Home

As the money floated away on the wings of bills, I realized that civilian life was just as bad as military life. I had left because the long deployments away from my family had started to tear us apart. My own kid didn’t know who I was and my wife seemed like a stranger. I joined the American working force to provide an honest living for the ones I loved. There was no question of right or wrong there; I would do anything for them. 

Life in the civilian world wasn’t all its’ cracked up to be, though. We’d just hit a recession and the jobs were scarce. This new world was a place where people got paid dirt to do the horrible things that the average Joe wouldn’t want to do. And, just like the military, if someone thought you weren’t doing it well enough you’d get your head chewed off.

If anyone caught wind of you being prior military they would take only one of two routes: A: they would look at you like an unsung hero and start asking questions about a life you’d rather forget, or B: they would condemn you with a look of horror, thinking of the misdeeds you may have done in the name of the good ole USA. I doubted the life changing decisions I had made for my family at every turn. I should have stayed in where there was always a stable paycheck and a roof over our heads. It had been an easier life where I … never got to see the smiling faces of those I fought for. Where the first year of marriage I saw my budding bride for a month and saw the first 21 months of my first child’s life through the still images sent to me in an envelope; packed with a spritz of perfume and a careful lipstick kiss on the seal.

With the economy being so bad, no one wanted to have a violence-scared war veteran who looked like a victim from a Freddy Krueger hack and slash. A homemade pipe bomb had blasted my convoy while we were on a routine area check. The first car had taken the brunt of the bomb. I had been in the second, where all the bits of the first truck had flown. Safely in the back with my rifle leaning on the door within arms reach, I had ducked behind the driver’s seat and put my arms over my head, praying I survived long enough to hold my son for the first time. I walked away with shrapnel scars on my neck and back, part of my hair would never grow back, and a limp from a round I’d taken in the calf. I was luckier than the poor guy sitting in the driver’s seat, or the poor passenger for that matter, too.

As I walked through the doors of my new workplace, I was struck blind by all the vibrant red, yellow, and brown. The cracking tiles underfoot were worn from use and the paint on the door handles had rubbed away until all you saw was the steel rod beneath. I had eaten here when I was younger. A runaway-teen who had escaped the lunch line and found bliss at the end of a double cheeseburger and a side of soggy fries.

As with any new guy, I was set to the worst job in the whole joint; fry duty. Freakin. Fries. I’d been through the deafening clack-clack of rapid gunfire, saved the men around me from impending death at the careful hands of torturers, been saved a few times too. I’d been through things that these high school brats could never even dream of, but I completely understood the concept of the ‘New Guy’. Geez, the two societies weren’t so different after all. New guy gets the worst, in fast food that meant fries, latrines, and the ‘Hole’.

God, how I hated fries now.

I’d cleaned bathrooms far worse than these. When you’re used to sitting your bum on a throne made of a bucket and a dusty lid, cleaning up after messy, uncaring American’s isn’t so bad. I found out the hard way that it must have been the Military that taught young men not to splatter urine on the floors, or maybe it was the intensive training in aim. I had two guns and the military had taught me how to use both like I wasn’t capable of functioning thought.  Maybe, it was that we were expected to keep our stuff clean and no man wants to mop up his own pee at the end of a rough day because he has inspections in the morning. Dear God, no. After you clean your bathroom, you start pissing outside. This orange and yellow bathroom would get cleaned and then misused again and again; its’ customers not caring if they left it in the same condition as they found it.

Latrine duty was usually given during the breaks from fries and the Hole, known to most customers as the ‘first window’. Luckily, I was too ugly for the Hole. That’s where they sent the high school girls who had personality and a smile, not grizzled twenty-something adults that have been through the meat grinder. It was a small victory. Instead, they stuck me behind a grill; the arid heat not too dissimilar from a desert’s. On a summer day it could easily get into the hundreds standing next to those grills. During breaks, you’d go out the back door and sit in the sun, where it was a brisk ninety, and the wispy breeze would start to cool the sweat from your overheated body.

When things got tough, I’d think of my family. When a customer would demand the firing of the ‘moron’ that jacked up his burger, I’d think of Serenity, whose hippy parents had named her well. I’d think of how I met her, the little things that made me fall in love with her, the feel of her head on my shoulder as we lay in bed.

On the few breaks that you were given, you had the choice of a free meal; a meal that you probably prepared for some stuck-up customer that hadn’t wanted their custom burger in the end. I’d eat in peace next to the bathrooms because, face it, what customer wants to sit next to the bathrooms? It was a peaceful place until someone came to use them, but the greatest thing was: they’d have to leave, too. And you’d be left sitting there in peace. Momentary bliss coming at the end of someone’s discarded double cheeseburger.

After breaks, I’d get up and do it all over again. The scheduled feel of the work constantly reminding me of the military work I did for better pay and more respect. The screams of children echoed around my workspace because parents were too lazy to care that their kid was really annoying.

Every so often, my other duties would beacon me from my post at the grill.

“Bathrooms!” the manager of the day would scream from the chair in her office and I would go grab the key to the closet that held the fifty year old mop and bucket and nuclear cleaning spray.

“Fries!” one of the food-baggers would yell because they were too busy to put some down into the splattering grease.

At the end of the day, I come home smelling like fast food. The oil on my skin making the grease-heavy shirt slide around in awkward positions. I felt like I needed to shower in hydrochloric acid just to clean away the taint that place left on my soul as well as the grease on in my hair. I walk through the door and the stench from that place would waft into every crevice of our six-hundred-dollar-a-month apartment. My wife is leaning against the wall, the dog having tipped her off to the Master’s return. Her arms are crossed over her chest and a loving smile graces her beautiful face as her eyes turn up in happiness. My son is playing with the dog, his brown dusty hair getting ruffled as the dog wins. I smile every time I walk through the door to one of the worst places I’ve ever had the benefit of living in because I get to come home. I get to come back to the wife I worked for, the son I slaved for, and his dog I’d saved for. Their beeming faces waiting for me near the door, welcoming me home daily. That alone is worth every customer-driven barrage, every trip to clean up after the turd someone couldn’t flush, every pimple on my aged face from the grease that clung to the air of a place I hated so much. This was worth that non-existant paycheck and the money floating away to all the bills.