Peter Boychuk
"Fritters in Kandahar"

Lights up on CRAIG (22).

CRAIG:

So I’m sitting on the couch with a Big Rock and a bag of Doritos and I’m watching the Stamps get their ass handed to them by the fucking Saskatchewan Roughriders because Tom Higgins isn’t fit to coach the marching band let alone the greatest sports franchise in the history of Canadian football, and out of nowhere Lisa turns to me and goes, “Did you know they’ve opened a Tim Hortons in Kandahar”?

And then she hands me this pamphlet that says, I shit you not,  “Live the adventure in Afghanistan!” and it’s got this picture of three pastry chefs wearing camouflage hats and I just bust out laughing, it’s so fucking stupid. They’ve got this steely look in their eyes like they’re off to hunt down Bin Laden instead of glaze maple creams and I ask her, “Where’d you dig this up?” and she snatches it back and says, “I picked it up on the way home.”

And then she tells me that she had read this article in Macleans Magazine about this woman who went there and started blogging about her experiences and now they’re making it into a book and all I can think is, when the hell did you start reading Macleans? It’s like the most boring magazine in the world.

And I want to ask her but she just keeps going on and on about this woman and how she found herself and now her life will never be the same and that’s when I realize oh my God, she’s serious about this. So I ask her, “Are you actually thinking about applying? When were you going to tell me?” And she says, “I’m telling you now.”

Then everything’s draining away - the game, the pamphlet, the living room - and we’re on that camping trip in Kanaskis and she wakes up screaming because she’s had a nightmare and now thinks there’s a bear outside our tent even though we’re not in bear country and I hold her in my arms and tell her it’s okay, it’s alright, I’ll never let anything happen to you. Ever.

“Sweetie, why can’t you work at a Tim Hortons here in Airdrie? I think they’re still looking for people."

“That’s not the point,” she says.

“So what is the point?”

She doesn’t answer. As usual. I love Lisa, but trying to have a real conversation with her is like doing decryption. She never tells me what she wants because she’s afraid of disappointing me or hurting my feelings even though I’ve told her a million times that I’m not made of glass and I’d just rather she state what she wants in plain terms, but instead we have these long agonizing conversations where I’m trying to draw her out like some kind of snake charmer and eventually it comes out that she really wanted to go see her sister instead of come with me to see District 9 and I’m like, Jesus Christ! Is that why we’ve been going round and round for an hour and a half? Why didn’t you just tell me, I could have gone with Chuck and she goes, well I don’t want to make a big deal of it and I go, well obviously it was a big deal because otherwise we wouldn’t have devoted the last hour and a half to it, right?

Anyway, at this point the phone rings and it’s her Mom so she has to take the call and then I’m left there with the Stamps throwing yet another interception and my bag of Doritos and my half-empty can of Big Rock and this fucking pamphlet and I start to wonder, is it me? Am I driving her away? I know I’m a pain in the ass sometimes but I’d like to think that I try, you know, and that’s more than some guys do, a lot of guys just sit on their ass and take and take but I try and go splits with the giving and the taking, but is that not enough for her? What am I doing wrong?

And if she’s running away then why go to fucking Kandahar? Afghanistan’s a wasteland. Gets to be sixty degrees during the day. You can cook bread at that temperature. Why would she want to go there of all places? It’s dangerous, you know? People blowing up from roadside bombs and fucking rocket-propelled grenades. Why would she volunteer for that?

And it’s a stupid war. Took ‘em ten years to find Bin Laden. The guy was 57 years old, he was on dialysis and he was living in a cave; how hard could he have been to find?
And every day guys are getting sent home with flags draped over their coffins, I mean the other day I saw on like someone’s status update or something that we just lost our 100th soldier, and that can’t be all that many more than we sent over there in the first place since the Canadian military consists of about twelve guys from Ontario…

And then it dawns on me. What a fucking idiot I am. 

When she gets off the phone I walk right up to her and look her in the eye. “Is this about Sean?” She doesn’t say anything. I hold up the pamphlet. “Sean. Is this about Sean? I know he enlisted. Are you bailing on me so you be closer to your old boyfriend?”

“He wasn’t my boyfriend.”

“Oh sorry. Fuck-buddy.”

“I’m not talking to you when you’re like this.” And she’s off to the other room, which is what she usually does when we have a fight, but I’ve got this in my teeth so I get up off the couch and go after her. We go back and forth:

“Answer the question. Is this about Sean?”

“Craig, you need to back off.”

“Just answer the question.”

“Craig-"

“Is this about Sean?”

“YES!”

Huh. Okay, I wasn’t really expecting that. She gathers my hands in hers and I try to pull away but she won’t let me.

“Look at me. Craig, please look at me. Yes, it’s about Sean, but not in the way you… When I heard that he was going there I was filled with this admiration, you know? Not because he’s going to fight – I could never do that, I could never kill someone - but because he’s serving something larger than himself. And I find that, I don’t know, I find it kind of… inspiring.” She lets go off my hands and starts picking lint off my sweater. “I just - lately I’ve been asking myself, what’s the point of all this? Why am I working at Safeway - is it really so we get half price on groceries and buy a new plasma TV?”

“I told you, I didn’t need the television,” I say, “if there was something…”

“Honey, this isn’t about the television, it’s about me. I need to find some like, some sense of purpose or something.”

“And you think you’ll find that serving donuts in Kandahar?”

“I don’t know,” she says. “But it seems like someplace to start.”

We fall silent. The only noise in the apartment is the sound of the television. It’s third down with a minute on the clock and Coach Higgins is trying to figure out his next move. For the first time in my life, I sympathize with the man.