The Nobody People by Bob Proehl (manga ereader TXT) 📕

times. “Gonna see some fireworks,” Garcia said, clapping Avi on the back. After lights out, Avi heard Garcia mumbling prayers in his bunk, his voice cracking like a teenage boy’s.

In the morning, the men suited up. Avi went to the quartermaster to get himself a vest, but no one had requisitioned one for him.

“No chance,” Louis said. “You’re going north with Bravo to keep eyes on a med base.”

“Bullshit,” Avi said, standing as if at attention. “I’m part of Echo, and I’m staying with the guys.”

“Let him come along,” Garcia said. “He’s one of us.” Too tired to bother with something so minor, Louis scribbled a requisition note and passed it off to Avi.

“You’re in the JLTV with Hex Squad,” he said. “Watch your ass.”

Hex Squad headed into the city from the northwest. Recon said there was a weak spot; forces had gone slack at their initial incursion point, and a small group could get right up in there. No one considered that the eastern edges had been held for days. Enough time to seed the ground with IEDs. Avi remembers Garcia sitting across from him, singing “Call Me Maybe,” a summer hit Stateside two years before enjoying an afterlife in Iraq that month, when the JLTV lifted into the air. This model of Joint Light Tactical Vehicle was armored up the ass, as the men in Hex Squad bragged, but there was only so much armor you could slap on a glorified jeep before it was a tank, and tanks were no good on the roads out here. The desert was dotted with tanks from Gulf War One, where they’d gotten mired in sand and been abandoned. The JLTV was impervious to mortar fire, but a directed explosion to the back of the drivetrain that was near and severe enough to puncture the gas tank could blow through the undercarriage. Which, in this case, it did. Garcia went up like flash paper. Avi’s leg, extended casually into the center aisle of the vehicle, looked like a wooden match burned down to the holder’s fingertips: a blackened shinbone with the flesh seared away.

Of all the ways he cursed himself later, there was one that he kept secret. He never shared it with Kay, or the shrink, or Louis. You fucking child, he thought to himself. So afraid of being left out. Had to rush off to die with everyone else.

—

Avi gets to LaGuardia early so he can drink. Even in New York, it’s tough to find a beer at six in the morning. He has two whiskeys on the plane and another at a bar in O’Hare on his way out. There are so many choices; the airport is a city in miniature. He picks one called Good Judgment, because the name stings and because it feels more like a movie set for a bar than an actual place. It’s somewhere to lose track of time, not just minutes and hours but years.

By the time the cab drops him in front of the house on Jarvis Avenue, it’s late afternoon. He should be picking Emmeline up from school. He imagines a world where she is jumping into the back seat, telling him about math classes and science projects. It hasn’t snowed in Chicago, but the lawn is dead. The car in the driveway is tiny, fuel-efficient. It could fit inside their old van. Avi thinks of the pieces of his life that way now. Old van. Old house. Old wife. Old daughter.

Avi trudges across the slick dead grass to the front door. He fumbles with his keys, then decides to knock. The man who answers could be a younger version of himself. Taller, paler, less broken. They’ve only talked on the phone. Avi can’t remember his name. Professor of something at Loyola. Married. No kids.

“Can I help you?” the man asks.

Avi’s eye is blackened; the cornea swims with blood. The clothes he’s been wearing for thirty-six hours have been tossed into a New York City snowbank and slept in.

“I’m sorry,” he says. I should have that tattooed on my forehead, he thinks. “This is my house.”

“I think you’ve got the wr—” The man looks more closely. He sees Avi under the blood and bruises and stubble. “Mr. Hirsch, I’m sorry. Come on in. If you could take your shoes—”

Avi starts up the stairs, tracking water and mud. “I’m sorry to crash in,” he says. “I promised my daughter I’d pick up some of her things while I’m in town.”

“No, of course,” says the man who lives in Avi’s old house. He eyes Avi’s tracks on the floor. “We’ve been using her room as a guest room. We moved her things up to the attic for storage. Do you need a hand getting up there?”

“No,” Avi says. “I’m good. Thanks.”

“Since you’re here,” says the man, standing at the base of the stairs, looking up at Avi. “I admire the work you’ve been doing. It’s amazing. But this house is listed as your address? Online? And someone has made it public.” He glances at the door. “We’ve been getting threats.”

“Threats?”

“Taped to the door,” he says. “Left on the stoop. It’s nothing. Jan freaks out. I keep telling her, It’s nothing. People like this are cowards. But if you could change that? Online? There’re a couple spots. There are websites you can go to—”

“I’ll take care of it,” Avi says. “You shouldn’t have to be afraid.”

“Yeah,” says the man. “Anyway, if you need a hand.”

“I’m good,” Avi says. “Maybe coming back down. I’ll yell for you…”

“John,” says the man. “John and Jan. Can’t get more forgettable than that.”

“Thanks, John,” says Avi. “I’ll yell.”

The upstairs hallway is lined with vacation photos. John and Jan at the Acropolis. John and Jan at Aztec ruins. Each photo is of two beautiful people with their faces pressed together in front of something they were supposed to see, a place they were supposed to visit. A checklist that made up a life. Avi thinks about the places