dave swan
And the Armies That Remained Suffered
Clay knew he’d made a mistake as soon as he opened the door. Actually, a double mistake: the smiling visitor was his ex-girlfriend and she was holding a clipboard. “Hey,” Patti said. “I really had to lean on that bell. Mind if I come in?”
He said, “Sure,” because he couldn’t think of anything else. Patti sat on the couch and he took his usual spot in the recliner, hoping she wouldn’t see the fresh duct tape on the footrest.
“You look good,” she said. “Like you gained back a couple pounds. How’s your leg?”
“A little touchy is all. What you got there?” he said, pointing at the clipboard.
“I’m collecting signatures on a petition to save the Colonel. You know they’re talking about takin’ him down, right?”
Clay groaned inside. He’d always hated how she kept getting riled about causes that didn’t interest him, and since they weren’t a couple anymore, he wasn’t obliged to listen to this one. “Nope, I hadn’t heard,” he replied. “And I don’t want to sign. It’s no skin off my ass either way.”
“But he’s been there over a hundred years,” Patti said, sounding exasperated. “Now all of a sudden, it’s racist and wrong and all that garbage. They’re not getting away with it. That statue’s part of this town. It’s our heritage.”
“Maybe yours. I got other problems. I’ll tell you what, you want to get mad about something, try the VA. I know a lot of folks who’d sign on to that.”
Patti sighed. “I can see you’re gonna be stubborn. That’s okay, you can always change your mind.” Standing up to leave, she said, “There’s a big rally in a couple weeks when they vote. Maybe I’ll see you there.” Right before she closed the door, she added, “If not, we should get together sometime anyway.”
Taking stock of himself in the mirror, Clay saw he had regained weight, though at five-ten and 155 pounds, he was still thinner than before he deployed. He noticed it was about time for a haircut, with his medium-brown hair past his ears, the mustache curling over the upper lip. Getting together with Patti was another story; though they’d stayed friends after the split, he wasn’t about to get any closer when she was off on one of her crusades.
#
The Colonel wore a wide-brimmed Confederate officer’s hat, a bushy beard, and the solemn look that was forged on his face in the first year of the 20th century. Rifle in hand, he stood watch on the lawn of a decrepit courthouse the county planned to tear down. As Clay learned from a local news website, a campaign to remove the statue at the same time had sparked the backlash that brought Patti to his door. At the hardware store the day after her visit, he saw a leaflet with the Colonel’s photo under the headline DEFEND OUR RIGHTS!!!!!
Clay’s purchases included concrete for the carport floor, window caulk, and a doorbell to replace the rusty one Patti had mentioned. He didn’t mind fixing a few things since the uncle who owned the house let him live there free, but the place had bigger problems too. He was unloading his cart into his pickup when Doug Yarborough, who lived down the street, walked up. “How’s it going?” he asked. “Why didn’t you take that space?” pointing to the parking spot outlined in purple with a sign For Combat wounded.
“I’m not wounded now. See? No cane,” Clay said, holding out his empty hands. “Leave it for somebody that needs it.”
“You sleeping?” Doug said. “I couldn’t after I got back from Kuwait in ‘91. And I wasn’t hit.”
“Some nights better’n others. I’m good, though.” Right then Clay’s leg started hurting, not the bone-deep pain but the ache that still sneaked up on him sometimes.
#
All of a sudden it seemed like the damn statue was on everyone’s mind except his. Within a couple of days, the leaflets had been plastered on windows and phone poles all over town. A shouting match broke out in a neighborhood online group that usually focused on potholes and lost dogs. Two customers were having a lively talk about the situation when Clay came into the shop waiting room with the bill for the fuel pump he’d put in one of their cars.
“Woke is THE worst thing that ever happened to this country,” the younger, louder one declared. “It wrecked the schools and the military. That’s how we lost Afghanistan.”
Clay’s gut tensed a little. “Here’s your total, sir,” he said, handing him the paperwork. “By the way, I was in Afghanistan. Not at the end, though.”
The man’s fleshy face turned red. “Sorry, no offense. It must have been hard seeing it fall apart. It made me ashamed to be an American.”
“That was a mess for sure,” Clay said, remembering to think before speaking like the counselor told him. “But we all knew it wouldn’t do any good to stay there. I did what I could. I’m not ashamed about anything.”
