Soft as a Breeze

I’d just gone into the bar for a quick beer, something to wash the dust of the day from my throat. As my eyes grew accustomed to the dimly lighted interior, I saw that the bar was mostly empty. The bartender busied himself washing and rinsing glasses, and one tired old hippie-looking dude was sitting at the bar, nursing a beer. I glanced around, then decided to take the second barstool down from the guy.

He looked to be a few years older than I. His hair was ruffled and he was sporting a few-days stubble. His military field jacket hung loose at the front, and as I sat down I saw that he was hunched over a shot glass and a beer. I motioned to the bartender. “Budweiser, please.” I glanced to my right. “And set up my friend here if he wants another one.”

The bartender complied, and just as he turned away, the fellow next to me downed the shot and followed it with a swig of his beer. Then he swiveled slowly to face me. I smiled, readying myself to say “You’re welcome” or “No problem” or some other societal nicety. But I didn’t get a chance.

“Damn,” he said, and it was the quietest, softest pronunciation of any word I’d ever heard. I focused on his eyes and realized he wasn’t looking at me so much as a thousand yards through me. “Damn,” he said again. “It’s been forty-two years since Digger proved he wasn’t so soft after all. Forty-two years since the world caved in and I heard all them scratching sounds somewhere to my right, I think. You never can really tell when you’ve just dropped into a tunnel and you’ve got a flashlight and the louie’s pistol and then the lights go out anyway, know what I mean? I mean one minute a small circle of dirt’s all lit up in front of you and y’know where down is and where up is and there’s just enough glow on the walls to confirm your own space... just enough glow so you know the musty dirt walls are there ‘cause you can see the roots sticking out of ‘em ever’ now and then. And there’s the light behind you too, comin’ in through the tunnel entrance. ‘Course you don’t really know it’s there ‘cause you can’t see it directly, but you sort of sense it, sort of feel it coming in a few yards behind you, kind of a security cord to the outside. You know it’s there because, you know, it has to be. I mean, things don’t just go away when you turn your back, right? The hole is there for sure, and if the hole’s there, then the light’s there. Just makes sense, right? I mean, you just dropped through it, for Christ’s sake. So ever’thing’s okay, ‘cause the light’s there in front and behind, and the voices are still there. They’re muted, I mean, but they’re still there. And you know you’re okay.

“Well, I’m on my hands and knees, pushing that light ahead of me, and I could hear ‘em, maybe all of ‘em. Mick talking shit. I mean pure, unadulterated bullshit, you know, about how bad he is and all. Big, dumbass Mick. And silly-assed Raymond. Can’t-keep-his-sheets-­dry Raymond from the Bronx. Pisses himself nearly every night and then hopes it’ll rain so we won’t know. Only Jesus H. Christ, man, piss don’t smell like rain, I mean even that damn drizzly, miserable rain that just don’t hardly ever stop. Like he thinks we don’t know he’s got a little problem. ‘Course we do know, but we ain’t gonna say nothin’ anyway. I mean, Ray’s a silly ass, but he was there, like us. And Lieutenant Danforth, you know, the louie... he was completely screwed up at first, all that Boat School bullshit, you know, but only for a few days. I mean he snapped in pretty quick for an officer, and he wasn’t too bad even before he snapped in, really, but after a few days we knew we wouldn’t have to coddle his young ass. Got to where he was pretty okay. ‘Course he sent me down that damn hole and all, but I mean hey, it’s my job, y’know?” He paused and took a swig of his beer.

“Then Digger... poor little stupid friggin’ Digger. He’s the one guy we really watched out for, like it was a personal favor for his mom or somethin’. ‘Little Jimmy Carson’ we called him until that damn tunnel broke on me. Little piano-playin’, soft-talkin’ Jimmy Carson. But don’t get me wrong, now: he pulled his own weight, y’know? I mean it wasn’t nothin’ personal or nothin’ like that. He was just soft. ‘Course I don’t mean soft like hard or soft, or like tough or soft. Jimmy was just sweet. He really gave a shit, y’know? Been in country eleven months and always pulled his own weight, but sort of easy, always with a soft, quiet touch. Even when Sergeant Johnson’d holler, ‘Point, Jimmy!’ well Ol’ Jimmy’d just wave and move up to the point, easy like, just sweet. Quiet. ‘Sure, Sarge,’ he’d say, and we didn’t worry about him that way either, not a deep kind of worry. It was almost like he was too soft to get hit, y’know? Like if a round did hit him he’d give just enough to absorb the thing and it would drop off him. That kind of soft. Like mellow, y’know? Pliable. Pliable little dude. Good ol’ Digger.” He finished his beer, then set it on the bar a little too hard and glanced at the bartender.

