and save him? The reel of potential spins over my mind’s eye: wearing a dress to dinner with him, getting naked with him and pressing our bodies together, holding him when he cries.
No, that’s not me.
I tentatively touch his bicep, the warmth under my fingers soothes this ragged worry that hasn’t yet receded since the night before. He reflexively folds his lower arm back to press his hand to mine.
“Don’t you worry, Glue. I’m here. I’m okay,” he mumbles, half-asleep.
If I were that woman, I wouldn’t be here next to him on the bed, having just pulled him out of his own vomit and all but showered him myself. I am not a girl, not in that sense. I am his brother. He might slip away from me into this dark, cold world but I’ll never stop trying to pull him back.
I sigh and go to do something about the stench in the living room.
Katie Trescott works at a marketing firm and is a Corpsman in the Navy Reserve. She studied Creative Writing at Florida State University and served in the Peace Corps in Ukraine. She and her dog, Diggity, live in Augusta, Georgia. When she’s not working or writing, she enjoys camping and watching soccer.
“Brothers in Arms” was inspired simultaneously by the unity forged among those who serve and the division created by the defining experience of combat.