Many of you have already read versions of the below story. But the below version won me an award. All College Honors (Graduate Creative Writing–Fiction) at California College of the Arts. So here it is again. A bit different, a bit the same.

Two dirty men smoke a joint on a busy street corner. Henry can recognize that smell anywhere. Even through the rank odor of urine and shit and rotting teeth and rotting cities. He quit when he couldn’t find the words to match his thoughts. He’d think cat and write dog. Genocide became Happy Birthday. It was very confusing.

Henry’s waiting for a bus. It’s already ten minutes late. A girl waits too. Dark sunglasses cover half her face. She wears short shorts with her university’s name emblazoned across the ass, flip flops, white t-shirt, and a blue back pack bulging on her back. Her right hand presses a small silver phone to her ear, her left waves and swirls and floats as she talks.

Henry keeps headphones over his ears when he ventures out. They’re not connected to anything. The silver plug shoved into his front pocket. He hopes they keep people from talking to him, from asking for change or a cigarette or directions. But they’re not very effective. People here are persistent.

The light turns green. Cars and bikes and people surge away. Still no bus.

One guy is standing. He has short black hair and a sickly beard. The other, coughing gray smoke out of his toothless mouth, is in a wheelchair. His hair is long and dirty blond—layers and layers of dirt caked to golden curls. His beard is thick and matted and rests on his chest. He passes the joint, talks loudly about how his brother doesn’t approve of his life style. Doesn’t approve of his long hair or beard or of him pushing himself along in a wheelchair. His friend sucks at the joint like a drowning man sucking a straw.

“That’s it,” he wheezes.

“Bullshit,” wheelchair says.

“Yeah, they do.” Henry watches him roll the roach between grimy fingers.

“Damn. You got anymore?”

“No.”

“Fuck,” wheelchair says. “Guess we gotta get to work.” He moves his head around slowly, gazes at the bus stop through bloodshot eyes. The girl is closer to him. “You got any change?”

“Hold on,” she says into her phone. “What?”

“Change? Do you have any change? I’m awfully hungry.”

She smiles. “Sorry.”

“But you’re waiting for a bus,” he pleads. “I know you’ve gotta have some change.”

She shrugs her shoulders, looks across the street. “What? Oh…nothing, some bum…soon. Well, whenever this bus shows up.”

He looks at Henry, smiles, pushes his feet along the concrete, taps Henry’s arm. “How about you, man? You got any change?”

Henry stares at him. Henry pulls the bag from his back and reaches into it. At the bottom, under a pile of books and notebooks, his hand caresses a cold Colt .45. A beautiful weapon. Polished silver slide and barrel and dark wooden grips with angry swooping eagles carved into them. The Marines gave it to his father when he retired. The Marines don’t do anything half-assed. No gold-plated watches for those guys.

The man smacks his lips hopefully. One dollar and he can wheel himself across the street, get a cheeseburger. Five and he can get another joint, maybe a can or two of cheap beer. “Just a quarter, man? Or a dime? Shit, man, I’ll even take a dime.”

Henry’s dad loved this gun. It hung over the fireplace in an oak box frame with two dark Globe and Anchors flanking it. An inscription thanked him for his twenty years of faithful service to God, Country, Corps—Semper Fi. The old man would sit in his worn leather chair with a bottle of whiskey and stare at it for hours. When he was much younger, Henry would sit on the floor next to his father reading the Boy Scout Handbook or watching the Cubs lose or listening to a fire burn. “That thing makes a hell of a noise,” his father would say. “And a big fucking hole.” He’d wink.

It came into Henry’s possession after his father used it to put a big fucking hole in his head. “Fuck you all. And even though he joined the pussy army, give the gun to my boy.” His dad’s short note, his last will and testament. He never was much for sentimentality.

“Hello?” Wheelchair says. “Don’t act like you don’t hear me. Can you help me out?”

“No.” The man pushes himself forward and looks greedily into the bag. Henry’s knuckles are white and knotty around the grip, the hammer cocked, his finger dances over the trigger. “I can’t.”

The man slowly pushes himself backward, his eyes tight and vicious.

The bus arrives, its doors open. Henry zips his bag, slings it over his shoulder, climbs aboard.

