Baby Bobby sabotaged Rita’s sleep, made her back ache, and sweat-stained her favorite concert tees with the stroke-inducing effort it took to haul his ten-pound, Temu mail-order ass from one end of the school to the other.

But worst of all, Baby Bobby killed her cool.

When Rita walked the hallways of Thomas Wolfe Senior High School with Baby Bobby in the front-facing carrier, it looked like a Chucky doll had burst from her chest.

At two and a half feet tall, he was exactly half her size. Had a head the size of a volleyball with LED eyes that flashed green or red, depending on his mood. His stamped-on, ginger hair looked like the lit end of a cigarette, and his pink, keloid mouth was stuck in a permanent grimace.

But it was his arms, his arms that carved out his pugilistic personality. A doll with a human-sized chip on its shoulders. They were bowed and ended in stumpy little fists telegraphing that Baby Bobby was ready for a glass-breaking bar fight with anyone who might glance at him sideways. The legs were dead ringers for turkey drumsticks. To such a degree that Rita felt it was all but inevitable that she’d wake up one morning and her family’s pitbull, Brad Pitt, would’ve ripped off and swallowed one.

Christ, if she ever had a baby this disagreeable looking, she was certain her first stop would be the dark doorway of a church or fire station. She’d leave him there in a basket like a modern baby Moses. Someone else’s problem. Wished she could do that with Baby Bobby.

And yet that would mean a big, giant ‘F’ in Life Arts – a class she’d only taken because she’d been assured by friends it was an easy ‘A.’ She’d been misinformed. Just like Rick in her fave black-and-white film, Casablanca. An ‘A’ was something Rita desperately needed. Had to bring her total GPA up to a 2.0 to have a chance to graduate, to get out of suburban Asheville—and hopefully out of America.

None of it, not the school, not the town, not the country, none of it was a good fit. She had a wayfarer spirit, so everyone told her, and European sensibilities. Well, the ones cool enough to see it. She longed to live in a place where the answer to the tasting menu of life was always yes. Majorca?

But she knew that in this moment, the one thing that stood in her way, the one thing strapped in her way, was the giant, plastic Tamagotchi faux baby she had been assigned to keep alive for one full week.

On the day they were first issued, Rita had asked Mrs. Maryjane O’Meara why she and the six other ‘Baby Mommas’ that Spring semester couldn’t just turn off their Baby Bobbys or Baby Bettys when their digital crying, laughing, or other hysterics became too much.

“Because that’s the whole point. You just can’t turn off a real baby,” said Mrs. O’Meara, the weary and dry-witted Life Arts teacher whose tenure stretched back to a time when it was just plain old Home Ec. “And as far as you’re concerned, Baby Bobby is just as much living flesh as Big Arnold over there.” She pointed to another of the ‘Baby Mommas’ slumped over his desk in the front of the Life Arts classroom, which was heated by oven-warmth to a perfect somnolence, with the aroma of baking peanut butter and chocolate chip cookies.

“Wait, IS he living? Jessica, check his pulse!” Mrs. O’Meara said with feigned urgency to a student seated next to him, her mischievous smile momentarily giving her the appearance of an overgrown elf.

Big Arnold was a 6’3, 250-pound senior and standout linebacker for the Thomas Wolfe Senior High School Angels football team. His black hoodie was pulled over his head, and he was softly snoring. His Baby Betty was slung over his apex predator shoulders in a mini backpack carrier. Baby Betty had spiky, plasma-colored hair partially covered by her own red hoodie and a painted unibrow on her forehead in the shape of a flying seagull. Peeking out over the lip of the carrier, which rose and fell with each of Big Arnold’s breaths, she looked like an angry Puritan child ready to accuse some innocent milkmaid of witchcraft.

Big Arnold’s kid should’ve been born a Sasquatch, Rita thought. She had a breezy friendship with the easy-going dude based on mutual desperation. Because like her, Big Arnold was very much in need of an ‘A.’ The grade that could inch him over the academic goal line to graduation. That would mean a full ride to play ball at West Virginia Methodist Community College. But he needed the diploma first.

Rita felt more than a little concern for him. She’d been the one, after all, who convinced him to take Life Arts, along with another supposed, easy ‘A’ -- the Musical Theater class. It was a double Hail Mary of electives. If they succeeded, they could leave their last four high school years in the rear-view mirror. If not … Rita didn’t even want to think of the alternative.

“What happens when … if you shut him down,” Rita asked, truly curious.

Mrs. O’Meara gave her a gratified look. “I thought you’d never ask. But this is a better show-and-tell. Give me that little rug rat,” she said, taking Baby Bobby from Rita.

“Okay, gather round all you Baby Mommas. Jessica, wake up, Big Arnold. He needs to see this, too,” she said.

When Jessica succeeded in finally waking up Big Arnold, he yawned loudly and wiped the drool from the corner of his mouth with his hoodie sleeve. The Baby Mommas, now all present, formed a semi-circle around Mrs. O’Meara. When she was sure she had everyone’s attention, she began:

“Rita just asked me what happens when you hit the off button. What I like to call ‘killing’ your baby. Well, aside from failing this capstone assignment and probably the class…,” Rita and Big Arnold looked at each other apprehensively, “…these little bundles of joy will exit their digital worlds. But just like a real child, saddle you with a guilt trip that will haunt you for the ages.”

With that, Mrs. O’Meara pulled up the back of Baby Bobby’s red and white striped shirt. She depressed a switch that unlatched his back like a battery compartment. She held him up so everyone could see. There in the middle of his electronic innards was a round, rubber diaphragm.

“If you depress your finger into this diaphragm for three continuous seconds, you will ‘kill’ your baby. Or more accurately, it’s a one-week, digital lifespan specifically assigned to you. This will shut off all of its mechanical functions and, most critically, its recording data. It cannot be reset without the LifeKey, which I have the only copy of. Is that clear?”

Yes, Mrs. O’Meara, the Baby Mommas all murmured in the affirmative.

“But exactly how does your Baby Bobby or Baby Betty mark their moment of demise and your failure as a Babby Momma,” she looked to Big Arnold, “or Baby Daddy?”

“Like this,” she said, answering her own question. She depressed the red button. “One, two, three,” she counted and then turned Baby Bobby forward so they could see his face. Immediately, the doll’s arms and legs stretched out from its body forming an ‘X.’ Then it began vibrating as if it were being electrocuted.

The spectacle was so disturbing that three of the Baby Mommas, including Big Arnold, took a step back. But the show wasn’t over yet. Baby Bobby began swinging his ginger head back and forth, crying, “Why, Momma? Why? Why Momma? Why? Why Momma? Whhhhhhhhhy?” In the last refrain, the sound trailed off. Baby Bobby’s head slumped to his chest, his arms limp at his sides, his legs dangling lifeless, as if he’d just been dropped from the hangman’s noose. Most of the Baby Mommas all stared, eyes agog. But Rita cupped her hand to her mouth, hiding a smile. The little demon had finally returned to hell, where he belonged, she thought.

Rita tried to hold it in, but then a laugh burst out between the fingers of her hands, making it sound more like a snort. This was the release. Everyone else, joined in. Even Mrs. O’Meara smiled. Rita moved forward and wrapped the soft, doughy teacher in an unexpected bear hug, the body of Baby Bobby sandwiched between them.

“A little dramatic,” Rita said, “but thank you, Mrs. O’Meara! Thank you! Thank you! You just saved me from a lifetime of regret.”

Mrs. O’Meara pulled her in for a moment, returning the hug.

“You’re welcome, dear,” she said, then paused to fish inside the side pocket of her apron. This broke the embrace. “But you forget that in Life Arts, I am the goddess of all that dwells and smells of home. Baby Bobby will be born again,” she says, triumphant. She waved something, a blur of yellow plastic, in front of them. “Behold the LifeKey!”

~ ~ ~

On her fourth day as a Baby Momma, Rita was on her last friggin’ nerve. Baby Bobby had woken her up three times in the middle of the night. Each time she had to turn on the electronic ‘milk bottle,’ wait three minutes until the word ‘warm’ glowed at its base.

Then she had to insert the bottle’s sensor nipple into his mouth. It took another three minutes for the base of the bottle to glow, ‘empty.’ After, she’d need to walk around her room rocking him for another five minutes or until his LED eyes flashed green.

That was the signal he was going back to sleep—and then, so could she. When they flashed red, it meant he was awake, unhappy, and that a crying fit was imminent. She did the math in her head as she zombie-walked to second period. Three plus three plus five equals eleven times three. Thirty-three minutes! The plastic monster had kept her up for more than half an hour in the middle of the night, plus all the time after each ‘episode’ it took her to fall back to sleep.

Ridiculous rituals to keep their ridiculous fake babies from fake infant mortality. Wasn’t like she was planning on being a mom, any more than Big Arnold Demitrio. She was going to be an EDM DJ. Probably live in Ibiza. Party on the beach all day and spin raves all night.

She’d seen what having kids could do to you. Her Pops had wanted to play bass in a jazz band but ended up as a night supervisor at the municipal water plant. Her mom was a cashier at Costco. She’d dreamt of being a costume designer in Hollywood.

She appreciated their sacrifices but learned more from the lessons their failures had taught her. To emphasize them, she stenciled Sin venta! Sin rendicion! in giant black letters on posterboard. Hung it opposite her bed so it was the first thing she saw when she woke up each morning. The last thing she saw before she went to sleep at night. Aside from Baby Bobby's hideous face.

The third period bell rang. Rita needed to navigate in just five minutes from Algebra II at the school’s east end, all the way to the auditorium on the west end for her Musical Theater class. It was challenging even if she didn’t have Baby Bobby blocking her view like a dead deer on the hood of a pickup. She was panting and pissed by the time she got there – just beating the final bell. Everyone else was already in their places. Even Big Arnold, who was on the set crew.

On this day, they were rehearsing for the school’s spring production of Mamma Mia. The next setup was for the song Voulez-Vous and that weird disco scene. Big Arnold stood on a ladder at the center of the stage, hanging a disco ball from a hook on a monofilament line.

Rita wished he’d be more careful. She imagined him slipping from the top rung, plunging to the floor, and crushing Baby Betty under his freight train mass. Killing your baby with body weight would be a likely first in the Life Arts class. A theatrical exit for Baby Betty, but a sad, slapstick ending to Big Arnold’s lifelong dream.

The principal, Dr. Ferryman, had considered cutting the disco scene from the play, too suggestive, he’d said. But relented when the Musical Theater instructor and show director Ms. Dolores Riggenbach assured him that whole production would be rated ‘G,’ for Godly.

Rita was already sick of every song in the show. But thank god she didn’t have to sing or act. She worked the soundboard. Cueing up and playing soundtracks, opening and closing the microphones, and fading foley snippets in and out.

It was a natural fit for her temperament and skills. If she could only fade Baby Bobby out the same way. She put on her headphones and adjusted the levels on the soundboard when his eyes flashed red. He began the tinny stirrings of sniffles and short whines that preceded his full-on crying fits.

This could only be circumvented if Rita picked him up immediately and rocked the evil little lump back to neutral. But with the over-ear cans, she missed the early warning signs.

What followed was two uninterrupted minutes of “mamma, mamma, mamma” threaded together with intermittent wailing that would continue now as a penalty cry, no matter what she did to calm him.

Tanya and Austin were on stage and mid-verse when Baby Bobby’s nerve-jangling abandoned-child-in-a-Wal-Mart-shopping-cart-wails broke the magic.

The guy sitting next to Rita doing lights was a goth, robotics nerd named Jalani. Anything dark, death-ish, and filled with misery was sure to capture his attention.

He used the interruption to create a seizure-inducing Fall of the House of Usher light display to accompany Baby Bobby’s anguished throes.

It brought the whole rehearsal to a crashing halt and Ms. Riggenbach to her feet. Her hands on her pear-shaped hips silhouette appeared from the first row, where she was directing. She looked back toward the light and sound booth.

“Sorry!” Rita said over the PA system. “Satan’s spawn is at it again.”

“Thank you!” Jalani said appreciatively.

“Didn’t mean you num-nuts,” Rita said, futilely rocking Baby Bobby in her arms, a profound look of resignation on her face.

Ms. Riggenbach turned back to her leads. Before she could finish her sentence about starting over from the top. Another sound filled the auditorium.

“OOO-ree, OOO-ree, OOO-ree, OOO-ree, OOO-ree.”

“Oh, for goodness’ sake,” Ms. Riggenbach sighed. “What now?”

Rita’s cans were down now while she was rocking Baby Bobby back into the 9^th circle of hell. Her finely tuned ears knew immediately what she was hearing: the Active Shooter Alert.

“OOO-ree, OOO-ree, OOO-ree, OOO-ree, OOO-ree.”

A pulsing blue flasher activated over all the entrance and exit doors, confirming. She looked over at Jalani.

“Coooooool,” he said, mesmerized by the show, a big smile spreading across his face.

“OOO-ree, OOO-ree, OOO-ree, OOO-ree, OOO-ree.”

~ ~ ~

Even though it was the middle of the school day, the hallways of Thomas Wolfe Senior High were empty. The alarm triggered a practiced response: students sheltered in place, barricading themselves in their classrooms, lunchrooms, and bathrooms, wherever they were. In the case of the Musical Theater class, the auditorium.

Rita’s voice came over the PA again. “Need to lock the doors, Ms. Riggenbach,” she said calmly. “That’s the active shooter alert.”

Ms. Riggenbach signaled Austin and Tanya toward the entry and exit doors. They pulled up on the metal bar handles of each, locking them. Without being told, Big Arnold followed. He carried four high-back chairs from the set, two looped through each arm, as if they weighed no more than Easter Baskets. He wedged one under each bar of the entry doors, then did the same with the two exit doors. They all gathered at the lip of the stage riser. What now?

~ ~ ~

A single individual appeared in the main corridor. He wore woodland camo from head to toe, including a backward ball cap and a neck gator that covered his face up to his eyes. He carried a Desert Tan Colt AR-15 in low ready. A Ruger 9mm semi-automatic pistol in matte black was holstered around his waist by a green army surplus molle belt. His head swiveled back and forth from the doors on his left and right.

He seemed in no particular hurry. No particular worry, despite the flashing blue lights and the foreboding echoes of the school alarms. He stopped at a door to his right. He reared back and punch-kicked the handle with the sole of his boot. When it flew open, he swept the room with the muzzle of the AR.

He tilted his head to the side to look in. It’s the way his avatars did it in HALO and Call of Duty. It’s the way he’d seen it done in CQCB in a million war films. It was how he did it, playing paintball with his buddies.

Inside, he saw a dash of movement. His finger instantly slid from the trigger guard onto the trigger. A slow, steady pull, a crack, and a whiz. The round supersonic flattened against the far wall without finding its target. He didn’t care. It wasn’t her. Just marking his territory. He moved on.

He glanced at his watch; 11:45. He knew her schedule by heart. Always memorized her schedule. That way, he could tell if she was where she was supposed to be. Or maybe she was slow-walking to class, talking and flirting with other boys like she always did. This made him insane. Couldn’t she see how much he loved her? Worshipped her?

She’d given him an 8X10 print of her senior picture. Drew a little heart, wrote next to it ‘you Colby.’ He taped it to one of his bed pillows. On nights when he wasn’t with her, talking on the phone or texting her, he held the pillow close to his face, stared into her sharp green eyes and porcelain skin, framed by a silky mane of straight red hair parted down the middle. Her parents had come from Ukraine, so he called her his Slavic Princess. My Slavic Princess this, My Slavic Princess that.

Talked to her about their future plans together. Or -- if she’d done something wrong, wasn’t where she said she’d be, or had acted weird when she saw him, he’d later confront the image. Ask why she couldn’t see how much she hurt him when she acted like a whore. And last night, last night, he slapped it, straddled the pillow, and pounded the photos with his fists until it was ripped and crumpled beyond recognition.

His Slavic Princess had sent him a long email. Didn’t have the courage to tell him to his face or even call him. Said she’d had enough. Said she’d felt like he was trying to control her. That she couldn’t be herself around him anymore. Said she’d always care for him, but she didn’t want to be his girlfriend anymore. He needed to deal with his issues, his anger, his jealousy, his … what did she call it? Possessiveness. All her big words. Maybe, she said, he should talk to someone. You know, about his mom leaving him and his dad. Maybe that was the problem.

Then she just signed off, ‘T.’ No usual XXX’s and OOOs at the end like she always typed. Or used to. She’d stopped a week into the new semester. She’d stopped when she started rehearsing for that play with that guy Austin. He looked like one of the Hemsworths. Played lacrosse. Wore $100 jeans, ripped waffle thermals, and Doc Martens. He hated the guy.

But now, looking at his watch again, he realized he knew where they both were. He ambled down the long hallway toward the auditorium. No need to rush. The entire school was in his hands now.

With all the noise and commotion, both Rita’s Baby Bobby and Big Arnold’s Baby Betty got the fire eyes, as the Baby Mommas called it. Their red LEDs lit up, creating a demonic glow. They were about to howl.

Rita and Big Arnold were frantically rocking them, trying to calm them before their crying jags gave away their positions to the shooter or, god she hoped not, shooters.

With the doors locked, they might think the auditorium was empty and pass them by. Tanya’s phone buzzed in her pocket. She pulled it out, looked at the screen, and saw the text:

Coming for you and your new boyfriend
My Slavic Princess
You said you loved me, but you lied
Now you’re going to die

Just as she finished reading the message, they all turned to face the direction of a young, male voice on the other side of the auditorium doors.

“Tanya, Tanya. I know you’re in there, T,” he taunted in a sing-songy tone. “You and Ass-ton,” he laughed at his play on the name. “No use hiding. You make me work too hard, you’re both gonna die slooooooow.”

The other students and their teacher looked at the two. Even in the darkened space, they could see Ashton’s face blanched of color. Tanya shook her head, seemingly more angry than afraid.

The gunman continued. “I’ll start by shooting your feet, then your knees, and just keep working my way up until I get to your faces. No open caskets for either of you,” another laugh.

“Now, if you let me in, maybe we can work something out,” the gunman’s voice sounded casual, parental even. Like he was talking to children who had done something wrong and needed to accept their punishments.

“Who is that?” Rita whispered to Tanya.

She held out her phone screen so everyone could read it.

“No way we’re opening up those doors,” Austin said. The group nodded.

“And you two need to shut those things off,” he continued, pointing at Rita and Big Arnold, still rocking their fake babies. Rita and Big Arnold looked at each other, uncertain. The same thought was going through their minds.

