Chris Cummins
Arms Against a Sea of Troubles
The arm, bent slightly at the elbow, lay among the dusty pieces of jagged metal and torn earth. Private Martin Beuren carefully traversed the mounds of rubble, taking care where material gave way under his feet. He marveled at the arm. It was beautiful. For a moment, he fixated on the index finger, arched as if beginning to let go of something. The other fingers also gave this illusion, but no object was near enough to have been grasped. Around the wrist was the unmistakable Army issue watch, complete with compass. The drab green of the sleeve was caked with plaster and small circles of blood, but a red sash of some sort was also wrapped around it. On the upper part some bars and stars were languidly ripping off, but the arm was wide and strong. After that, nothing. But it was beautiful.
Martin dropped his rucksack and contemplated calling over some of the boys. Instead, he rummaged through the pack and pulled out his Nikon F camera. He craned his neck and head over the arm, but could not capture its magnificence. Private Beuren dropped to a knee with the light behind, yet still couldn’t get it right. He tried other angles with the light coming from the side or facing, and nothing gave the picture what he saw. So, Martin snapped a simple standing one, gave one last look, and jammed the camera back into his bag, before pulling out a canteen with sandy water. The war was eight months old for Martin. It was not a baby anymore with crying and screaming and cuts from tin cans during dinner. Instead, the war was an adolescent, like Martin, a banal pursuit of an enemy with splashes of sex and rice field horizons and watery beer and misspelled words on letters home. And now, an arm.
“How’s it comin’, Beuren? You and your friggin’ arm. It’s hilarious!”
Martin doesn’t want to answer the question. He pretends not to hear Doug, tries to focus on his painting. But he feels Doug staring at his back, daring him to keep silent. “Do you ever think about the war, Doug?” Martin asked.
“I remember the boom-boom girls,” Doug laughed.
“I don’t mean the girls,” Martin sighed. “I mean, what it all looked like.”
“It was one big piece of shit. One. Big. Shithole.”
Martin breathed in deeply, vacuuming the air of his paints and linseed oil, and then spilling the air slowly out of his nostrils. “What about the rice fields?”
“What about them?” Doug began, but Martin had lost track of any words being spoken, reconnoitering the large canvas before him. In the corner, pinned with one of his service medals, was the picture. It looked slightly different from the way Martin had seen it some years ago, and its composition lacked any artistic value whatsoever. But the arm, in its entirety, was there. He began his painting weeks earlier, after having been sent his first VA check. It was 1973 and with his two hundred eighty-nine dollars and twenty-six cents, Martin bought some groceries—canned beans, bread, milk, eggs, paper plates and sundry items, and some paints, a large canvas and brushes.
The painting process was slow, with many pauses to capture the correct hues of dead skin. This, of course, only prompted Martin to question how dead the skin was, and if more pink would be better to show its animation. Each fingernail became a daily endeavor, using close inspections of the photograph with a magnifying glass, as Martin was certain they were bitten or, at least, poorly cut. He had finally begun the wristwatch, amazed at the notion it may still be telling time.
“You should have taken it, man.” Doug said.
Martin paused, the gentle cock of his head asking the question, the actual arm?
“Look at that thing. It looks new, like when we got them at Bragg. Remember that?”
That’s when Martin understood that Doug meant the watch, not the arm.
Doug shifted on the stool, uncomfortable with silence. “Remember?” he urged Martin angrily.
“Yeah,” he replied, working in the silver clasp of the watch with his brush. Martin wished Doug had some business elsewhere, like the garage below, where his prized silver 1965 Corvette sat on blocks. A quiet patient awaiting the ministrations of a concerned doctor. Doug treated that car like Martin treated his painting. Focused, obsessed. Though Martin rented the space from Doug for a measly $180, Martin also considered him a war buddy, a reminder of friendship, like the first few pages of a book which jog your memory so you don’t have to read the rest. Martin did that with the books he had read in high school. He picked them up and began reading, usually intently, then realized the characters were like dead relatives he already knew, and returned the closed book to the pile he drew it from.
But it was Sunday, and Doug barely worked the other days of the week, so Martin didn’t mind occupying him. If he were lucky, Doug sat on the couch instead of the other stool which was close to the easel, and Martin painted without any interruption, since Doug’s voice stopped dead at Martin’s deaf left ear.
“Whose arm do you think it was?” Martin asked.
“How the hell should I know?” Doug responded quickly. “Does it matter? I mean, he’s dead, whoever he was.”
Martin contemplated this statement for a time. The man was obviously dead, right? He supposed there was a chance the man survived the blast, the medevac, the surgeries, the blood loss. He brought himself back to that moment on the rubble pile. Had he looked hard enough? Could there have been someone under the mess that used to be a building? Was he really dead?
“Are you sure?” Martin craved reassurance.