***

Henry and two other soldiers were dug into a hill above Vrbovac waiting for the Mad Mortar Man to strike when he got the news.

Triple-M would pop up every now and again to lob one or two mortar shells at any gathering of Serbians. The division’s artillery scouts’ radar could detect each launch and pinpoint to within one hundred meters its point of origin. But by the time anyone responded Triple-M would be long gone. It was embarrassing. Four thousand soldiers from the strongest army in the world with billions of dollars of cutting edge technology couldn’t catch some redneck Albanian with a twenty dollar mortar tube strapped to the bed of a two hundred dollar pick-up truck? He was mostly a nuisance, never actually hit anything. But he either improved his aim or got lucky.

A Serbian woman nursed her new daughter in the living room of their small home when a mortar shell came crashing through the corrugated tin roof, killing them both instantly. The next day he shelled a crowded playground. Tom Brokaw told America about it over dinner. Video of shouting men and wailing ambulances and weeping women clutching brightly-dressed bodies flashed across the screen. American soldiers stood behind their body armor and machine guns trying to avoid the cameras. Henry was there. His mom saw him on TV and called all her friends. A general’s wife saw it too. She complained to her husband while he tried to watch a football game. He made a call, grabbed a beer from the refrigerator, kissed his wife on the forehead, told her they would catch the bastard who did that, and went back into the living room cursing the Broncos. The next day, intelligence came down from Division and Alpha Team, 3rd Platoon, 212th Military Police Company—Sergeant Jackson and Specialist Jones and Specialist Henry—was dispatched to Hill 402.

They’d been on the hill, which was more like a mountain, for eight hours when the snow started. It snowed for forty. The eastern sky was turning pink for the first time in three days when the radio crackled. It was Company Headquarters—Henry was coming down, they wouldn’t say why. The commander was on his way to get him. He was bringing hot chow and mail, too. Sergeant Jackson asked if they all couldn’t come down given recent weather conditions. Negative, the radio answered. Seven days.

“Why the fuck does Henry get to go down?” Jones complained. “Why don’t they take us all off this fucking mountain? This guy ain’t gonna do shit until it gets warmer. He ain’t dumb. He’s probably nuzzled up next to some bitch in front of a roaring fire laughing at us.”

“I don’t know, man,” Henry said. “You know I’d rather be up here with you.”

“Bullshit,” Sergeant Jackson laughed. He sat against a tree and blew breath through cupped hands like an angry prayer.

“Man, fuck you, Henry,” Jones said. “Hey sergeant, why don’t we light a fire up here? Get some kind of heat?”

“Because, you dumb shit, they’d see us.”

“Who the fuck is they?” Jones asked. “And look around sarge.” They looked around. Jackson scowled, Henry smiled, Jones nodded. Their green and brown and black camo stood out brightly against the snow.

“Whatever.” Jackson dismissed him with a flick of his wrist, stood up and went behind a tree.

“Here they come,” Henry said.

The commander’s convoy, three Humvees, snaked up the white hill. The three soldiers watched the convoy struggle up the hill and brushed their teeth and scraped three day beards with icy, dry razors. After an hour, Jackson saluted the commander and Jones helped unload the mermite cans filled with cold eggs and sausages.

“Hello, Henry,” the commander said. The chaplain stood next to him. “Come with us.”

They walked away from the trucks to a clump of trees. The leafless branches sagged under the wet snow. The fog of their breath hung briefly in the light air before dissipating into nothing.

“How are you, son?” the chaplain asked. He was skinny, but his cold-weather gear made him look bulky. His long pale face was blotched red and a clear drop of snot hung from the tip of his nose.

“Not too bad, Chaplain,” Henry said. “A bit cold, but, you know.”

The chaplain scoffed. Stamped his feet. He had no idea.

“Why don’t we have a seat,” the commander said. They looked around. “Or not. Henry,” he said and looked at the chaplain. The chaplain watched smoke curl lazily from cooking fires in the town below. “Henry, I’m afraid we have some bad news. We got a Red Cross message last night. Your father. He, um, well, he passed away.”

The chaplain coughed, the commander lit a cigarette. Henry felt like he should say something. “How did he die?” he asked.

“We’ve got your leave paperwork all filled out,” the commander said. “You leave tomorrow. Down to Skopje and back to Germany and then to the States.”

