Page 79 of You're So Vine
When I head outside with two steaming mugs, Cam lets me sit on the bench before wrapping a big soft wool blanket around my shoulders. He also gently slides a hat onto my head.
“Short hair’s not much protection from the frost,” he says, tugging it down over my ears. “You need a woolly mane like mine.”
“Some men don’t like women with short hair,” I say.
Cam sits down beside me. “Some men can’t see past their own ego to what’s really important.”
I hand him his mug of hot cocoa. “It’s got a ton of cream, sugar, and alcohol in it. I suspect it’ll taste like those really bad liqueurs we used to drink in our teens.”
“Ugh, yeah,” says Cam with a shudder. “That bright green melon one. Same color out as in.”
“Ee-yew!” I protest. “Okay, on that note, I’d better test this concoction out…”
I take a sip of the hot cocoa.
“Not bad,” is my verdict. “If I do say so myself.”
Cam doesn’t look convinced, but he also takes a sip.
“Shit,” he says. “That is good.”
“All the food groups: fat, sugar, alcohol, and Hershey’s cocoa powder.”
We’re happy making small talk, though we both know we’re putting off the moment of truth. But it’s a beautiful night, why not enjoy it? Cam’s workshop is in a small clearing, so the sky is a patch of velvet black above us, framed by a lattice of moon-touched branches. Still, dark, and deep, like a Robert Frost poem. The stars are strewn all over like the sugar I may have accidentally spilled on Cam’s kitchen counter. The longer you look, the more stars you see: great swathes of them, reaching farther and farther outwards, all the way to infinity.
“Gives you perspective, doesn’t it?” says Cam. “The universe is so big we don’t even feature so much as a pin prick.”
“You know, we should find that comforting,” I tell him. “Because no matter how badly we mess up, in the grand scheme of things it’s not important at all.”
“Still hurts though. Even if the universe doesn’t care…”
Cam’s voice is quiet, distant. The moment of truth. Best not put it off any longer.
“What happened?” I ask softly.
He’s propped his elbows on his legs, bent over, staring at the ground, both hands wrapped around the mug of cocoa. It’s too dark to see his expression, but I do catch the corner of his mouth rising in a wry smile.
“It’s the shortest story I’ll ever tell you. Happened in the blink of an eye. You wouldn’t think it’d have such an effect, but it did.”
My urge is to reach out and touch him, but I don’t want to interrupt the flow. I think it’s best if I just sit quietly and let him take however long he needs.
“I was the ideal soldier,” he begins. “Mainly because I never thought too hard about anything. Took each moment as it came, followed orders, did what had to be done. Liked the camaraderie of my platoon but never got too close to anyone. Didn’t see the point when tomorrow they might be gone. If I’d ever been asked to describe myself, I’d have said I was pragmatic. But the truth is I was self-centered. That’s the trouble when you enlist young: you haven’t had time to get over your teenage self-absorption, the conviction that the world revolves around you. And I was lazy,” he adds. “Army rules meant I hardly ever had to think for myself. I never had to consider the consequences of my actions because I was just doing a job. I believed those above me knew what they were doing, and if it was okay with them, then it was okay with me…”
Cam’s assessment of his young self seems overly harsh to me. But it’s his story. He has to tell it as he sees it.
“We were stationed at a base in Eastern Afghanistan, and I’d never taken much notice of what was around us. Which was locals—mothers, fathers, kids—trying to get on with their lives. I didn’t bother to notice them because they were outside the scope of my job. They weren’t relevant. Then, one day, a bunch of insurgents decided to attack the base. Fired on us with no warning, overshot … hit the local village…”
Oh no. I take a sip of cocoa because I need the comfort. But I don’t really taste it.
“We were sent out to help,” Cam says. “First thing I saw was a little girl and a scrappy mule, both of them lying in the dust, the mule screaming and flailing, its back leg shot almost clean off. The little girl was trapped underneath, and I could see she was badly injured, too. But there was no way I could lift that animal while it was in that state. So, I shot it in the head, put it out of its misery. As it flopped down lifeless, I caught the little girl’s eye. She can’t have been any more than nine years old, and the fear on her face… She began to struggle under the dead weight of the mule but there was no way she could escape. I bent toward her, but she screamed at me. I’ll never forget that sound, so full of rage and pain and terror. I realized she thought I was going to shoot her, too…”
Cam cricks his neck, takes a breath.
“All this happened in no more than two minutes. Me running up, me shooting the mule, the girl screaming. But in those two minutes everything changed. I looked outside my small narrow world for the first time, saw what I was part of. Saw what that meant…”
He’s gone completely still. Lost back in the moment. I feel sad, and I feel angry, too: how many young people like Cam have gone into war with no real idea about what it might be like, only to have the truth be so traumatic they never fully recover? Most people enlist because they genuinely want to do good in the world—fight bad guys, help keep peace—but it’s never that simple, is it? War’s chaotic, full of gray areas. A mess.
I can see now how easy my life has been. I’ve never really been tested, not in any meaningful way. Maybe that’s why I needed to hear this story: to prepare me for what might be required of me after tomorrow.
