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by Craig Gridelli
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He’d always known this day would come. It was inevitable, really. But to see it in print. ‘KABUL FALLS,’ proclaimed the cover of the newspaper that had been tossed onto Jake’s well-manicured front lawn. Just like any other paper on any other day.
Kabul falls.
A thing he’d never truly doubted since the clear and hot morning that he’d climbed up the rear ramp of the C-130 which carried him away from Bagram Air Base, Kabul shrinking and then fading out of sight entirely through the port windows.
But, as with all inevitabilities, events had finally conspired to rob him of the distances he’d created. Now he found himself frozen solid on his front lawn in the humidity of the August morning. He was holding the newspaper unopened in his hands, by all appearances merely contemplating its cover. Beads of sweat had formed near his temples.
He didn’t need to open it. From the headline alone he knew what it would say. He could have written it himself after the first time he saw the Afghan army evaporate, disjointed and scrambling under pressure from a single DShK hidden somewhere in the trees that ran along the ridgeline above the outpost. Or the first time he’d tried to explain to the local Shura the need to pay taxes to the Afghan central government. The interpreter had been reluctant to translate their response until Jake had promised not to get angry.
Kabul falls. No shit.
He didn’t want to throw the paper away, though. It seemed like something he shouldn’t throw away. So he brought it back into the modest two-story colonial where he’d made his life and his home and where he endeavored to raise his children. He fixed himself a bowl of cereal and sat down at the kitchen table to eat it.
But he wasn’t hungry. He was thinking he’d work himself up to it when he heard his wife Marcy come into the kitchen through the backyard door. She paused behind him.
“Morning honey,” he said. When she didn’t answer, he turned in his chair. She was looking down at the newspaper on the table, still finely folded. “It’s no big deal,” said Jake. “Was bound to happen eventually.”
“Are you feeling okay?”
“Totally fine,” he said. It was strange how quickly it came, the old defenses. Even with those from whom no defense was needed.
There had been a time when he’d wanted to talk about these things. He had a lot to say. But when he had tried to talk about it he’d found that people didn’t really want to hear it. They wanted a highlight reel, not a plodding tragedy. And talking about it like a highlight reel made him feel empty inside so he’d given up on discussing it altogether.
Marcy gathered breakfast for the children as Jake cleared his bowl from the table and rinsed it and put it in the dry rack. Behind him, the backyard door swung open and clattered into the inner kitchen wall. Tommy and Susan rocketed through the kitchen and into the living room, engrossed in a game of their own imagining.
Jake changed his mind about the paper. He walked it to the kitchen trashcan and jammed it in. Then he went over and kissed Marcy on the cheek. “Heading into the office,” he said. “Love you.”
“Love you,” she said.
He went through the living room toward the garage. “Have a good day, kiddos. Love you,” he said to his kids as he passed. They had turned the couch cushions into a fort and they were competing for control of it.
“Daddy! Can you play?” Tommy asked from atop a leather rampart as Jake neared the garage door.
“Not right now, bud. Gotta get to work.”
Jake went into the garage, opened the garage door with the keypad, and climbed into his Jeep. As he started the car, the radio came on. “Afghanistan continued its dramatic collapse yesterday, as Kabul fell to the Taliban without a fight,” it said. “Experts are stunned by the speed with which the U.S. trained Afghan army has fallen or fled in the face of the Taliban opposition.”
He flipped off the radio. Taking a deep breath, he closed his eyes and then opened them again and pulled out onto the street. Experts are stunned, he thought to himself. What made them experts?
It was only a short drive to Botelli & Family Accounting, and Jake parked his Jeep in the lot behind the building. The front lot was for customers only. Summer was not a busy season for Botelli & Family, but there was always tax accounting work to be done. He was determined to find some, even if it meant going down into the dank basement storage room and combing through old audit files in whatever dim light was available from the yellowed ceiling lamps.
Over the course of the morning he got himself good and preoccupied, so much so that he’d forgotten about a lunch meeting he was supposed to have with Chuck, who worked over in corporate tax. Chuck’s daughter went to school with Susan and Marcy was fond of his wife Jenna, so he’d booked a trip to Outback with Chuck to do some relationship building over a Bloomin’ Onion.
A booking which had escaped his mind entirely until he heard a polite wrapping on his office door. There stood Chuck, looking in through the long vertical window beside the door frame. He seemed unsure of himself, which was a notable departure from the clowning confidence that Chuck had brought to their handful of previous encounters. Of course, Jake knew why. He felt the tension creeping into his shoulders and tried to will it away.
“Oh man. C’mon in. I’m sorry, totally forgot about lunch.”