The chaplain looked at the commander. Jackson watched them from the parked trucks. The commander looked at the ground.

“Well,” the chaplain put his hand on Henry’s shoulder. The dark cross stitched to his helmet was crooked. He looked through Henry. “It’s difficult.”

“Oh yeah?” Henry said.

The chaplain closed his eyes, bowed his head. “Actually, he killed himself. He….” He shook his head. Opened his eyes.

A brittle breeze wafted over the hill. The sun burned brightly. The snow hardened. Jackson looked away. Henry watched fat gray clouds move slowly down the mountain looming over the country. He felt very light, like he would float away if he wasn’t weighed down by his equipment. He walked to the trucks, got in, and waited to go home.

***

Henry was a senior in high school the last time he saw his father. After twenty years, his mother had had enough of her husband’s drinking and yelling and fighting and moved out. Henry helped her and his father watched them load small boxes into a borrowed car and drive off to a moldy apartment on the other side of town.

“Did you get everything?” his father asked Henry later that night. He was in the TV room, always in the TV room. He didn’t look away from the flickering screen.

“I think so,” Henry said.

“Do you?”

Henry’s face flushed. “Yeah.”

“I don’t,” his father said.

Henry looked around. “Why?” he asked. “What did we forget?”

Smoke rose slowly from a smoldering cigar on the coffee table, ice clinked against the glass in Henry’s father’s hand as he brought it to his lips. “Your stuff,” he sneered. He slammed back the whiskey.

“My stuff?” Henry asked. “What do you mean?”

His father stood up slowly and walked unsteadily to the small bar in the corner of the room and poured the glass full. “What do you mean what do you mean?” He picked up the glass and staggered back to his chair, sat down heavily, started flipping through the channels. “I mean get the fuck out of my house.”

“What?” Henry’s head felt disconnected from his body.

“Get out.”

“Where do I go?” Henry asked.

“I don’t give a shit.” He found an old John Wayne movie. He set down the remote. “Go live with your cunt of a mother.”

***

Henry’s on his way to work washing dishes at a small restaurant. He’s on the bus and is deep in a story. A boy pretending to be a bull just killed a boy pretending to be a bullfighter. The fighter’s blood empties from him like water draining from a bathtub. The police have the bull in hand, a doctor pronounces, a priest gives rites, the bus lurches to a stop. Henry looks up. Two police cars, lights flashing, block the road. The sun glares off their windows.

Two of them, in crisp black uniform, get on the bus. One is young, tall. His hair cut to stubble on the top of his red head. His face is chiseled and tan. His eyes stupid. A rookie. His partner is as tall. His gut spills over his pistol belt. His salt-and-pepper hair is messy. A bushy mustache crawls under his thick nose, over his thin lips. A veteran.

They look down the aisle. Henry looks at his book.

The rookie sees Henry and a smile creeps across his face. He leans into his partner and points at the plump white boy with skinny hair and a fat nose deep in a book. The veteran nods and they walk towards him. The rookie’s hand is curled around his pistol’s grip. The veteran’s hand rests on his weapon. Their holsters’ thumbsnaps are unsnapped.

“Hi,” the rookie says.

Henry pretends the officer is talking to someone else. He doesn’t know what’s going on in the story anymore. The letters and words have vanished from the pages in front of him.

“Hey,” a gruff voice snarls and the veteran’s hand is on Henry’s shoulder. “We’re talking to you.”

A bored female dispatcher asks for a bathroom break over the radio. Henry’s fellow passengers watch out of the corner of their eyes.

“Where did you get on?” the rookie asks.

“What?” Henry says.

“Where did you catch this bus?” the veteran says. “Where were you just waiting?”

Henry feels the blood drain from his face. His hand is shaking. He closes the book, puts his hands on his lap, looks at the bag at his feet.

“Don’t even think it,” the rookie says.

“Let’s go,” the veteran says and grabs the bag.

The rookie pulls Henry gently through the open back door and pushes him against a hot black Crown Victoria. The veteran reaches into bag. Handcuffs are slapped onto Henry’s wrists. The cool metal digs into his flesh.

“Gun.” The veteran holds Henry’s pistol in the air by the trigger guard.

