How a Good Day Ends

By Travis Klempan

Julio opened the refrigerator, retrieved the orange juice, and considered scrambling himself an egg or two. He decided against it, opting instead for a granola bar, and let the door slam shut. The impact set the Formica breakfast table behind him to vibrating. He glanced over as he poured the juice into a glass, content in the knowledge that the world shaking off its axis would not disrupt Mibuela’s task.

She bent over the fine stationery that she had asked Julio to bring home a few days before, along with stamps from the Post Office. With such fine tools, she’d said, my message must be crafted with care. Satisfied with her signature, Mibuela blew on the page to dry the ink. She folded the paper carefully into thirds, slid it into the envelope, lifted it to her mouth–

Julio leaned forward.

–and shouted curses in Spanish, English, and in French, filling the envelope with her hard visions of the candidate’s future, imploring him to pull his head from his ass, and woe to anyone who did not heed the warnings of an old woman in San Sebastian, Nuevo México, gracias a Dios.

Julio smiled and sipped from his glass. Mibuela licked the envelope and sealed it quickly, hoping to trap as much of the energy as possible. She affixed an American flag stamp to the upper right hand corner and slid it across the table toward her grandson, then made the sign of the cross over her chest.

Julio finished the juice and rinsed the glass in the sink. “Is this one for McCain,” he asked, “or Obama?”

“Senator McCain,” Mibuela replied. “Tomás mailed the one for Senator Obama on his

way to soccer practice.”

“That kid rises early.” Julio scooped up the letter and slid it into the back pocket of his jeans. “Anything else you need from me today? I’m headed to the store but should be back before lunch. I picked up a shift tonight.” He grabbed the keys to his truck and pulled his ballcap from its appointed hook by the door.

“Yes.” She stood and gave him a hug, a kiss on both cheeks, and ran her hand over his head. “Consider getting a haircut. I cannot believe it’s grown this long and the girls still look at you.”

Julio grinned and kissed the top of her head. “There’s only one girl for me,” he said, “and she’s waiting for me at the store.”

Tomás may have put the letter in the mailbox, but it would never get picked up, Julio saw, not without raising the little flag on the side. Their mailman was meticulous, thorough, a Vietnam vet who liked to jaw with Julio whenever he was running late – and only when he was running late – always asking after the younger man’s health, mental and physical. Rudy claimed that Agent Orange had taken all of his hair and most of his teeth, and was convinced that Julio and all the other Iraq and Afghanistan war vets would start getting sick soon, and if he didn’t register with the VA up in Albuquerque, then hoo boy Julio would suffer just the same as–

“Ay!” He pulled his hand back from the mailbox and stuck his finger in his mouth.

“Good morning.”

He turned. It wasn’t Rudy but Amanda, the woman who’d lived next to Mibuela and the Cristobal family for years, going so far back as to be the teenager who babysat a young Julio and even younger Tomás. Grown, no kids of her own, she liked to check in on Mibuela, Tomás, and, since he’d landed back at home after getting out, Julio.

“Hey, Amanda. Nice day out, yeah?”

“You okay?” She nodded toward his hand, which he now shook in hopes of distributing the pain.

He saw the offender crawl out of the mailbox and rest upon the back of the door. “That little a-hole just stabbed me.”

“Stabbed?” she replied. “Don’t you mean stung?”

“Bees sting,” he said. “Wasps stab you. Little effer.” He considered mashing the life out of its body, but he had no weapon nor any stomach for the act. Off it flew, and he glanced inside, ensuring there was no nest, or another bunch of little effers.

“Huh. I never thought of there being a difference,” Amanda said. “You sure you’re okay?”

He smiled his relief at her as he slid the envelope in to accompany its partner, then shut the door and lifted the flag that signaled a need. “This ain’t nothing.” The wound still smarted, though. Julio thought about telling her about the time his platoon had to deliver 10,000 honeybees to a farmer in Diyala Province so the man would stop snitching on them to al Qaeda, but he decided against it. “What’s up? You came here looking like you wanted to ask me something.”

“Right. And if this is one of those times, y’know, too personal or whatever, I just, I’m at a loss who else to go to.”

“Sounds serious. What’s up?”

“You know my sister sent her son, my nephew, to live with me for the summer.”