“Hey buddy. How ya doin?”
“Doin good, yourself?”
“I’m good. I’m good,” said Chuck. He looked as though he had more to say, though, so Jake remained quiet until it came out. “I figured maybe it wasn’t a good, ya know, I mean, if it’s not a good day we can reschedule.”
“Nah, it’s a fine day,” said Jake. “Just give me a minute to finish an email.”
“You sure? I mean, I know this must be a weird day for you. Or, not weird, but, I guess, stressful.”
“Why?”
“Well, with the Afghanistan thing and all.”
“Oh, that. Nah, it was a long time ago.”
“Okay, well, if you’re sure you’re good.”
“Yea man, I’m good.”
“Or, if maybe lunch will help distract you or something.”
“I’ll meet you in the lobby in five, Chuck.”
At Outback, no matter what Jake said, Chuck insisted on paying for lunch.
By the time Jake got home that evening he was exhausted. When he came in through the garage door, Marcy was making chicken cutlets and the smell filled the house.
“Hey, love,” said Jake, following his nose into the kitchen.
“Hey there,” she said.
“Chicken cutlets? To what do I owe this pleasure?”
“Figured it was a good day to treat ourselves.”
“But our diet?”
“To hell with the diet,” she said. She smiled at him. She was a good one, his wife, and she understood him as well as anyone had ever understood him.
“Works for me,” he said. “I’m going to grab a beer, do you want anything?”
“I already poured a wine, thanks,” said Marcy.
Jake went back through the living room and into the garage where the beer awaited cold in the spare refrigerator. An American flag hung above the fridge, and beside it was a battered old toughbox, gathering the garage’s many dusts. That hard plastic footlocker of sorts had been in many dusty places over the years, always tucked away, always put to the side. But always there, enduring.
He opened the fridge and took out a beer.
When he came back into the living room, Marcy had summoned the children to the table. Dinner was delicious, Jake had three cutlets and the beer was refreshing and cool.
“Can we have ice cream?” asked Susan after she finished her plate.
“Go play in the yard,” said Marcy. “If you’re good you can have ice cream before bedtime.”
This brought an appreciative cheer, and the kids took off for the yard. Jake got up to help clear the table. “I got it,” said Marcy. “Go get changed. Relax.” She stood on her tippytoes and kissed Jake on the cheek.
“Thanks,” said Jack. She was a good one.
He went upstairs to their bedroom and stripped off his suit. He hung it up in the closet and put on a pair of gym shorts and a t-shirt.
He was about to go downstairs when something caught his eye. The frame above his nightstand. It was a picture of young men standing in their uniforms around an up-armored Humvee. Beneath it was a captain’s rank and his old nametape. Below that, it said COMPANY COMMANDER.
“Daddy!” Tommy called from the yard. “Daddy, come play with us!”
“Be out in a sec,” Jake called back.
He pondered the picture for a while. And then he pondered what was not in the picture. The green-brown mountains and the glistening river where the Pakistani kids played and the Afghan men threw rocks at them and the small village in the valley and the clouds thrown up from the artillery on the rockfaces and the sounds of the Russian rockets whistling in and the smell of the HESCO walls as he hid up against them and the face of shopkeeper who sold him DVDs and who he caught stealing fuel from the tank and the taste of the chai tea with the Afghan army colonel who would later die and the look of the bomb maker who had lost his own eyes in an accident making bombs to kill his men and yet had come to him for medical aid and the fear of the fighter they grabbed after the lieutenant was shot in the neck when he had to stop the men from executing him on the spot though he had half a mind to do it himself. None of that was in the picture and never would be. It seemed to him it would never be anywhere.
He reached up and took the picture off the wall. He carried it downstairs and into the garage. Moving around the Jeep, he crouched beside the old toughbox. For a moment, he felt frozen, unable to go either forward or back. But, at length, he pushed open the heavy plastic top and took a long, lingering look at the contents inside. His ACUs. A scarf he’d bought from the bazaar in Jalalabad. A knife with a hilt allegedly made out of rock from the Tora Bora mountains. A small, hand-crafted chess set. A lion made of lapis. But he didn’t touch any of it. Best not to touch it.
Jake put the frame into the tough box and closed it.
“Daddy!” his son called. “Are you coming out to play or what!?”
Jack went out into the yard and played with his children.
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Craig Gridelli is a former Army Ranger who served from 2006-2010, including a thirteen-month tour to Afghanistan. He now lives and works in New York. He is married with two children and a bulldog. Previous work of his has been published at East of the Web and the No Sleep Podcast.
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