On Not Fighting a War

by Robert Rutherford, '05.5

I have never been to war. I hope I'll never go. There is nothing that I believe in enough to sacrifice my life. These are supposed to be days of idealism and youth, and I am blessed. I cannot care. I cannot fight. The only appealing little thing about violence is the potential for heroism, and I doubt I'll ever be a hero or save an innocent life from a burning building, stop a runaway train like so many bad movies. I can't see myself triumphing over this world. I can see myself climb out of the trench and nobly get mowed down by the bullets of a gattling gun. I let fly an arrow from my longbow. In the cockpit of a fighter plane, props twirling, I strafe Japanese ships and dodge innumerable Zeros. On a dusty hill I calculate the trajectory of an artillery shell and re-check my math. I slink through a dark jungle and blend in with the foliage, camouflaging my thoughts, a shadow amidst all the life. I can only see myself in war movies, not in actual wars. I have never been in an honest-to-god kill or be killed full on violent fight, much less a nationally sponsored war. Never defended my life or my honor, or someone else's; but I have taken and sadly given a beating. The closest I have ever been to war is a controlled skirmish with a friend, a fistfight for fun. No anger. One time, at his twenty-first birthday party, Frank and I gave up on docile lives and began to fight. Neither of us was born in Idaho. We never grew up together but we've both spent some time there. Our families moved, his east mine west, Hong Kong and Connecticut, so we're there for the summer and the winter. We know some of the same people, like the Peruvians and Adam Pracna and Jason Spicer, but we're three years too far apart. I'm younger, and we never hung out. We've got mutual friends and we've eaten at all the same places. Small town, not many places. We've both driven out the same canyons in a pickup with mud and girls, same girls? Who knows? There's a keg or two in the back kicking up dust up into it all and clouding up the sky, and we're throwing empty glass bottles shattering at trees and shadows and animals as we drive and sing. Somewhere in the next yellow valley over it's raining, but we can't see any clouds. We worked the same summer job setting up big white tents and tables and chairs for weddings and receptions and celebrations et cetera. We had fun, it was outside at least. We'd roll the tables down hills when no one was looking and sometimes when everyone was. We'd lift hundreds of pounds of metal spikes and put up big tops like the circus was always coming to town but never made it. That job's where Frank got that leatherman he always fondles, he stole it from our boss. It's his most cherished thing. We weren't ever really good friends that summer, just worked together, and grabbed a few beers together after work and spun donuts in dirt lots with the company's pickup and sweated together outside and never really hung out. We were just cowboys, lonesome on the trail. When we're out there in Idaho we, hell, everyone, hell, forgets they ever lived in any other place. We came late and loved it. We're not angry about the time we missed, but we wish we were, because we know the world away is just boring. No one ever goes on adventures, so their stories are boring. They've got nothing worth hearing about so I never even tell them mine. The world away doesn't like getting punched in the face. No adventure. Not much fun. Too many regrets. Everyday I wonder if these people are alive or if they just pay lip service to themselves and their elusive, evanescent happiness. Frank entered into the local yearly rodeo contest and he's never ridden a horse, maybe once, but not a Bucking Bronco. They let anyone enter and you just sign a form and pay twenty-five bucks and then you ride 'em cowboy. It was hilarious. Frank lasted half a second or not even, it was just he was on him riding that thing and then frozen in the air arms and legs flailing and then he was in the dust. Not even long enough for a picture. Not even long enough for a memory. They call it a rodeo. We both go to Brown. There are eight of us here from Idaho, but we don't count. We're not from real Idaho. Real backcountry wild wild west, mountain man, bears and broken dreams Idaho. Frank and I are beating the crap out of each other. And smiling. Left arm down to his crotch. Try to squeeze the blood out of his balls, make them pop-pop. Chestnuts roastin'. Snowballs splattering. Marbles shattering. O, Elbow to the chest. A rib like a human wishbone, not turkey, not stuffing. Right hand to his arm, grab, latch, and pull. Throw him into the wall. Ha. In this moment we are friends. Really good ones. A twenty-first birthday party and a rusty, ten-shots-of-whiskey, taste of home. Twenty-one is not some sappy bullshit passage into manhood, because hopefully by then you're already a man. Goddammit. Hopefully you're old enough to take some responsibility for your actions, whatever