Would Mrs. O’Meara accept they had no choice but to ‘kill their babies’ to save not only their own lives, but everyone else’s in that auditorium? Rita hoped so, but feared she might just view an active-shooter incident as the ultimate Life Arts test.

‘You wouldn’t kill real babies in this situation. Would you?’ She imagined her saying. ‘And as far as you’re concerned, Baby Bobby is just as much living flesh as Big Arnold over there,’ she remembered her saying.

Rita looked to Big Arnold again; he was as confused as she was. Nothing really at stake here, a facetious thought. Only their lives if they don’t ‘kill their babies’ and only their futures if they do. Her inner exchange was interrupted by the doors being kicked, followed by angry shouts.

“Going to count to ten,” the gunman’s voice again, shouting above the din of the alarms. “Then I’m going to shoot open the doors—and then everyone inside. Your choice.”

“What are you guys waiting for?” Tanya said, irritation in her voice. “Shut those fucking dolls down before they get us all killed.”

“The dolls aren’t going kill us,” Rita whispered back, angrily. “Your armed psycho ex-boyfriend is! Way to pick ‘em, Tanya,” Rita said, indignant.

That made Jalani laugh. The rest looked to Ms. Riggenbach for guidance. She took a deep breath and tried to find a reserve of courage.

“All lives are precious,” she said. “What if those weren’t dolls but actual children. You couldn’t just smother them. This is a teachable moment.” She smiled and looked around at each of them with the confidence that she’d been inspired with the perfect solution. “Take the hand of the person next to you. Let’s form a circle and pray to Jesus. With God’s grace, no harm will come to us.”

They all looked at her as if she’d had her head so far up Jesus’s ass, even he would find her words hard to swallow.

“I’ve got a better idea,” Rita said. “Everyone, huddle up and listen.”

~ ~ ~

The gunman was out of patience. He began a slow, but menacing count.

When he reached ONE, he fired two rounds into the entrance door handles and used a backward mule kick to knock them open. A pall of smoke floated in the open doorway. The muzzle of the AR-15 poked in first, then the gunman. He peered left and right again, like he was clearing the room. With the exception of the blue flashers, the auditorium was dark.

The alarm still blared, but now it had been long enough to become background noise. The stage curtain was drawn, and the auditorium appeared empty. The gunman walked cautiously toward the front of the stage, sweeping the gun barrel back and forth. Suddenly, a voice over the PA system made him jump and point the rifle in multiple directions.

It was Tanya’s voice, disembodied. “Just because I broke up with you, Colby, you think you have the right to kill me—or anyone else. What kind of shit-for-brains entitlement is that?”

“Come out, lying bitch,” the gunman shouted, still waving his rifle.

“I didn’t lie,” Tanya’s voice continued. “I just changed my mind. Normal people accept disappointments in their lives without shooting up a whole school.”

From the pitch-black sound booth, Rita’s fingers pushed up the faders on the sound board. The sound of Voulez-Vous pumped in behind Tanya’s voice. Mixed with the alarms, it created a disorienting, auditory hallucination.

“You know what the difference is between men and women, Colby?” Tanya asked. “Men fear women will reject them. Women fear men will kill them. That seems fair to you. What you’re doing is just sick.”

“What’s sick is leading someone on and then dumping them with an email,” the gunman shouted above the building crescendo of noise.

“Boo Hoo! You little baby,” Tanya continued. “Because that’s what you are. Someone hurts you, and you just take it out on the world.”

Rita pushed up another set of faders, amplifying the sounds of a baby crying behind the curtain. As she pushed the faders further up the board, the sound became louder and more violent, ‘Mamma! Mamma! Mamma!’ Soon, it dominated the entire auditorium.

“Hear that?” Tanya’s voice pierced the air. “That’s you – a baby with a gun calling for his mommy because some mean girl hurt him. Now he wants to kill her.”

“Fucking, bitch,” the gunman murmured, still not sure where to turn. Then, in a quick draw, the stage curtain was pulled back.

Emerging from within, riding a sparkling disco ball, Baby Bobby swung toward the gunman’s head, fire eyes a blazing and screaming at the top of his mechanical lungs.

The gunman pivoted toward the mind-fracturing apparition, raised his AR-15, and fired. The disco ball shattered into a thousand points of light while Baby Bobby fell to the floor at his feet.

When the crying didn’t stop, the gunman raised his AR and fired another round, point-blank, causing Baby Bobby’s ginger head to explode. The gunman turned away and scanned for other threats. But the crying didn’t stop. He pivoted and sent another round into the doll, cratering its torso. Finally, the cries ended.

Before he could reorient himself. Rita turned off Tanya’s mike and slid all the soundboard faders into the red. Voulez-Vous blasted at maximum decibels from all the speakers in the auditorium. It even drowned out the alarms. The gunman dropped his grip on the AR-15 to cover his ears. It drooped on its sling over his shoulder.

Seated next to Rita in the dark, Jalani manipulated his own board, hitting the gunman with the 10,000 lumens stage spotlight. This blinded him long enough to give Big Arnold a running start downstage, where he launched himself off the lip and into the air. The linebacker landed on the gunman with a sickening crunch, laying him out at the foot of the stage.

He was stunned but reached for the Ruger 9mm in his hip holster. Before he could get to it, Big Arnold reached back and pulled Baby Betty from her backpack. Holding her by the arms, he swung her overhead, pummeling the gunman with the doll. Her eyes flashed read and she wailed like a banshee. This was obviously not the way to get her to go back to sleep.

The cries grew louder and more anguished with every wallop until the gunman raised his hands in surrender. One of his eyes was already swollen shut, and his nose flattened. A gush of blood seeped onto the woodland ammo neck gator, now pulled down to reveal his face.

Austin, who had crouched in one of the rows nearby, raced in to pull the rifle sling off his shoulder. Big Arnold dropped Baby Betty, finished unholstering the pistol, and turned it on the gunman while kneeling on his arms.

The sound of police sirens filled the distant air. Closer, on the ground next to the young man that might’ve killed them all, a tinny, cracked recording played, now only at a fraction of its volume because of internal damage; ‘Why Momma? Why? Why Momma? Why? Why Momma? Whyyyyyyy?’

-END-

[Note: this story is fiction, but inspired by a true story shared with the author by Cami Paul]

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If you liked what you just read and want more, here are links to previous short fiction on Kevin Sites Writes:

Order Kevin Sites’s award-winning debut novel, The Ocean Above Me, available at the link below.

https://www.amazon.com/Ocean-Above-Me-Novel/dp/0063278286

If you liked what you just read and want more, order Kevin Sites’s award-winning debut novel, The Ocean Above Me, available at the link below.
https://www.amazon.com/Ocean-Above-Me-Novel/dp/0063278286

My portion of the program begins at 00:14 into the first hour and continues until 00:27 (13 minutes total). [Program Date 2-8-25]

ScubaRadio is the first and only nationally syndicated radio show devoted to diving. This professionally produced radio show has been going strong since 1997 and airs every Saturday from 3-5pm EST on radio stations throughout the US and worldwide on the web at ScubaRadio.com. Greg The Divemaster keeps you up to date on the latest dive related news and information and is your diveguide for this unique forum that allows listeners and guests to share their diving adventures.

If you liked what you heard and want more, order Kevin Sites’s award-winning, debut novel The Ocean Above Me, available at the link below.
https://www.amazon.com/Ocean-Above-Me-Novel/dp/006327828

6

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How to Win a War

Breakfast…

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2. We are all just prisoners . . .

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We are all just prisoners . . .

Anemones…

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Kevin Sites reported the war in Afghanistan from 2001 - 2013. His award-winning book, Swimming with Warlords documents that odyssey. You can find it at the link below.
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A Taliban Mortar Finds Its Target, Triggers a Dilemma

Northern Afghanistan. October 2001…

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2. Phantom Fury, The Untold Story Part 1

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Phantom Fury, The Untold Story (Part 1)

This month (November 2024) marks the 20th anniversary of Operation Phantom Fury, also known as The Second Battle of Fallujah, the biggest, bloodiest, and costliest of the U.S.-led war and occupation of Iraq [2003-2011…

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3. The Right to Bear Arms

Kevin Sites Writes Substack

The Right to Bear Arms

NOTE: THIS VIDEO DEPICTS GRAPHIC SURGICAL PROCEDURES (not suitable viewing for everyone…

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‘At the helm, Captain Clarita Esteban allowed herself to glance back momentarily, wary of the next monster that would crash across the bow.’

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Storm

This is the Chapter 1 excerpt of The Ocean Above Me, available now in paperback…

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2. A Deep and Gorgeous Thirst

‘While some might consider it a dubious distinction, being the best and retrieving the dead, curiously to Nico, it was the one thing that made him feel alive.’

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A Deep and Gorgeous Thirst

“While some might consider it a dubious distinction, being the best at retrieving the dead, to Nico, it was a sacred avocation. Curiously, the one thing that actually made him feel alive…

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3. Force Protection

‘Secrets are no longer necessary when those they indict or protect stop sharing your air.’

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Kevin Sites Writes Substack

Force Protection

[NOTE: Nothing about this is for kids, including the use of violence, explicit language and even slurs, unpalatable, but appropriate to the character building and mindsets essential to the narrative within this work of FICTION…

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2 years ago · Kevin Sites

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If you liked what you just read and want more, order Kevin Sites’s award-winning debut novel, The Ocean Above Me, available at the link below.
https://www.amazon.com/Ocean-Above-Me-Novel/dp/0063278286

Hard Hat Diving simultaneously fulfills our human desire for both solitude and connection.

Kevin Sites Writes Substack

Resurrection of the Deep Sea Diver

[Jack Dabb adds one more to his thousands of logged helmet dives. While one of the most experienced recreational Standard Dress divers in the world, he is also one of the youngest.(Photo by Nate Leff @bsaleff) Taken at Vortex Springs, Ponce De Leon, Florida 10-23…

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2. Deep Dive

How an antique dealer in the corn belt became one of the world’s largest and most trusted purveyors of diving helmets and diving history

Kevin Sites Writes Substack

Deep Dive

Click the link below to read my article, Deep Dive, as published in Sea History Magazine…

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2 years ago · Kevin Sites

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3. What the movie ‘Civil War’ got right (and wrong) about war correspondents.

[Hint: it’s not always about the ‘bang bang.’]

Kevin Sites Writes Substack

What the movie ‘Civil War’ got right (and wrong) about war correspondents.

TRU DAT: (Unique non-fiction…

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2 years ago · 1 like · Kevin Sites

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***Remember, it is COMPLETELY FREE to read, like, comment and subscribe.***

Where the prompt tells you to, Choose a Subscription Plan,

simply click the box, NONE (FREE).

If you liked what you just read and want more, order Kevin Sites’s award-winning, debut novel The Ocean Above Me, available at the link below.
https://www.amazon.com/Ocean-Above-Me-Novel/dp/0063278286

Working for NBC News as a correspondent/shooter, I embedded with 3.1 Marines, videotaped, and reported some of the battle's most dramatic and controversial footage. Even all of these years later, it's difficult to watch.

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Still, it is necessary to ensure the event isn't reduced to the nostalgia of military tactics and strategy but studied for the more profound lessons revealed by the costs of fighting an unprovoked, unnecessary war with unclear objectives and clearly outside the scope of national interests.

In this and upcoming videos, I will examine the physical, mental, and moral injuries suffered by combatants and civilians during this conflict. Much of what I witnessed and recorded has never been seen.

It reveals both selfless acts of sacrifice and the darkest parts of human character, which are nearly always intertwined during periods of extended conflict.

I hope that these successive videos, which will be completed in multiple parts over the next year and pieced together in an hour-long documentary, will be used not to cast blame but to renew a constructive dialogue within our society about our mutual responsibilities and how we will conduct ourselves in war—all of us, the public, and those who fight in our name.

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[License-Free Music by Pixaby: OpenMusicList, DarkMystery]

Kevin Sites reported the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq from 2001 – 2015, beginning with the overthrow of the first Taliban government and ending with the rise of the Islamic State.

His award-winning book, The Things They Cannot Say, details more stories like this one. You can find it at the link below.
https://amzn.to/4cfGyb0

The Lincoln County Sheriff’s volunteer dive team had set up a line of jackstays perpendicular to the Alsea Bay Bridge. Lingering evidence of their earlier, unsuccessful search for the body of 7-year-old Misty Leander. The blaze orange buoys now pulled in the direction of the outgoing current. This ebb tide was the first thing Nico noticed arriving at the scene. It triggered a flash of discomfort. He knew it could bode either way for the recovery efforts. Lower water levels in the bay might expose the little girl's body. But the force of its retreat could just as quickly sweep her over the Alsea Bay bar and into the vast, gray expanse of the Pacific, where she would be lost forever.

Death without a body was a gaping void nearly impossible to fill for those left behind. Nico was forced to swallow this bitter lesson at just ten years old when his father failed to return after just one of thousands of freedives he’d made over a lifetime harvesting sponges off the coast of Tarpon Springs. It was a Sunday distant in years and miles, but also so much like this one. The arrival of an unwelcome grief, a new inviolable reality presenting itself as a family’s new and dreaded defining moment. But Nico would not let the sea take Misty Leander’s body, as it had already taken her life. He dismounted his truck, walked to the shoreline, placed the palm of his right hand on the gray-green water of the bay, and closed his eyes. She was an accident, he explained, a miscalculation unlike his father, who was fair harvest after daring the sea one too many times.

“Who’s that?” Timothy Leander asked, looking at the bearded, long-haired stranger and talking to himself at the water’s edge.  He wiped away the pudding of snot and tears from his face with the already crusted back of his sweatshirt sleeves and stood up from one of the folding chairs set up for the family inside the Incident Command Tent.

It had been erected on the north bank of the bay, closest to what the searchers identified as the LPS or Last Place Seen. Ray Falk, the senior member of the Sheriff’s volunteer divers, looked in the direction Leander was pointing. Falk, with the others, had searched the waters all morning and early afternoon but was now sipping coffee to ward off the body chill of those long, fruitless dives and had stripped his red public safety diver dry suit to his waist.

He squinted at the figure as he came closer, smiled, and reached out his hand in recognition.

“Hey, Nic,” he said. When Nico looked at him uncertainly, he said, “Ray Falk. Worked with you for a week last year at Beaver Lake. Recovery of that kayaker?”

Nico held his gaze, Falk’s face coming back to him slowly, vaguely.

“Right, Ray.” He said, taking the man’s hand but looking over to Leander.

“You, the dad?” He asked.

Leander nodded.

Nico had been debriefed by phone on the drive down from Garibaldi but still wanted to talk to Misty’s father and mother and sift whatever critical details might have been missed in the interviews conducted immediately after the event. The heated mixture of panic, fear, and grief muddied their memory, making it as resistant and opaque as the bay waters before them.

Timothy Leander did not want to tell the tale again. Nico sat him back down and took a knee before him in a penitent’s pose while Leander rocked into himself, hunched over a starter paunch sheathed in an oversized green Dickie’s t-shirt and unzipped gray hoodie. Nico could hear the rush of the outgoing current. He placed a consoling hand on his knee but squeezed his fingers into his patella to bring the grieving father back into focus.

“Timothy,” Nico whispered. Leander sniffed once and looked up, hair sheepdogging over his eyes. “Misty is out there,” he gestured. He had the young man’s attention again. “I can get her back. Then you and your wife can say a proper goodbye. But you have to help me.”

Nico glanced back over his shoulder. The gray harbor seals were already claiming patches of sand emerging from the receding water. Time was slipping away.

Leander looked to where his wife sat, comforted in the arms of a female sheriff’s deputy, her hair wet underneath the hood of her XXL tan Carhart jacket and a gray blanket draped over her shoulders. He saw that it was up to him. He sat upright and drew in a breath. Told Nico how Misty had begged him to launch one of the crab pots over the aluminum rails of the rented, 15-foot Smoker Craft outboard. Said he gave in to her, like he always did, impossible to say ‘no’ to her endless ‘Please Daddy, pleases.’

Leander exhaled as if it were his last breath.

“I helped her lift the trap to the edge so she could nudge it over and into the water. But you know what was weird?” He asked. Nico shook his head.

“I remember almost being, like, hypnotized looking at the bait.”

“The bait?” Nico asked.

“Yeah, the frozen chicken in the center of the trap. I mean, I’m the one who put it in there. Marian don’t like to touch it,” he looked over at his wife. “And Misty sure don’t. She called it ‘icky,’” he smiled, recalling. “But it just held me still for a few seconds. That bumpy white skin of the frozen chicken legs I put in there. Then Misty surprised me. She pushed the trap into the water before I was ready,” his voice cracked. “Before I told her it was okay. That’s just the way she was. She was always running ahead. She didn’t have no patience.” Leander shrugged. “But she’s just seven. Nobody got no patience at seven.” Leander wiped at his eyes and looked off over the bay. “The world’s a wonder at that age.”

“It is,” Nico agreed but considered another ‘wonder.’ Why the Leanders hadn’t thought to put a personal flotation vest on their daughter—or themselves, but now wasn’t a time for blame. They would have years to think about what they might’ve done or hadn’t done right in the aching absence of their child. “What happened then,” Nico prompted.

“She was leaning too far over the edge of the boat,” Leander said, “wanted to see the splash when the cage hit the water. But when it slid over the bow, the net snagged the sleeve of her sweatshirt.” He paused, fortifying a crack in his voice. “Drug her right under. Bay swallowed her up, just a flash of pink … then nothing.”

“What about the line securing the trap,” Nico asked.

Leander nodded. “Right away, I pulled up on it,” he pantomimed the action.“But the knot came loose or something. Nothing on the other end. Trap was gone, Misty with it.” He wiped his eyes. He seemed ready to slip back into himself, a useless miasma of second-guessing and self-reproach, when Nico gripped his knee again and pressed him for more.

“And after that?” Nico asked.

Leander spoke quietly, “Marian stood up in the boat,” and nodded toward his wife.  “She was trying to reach Misty but lost her balance and fell backward.” He shut his eyes and labored to remember the order of the events. “She was splashing around, reaching out to me. She’s not a swimmer.”

Again, lifejackets, Nico thought but tried to keep the judgment off his face.