When he drove past the courthouse on his way home, a pair of TV news vans were parked by the statue. The reporters were holding their mics in front of someone whose face he couldn’t make out but had a long blonde ponytail. A few minutes later Patti texted him a selfie with one of the journalists and hey I’m gonna be on the news!
#
Clay didn’t bother to watch the broadcast before heading down to the Legion, where he could drink, relax, talk to the older guys, and not worry about somebody looking for a fight. Ever since the mobile home plant closed, the local bars had been full of people with nothing better to do than get wasted and mean. Clay knew a few who tried fentanyl instead, usually winding up in rehab, jail, or both.
A man pulled up the stool next to him and ordered a beer. He wore a Dawgs T-shirt and looked to be about Clay’s age with darker hair and his arms covered in tats. “Hey, how you doing? Jason,” he said, extending his hand.
“Clay.”
“Nice to meet you,” Jason said and took a pull on his beer. “Man, that tastes good. I’ve been driving all day. Going to the VA hospital tomorrow.”
“Good luck,” Clay said. “I’m hopin’ I never set foot in there again.”
“Really? Mind if I ask what happened?”
“Well, I did a tour in Kandahar and re-upped for the bonus,” Clay said. “Big mistake. I had three weeks left when the Talibs dropped a few mortar rounds on us and tore up my leg. It didn’t heal right and the VA sent me off with pain pills when I should have had another surgery. Took a damn year to get it.”
Jason looked startled. “That so?” He moved closer and lowered his voice. “You got any of those pills you don’t need?”
“I don’t take ‘em anymore,” Clay said, shifting the other way on his seat. “And I threw out the leftovers,” he added, hoping that would get rid of Jason.
“Think they’ll give me some at that hospital?”
“I wouldn’t know. I wouldn’t keep asking in here either. People might get the wrong idea.”
Jason held up his hands. “Hey, no problem, man.” He picked up his glass and walked off toward the pool table.
In the morning Clay woke up to find the old window AC blowing warm, the sheets stuck to his sweaty torso. The power in the kitchen died when he turned on the microwave, so he had to hunt up a fuse before he could eat. He was in the middle of a complicated repair on a Bronco when Ron, the chief mechanic, started ranting in his bullhorn voice about the Colonel, and Clay’s fist tightened around the wrench he was holding. He had just stepped out the door at 5:30, wondering if his uncle would spring for a new AC, when Patti texted him again.
#
“I won’t be long,” she said for the third or fourth time as they drove south on a winding two-lane road. “I’m sorry I had to call. I couldn’t get hold of anybody else.”
“You know I want nothing to do with this,” Clay said, louder than usual. “Which is why I was so surprised.” He was also surprised and slightly disgusted with himself for helping her.
“I told you, my car quit. I don’t know what’s wrong and I sure don’t know where I’m gonna get the money to fix it,” she said, quickly adding, “I won’t ask you.”
“Sure you didn’t leave the lights on yesterday?”
“I didn’t have ‘em on. It’s something else.”
They passed an abandoned Chevron surrounded by scrub pines, then a low brick church with a sign that warned THE MEMORY OF THE RIGHTEOUS IS BLESSED, BUT THE NAME OF THE WICKED WILL ROT. – PROVERBS 10:7.
“We’re almost there,” Patti said, followed shortly by, “This is it on the left.”
He pulled into a strip mall, parking in front of an office supply / copy store, where Patti hurried inside and came out with a box of leaflets. As they turned back onto the highway she asked, “Hey, what did your people do in the war? Not that it matters.”
“No idea. My dad took off before he got around to telling me about my great-great grandaddy.” Clay chuckled. “I might be a half-breed Yankee for all I know.”
“Don’t say that.” Patti made a face. “You could find out easy on Ancestry or one of those places.”
He made a face back at her. “You think that’s how I want to spend my time?”
She sighed. “I’m sorry. I don’t know, maybe I’m taking this too seriously.” She looked out the window for a minute, then said, “How do you want to spend your time, Clay?”
“What do you mean?” He hoped she wasn’t going to hit on him because he figured he should say no—and even though he was mad at her, he might not want to do that.
