His Story

I don’t have any grand delusions about my own mental health. After years of practice, I have found it is completely possible to be convinced certain people are trying to ruin me and know at the same time they can’t possibly be. The practice was in believing they couldn’t possibly be.

This time, I know I am onto something real. I feel naked. I sip at my tea with a practiced bland affect, cutting occasional glances at a young man. He’s sitting at a table some twenty feet away, scribbling in a notebook. I’m feeling like it’s getting time to take some evasive action.

Earlier, we sat in the same train car. He walked by, stopped, turned around.

“Hey, buddy,” he says, “you been to Afghanistan?”

I look at him while he stands there with this gaping smile aimed at me. He almost looks like he could be from Fellujah; then again, he could be from Tijuana. Either way, he sounded one hundred percent American, but after two years in a warzone, you end up looking at people differently.

“Yeah. I was there.” Must be the haircut. I’m not wearing a t-shirt declaring itself as my sole, lousy piece of nostalgia from that place. No uniform for sure - that can get you the wrong kind of attention.

Then, he’s sitting across from me. “How long were you there?”

This lasted for fifteen minutes, but after the first three questions, I wasn’t talking. He wanted to know these details. How does your team plan a mission? How do you know which way to travel through a city? What was your biggest worry when you were there?

I review my personal List of How to Tell If You Are Being Paranoid or Is This One For Real. Item one: he doesn’t know me. He has no motivation, unless he’s one of these so called home-grown terrorists. Item two: he’s probably watching me because he has some soldier boy fantasy running through his head, or maybe he’s not even looking at me anymore. I’m just part of the scenery. Item three: according to everyone else, people aren’t out to get other people in real life. Not in an everyday scene like this, at least. I find this last point the hardest to believe.

My tea finished, I stand and toss some change on the table. My shadow happens to be gathering his things. I watch him out of the corner of my eye as I head toward a door leading out into the northbound side of the train station. He’s throwing something away and walking toward the same door.

He has no motivation. It’s coincidence. Unreasonable to think he’s up to no good.

Training in the Army has taught me how to deal with situations like this. It was maybe some of the best training I’ve ever received: situational awareness. The rules of how to deal with this type of threat are cut and dry. Be unpredictable. Stay in areas filled with potential witnesses. The third says to avoid your attacker if at all possible, but I’ve had a long week, and even though my back aches and I feel about three nights short on sleep, I think that maybe I can take him and be done with this. He looks like a college kid trying to be the big man, with his big hair and backpack, his grey hoodie and his dark glasses.

I adjust my own backpack and move fast out of the door. Turning a corner, I see him popping out of the same door, head swiveling. I find a recess in the wall where a vending machine must have sat at one time. It’s empty now, so I take cover. A sneaker squeaks on the waxed floor of the train station amid the rumble of voices. Footsteps quicken.

With perfect timing and trained intuition, I reach out and grab a handful of shirt. Grabbing his arm with my other hand, I twist my hips hard, hurling him around in a new, unexpected direction – an arc that ends with his face smacking into the cold cinderblock wall. I kick his feet back away from the wall and about three feet apart, forcing him to balance himself with his cheek planted on the blood-spattered wall. Next, I grab his backpack and sling it to the ground.

“You,” I hissed into his ear, “are not going to move. Or I will kill you and stuff you head-first into a toilet. Understand?” He nods, and I add a fast punch to his ribs for punctuation. He coughs and almost loses his balance. I see a line of thick, bloody drool stretching for the floor.

The contents of the backpack spill onto the station floor: pencils, The Iliad, The Art of War, some kind of Palm planner, a tiny digital camera, and the notebook.

“No!” he whimpered. “I’m sorry! I…I just wanted to know you. I wanted to understand you…”

I ripped open the notebook, turning pages to see how the words could relate to me. The words that poked out at me – the ones highlighted in yellow or sometimes with a box drawn around them – started coalescing into an idea: Trojans; unfathomable plans; The Serene and Inscrutable Commander. There followed a kind of character sketch on the last page.

Thousand Yard Stare – I think I understand this phrase now. Man on the train – fresh from Afghanistan, I bet. Sat alone on the train. Generally avoids people. Timing of words were interesting. Asked if he was in Afghanistan, and he answers, “Yeah” pregnant pause, then, “I was there.” The pause spoke volumes. He’s a tough guy, but more than that he’s a lonely, haunted man. Can probably use this for the end of the story. Looks around at the people in the café as if they’re going to come up and slip a grenade in his backpack.

“I just wanted to make a believable character for my story…”

Just a big waste of time. His story, he says.