“Yeah,” Doug said, and bit his fingernails.
“I suppose you’re right,” Martin began, “but people have lived through things like that, right? Remember that guy we used to call ‘Beans’ cause he cut himself on the MRE can? He lost a leg on a trip wire, and he’s still alive, right?”
“Shut up, Marty,” Doug said with a hint of exasperation. “Dead. Alive. Who cares?”
Martin continued adding some diluted white streaks to the face of the watch, using his smallest liner brush, hoping to emulate a slight glare upon the glass. He stopped talking to Doug, who had retreated to the bookshelf in Martin’s apartment, though he didn’t read all that much. Martin had pushed Doug too far into the past. It wasn’t that difficult to do. Doug would get wound up talking about the war and suddenly stop, as if he had hit a wall. Unfortunately, that was all either of them knew to talk about, especially since Doug didn’t like painting and Martin had never owned a car, much less driven one. Martin had always thought driving was just an illusion of control.
“I gotta do some stuff downstairs, Marty. I’ll see you later.” It was Doug’s way of being tactful.
“Okay. I’ll see you,” said Martin, who turned but saw no sign of Doug in the doorway. In an off-hand way, his wish for solitude was granted, and Martin vigorously filled his palette with some siennas, white, orange, red, blues. He had returned to think of the arm as dead, so blue might bring that out. Or maybe it was dying, not dead yet. So, some blue could act as a coldness leading to death.
Occasionally, he felt pinpricks of memory needle his back. There were some cold nights in the Quang Tri province. Once, he wandered into a peasant village and viewed families stripped naked, huddled together, motionless on the dirt floors. He noticed young girls in a few corners, but the faint Alice blue of their skin was what struck him. He wasn’t certain if the cold actually killed them, but it was cold enough.
Maybe the sleeve should meet the watch instead, he thought. It was nearing noon, warm in his apartment, and he could hear Doug using some air pressure tools below. He squeezed some green onto his palette and looked back at the picture.
“No, it’s not blue, but the sleeve is short,” he said aloud. Martin inspected the photo carefully, noting the dirt around the watch and wrist. The green wouldn’t be wasted if he mixed it into brown, but there was no way Martin could begin the sleeve. It took three hours to finish the watch, and his eyes were beginning to blur. He started the upper part of the wrist with flecks of dirt around the band, and even more on the face of the watch. His hand cramped while he deliberately poked the canvas with his brush—stopping, referring to the photograph, and softly striking the canvas once more. Then he brushed his right eye with the back of his hand, looked at his fingers, and brushed his eye again. The brush fell to his pants and the floor, while Martin continued rubbing his eyes, now with both hands.
In basic training, Sergeant Brooks had instructed them not to do that. “Yer hands are so fuckin’ dirty, you’ll probably infect them. Jes close yer eyes, y’all. Don’t make it worse. Jes close ‘em, squeeze ‘em, and the tears’ll get whatever is in, out.” Martin never followed that eye rule in the field though. He’d rub the dust and dirt out constantly, so much so, he sometimes lost sight for minutes on end. They were red and useless. He’d grab Doug’s arm and whisper, “I can’t see, Doug. What are we doin’? Just tell me where I got to go for a minute until I can see straight again.” Sometimes he’d rub them on purpose, not tell anyone, and look around because the war could be beautiful in that strange, nebulous way that sometimes escaped description. But Doug always held his arm or pushed him forward. A guilt pervaded Martin’s conscience. Maybe he shouldn’t have wished for Doug to leave.
His vision cleared enough, and he picked up the brush, then plunked it in some water. The sleeve would wait, but he was certain the sleeve was the next step.
“Why’s the arm bent?” Doug had maneuvered behind Martin’s stool, like a parent looking over his child’s shoulder, simply appearing without warning.
“Cause that’s the way it is in the photograph.”
“You’re a bonehead, y’know that, Marty,” he responded. “Why is the guy’s arm bent in the photograph?” he said slowly, accentuating each syllable.
“Maybe he was going to do something. Maybe he had a gun.” Martin applied thick strokes of paint to the upper part of the sleeve just below the sash. It showed the wrinkles of the material, yet caught each wrinkle’s shadow with the dark green to black depths. In some places, deep red circles lay upon the material, conforming themselves to each crease. “Do you think he knew it was coming, Doug?”
“Huh?”
“Whatever happened to him,” Martin said. “His hands were ready. Or had been ready, see?” Martin pointed to the photo with the end of his brush.
“Yeah, he knew.” Doug said with cynical confidence.
“Knew what?”
“You know what.” He said, gesticulating with his hands. “For Christ’s sake, Marty, you know!” Doug pointed to the picture sharply.
But he didn’t. He stared along Doug’s arm, followed the greasy finger to its chewed black nail then turned his sight to the photo. Yet he did not see it. He began to rub his eyes.
