Redeployment

A soldier remembers shooting dogs in Iraq. The first time was when he saw a dog lapping up blood after a fight. He remembers getting on the medical airliner to come home and how confused everyone felt now that their time in the war was done. His thoughts shift frequently from images of hurt children he saw in the war; to when he got his own dog, Vicar; to a friend of his named Eicholtz.

The dogshooting was called “Operation Scooby” (3). When he gets back to America, the narrator feels naked after handing in his gun at Lejeune. Outside, his wife, Cheryl, waits with many other family members who are there to see the soldiers arrive home. He is nervous and kisses her because “I figured that was what I was supposed to do” (8). He has not driven in seven months, so he drives them home. When they arrive, Cheryl asks him how he is, which he knows means “How was it? Are you crazy now?” (8).

When he sees Vicar, the dog moves slowly. He has little tumors on his legs, common to Labradors, but he has more than usual. Vicar is also abnormally thin. Cheryl kisses him, and he carries her upstairs where they have sex: “I put a big grin on my face but it didn’t help. She looked a bit scared of me, then. I guess all the wives were probably a little bit scared” (9). He describes coming home as the first breath after nearly drowning: “Even if it hurts, it’s good” (9).

Two of the other men he knows come home to wives who are either pregnant by another man or who had left without saying goodbye. One of these men, Weissert, takes the narrator on a bender full of strip clubs and bars. The narrator spends the rest of that weekend watching baseball games with Vicar. He struggles to adjust to being at home: “Even though I hated the past seven months and the only thing that kept me going was the Marines I served with and the thought of coming home, I started feeling like I wanted to go back. Because fuck all this” (11).

He is sad by how sick Vicar is, but Cheryl convinces him to leave for a while and go shopping with her. While they’re driving through town, and then walking around in the stores, he can’t stop scanning the windows and doors for enemies. He starts constantly and finds himself reaching for his weapon, which he is no longer carrying. He describes his state as being at threat level orange, which means “you don’t see or hear like you used to. Your brain chemistry changes. You take in every piece of the environment, everything” (13). He says that most people spend their time at white and will never have an idea that orange exists.

At home, Vicar has vomited. “‘Goddamn it […] It’s fucking time,” he says (13). Rather than take Vicar to the vet, he will handle it himself. He drives Vicar to a spot by a stream nearby as the sun is setting. He carries Vicar to the stream and sets him down. Vicar wags his tail and looks up at him, “[a]nd I froze. Only one other time I hesitated like that” (14). He describes an incident when an insurgent had sneaked into their perimeter but was quickly forced to hide in a cistern filled with feces, and “[a]bout four or five Marines aimed straight down, fired into the shit. Except me” (15).

The feeling of looking down at Vicar is the same: “This feeling, like, something in me is going to break if I do this” (15). But the thought of a veterinarian killing his dog is worse. He describes the proper rhythm and method for killing with three shots: two to the chest and one to the head, which brings a certain, painless death:“That’s how it should be done, each shot coming quick after the last so you can’t even try to recover, which is when it hurts” (16). He shoots Vicar, then realizes he has no idea what he intends to do with the body.