“Well, not a good one,” Leander continued. “And that water’s cold. I could see in her eyes she was panicking, but I was also looking down at the bubbles. That spot where my girl disappeared.” He choked back a sob. “I didn’t know which direction to reach, but Marian looked like she was about to go under.” He took a deep breath. “So, I went for her first. Pulled her arms onto the side of the boat. By the time I was able to get her back in I lost where Misty gone in—and I couldn’t see no more bubbles.” Brought his hands to his face.

“After the trap line came undone,” Nico said, drilling down. “Which way did the trap buoy drift? Toward the bridge or away from it?” Leander looked puzzled and took a few beats before answering.

“Away from it … I think. But a lot was goin’ on.”

“If you want your girl back,” Nico mirrored Leander’s words, “you have to be certain. Toward the bridge or away from it? And after, was it moving toward shore or the bar?”

Leander looked like he might break into a thousand pieces. Then Marian Leander spoke up.

“It was drifting toward the bridge and away from the bar,” she said with no hesitation.

“How do you know that?” Nico demanded, refocusing from Timothy to her.

Marian Leander pulled away from the deputy and pushed the hood back from her face. Strands of wet blond stuck to her forehead. Her eyes streaked black where tears and the bay water washed away her eyeliner.

“I know because the front of the boat was pointed at the spit. The water was slow then but still running back upriver. Level getting higher then, not lower.” Nico stood up and looked at his watch. He nodded his thanks, but she called after him before he could turn away.

“Mister.” He stopped and looked at her. “My baby girl hates to be alone in the dark.”

“Me too,” Nico said, nodded.

“Don’t come back without her.”

“I wouldn’t. Won’t.” He said.

“Promise?” She asked, stepping forward

He lifted his little finger, curled it into a pinkie swear -- and she returned it.

“Tell me one thing before I go.”

“What’s that,” Marian Leander asked.

“Misty’s favorite song? The thing she’s always singing and dancing.”

This time, Timothy spoke up. “Frozen,” he said. She loves the Disney movies.”

“But what song?

Timothy looked at his wife. “Let it Go,” he said. She nodded to confirm.

 Nico searched his phone. “Got it,” he said. He hit play and held it to his ear while he walked to retrieve his gear in the back of his pickup.

Once out of earshot, Timothy Leander turned to Ray Falk. “You all sure he’s the right guy for this? When we was talking,” he paused, “I could smell the whiskey on him.”

~   ~   ~

Nico looked over the water, considered the information the Leanders had given him, and calculated two key scientific determinants of his peculiar profession: the body descent graph, an approximation based on time and temperature of whether a body will most likely be found on the bottom or at the water’s surface based on its retention of internal gasses. The body movement path, based on tides, current, and flow of where a body will likely travel through the water from the Last Point Seen or LPS. Nico’s ability to predict these two things with uncanny accuracy was the reason he’d been asked to come here in the first place. Nico Papadopoulos, aka The Grim Deeper, had more than a hundred body recoveries in his 20-year career as an Oregon State Police Search and Recovery Diver. He was the one called when others failed to find someone lost or disposed of in the water.

While some might consider it a dubious distinction, being the best at retrieving the dead, to Nico, it was a sacred avocation. Curiously, the one thing that actually made him feel alive.

His hands stretched out the silicone neck seal of his drysuit, so it didn’t rip when he pushed his head through. While the October air temperatures were still mild, the water hovered at a bracing 50 degrees, according to the averages registered by the volunteer divers. He'd be a little cool with only a 100-gram Thinsulate undergarment for insulation, but he preferred that. Better to allow him to feel the thermal signature. He pulled the zipper across his chest and ensured it locked in place at the end of its draw. He paused for a moment to admire the surroundings. How brutally beautiful this place was. While the town of Waldport barely made it onto the state map, its Alsea Bay attracted fishermen and crabbers from across Oregon. A late afternoon mist clung to the needles of their uppermost branches of the Douglas Fir, Ponderosa, and Sugar Pine that edged the shoreline. A postcard-ready, art deco-style bridge joined the Bay’s north and south banks with thick stone footings and a high-looped arch, supported and cinched by dozens of braided steel cables. The city’s website claimed that during the coldest and wettest months of winter, the winds blowing through them created haunting music. Nico hoped to hear it one day but as just another traveler driving up the coast, not as a diviner of death, plumbing the bottom of the bay for the body of a child.

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He pulled on his 7mm neoprene hood, carefully tucking back his hair and beard to ensure a good seal with his full-face mask. Then he donned his fins, but before entering the water, he completed a radio check and reviewed rope signals with his tender, a cocky young man the others on the volunteer dive team had nicknamed Johnny Bravo. Nico explained to him that one tug on the coil of nylon rope he wore around his waist meant stop. Two tugs, everything was okay. Three tugs let out more slack on the line. Four tugs meant he found her. Any more than that from the diver signaled an emergency of some type, and the tender should pull him back to shore. Likewise, if the tender pulled five times on the rope, the diver should return immediately.

Nico inflated his dry suit and waded in. Floating at the surface, he checked for bubbles that would reveal leaks in his neck and wrist seals or holes in the suit laminate itself. Problems that could turn a recovery diver into an additional victim. When satisfied, he gave the tender an ‘okay” sign and a thumbs down to indicate he was ready to descend. As the glass of his mask broke the tension of the water’s surface, his world turned pale, milky green, and he felt, as he always did at this moment, filled with purpose and an otherworldly calm punctuated only by the sound of his breathing. When he clicked off his radio, Johnny Bravo flinched. He was about to give him five pulls, the tender to diver recall, when Ray Falk, who was supervising the surface operations, stopped him.

“This is how he works,” Falk said. “Doesn’t want anybody in his ear while he’s down there.”

“Why?” Johnny Bravo asked.

Falk hesitated and took a sip of his coffee before answering. “Says he won’t be able to hear them.”

“Hear what?” Johnny Bravo asked, puzzled.

Falk nodded, “When they’re calling to him.”

“That’s fucking crazy,” he answered, but in a voice low enough, the Leanders wouldn’t hear him. “He comes here smelling like the Jack Daniel’s Distillery tour, talks to the water, then turns off his comms so he can hear it answer back?

“You know what’s fucking crazy,” Falk said, growing irritated, “is that guy on the other end of your rope never comes back without them. Not once. So, if you got a problem with that, Johnny, hand me the line and sit in your truck where you’re less likely to piss me off. And maybe you should think about doing a little less talking and a little more listening like Nic out there, and you might learn something, too.”

The rope tender shook him off and kept his eyes on Nico’s bubbles as they tracked along the west end of the bridge, toward the south bank of the bay, weaving back and forth in a slight zig-zag pattern but headed in the direction of the bar and the open ocean.

~  ~   ~

Nico plucked his way along the muddy bottom in near zero visibility, weaving his hands in front of himself like two crossing arc lights, hoping to brush against something that should not be there. Sometimes, he’d catch the silver glint of a Lingcod or a scuttling family of Dungeness crabs in the glare of the 1000 lumens light mounted to his mask. Every few feet, he’d stop finning forward. Spoke into his mask.

“Misty,” he whispered, “Misty.” Gently, he kicked forward. Listened. Repeated in each direction, staying silent amongst the slow tidal drawback and dull clicks of ten-thousand-crab claws. Long ago, Nico learned to de-emphasize visual input in his search and recovery dives. Sight was usually the least helpful sense in his line of work since the muddy lakes, rivers, and bays like this one were saturated with the brown tea of long-decaying organic material or neon algae blooms exploding along the shorelines fueled by the chemicals of agricultural runoff.

During the early days of his search and recovery training, Nico was intrigued by reading about the exploits of a blind salvage diver named Bert Cutting. When a barge dumped a load of 155 cars into the Ohio River in 1951, Cutting, by touch alone, retrieved 146 of them, plus the barge itself. He worked underwater, 6-8 hours a day for 100 days, using a homemade metal shallow water diving helmet with no glass viewing ports and supplied with air by a garden hose and compressor built from a washing machine engine. Old photos depicting Cutting wearing the windowless contraption made it appear like he had caught his head in a stovepipe. But regardless of his humble equipment, Cutting’s superhuman effort saved the company more than $300,000, a veritable fortune for the time, and earned Cutting an entry in Ripley’s Believe it or Not.

Like Cutting and most other salvage and recovery divers, Nico also worked to develop his other senses, sound, and feel primarily. But it took a near-death experience to understand his heightened abilities in each.

After five years working as a police diver, Nico contracted a water-borne bacterial infection following the search for a murder weapon in a stagnant stretch of the Willamette River just south of Portland. While he found the target, a 10-inch Bowie knife with a rusty, serrated spine that had been used to saw the jugular of a meth addict who pissed off his buddy by stealing his last cigarette, the consequences in securing justice for the man were steep. The morning after the dive, Nico woke up with a world-shattering headache that made him want to suck the 115-grain, 9mm Lugar rounds out of his service Glock just to stop the pain. Within hours, he had a temperature of 105 and rising, was projectile vomiting and hallucinating that the ends of his fingers were splintering like string cheese and that his long-lost father was swimming through his apartment picking sponges from the kitchen sink. It took specialists a month to pinpoint the cause and another six months of treatment to bring him back from the brink, including a weekly regimen of blood transfusions and heroic daily doses of broad-spectrum antibiotics to kill whatever it was that had invaded the meninges lining of his brain. When it was finally over, Nico felt like a husk of the man he once was. He’d lost 30 pounds, struggled with concentration and short-term memory, as well as a 15-percent hearing loss in his right ear. He was assigned to desk duty indefinitely.

But Nico wasn’t made for a life lived only above water. The change triggered a black-dog depression that felt impossible to shake. He managed it with an open Lorazepam prescription, handles of Old Forrester, and weekends on the couch doing nothing but drinking and watching classic movies marathons. The Philadelphia Story, his fave, probably seen it a dozen or more times already because where else could you watch Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, and Jimmy Stewart chew up the scenery together with dialogue so sharp it should’ve made their lips bleed? He also enjoyed the myriads of drinking references, poorly aged as they were like Grant’s C.K. Dexter Haven popping off gems like, I thought all writers drank to excess and beat their wives. You know at one time I think I secretly wanted to be a writer.

Or Stewart playing Macaulay Connor defending Hepburn’s character to her ex-husband, Grant’s, C.K. Dexter Haven.

Connor: She's a girl who's generous to a fault.

Haven: To a fault, Mr. Connor. Except to other people's faults. For instance, she never had any understanding...of my deep and gorgeous thirst.

Watching it made Nico feel he wasn’t drinking alone but in splendid, witty company. At least until he blacked out. He repeated the process until Monday morning rolled around and the new work week arrived. But months after the same destructive routine, Nico threatened to quit the force if he wasn’t reinstated full-time to the dive team. His supervisor eventually relented. Told him it was his funeral.

“I died months ago,” Nico cracked then. “Right after you parked me on the desk.”

It took time to get back in shape after so long out of the water, but it was on one of those early post-recovery dives that Nico found that his ordeal had done more than just diminish him. In some strange, inexplicable ways, it had made him better.  

During the search for a victim of domestic violence, a 27-year-old mother of three, strangled by her boyfriend and dumped in the Bonneville Dam, Nico grew frustrated when the team’s search patterns failed to locate her.  While the others took a lunch break, he grabbed a fresh tank and re-entered the water alone. He tried whispering her name, Pam, and repeated it almost like a mantra. He said it so much his onshore tender asked why he was talking to himself. Nico turned off his comms and continued.

Then, after 20 minutes of calling her, he heard something back, not so much words, but the hum of some kind of echolocation, like that used by bats and dolphins. The tone grew higher in volume and frequency the closer he got to her. After another 30 minutes of searching, with only a third of the air left in his cylinder, his hand brushed the soggy toe of a fleece boot under an accumulation of logs, plastic, and other debris at the base of the dam.

His next touch landed on her calf, covered in denim but the shape beneath it soft and pliable. Next, he touched her hip and breast and felt the snag of her long hair in his gloves. Then, in the formal ritual he always performed when recovering a body, he knelt before her and removed the black PVC bag from the thigh pocket of his dry suit. Reverently, he spread it out from head to toe and unzipped it.

He placed a gloved hand on her body and recited the words he always said, only the name itself changing.

“Thank you, Pam, for helping me find you. This is not where you belong. If you’re ready, I’d like to bring you home.” Then, as gently as if he were handling butterfly wings, Nico lifted her tiny frame from the bottom, slid her inside the bag’s opening, and zipped it close. When he was finished, he tugged the rope around his waist four times, ascending with her body cradled in his arms.

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~   ~   ~

Now, at the bottom of Alsea Bay, Nico tried calling Misty again. After hearing nothing back, he began to worry that his window for finding her may have already closed.

“Your mommy and daddy are worried, Misty. Parents get scared when they can’t see you. Tell me where you are, sweetheart,” he said pleadingly. “So, they can see you and know you’re okay.’

But Nico knew that when he found Misty Leander, she’d likely be unrecognizable to her parents even in the short time she’d been in the bay. Water was not kind to the human body, turning it into a soapy, amorphous version of its former self. Once the sea took a human body, an immediate macabre feast began, triggered by the onset of the body’s digestive acids. Putrefaction starts with the end of the body’s perfusion, the last heartbeat. This was the invitation to surrounding life, both visible and microscopic, to feast. Nibbling fishes and plucking crabs would seize first on the soft, exposed tissues of the face, eating away lips and noses to reveal the skull’s superstructure beneath.

The thought of the damage swarms of relentless, eight-legged, bottom-feeding Dungeness had likely already done to the seven-year-old made him shudder. When he did bring her home, he’d open the bag only enough to show them her pink sweatshirt. In past recoveries, he saw what happened when families insisted the black bags be fully opened. The horror was immediate and indelible.  It is better to remember loved ones when they have faces, words, and breath.

“Misty,” Nico called out again, hoping if he couldn’t hear her, maybe he’d be able to pick up her thermal trail. This had been the other “gift” his almost-fatal meningitis had bestowed on him.

He encountered the phenomenon during the body recovery of a 12-year-old boy with Down’s syndrome who drowned in the Umpqua River when his mother had left him unsupervised for only a few minutes to use the bathroom of their rented holiday cabin. The boy had slipped from a steep bank and disappeared in a deep, narrow river stretch with a fast current. Reasonably, other search and rescue team members believed they would find the boy miles downstream, and that’s where they headed. Nico insisted on going in at the bank where the boy was last seen, even followed the sliding dirt trail of his sneakers to where they ended at the lip of the river.

Once submerged, he discovered what he could only describe as the boy’s essence, a slow-dimming warmth he could perceive even through the layers of his drysuit, mask, and gloves. He followed its path directly to the body, snagged on a submerged branch inside a calm eddy just 100 yards away. When he tried to explain this to his supervising officer, he laughed him off. Told him dead bodies didn’t leave heat trails. He had a harder time when Nico returned with the second one a few weeks later, then the third. Finally, he stopped asking how he did it, satisfied enough with the successful recoveries.

All that was fine with Nico, too, since he wasn’t sure how he did it. He just regretted not being ‘gifted’ with these abilities earlier. Maybe he could’ve used them to find the body of his father. He’d swam that same shoreline in Tarpon Springs for years after his disappearance but never once felt the trail of Georgios Papadopoulos. Never once heard his voice. Though he’d called to him so many times, he nearly drowned himself.

~   ~  ~

In the present, Nico thought about the song Timothy Leander said was Misty’s favorite and began humming it based on what he’d heard while playing it on his smartphone. He also looked at the console holding his submersible pressure gauge, indicating how much air he had left in his tank. He started with a total of 3000. PSI, but after 45 minutes of deep breathing in the cold water, it drained to 700 PSI. The typically conservative search protocols dictated he should end the dive at 500 PSI and swap out for another tank – or end the search for the day.  He wasn’t ready to do either.

Nico stopped his finning and humming when he thought he’d heard something. Turn his right ear slightly in the direction of the sound. He expected to pick up on the echolocation that he could only detect in that one. Instead heard . . . the rollicking sound of piano keys? He shook his head, trying to clear the apparent malfunction, anything from a surface radio song caught and amplified underwater to an auditory hallucination. But after a moment of stillness, he heard it again. This time, it came with words: I've got my eyes on you, So best beware where you roam.
I've got my eyes on you, So don't stray too far from home.

Nico recognized and dismissed it immediately. It was from The Philadelphia Story soundtrack, Cole Porter’s I’ve Got My Eye On You. He rebuked himself as he so often did after his weekends of heavy drinking, a habit he’d yet to break even after being put back on the dive roster.

These were the side effects of passing out drunk in front of the tube so frequently it was able to paste its images and sounds deeply into his pickled brain. He refocused himself, but the song continued. He found it growing louder as he finned forward. The auditory montage became more layered as he chased it, peppered with lines from the film. With each turn he made toward the sound, they became clearer, more insistent.

Doggonne it, C. K. Dexter Haven, either I'm gonna sock you or you're gonna sock me!

Splendid chap, George. Very high morals. Very broad shoulders.

It - it can't be anything like love, can it?

No, it mustn't be! It can't be!

Would it be inconvenient?

Terribly!

From the shoreline, “I don’t know what’s up with this guy,” Johnny Bravo said, letting out slack on the rope tied to Nico’s waist. “But he’s gotta be close to zip on air . . . and it feels…” he looked at the twist in the rope, “like he just started swimming in circles.”

“Maybe he’s got something,” Ray Falk said, concealing his concerns. “Stay sharp.”

Nico kicked hard and pushed himself forward, Porter’s piano keys growing more frantic in his ear.

I've set my spies on you; I'm checking all you do. From A to Zee. So, darling, just be wise, Keep your eyes on me.

Thought he could see in the distance, a patch of pink, beautifully incongruous on the muddy bay bottom, pushed toward it, felt like he was kicking against the tide though he was with it, music swirling, swaddling, all his senses in a sumptuous moonlight fog.

There. So close. He reached, stretched, and strained until he felt something unravel.

Back on shore, the radio crackled, “Got her. I’ve got her,” Nico’s voice came through the static.

Ray Falk hurriedly picked up the hand mic on the box console. “Nic? You found her? Confirm.” A minute went by, then two. “Nic, confirm, please.”

Nico’s voice again over the radio, softer. “It’s okay, Dad. I’ll take her now.”

Johnny Bravo looked at the box, then at Falk, spun a finger around his ear, but then the tugs came so fast and hard that he nearly dropped the line.

“That was five … I think,” he said to Falk.

Falk nodded, “Pull him in.”