they are. It's more like "yeah buddy, good job, you made it." Yes, goddamn, yes you're still here so "cheers, have a drink" for the first legal time in your life. Franks favorite drink is whiskey. In a mason jar, in a red plastic keg cup, in his mouth, in whatever's not dirty with chaw or puke or dirt filth, in a glass even. I am just a cowboy, lonesome on the trail. I don't want to die. I sound so whiny, so weak. I don't want permanent oblivion though I often seek its temporary refuge. I sleep and drink too much, shutting off the world around me and retreating from causality. I close my shades and wake up in the afternoon only because I need to use the bathroom. My patterns are too restful; they are a waste of time. I regret the days I've wasted, yet they continue. Days filled with no import, and I will never remember them. I once trusted my memory implicitly. It was not infallible, not photographic, just trustworthy. Now false memories pollute my mind and I do not know my past for certain. I live in Idaho, I go to college, the rest I fill in daily. Frank's left hand pulls back and we laugh and his fingers fist and punch me in Adam's apple. I can't breathe though I suck in real hard, trying, while Frank's other hand just rams into my front teeth. I break free and left leg and right take me stumbling to the mirror. My tongue feels while my eyes look at the tooth and it's all bent backward and hurting a lot but in the mirror it looks A-OK. Looks like it except for the little red round line between the pink of the gum and the white of the tooth. I just kind of push it back into what feels like the best pretty good alright place and there's no more time for that 'cause Frank grabs my shoulder and I spin around. And around again and Franks offa me and I run back to the mirror and just punch it so hard, and it doesn't break. My hand bounces off its own reflection like a repelled magnet, elementally opposed to occupying the same space and time. Now I'm angry because the mirror won't break so I hit it hard again and I don't know what was different but the glass just shatters. The blood reflects in the shattered web of cracks that is broken by inches to reflections of shocked faces who just don't, you know, just can't figure out or understand what they're seeing right there plain in front of them. They don't realize that this is the closest I have ever been to war. The plan is to die by thirty or not at all. I'm playing a blindfolded game of connect the dots. It is uncertain and worrisome and thrilling. For every time I exhale I inhale again, and so I know I do not want to die. I have to think this through logically, step by step, add one and one until I get two, and prove it to myself. With this proof I know that I do not want my family visiting me in a field of white crosses, crying for the first few years maybe, then not crying at all. Then not coming. Frank and I live fifty miles north of where the flat high-alpine desert of short sagebrush rises and transforms and gradually creates valleys and mountains and becomes the sharply notched Sawtooth Range. These mountain cousins to the Tetons of Wyoming possess twelve thousand foot peaks and large lakes impounded by glacial moraines. I have hiked the peaks and swam in the waters. The land is beautiful. In winter it is very cold; a dry, high alpine desert. Water evaporates up into the air. It does not linger to harass me and drag my garments down with its weight. It does not bother me. It is cold and dry and the snow is plentiful and powdery and the sun shines reflecting off the white landscape while I ski and throw snowballs at cars and sleep in igloos of piled, packed and hollowed snow known as Quinzie huts. I am dry throughout the winter in a desert in the mountains. On the Fourth of July a few summers ago I hiked to Alpine Lake. It is a small body high up in a mountain bordered by grey skree fields that bleed down into the water and tumbled boulders that must have made an incredible noise when they fell years ago. There are pine trees and little flat land. The trees that survive in the limited soil and strong winds grow surprisingly straight. The lake is clear enough to see the bottom rocks ripple in muddled greens and blues. If it weren't for the sterile lack of life the waters could be confused for some sparkling Caribbean inlet. Aquatic life does not thrive so well eight-thousand feet above the Pacific. Over the water the nearby peak rises as a jagged black scrag. I've called Alpine Lake water, it usually is. But when I went in July it was hard white ice, all frozen solid save for ten feet between the shore and the iceberg. Antarctic glacial snow never melts; I thought Alpine Lake would never thaw. This was no day trip I took. I was backpacking. I carried what I needed in and out and left only a whittled stick. I brought a tent, a tarp, a sleeping bag and pad, some food, a book, a flashlight, a first aid kit, a knife and a change of clothes. I also brought iodine to make the Giardia choked