He turned back to me, though I had the feeling he was watching me even when he was looking at the bartender. He shrugged. “But still, you know, we watched him like he was our kid or somethin’. I mean we always watched him, like it was just a regular thing we did. I mean it wasn’t like we had to think about it. It was like somethin’ y’have to do but y’don’t mind ‘cause it’s just what you always do, natural like.

“Anyway, I was pushin’ that light ahead of me and probably grinnin’ a little ‘cause I was tryin’ to make out what Mick was braggin’ about when that damn hole broke. That’s when Jimmy became the Digger. You know, the guys said he never said nothin’. Didn’t jump or scare or nothin’. Said he just ran, soft and easy like, glided like, to that hole and started right in diggin’. Then everybody else jumped and stumbled and cussed and fell all over each other tryin’ to help him dig.

They all dug, I guess, even the lieutenant, for what I’d still bet to this day was most of an hour, ‘cept the louie told me later it was only a few minutes. But nobody dug like Jimmy. And they said he never said a word and he never stopped. He just kept on diggin’, soft like, ‘til he found my boot. Then he yelled ‘Hey!’ they said, but he never stopped diggin’ even then, even for a second. Just tore in a little quicker, I guess. Still soft like, you know, but not quite as soft.

Anyway, somebody said it was Mick that tugged on my boot, but he sure didn’t tug like he talked. If he’d tugged like he talked he’d have tugged hard, hopin’ just the boot and my foot or leg would come out. But he just gave a little tug, like he hoped it wasn’t loose but still attached. I know ‘cause I was on the other end of it but Mick never said nothin’ about it later so I didn’t have to slam him over it. ‘Course the boot didn’t come out alone, neither. It never came off ‘til I took it off myself, later.

“Well anyhow, Ol’ Digger brought me a beer that night, soft again, wantin’ to help a little bit, I think. Thought maybe my nerves were shot or somethin’. ‘Stan?’ he says out of the dark, all whispery like. Well, I looked up easy, not jumpy, ‘cause it wasn’t a sudden thing like a snapped twig or a body movin’ past a blade of elephant grass or somethin’. It was soft as a breeze, like a real breeze, like it’s almost there but not really. ‘Yeah?’ I says back to him, and I tried but I couldn’t do it as soft as he could.

“I was thinkin’ we hadn’t ought’a settle on Digger, maybe we should’a called him Breezy or somethin.’ Anyway, sure enough, he passed me a beer, then smiled and settled next to me on his heels. ‘You okay?’ he says, all whispery. ‘Yeah, no problem,’ I says to him, and I remember plain as if it was yesterday, a raindrop filtered off a leaf and streaked across my glasses. Well, that was normal, but for the first time ever I thought I could actually hear that raindrop sliding across that leaf before it fell. ‘Cause I was concentratin’ so hard on hearin’ Digger and tryin’ to mimic him... the softness, I mean. Anyway, real quiet, Digger—the breeze—says, ‘Everything works out, huh? I been here eleven months and ain’t never come that close.’ And I remember I nodded, though he couldn’t see me in the dark, or maybe he was soft enough, bein’ akin enough to the breeze I mean, that he really could. ‘Everything works out,’ I says, but I still couldn’t get it as soft as he could, even practicin’ sayin’ it soft on purpose.

“Without tryin’ at all himself, he says, real soft, these exact words. He says, ‘Well, I guess I gotta go on home.’ ‘Course him and me and anyone else if they’d been there listenin’ knew he didn’t really mean ‘home’ but just back to his poncho and his sleepin’ bag. And just like that he lifts himself off the ground, the breeze does, like he don’t weigh nothin’ anymore and drifts toward his sleepin’ bag. I tried one more time to get it right. ‘See you in the mornin’, Digger,’ I says, but nope, it didn’t work. ‘See you,’ wafted in on the breeze so soft that I wasn’t sure it was his voice. Might’a been another raindrop slitherin’ across a leaf somewhere.”

