Five Miles to Epworth
By Zack Harmes
There are things he knows.
He knows the call to prayer echoes through the city at dawn.
He knows it is safer to move during the hours they hold sacred.
He knows that’s not always true.
The stench of rot and decay is normal. The scent of garbage, diesel, and gunsmoke are familiar and comforting. But when he wakes to the hint of lavender in the air, only a whisper on the morning breeze, he knows he is starting to slide again.
Lavender fixes purple in his mind. It makes him think of dark brown hair, wet after a shower, that tingles against his face. The shampoo that she uses is on the other side of the world, tucked into a corner of the bathtub. To find that smell lingering here, woven into the stench, is an omen.
Her ghost, a spectral memory on this empty street, means only one thing.
He dreams of cool water on his skin. He dreams of summer days spent on the river, of turning over rocks, of yellow bikinis and the smell of coconut lotion. He dreams of rainbow Cokes, popcorn, and carnivals.
The priorities of work are simply that: priorities. Weapons maintenance. Security. Scanning sectors of fire, he forces his focus on the bland emptiness in front of him. The desert is always the same, some invisible line drawn across a map, the names of the countries never really matter. He’s here, again, and he has lost track of how many times he’s come back.
The desert is an ocean of sand that floods the city. The sand is a constant reminder of where he is and what he’s doing. It wriggles into his boots and gathers in hard clumps between his toes. It bites into the pores of his neck beneath the collar of his armor. It crackles between his teeth with every sip of water, burrows into his scalp, and hides in the folds of his eyelids. No matter how long he stays, the sand is always a part of it that refuses to be ignored.
When they stop, he takes a knee on the broken pavement, fingers hovering over the trigger. They are facing out towards the edge of the world. On the horizon, the sun climbs steadily into the sky and brings the promise of heat and pain.
He knows the men on the rooftops behind them murmur into cell phones.
He knows they are studying his routes of movement.
He knows the rules of engagement.
He knows a firefight is nothing more than a conversation between soldiers, and there was a lot to discuss. Death is a universal greeting, and only a few sentences would be needed to bridge the divide between their worlds. He knows he is fluent in the language of violence, that to speak its harsh vowels is as simple as a flick of his thumb, a snap of his finger. He knows he needs to speak only one syllable of five-five-six and the debate would rage.
But what he doesn’t know is if anything would have been different, even if he had.
#
The walls of her cage are pearl white.
She has tried to cover them in framed photographs. On the mantle rest neatly arranged pictures of the two of them sitting on beaches, in Ferris Wheels at carnivals, standing on the streets of Chicago. On the bedside table, their wedding announcement.
There are paintings of the Eiffel Tower and of red trolleys rumbling through the hills of San Francisco. There are vibrant green waterfalls in faraway jungles. She’s tried to fill the empty space with memories, because a house is not a home until it is layered in time well spent, time well lived.
But the sunlight catches the blank spaces between and litters her world with sharp edges. If she focuses on them, she’ll slip on a jagged memory and hemorrhage on the kitchen tile, her face a twisted mask of smeared mascara. She decides she is finished with bleeding out.
Paint, she thinks. And lots of it.
She tears everything down in a frantic storm. She moves the furniture to the centers of each room. It takes her six rolls of masking tape before the house is ready.
By nightfall, every wall is washed in Forest Green, Marlboro Red, and Starfire Yellow. She steps back to admire her work as the sun sets on another day. She takes it all in and lets out a sigh.
It’s not working, she says to herself.
She skips the wine and goes straight for the vodka.
When the liquor dulls her to the point of bravery, she picks up the phone and calls her father. He answers on the first ring.
How are you holding up? he asks.
It gets easier every time, she lies.
When’s the last time you heard from him?
Three weeks ago, she says. He was in the desert. Said he was doing fine, and he’d call me when he could.
Well, her father says, no news is good news, right?
She rattles the ice in her glass.
Baby, her father says, how are you really doing?