Seeing the commotion, the Leanders both rushed to the water’s edge.

 But when the black bag reached the surface, Nico wasn’t with it.

“He’s probably just scouring the bottom for anything that might’ve been left behind,” Falk explained to the Leanders, but not entirely convinced himself. Then added, “That’s just the training.”

When Johnny Bravo tried to retrieve the bag, he found it too heavy to move. He and Falk grabbed opposite ends and, with difficulty, duck-walked it up the incline, setting it down in front of the Incident Command Tent.

“Open it,” Marian Leander demanded, kneeling beside the black, lumpy rectangle.

“Ma’am, you’re not going to want to see …” Falk said, holding out a hand, but before he could stop her, she unzipped the body bag and pulled back the entire length of the flap. She and the others reared back momentarily when a couple of fish flopped onto the sand, and a handful of crabs climbed off the mound inside.

A thick silence fell, and they all gathered and struggled to process what they saw. There before them, still in all his scuba gear, was Nico Papadopoulos, his arms and body protectively wrapped around a tiny inert figure dressed in a hooded, pink sweatshirt, pajama pants, and rain boots.

Timothy Leander knelt next to his wife. He reached for her hand and then used his other to lower Misty’s hood. The skin of her face was waxen and bloodless, drained of all color and life, but also wholly untouched—as if something had stood guard over her on the bottom, shooing away anything that might mar it.  Both Marian and Timothy Leander nearly cried out her name in unison and pulled her out of the diver’s arms and into their own.

It took him a moment, but Ray Falk shifted his attention from the spectacle of the unmolested corpse of Misty Leander to the man who recovered it. He quickly removed Nico’s face mask and used EMT scissors to shear off his neoprene hood and latex neck seal. Falk bent down and put his ear to Nico’s lips while Johnny Bravo palpated his wrist for a pulse after stripping off one of Nico’s gloves.

Ray Falk shook his head. The younger man confirmed the same, then reached down to check the pressure gauge on Nico’s tank. Held it up for Falk to see. The needle was buried in the red. Not enough air left even to purge the regulator when Johnny Bravo gave it a squeeze.

-END-

[Note: A special thanks to Mike Berry, the godfather of police search and recovery diving and the author of The Water's Edge: A Manual for the Underwater Criminal Investigator. The book, along with his course, Public Safety Divers/Underwater Criminal Investigators, was used for reference in this work of FICTION.]

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If you liked what you just read and want more, order Kevin Sites’s award-winning debut novel, The Ocean Above Me, available at the link below.
https://www.amazon.com/Ocean-Above-Me-Novel/dp/0063278286

Sea History Magazine - Deep Dive

Read my article, Deep Dive, page by page by enlarging the images below.

Nathan Davis, part of Classic Diving LLC, descends into Vortex Springs, Florida wearing an iconic Mark V diving helmet and standard dress.
[Cover photo by Anita Sites]

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If you liked what you just read and want more, order Kevin Sites’s award-winning, debut novel The Ocean Above Me, available at the link below.
https://www.amazon.com/Ocean-Above-Me-Novel/dp/0063278286

-END-

Authors Kevin Sites, The Ocean Above Me and Earl Swift, Chesapeake Requiem discuss their sea-related books (one novel, one non-fiction) at Bookmania! 2024.

The book festival is one of the most dynamic in the country sponsored by The Martin County Library System in Florida, people who love books and support the authors who write them.

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[This event was one of my personal favorites because everyone involved was an A+ from the indomitable organizer, Janette Noe to our panel moderator, the thoughtful and exceedingly well-read, Peggy Chittum.

But I was thrilled to share the stage with the prolific and profound Earl Swift whose immersive journalistic feats are as legendary as his ‘load-bearing sentences.’]

If you liked what you just watched and want more, order Kevin Sites’s award-winning, debut novel The Ocean Above Me, available at the link below.
https://www.amazon.com/Ocean-Above-Me-Novel/dp/0063278286

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"Secrets are no longer necessary when those they indict or protect stop sharing your air."

I’m certain this will be just another of my journals locked in a desk drawer that no one will read. But stories like this are really just for the teller anyway, so I write. And as I force those memories from their containers back into the circulation of my mind, I can see the problem clearly again, as if it were yesterday. Teddy was too pretty.

Even with all the drinking. I mean early Elvis pretty. Blue eyes, skin a smooth, taut canvass without a blemish, cheek bones that could cut diamonds. Thick black hair he combed up in a pompadour still at the turn of the new millennium. He said his hair came from his ancestors, that he was part Navajo, not uncommon where we lived in Grants, an hour and change west of Albuquerque at the intersection of the Continental divide and the badlands of El Malpais.

But Teddy didn’t know his own dad, let alone his supposedly indigenous ancestors. And the mystery, fiction, whatever it was, both fed his inner demons and inflated his sense of importance. Liked to lord it over my mom, Loretta who, unapologetically came from a long line of New Mexico trailer trash. Allowed Teddy to feel superior even though it was her work that bought us the double-wide we grew up in, put the food on our plates, the clothes on our backs, the few presents around the tree at Christmas.

Still, Teddy fervently believed his presence was the golden sunshine of our existence. As husband and father why wouldn’t he? Everybody else was drawn to Teddy, women, men, cats and dogs. He had that giant Venus fly trap smile with charming micromillimeter gap between his front teeth. Wasn’t anyone that didn’t want to be around Teddy. Except us. We knew him when those Hollywood high beams of his shut down, when the last shot of Cuervo or can of Modelo that put him over the line, switched on that reserve of anger and meanness, activated his desire for confrontation that got his fist twitching in our direction.

To the rest of the world, Teddy was magnetic. Nuclear even, like the uranium motherlode discovered here by Paddy Martinez in the 50’s giving the place it’s nickname, Yellowcake Boomtown.  Teddy was a boomtown unto himself. Didn’t even need a job. Folks bringing him over their cars to work on in the aluminum shed garage that Loretta bought for him and had set up next to our trailer. It was tactical I think. Teddy so averse to real work he needed to be walking distance to it to ever get there.  Also close enough for Loretta to keep an eye on him. When she could, anyway.

On a typical day he’d make it to the garage by 10 or 10:30 am after a big hangover breakfast first. She’d cook him up platters of scrambled eggs drenched in salsa, black beans and corn tortillas. After eating he might flush a transmission or rethread a new timing belt-- if he’d had the foresight enough to pick one from the Auto Zone the day before. Usually not. If you brought your car or truck over to Teddy for even the smallest, easiest work you were probably leaving it for the week.

But it might not be the work you were looking to get done anyway. Rather a chance to sit on the tattered bar stool next to the tool bench and drink a beer while Teddy had you laughing your ass off with a stream of jokes, or unkind observations about the good folks of Grants.  Occasionally he’d use a ratchet to tighten or loosen something under the hood, every action inevitably leading to another story that would delay the work even longer.

It was okay, because if you used Teddy, you didn’t come here to be in a hurry. You came to be entertained, to feel the warmth of his nuclear core, to get his focused attention for a minute or an hour or whatever he decided you needed, or he had to give you that day, all while old school country played in the background on the black JBL Boombox that Loretta also bought him after he hounded her for weeks. His old radio not good enough for his “business.”

Maybe it was you didn’t come over for work on your vehicle at all. Maybe you came over, to get worked yourself. That usually happened when Loretta put in her guard shift at The Northwest New Mexico Correctional Facility. She’d been there nearly 20 years since the time it had been a women’s only prison, but stayed after it went private and now housed just men. She had enough seniority to get good day shifts and admin duties. No longer working the tower, walking the walls or the yard. She was respected. She didn’t take anybody’s shit, not the inmates, not the other guards, not even the warden. The only person she took shit from was Teddy.

I could never figure out why, other than him having hypnotized and dazzled her too. Once Teddy got you under his spell that’s usually where you stayed, no matter how many lies and betrayals. And when it came to Loretta, there were too many to count. When she was off at the prison, was when Teddy focused his attention elsewhere. Everywhere actually.

Any pretend effort under the hood giving way to the insatiable drive under his belt. He wasn’t too discriminating and never discreet. Just as willing to doggy the 29-year-old, single-mom, deli clerk from Albertson’s against her ’89 Honda Civic as use the dirty green vinyl couch, considered the customer waiting area, to reverse cowgirl the Wal-Mart greeter grandmother on the backside of her 50’s. Wasn’t too proud to get sucked off by the local Methodist minister’s son, either. A deeply lost soul himself, as I recall, and regular glue sniffer who’d been in Henley’s grade but dropped out his junior year. Do almost anything for pocket change including Teddy.

Teddy told me once with drunken pride,

“Son, don’t matter who on the end of your dick when your eyes closed.” Something he said he learned during various d & d stints at county.

I know all this because I saw it too many times. Often just after the school bus dropped me off in front of the trailer. Teddy not even bothering to slide down the garage doors. It’d be a coin flip on which Teddy was more of, voyeur or narcissist. That’d take the wisdom of Solomon to decide, and I don’t have that even all these years later.

But it didn’t really matter what I saw though that garage door because’ I wasn’t no snitch. Once I was though, briefly at age ten. Loretta put an end to any stoolie inclinations I might’ve had. Flushed it out of me. Really. Put my head in the shitter and yanked the handle three-times just to make certain. Her the original water boarder. I’d caught my brother, Henley smoking in his room with a couple of friends. Grabbed the ashtray they were using. Put it in my Aqua Man lunchbox. After I showed her, she just shook her head, stubbed out her own butt on the kitchen floor with a grind of her work boot. Dragged me into our trailer’s bathroom and cured me of it right then and there. I was still  on my knees, coughing and choking when she looked down at me with disdain.

“I didn’t raise no rats,” she said. I got the message. In a world full of traitors and two-dollar turnkeys, family loyalty was everything. This from a prison guard.

Maybe that’s why she put up with Teddy. Figured it was just his nature. Figured it was that story, you know, the scorpion on the frog’s back, a sting killing them both in a swim across the river. I think she didn’t see Teddy as a bad man, just one full of appetites. People for him were no different than his shop tools or a plate of tacos. Something he used to sustain himself.  

I admit, Teddy did have one admirable quality though he did his best to hide it. Deep inside himself he was not deluded by his own game of smoke and mirrors. When I looked at him directly I would sometimes catch it in his eyes. A sliver of shame. That momentary eclipse of his self-confidence. That he understood it all was just a long grift and that everyone who ever engaged with him at any level would eventually go away disappointed. But leave enough of folks like that in your wake and one day somebody’s going to turn that disappointment into action.

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It was the summer before my sophomore and Henley’s senior year of high school. He’d already decided he was leaving Grants and just how he’d make it out. Enlisting in the Marines. In 10 months, after graduating, he’d go to boot camp at Pendleton. But he’d already quit the cigs, was running and lifting weights so he wouldn’t be gassed once the drill sergeants got their mitts into him.

“Couldn’t be no worse than life here,” he told me one night while we lay in our beds, too hot to sleep, just a few feet apart in the trailer’s second bedroom. “ Teddy sucks the life out of us every day for free, why not get paid for it.”  I agreed, wished I was old enough to go too then, but at 16 I had  a few years left in Grants -- all within Teddy’s crosshairs. And the man had a way of pushing you until you just couldn’t or wouldn’t take it anymore.

He had dogged Henley endlessly when he told him he was joining the Marines. Told him he was a pussy and too skinny, that he’d wash out before a week went by.  Couldn’t stand the fact that his oldest son would be out of his clutches, trying to be something more than he was. Even refused to sign the parental authorization for his early enlistment, since Henley wouldn’t turn 18 until the follow Spring.

When he found out Loretta had instead, he rewarded her with a slap that nearly dislocated her jaw. Was going in for more when Henley jumped on Teddy’s back, wrapped his long arms around his neck, pulled with all his might. Enough to bring him to his knees. Enough to choke him out cold. He might not have let go had at all had Loretta not dragged him off. Told Henley it wasn’t worth going to jail for killing a sack a dog shit like Teddy. Henley finally unwrapped himself from where he’d clung to Teddy’s back, laying in the dirt. Anger not fully dissipated he stood up, reared back and laced into one of Teddy’s kidneys with the toe of his boot. A satisfying crunk.

When Teddy finally came to gasping for air, he crawled, hands and knees into his garage looking like a tarantula on the hot desert sands. Went straight for his shop fridge, drank the two sixes in there and a few of the pint bottles of tequila he had stashed under oily rags and in empty parts boxes.

Got so fucked up he passed out again and  pissed himself while slung over the green vinyl couch, dark amoeba spreading from the crotch of  his greasy coveralls.  We just left him for the rest of the day. Thought he might be dead, until he finally roused himself when Loretta left for her shift. Came into the trailer, took a shower and slept it off. Got up the next morning, smiling like nothing happened. Concealing his plans behind bloodshot eyes and booze swollen face.

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That same year, maybe it was March already, Henley had started seeing, Juanita Guzman. A dark, haired beauty who was studying cosmetology through the high school’s vocational program. Cut hair on the side to make some extra money. Offered to cut his for free. He told her the Marines would do that come summer, but maybe they could see a movie? Go for a pizza? Henley was kind, respectful and she liked he had plans to get out of Grants too. Before long he was with her all the time. I barely saw him that spring. He kept away from the trailer and Teddy as much as possible. Had since choking Teddy out. But that ended with the Senior Prom. Loretta insisted Henley bring Juanita over for pictures before the dance.

I remember the first thing I saw was the corsage. Henley had gotten her one so big it nearly cast a shadow. Loretta was gushing like she never had, took a million pictures of the two smiling like nothing else mattered. Even Teddy got in on it. Had washed and waxed his Ram 1500 and made a big show of handing Henley the keys like a regular dad might.

That’s all it took. Maybe because he wanted to believe his father really cared about him or maybe because he was in love, Henley got comfortable. He started bringing Juanita home more and more often. I mean why not. It made Loretta so happy. She would cook up a big pot of spaghetti with pork chops, fuss over how pretty Juanita was, how she’d wish she had a daughter like her instead of two lunkhead boys. And Teddy would sit there, watching it all, laughing, feeding into the moment by recalling some of Henley’s childhood glory days, scoring goals in middle school soccer or hitting home runs in Little League and such, or teasing about goofy Halloween costumes and him waiting up all night for the tooth fairy. Being the perfect dad, being the perfect gentlemen. Daring Henley to forget that one afternoon, daring him to believe we were part of a normal family. And Loretta wanted another female around so badly she forgot the wolf at her table or — chose not to see him for a time.

But not me. I had been studying Teddy my whole short life, then. I looked past his false smiles and his fatherly nods of approval.  I watched his hands. Watched how he patiently peeled back the labels of his beer, slowly, methodically, letting the condensation do its work on the glue and then ever so patiently, rolling it diagonally across, no smudges, no streaks, no paper backing left, just the smooth amber darkness and his hand around its neck.

After awhile I could tell Juanita had been convinced by Teddy’s charade too because she opened up. Shared the darker aspects of her own life. Hinted at her daddy having some drinking issues, older brother in a gang and the younger one a pothead. Tween sisters getting too much attention from a sketchy uncle. All those revelations made our secretly dysfunctional home look like a comforting desert oasis, our family a masterpiece of modern tranquility by comparison. Everything Teddy needed.

One night when Juanita came over to watch the X Files with Henley, after his workout, Teddy mentioned that her old Corolla seemed to be running hot, a shimmer from the hood and smoke out of the tailpipe.

She shrugged, turned her attention back to the screen in our living room, but that was Teddy just waiting for the condensation to soak through before he started the slow peel. Said he’d take a quick look under the hood, no big deal. She found her purse, handed him her keys, a My Little Pony plush attached to the chain. She thanked him and turned back to the screen.

I had been sitting on the floor, watching TV with them,  but got up and pretended to go to the bathroom. Instead, I went out the backdoor and around the corner of the trailer. I spied as Teddy pulled the latch on the Corolla’s hood and propped it up. It was a perfect screen, blocking the view from the living room but not from me. I saw as he rummaged through the glove compartment, looking at the car’s registration and owner’s manual with little interest. Then he moved on to the latched center console, rifled through some wet wipes, some loose tampons a bag of generic breath mints from the Rite Aid. Teddy popped one in his mouth and smiled—until he saw me looking at him.

“The fuck? You little creeper?” Hid his surprise with anger. Hid it more by pretending he was just getting ready to turn the ignition which he did, clumsily inserting the key and starting it up.

Teddy told Juanita the radiator was leaking. Would find her another at the junk yard, Corollas being as common as cactus there, swap it out for her. He looked up, scratched his perfectly square jaw, pretended he had a list of customers waiting on him. Could maybe do it on Wednesday of that week. Wouldn’t take but an hour or two. When Juanita said she’d didn’t have the money that’s when Teddy went, well, full Teddy while Henley was taking a piss.

“C’mon now Juanita,” he said in a low conspiratorial voice. “You practically family now all but in name. Henley over there slower n’ sloth putting a ring on it . Spending all his time getting ready to be one of the few and the proud.”  Teddy winked at her, his grin nearly reached his earlobes, “Forgetting what’s really important.” Juanita blushed.

“But tell you what,” Teddy touched his pomp, “getting a little shaggy here. Maybe you can bring your scissors and combs over one night and give me a trim. That way everybody be running clean. Sound fair?”

Juanita brought her Corolla over that Wednesday and Teddy, as promised, fixed it for her in a couple of hours. A miracle of motivation if there ever was one. But, of course, nothing happened then. We were all around. Henley, me, even Loretta. Teddy had the audience he wanted. The one that proved he could be trusted to do what he said. No monkey business, at all. Just a good dad, doing a good turn for his potential daughter-in-law. 

But what nobody saw but me, was when he called in the barter. Not more than a few second after he shut the hood on her car, Teddy was throwing his head back, trying to flick some stray locks that had slipped their pomade and fell over his left eye. Sighed in frustration. Juanita stepped to him, pushed it back with her forefingers. Smiled. Agreed that he needed a trim. Teddy suggested the following Monday afternoon, knowing Henley would be at his recruiter’s, as he always was for his weekly check-in.

I continued to shoot baskets on the netless, rusty hoop and filthy backboard welded to the side of Teddy’s garage. Conspicuous by the noise I made, giving Teddy what he thought was perfect cover.

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There was flu outbreak at the prison and because a handful of other guards called in sick , Loretta had to work that Saturday. That left me, Henley and Teddy alone together. Never a good mix. The cyclone of Teddy’s dark-side swirling in on us when there was no-one around he thought necessary to activate his pretensions or restraint.