“Oh, stop it, Marty.” Doug pulled Martin’s hand away. “The guy had it comin’. We all got it comin’. He was a soldier in a war, and that means you got it comin’ to you, too.” Martin looked at the photo, then his painting, and nodded in agreement, though he really didn’t understand what Doug was saying.
The paint was almost dry, yet imperceptibly still alive and changeable on the canvas. Martin waited days for the paint to dry, but couldn’t hold out; he had to touch it. The arm was posed just as the photograph, but this arm was more…real. He straightened his fingers and poised them hovering above the painting, then closed his eyes. Martin lowered his hand in a slow sweeping motion and felt the topography of the Army issue jacket, its folds. It was as if he were feeling the actual arm. His heart raced and a warm sensation filled his chest. He continued reading the painting like braille. The paint smeared slightly though, and he jerked his hand from the easel, quick as a shock through his arm and shoulder. The blemish was unnoticeable to an untrained eye, but he knew it was there.
A fleeting temptation to destroy everything overcame him. It was no longer the arm in the photograph. Martin felt closer to it now, understood it with new clarity and emotion. He no longer felt that he was merely putting paint on canvas. This arm was being reborn. It existed within Martin, not just as itself. He noticed the photograph on the corner of the canvas, its simplicity, its banal background. Martin picked up his palette and squirted a blob of green onto it.
“Still at it.” Doug was smoking a Pall Mall, leaning against the door jam, ashing the floor.
“There are some empty cans in the garbage, if you want them.” Marty wasn’t annoyed, but tried to keep a clean place. “I just don’t want that stuff all over the place.”
“You should put some in your painting. Ashes to ashes and shit,” Doug advised. “Like dirt on his neck or something. Y’know, for realism.” Marty looked up. Doug’s interest in the painting had grown ever since Martin began to add a person to it. It seemed a sincere critique.
“I don’t think there would be ash on his neck.”
“Well then try giving him a hard on. Everyone should have one of those.”
“I meant the gray doesn’t seem to fit,” Martin dully responded.
Doug started to ash his cigarette but thought better of it. He let it burn in his mouth and said, “I’m just playin’ with ya, Marty. You’re the artist here. I think it’s good so far.” He wound up dropping ashes on the floor anyway, but continued talking out of the side of his mouth. “The guy’s boots are just like ours, the way you got his legs makes him seem, I dunno, almost comfortable. They’re not twisted or anything. But you can still tell the guy’s dead for some reason.”
“Thanks.” Martin took in the conversation thoughtfully. Engaging in any talk with Doug was short-lived, so he wanted to make most of it. “What do you think I should do with the other arm?”
“Another friggin’ arm?” Doug said on his way to the kitchen for a can. “This is gonna take you for fuckin’ ever! And nobody has that much time.”
“Probably,” Martin laughed uneasily.
“Well, you haven’t done the head yet, so you could do something with that.” He gently tapped his cigarette against the can. “Jes don’t make that guy me. Ha! Wouldn’t that be freaky.” The thought had occurred to Martin though. Doug was the best model he’d get for a face, besides those in pictures, though they lacked the tactile nature of really figuring out the subject. He knew he couldn’t ask. That was way beyond their relationship.
“Here’s what you do,” Doug said while moving toward the large easel, “You take the guy’s head and have it facing down. Then you bring the guy’s other hand up to his head, and—” Doug pointed at the place for this added composition and wiped the canvas, leaving a trail of black grease along the unfinished neckline of the soldier.
Suddenly, Martin lunged at Doug’s arm, knocking the cigarette in his hand to the floor.
“What the f—?” Doug began. But his words were stifled, as Martin’s right fist jolted the breath out of Doug’s lungs, sent him to the floor. Martin would have continued, but a smoky smell had begun on the carpet fringes, redirecting his attention. He swung his leg over Doug’s gasping body, stood, and stepped on the burning rug. Doug pulled himself up on his elbows, visibly shaken.
“What the hell are you doing?” Doug said, gaining his breath.
“You,” Martin began, “I—”
“It’s just a little grease!” Doug composed himself. “You can wipe it off and paint over it, man. Ya don’t gotta belt me in the gut!”
“It’s just, you…” He couldn’t continue. The short, black streak stared back at Martin. Rage and confusion mingled. “Just go, Doug.”
“I can’t, Marty.”
“What do you mean, you can’t? Just leave.”
“I’ll go get us some beers or something,” Doug said. “Look, I’m sorry, Marty.”
“Please go, Doug.”
