Here is how I imagine him:
Midnight.
He sits on a metal folding chair, half-dressed in pants and a t-shirt. This is his room, a modified shipping container, his home for the previous three months as well as for the next nine. The exterior is steel, the roof protected by a layer of filled sandbags, the interior lined with plywood, bulky two-by-four shelves pushed up against one wall, his bed against another. There are no windows. The lights are off. His personal belongings are all around him: a DVD player and pirated discs, a computer to screen the movies. The hard drive holds pictures of his children, pictures of his life as a soldier. It holds financial information, rows and columns a living record of gains and, mostly, losses. His life, reduced to things invisible. Digitized, stored inside miniature manila file folders. Things so big made so small. He is an Army sergeant, aggressive and motivated. Mature. Battle-tested. The type of leader his bosses admire. He has responsibilities. Even as he sits, there are soldiers all around him, eighteen young men, some literally half his age. Flesh and blood. Life-sized. He is responsible for their health and welfare, for their training, for their lives. Two of them, on guard duty on top of the operations center a few buildings over, look out into the dark Kandahar desert night. Looking for things they’ll never see, but things he sees. Dangerous things. A few of the other men, sergeants like he is, are close by. They are in their own rooms, their own modified shipping containers. The remainder, all junior soldiers, sleep in their barracks just twenty meters away.
He looks at his government-issued belongings, spread around him on the floor. Disarray. Protective gear, a night vision device, maps and alcohol pens, packaged military rations, dirty uniforms and socks and t-shirts. Fragments of war. Weapons too, and ammunition. Small things that produce big results. On the floor next to his bed are his boots. One upright, the other on its side. There is a pistol there, next to a boot, a lace casually touching the barrel. An American flag in the background and it would look just like those romanticized, self-indulgent paintings he sees in the kiosks at the base department store back home, the prints with romanticized, self-indulgent titles. Like Casualty of War. Or Freedom Isn’t Free. There is a mostly empty plastic container on the table next to him, a remaining few drinks of whiskey mixed with Coke, sent to him in a Dasani water bottle from someone at home. Maybe a friend. Probably his wife. A peace offering, trying to make up for spending so much of their money – of his money – trying to make up for overdrawn checking accounts. His eyes are closed, the back of his head resting against the wall behind him. Or maybe his head is hung forward. Low. Chin on chest, elbows on knees, fingers interlocked behind his head. His hands pulling down, his neck pushing back. A stalemate. Tension permeates through his body, envelops him. He is thinking: About money, about finances, about his two homes. About mortgages he can’t afford, about bankruptcy. He thinks about his career, how it is stalling, how he is not getting promoted fast enough. He thinks about war. How this one is not pursued aggressively enough, how anyone not wearing a US military uniform is the enemy, how they are all around him. He thinks about his wife. About happiness. He thinks about envy and regret. Mostly he thinks about the one thing he believes he has earned, he knows he has earned, the one thing that should not be taken from him, that should, rather, be granted him: Mostly, he thinks about respect.
Here is how I imagine him.
Midnight.
He breathes in deeply. Holds the air, squeezes his lungs. He flexes. His neck, his face, his jaw. Every muscle clenching, every tendon expanding, every artery, every vein, every capillary constricting. Every electron circling, faster and faster, in tighter and tighter circles. Spiraling. Like a tornado reaching for ground, like his deepest center is a black hole, sucking every part of him into it.
He breathes out. He opens his eyes. And then he stands up.