Hujra Inmergo Moros
By Joshua Swink
April 2012-Black River, New York
How do you capture a thought, emotion or even a fleeting sense of worry? Do you chase them in circles like a scared baby chick until they cower and give into you? Do you accept them and let them slide over you like the warmth of a blanket placed upon you in your sleep by someone who loves you? You don’t want to capture them sometimes, sometimes they capture you and there is nothing you can do about it.
“I burn but I am not consumed,” he says under his breath.
The stillness of the water was broken by a loon skidding into the water from the bank. He had remembered reading once of a story of how loons who often land commonly on wet roads mistaking them for rivers or lakes. Loons who are so easily startled, patterned in black and white skittering across the water. The fog melted as a loon steered towards his canoe, shocked to come upon him it turned away and glided to the opposite end of the lake. He watched the loon as it bobbed its plain gray head in and out of the water looking for fish. Suddenly it was gone, the surface broken, chasing a fish deeper. The water was still again, the fog was now more than a foot off the glistening black water. With a cacophony the loon bursts through the veneer of the mirrored distilled unspeaking calm that had settled. The holy joy was felt with the prolonged wail of the loon. He was shaken back to awareness, the wolf-like call popped gooseflesh onto his arms, and he pulled the woobie tighter around his body. The wind had moved the fog, it was now beginning to roll in waves across the surface of the water, rollercoasters of advection blocking what little sun had begun to peek through the sky.
“I burn but I am not consumed, '' he said to the fog.
With a yodel call the loon took flight and was gone. More hunting somewhere else he thought. Or perhaps it was finding its own way back to the group. He realized then he may never find his own way back to any group. That part of his life was over he thought, you can’t be part of any group who doesn’t understand what you’ve done. What you’ve seen.
The canoe had been drifting slowly with the current moving him closer to the spillway. He considered letting it take him. The canoe could be sucked into the forebay, he could ditch it then, spread his arms wide and fall into the water, open his mouth and let it fill with tepid icy barrage of water that pulled him under into the spillway crest. Maybe he would make it through, maybe he stayed in the chute spinning with arms raised skyward infinity riding over him as his body would slowly waste away. The skin consumed by fish picking him slowly to bone. Until all that was left is a skeleton, a shell of who he once was. The skeleton, arms raised, would continue to spin, the water would wash around him eroding him into dust that finally washes into the tailwater, making its way downstream, over rocks, past the family of loons and finally settled into the basin. If the sun was strong enough it could pull him into the clouds, hold him as long as it could and then dump him into a mizzle on another person canoeing.
This didn’t happen, he arrested the movement of the canoe with a simple paddle action moving it back on course. The course away from becoming dust. He may yet end up in the spillway but not yet. Now he must decide.
The old rivers north of here have meandered to now, here and now. Leaving remnants of what once was. The water was dark, clarity unbeknownst. Ripples appeared around the canoe as he paddled one stroke left, one stroke right until he was dead center, equal distance to the spillway or to his car. Safety one way, death another. He must decide. The ripples bubbled and churned gently. Dancing across the surface, mixed with fog they roll away as the gentle breeze became a stiff wind. Only for a second and then the ripples were gone. Waves of fog returned, lapping lazily against the boat, rolling over him as smoked, as he once had on a dirt road. A dirt road of death.
Facing away from his car, he squinted his eyes through the fog he could barely make out dense forests, rising above the layers. This lake, a hidden gem, a secret dark body hidden amidst rugged terrain. The bush crickets were singing a chorus, filling the air. The strange lullaby of the staccato rasps dulled against the revered festival of lights breaking back through the fog again. Cycle after cycle. Fog battling the sun. He was closer to a decision now as the canoe turned in concentric circles, melancholic, indecision frozen in a timeless beauty. This lake, a harbinger of changing seasons. The fog and lake a fusion of sky and water. He hung his hand over the side as the boat was drifting and turning, his hand glided, breaking the water’s surface, like the loon before him he plunged his hand to the wrist into the dark water. Light tendrils had broken through the fog, a palette of vibrant hues whispering tales of ancient lore. The confluence of his soul speaking to parts of the Earth.
The dirt road of death and fire are a million miles away. With his hand in the water, he was splashing it back into the canoe and onto his face, echoing off the trees. The fog had broken completely around him, and the sun was out, only on his canoe. The rest of the lake was enveloped in an ethereal mist, the guardian of mysteries danced between light and shadows. The coolness of the water provided a wellspring. He ached to forget, to move on, to not feel the death, taste the death, smell the death. Hundreds, even a thousand hours of worry. Chasing a thought that always lands, like a loon, gliding into his memory. He brought his hand out of the water and wiped it dry against the woobie. The condensation has dampened the woobie so his hand only partially dried. Below him in his dry bag he pulled out the pistol. He lay back in the canoe and shielded his eyes to the sun.
“I burn but I am not consumed,” he told the sun.