He cracked a beer for breakfast started in on Henley. Same tired Teddy bullshit, taunting that he’d be on Greyhound back to Grants after the first week of boot camp. Or if, by some miracle, he did make it through they’d send him off to a jungle hellhole in the Philippines or to freeze his nuts off during a Korean winter guarding the DMZ. And while he was thousands of miles away, Juanita would find someone else to keep her warm.

Teddy pantomimed a cartoon fucking motion pushing his hips forward and scrunching up his face. Henley shook his head with tired resignation. Had been waiting for months for the return of the real Teddy and here, finally, he was. He flipped him the bird on his way out for, what I knew would be one of his long desert runs, not coming back until he lost the desire to beat Teddy to a pulp. Something he could clearly do now, after all his bulking up and training.

Once Henley was out the door, Teddy turned his formidable bitterness on me as I ate a bowl of Sugar Crisps at the kitchen table. Asked me if I knew I was queer yet, that it was obvious to him the way I spent all my time in my room reading those Harry Peter books. In mock seriousness, he asked if I’d thought about my future. With my grades maybe I could get into UNM in a few years and me and all the other fruits could play with each other’s magic wands in our dorm rooms. Or I could just skip all that, he offered, and go directly to Santa Fe, open up a little boutique selling dreamcatchers and turquoise jewelry to tourists. Teddy told me he had it on good authority that was all the entrepreneurial homos did. Either that or real estate.

“The world is your motherfucking oyster girl,” he said sarcastically, slipping in shots of tequila now with his second beer.

I said nothing, took one more bite of my cereal, then got up and to wash my bowl in the sink. I’m not sure where it came from, but I remember I stopped and just stood there still, with my back to Teddy.

“You hate us all so much Teddy,” I finally said, “why don’t you do everybody a favor, pack your shit into that giant truck Loretta bought for you and just drive away. Just go somewhere else.” I let it sink in.

“Oh, that’s right,” I said, feeling braver than I should have. “You can’t because you don’t have a dime to your name. Wouldn’t take but a day or two before you were sleeping in the Wal-Mart parking lot. Waft of your own failure come spilling out of the cab every time you opened the door.”

“Better watch your tongue, little cocksucker, else I cut it out your head,” Teddy shouted at me, sitting up, straight now, getting ready to lunge. “I ain’t going nowhere,” he sneered. “This is my house you living in. Be your useless ass and your jarhead wannabe brother out in the streets with nothing but the clothes on your back before me.” I could hear him taking a long draw on his beer nearly emptying it. Then started up again.

“Hairless little, peckerwood talking at me like your balls already dropped.” He was getting worked up now, volume and anger building, words nearly fumbling through his increasingly alcohol addled brain. I kept my back to him. “You ain’t even close to being a man yet. So, don’ trying talking like one.”

I turned on the faucet, the old pipes groaning as I rinsed the milk and leftover cereal out of the bowl. Teddy suddenly changed pace, turned inward, muttered to himself, “Fucking end you all, I don’ start seeing some respect.” For a second, I thought I heard him draw back a sob and to me it was the blood in the water.

“You’ll be the dead one,” I said, called back his attention from the pool of his own self-pity.  “Henley catches you trying to fuck Juanita. Might’ve been already,” I turned off the faucet so he could hear me clearly, “Loretta not pulled him off you.”

I saw his reflection on the fridge and ducked as he reared back and winged the half empty bottle of Modelo at my head, missing it by inches and exploding against the kitchen cabinet in front of me. Glass tinkled into the stainless-steel sink, while beer foamed pooled at the downward tilt of the broken cabinet door. The one Teddy had promised Loretta he’d fix, but never got around to. Everything went silent for a moment except for the drip, drip, drip of the beer foam on the Formica counter. I smiled to myself knowing Teddy hated people knowing his plans, even though he telegraphed them by a mile.

“Clean that shit up before she gets home,” he said, pushing away from the table, nearly slamming the front door off its hinges on the way out to his garage.

~ ~ ~

I must’ve got Teddy pretty worked up since instead of just sitting around on the couch getting more shitfaced all day he decided to get shitfaced while changing the oil in his Ram.

He was tucked half-way under it, removing the oil pan, blasting the classic country station on his JBL, early Waylon Jennings mournfully singing about always being crazy or something, as I recall.  From the trailer window I could see through the open garage door, just his dirty jeans and snakeskin boots sticking out from under the truck—along with the red-handled jack.

I felt a wave of heat build in my feet and climb up to my forehead. Felt the swell and contraction of my heart in my chest. In that garage the future unspooled before me. Teddy would climb out from under his truck more determined than ever.

In just a day and a half he’d be sitting at the bar stool in the garage while Juanita trimmed his hair. He’d breathe in her smell as she pressed close to him and he’d look at her as if she were some heavenly vision he couldn’t imagine had materialized in front of him, Our Lady Overwhelming Beauty or some such shit.

Then he’d make her laugh, so much her side would hurt, and then he would change it up, tell her how pretty she was again, then tease her. She would feel ebullient, prized, but more than anything, seen. That’s what Teddy did, that’s what Teddy could do. And once he filled her up with those emotions, he’d work on her logical side; make the case that Henley was just a boy, didn’t deserve a smart, ambitious, beautiful woman like her. Henley had chosen the Marines instead of her, that was how much he really cared about her, how selfish he was.

And that while she was waiting for him here, faithfully, Henley would be sticking it in all kinds of whores all over the world, coming back with who knows what diseases, probably even give her something himself. Something dirty and unspeakable, uncurable, even. No, she needed the kind of man that appreciated her now, a man of some means and respect. A man filled with desire for her, that thought about her all the time and would take care of her needs first, not his own, how she deserved.

But then she’d ask about Loretta, how it could work the way things were. And he’d tell her that had been over for a time now. Working the prison all those years had made Loretta hard and distant. She didn’t even like sex no more cause of the ugly things she seen. They even sleept on opposite sides of the bed. They were just sticking it out until the boys were both out of the house. It wouldn’t be long now, but he didn’t want to wait to be together. He didn’t think he could wait anymore, the way he burned for her each day.

I know now I heard every word he would say to her before it actually happened and also exactly how she would buy into it. Teddy was that convincing, had done this his whole life, after all. But even so, it wouldn’t happen all at once. He was still peeling the label. She’d be ready in a few weeks or maybe months after Henley left. Regardless of what he’d said to her, he could be patient. Patient until her 18th birthday at least, that was for damn sure. He wan’t about to go down on any statutory rape bid.

And finally, when Henley came back on leave after boot camp, all muscled up, hair high and tight, Teddy would tell him what he'd done. And there would be no run long-enough to dispel his fury. All his pent-up anger and rage from the years of alternating neglect and abuse would come spilling out of him in a geyser of  uncontainable violence.

Something Teddy would not only welcome but had sought in the first place—the end to his own miserable existence at the hands of his son. But as badly as Teddy sought his own ruin, of one thing I was absolutely certain, he was too much of a coward to go it alone. He needed to take Henley with him.

When the vision ended I stepped on the back of my sneakers, barefoot I opened the trailer door just wide enough for me to slip through and moved heel to toe across the stretch from the trailer to the open garage. Standing there I realized I had already resolved to accommodate Teddy’s plan, just not the way he intended. Slowly, silently, I reached down and twisted the jack handle counterclockwise, as I’d seen him do so many times before.

One turn was all it took before the gravity of the Ram took over.  The shaft spun  in my hand  like a drill bit, and I dropped it to the floor. Immediately the truck’s undercarriage bore down on the poured concrete floor with all the substantial gravity of its 3.6-liter V6 engine.

I watched Teddy’s legs scrabbled on the slab trying to find purchase, heard a cracking sound underneath, similar to popping bubbles from sheets of plastic package insulation, finally a long, flat ‘ploooooof,’ like the remaining volume squeezed from a blow-up camping mattress.

Only I knew it wasn’t air, but a life’s worth of meanness, beatings, cheatings and fear. All the blackness squeezed out of Teddy in less time than it would take to say Dóó ni'áásh. Navajo for ‘until we meet again.’ (Figured Teddy would like that one even though a tribal elder spirit would need to translate it for him after his crossing.)

Once the sound stopped, I watched as blood seeped from under the truck and pooled around the jack. A red moat around a red castle. It was hypnotic.  But then a disturbance in the light made me look up. Henley’s silhouette in the garage opening.

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The three of us were questioned later that afternoon by Grants PD who, for due diligence, also called in the Cibola County Sheriff’s detectives. But the story told itself. The pile of empty beer bottles on the garage floor and later, the tox reports, indicated a very drunken Teddy probably forgot to set the jack’s safety before he crawled under the truck.  

Wasn’t a surprise to any of the local law enforcement with all the drunk and disorderly charges Teddy had racked up over the years. And they quickly agreed with Loretta, who they had long respected and admired as a fellow officer, but sympathized for being married to Teddy, that this was all but inevitable.

At the end of the interview, she got up from the couch, where we were sitting but turned ever so slightly toward me before seeing the cops out. In that gesture I knew that we would weather this little storm and all would be good again. Because as she clearly demonstrated years earlier, she didn’t raise no rats and in this family loyalty was everything.

But secrets are no longer necessary when those they indict or protect stop sharing your air. Henley in Fallujah five years later and Loretta of breast cancer, two after that.

Now I’m free to do whatever I please with my knowledge -- or nothing at all.

But call me sentimental, after chronicling all of this in my journal, I realize I still can’t fully let go of that memory that bound us all together so tightly for so long – nor the 25-year-old pickup I still own.

Now sun faded and inoperable, it’s covered by decades of New Mexican dust and parked in the backyard of my modest little home outside Santa Fe, a small dreamcatcher dangling from the rearview mirror.

Just in case Teddy decides he doesn’t like the way I rewrote the ending.

-END-

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If you liked what you just read and want more, order Kevin Sites’s award-winning, debut novel The Ocean Above Me, available at the link below.
https://www.amazon.com/Ocean-Above-Me-Novel/dp/0063278286

Anemones

It is nearly 2am and there are six men, bound and blindfolded on their knees forming a crescent around an armor-plated Humvee.

It is their hands that fascinate me the most—perhaps because I can still see them, white finger anemones wriggling in the darkness.

Their faces have already disappeared behind dirty strips of cloth or snuffed like candles with nylon sandbags.  It takes only moments from the time they are captured and faced down in the dirt, to the click, click, click of the plastic cuffs noosed around their wrists.

It is with stunning swiftness that these Iraqi men, these suspects in a guerrilla war against occupation forces, are ‘bagged and tagged” in a world where the American military, as it so often proclaims, owns the night.

One prisoner, who looks to be no more than 19 or 20 years old, the same age as many of the American soldiers that now surround him, is getting more attention than the others.

In the dark chill he is dressed in nothing more than a thin, cotton gray dish dash robe. As two OH-58’s whirl above a soldier bends down beside the prisoner and talks to him as if he were a misbehaving infant.

Go Boom.

“You hear those choppers,” he says, “you like helicopters don’t you? You like to shoot down helicopters? Go boom?”

The brigade commander later tells me the prisoner has been identified by four separate local sources as one of the men directly involved in the recent shoot down of a Blackhawk helicopter that killed six soldiers; perhaps even the trigger man who launched what the Army believes was a Bulgarian-made Strela-3 missile.

I look at his index finger. It is un-calloused, slender, did it, I question in my mind, make the deadly pull?

The captured men are are taken in front of the Humvee where an informant sits behind bulletproof glass. They are already blindfolded but a soldier shines a flashlight in their faces anyway to make sure they cannot identify their accuser.

If the informant nods the man is taken to the right, if he shakes his head, they are taken to the left and . . . released?

Pity or Recognition?

It is strange to me that it is not so much pity that I feel while I am videotaping them, painting them green with my infrared light on my camera, but recognition.

I know the position they are in, the dread you feel to be bound and awash in the indecipherable language of your captors, to feel your mouth turn as dry as the desert that surrounds you, to wonder if this will be the hour of your death—or to wonder if the hours to come will make you wish it had been, to know that at this moment you are helpless and hopeless and that the question of whether you have any control over your own destiny has finally and irrefutably been answered. 

Early in the war my CNN team and I had been in the very same position. But we were captives of the men American forces now hunt down—Saddam’s Fedayeen militia.

We had pushed too hard to be the first journalists into Tikrit, the last major city not fallen to coalition forces.

Thirty kilometers from our prize, at a checkpoint near a village called Amal Bedi, we are forced from our vehicles at gunpoint and told to lie face down on the road.

Their leader, a middle-aged man wearing a red head-scarf called a kaffiyeh and a dirty trench coat, looks at me with contempt and says in Arabic, “This one is surely an American spy.”

Then he lowers the barrel of his AK-47 and fires a shot on the asphalt between my legs.  I am frozen in place. My colleagues are kicked and punched while my arms are bound tightly behind my back. 

My translator, a Kurd from Sulamaniyah named Tofiq looks at me and says,

“Today is the day that surely we will die.”

But it is Tofiq who will save us—goading a tribal chieftain to intervene with the Fedayeen, bluffing that if we are harmed coalition forces will turn their village, Almal Bedi, into rubble.

We are eventually released, but have lost one of our trucks, most of our gear and all of our money; thousands in U.S. dollars that were supposed to help buy us out of binds like this one. What we have though is more than the sum of all of that. Our lives.

And it was not violence or bullets, but words — Tofiq’s words that have set us free.

Now as I look at these men, bound and blindfolded, I think of my time in their place; that they have no Tofiq to speak on their behalf, wonder if they are guilty or innocent of what they are accused. 

If these men had instead been my Fedayeen captors would it be me leaning over and whispering discomforting things to them?

If these had been my Fedayeen captors could I have done worse?

If these had been my Fedayeen captors might I have done better?

[Six months after this event, in April 2004, the systematic abuse of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. soldiers at Abu Graib Prison was first reported with accompanying graphic photographs and videos.]

Kevin Sites reported the war in Iraq from 2003 – 2015, beginning with the U.S.-led invasion and ending with the rise of the Islamic State.

His award-winning book, The Things They Cannot Say, details more stories like this one. You can find it at the link below.
https://amzn.to/4cfGyb0

Debut novel, The Ocean Above Me from Kevin Sites.

Trapped undersea in a capsized shrimping trawler, a damaged former war correspondent is forced to confront a deadly secret from his past as he struggles to survive in this gripping novel of trauma, loss, love, and redemption.

Lukas Landon is trapped and alone, leaving him twenty-fathoms deep in exquisite isolation. He has no one to question but himself.

Will he finally come clean? And if he does, will he make it out alive from this 110-ton steel tomb under the sea to finally tell the truth to those who need to hear it?

Author Kevin Sites was an award-winning backpack journalist, reporting from 30 different conflicts and natural disasters in the course of his career.

He has spent nearly a decade covering news for global wars and disasters for ABC, NBC, CNN, and Yahoo! News. Kevin is also the author of 3 non-fiction books on war

• In the Hot Zone: One Man, One Year, Twenty Wars.

• Swimming with Warlords: A Dozen-Year Journey Across the Afghan War

• The Things They Cannot Say: Stories Soldiers Won’t Tell You About What They’ve Seen, Done or Failed to Do in War

To connect with Kevin Sites:

www.kevinsiteswrites.com

www.kevinsiteswritessubstack.com

If you liked what you just read and want more, order Kevin Sites’s award-winning, debut novel The Ocean Above Me, now in paperback available at the link below.
https://www.amazon.com/Ocean-Above-Me-Novel/dp/0063278286

When Landon made a buy from Cole he didn’t run off like the guy had leprosy.

He’d sit with him in his North Charleston duplex watching him reset his turntable, working through his collection of Bowie albums on vinyl, listening to his glory days stories above the din of Starman or Under Pressure.

Maybe even watch a ballgame on his flat screen, though Cole would be getting calls every ten minutes and visitors every twenty. Landon remembered thinking at the time, thug life-- not so relaxing. But it was better than partying with amateurs. After his divorce, aside from the rare hook-ups, Landon stopped going out altogether. Just hung with Cole if he needed a change of scenery from work or his apartment. Drinking with civilians was donkey work anyway. You went to a bar got the first one down looking for the second but trying not to seem too eager. You got the second down and there was even less relief, yet a third too soon was like warning bells on the fire wagon that your puckering irritated face didn’t just need a few drinks at the end of a hard week, it needed oxygen. Better to be among pros. Concentrate on what was important.

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Landon had been introduced to Cole by the paper’s sports editor Earle, a committed stoner with a precisely, sculpted god-like afro and wafting 24/7 weed reek, that made Landon suspiciously hungry just sitting next to him in the newsroom. But Earle wrote so gorgeously of the heat and heartbreak of local sporting contests many feared he might someday stop, and the poet within might vanish like a pot smoke memory. Cole had played a couple seasons of minor league ball with the River Dogs in the South Atlantic League, thus the initial connection to Earle, but got dropped after pissing hot one too many times. Cole, didn’t seem so disappointed, made a lot more money selling weed and coke transited up through the Miami pipeline. Thus, the ongoing connection to Earle.

Cole had a code of ethics when it came to his drug trade, didn’t move meth, smack or even opioids and told Landon about it nearly every time he came by to buy an eight-ball or two as they sat for their post-buy ritual.

“Look bro, I don’t want nobody’s blood on my hands,” Cole would say, pushing Landon on the shoulder as they shared a couple gratis lines on Cole’s brown, fold-up card table. “You don’t know what’s in that shit. Probably Fentanyl from China. Hunert times more powerful than smack.”

His eyes bristled with coke-intensity, despite the dark circles of one too many nights without sleep or … was it, eyeliner? Cole loved Bowie almost as much as his blow. He leaned back tapped his right nostril to better suck in the load on the left. Handed a clipped, clear-plastic drinking straw to Landon and gestured for him to take his turn.

“And don’t get me started on the pills. Back when I was with the Dogs, more en half my teammates were taking Oxy or Perc for their shoulders or knees. Couldn’t function without it.”

Landon, nodded, but never hid his skepticism at cynical attempts to dress up dirty business; international conventions that tried to make wars more humane or … codes that qualified the value or damage of one psychoactive substance over another. He sucked up his line, tapped his nose as Cole had done, let his eyes wander around the room though he’d seen it many times before.

