[NOTE ON SENSITIVE MATERIAL: Story contains references to Mental Health Issues, Substance Abuse, and Suicide/Self Harm]

Commotion.

Maybe someone’s breaking into the cars again.

I pulled my headphones out and laid them on the counter beside the sink. I turned off the faucet and dried my hands, leaning forward to look through the fogged-up kitchen window into the dark outside and craning my neck as I traced the gravel drive from right to left towards the street, checking one after the last like we had ever since the break-in.

Beater Mitsubishi, nice Corolla, deathtrap Corolla. No lights, no movement. Nothing. 

The last of the water circled the drain and I heard it again over the headphones’ din and the soft coo of the owls outside. Heavy Pelican cases clumsily dragged across a hardwood floor. Muffled cries. A dog’s sixteen overgrown nails desperately scratching back and forth across the same creaking floorboards where the pelican cases were drug and the tears were falling.

Inside, upstairs. 

I left the dishes and walked towards the front door and the stairs. I found DJ in our living room, slumped on our old fabric couch, soaking it with the stale smoke that hung on him. His mouth was open, and his boots were still laced. DJ was years older than Pete and I. He was a nightshifter at that time who walked home from the bakery most mornings seasoned with olive oil and flour and sweat, sometimes decorated with an iodine smudge around the plasma center scabs on the inside of his right forearm. On his nights off, he’d simply not wake up, sleeping instead from the afternoon after a worknight through to the next mid-day. He claimed it saved him money on groceries, and it did. 

I approached and nudged his shoulder. “Hey, wake up man.”

“What’s going on?” He stirred and turned to his left to check the driveway through the front window over his left shoulder and reached for the space between his belt buckle and his left pocket where he kept his pistol. He’d lost too much weight over the previous year, and as he reached, he just managed to roll his belt to face the floor with his left hand as he rubbed his eyes with his right.

“Listen,” I whispered.

“What is it?” His eyes finally opened, and his head turned right to fix upon the pistol at his two o'clock, realizing he must have at least removed that before letting his eyes down the previous evening. He was still. I watched his eyes as he registered the scene happening directly above us. A cry stopped short. A pause, then heavy glass laid on wood. A shaken voice now carrying a country melody whose words were lost in the floorboards and plaster between us. The familiar metal slap of a bolt slamming forward into battery. DJ’s eyebrows arched. The melody floated on. 

“Is that Pete?”

“Yeah”

“Is he drinking? It’s late as hell.”

“I don’t know. Just heard him. Doesn’t sound good though.”

“Nope. Did he say anything about Sara?”

“You mean Carrie?” 

“Yeah, that one. What happened with her?”

“He said he was helping her pack this morning, what do you figure?”

DJ turned away from his pistol, his expression unchanging, he stared blankly ahead of his boots, then rubbed his eyes. He answered, “I figure we oughta talk with him.”

By the time we came upstairs the kid had run out of tears. I knocked twice and slowly opened his door. I was greeted by the clattering paws and usual affectionate teething of the dog. Our friend was sat on the side of his bed. His rifle was propped just beyond him on his right. We stood in the doorway, and he cut a jack-o'-lantern smile as he turned towards us and slurred in singsong at the dog “Down girl, down! Good girl.” His face fell again as the dog turned to jump onto the crumpled bedding beside him and lick his swollen cheek. His eyes rose to meet mine, dirty and drying and falling in on themselves like a used sponge, meekly searching for accusation in my expression. Something about his sobriety. Something about his proposal. Finding only silent concern, he smiled again as he watched a thin, dirty baker quietly slip his frame between mine and the door like a stray cat. DJ’s gaze circled about the room in its entirety before landing on Pete. He asked flatly, “Whatcha celebrating, brother?”

“Rota, and all its… sailors… and Spaniards!” Pete bent low too quickly, nearly falling from his bedside to make a performative, matadorial sweep of his arm to scoop the bottle between him and I from the floor. He rose and staggered before lifting the bottle in a grotesque toast and taking a pull. The dog rose up from the bedding in concert with its master. I stepped forward to pet it.

“That sucks,” DJ responded and stretched out his hand “mind if I join you?”

Pete struggled to swallow. His eyes teared up and darted quickly about his feet. He motioned with a shaking hand that he meant to find the bottle’s cap somewhere among the ruins of his bedroom floor. DJ extended his upturned palm again, “It don’t matter, man.”

Pete momentarily righted himself and leaned in to hand off the rum, almost bowing as the thin man bent like a willow in the wind to reach and receive it with equally exaggerated courtesy. The dog, excited by the movement, braced to jump from the bed before hesitating at the disorder below her. Clearing his throat and clumsily wiping the corner of his eye, Pete concurred “No, it doesn’t.” 

