Dark Days Under a Black Sun

PTSD

You grew up doing this stuff? Martial arts?”

“Forever.”

“Teach before the Army?”

“Nah, I started training men the first time I was overseas. It felt like, how could I keep that knowledge to myself when it might save their lives? Any time I wasn’t on duty, I was teaching. It was all bullshit, though.”

“How’s that?”

“No hand to hand in combat anymore.”

“Mmm. Guns and bombs.”

“Guns, rockets, missiles, bunker busters. Mines in the middle of the fucking road—not Muay Thai and jiu-jitsu. Military cares about hand-to-hand like they care about CPR training. Doesn’t do shit, but they say it empowers a soldier. Nah, I wasn’t teaching men how to fight.”

“So then?”

“I was teaching them to kill.”

“Oh.”

“More precisely, I was teaching men to be able to kill.”

“Ah, I get it.”

“You don’t. No disrespect. I didn’t get it either. I thought I was hot shit, training guys on my own. Army taught me to teach better—efficiently. Give a soldier everything he needs, but only what he needs. They don’t have years to train. Don’t get me wrong, I did them right. It doesn’t mean shit in war, but you’d rather face five Rottweilers than any one of my students.”

“So then—”

“You know in World War II only twenty-five percent of M-1s were fired?”

“What’s that?”

“Only twenty-five percent of M-1s were fired in World War II. And the kill rate was nothing. All these soldiers, pure marksmen in training, couldn’t hit the side of a wall in combat.”

“Wow, that’s crazy. I never heard that.”

“It sounds impossible, but it’s true.”

“They know why?”

Marvin relit the joint, took a long pull, and then pinched it dead again.

“My wife’s a potter,” he said.

“I’m sorry?”

“Mattie, my wife. She’s a potter. Makes bowls, vases, other things—pretty good too.”

“Uh.”

“She tried painting, watercolors, drawing. But it didn’t work for her. She said she couldn’t feel the paper. She needed to have her hands in it.”

“In it.”

“The first time she let me watch her, mmm… So beautiful. You ever see a woman play the cello? Just like that, her body around the wheel and hands on the clay. So everything you see on the bowls is her hands, is her fingers. Everything. This pure connection. I married Mattie five months after seeing her at the wheel that first time—I know it sounds crazy.”

“No, not at all.”

“No?

“I don’t think so,” Sam said. “Not when you’re in love. So your wife—sorry, did you say Mattie was your wife or your ex-wife?”

“Well, both, really,” Marvin said. “I mean, Mattie’s my ex-wife, but she’s still my wife, you know? That’s forever. Shit, don’t tell her that, though.” He chuckled. “Talk about lawyers. Nah, she doesn’t always understand. Sometimes… It’s complicated. But she knows. We can’t always be together, but she knows who she is. And she knows I’m her husband.”

“Yeah, definitely—so the combat training and M-1s and World War II, I don’t understand—”

“People don’t want to kill.”

“What’s that?”

“At first they thought it was just adrenaline and microtremors. But that wasn’t it. The problem was that the soldiers didn’t want to kill. So they didn’t fire at all or just aimed at the sky, most of them.”

“Really? That’s wild.”

“I was so moved, when I learned that,” Marvin said.

“Yeah.”

“Ahhh, but the Army, smart motherfuckers. They spend all this time and money to find out that people are inherently good, truly God’s children. So what do they do? They spend more time and money figuring out how to break it, how to take the humanity out of people. And they did. Figured it out well enough by Vietnam to destroy a generation of men.”

“Mmmm.”

“And we get better at it all the time. That’s why PTSD rates keep climbing, every decade.”

“I read that somewhere.”

“Detection is part of it,” Marvin said. “Better mental health awareness. But mostly it’s me.”

“You?”

“Training. See, it’s like Mattie at the wheel, with her fingers in the clay, soldiers have to feel it. If you want a soldier to aim at center mass with calm hands and pull the trigger, first you teach him to grapple in the mud and choke a man to death.”

“Jesus.”

““Beautiful, isn’t it?”

“What’s beautiful?”

“People,” Marvin said. “People are beautiful. At our core, in our genes, we’re not made to kill. Takes a guy like me getting up inside a man, ripping out all his goodness, dipping it in poison, and putting it back inside him. That’s how I make a soldier.”

“Mmmm.”

“And I’m really fucking good at it. Tricky to mimic real combat conditions, but I have methods. Even created new techniques that became standard.”

“Like what?”

“Like men can do things with their teeth you couldn’t do with a hatchet.”

“Oh, fuck.”

“Nobody expects it, but the human jaw can bite with almost three hundred pounds of force.” He chuckled softly. “Remember to floss, Sam. Your teeth are your best friends. Take care of them and they’ll take care of you.”

“Jesus.”

“Amen. By the time I teach a man to use his teeth as easy as brushing, there’s nothing he can’t do. When he’s holding an M-4, he’s just a kid with a water gun.”

“Yeah. I see.”

“Yes. Now you do.”

Marvin tucked the half joint behind his ear. Then he rolled down his window to clear the smoke and Sam did as well. For half a minute there was only the roar of wind tearing through. He closed his eyes. It felt wonderful.

“I want to tell you something, Sam. Something I don’t tell anyone. I don’t know why.”

Sam did. He had heard many confessional stories from the passenger seat. Drivers would reveal to him what couldn’t be said to a friend or spouse. There was security in speaking with a stranger who would disappear forever at the end of the ride.

“Okay.”

“I think…well, I don’t know exactly—but I know you’re here for a reason.”

“Oh yeah?”

“It’s not full yet, not clear, but I want to tell you this thing.”

“Okay.”

“My first tour, in Afghanistan, I was a kid. Even with two kids of my own, I was a kid. I was so excited to get over there, to be a warrior. I had trained hard—hard. I felt like I could do anything. I had fucking claws and wings and fangs. The baddest motherfucker in the baddest motherfucking army in the world. No fear, no doubt.” He nodded. “From day one I was an effective soldier. Nothing could touch me. Nothing I saw. Nothing I did.

After, I went home, and I was fine. Some people have problems. Not me. Just happy to be with my family. I still trained, stayed strong. But relaxed. Played with my kids, took Mattie out to the movies, ate bacon double-cheeseburgers, watched the Jayhawks. Everything was okay, until a week before I went back. I was in the shower one morning and suddenly I started shaking, just shaking—my whole body trembling, and I couldn’t stop for I don’t know how long. I didn’t understand, I thought—I don’t even know. And then it came to me—I was terrified. And it didn’t make sense. It didn’t make any sense at all. I went for a long run, finally shook it. But it happened again that night, worse. Couldn’t sleep for hours. Again the next day, shaking, while I was sitting on the can. I thought, what the fuck was wrong with me? And it felt—it’s hard to feel like a man when you’re lying in bed, shaking, trying not to wake your wife. I couldn’t let her see me like that. Mattie didn’t marry a man who trembles. So the next day, I spent some hours meditating, just sitting on the rug in the living room, trying to clear my mind and let the answer come to me. And it did.”