Part-time assistant golf pro Jimmy Denton carried pictures of his ex-girlfriend on his cellphone. He also carried a bump stock-fitted AR-15, 8.1 pounds fully loaded with its comically unnecessary sixty-round drum magazine. He wasn’t in the military and never risked his own life for the good of his country. But he liked pretending, so he carried the rapid-fire death machine anyway.
He carried it past statues and monuments of other war veterans, people who’d actually served. He carried it up to the capitol where those “assholes” sat, voting on laws that might actually save lives. “Bunch of assholes,” Jimmy Denton called them. There was no kind of asshole Jimmy Denton hated more than assholes who wanted to save lives. Well, that and his own asshole. Because Jimmy Denton also carried inflammatory bowel disease.
Brett Samford was the kind of guy who could throw a football up in the air, run a few feet to get underneath it, and catch his own pass. You might say he was a loner. And not super talented. And saying those things would be absolutely true. You didn’t want a guy like Brett Samford on the front lines. Luckily for America, he wasn’t anywhere near them.
He was an out-of-work tax accountant who traveled to Richmond on a Monday for no reason, other than having the time on his hands. He carried a Kevlar vest, night-vision goggles, a bulletproof riot shield, forty-four pounds in all. He carried the immeasurable weight of staggering stupidity and believing right-wing conspiracy theories. In his wallet, he carried unpaid parking tickets, eighteen dollars cash, and a frequent customer card from Quiznos that only needed two more punches to earn him a free sandwich. Later, he’d carry his body, and his appetite, down the street to Quiznos.
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They say the way you know a war story is true is if it’s completely unbelievable. And technically, this isn’t a war story. Not even close. So that maxim isn’t applicable. But it was the sacrifices of other brave soldiers who did go off to war that afforded us the right to go make fools of ourselves in the capitol of Virginia for six hours on a federal holiday.
The high afternoon sun seeped over the sharp, white triangle of the capitol building. It was a little bit chilly out. Not cold, but, like, not comfortable either, ya know? And our freshly cleaned and starched, never-seen-action combat uniforms were starting to get a little bit itchy. It was pure hell.
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We carried cigarettes and faux-patriotism. We carried mouth tobacco, genetic predispositions to skin cancer, and laughably ill-informed opinions. Some of us carried restraining orders because of previous domestic violence accusations. We carried handguns and tactical eyewear and male-pattern baldness. We carried extra magazines in canvas bandoliers hitched to the fatigues we bought at military surplus stores. Jimmy Denton carried anti-diarrhea pills and some other medicine because of his horrible IBS. Brett Samford carried that Quiznos card. We all carried complexes about our penises.
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I can see us like it was yesterday. Jimmy Denton and Brett Samford and me and Lil’ Jonesy. Jonesy was young. Too young maybe. Barely mid-fifties. Too dumb to understand. He didn’t even bother reading the common sense gun legislation that was being voted on. Hell, none of us did. We were all there, in this terribly safe place, in this terribly beautiful town, in these terribly stupid war costumes, next to a terribly nice river that in the summer is probably perfect for standup paddle boarding. And for what? Far as we could tell, the only reason we were here was to look dumb on Twitter.
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The screams came low at first, and then louder. They were coming from the bathroom of the Quiznos where we were having what most people call lunch, but we called L-rations, because why the hell not. We realized we hadn’t seen Jimmy Denton in almost ten minutes and knew those screams from the bathroom were his.
His Crohn’s must have been flaring up something awful. War is fucking hell. We wouldn’t know, but from the screams, it sounds like IBS might be just as bad. And if there’s a moral to this story, it’s to remember to get them to punch your punch card when you pay, because if you don’t, you can’t go back up to the register after. They just straight-up won’t punch it. Brett Samford learned that the hard way.
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I look back and think about this often, how memories can let you believe what you were doing was righteous even if it wasn’t, but luckily it was all captured on camera and put on the internet, so we can see exactly how silly we all looked. But hey, we were just kids. Middle-aged, divorced, 35-to-65-year-old kids.
You’d think eventually the idea of having to endure a background check would no longer wake you up in a cold sweat. That the fear of merely having to prove you’re not insane to own a lethal weapon would wash away, like the tide of the James River. You’d think the terror of kids wanting to feel safe at school wouldn’t seep into your bones. But then again, it was this crippling fear that made us who we were – and this fear was the heaviest of all the things we carried.
That, and the complexes about our penises.