He returned his gaze to Cole. “I get the smack thing,” Landon said, especially with everyone OD’ing left and right. But how come you don’t move meth? It’s essentially the same thing as Adderall. What they give to ADD kids. It’s just one carbon atom away. And this shit,” Landon gestured at the new row of lines, Cole had just chopped and spread on the table, “is expensive. Where’s the egalitarian in you?”

“EE-gal-uh-terry-on,” Cole repeated, enunciating like he was trying the word out, laughed hard, at the sound of it. He was deep into the binge; a time Landon knew was tricky to navigate. Your dealer’s brain on a dopamine seesaw while you’re sitting across from him equally inoculated against emotional balance and prudent reaction.

“Fuck Landon, mixing your chop with essays on social equality.” Cole, shook his head dismissively before he drew his straw down another line along with the usual post nasal-dance, then piping up. “Correction, mixing my chop…what kind of asshole does that make you?”

“A thinking man’s asshole,” Landon answered quiz-show, quick.

“So, your shit comes outcha mouth too, is whatya mean,” Cole murdered him. Then more thoughtful, turned the question back.  “You ever done ice?”

Landon, heavy-lidded nonchalance as he took the straw from Cole. Meth had been Ohio’s state animal, flower and song all rolled in one. The crystal lining of the Midwest’s rustbelt.  Until opioids dethroned it. Seemed to makes sense. Why keeping revving yourself up when there was no work to go around. A state with massive unemployment a few prospects. Who could deny the earnest, god-fearing, exhausted citizens of Ohio from going down the Oxy hole after so many years on the tweak.

“Yeah, Landon stood up to do a line of his own at the card table, “you have some real bat-shit thoughts when you’re on meth, but at least there’s quantity.”

“Cracker pu-leez,” Cole said, prepared to visualize his story, an over-eager member of summer stock theater. “Starts out all ‘look at me I’m Pickle Rick,’ smartest man in the universe and then…” he slapped his right hand down hard in a karate chop into his open left palm, “cut ta two days later and you’re duckin' out the way of the flying monkeys in your living room and moshing to a death metal soundtrack only you can hear. All tight and shriveled up ‘cause you ain’t ate or drank nothing in 48 hours—and here’s the worst, still, still, still…” he emphasized the repetition, “still…you won’t pull that fucking pipe from your mouth cause every wisp makes ya cock shudder like its Godzilla’s tail one swing from destroying Tokyo.” He nodded. Case closed.

Landon laughed hard. Genuine. Cole was a master performer. However good he’d been on the mound or not, Landon was pretty certain he always had the attention of the fans.

“Being alone with your thoughts is good sometimes,” Landon jumped on the riff, the coke-chatty in him now kicking-in. “But being alone with your thoughts on meth is like being locked in a bathroom with a sociopath that won’t stop masturbating.”

“Oh, so you’ve seen my video,” Cole said, feigning pride. “It’s very popular.  Almost 280 views. Tell your mama thanks again for watching.”  Cole slapped Landon’s shoulder in a just kidding gesture.

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Though they always did drugs when they were together, he and Cole didn’t always talk them. Sometimes Cole asked him about the wars. He was always chatty from the blow anyway and what else were they going to talk about? Baseball? Landon never said, but he hated the ex-pro-athlete’s former sport. The only game he hated more was golf.  Old war stories were an easy chat choice over either of those sleeping-pills disguised as athletics. He actually enjoyed telling some; the accidental airdrop of lady’s pumps to the Mujahidin? Insane! Soldiers drowning in the middle of the desert? Tragic irony! An insurgent so doped up it took an entire platoon’s intersecting field of fire and six grenades to bring him down. Commitment! But usually, just a few minutes into any of them they’d be so juiced up and thrumming that they’d fly past each other in individual monologues, neither able to shut up or listen and they’d have throttle back, regain their footing with a couple of shots from the magnum bottle of Evan Williams on the table between them.

Once Landon had told Cole the story of his capture and brief captivity at the hands of Saddam Hussein’s Fedayeen in Iraq. A moment for Landon that embodied the taunting, duality of war in which the terrifying fear of death was seamlessly joined with the thrill of its near avoidance. It took place in the first few days of the U.S. invasion after he and his unilateral colleagues got lost in the desert chasing the U.S. Third-Infantry’s main invasion force. They mistakenly drove up to an Iraqi checkpoint manned by Saddam Loyalists and seconds later found themselves on their knees with AK47’s muzzle at their heads. They were only saved by their remarkably brave and quick-thinking Kurdish fixer. And he did it not by begging for their lives, but threatening the Fedayeen with an even worse death. Bluffing that an American commando unit was mopping up just a few kilometers behind them with orders to leave no injured or alive Iraqis in the invasion’s wake. Only dead ones.

Despite the drama of the tale Cole only heard -- or processed -- the part about the gun muzzles. Taking it as a cue to pull out his own matte black Sig Sauer P229 from a Kydex clip holster tucked in the small of his back hidden by an oversized bowling shirt. He dropped the clip and slid back the action to eject the round in the pipe, catching it in the air before presenting it to Landon to inspect.

“I don’t want my fingerprints on that shit.” Landon would say, seemingly joking, but deadly serious. The implications of him being connected to a known drug dealer’s gun went nowhere good.

The routine itself was impressive and Landon believed that Cole had definitely seen it on some crime show on TV and practiced for hours while home alone.

“Hope I never have to use it,” Cole said, taking it back after the first time he showed it to Landon. “But you know how much a kilo of chop costs wholesale these days?” Landon shook his head. “Twenty-five, thurty-thousand. Who wouldn’t be tempted to take a run at me either holding the dosh or the product?” Landon nodded, was getting impatient, ready to leave, knew when the gun came out Cole’s seesaw was dipping too far to one end or the other. But he also wanted to avoid offending. Cole could smell furtive on any customer and Landon didn’t want to lose all that good will he earned by simply being decent, not transposing his own self-disgust onto the man who provided the raw material for it. And maybe, Landon mulled through his memory, he’d made all those trips to Cole’s and hung out for something that had nothing to do with their private party at all. Maybe he was seeking another fleeting thrill that made all others hopelessly insignificant. It had been a Wednesday night that year in September on a date he never shared with anyone. His birthday.

They were doing exactly what they were doing now. He was watching Cole singing and dancing to Bowie in the middle of his North Charleston living room as usual, but this night the show was all Diamond Dogs.  

“Rebel Rebel, you've torn your dress, Rebel Rebel, your face is a mess, Rebel Rebel, how could they know?” Cole’s eyes were ringed black with mascara, he wore cut-off jean shorts, a white ribbed, tank top and a modest (for a drug dealer) pinkie-thick, loop of gold chain around his neck. His shoulder-length blond hair pulled back from his face by a backwards RiverDogs ballcap, Charlie T. the mascot with a bat in his mouth, snapping down like it’s a dry twig. Cole was also barefoot and Landon knew what was coming next. Had seen versions of this performance or others like it several times before. Cole gripped his mic, a 34-inch, maple-wood Louisville Slugger at the smooth-convex curve just beneath the knob and bent down low to where Landon, his sole audience member, was sunken into one of two matching blue suede La-Z Boy recliners. Landon grimaced as Cole belted out the final sting of the chorus, “Hot tramp, I love you so! Don’t ya?” Cole immediately launched into a rooster cluck walk back and forth across the room for the bridge, pulling the knob of the bat back to his mouth, “Doo doo doo-doo doo doo doo doo.”  Landon pumped his fist in support, but his real attention was on the powdery grid that crisscrossed a framed 11x14 mirror-etched image lying on his lap. It was Cole during his playing days, left-arm cocked back like a trebuchet, ready to hurl from the River Dogs mound. More than the Bowie performances, Landon silently admired the willful disregard Cole had for his former life, choosing to snort blow off the souvenirs of his own failed past. He was no longer contained by the chalk lines of baseball diamonds but redrew his own fields more lucrative dangerous and exotic, not counted in innings or pitches or times at bat, but in moments like this one in that couldn’t be full described or explained, but which followed only one rule, that it would all happen at double-speed, careen wildly off course and end with a crash.

What could be more liberating than knowing how it ends? Landon set the mirror back on the fold-up card table between the two recliners that held their Pabst cans, and omni-present magnum-bottle of Evan Williams encircled by a large condensation ring, his TV and stereo remotes and the Sig.

Cole picked up the straw from the mirror, bent over the table and inhaled two more thick lines, one in each nostril, before going back to the performance. “You've got your mother in a whirl cause she's not sure if you’re a boy or a girl…” All the fun of a drag show without the explanations. But unfortunately for both of them Rebel, Rebel was the last cut on the A side of Diamond Dogs record and that meant one thing; a Cole monologue before another Cole performance.

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Landon liked the performances better. The rest was just gibberish, hyper-talk on a tightrope. And Landon knew where the slips could lead: Cole’s angry rants, Cole’s crying jigs, Cole’s occasional threats of violence, sometimes against Landon, sometimes against himself. The performances kept those risky channels of Cole’s brain occupied. Bowie was enough, more than enough, as long as the needle was in the groove. As long as the vinyl was spinning. As long as there was no dissension. But that was another problem with coke. Not with Cole, but with Landon. On coke Landon liked to sow dissension. Something his professional life didn’t allow. You could poke and prod a source. You could and should be skeptical of a source, but it had to appear to come from a place of fairness, a place where the source felt you hadn’t fully made up your mind yet (even if you had). Outright disagreement, dissent, well…that shut the whole thing down. End of conversation, game over. But here, in Cole’s living room, doing Cole’s coke Landon wasn’t on the job. Here he was free to disagree and he liked, in some ways, what it provoked in Cole, but liked even more how it made him feel.  Like a participant. No, more like an Agent Provocateur.

“Landon,” Cole said, as he lifted the turntable’s clear, plastic lid and flipped the vinyl but set the stylus on its resting clip rather than back on the vinyl. “You know why I love this album?”

“Lemme guess, because its Bowie.”

“Yeah, dickhead. Who else is there? But why this Bowie album?”

Landon braced himself. Bent over the mirror on the table and drew in another line, thick as a freeway center-divider, followed by a final swig that emptied his can of Pabst. He used the La-Z Boy’s side stick to lower the leg rest, got up and went to the fridge where he retrieved two more cans of beer, tossing one to Cole, who snapped it up in one hand, showing admirable eye-hand coordination this late into their partying. Landon cracked his open, sat back down.

“Okay, now I’m ready. Tell me. Wait!” Landon teased, holding up his hands to stop Cole. “It’s because it’s Diamond Dogs, right?  And YOU,” he hit it hard, “were a baseball diamond dog.” Cole was silent for a beat. And Landon wasn’t sure what was coming. Had he provoked him that quickly? First time at bat?

“That’s fucking brilliant. I didn’t even think of that. But it adds to my stoke.” Cole sometimes dipped into surfer patois, reminded Landon that for a drug dealer like Cole, time spent on the waves of nearby Folly Beach was like a CEO spending time on the links. Both great places to make deals.

Cole’s eyes looked more intense than Landon was comfortable with at this hour. Meaning he’d want to party the whole night and Landon had still had to work tomorrow. He’d wake up feeling shaky, weak, translucent, his body drained, his brain depleted of dopamine, his blood wondering why the alcohol spigot was now shut off.  So, he’d have to appease it. Always tried to keep a couple grams in reserve, so a line or two and a shot and a beer all before 8am and he’d at least be able to get into the shower, blow out his clogged and constricted nasal passages, brush his furry teeth, half dozen drops of Visine in each eye and like Roy Scheider as Bob Fosse in All That Jazz. “It’s showtime!”  Some birthday celebration.

But that was getting ahead of himself. They hadn’t even gotten through this evening yet. He could put off the full-blown regret for a few hours at least, there was still bourbon on the table, half a case of beer in the fridge and at a good percentage of the eight-ball they started with covering most of the image of Cole frozen in his mid-pitch glory days.

“Diamond Dogs was like this weird fusion, Dude,” Cole continued with his explanation. “Bowie’s last gasp of glam melded with Orwell’s 1984. You know, Big Brother and all that shit. Landon looked at him blankly. While Cole waved him off. I know, I know, I know. It’s out there,” Cole said, excitedly, “You’ll hear it all on the B side and then you’ll get it.” He went over to a set of deep shelves against the wall where he stored all his albums, alphabetically by artist. He went to the “B” section, apparent by the capital letter, “B” Cole had cut from some magazine headline and taped to the shelf under the albums it stored. From there he pulled the cover of the album currently in rotation and held it in front of Landon, who shimmied up a bit from his comfortable sag in the recliner to look. It featured a drawing of Bowie, hunched over a table looking a bit like an orange griffin and flanked by two gray-dog women with flaming red hair.

“Yeah that’s definitely some fusion shit,” Landon said.

“Dude, dude, you don’t know the half of it.” Cole then opened the album to show beneath the fold… a drawing of Bowie with clearly defined dog genitalia. Cole held the cover reverently, as if he were presenting a rare and fragile newly discovered, Dead Sea scroll.

“Cole, I’m a little worried,” Landon said, lifting his beer can to indicate the surprise reveal on the album cover. “You like this album because Bowie has a cartoon dog dick on its cover?”

“Dude, do you know how rare this cover art is? I spent five-kay to get this.”

“Okay, now I’m really worried about you.”

Cole continued, undeterred. Insistent. “When the album dropped in 1974, there were only a few originals like this. Most LPs got painted over. This is one of the few that still exists, man!” Landon considered what Cole was telling him. Considered whether he wanted to play nice. Landon nodded, then bent down over the mirror and did two more lines, tapping each nostril before responding. Had his answer.

“How do you know it’s real?”

Cole stood completely frozen. Blinked a couple of times.  A wild rhino stunned by a  tranq dart. Landon, smiled. “If it’s that rare and valuable, only make sense there would be some fakes, right?” Cole snapped out of the stun, face flushed red. Closed the album, put it back on the shelf.

“I know it’s real because I spent five-kay on it. Because I gotta fucking-certificate-of-fucking authen-tissity!” He shouted, spittle flying over the card table onto the mirror, little dabs breaking up the line. “That’s how I know it’s real.” Anger not dissipated, he grabbed his Louisville Slugger leaning against the wall, took swings in the air. Close enough for Landon to feel the whoosh of air on his face. Would crack it if he leaned down to do the line. He held his position, growing annoyed at Cole’s antics.

“Wall-eyed motherfucker!” Landon knew he shouldn’t, but here, in Cole’s living room he could create chaos from a recliner, push things to the brink and bring back a little of that adrenaline that the coke fell short in summoning. Besides, Cole just went to the dark side on him. Landon bent forward rubbed his face in his hands like he was praying, felt the exhaustion spreading through his entire body.

Landon sighed. “For the last time its hypertropia. Take a good hard look.” Landon pointed at his right eye with his index finger leaning closer to Cole. “Points up, not out.” Cole, look confused, unsettled for a moment, until Landon pressed on. “And hate to say it dude, but you got worked on that …” pointing to the cover, then he paused, felt the flush of anger from a thousand insults never answered, fuck it,  “… dog dick masterpiece. You know same way you did on the mound.”

Cole stopped swinging, leaned the bat back against the wall, walked to the turntable and cranked the volume to the point Landon thought the floor was vibrating. Cole strode back to the table between the recliners and bent down to do his own two lines, but when he came back up, he was holding the Sig and pointing it at Landon’s face.

“Why you trying to spin me up, bra?” Cole demanded, but flatly calm now. Landon looked up but didn’t react. “I let you suck up mountains of my best chop, drink my bourbon,” he waved the muzzle pointing over at the three-quarters empty bottle on the card table. “And show your gratitude by yanking my chain?” Cole leaned in closer with the pistol. Landon kept a blank face but heard the trill of a thousand insects inside his forebrain. This was the buzz he came for. He cocked his head slightly, looked down the dark muzzle, wondering if this was really the abyss yet? He stared impassively until Cole’s hand began to shake, the weight of the gun and the spike of the blow on his heart no friend to accuracy. Even at this close. Maybe Cole’s tremor might just disfigure rather than complete a dramatic exit. No glamor in that. Landon shuddered at the thought of  explaining the joke in perpetuity through gnarled lips to the curious and dull. He raised his Pabst can and tapped it gently against the muzzle of Cole’s Sig, but then held it there. Pushed the southpaw’s aim away from his face. Then he stood up, wrapped his arms over Cole’s. He looked up into the man’s pulsing, ticking pupils, watching, waiting for them to calm, the violence behind them to seep away. Nature’s Oxytocin disarming  chemical dopamine. When it did he whispered into Cole’s ear.

“Just fucking with you. Love ya, bra.” Cole went limp in his arms, tossed the pistol back on the card table. Cole hugged back. A giant bear hug by a giant coked-up teddy bear.

“Just fucking with you too, bra. Love you, bra. Ashamed now by what he’d said, Cole scanned his stuttering brainwaves for ways to make Landon forget. “I was thinking you should do a story about me and my Bowie collection. Best in Charleston.”

“I know it is bra,” Landon assured him. “I know it is. But now I gotta go. Get some sleep before I have a heart attack.” He turned to the table, poured them both another shot of Evan Williams, then held up the glasses. Cole took one and they clinked them together.

“Bowie!”

“Bowie!”

Cole went over to the turntable and put the stylus another track. Cranking up “Rock ‘n Roll with me” to an ungodly volume. Then from the floor several loud thumps like a ceiling being poked with the end of a broom handle.

Cole responded, churning the thick-end of his bat onto his own living room floor. “My Fucking tenant,” Cole said. The tenant responded with three more thumps of his own. To Landon it was the dull faraway sound of mortars. Cole reached for his Sig. Landon pushed his hand away, then kissed it like the Pope’s ring and walked out the door, twisted grin on his face. Wished he could find in the new morning an allegorical rebirth, some small, good thing, regardless of how derivative, a journey whose path led elsewhere, but started as others had--with a taste of warm, fresh bread.

-END-

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If you liked what you just read and want more, order Kevin Sites’s award-winning, debut novel The Ocean Above Me, available at the link below.
https://www.amazon.com/Ocean-Above-Me-Novel/dp/0063278286

The widespread use of high-tech body armor has saved many lives in warzones, but at a price. Usually it’s the loss of exposed limbs. For U.S. Military doctors in Eastern Afghanistan, amputations were a frequent and somber ritual. Then one day, a dozen years into America’s longest war, they had a chance to not only save a life, but a future livlihood as well.