Greg, Julio thought. Maybe Greg? He’d seen the kid all of a handful of times, the few moments he ventured outside when his video game had to reboot or something. Even though he was about Tomás’s age, the two never interacted. Amanda hadn’t asked, and Julio had no intention of forcing a friendship–

“He’s heading back to New York, once the school year starts, so I only have a few more days with him. Anyway! Yesterday he actually talked to me, long enough to express an interest in atheism, of all things.”

She pronounced that word like she’d only heard it for the first time yesterday.

“Have you,” he said, “talked to him about it?”

“I wouldn’t know where to start. I was raised Roman Catholic, but it’s more like, I make it to Mass on Christmas Eve and Easter.”

“Why not have a pastor or something try to talk him out of it, if that’s what you want?”

“Oh, no, I don’t want to talk him out of it. If he came out as gay, I’d try to find a gay guy for him to talk to. If he came out as a sports fan I’d ask Rudy to talk with him. If he wanted to join the Army, I guess I’d ask you, too.”

“You’re supporting him?” Julio asked.

“Yeah, is that weird?”

“And you think I’m an atheist,” he continued, “so you want me to, what, tell him what it’s about? Mibuela has an entire shrine in the house to every deceased member of the Cristobal Family, and if she found out I don’t believe in any of that–”

“I won’t tell, I promise.” She gave him a tight-lipped, nervous smile. “Listen, forget about it. He leaves in a few days, I’m sure there are a bunch of atheists in New York he can talk to.” She folded her arms over her chest and shoved her hands into her armpits. “Sorry about your finger.”

The rhythmic beep of each item passing over the scanner wasn’t meditative, or grating, or anything, Julio thought, other than the little laser reading each little barcode to tell the machine what to charge him.

“Eggs, milk, flour.” The beautiful young woman narrating his purchases worked quickly and efficiently, which was reason enough for Julio to avoid the self-checkout lines, which he’d decided to hate for philosophical reasons, after hearing something about it on the radio. The fact that Stephanie had been dating Julio since before he’d left for boot camp also meant he took any opportunity to see her. Working nights meant he was gone by the time she was off, so until they figured out their schedules–

“Waffles or pancakes?” Stephanie punched the keypad to finalize the sale.

“Waffles,” he replied. “They’re Tomás’s favorite. He’s starting senior year on Monday.”

“You got a waffle iron?”

“Then I guess pancakes are his favorite.”

“Y’mind hurrying up?” The wizened little man next in line glared at Julio from under his ballcap. “Some of us don’t have the time to waste.”

The guy’s hat read Korean War Vet, so Julio let it pass. He didn’t offer any comment, though, on account of how little time he had to waste, too.

“See you this weekend?” Stephanie asked. Jimmy the bag man finished bagging the ingredients for pancakes and Julio nodded. Deciding to waste a moment more, he leaned across the checkout counter and kissed his girl goodbye.

The presence of a strange car in Mibuela’s driveway didn’t raise any alarm in Julio’s mind. She had a surprising number of visitors for an old lady – church birds, silver sneakers, bingo partners. Her nicknames for the social circles she flew in always made her grandson smile.

The smile disappeared when he saw the government plates on the otherwise nondescript sedan, and it morphed into a scowl when he saw the stacks of brochures and pamphlets in the backseat.

He managed not to kick open the door, managed not to storm into the living room, and managed not to throw the two men seated on the couch out a window, which he counted as a series of successes in managing his emotions. Julio didn’t like living in the past, especially didn’t like living in the five years he’d spent in a series of green and beige uniforms, but the sight of two men in Army garb flooded his memory with images he’d tried his best to put behind him.

Mibuela and Tomás sat across from the two soldiers, her antique coffee table not enough of a barrier to impede their conversation. They all looked up and stopped talking while Julio kept his gaze forward, intent on putting away the groceries before the food spoiled, lest he instead grab the men by the backs of their collars and eject them out the front door.

Finished, he closed the fridge and forced himself to take three deep breaths. If his mind was suddenly back in uniform, he had to act like a soldier. And no soldier worth his salt would go running headfirst into an ambush, nor would he not take a second to come up with at least the start of a plan.

Julio wiped the scowl from his face but didn’t make it all the way to a smile by the time he joined everyone in the living room. He now had a better chance to assess the two men who’d invaded Mibuela’s home. His initial observations were correct – a sergeant first class and a sergeant. Julio had left the Army as a corporal, done two tours in Iraq, and led a squad of soldiers through some heavy duty shit; from the looks of it, the staff sergeant was a soft desk jockey, maybe some kind of admin pogue, but the sergeant had the same Combat Infantryman Badge as Julio did, and watched him with the same intent gaze that he regarded the intruders.