The baker lifted the bottle to his own lips and pulled and coughed and feigned indignation. He doubled over it and arched his eyebrows, nearly touching his nose to its label, “my friend, this says right here ‘ninety-two proof’. Now, if I were a reckoning man, and I reckon that I am, I’d reckon there is a non-zero chance that you are legally intoxicated.” 

Our celebrant cut himself into another jack-o'-lantern, amused at the whimsical turn in his companion’s tone. A child caught with his hand in the liquor cabinet. He looked to the right at the rifle propped beside him and his face fell again. I nodded at the baker.

Are you with me?

I gestured at the dog, “Yo Pete, when was the last time we let the dog out?”

“It’s been… what time is it?”

“Let’s take her out. You want a smoke?”

We smoked in our coats, leaned against the back steps under the alley light and watched the dog keep herself warm trotting laps through the tall grass, chasing scents and shadows between the bare trees. I finished lighting my cigarette and passed the lighter to DJ. After a nod of thanks, he lit his own, took a drag and screwed his eyebrows up. Breaking the silence with a hint of levity, “How tired are you fellers, anyhow? I mean I’m always up this time of night and it still fuckin’ sucks. Fuckin’ cold.” 

Pete was lost in thought, watching the dog. I replied, “Wouldn’t be so cold if you ate a sandwich once in a while and put some meat on your bones, femboy. I mean look at my fat ass. I’m cozy.”

“You know, Ryan? I bet you wish you were a big ol’ sexy fat bear of a man, but you’re not. You’re neither fat nor hairy enough. You’re like my grandma’s lab. Overfed for fifteen years and then hit with some mystery disease, probably venereal, that makes it all dopey and halfway thinned-out and balding, somehow still chugging along all these years later.”

Pete retched laughing. The baker, satisfied with himself, shivered and took a victory drag while I took one and wondered about how to respond. Pete joined the conversation when he gathered his breath, “Is that how you guys talked in the Marines?” 

“Naval service, sweet cheeks. See, you’re all beat-up about this girl right now, but give her two years. You won’t want to go anywhere near her. And whatever - Spain,” here he waved his hands above his shoulders and rolled his eyes, “Rota sucks. If she’d said yes, you’d have gone there and you’d be a ‘dependent’, okay? You’d have to deal with so much garbage. Standard-issue Facebook group drama, end up staying on base all the time because you don’t speak fucking Spanish and the locals will pretend not to speak English, so you’re on fuckin’ Facebook watching all these people flex the government paygrade of their absent spouses for social clout, trying to get you in on their pyramid schemes, literal garbage piling up. Your family won’t visit you. When your girl is around and you do go off-base, there’ll be fifteen-fuckin’-thousand Spanish dudes and a bunch of teenage sailors hitting on her. Maybe even your boss. It sucks.”

“Maybe you just suck, I’d like to go to Spain.”

“Shut up, Ryan. Go plan your Spanish vacation right now and see what there is to do within thirty kilometers of Rota from eight to eight o’clock with some self-important goon walking around with your boss making sure you don’t actually go to any fun clubs.”

“Well, you still suck.”

DJ’s excitement drew the dog to the back steps. I collected the cigarette butts and put them in my back pocket. I opened the screen door and motioned for the others to get inside so the dog would follow. I locked the door behind us. We all grabbed beers from the fridge in the kitchen on our way towards the stairs and followed our heartbroken friend back to his gun. 

As Pete crossed the doorframe, DJ pointed at the rifle and spoke to him, “let me see that.” 

“What about it?”

“You got me all nostalgic.”

As he received the rifle, DJ dropped the magazine, pocketed it and pulled the charging handle to the rear, locking the bolt back and ejecting the last round from the firing chamber. Heavy brass with a green tip, it spun wildly as it was released and landed with a muted thud within a pile of laundry. The dog jumped to investigate. I caught her on the edge of the bed and led her back to her crate by her collar and locked her in for the night. DJ lifted the rifle level with his chin and peered through the ejection port to ensure it was empty. Pete lifted his beer vertically and set the empty can on his nightstand. His eyes sank to search the laundry between us. DJ walked farther into the room, between the end of the bed and the dog crate. He looked straight ahead towards Pete and I and nodded.

Are you with me?

DJ released the bolt to slam home on an empty chamber, gently clicked the ejection port closed, then took hold of the end of the barrel in his right hand, resting the stock of the rifle on his right boot and assuming a rigid, unnatural posture before speaking.

“Pete, check this out. You remember Full Metal Jacket?” 

Pete raised his glazed eyes from the floor and laid back on his bed. He slurred,

“What about it? You didn’t go to Vietnam.”

“No shit. Shut up, nerd. Check this out.”