A thirteen-year-old Afghan boy named Habibullah caught his arms in a flour mill and they were nearly shredded from his body. An American medical team at remote combat surgical center in Zabul Province in Eastern Afghanistan used all of their collective knowledge as well as a few improvised tricks to give him a second chance.

[This video was produced for the Global Post, but never aired.]

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Kevin Sites reported the war in Afghanistan from 2001 - 2013. His award-winning book,Swimming with Warlords, documents that odyssey. You can find it at the link below.
https://amzn.to/4ci0ASn

It was longlisted by The Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize, Finalist for The Hawthorne Prize and American Legacy Book Awards Winner for Best Fiction Thriller and Best Psychological Thriller.

“At the helm Captain Clarita Esteban allowed herself to glance back, momentarily, wary of the next monster that would crash across the bow.

In the loose flapping of the outriggers she saw the skeletal wings of a flightless, heavy-bottomed bird. All velocity, no lift.”

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. . .

CH A P T E R 1

STORM

Philomena rose on the swell of an early-winter sea. A humble, cupped-hand offering to angry gods, 110 gross tons lifted like a 110-pound ballerina. The mid-Atlantic water turning gunmetal gray as it stretched and then clipped into windblown froth. Her outrigger arms, shaken loose from their bindings, struck hard against the deck, hammer to gong, sending a bass current resonating through the ship. At the helm Captain Clarita Esteban allowed herself to glance back, momentarily, wary of the next monster that would crash across the bow. In the loose flapping of the outriggers she saw the skeletal wings of a flightless, heavy-bottomed bird. All velocity, no lift.

“Shrimping 101, Junior,” she shouted above the noise of the storm. “Secure the damn outriggers.”

She shook her head in disgust, but knew it was no time to school her crew. Junior, the deckhand, ducked away among the five others gathered in the wheelhouse, all dressed in boots and rain slickers, summoned in the middle of the night by the unexpected ferocity of the storm.

They struggled to keep their footing when the arms soared skyward again, slapping against each other as the water disappeared beneath the ship after a moment of zero gravity at the wave’s crest. Philomena’s bulk, unstoppable on the downward stroke, displaced its weight and more on splashdown, sucking in torrents over the gunwales before washing back out again on the next lift.

“And where the hell’s the reporter?” Esteban demanded, once confident they’d all stuck their last dismount without injury.

LUKAS LANDON HAD slept through stormy prelude, woken only now by his nausea. The hot lavender tea the cook had given him, mixed with a teaspoon of a peculiar white powder, had indeed helped him sleep. Too well, it seemed. He climbed down from his top bunk, sloth-like, timing his movements with the ship’s rise and fall. Pushing himself against the back wall, in a lean-to squat he threaded one leg through his jeans, then the other. He was wearing a mil-spec T-shirt the color of cocoa powder, bought from the mall-size post exchange in Bagram, his thick, green wool sweater pulled over it. The sweater was an ugly pragmatic thing of ropy Celtic weave, a gift from Vanessa, handed to him blank-faced on their last Christmas together. Even in his fuzzy state, Landon noticed that the two bunks below his were empty. Junior and Chuy were above deck already, no doubt, tying things down, battening the hatches or whatever it was deckhands did in rough seas.

Landon looked at his feet and made a tactical decision to peel off the dirty socks he’d worn to bed. Bare feet, he figured, were better for gripping Philomena’s lower deck as she pitched and rolled. Plus, if he had to swim tonight, he’d rather his feet be unencumbered by socks or shoes. He shuddered at the thought, considered another almost as scary: the possibility of his MacBook Air falling to the floor and getting smashed to pieces. He reached to the top of his bunk, found it inside his sleep- ing bag, and stuffed it back into the waterproof black polypropylene shoulder bag where it normally lived on the ship when he wasn’t abusing its keyboard. Then he rolled his sleeping bag around it like a taco and stuffed it all into his duffel bag. He was about to pinch the bag’s loops together and clip it shut when he remembered his smartphone. He might need it to grab photos of the crew in action topside. He dug his hand deep into the duffel, retrieving it with just a few sweeps of his hand. He’d doubled-wrapped it with resealable sandwich bags before they left Port Royal, just in case of a night like this.

He slid the bagged smartphone into the back pocket of his jeans, closed up his duffel again, and rehung it on the bunk’s foot-rail, content that the expensive gear inside was safely insulated from harm. His in- sides were a different story. His stomach was becoming queasier by the second. Before climbing up to the deck he’d first need to make a pit stop to expel the ornery remnants of what little he’d eaten earlier that evening. It had been choppy when he finally went to bed past midnight after filing his last dispatch, but nothing like this. Landon’s innards sloshed from side to side.

The marine toilet was a dark mole hole tucked into the curve of Philomena’s bow at the bottom of the ship. To reach it Landon would have to descend a small staircase that led from the closet-size staterooms. While he hated the idea of going deeper into the guts of the ship, better to purge in private, he thought, than embarrass himself in front of the captain and crew. Once done, it would be another short trip up the double-stacked tower with the galley at its base and wheelhouse at its crown.

The distance to the head was a diagonal downward journey of just eight feet. So why did he feel like one of the Flying Wallendas about to cross a tightrope hundreds of feet in the air between skyscrapers? When the sea leveled out, he took a breath and went. He reached the handle of the head’s oval metal door in two steps and a shuffle. But as he pushed in against it, he felt a new dread in his stomach. Philomena being scooped into the air yet again. Reproach for himself when he realized his feet were too close together. Regret when they were both swept out from under him. He had only a fraction of a second to tuck his chin and brace with his forearms. His body rotated, pig on a spit, exposing his back to the steel jut of steps, and a sudden torque of the ship hammered his spine against them. Even with the discordant storm sounds echoing in that space, Landon could hear the crunchy snap of his number-six rib, and with it an oscillating short-circuit of pain and shock. He would’ve dwelt there, but he sensed Philomena beginning to rise yet again. He scrambled to his knees, pushed open the door to the head, and shut himself inside. This drop was more forgiving than the last, with the ship caught in the slough of a following wave, a gap long enough for him to register the ripping pain in his back and his nausea reaching its peak.

He crab-scrabbled to the lidless bowl of the marine toilet and emptied his guts in a deep, hollowing retch. While that cleared his useless ballast, the muscle contraction around his broken rib ignited a stabbing pain so fierce his eyes watered, forcing him to check the panicked intake of his breath to avoid repeating the torture in reverse. Instead he drew air in wisps, short, shallow, cautiously. He wiped his mouth with the back of his right hand, releasing it from its death squeeze around the rim, adrenaline, fear, and pain still surging across his synapses.

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“The glory that was Greece,” he whimpered, “and the grandeur that was Rome.” Repeated the mantra until it calmed him, but also, unintentionally, distracted himself from the ship’s next rising cycle. When it reached its apex, the hangman’s trapdoor opened. The downward force folded Landon’s left arm. His unsupported weight dropped in a half-meter free fall, his face leading the charge, slamming into the back of the bowl. A flash-bang grenade of white exploded inside his head, then petered out in an ephemera of gray mist and stars. He ran his tongue against his uppers, found both incisors relocated as enamel arrows pointed toward his tonsils. Landon wondered if the next battering would simply finish him off. Oh, that would be merciful. He could see now how people in life-or-death situations decided to just give up. It was manifestly easier to choose less suffering than more. In the lull, he swallowed the blood accumulating in his mouth. It tasted of iron, salt, and defeat. Would he choke on his own teeth with the next gulp of blood? The thought still inchoate, he reached up with his right hand and wiggled them free of their sockets. New pain surged through his septum, but then a moment of pride as he looked at the bloody Chiclets he’d delivered. Pitiful as it was, he upended the cycle of doom by taking action, tucking the teeth into the front pocket of his jeans while his tongue now probed the bloody gap. Maybe a dentist could replant them after it was all over. But that consideration was wiped away by Philomena’s latest ascent.

Landon rolled onto his right side and uncoiled his six-foot frame, pressing his bare feet against the toilet base and his back against the metal curve of the wall. With the tight wedge and his right shoulder to the ground, he hoped his body mass would muffle the shock wave before it reached his broken left rib. He had a million digital magazine descriptions, and he’d read in some lad mag a similar tip on the right body position to survive a sudden elevator drop. Probably nonsense, but he clung to the concept nonetheless. It was that or wait for the ship and the sea to finish him off, a fate he was still fighting against, at least for now. Historically, his optimism had been weak. Any dark prognosis consumed him, rolled him over quickly, conclusively, repeatedly.

The drop never came. At least not the way he expected. He braced, waited for the climb to slow and for the inevitable elevator plunge. But at the peak, the trawler seemed to hover for a moment, and the rumble of the engine went silent, its vibrations still. He felt the hot flash of a new fear. Philomena had lost power. Landon raised his head, spat out the stream of blood that had been pooling in his mouth, and returned to his defensive crouch. Then came a massive slam against the ship’s starboard flank. The wave’s energy raced through the hull, concussing through his back and the contours of his body. His feet slipped as Philomena tipped low to port. He pushed harder against the base of the toilet bowl, exerted so much force he’d thought he might displace it from the rivets that held it fast. As the ship’s port side swung back up, now dipping to starboard like the low end of a cradle, he relaxed slightly.

Anticipating the next cycle, Landon pushed with his feet again as the boat rocked hard, back to port. But it would make no difference. A bulldozer of water pushed Philomena into her portside momentum and did what seemed impossible; it flipped the ship keel up. The momentum pinned his body to the highest point in the room, as if at the top of a roller-coaster loop. But just as quickly as it had spun, the ship’s spiraling keel came to a stop. The inverted wheelhouse had found friction like a surfer’s hand raking the inside of a wave. With the centrifugal force suddenly cut off, Landon plunged, left side down. This time the pain had color and texture, a searing campfire of orange cracking through every nerve ending. And then . . . nothing. The overloaded machine of Landon’s brain shut down.

GIVEN THE CHOICE, he might’ve preferred that to experiencing what came next. With no forward thrust, the nearly three-ton weight of Philomena’s Caterpillar D343 diesel engine became an enormous anchor at the ship’s midline. The imbalance of the weight and position dipped the tapered edge of the starboard gunwales like a knife into the surface of the water. The angle of the slice drove the ship downward with such force that it was entirely submerged in seconds. Giant bubbles of air burped out toward the highest point of every opening. The high, shrill whip of the forty-five-knot Force 9 winds that had buffeted it just seconds before vanished. Seawater squeezed through every crevice in the ship’s deck, flooding forward from stern to bow. First filled was Philomena’s freezer-plate hold, with a six-hundred-box capacity but only two-thirds full of white shrimp. Next the water climbed to the engine room, rising at a steep angle toward the bow and the ship’s head, where Landon lay unconscious. With its firehose pressure, the sea penetrated nearly every hollow cavity, purging it of air and creating a cacophony of sounds, the screaks and clicks of metal and wood pushed to near-failure points. Then Philomena shuddered. Was finally silent, before it began its fluttering descent to the sandy bottom below.

-END-

If you liked what you just read and want more, order Kevin Sites’s award-winning, debut novel The Ocean Above Me, available at the link below.

https://www.amazon.com/Ocean-Above-Me-Novel/dp/0063278286

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Breakfast

A Forward Operating Base on the western border near Tal Afar, Iraq. November 2003. Temporary home of an American airborne battalion.
When I arrive, nobody’s in a good mood.

A patrol was ambushed the night before. 
A popular staff sergeant lost his leg to an RPG and is now struggling for his life.

The battalion commander is a tall, powerfully built man who at one time had been a state champion wrestler with Olympic dreams. A bad knee ended that.

The next night he leads his men on a raid against a suspected insurgent leader. His soldiers swarm a multi-house compound in the dark, chill of 4 AM.

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Doors are kicked in. The family roused.
In one of the bedrooms a specialist peels back a blanket.
Two young boys are revealed.
So small and the way they’re curled around each other, they look to me . . . like puppies.

The head of the house is taken to the main room.
He’s forced to his stomach on the cold concrete.  

One soldier puts a boot between his shoulder blades.
Another threads his hands through plastic loops.
The cuffs click tight, joining his wrists behind his back.

He’s stood up and held in a corner of his own house.
A light machine gun is pointed at his chest.
His wife and children huddle under thick blankets while the house is searched. 

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Bad intel. Nothing is found.  A knife slices through the cuffs.
The man is released just as the sun begins to rise. 
It is the Muslim Holy month of Ramadan.

But now that the dawn has past, neither he, nor his family will eat or drink anything until sundown.

There are apologies and the soldiers load up their Humvees to head back to their forward operating base.

I see the man, who only moments before had been held at gunpoint, pressed to the floor with a boot, now approach the commander.

He places his right hand on his heart, looks the officer square in his eyes.
Softly asks him to bring the men back inside his home.

His family will prepare them breakfast before they go.
The gesture politely refused. The commander and his troops retreat.

-END-

(Text and photos by Kevin Sites)

Kevin Sites reported the war in Iraq from 2003 – 2015, beginning with the U.S.-led invasion and ending with the rise of the Islamic State.

His award-winning book, The Things They Cannot Say, details more stories like this one. You can find it at the link below.

https://amzn.to/4cfGyb0

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“The scars and ink had taken months to spell out what he wanted to say, but now reflected his life’s purpose: These hands doled out justice.”

. . .

Cullman County Sheriff “Mean” Gene McAvoy harbored no delicate sensibilities about the potential boot sitting across from him. In fact, the deputy candidate’s obvious tolerance for pain and messaging boldness intrigued the six-term lawman. Mac, a proud ‘bama redneck, most believed would exit the office only through death or indictment, would gladly tell you himself after a few beers and a shot a Jim Beam on a Saturday afternoon fishing for striped bass at Dismal Creek that Bull Connor had been both his inspiration and career role model. Kept his grandaddy’s battered, yellow hardhat on a shelf behind his desk in case the rest of his demeanor played too subtle.

“A’ight son, just make sure you got your sleeves down, when ya’on the clock,” he chuckled. “Hey Donny,” McAvoy shouted to his number two, Don Miller, was a cross between Ed McMahon and Machiavelli, the sidekick consigliere who was always posting up just outside the Sheriff’s office for occasions like this.

“Take a look at here what our newest deputy-to-be done to hisself.”

McAvoy had discovered Heller’s body art after asking him about potentially ‘compromising ink’ he might be sporting. A routine question for new badge hires.  Though pleasantly surprised when the boy hadn’t been tatted up in swastikas or black SS lightning bolts, the Sheriff wasn’t expecting this.

Miller’s eyes widened too when Heller pushed back the sleeves on his maroon, bone-button cowboy shirt. While he hadn’t done it for attention Heller was now feeling like the center attraction in a carnival side show. He’d just wanted  a reminder. Palpated the comforting swell so often it became like a ritual sign of the cross or finger kiss to a mezuza.

“Y’all Joad Heller’s boy, right?, Miller had asked at the time, eyes still locked on the design.

“Sir,” Heller confirmed, breaking Miller’s gaze only when he re-sheathed his log-sized forearms.

“Shame about you mamma,” Miller offered, looking into the giant’s face for the first time. Expecting to see some deadness or cruelty there considering where the boy’d been and what he’d seen. But Heller, at least at this moment, had the soft, alert eyes of a pleaser. Incongruous, Miller thought, giving what he’d carved onto his body. Shook his head as he watched him walk out the door.

Heller  had started it one searing, sleepless summer night at COP Tillman after getting the news his unit had been extended, indefinitely.  Sitting in one of the plastic port-a-shitters, he’d dragged a boxcutter from the crease of his left wrist to his elbow. Then, added two slashes, careful not to nick veins, turned the line into an arrow pointing to his hand. Did exactly the same to his right. Later, post-deployment, after allowing the scars to rise and keloid over into perfect, pink earthworms, he had the word “Front” tattooed in a black, military stencil above the scars and “Toward Enemy” in the same, below. The scars and ink had taken months to spell out what he wanted to say, but now reflected his life’s purpose: These hands doled out justice.

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.   .   .

Following six-weeks at the police academy in Birmingham, Lance Heller spent the two years, on the prescribed first rung of the sheriff deputy career trajectory, guarding cons at the Cullman County Correctional Facility. Most there, CO’s and inmates alike, gave him wide berth, his size and solitary bearing early conversation crushers. But he got to know a few of the older inmates, black, brown and white alike. Men so hollowed out they gave traditional boundaries no truck at all. Talked to anyone they motherfuckingfeltlike, including a monster-sized screw like Heller. And Heller had surprised them, if that was still possible, that such a quiet, placid giant existed in there with them. Someone who treated you with respect if you proffered the same, who avoided verbal and physical violence unless provoked and whose countenance seemed to reflect no pleasure in the task of penning men up like animals. By the time he left, a handful of them were quite sorry to see him go. Told him so to his face.

.   .   .

He spent his next two years solo, just how he liked it, cruising the county from Battleground in the north to Black Bottom in the south and from Holly Pond in the east to Crane Hill in the west. Endless nights of Alabama blacktop, long drives in delicious solitude. What he’d dreamed of during those 16-months in the sandbox and 24 on the cellblock. For the most part he’d acquitted himself fine, responding to domestics, break-ins, bar fights and such. Applied peaceful means when he could or violence when he must, content to do his real work in the dark and out of uniform. A shadow inspiring fear or reassurance depending on where you stood. But happy to stay out of the sightline of Mean Gene MacAvoy and Donny Miller with the exception of brief exposure during the morning shift changes. The two always just shaking their heads in disbelief when they saw him, as if Bigfoot himself had just passed them in the hallway.

It wasn’t until near the end of his fourth year with the Sheriff’s Office that Heller drew some unwanted attention. Happened on a late Friday night early Saturday morning when he stopped to help what he figured were stranded motorists on County Road 31, few miles north of Colony. At first, Heller had passed the royal blue Escort pulled off on the side of the road in the southbound lane with no lights. He’d thought it was abandoned, but checked his rearview, noticed movement inside and crossed over the median to go back. He coasted to a stop behind the vehicle, no radio or flashers until he knew what he was dealing with. Liked it better without a circus anyway. Only his headlights illuminating two figures in the car. A woman in the driver’s seat and a man sitting next to her. They were both frozen as if the patrol car beams turned them into ice sculptures. Heller had learned in his nighttime cruising of the county roads that people reacted three ways when stopped by the popo. Folks either, 1. Exploded in a flurry of activities searching for licenses and registrations in gloveboxes, 2. Frantically tried to toss joints, baggies or bottles out of sight, or  3. Just locked in place. This was definitely a 3. These individuals, he speculated, were frightened. And not without good reason, he knew. Being black during a cop encounter in the middle of the night anywhere in America the odds were rarely in your favor. He also knew their fears would grow exponentially when they spied him through their rearview mirrors.  Saw the silhouette of his battleship frame eclipse the headlights on his ‘long’ short walk to them. The stop did not go as Heller planned.

