Detroit
2020
My boots crunch and squelch in the slushy snow along I-94. The Cadieux overpass is less than a quarter of a mile away Even though there is half an hour of daylight left in the day, I can’t see the trestle. It is snowing too goddamn hard.
At least my feet are dry. The boots the Capuchins had given me had come “gently used,” and I snatched them up immediately, hoping they would fit. They were a little big, but hadn’t been worn enough to be broken in. A friar holding a clipboard was inventorying several large cardboard boxes that had just arrived for the other homeless. He had given me a pair of thick socks so when I laced the boots up tightly, they almost fit perfect.
That was in November. The boots are now properly broken in.
Despite the blizzard, I move in as near a straight line as I can along the shoulder of the expressway. I don’t need to see the overpass to find it. I was head of the class in Advanced Land Navigation and Orientation back in Coronado, all those years ago.
A lifetime ago.
I know the contour lines of this terrain. I can feel it with my feet and my knees. I can get to the overpass in a full white-out. I can get home blindfolded. I’m almost there.
I see a black patch in the snow to the right of my path and squint down at it. Probably the fragment of a blown tractor tire.
But why isn’t the snow covering it?
As the sun goes down, I stop in my tracks and look down at the dark spot in the snow along my path home.
* * *
The dog lays in the dirty snow beside the road, unconscious. Beneath him, the snow melts, becomes liquid. Around him, the wind whips and lashes the warmth from his body. The snow beneath him freezes, then melts again. As the small creature’s body temperature falls, the less the snow melts and the more ice crystals form in his fur.
His own blood has frozen in his nose and on his lips.
The little black dog lays enveloped in an unconsciousness so deep and so black that despite his broken hind legs and a concussed head, he seems to be in no pain. This eclipse of the dog’s pain deepens as his heartbeat slows and his breathing gets shallower. As his temperature is dropping.
As he is dying.
I know about this. I have seen it before.
A lifetime ago.
His stuffy guy lays in the snow next to him, tattered and bloody. It is now bloodied and frozen.
I push back my hood. I remove my gloves and put them in my coat pockets. I bend and carefully scoop the small black creature up in my large, warm hands.
The dog is very light and his legs hang at wrong angles. Without thinking about it I also pluck up the remains of the toy laying in the snow and absently stuff it into my deep parka pocket along with my gloves.
I lift the dog’s limp body close to my face. I look and listen, then run my hands over the dog’s limbs. My hands move with the same gentle, confident, and deliberate ease they always have. I have never taken my hands for granted. I keep them clean—even under the nails.
I can quickly locate the fractures in the hind legs. I can’t be sure of anything beyond that, and anyway, isn’t that enough? This small creature is in a world of hurt.
The dog seems very small as my large, powerful hand grips its neck. One quick motion and it will be done and it will be a mercy.
The small dog stirs and for one moment—less than a moment, really—he opens his eyes and looks directly into my eyes. He then passes out of consciousness again. In that half of a moment, even in the failing light, I see and mark his remarkable eyes—one brown and one blue as a scrubbed summer sky and both full of life—and I am uncertain.
In the end, I release my grip on the dog’s neck, unzip my parka halfway, and gently slide the dog into the warmth there. With my head down, hugging the small creature to my chest, I turn and march on towards home.
“Ok. If you fight, I’ll fight, too. I doubt like hell you’ll even make it through the night, but I guess I’m with you now. The whole way,” I said out loud.
Approaching the trestle, I haul up a bag of old newspapers to ignite a fire.
Need heat. No rest, tonight. Too much to do. Hang in there, dog. Wish I had coffee.
When was the last time I wished for some coffee?
A lifetime ago…
The Man Named Glue
Korangal Valley, Afghanistan
2006
“Damn, I wish we had some coffee,” I said, “it’s fucking freezing.”
“I’d even take some of that instant shit from an MRE,” said Collins.
“See if Probey can dig something up.”
It’s my first fucking week and I am surprised at how cold it gets in Afghanistan.
The kid on the table in front of us is twenty years old.
Collins and I were on loan from the fleet to support the 10th Mountain Division while establishing operations to Firebase Phoenix. It was another joint thought up by the U.S. Naval Special Warfare Development Group to make positive headlines in the media during an unpopular war. Just a couple of corpsmen who also happened to wear the Navy Seal Budweiser insignia alongside our Caduceus.
The young man came in conscious, somehow. He had that wide-eyed shock trauma panic stamped into his features.
I administered a heroic dose of morphine and he drifted off.
He had been in a firefight and was hit in his right flank. We determined that the bullet had fractured the right kidney, the right hepatic lobe, the gallbladder, and then entered his hemithorax.
“Goddamn, that’s a big round. Kalashnikov?” Collins wondered.
“No. This is a Dragunov.”
“Fuckin’ snipers.” Collins sighed.
“How far is the airlift?” I shouted over my shoulder to the hallway.
No one answered.
“He’s bleeding like a sieve. I can’t lock on with the hemostat,” I said.
“Blood pressure is 80/40, pulse is 120,” Collins called out. “He’s slipping.”
“I’m gonna try something,” I said, “Gimme some lavage.”
“Saline?”
“No. Water so it doesn’t cloud up on us. I need to see.”
“Here. How’s that?”
“Good enough. Gimme that gauze to clear his wound.”
“Got it.”
“Now, gimme the glue.”
“The what now?”
“The glue. The tube in the big bag.”
Collins ran and threw open the large field bag that looked like something you’d use to pack for a ski trip. “What am I looking for?”
“A small white and red tube. Looks just like Gorilla Glue.”
Collins picked up a small tube and read the label. “Cyanoacrylate?”
“That’s it. Uncap it.”
Collins dropped the cap on the floor and handed me the tube.
“One more lavage to clear the site,” I said.
I made sure the small nozzle was in the forward, open position and I started repeatedly spritzing the entire wound. I emptied almost the entire bottle and then stepped back.
“Holy shit,” said Collins. “It worked. There’s no more blood. Holy shit. You just super glued this motherfucker back to life!”
“Maybe. It’s on this kid now. He has to hang on until the medevac gets here. We just have to keep him warm.”
Later we would learn that this twenty-year-old soldier did in fact survive. After that day, throughout the entire 1st Battalion, I was known only as Glue.
Detroit
2020
“We have to keep you warm, kid,” I say to the unconscious little animal in my coat as I enter the lean-to I had built up high, where the abutment and the beams meet.
I am able to keep him in my coat nice and tight so that both my hands are free to light up one of the chafing canisters I had hidden. I can build a proper small fire in a discarded, legless charcoal grill that I found somewhere and repurposed for warmth.
The blizzard is raging over the trestle but the lean-to is solid and the fire is warm. I gently pull the dog from my coat. He stirs and whimpers.
I pool my coat on the OSB board that serves as my dining room table and gently place the dog upon it, near the fire’s heat.
“This is a fancy operation table, kid. Oriented Strand Board I found in the garbage behind a lumber yard. You know, I once watched two army engineers argue over whether OSB stands for Oriented Strand Board or Orinated Strand Board. They almost started slugging each other,” I say and smile, realizing I am chattering idly as I prepare myself. I also realize that I cannot remember when I last spoke aloud. Two days ago? A week? Has it been that long?
I begin my examination.
David Reames is a senior in the NYUSPS Creative Writing program. He is a professional artist who lives in Manhattan with his wife and rescue dog.