Martin looked bewilderingly at the canvas. The streak seemed to lose intensity until he felt it might be a part of the painting. It was supposed to be there. Perhaps it was another fold in a sleeve, or the butt of a pistol. He didn’t know how yet, but the streak was showing him the way to finish. The streak grew in his vision until he saw the entire composition. A completed form spread out from the grease like an explosion, the explosion that removed the arm in the first place. The streak connected what looked like empty space on the canvas to the soldier’s head, where his eyes would be. The soldier’s eyes would be void, flat looking.
He noticed the dead cigarette and barely charred carpet. The mechanical way he’d hit Doug returned, along with the way he’d extinguished Doug’s voice for that one moment. His arm’s reflex was astonishingly quick and strong, like a tightly pressed spring. Martin quickly felt exhausted, spent. He wanted to vomit or faint or suffer some sort of penance for striking Doug, but he didn’t know how. So he returned to the painting and Doug returned with two cold beers. Martin didn’t object to Doug’s return, but also didn’t accept the offered can. He let Doug stand there, arm outstretched, until he got the hint. Doug shrugged and took a seat, watched.
They existed together in a strange dance of slow breathing and solitude. Doug no longer offered Martin advice, for which the artist was thankful, yet oddly disconcerted. With a quill brush between his right middle and ring finger, and a hake gently poised in his thumb and index, Martin dusted on the painted dirt. Martin needed Doug to say something. Maybe he should say something first. He even opened his mouth, but he couldn’t think of the right thing to say. Both remained silent except for Martin’s sluggish exhaling. It was time to paint the other arm. Martin grabbed a Filbert brush to blend some raw sienna and olive green. Raising the brush to the canvas, he glanced at Doug, who sat on the stool, beer in hand, eyes forgiving the artist for the recent assault. But he could not apply the paint.
He watched as Doug dropped to the bottom of a well, a tunnel. The colors of his skin, his shirt shifted, muted, blended until he looked like someone else, somewhere else. A Doug younger by only a few years, but so much younger than now. Dizziness overcame Martin, and his arm dropped away from the painting, the brush handle clattering against the floor.
Martin crashed to the floor, curled over to protect his head from incoming fire as smoke and dust filled the room. He swore he heard mortar fire, but that was impossible. The easel toppled backward, spilling oil and red paint. Palette knives, solvent and linseed oil flew from the easel tray, and chemicals filled his nose. He lunged to grasp something, anything, to bring himself back to the apartment, the painting. His palm pulled through a corner of the painting, across a portion of the rubble pile, leaving a vicious flash of blended colors.
His hand found the palette knife, flexible, strong, and sharp. Lying in front of the picture, nearly complete, Martin contemplated the strength he would need. He needed to get back, to enter into the blast zone, he needed to retrieve the arm. Canvas is weak enough, it shouldn’t take much effort, but the back-and-forth movements of a blade without teeth might require a constant hard pressure. He aimed for the painting arm right at the point where the bicep was meant to connect to the shoulder. Instead, the knife found his own arm, where he plunged the point quickly, aggressively into his own muscle. The pain was excruciating, too much for Martin, and he nearly fainted against the canvas, smudging his recent work on the shirt collar. His heart raced as his body slumped over the picture, but he smiled. He’d found the way. To apologize for striking his friend. To completing his work. To closing the loop.
Doug was kneeling next to Martin, gently unfolding his clenched fingers which clutched the palette knife, which wasn’t a palette knife at all, but an Army issued bayonet.
Martin’s wide eyes watched his apartment disappear into the confusion and bedlam of Quang Tri City. It was ’68 all over again. The desperate, shoved-to-the-back-foot attempt to counter the Tet Offensive. Amidst the barrage, Doug, now in his fatigues and flak jacket, dropped the knife and held Martin’s hand. Doug smiled. “Close your eyes, Marty.” His voice was unusually calm. Soft almost. “We’re not here. Just close your eyes.”
Martin squeezed Doug’s hand. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I’m sorry.”
“But there’s nothing to be sorry for Marty,” he said in a voice that seemed far away and not quite real. “No need to forgive.”
A warm breeze dissipated the smokey smell into a mix of linseed oil and the dust of a city jungle, bitter and innocent.
“‘Arms Against a Sea of Troubles’ is a short story that delves into the psychology of death in war. Ultimately, it centers around the conflict of self and memory, specifically the way in which war haunts a person, but an escape such as art allows some release.” —Chris Cummins
Chris Cummins lives outside Buffalo, New York and teaches high school English, creative writing and drama. In addition, he directs plays and musicals and teaches in a film academy, a multi-faceted learning experience which includes script-writing, acting and video editing. Although his most recent work focused on the writing and production of two locally performed musicals, his first writing love is poetry. He’s been featured in the Buffalo News, Heduan Review, Book of Matches, Literary Heist, Lotus-Eater, Aromatica Poetica, The Gilded Weathervane, Lothlorien, WordSwell, Goose River Press and other small presses.