water safe to drink. It was the Fourth of July and even though fireworks are legal in Idaho I didn't have any packed; the stars would be my pyrotechnic show. Some nights they are bright enough to read by. It should be clear how I celebrate my independence. I also brought a bathing suit. After setting up camp I reached into my bag and brought it out. The sun was still shining and the air was warm. Stripping I paused for a moment, naked in the wilderness, and looked around. No animal voyeurs wondered what I was doing. After pulling the suit over my thighs and tying the drawstring in a tight bow I dipped my finger in the water, then my foot. They felt numb when I pulled them quickly out. I climbed up on a tall boulder that was half submerged in the cold clear water, half in the dry frost-heaved dirt. It was the summer, the Fourth of July and I was not at a warm sunny family barbeque stealing a beer from the cooler when no one was looking. I inhaled and jumped. In the air I looked down and found myself plunging into hard ice. I screamed before I hit, thinking I would crumple on the frozen water, but my jump proved true and I splashed down miles from the nearest diving board. There was a pause in my head, ears ringing underwater. I felt no temperature, just a million needles all sticking into me at once. The needles pressed in on my and broke and I felt my body erupt with a quick confused heat. The sensation calmed as I broke back through the surface. Feeling the air I thought I was falling back into the water. My wet hair and face froze. Inhaling audibly I swam the three short strokes to the gigantic iceberg and clamored aboard. I stood for twenty seconds on the raft and looked around. The sun felt warm; I felt like a polar bear. My eyes darted around, taking in the scenery that now seemed more vivid somehow. I was cold but the sun was rapidly warming me. Then I realized it was time to go back; I could no longer feel my feet. I jumped off the iceberg. Prepared though I was I still recoiled as I hit the water. My muscles tensed in some primitive reflex and the needles returned. I can't remember climbing back on the shore, only the sun that greeted me there. It was warm and it covered me. I wiped the water from my body with my hands and shed the swimsuit. The sun and dehydrated air took the rest of the water off my body and I was dry. It was cold and I was wet, but there was no humidity so I dried quickly and did not get frostbite or pneumonia and die. Everyday life should be my proving ground, my battlefield, my war. I should show my courage everyday in all the so little, so important things. I sometimes see courage as something I will do when the time comes, rising to action and conquering all evil in one deft blow. I'll be courageous when the moons align and the tides swell higher. Courage is not so grand. I have built it up too much. Courage should not be an extreme of human emotion/action. Courage should be when I call a girl and ask her to dinner. It should be when, hopelessly late to class, I still show up to at least learn something. It should be constant honesty. It should be diligent communication. Courage should be at least pretending I'll live my life. Courage should be waking up in the morning before the sun rises and going for a walk. I was out a canyon. Out near a bonfire twenty feet tall with friends so close I don't need to remember their names. We're singing to the music. Punk rock out of a reversed Jeep breaking the speakers from heavy bass and static and yelling to the country chords played faster than sin. I say something stupid so I get punched in the arm hard enough to make a big bruise the next day which I don't notice because there's always a bruise there and never not. Frank's playing with his leatherman that he always flicks open and back and forth and opens and closes and folds and unfolds, folds, and he always threatens to stab me. And when he's drunk he comes really close. But he wouldn't really stab me, just pretend, even though the blade comes really close and I think it's going to go right through me, and hurt too much, but it's only a nail-file to trick me, except when he's drunk, then it's a knife. We all tell him good joke and laugh and are all sarcastic. But he wouldn't stab you, unless he really likes you, or he's really wasted. Then I might get stabbed, but at that point I probably want to get stabbed anyway. Out to a canyon we've both been so many times before this one. Always. Out Corral, out Baker Creek, out Trail Creek, out Warm Springs, out West. Wherever. Whenever, long as it's dark. Get some kegs, steal some pallets that burn bright and long and drive out a canyon to see some friends who are already there, because everyone's already there. Some kid is driving his four-by-four back and forth over this big fallen pine tree out behind the fire and it's really long and there's this other kid standing, standing by the other end of the log and not really noticing. He's just, because he's drunk enough to