The admin guy, though, rose and smiled like a used car salesman, offering his hand along with the dopey grin.

“How do you do, son?” he asked. “I’m Sergeant First Class Tommy Atkins. Your brother here was telling us he didn’t think you’d be home, and I said how sad I’d be to miss you.”

Julio felt the spot where the wasp had stabbed him flare with blood. Too bad wasp venom didn’t transfer secondhand.

“Always nice to meet a former soldier,” Atkins continued. “Thank you for your service.”

“You’re welcome.” Julio glanced at the sergeant, still seated. “Who’s this guy?”

Atkins laughed. “Sergeant Bartolomeo Colón. We all call him Bart down at the office. This is his first month as a recruiter, so I asked him to tag along while we spoke to your brother.” He sat. Julio stood. “I was just commenting on how your brother and I share the same name.”

“Tomás and Thomas aren’t the same,” Julio said. He looked at the boy next to Mibuela. He couldn’t meet his older brother’s eyes. “And he’s only 17, so I think you guys are a little premature.”

Atkins laughed and Julio noted that Colón’s face didn’t change. “Actually, the Army’s different from when you and I joined. We’ve got lots of ways to sign him up, if he’s that interested, which it sounds like he is. I joined before 9/11 as a 92Y, and got called back in. Tomás says he’s looking at infantry, which is great, since Bart and you can talk to him about–”

“I’m not talking to him about shit. And neither are–”

“Julio!” Mibuela didn’t stand up, but she still filled the room. “These are guests in my casa, and you will not use that language in front of Tomás.”

“I’m sorry, Mibuela,” he said, “but someone’s gotta stand between him and these vultures.” He turned to Atkins. “Do you idiots know what it looks like when two soldiers in fancy uniforms roll up on a house? This neighborhood has seen that kind of–” He looked at Mibuela. “–stuff before, and there’s still wars going on.”

Atkins kept his smile on, but the light behind his eyes changed. “Like I said, Corporal Cristobal, Sergeant Colón here is observing.”

Julio smirked. “Or maybe it’s for your own safety,” he said. “I’ve heard what you recruiters are up to these days. It’s 2008 and it ain’t getting any easier to convince guys to join.”

Colón spoke for the first time. “Your brother said you’re a survivor of the Battle of the Coffin.” It wasn’t framed as a question, though the statement dripped with incredulity. Julio had encountered it before, while he was still in, and the couple of times he ran across any other infantry guy who hadn’t been there. “Hard to believe reports,” Colón continued. “If even half of it was true–”

“It was all true,” Julio said. “Let me ask you this – how much recruiting do you guys do up in Vista Del Monte? Antelope Hills? Or do you just spend all your time here in San Sebastian and South Mesa?”

Atkins stood and picked his green hat off of Mibuela’s coffee table. Colón followed suit, finally looking into Julio’s face. A quick glance at the man’s chest showed he’d done a couple tours in Afghanistan, but hadn’t done time in Iraq.

Guess we’re even, Julio thought.

Atkins nodded politely at the old woman and Tomás, then turned to Julio and set his face to what he might have imagined looked intimidating. “I’m sorry you seem to be ashamed of your service, Corporal Cristobal.”

“Julio is fine.”

Atkins grinned. “Your brother turns 18 in October. Once that happens, we don’t have to ask your grandmother to be here when we talk to him, and Tomás won’t need anyone else’s signature to join.”

After Julio kicked the recruiters out, Mibuela kicked him out. He had a shift anyway at the Imperial that night, so this gave him an excuse to go cruising in his truck until then. He drove slowly and aimlessly, though the natural contours of the land always drew him upward, toward the top of the mesa.

San Sebastian used to be too small to matter to almost anyone outside of New Mexico. It didn’t have the size of Albuquerque, the history of Santa Fe, the tourist charm of Taos, or the extraterrestrial kitsch of Roswell, but it was home. Had been, for Cristobal men and women going back to the land grants. Julio used to know most of the kids in the neighborhood, but some magazine had named it a “best place to live.” By the time he got back from Iraq the faces had all changed, replaced by loud Texans and rich Californians, until Amanda’s and Stephanie’s were some of the only ones he could recognize outside his family.

