by Dan McGurkin

The pack’s straps pulled down on his body. The patrol had gone on long enough now. Long enough that he didn’t even care to look at his watch and know how long. Long enough to arrive at the moment where no amount of preparation could have helped alleviate the pain of the pack’s straps pulling down. Nothing could have prepared the body to carry the unnatural weight on that unnatural place between shoulders and neck. And there, just now, he felt the pack and straps join forces with the body armor in a tug of war against his own mind, with his focus and attention as the prize. And the pack and the straps and the armor and the pain were winning. 

He had read that shoulder shrugs could help prepare his traps for this work, but that the best preparation would be to wear his equipment as much as possible. To deaden the nerves and inoculate the necessary parts of his body to the necessary and inevitable reality of wearing and  walking, hours on end. And so he had worn the equipment as much as possible, even at home. And Carrie had made fun of him for wearing his gear around the house on Saturdays as he woke early and made her breakfast and coffee and brought it to her in bed. “You look like an over-prepared butler.” She laughed at him between sips of orange juice, and the tray sat between them on the bed. 

He looked around at the village where the patrol had halted, just after the moment when he had begun to lose the tug of war. Fifteen, maybe twenty mud brick buildings stamped astride the gravel road. Breakfast in bed was his way of thanking Carrie. She was so supportive each weekday when he had been in training, woke up at 4 a.m. to make him a real breakfast and help him gather his bags—there were always so many bags—and take them to the truck to head in for training. He had been a new husband and a new soldier and learning to do both, feeling already the difficulty of doing both well. Weekday hours he’d dedicated to the former, plus any nights he hadn’t spent drilling in the field. Weekends he’d dedicated to the latter, thus the breakfasts in bed. And Carrie would look at him as they walked the dog and unfailingly find camouflage paint he’d missed in the shower. Usually behind his ear. Closest to his brain.

The people in the village had started to realize he and the other soldiers were stopping for more than a moment. Most had passed the phase of stopping, staring, and sharing some whispered words. A few had begun to set aside their things and tasks and approach soldiers on the patrol. He thought of Carrie, and how she would set aside her schoolwork and go to the door to greet the mailman. She’d known the mailman in their hometown, so why not this new one as well? He’d tried to explain things might be different than they were in western Montana. And the mailman had proven nice but not as interested in talking or stopping as the one back home. Except for when it was more humid than normal, and then he’d stop and let Carrie chat with him while he took refuge in the shade of the apartment. The apartment, too. So different but so the same as these mud brick buildings. The one that they’d begun to babyproof so many months early.  They’d reasoned that they ought to start early because he wouldn’t be there at the apartment  when the baby finally came. He’d be over here, in the village. But they both knew the real reason was that Carrie was so happy and excited she just couldn’t wait and had to take breaks from her schoolwork to focus on the baby.

The memory unsettled him and he tried to shift the weight of the pack straps and armor and grunted. It’d only been last night when he had seen the email from Carrie. He hadn’t known how to respond to something he had never expected. Carrie wrote that she felt ashamed and embarrassed. Part of him knew they should have waited until she was further into her pregnancy to share the news, but they’d been so excited. He remembered the words from her email, the ones her mother had said, that “it happens more often than you know and more than people share.” He’d written a quick response to Carrie and logged out, promising to write more after the patrol.

He looked out at the village and people and felt vulnerable and un-bulletproof. And un-babyproof. You cannot babyproof your heart, he decided. Maybe that wasn’t his idea, something his dad had said to him once. No, can’t babyproof it any more than you can prepare the space between your shoulders and neck for patrol. A child steals your heart. Pregnancy unlocks the door, he thought. And birth throws it open, and the child rushes over the threshold and grabs your heart and stays. Or so he imagined. 

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You cannot babyproof your heart, he decided. No, can’t babyproof it any more than you can prepare the space between your shoulders and neck for patrol.

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A child ran out from one of the mudbrick buildings, pouring out words they don’t speak in western Montana but universally understandable as a request for candy or trinkets. He put on a  smile and knelt, and the kneeling forced his body forward and the weight of the armor lifted as it  rested on his upper thigh. He removed his pack and felt the relief of blood rushing through the area between his shoulders and neck. He unzipped the top pouch, took out a bag of toffee, and watched as the child ran away with the candy. He watched until the child reached its mother in the doorway. Then he shouldered the pack and continued down the gravel road.

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“Patrol” by Dan McGurkin appeared in Issue 45 of Berkeley Fiction Review.

Dan McGurkin is an officer in the United States Marine Corps and currently a Leaders Fellow with Mission43, an Idaho non-profit helping veterans and military spouses succeed after the military. He has taught at the National Intelligence University, deployed to the Middle East, and served as a daily intelligence briefer to the White House. This is his first published creative work.