Patti turned sideways, facing him. “I’m not trying to get rid of you,” she said gently. “But when we met, you said you didn’t want to get stuck here and you’d leave when your leg got better. You could go now.”
“I’m alright,” Clay said, a little uneasily. “I’m working and not paying rent, which is nice.”
“That dump could fall down any minute. I heard you complain plenty about your job, too.”
“I like feeling normal again.” Clay slowed down behind a semi, peered around it, and saw traffic coming. “It’s still home, you know? I’m not ready to pull up stakes.”
“You’re better’n normal. In spite of what you’ve been through,” Patti said, settling back in the seat. “You were always good to me. You ought to be good to yourself.”
Clay’s cheeks flushed. Seeing the road was clear, he pulled into the left lane and swooped around the truck. “Pretty smooth, huh?” he said. “Like Kyle Busch at Darlington.”
Patti gave him a little smile. “Just think about it. I’d leave in a heartbeat except I got to look after my grandma. Besides, I’d probably end up waiting tables again.” She fiddled with her nails for a moment, then said, “I might be doing that all my life.”
They rode mostly in silence the rest of the way to Patti’s building. She got out, leaned back into the window and said, “I’ll see you, okay?”
“Sure enough,” Clay said, not meaning it. He went home with a thought sprouting in his mind, one that probably shouldn’t be there, definitely nothing he could tell her about. But it didn’t go away.
#
Clay was looking at the bulletin board when Ron came into the break room, said “Scuse me,” and stuck a beefy arm in front of him to tack up a sheet of paper. He could almost feel his blood pressure surge as he stared at what must have been one of those new leaflets, urging citizens to “Stand and Resist!” when the county commission decided the statue’s fate.
“You fixing to be there?” Ron asked.
“Not me,” Clay said, his voice flat, unemotional. “I don’t have a dog in the fight.”
“Bullshit. We all do,” Ron snapped. “We’re going into that meeting and not leaving until they do the right thing.”
Clay knew his counselor would say de-escalate, walk away. He also knew Ron carried a Smith & Wesson everywhere. “I don’t like the sound of that. Somebody might get hurt,” he said, thinking of Patti.
“Let ‘em try and move us,” Ron said in a threatening tone. “If they want another war we’ll give ‘em one.”
“A war’s nothing to joke about.”
Ron snorted. “Son, I thought you had sense. You ought to come along, do your part.”
Clay forgot about de-escalation. Leaning right into Ron’s face, he growled, “My fuckin’ part? I already did my part for the country, this country, not what they were fighting for way back when.” He slapped his thigh. “I still got metal in me. And you want me to get shot or arrested over a goddam statue?” He stalked out of the room, half-expecting Ron to yell, “You’re fired!” in his wake. For once the boss stayed silent as the idea he’d had after leaving Patti’s place roared through his head like a fast freight train.
#
The courthouse sat hushed and deserted under a pearly moon, the monument casting a thin shadow across the lawn. Scanning the nearby streets and seeing no lights, nothing stirring, Clay parked the truck with the tailgate under the statue’s feet.
Balanced on a ladder he found in his uncle’s basement, he wrapped the tow chain that he’d quietly borrowed from the shop around the weathered bronze legs a few times, securing it with the hook at the end. He attached the other hook to the loop on his trailer hitch and tugged on both ends to be sure they were taut. His hands weren’t shaking like they used to when he got stressed, his pulse no longer racing, just holding steady. Feeling absolutely zero doubt about what he was about to do, he climbed back into the cab and floored the gas.
The statue flew off its perch and landed on the grass with a muffled clank. When Clay stopped and jumped out, he found the Colonel flat on his back, his right leg torn off at the knee, the calf and foot still on the pedestal. The neck was crumpled, the chin pushed down on the chest, while the rifle, which had been at the statue’s side with the muzzle tilted forward, now aimed toward its head.
Clay almost laughed out loud when he realized he wasn’t the only soldier in town with a bad leg. Quickly and methodically he unwound the chain, wiped off the dirt and grass, and drove to the shop where he put the chain back where he’d found it. He also left a short resignation note on Ron’s desk and slipped another note in his uncle’s mailbox but was several hours down the road before texting Patti.
I’m taking your advice. Don’t know exactly where I’m going but will be fine. Hope you work things out for yourself. Take care, Clay.