He downed a shot and took a swig of his new beer and shook his head a little. Warding off another memory, I thought. Or maybe shaking one into the front.

Then he resumed. “Bein’ there was mostly boring, Man. Long periods of nothin’ to do but wait for somethin’ to happen. Even the damn jungle was quiet and soft and sweet, a lot like Jimmy, ‘til that one scalding, blinding-white instant when all hell breaks loose until you can shove it back where it belongs, all in a split second. I mean there’s a big lead-up that’s sort’a excitin’ and lasts longer than time, when things are happenin’ all around you and you’re doin’ a lot of different things, but it’s still okay ‘cause it ain’t happenin’ directly to you.” He paused and smiled, and fire filled his eyes. “And then there’s that damn lousy scalding-hot second of pure hell when the whole damn mess centers right there on you: just you. You know what that’s about, my friend? It’s when you really are all by yourself and so is your buddy whose only a damn foot away in the same hole. It’s when you think the earth is spitting little squirts of mud at you ‘til you remember it’s bullets and every nerve in your face goes numb and the rest of your body slips into slow motion. It’s when all the rain in every drizzly, miserable cloud on earth is falling within a two-foot radius of the center of your sorry head, and everything and everyone is screaming at you or past you and you can’t do anything as fast or as good as you have every other day of your life. Things like duck or run or get out of the mud or find a trigger or remember a friend who pulled you out of a tunnel two weeks ago. And then, quick as it started, the instant ends, just like that.” He sighed, took a drink of his beer, shook his head almost imperceptibly. “And you’re alive and you’ve got to get capable again ‘cause y’don’t know when the next fear might slap across you.

“Well, y’start to stop shakin’ and y’think of a cigarette and y’reach for one. ‘Course, you’re still just a stupid kid and Mom flashes one’a them mom looks through your mind, but she ain’t really there so you reach anyway. Then you want to lighten up a little bit, joke with your friend, y’know? You wanna show him you’re both still bad, tell him Charlie’d sooner sandpaper a bear’s ass in a phone booth than mess with you, by God! And your buddy smiles kind of soft in your mind and you want to offer to split that extra beer in your pack with him, y’know? Split a beer with the wind, you think, maybe help his nerves a little bit. So you’re thinkin’ about reachin’ for it, but you decide to joke first and get the beer in a second. And then you’re smilin’ and turnin’ your head and openin’ your mouth to tell him about bear’s asses in phone booths—” He slapped the bar, hard. “But his goddamn face is gone!

“Then there ain’t nothin’ but screamin’ and scalding water on your cheeks, even in the rain that’s too damn hard and cold and miserable to care about anything. And four guys jump on you like the rain and the wind, hard, like thugs. They take your breath like a gale, like a damn firestorm, not soft, not like a breeze, and they yell ‘Shhh!’ and ‘Shut up!’ and they use your name like they know you, y’know? But you scream right through their hands, right through the blood and the bone chips and the grimy meat of their filthy goddamn hands. You’re screamin’ for a breeze, just a soft little breeze. You’re screamin’ for a breeze that pulled your ass out of a grave a couple weeks ago and now there ain’t a goddamn thing you can do but scream and wish he hadn’t dug so good. But the breeze is gone... just gone.”

The grizzled old guy downed one more shot, then polished off his beer. He turned both glasses upside down on the bar and swiveled back to me and slipped off his barstool. He stood ramrod straight. “Hey, you be careful goin’ home. And thanks for the beer.”

“No problem, man. Jeez... that’s a hell of a story. Rough way to end it though.”

“Yeah... well, that’s just how some things end. The louie came up the next day with his head down. Said Digger took a round to the side of his right cheekbone and he was real sorry. But hell, you know, like I told the lieutenant, it wasn’t nobody’s fault. I mean, even Jimmy wasn’t soft enough there, y’know? Nobody is.”

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