She sighs. Every day feels exactly like the day before. Wake up. Clean the house. Mow the grass. Find more things to clean. Go to bed.
Maybe you should come stay with me during this one, her father says. It might do you some good to get out of Epworth for a while. Give you things to do.
I have plenty to keep my hands busy.
Darling, he says, it’s not your hands I’m worried about.
Truly, Dad, I’m doing fine. This is our home. I want to keep it perfect for him.
But you have. It’s the same thing every time he goes. You stay and try to make it perfect, and you get so upset when it calls to him. Baby, he’s a soldier. He can’t ignore it.
But maybe this time it’s different, she says. Maybe this time he’ll see.
Some people don’t realize they missed their exit until they’re in the wrong town, he says. You can’t steer his car for him, baby. People gotta wind up in some place they don’t want to be before they realize they were driving the wrong way the whole time.
I can’t remember why I called you, she says.
Over the line, she can hear her father grind his teeth. She drinks the last of her vodka.
Listen, you know I’m always here for you, he says. You can call me anytime, for any reason.
I love you, Daddy, she says.
She hangs up the phone and watches the ice melt in her glass. When a watery pool is all that remains, she looks around at the newly painted walls of the house. The furniture still sits in a chaotic mess. She lies down on the couch.
Tomorrow, she decides, she’ll paint the whole place in a coat of Coyote Tan.
#
They taught him to close his eyes and see the attic of his home, layered in dust and shadow. They taught him to stack towers of cardboard boxes with words scrawled in black marker. The corners of the boxes are frayed and torn at the edges from use. As he walks through, he passes row upon row, and reads words like “LOVE” and “MOM” and “DAD.” His fingertips trace the edges and leave tracks in the dust as he looks for the one he needs the most.
Behind the optic of a long-barreled rifle, he opens his box marked HATE.
They told me I could do anything, he tells Sergeant Johnson. I had scored high enough on all the tests. But all I could think of was that video. You know the one. Where they killed that little girl. Cut her head off. I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
Next to him, Johnson stares through a pair of binoculars and says nothing.
I told them the only job I wanted was the one that would put me face-to-face with the man who held the knife, he says. He reaches over his optic and clicks it twice. A group of men swim into his vision. They cradle bundles of cloth to their chests. The black barrels of rifles poke out of layers of burlap and cotton, glinting in the sun. He can see the sweat stains on their clothes as they shoulder wooden crates of ammunition. They move their cargo into a small, windowless house made of brown adobe-style bricks.
Johnson lies next to him and mumbles quietly into a radio. The voices crackle back in answer. He speaks without turning his head. I used to be as stupid as you, Johnson says. But if you keep coming back here, you’ll learn that it always ends the same. Their side or ours doesn’t matter. A bullet or a heart attack. There is no difference you can make that matters.
He adjusts the position of the rifle, sucks it tight into his shoulder and watches the men continue their labor, unaware of the eyes watching them, unaware of the death racing towards them in the sky.
I keep telling myself, he says to Johnson, one of these guys out here, just one of them, has to be the one that killed that little girl.
You think that makes you special, Johnson says. If you weren’t here, someone else would be. A short while later they hear the approach of rumbling thunder on a cloudless day. The sweat stings their eyes and greases their hair. The sand clings to them like sugar on frosting.
He turns away from the blast and looks at Johnson, who keeps his binoculars trained on the house. He can see the reflection of the fireball on the smooth glass ovals.
Go home, Johnson says, and dedicate your life to forgetting this…
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Praise for Five Miles to Epworth:
"A story of "what ifs," eventualities, and realities. A glimpse inside a world you have to live to truly know." - Travis Kerns.
"A great work filled with detailed imagery depicting the throes of separation in a soldier's family, a desperate battle on two fronts. Very well written." - Winston Wilson.
"A deep story that finds a way to lodge itself into the tight spaces of your mind and irritate, rub, and agitate, until you read it again." - Derek R. Trumbo Jr.
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