make an evening out of just staring at the fire and watching the sparks rise up and listening to the crack-pop of the pine wood fire, standing. With a PBR in one hand or a Natty Ice or it doesn't matter because it'll spill in a second so unless you're on the ground below him that can is wasted. The pickup is tweaking out his shocks and rallying hard-core on the log back and forth but there's some weird rolling big-like divot mound in the ground, the ground's not flat, and the truck gets at this angle and the log rotates around really fast. At the other end is the kid with the beer and he's just standing there and here comes the log, fast. It just hits him solid square in the back and everybody hears the connection over the punk and it's wood and spine and the sound, it's a hollow sound like wood on wood, like hitting a tree with a stick till it breaks, but not wood. Bone. This kid goes flying, flying like fifteen feet, just up in the air, flying, airborne, alive. So quick he hits the ground, and everybody yells, "Oh shit dude what happened?" and he's dead. But not really, that's exaggerating, 'cause that would suck for him. His friends all run over to help him and I get a good look and the kid is just dazed. And his eyes still look peacefully into the fire but now not like before. There are little red dots that grow in the angled left and right corners of his mouth. One on the left and one on the right and the blood stays there and doesn't drip as if there's nothing behind it. Not any more blood, not anything. It was surreal, and people were slapping him on the back and yelling "Fuck Yeah" and pouring beer on him like it was his birthday, like he was a hero. And he's just staring, sitting, staring. That's violence, because it has no cause. Getting punched by a friend doesn't count. My knee comes up and thrusts into Frank's leg and gives him a large numbness so that he cannot feel and picks him up and lets him drop to the ground. Frank yells with pain and persuasion. All the people watching can't comprehend the smiles on our faces. "C'mon, what are a few broken bones when it's all good clean fun? You know, life is hard and so are we, right?" Right? All the people watching are horrified. They don't live like this. They are civilized and have never gone and will never go to war. I cannot dismiss all and say that war and violence are unconditionally wrong. They can be terrible crimes; they can also be necessary. Conflict is a part of this world. I see war, or threats of it, and know that it must happen. I do not support murder, but I understand that some people believe in something (their country, their leaders, themselves) enough to risk death. Some people hate themselves, and try to punish their own lives. Pacifism is a valid ideal too, but it is weaker, not for lack of conviction, but because no one can risk death for pacifism. It may be worth dying for peace, but a martyr's accomplishments are enjoyed only by those who survive him. Dying to prevent more death is the ostensible, rationalized goal of war. Living to prevent death is the logical goal of peace. Frank is given another chance to rise and he takes what he can get and kicks me in the head. Yeah. Kicks in the head, and kicks in the head. And drive down a dirt road with a full moon and aspen and pine and sagebrush and scrub and stars you can actually see and crisp air and coldness and breath and songs and yelling and drinking and loving it and loving your friends and being a friend and getting punched in the face and kicked in the head and no regrets motherfuckers. That's what this is basically all about. Not war: There is enough freedom in peace to fistfight. During the fight with Frank I was testing myself. I needed to know just what I could do. I needed to be sure that if I was ever forced to go to war, to fight for my life, then maybe, maybe I could. The people watching just can't watch anymore, it's too much; it looks like we're hurting each other. The carpet is getting redder so the crowd interrupts with curses and full nelsons on me and Frank who can't bear the separation. For a moment there is appalling calm. We're being talked down, rationalized, but we catch the bright white in each others eyes. When we turn to shake hands we hug and when we turn to kiss we punch each other in the face. Shit-eating grins have never lived like this, never had this purpose or necessary devotion. Never needed a place on these faces like this perfection. The fight ends because it has to sometime. Because I do not want to fight and die, just get a taste of it, enough to have experienced something closer to war than anything else. Nothing I have done ever compares to the books I have read or the movies I have watched. I have fought, but with a friend, in ultimate safety. It's simplistic: I wish my life closer to death so I can feel more alive, so it feels very true. And wishing that, wishing oblivion, I know it is a stupid idea; to want hardship. Stupid and wrong. Like fighting with a friend, like war.