Alf calls me at the hospital to tell me everybody’s all
right. This is about an hour before lights out, and the ward nurse, a bastard of
captain eyes me like I just sold my country to the Vietcong.
We don’t generally get phone calls from off base. So three
in a month, and two within a week, are just too much for the captain to handle.
The fact that Alf is on the other end puzzles me.
We don’t talk much. For the most part, we’re adversaries,
rivals in some imaginary game I’ve yet to learn the rule of or what it is
about.
“We had an accident,” Alf tells me, referring to him, Bob
and Jimmy.
The trio apparently decided to take a drive after Bob and
Alf dropped acid. Bob refused to let Alf drive, and Jimmy being Jimmy, said he
didn’t care what they did as long as he didn’t have to hear any of the BS.
Bob’s Volkswagen is legendary, and so is Jimmy’s ability to
cause damage to other people’s vehicles. So as Alf relates the story, I believe
it, I see it unfolding in my head like a grain movie: Bob behind the wheel, Alf
in the passenger seat, Jimmy in the cramped back seat playing solitaire,
pretending everything is normal when it clearly is not.
He’s always doing this, trying not to let any of us get to
him, when I’m pretty sure, behind that unmoved expression, some voice inside
him screams about our being nuts.
Anyway, Alf tells me Jimmy suddenly laughs and says he sees
a spider.
Alf says he doesn’t see any. Bob looks into the rear-view
mirror and wants to know what the fuck Jimmy is talking about. Jimmy leans
between the seats and points at the front windshield.
Alf still doesn’t see anything. Neither does Bob.
Jimmy smacks the windshield with the heal of his hand,
causing it to crack.
“There,” he says, pointing at the cracks. “That’s its web.”
At this point, Bob, who is paying more attention to his
cracked windshield than he is to the road, steers the car into a curb.
“It drove the steering box through the front fire wall,” Alf
told me over the phone. “But we’re all right. But Bob wants to kill Jimmy – not
only because he caused the crash, but because he got out of the car and blamed
Bob for everything. He even says Bob screwed up his game of solitaire. I think
Bob really would have killed him, if Jimmy hadn’t waved down a passing car and
asked for a ride. He fucking left us there, the prick. But we’re all right.”
After he hangs up and the ward lights go out, I crawl into
bed and ponder all this. Around me, I hear the heavy breathing of soldiers who
have seen too much war, some of whom won’t be leaving this place alive, and I’m
thinking: We’re all really all right, aren’t we?”
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