Highway or Belief by J. Scott Brownlee

Author:J. Scott Brownlee
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: SCB Distributors
Published: 2016-02-16T05:00:00+00:00

Elegy for Soldier Who Returned Without a Voice from the War in Iraq

As I walk through the Wal-Mart now in Marble Falls, I think about the question,

ask myself, What could you do after the fact of what was done to you but die?

In my head, you’re alive in the beer aisle still with that fake ID stuck in the back

of your pants when the Wal-Mart man grabs a hold of you to ask, How many kegs?

You’re the underage kid who used to cut every person you could in the high school

lunch line, back when nothing was done to you no matter what you did. You took

apart the team golf cart, then put the pieces back together on the roof of the school.

No one cared. You smoked a joint in the bathroom each day, and no one punished you.

You had so many fans as the varsity back. The whole town worshiped you. I remember

your chinstrap buckled tight and your helmet’s t-bar crossing over your face—the thick

shadow of it. I remember the eye black and sweat stuck to it, the way you went to school

all week for the scared looks you got on the field Friday nights from behind your face-

mask. I remember the pads and spandex stretched over new teenage skin. I remember

the day we had to bury you in them (how the whole town showed up) like the night

you slid off the slick bridge on a dare to the river of catfish and black gar below.

Seeing your broken body bleeding out and bent in the shape of an L, I was reminded

of the football field just then, of the capital L in the center of it that made you

what you could not be years later, two tours in you. You came back from Iraq

with a new brokenness and stood out on the grass of that field once again, where

you knelt down and cried, finally, like you wanted to so many times but could not

in Tikrit, Basra, Mosul, Baghdad. When the checkout man asks me for ID, at first

I don’t hear him. There’s a second or two before I realize I’m standing in line

with a beer in each fist—with my hands in my pockets as deep as they’ll go.

Getting lost in my head tonight, I think of you being spoken to—

whatever war must have said in those daily huddles before each precise move

of your tan, M-1 tank. I ignore everything around me except you—mustached

version you left stuck to that fake ID—how we laughed about it every time

we bought booze. I like to think, Before you fell, leaving the pavement

of the bridge, you heard the crowd cheer and were swept up by applause.

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