He said, “Sure,” because he couldn’t think of anything else. Patti sat on the couch and he took his usual spot in the recliner, hoping she wouldn’t see the fresh duct tape on the footrest.
“You look good,” she said. “Like you gained back a couple pounds. How’s your leg?”
“A little touchy is all. What you got there?” he said, pointing at the clipboard.
“I’m collecting signatures on a petition to save the Colonel. You know they’re talking about takin’ him down, right?”
Clay groaned inside. He’d always hated how she kept getting riled about causes that didn’t interest him, and since they weren’t a couple anymore, he wasn’t obliged to listen to this one. “Nope, I hadn’t heard,” he replied. “And I don’t want to sign. It’s no skin off my ass either way.”
“But he’s been there over a hundred years,” Patti said, sounding exasperated. “Now all of a sudden, it’s racist and wrong and all that garbage. They’re not getting away with it. That statue’s part of this town. It’s our heritage.”
“Maybe yours. I got other problems. I’ll tell you what, you want to get mad about something, try the VA. I know a lot of folks who’d sign on to that.”
Patti sighed. “I can see you’re gonna be stubborn. That’s okay, you can always change your mind.” Standing up to leave, she said, “There’s a big rally in a couple weeks when they vote. Maybe I’ll see you there.” Right before she closed the door, she added, “If not, we should get together sometime anyway.”
Taking stock of himself in the mirror, Clay saw he had regained weight, though at five-ten and 155 pounds, he was still thinner than before he deployed. He noticed it was about time for a haircut, with his medium-brown hair past his ears, the mustache curling over the upper lip. Getting together with Patti was another story; though they’d stayed friends after the split, he wasn’t about to get any closer when she was off on one of her crusades.
#
The Colonel wore a wide-brimmed Confederate officer’s hat, a bushy beard, and the solemn look that was forged on his face in the first year of the 20th century. Rifle in hand, he stood watch on the lawn of a decrepit courthouse the county planned to tear down. As Clay learned from a local news website, a campaign to remove the statue at the same time had sparked the backlash that brought Patti to his door. At the hardware store the day after her visit, he saw a leaflet with the Colonel’s photo under the headline DEFEND OUR RIGHTS!!!!!
Clay’s purchases included concrete for the carport floor, window caulk, and a doorbell to replace the rusty one Patti had mentioned. He didn’t mind fixing a few things since the uncle who owned the house let him live there free, but the place had bigger problems too. He was unloading his cart into his pickup when Doug Yarborough, who lived down the street, walked up. “How’s it going?” he asked. “Why didn’t you take that space?” pointing to the parking spot outlined in purple with a sign For Combat wounded.
“I’m not wounded now. See? No cane,” Clay said, holding out his empty hands. “Leave it for somebody that needs it.”
“You sleeping?” Doug said. “I couldn’t after I got back from Kuwait in ‘91. And I wasn’t hit.”
“Some nights better’n others. I’m good, though.” Right then Clay’s leg started hurting, not the bone-deep pain but the ache that still sneaked up on him sometimes.
#
All of a sudden it seemed like the damn statue was on everyone’s mind except his. Within a couple of days, the leaflets had been plastered on windows and phone poles all over town. A shouting match broke out in a neighborhood online group that usually focused on potholes and lost dogs. Two customers were having a lively talk about the situation when Clay came into the shop waiting room with the bill for the fuel pump he’d put in one of their cars.
“Woke is THE worst thing that ever happened to this country,” the younger, louder one declared. “It wrecked the schools and the military. That’s how we lost Afghanistan.”
Clay’s gut tensed a little. “Here’s your total, sir,” he said, handing him the paperwork. “By the way, I was in Afghanistan. Not at the end, though.”
The man’s fleshy face turned red. “Sorry, no offense. It must have been hard seeing it fall apart. It made me ashamed to be an American.”
“That was a mess for sure,” Clay said, remembering to think before speaking like the counselor told him. “But we all knew it wouldn’t do any good to stay there. I did what I could. I’m not ashamed about anything.”
When he drove past the courthouse on his way home, a pair of TV news vans were parked by the statue. The reporters were holding their mics in front of someone whose face he couldn’t make out but had a long blonde ponytail. A few minutes later Patti texted him a selfie with one of the journalists and hey I’m gonna be on the news!