He turned the wheel and pulled into a spot at the local park. A bunch of kids played a half-ass game of baseball on the diamond. It wasn’t the one where he’d played, years before, but a bright and shiny new addition, like so much of San Sebastian. He couldn’t stand to watch more than a few minutes, but when he pulled out of the park he realized it was almost sundown. He slipped out of time like that less and less these days, had done it a lot when he first got out, and put the concern out of his mind. He was already dressed for work, but didn’t want to be late.

The Imperial Theater was one of the few landmarks that had survived the creeping revisioning of his hometown. Surrounded no longer by tattoo parlors and dive bars, flanked instead by artisan burrito destinations and fancy flower shops, the boxy concert venue was a touchstone from Julio’s high school days, when he’d used a fake ID to sneak Stephanie and her friends in for heavy metal shows. Bands still came through, though their collective tone and flavor had softened to match the rising middle class mood of the town.

Sometimes he did double duty checking bags before people went in, overlooking the single joints but turning away the hard stuff, always barring those with outright weapons – brass knuckles, knives, a gun once. Anything could be a weapon, but if it was something so easy a suburban dad could wield it to hurt someone, he turned them away.

Some nights he did triple duty as a barback, and basically any and everything that Big Steve asked him to help out with. That reminded Julio a little too much of what the Army had been like, never saying that’s not in my job description, but at least here Big Steve was chill and Julio could drink lemonade all shift long and go home at the end of the night without someone trying to blow him up.

He checked in at the front desk and grabbed a radio, clipping it to the back of his jeans. Some band called Chasing Churchgoers was slated to play. He never paid much attention to the talent, except when a death metal or hardcore rapper came through, because that’s when the crowds got crazier. Looking at the poster for Chasing Churchgoers, he got huge nerd vibes, four guys dressed the same, like some throwback to the polite bands of Mibuela’s youth. Clean cut, uniform, upright citizen vibes…

He shook his head. Can’t escape the Army, he decided.

An hour after the show started, he swapped spots with the security guy inside. Fewer IDs to check, and Bobby could handle any nonsense outside until Julio reinforced him. By now, the energy was confined to the auditorium and bar, a bunch of white men and women in button-ups and slacks bouncing and swaying along to the decidedly low-key tunes put out by the dorks on stage. Fine by him, since he wasn’t in the mood to split up any fights. Maybe there really was some church element here, though they didn’t seem religious. Could you be religious without being churchgoing, he wondered.

Julio saw two familiar faces, neither of them faces he wanted to see ever again. Atkins and Colón had picked the right crowd, trying to get eager and earnest teens and twenty-somethings interested in the lies they peddled, but they’d picked the wrong time and place. He debated with himself if he could bounce them for trying to incite violence, since that’s ultimately what joining the Army led to, and had bounced more than one idiot in the past on nothing more than his own gut feeling, and every time Big Steve had deferred to Julio’s sense and judgment. That’s why I hired you, man, he always said, intent on keeping the peace rather than allowing negativity to fester and grow inside the walls of the Imperial.

Fuck Big Steve, he thought. He’d hired Julio because Big Steve used to have a thing for Julio’s mom, after Julio’s dad left, and felt sorry for the otherwise unemployable soldier. Slipping time made it hard to keep most jobs that required more than a black shirt and a penchant for tossing troublemakers paired with the ability to do so. And fuck San Sebastian for changing so much he couldn’t recognize it anymore, and Amanda for thinking Julio was the answer to her atheist nephew’s curiosity, and that old man for hurrying him out of the checkout line, and Tomás for thinking he could go around his big brother’s back to join up, and Mibuela for–

For what? For raising him and Tomás when their dad split and Mom died? For teaching him right and wrong, and good and bad, and what to do with the strength he’d been gifted with? For opening her heart and her home when he’d failed at the Army, couldn’t hack it anymore because no one should see that kind of stuff and live to tell the tale? He didn’t want to tell stories, because no one believed him about the Coffin or the bees or any of the rest of it. He didn’t want to be believed, since sometimes he couldn’t believe it, but he didn’t want to be forgotten, either.

Julio found Big Steve and asked if he could step back outside, get fresh air. Big Steve didn’t mind, Bobby was newer but the crowd was milquetoast and if push came to shove came to fists Julio was two seconds away and he found himself outside before he even realized it. People were streaming out and was the concert over already?