DJ locked his posture and suddenly raised the rifle by the muzzle up to his left hand and brought his right smoothly back down to the thinnest part of the stock with a snap, locking the rifle in a diagonal position, his eyes never leaving their straight-ahead-to-nowhere gaze, like a junkie nutcracker on a dirty mantle. Pete’s mouth opened slightly. He was clearly confused about what was happening. DJ continued with his robotic performance. Lifting the rifle to his right shoulder, snapping back to center, then to his left shoulder, each movement preprogrammed, his eyes never moving. I crouched and silently felt through the laundry at my feet until I found and pocketed the loose ejected round before slowly standing again. Pete was asleep. The baker came back to life and laid the rifle on top of the dog crate. I pulled the loose round from my back pocket, and he pulled the magazine from his. We turned off the bedroom light and made our way down the stairs back to the couch in the living room. DJ sat on the couch where he’d begun. I took the rifle magazine from him and snapped the loose round into it, then lifted up the far couch cushion and slid it far underneath.

“Do you think he has any more?” I asked.

“No, he just bought the thing. I only gave him thirty of my rounds to fill that one mag he’s got.”

“We can’t keep it from him once he’s sober and goes looking for it.”

“No. What do you have going on tomorrow?”

“I’m off, basically. Students are all gone until after New Years’. Some video-conference training in the afternoon is all.”

“Let’s take him out in the morning, then.”

“You thinking the diner or the Turkish place?”

“I’m thinking the shooting range, it’s always empty this time of year and I really am nostalgic now. It’ll do him some good.”

“It’s supposed to snow, you know.”

“That’s awesome.”

“Yeah, actually. I’ll make a pot of coffee.”

I poured the water and loaded twelve spoonfuls of coffee in the filter. I started the pot and looked over the dishes. Halfway done as they were, the silverware would dry with water spots, and that bothered me. I wiped them down and put them away before I washed and dried the coffee cups as the pot steamed and hissed that it was finished. The window to the gravel drive was fogged-up again. I returned to the living room to find DJ asleep and set a timer on my phone for three hours, then laid down on the far side of the couch from DJ on top of where I’d hidden the magazine and passed out. 

I awoke to a plate of scrambled eggs in front of me, DJ’s footsteps were creaking up the stairs to Pete’s bedroom. I could hear the two of them through the house as I went to pour my coffee.

“Wake up, nerd.”

“What?”

“Get up, we got stuff to do. There’s eggs and coffee downstairs.”

“My head hurts.”

“No shit, you were obliterated last night.”

“Shit. Did I wake you guys up?”

“You asked me about the military and made me all nostalgic so I played with your rifle. Now we have to go shoot it. Grab some food and let’s hit the road before the range gets too crowded.”

“I have to help Carrie with the last of her packing this morning.”

“No, you don’t. St. Louis airport is all jacked up from the storm. A lot of flights are canceled. Flying gov’ she’ll probably get delayed a day or two. Also, who cares. No one helped me pack. She’s brand new, too. What the hell does she even have to pack, stuffed animals? Let’s go get out there before the storm gets here.”

“Can you shoot in the snow?”

“I know Ryan and I can, you haven’t even shot your rifle yet. Get some food and let’s roll. Ryan’s bringing all his ammo, too.”

I packed my range bag as the two of them took their breakfast and went outside to warm the car up, taking the opportunity to monopolize the sound system. The drive north of town to the range was desolate. The sun was trying to rise through the storm to the east and what gray light made it through the clouds passed through the winter forest like hot water through steel wool. With the students gone, most of the locals were either on vacation themselves or cozied up indoors with their families. The first flakes started falling as we turned into the sun, off the highway and into the parkland toward the range complex. I let them hit the windshield and streak neatly towards the roof. If I’d used the wiper they’d just smear, anyway. When we pulled into the parking lot we had the entire place to ourselves. We shot for hours, first through Pete’s ammunition, then DJ’s and finally my own. The snow fell progressively heavier as the sun fought its way up and out of the trees beyond our targets, and when we were holding our breath between shots to avoid fogging our scopes. The kid was exhausted, but he did well enough, and we told him as much. That seemed to put him in good spirits. We unloaded our rifles around lunchtime. We slung them on our backs and swept the concrete shooting platform clean of our brass casings, then walked downrange through the storm to pull our final targets down and call it a day. I imagine I looked to be in rough shape. DJ’s goatee was fringed in snow and condensation from his breath. He was exhausted. The kid was first in line as we walked, and his cheeks were red like they’d been the previous night. He was smiling when we approached the line of targets.

“This is my target, right? Tell me I didn’t outshoot you, Ryan. Because it looks like I did.”

The baker shuddered and threw in his two cents, “Everyone outshoots Ryan, he sucks. He’s left-handed. You did pretty well, though.”

“Look fellers, none of us have got a girl now. I’ve still got the pack of smokes though.”

“Yeah Pete,” the baker continued, “you lost your girl, no family, no future, boo-hoo. But look around!” Here the gaunt man in the big coat raised his arms like that statue in Brazil and thrust his chin out, a frozen, shivering man mocking the tropical Redeemer and nearly as closely resembling the barren trees in the wind around us as his teeth chattered, “You’ve got this!”