He tapped on the driver’s side window of the Escort, rolled up tight, despite the warm spring evening. The young woman at the wheel glanced over to the young man in the passenger’s seat looking for guidance. He just bowed his head. Heller tapped again. She indicated she would need to turn the key in the ignition to power down the window. Heller nodded and when she did, realized immediately why she’d been reluctant to break that barrier between them. A powerful waft of acrid pot smoke emanated from inside. He didn’t say anything for a beat. His face inscrutable.

Finally, waved his hand in front of him like he was dusting smoke from a burning frying pan. Broke into smile. “Was worried y’all might be having some car trouble,” he said, trying to calm them. But seems like you’re okay. I’m Deputy Lance Heller he said, in friendly tone. And y’all are? The driver already had her license out, handed it to the deputy. Heller took it in his bear paw.

Reading it, “Regina C. Talmadge,” He paused, after glancing the date. “Well happy belated birthday Regina. Eighteen this week—so I take you’re just out celebrating a bit?” Regina nodded nervously as Heller handed her back the license.

“Yes,” she said, tentative.

“And you, sir, what’ll they call you?” The passenger didn’t answer, just continued to hang his head as if contemplating what to do. Finally, Regina spoke up.

“That’s Marcus.”

But no sooner had she gotten the words when he yanked the door handle back and bolted from the vehicle, sprinting toward the road. Heller did not give chase, but tapped Regina gently on her arm, urged her to stay put, while he shouted to the fleeing figure.

“Marcus,” a bemused annoyance in his voice. “C’mon back son.” Heller said. “A lil weed ain’t no reason to go rabbit, ‘specially these days.”

Marcus seemed unconvinced, was now across the road when Heller continued. “Some birthday present Marcus. Just leaving Regina here all by herself. Let’s get this all sorted, so we can get you two home,” he continued. “Your folks gonna be worried.”

At that Marcus stopped, resigned. The whole thing not particularly well thought out, he knew. Ashamed, he turned around and began walking back to the Escort. He’d just reached the berm on the nearside, when headlights appeared from out of the moonless night. Marcus froze. An early model blue and gray F-150 streaked past clipping the young man and spinning him sideways. He collapsed on the black top silently, as if felled by a poison dart. Truck kept going like it never saw him. Maybe didn’t. But Heller got the plate. Was weirdly blessed with the ability to remember random letters and numbers. Had served him well in the army. And now.

“Marcus!” Regina screamed. Both she and Heller ran to him. Heller calling dispatch for an ambulance and backup on the sprint. Marcus was lying on his back, his left leg pretzeled under him, conscious and alive, taking short, shallow, gasping breaths. His eyes wide, the pain of his crumpled limb and the inability to fill his lungs with a proper breath flooded him with terror.

“Get down here,” Heller said to Regina patting the ground beside Marcus. She did as she was told. He instructed her further in a calm and deliberate voice. “Hold his hand, talk to him. Tell’m a joke. Tell’m it’s all gonna be fine. Tell’m you love him—if you do. Never hurts to hear that,” he winked at her.

Heller pulled his heavy mag light from his patrol belt, twisted to its wide beam and scanned Marcus’s body. It was what he heard, rather than what he saw that got his attention. A whistling, seeping sound with every inhalation. He ripped open Marcus’s short sleaved button shirt, examined his chest, saw what he was looking for. Cotton candy, what Doc Petroski had called it in Afghanistan. A bubbling, bloody, pink froth on the right lower quadrant of his chest. Heller used his uniform sleeve to wipe it away, saw that it built up with the next breath. He pulled a handful of chem lights from another pouch on his belt, snapped them all in one wring of a chicken’s neck and spread them in a perimeter of glowing green around Marcus’s body. He went back to his patrol car, hit his blue and red flashers, popped the trunk and retrieved a large, waterproof, molded plastic case, bright green with a white circle at its center imprinted with a red cross. Back at the young man’s side he worked quickly, Marcus’s skin already tinging pale with signs of hypoxia. Heller pulled an oxygen cannister, the size of a kitchen fire extinguisher from where it nested in the black precut foam at the bottom of the first aid case. He attached plastic tubing, one end threaded onto the cannister’s gas nipple and the other to a conical mask.  He turned the valve on the oxygen cannister, setting the flow to 15 liters per minute and placed it over Marcus’s nose and mouth, gently lifting his head and securing the elastic band behind it. He handed Regina the mag light and told her to keep the beam over Marcus’s torso. Her hands were shaking so badly, Heller had to steady them in his own.

“Marcus needs us,” Heller said looking into her eyes. Only after she nodded, did he resume his work. Next, he wiped the chest clear with an antibacterial cloth then dug around in the kit for a few seconds and found what he was looking for—a thin, sterile 8x10 sheet of clear plastic. He removed it from its paper backing and placed it across the young man’s chest where he’d seen the bloody froth. He used white medical tape to secure it on the top and both sides, leaving the bottom open as a kind of exhaust valve. It was called an occlusive dressing. Something he also learned from Petroski. Watched him do one on Afghan Army soldier pierced by a round through a gap in his body armor.  Once Heller had the dressing in place, Marcus’s breathing evened out. The plastic pulled in against the puncture on his chest during his inhalations and expanded slightly as some air exited through the bottom on his exhalation. Heller was relieved as his color began to return. Regina saw the fear in Marcus’s face subside and he settled. She looked at Heller, grateful. Also, a little surprised by the big man’s medical knowledge and ease in applying it on a dark road in the middle of nowhere. She was more surprised by what he did next. Once Marcus stabilized, Heller patted down the young man’s pants pockets, located a dime bag of weed. He quickly pulled it open, scattered its contents into the sink of the berm, tossed the empty bag into the breeze watched it tumble like a gray dust ball to the tree line and then disappear. He looked again at Regina.

“Go to you car, roll down all the windows. Dump out everythin in the ashtrays or anything else we shouldn’t be finding on you tonight,” he said.

“It was just, that,” she gestured in the direction of the bag. “Marcus got into MSU… and my birthday she nodded, nervous. “Just wanted to kick it a little before everything changes, know?”

He did, but now there were sirens in the distance.

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.   .   .

When they finally sat him down after the Colony incident, Sheriff MacAvoy and Chief Deputy Miller told Heller, “this wan’t no reprimand.”

“You done good son,” MacAvoy told him, pushing back in his chair until the back wall impeded any further progress, he then stepped the sole of his boot against the desk’s edge holding at a 45-degree sweet spot, then tilted a plastic water bottle to his lips and let a dark, brown stream of Wintergreen Skoal dribble down its side.

“Prolly saved the boy’s life too, right Donny?” he said, so expectant of Miller’s support he didn’t even bother to look at him anymore.

“Damn right, Sheriff. Girl said you was like some giant guardian angel, feedin’ him 02 and patching up that sucking chest wound like you was back in the ‘stan.”

“But here’s the thang, Lance,” the sheriff interrupted, surprised Heller by using his first name. “You gotta call that shit in right away. I mean, a vehicle on the side of the road in the dark a mile outside Colony? Who knows what you coulda been up against, dealers, gangbangers. Ya’ big son, but your size ain’t gonna stop a well-placed round. Ya know that from what you seen over there.”

Heller nodded, if nothing more than to put the sheriff on pause for a second, which was all it bought him. “Good thing for you it was just a couple potheads. Young knappy ones at that.” The sheriff laughed and on cue, Miller joined in. “Now we glad you did activate your body cam, shows you doing some A1 hero shit, fully befitting a Cullman County Sheriff’s Deputy. But ain’t sure what you were thinking before that – things ya said to them about the weed ain’t being no big deal. Now it might be recreational legal for those hippie faeries in California, Colorado and Oregon – but still against the law right here in the Yellowhammer. Right Donny.”

“God’s truth, Sheriff,” Miller agreed.

 MacAvoy continued, “And I guess we can understand it cutting out before the amblance and Junior, uh Deputy Crawford, arrived. So, if y’all crystal clear on how we operate,” the sheriff unleashed another stream in his bottle, “me and Donny thought we’d reward ya, by moving you off nights couple months early before you scheduled to rotate. Next Monday you starting first shift. How’s that sound?” Like shit, Heller thought, but worked up a blank smile. “Thanks, Sheriff,” and then to Miller, “Chief Deputy.”

 “Well deserved,” Miller nodded. “But just one more thing and we all be square. We got the tox reports came back from that boy. Had enough THC in his system to make Snoop Dog proud. Heller tilted his head surprised, but then realized the man did little else besides surf the net all day when not straight-manning for Mean Gene. “Medical Center released him yesterday.” Miller unbuttoned his left shirt pocket, shook out a folded piece of paper. “Got a warrant. We need to you bring him in.”

The sheriff pushed backed with his foot letting his chair settle back into position bringing him closer to Heller. “And that video, well some idiot in IT musta hit the wrong button or somethin,” the Sheriff said, smiling, cause ain’t nothing on it now but you rendering life savin’ assistance to that boy, right Donny?”

“A real mystery, Sheriff,” Miller said. Heller knew what the trade was. Protection for him and the Sheriff’s Office from a potential lawsuit. They probably figured a case could be made that Heller had scared young Marcus into that mortal danger. Short it by going on the offensive. He imagined MacAvoy saying it aloud, which he never would, in between squirts to his bottle.

We just need ta make surtain no slimy, amblance chaser defense liar type tempted to take up his case. Know’d that the boy was crispier than homemade pork rinds. Arrest’l signal they wan’t be no payday against the county. No sir! Not on this one. We talk with the boy on hometurf and if he through with it all, we cut him loose. If not we call in Jonesy from the DA and he have the cometojesus with him.

How Mean Gene and Donny did business, he thought. Cockroaches after a nuke. Through his uniform shirt, Heller rubbed the raised edges of his forearms, thanked them both again and left the office.

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.   .   .

Geordie Rhodes’ house out near the county line was about as sorry as his life. Lance discovered the 54-year-old man had once been a Cullman County deputy, but with performance reviews so bad he’d never made it out of corrections. Eventually got bounced from the Sheriff’s completely and spent most of his days with a low rent private security outfit, checking in cars at a guard gate on the perimeter of molded fiberglass plant. Heller was surprised he’d kept guard card at all, considering that he’d already had two DUI’s on his record. And those were just the ones he’d found. Probably more that already washed off his record from earlier days. Rhodes home was a single-wide in an overgrown dog-patch of weeds, garbage and twisted mystery metals cluttering its lonesome country parcel. The F-150 that had clipped the kid was sitting in  the yard, sitting at 45-degree angle to the mobile home as if Rhodes had just hot parked from the liquor store, aiming for the quickest way inside the front door with his bottles and beer.

Heller took it all in. Breathed in the quiet before the violence, as he’d done before a night raid on the mud-brick qalats that were the architectural cornerstones of rural Afghanistan. He flipped on the Bronco’s high beams and the box shadow of the trailer, appeared on a little rise behind it.  After kicking in the tin-weight front door, he stood in the frame, let his silhouette sink in. He wore a green and black checked keffiyeh wrapped around his face and head and a pair of dark blue coveralls tucked into his old desert boots. Rhodes startled awake from his sprawl on the living room recliner, half handle of Old Crow on a TV tray and filthy jelly jar glass beside it. The threadbare carpet covered with empty Bud cans and fast-food wrappers licked clean. A movement out of the corner caught Heller’s eye.  A tiny, Dachshund bitch, overweight from eating whatever Rhodes dropped on the floor, which by the looks of both the trailer and the dog, was plenty.  It didn’t bark, didn’t make a sound, was just twitching and shivering trying to wedge itself into a stained corner, where, Heller figured, it had spent most of its miserable days and nights.

“Whathafuuu,” Rhodes mumbles, puffy-faced with eyelids heavy as kettlebells and the ugly disorientation from a few short hours of alcohol-ravaged, rem-less sleep. This called Heller’s attention back to him and the fact that he was shoeless with the recliner up quickly confirmed his target package. With a wrist-flick, he both extended the metal baton and brought it down in a vicious slice over the top of Rhodes’ right foot. The impact crushed several metatarsals and the lateral cuneiform. Rhodes screamed clear of  his sodden state, a sobering, eternal pain, that was just as quickly, absorbed in the surroundings of nothingness He reached toward it, but instead found himself face to face with the keffiyeh and from it a voice so deep it sounded like it was coming from the netherworld, but smelling of Pepsodent and a disciplined regimen of oral hygiene.

“That foot’l heal.” Heller gestured to the misshapen right club, a dirty white athletic sock absorbing a growing stain of crimson underneath. “But you’ll be letting somebody else do the driving from now on.”

“I didn’t do nothing, ” Rhodes said, coming out as a sob. Sucked back tears and snot, immediately after.

“We both know that’s just not the truth, Geordie. You been a menace on the road. But that part of your life is done. Best you stay in here until the fires out.”

“Fire? What fire?”

“The one about to take your old 150 out there.”

“Not my truck,” he whined.

Heller, stood up, touched his chin. “Well maybe you’re right, ain’t much left to it anyway—and being way out here you’re gonna need wheels to get you groceries, take you to AA meetings and such. I might know an ol’ boy needs some work. Good driver. So happens he’s in the program too.”

Rhodes reached toward his calf, choked it trying to stop the pain from moving up his leg. Silent tears finding pathways down the ingrained crevices of his face. Heller looked over to the corner again.

“The pup. What’s her name?”

“Huh?” Rhodes said, his disorientation dissolving with the pain.

Heller nodded to the brown bundle still quiet, but shaking so bad it looked to him like a roll of salami having a seizure.

“Wha—uh?,” Rhodes followed Heller’s eyes to the corner. “Dolly. Her names’ Dolly.” Rhodes said, hoping information might liberate him from the white-hot ache, the surging of pins and needles throughout his limbs and spine.

Heller, nodded approvingly, collapsed the baton by jutting it down into the recliner’s armrest. Rhodes flinched, became still. Saw some relief on the tray in front of him, uncapped the Old Crow and took a long, fish-gulping pull that nearly emptied it.

Heller squatted, held out his hand to the dog. She looked like she was about to rear back in fear, but then sniffed it. His scent calmed her. Then he scooped her up and tucked her under his arm. A football with a snout and tail.

“Aight, Geordie,” Heller said, agreeable tone, coming into his voice. “I won’t do the truck, but I’m unna take Dolly.” He chickened-winged his arm to emphasize the dog, in case Rhodes wasn’t following. Then Heller eyed Rhodes’ old beige landline on the kitchen counter.

“Call yourself an ambulance. It’s gonna take them about 40-minutes to get out here. That’ll give you time to think back how all this happened.  You being so drunk you got your foot all caught up in those rickety trailer steps. Twisted it and such. Hurt so bad all you could do was crawl into your recliner. Square?”

Rhodes nodded.

“I hear otherwise, I’ll be back for the truck. And,” he paused, staring down at Rhodes through the slits in his scarf. “if I hear that you out driving again I’ll torch it with you inside.” Rhodes dropped his head into his chest. When he looked up again, man and dog were gone.

.   .   .

Heller unwound the keffiyeh as he drove his Bronco down the empty country road toward town. He breathed in deeply then pushed up the sleeves of his coveralls and, without taking his eyes off the road, palpated the keloid welts. First the left then the right. Once he finished, he glanced over at Dolly in the passenger seat. He began singing to her, softly at first and then with growing confidence, ‘I am a seeker a poor sinful creature there is none weaker than I am.”

She sniffed him, then climbed forward, paws on the dashboard, strained to poke her head out of the half-cracked window trying to take in the crisp air outside as the dark transformed itself into dawn.

-END-

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If you liked what you just read and want more, order Kevin Sites’s award-winning, debut novel The Ocean Above Me, available at the link below.

https://www.amazon.com/Ocean-Above-Me-Novel/dp/0063278286

Northern Afghanistan. October 2001.

This incident took place near a village called Dasht-e-Qala.

At the time it was the front line between the forces of the Taliban government of Afghanistan and the Northern Alliance fighters attempting to overthrow it with the help of the U.S. military.

A group of journalists were at a fortified position, behind a Russian tank operated by the Northern Alliance fighters.

They hear a crack in the distance. It’s a Taliban mortar round heading for their position.

The concussion of the mortar explosion blows them off their feet. But that’s not all. 

Shrapnel slices into the thigh of a National Geographic field producer.

A freelance reporter working for NBC News captures the scene on video tape.

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The network reporter continues to videotape, is even urged on by the wounded man, “shoot this, I’m bleeding,” he says.

However, if the shrapnel sliced the femoral artery, the producer could bleed to death in just four minutes.

The network reporter is conflicted, but continues videotaping for another minute or two.

Finally, he puts down the camera, takes the producer’s scarf from his neck and binds the wound, but he lets the camera continue to roll.

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They retreat from the frontline position to a safer area in the rear.

The producer is taken to a local Afghan hospital and treated. He survives his injuries.

The videotape becomes dramatic evidence of the first on camera casualty in the U.S. sponsored fight to overthrow the Taliban.

Behind the scenes, however, some colleagues criticize the reporter for not putting the camera down right away and tending to his colleague.

That freelance network reporter was me.

Twenty-three years later I still think about that incident.

And I STILL feel I did the right thing.

I had enough medical knowledge to suspect it wasn’t an arterial wound, because the blood wasn’t bright red and spurting in time to his heartbeat.

I also knew that people rarely saw the actual casualties of war anymore. It was my job to show them. The very reason I was there.

Bloody images were no longer published and circulated the way they were in the Vietnam War era.

Everything felt sanitized now. I wanted to make sure our viewers saw the truth.

The truth of what happens when hot metal meets soft human flesh.

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So what would you do?

Was the shot important enough to delay treatment?

What if the producer had died?

Is capturing an image or video that could inform MANY people worth risking the life of a SINGLE individual?

(Text, video and photos by Kevin Sites)

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Kevin Sites reported the war in Afghanistan from 2001 - 2013. His award-winning book,Swimming with Warlords, documents that odyssey. You can find it at the link below.
https://amzn.to/4ci0ASn