He saw Atkins and Colón leaving the concert hall, a handful of impressionable teens hanging around them while the older man said something about money for college and the blank-faced infantryman said nothing, and Julio got up off the curb and approached them. The look in his eyes was evidently enough to scatter the cannon fodder and he found himself alone with the two recruiters, deprived of their targets.

“It’s okay,” Atkins said, loosening up his smile and disdain now that he no longer had to put on a show in front of an old woman or a bunch of kids. “I always give ‘em my business card first thing. Hear that, Bart? Always give ‘em the business card first, in case you can’t close the deal in one conversation.”

“You’re just full of good advice,” Julio said. When the older man grinned, he realized the soldier had been drinking, which was probably breaking some rule or regulation somewhere. He was uninterested in enforcing Army rules, but he could probably use it as an excuse to knock Atkins around a little. Would Colón jump in? Probably, not out of respect, but out of loyalty, on principle, and so Julio backed down.

“Wait here,” he said. By the time he came back from inside the Imperial, two trios of bottles in his hands, Colón had lit up a cigarette and the last of the concertgoers had fled. Not even midnight yet, Julio realized.

“You know how hard it is to find kids willing to sign up?” Atkins groaned at his situation as he leaned against the wall and drank. “The Army wants us to find a bunch of stone-cold killers. Not enough the wars are winding down, what’re we gonna do when the wars end? Kids like these have a lot more prospects than they used to. This is my last hurrah in the Army,” he said. “I don’t wanna go out as a failure.”

“That’s just bullshit.” Colón sipped and smoked in equal measure. “We’re doing a job, same as the bouncer here. Someone tells us what to do, someone tells him what to do. When I get out, I’m gonna drive trucks or something.”

Atkins bummed a cig from his partner and looked at Julio again with fresh eyes. “You serious about the Coffin?” he asked. “After Bart mentioned it, I made some calls, read the report. I gotta say, I’m going with Bart on this one. Too much to believe.”

Julio abandoned his last thoughts of pummeling either of these guys. What would be the point, he wondered. “What’s to believe? I served with a guy who kept a pair of his girlfriend’s panties inside his flak jacket on every patrol, said it kept him safe. One day he didn’t bring them along, that’s the day he caught an IED. Another guy ate nothing for meat for two months straight, did it on a dare. My sergeant could talk to birds, some lieutenant claimed Jesus died for our sins, but I never served with no stone-cold killers.”

The three men shut up long enough for the lights of the Imperial to shut off. They still couldn’t see the stars above them, though they figured the stars were still there.

“You guys watch the news, I bet.” Julio drank his beer dry. “Some guy down in Antelope Hills, they caught him on the news saying he raised his kid to be a sociopath. Did it as some sort of experiment, he was a college professor or something. They got him on the news because when his kid turned 18, the dad kicked him out of the house – still running the experiment – and the kid killed a couple of homeless guys in Albuquerque. They don’t know if they’re gonna charge the dad, too.”

“Why the fuck,” Colón said, “would you tell us that story now?”

“Maybe I’ll get in the business, too,” he said, looking at Atkins, who didn’t seem to hear a thing. “Just, the opposite of what you guys are doing. De-cruiting, maybe.”

“You hate the Army that much?” Colón asked. Atkins swayed until he landed on the wall, which held his torso upright long enough for him to slump to the sidewalk.

“I loved the Army, man.” Julio took the cigarette from Atkins and slid it into the beer bottle before it could burn the old man’s fingers. “That’s the thing, Sergeant. I can live with the bad dreams and the bad feelings, I know what I did and didn’t do over there. But every time I look at something, I see it in relation to the Army. They got a band here the other night from Newfoundland – I served with a guy from Canada. I try making pancakes for Tomás – it reminds me of those hard little frisbees they served at the chow hall. I don’t want that anymore, I want a normal life, but how come nothing else in my life has ever, is ever gonna replace that?” He looked at Colón. “How can you tell the kids that’s how it’s gonna be?

****

Travis Klempan is a Navy veteran and Colorado resident. He is the author of the novels HAVE SNAKES, NEED BIRDS and HILLS HIDE MOUNTAINS. His short stories and poetry have appeared in Line of Advance, Bombay Gin, Flyway Journal, and other journals.