#
Clay didn’t bother to watch the broadcast before heading down to the Legion, where he could drink, relax, talk to the older guys, and not worry about somebody looking for a fight. Ever since the mobile home plant closed, the local bars had been full of people with nothing better to do than get wasted and mean. Clay knew a few who tried fentanyl instead, usually winding up in rehab, jail, or both.
A man pulled up the stool next to him and ordered a beer. He wore a Dawgs T-shirt and looked to be about Clay’s age with darker hair and his arms covered in tats. “Hey, how you doing? Jason,” he said, extending his hand.
“Clay.”
“Nice to meet you,” Jason said and took a pull on his beer. “Man, that tastes good. I’ve been driving all day. Going to the VA hospital tomorrow.”
“Good luck,” Clay said. “I’m hopin’ I never set foot in there again.”
“Really? Mind if I ask what happened?”
“Well, I did a tour in Kandahar and re-upped for the bonus,” Clay said. “Big mistake. I had three weeks left when the Talibs dropped a few mortar rounds on us and tore up my leg. It didn’t heal right and the VA sent me off with pain pills when I should have had another surgery. Took a damn year to get it.”
Jason looked startled. “That so?” He moved closer and lowered his voice. “You got any of those pills you don’t need?”
“I don’t take ‘em anymore,” Clay said, shifting the other way on his seat. “And I threw out the leftovers,” he added, hoping that would get rid of Jason.
“Think they’ll give me some at that hospital?”
“I wouldn’t know. I wouldn’t keep asking in here either. People might get the wrong idea.”
Jason held up his hands. “Hey, no problem, man.” He picked up his glass and walked off toward the pool table.
In the morning Clay woke up to find the old window AC blowing warm, the sheets stuck to his sweaty torso. The power in the kitchen died when he turned on the microwave, so he had to hunt up a fuse before he could eat. He was in the middle of a complicated repair on a Bronco when Ron, the chief mechanic, started ranting in his bullhorn voice about the Colonel, and Clay’s fist tightened around the wrench he was holding. He had just stepped out the door at 5:30, wondering if his uncle would spring for a new AC, when Patti texted him again.
#
“I won’t be long,” she said for the third or fourth time as they drove south on a winding two-lane road. “I’m sorry I had to call. I couldn’t get hold of anybody else.”
“You know I want nothing to do with this,” Clay said, louder than usual. “Which is why I was so surprised.” He was also surprised and slightly disgusted with himself for helping her.
“I told you, my car quit. I don’t know what’s wrong and I sure don’t know where I’m gonna get the money to fix it,” she said, quickly adding, “I won’t ask you.”
“Sure you didn’t leave the lights on yesterday?”
“I didn’t have ‘em on. It’s something else.”
They passed an abandoned Chevron surrounded by scrub pines, then a low brick church with a sign that warned THE MEMORY OF THE RIGHTEOUS IS BLESSED, BUT THE NAME OF THE WICKED WILL ROT. – PROVERBS 10:7.
“We’re almost there,” Patti said, followed shortly by, “This is it on the left.”
He pulled into a strip mall, parking in front of an office supply / copy store, where Patti hurried inside and came out with a box of leaflets. As they turned back onto the highway she asked, “Hey, what did your people do in the war? Not that it matters.”
“No idea. My dad took off before he got around to telling me about my great-great grandaddy.” Clay chuckled. “I might be a half-breed Yankee for all I know.”
“Don’t say that.” Patti made a face. “You could find out easy on Ancestry or one of those places.”
He made a face back at her. “You think that’s how I want to spend my time?”
She sighed. “I’m sorry. I don’t know, maybe I’m taking this too seriously.” She looked out the window for a minute, then said, “How do you want to spend your time, Clay?”
“What do you mean?” He hoped she wasn’t going to hit on him because he figured he should say no—and even though he was mad at her, he might not want to do that.
Patti turned sideways, facing him. “I’m not trying to get rid of you,” she said gently. “But when we met, you said you didn’t want to get stuck here and you’d leave when your leg got better. You could go now.”
“I’m alright,” Clay said, a little uneasily. “I’m working and not paying rent, which is nice.”