The rookie nods, folds Henry into the caged back seat of his car. The door slams shut. Henry watches the bus drive away, the passengers staring out at him with detached curiosity, and then disappear.

***

Henry went back to Kosovo after the funeral. The Mad Mortar Man had vanished.

“Maybe he ran out of ammo,” Jones speculated.

“You think so?” Henry asked.

“Shit, man.” Jones scooped a large spoonful of gray mashed potatoes onto his plastic plate. “How the fuck should I know? What else would he be doing?”

“I don’t know,” Henry said. “I just hope they don’t send us back to that fucking mountain. It’s too cold for that shit.”

They were sent to a different hill a week later. “Fuck,” Henry said when Sergeant Jackson told them. “For how long?” For a week.

The snow melted during the day and turned the roads and hills into a thick sticky mud. The river was swollen and fast. Chunks of ice and trash churned against fallen trees. Everything froze solid again at night. A full moon shone through the skeletal trees as they dug into the hard ground.

“How was the funeral, Henry?” Jones asked. They had been digging for two hours in silence. Jackson leaned on his shovel and breathed out a plume of white steam.

“It was fine,” Henry said. Mud thumped to the ground behind him. He stopped and looked around. Jones smoked a cigarette. The red cherry lit his whole face when he inhaled on it. Henry looked at the moon. “No one was there though.”

“No one was there?” Jones asked.

“Nope,” Henry said. “Just me and my mom.”

“Hmm.” Jones sat down, pulled a green poncho tightly over his shoulders. Henry watched his face light and dim, his eyes dancing and distant in the red glow.

“You’re going to give away our position,” Jackson said. “Put that thing out.”

Jones pushed the cigarette into the ground and sighed. Henry slumped into his hole and pulled night vision goggles from his rucksack. He switched them on, a high-pitched whine emanated from the heavy black plastic. Through them, the night turned strange and green. He wondered if he would die like his father—alone and drunk. A rock crashed into the atmosphere and streaked bright green through the dark green sky. Henry made a wish. He scanned down to the field below them just in time to see the short green flash.

“Holy shit,” Jones said. “Did you see that, Henry?”

“Yeah.”

“Was that what I think it was?” Jones asked.

Before Henry could answer, a sharp burst of light filled the goggles and an explosion rumbled through the tiny village behind them.

“I thought so,” Jones said. He slid behind the Mark-19 machine grenade launcher, snaked his legs through its heavy tripod, jolted its seventy pound bolt back. “Give me a range!”

Henry aimed the range-finder. “300 meters,” he said.

Jones adjusted the weapon’s sights for range, pressed his thumbs against the butterfly trigger. 40 mm high explosive grenades rained onto the field below. The ground shook and the air smelled like sulfur and blood.

***

Henry calls his mother collect from jail. She accepts the charges. She’s confused. Where is he? And why is he in jail? What’s a bail-bondsman and how would she go about getting in touch with one? Why has it been so long since he called? She can’t remember the last time she’s seen him. Where is he again?

“I don’t have a lot of time, Mom,” Henry says. “Can you just get me out of here?”

“Honestly, John,” she says. “I wish you would just come home.”

“I will, Mom. Soon.” Henry hears her weeping quietly. “I promise.” The rookie taps him on the arm. “I gotta go, Mom.”

The rookie leads Henry to a cell, his polished black shoes click crisply on the polished linoleum floor. The cell is cold and hard. Henry lies on the thin mattress and closes his eyes.

***

It took them almost two hours to climb down that hill. Dried red blood was smeared across Triple-M’s mouth like cheap lipstick. His body mangled and stiff, his eyes still open. He looked very surprised.

“Oh, Jesus,” Jones moans.

“What is it?” Sergeant Jackson asks.

Jones stumbles away from the wrecked truck, vomits, weeps.

“Fuck,” Jackson says.

Henry walks over, looks into the cab. Two small, brightly dressed bodies cling to each other on the floor, tears slick and frozen on their pudgy faces. It looks like they’ve just fallen asleep, like the slightest noise will wake them. But Henry knows better.

Sergeant Jackson is on the radio with Company. The Division Commander will fly out in his Blackhawk. Henry will be on the news again. His mother won’t call anyone this time. But it’s silent now. The full moon, bright and fat and watching, sinks slowly behind the western mountains. There’s nothing to do now but wait.