The pistol had been his redeployment gift. The FRG had sold them with his platoon’s motto stamped on the side. Even stamped a number to signify the small number produced. Along the barrel he could see and feel the imprints of the tiny six parachutes, the lightning bolt and even the green outline in the white mountain. Below that Currahee it read. “Stands Alone”
“Sleeps together” he smiled as he mumbled to the sun.
He held the gun, still unloaded as he sat back up, placing the gun in his lap he readjusted the paddles steering once again towards the spillway entrance. He was still close enough to feel the pull of it, the pull of the end. Yet far enough away to be safe.
The pistol slid off his lap and he dropped the paddle to catch it. Losing the paddle over the side he watched as the paddle caught the current and flowed into the spillway. Spinning once, twice, a third time. It bounced once with the currents pull and was sucked under, gone. He had another.
This was a two-person canoe, he alone with the symphony of water and shrouded in morning mist. A haven no more.
For now, he placed the empty pistol back into the bag, he hadn’t decided yet. Reaching behind him into the floor of the canoe he pulled the second paddle into the space between his legs and rested it there.
“I just want to rest” he told himself.
“Don’t I deserve to rest”
The smell of the burnt bodies, effluvia extruding into an unwholesome memory as he considered paddling back to his car. Forget this he thought, go to the VA, they will see you. They have to see you. Explain it to them.
“I burn but I am not consumed” again to the fog.
His left hand placed the paddle back into the water brushing against the cell phone in the pocket of his ACU top. The ACU top stained with life experiences that he wished he didn’t continue to capture. On the cell phone are text messages that he has ignored for a week.
“Are you coming to the funeral?”
“Hey man Blair wanted you to be a pallbearer for him”
“You okay?”
“You there?”
“Bro?”
“Shelly????”
“??????”
And many more. Blair was his fault, he knew it. He didn’t protect him in the way that Rigson had done for him. Rigson who was now in a treatment facility in South Dakota learning how to raise cattle paid for by some VA program. Rigson of the dirt road of death. Rigson who had carried the water for him, so he didn’t have to feel the Commander’s skin slip off his body as he had pulled him from the wreckage of that MRAP. He closed his eyes and saw Rigson pulling the body out of the hatch, watching as the charred body slides away and he was left holding a melted FRACU and skin, sliding off the way chicken does when cooked just right. He dry heaved in the canoe, reached into his pocket and fingered the cell phone. Felt the case it was in. The Pelican case that protected the phone from damage. Rigson was his pelican case, until he wasn’t. He pulled his hand out and methodically smoothed down the chest pocket. It took him less than ten seconds to remove the ACU top, zipper down and off. The top now in his hand, cell phone included he holds it over the side and drowns it into the water. The fog was gone across the whole lake and the bush crickets had stopped, no longer confused by the night or day. After nearly a minute he released the top and it was gone. He never wanted to reply to those texts anyway.
“Shelly????”
“Garrett?”
“Bro, no one blames you. Blair was fucked up to start.”
The irony was not lost on him, Blair the virginal replacement soldier that was as fresh as Shelly had been before purgatory pulled him under. Blair, who had saved him from a trip wire on a mountain. Blair, who could not save himself. Blair who did not have the ability to shut the hell up when he was told. Blair, who Garrett should have protected but hadn’t. Blair, who had shot the kid holding the RPG. Blair, who couldn’t live with the fact that the RPG was something the kid had found abandoned in the mountains that morning, was returning to the FOB for a reward. Blair, a thousand other victories who succumbed to the one mistake. The mistake of being a human in a war.
Without realizing it the pistol was back in his hand, and he had loaded it. He tried, he told himself, he really had. He really worked hard, he followed the rules, did what the Chaplin told him to do. He followed the guidance handed out by the VA rep when he got out. None of it worked, all that worked was sitting in this canoe weekly. Returning to this spot to watch the loon’s fish. Daily he battled if he would finally sink into the spillway. Rigson was gone, he told himself, Blair was gone now. Lost amongst the numbers that the VA doesn’t really give a shit about. Just one less number they have to process a payment for monthly. Next, Stamped, approved, processed and buried. Isn’t that what they do with people like Blair, people like him? Did he ever have a chance? Does anyone?
How do you capture a thought, emotion or even a fleeting sense of worry?
“I burn but and am finally consumed”
March 17, 2014- Watertown, New York
A young kid and his little brother find an empty canoe. Dragging it to shore they cannot fathom how long it must have been underwater. It is icy and hot at the same time. Frozen in timeless beauty. As the two pulled the canoe to shore the ice crackled and groaned in the last dying vestiges of winter. A stark reminder, a melody of the wild. The two collapse into the canoe once it's on shore, laughing and whispering to each other of the adventures they will have with this treasure. The wind chills them as they both climb out of the canoe and begin dragging it home.
****
Joshua Swink writes about mountains, crime, war, trauma, and adventures. He lives at Fort Johnson, Louisiana but considers Cherryville, North Carolina, the New York mountains and Thousand Islands home as well. He is married to his wife Annie and together they have six kids, a fat black dog and two cats that act like dogs. Before he started writing he spent twenty years in the US Army Infantry, serving in both Iraq and Afghanistan.