“That dump could fall down any minute. I heard you complain plenty about your job, too.”
“I like feeling normal again.” Clay slowed down behind a semi, peered around it, and saw traffic coming. “It’s still home, you know? I’m not ready to pull up stakes.”
“You’re better’n normal. In spite of what you’ve been through,” Patti said, settling back in the seat. “You were always good to me. You ought to be good to yourself.”
Clay’s cheeks flushed. Seeing the road was clear, he pulled into the left lane and swooped around the truck. “Pretty smooth, huh?” he said. “Like Kyle Busch at Darlington.”
Patti gave him a little smile. “Just think about it. I’d leave in a heartbeat except I got to look after my grandma. Besides, I’d probably end up waiting tables again.” She fiddled with her nails for a moment, then said, “I might be doing that all my life.”
They rode mostly in silence the rest of the way to Patti’s building. She got out, leaned back into the window and said, “I’ll see you, okay?”
“Sure enough,” Clay said, not meaning it. He went home with a thought sprouting in his mind, one that probably shouldn’t be there, definitely nothing he could tell her about. But it didn’t go away.
#
Clay was looking at the bulletin board when Ron came into the break room, said “Scuse me,” and stuck a beefy arm in front of him to tack up a sheet of paper. He could almost feel his blood pressure surge as he stared at what must have been one of those new leaflets, urging citizens to “Stand and Resist!” when the county commission decided the statue’s fate.
“You fixing to be there?” Ron asked.
“Not me,” Clay said, his voice flat, unemotional. “I don’t have a dog in the fight.”
“Bullshit. We all do,” Ron snapped. “We’re going into that meeting and not leaving until they do the right thing.”
Clay knew his counselor would say de-escalate, walk away. He also knew Ron carried a Smith & Wesson everywhere. “I don’t like the sound of that. Somebody might get hurt,” he said, thinking of Patti.
“Let ‘em try and move us,” Ron said in a threatening tone. “If they want another war we’ll give ‘em one.”
“A war’s nothing to joke about.”
Ron snorted. “Son, I thought you had sense. You ought to come along, do your part.”
Clay forgot about de-escalation. Leaning right into Ron’s face, he growled, “My fuckin’ part? I already did my part for the country, this country, not what they were fighting for way back when.” He slapped his thigh. “I still got metal in me. And you want me to get shot or arrested over a goddam statue?” He stalked out of the room, half-expecting Ron to yell, “You’re fired!” in his wake. For once the boss stayed silent as the idea he’d had after leaving Patti’s place roared through his head like a fast freight train.
#
The courthouse sat hushed and deserted under a pearly moon, the monument casting a thin shadow across the lawn. Scanning the nearby streets and seeing no lights, nothing stirring, Clay parked the truck with the tailgate under the statue’s feet.
Balanced on a ladder he found in his uncle’s basement, he wrapped the tow chain that he’d quietly borrowed from the shop around the weathered bronze legs a few times, securing it with the hook at the end. He attached the other hook to the loop on his trailer hitch and tugged on both ends to be sure they were taut. His hands weren’t shaking like they used to when he got stressed, his pulse no longer racing, just holding steady. Feeling absolutely zero doubt about what he was about to do, he climbed back into the cab and floored the gas.
The statue flew off its perch and landed on the grass with a muffled clank. When Clay stopped and jumped out, he found the Colonel flat on his back, his right leg torn off at the knee, the calf and foot still on the pedestal. The neck was crumpled, the chin pushed down on the chest, while the rifle, which had been at the statue’s side with the muzzle tilted forward, now aimed toward its head.
Clay almost laughed out loud when he realized he wasn’t the only soldier in town with a bad leg. Quickly and methodically he unwound the chain, wiped off the dirt and grass, and drove to the shop where he put the chain back where he’d found it. He also left a short resignation note on Ron’s desk and slipped another note in his uncle’s mailbox but was several hours down the road before texting Patti.
I’m taking your advice. Don’t know exactly where I’m going but will be fine. Hope you work things out for yourself. Take care, Clay.
Dave Swan is a former journalist and a lifelong writer. His stories have also appeared in the Raven Review, Adelaide Literary Magazine, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, and elsewhere. He’s a member of the Atlanta Writers Club and helps manage their social media.
