Stones Under Boots

How my nemeses keep getting twisted into something other.

Here’s what I remember:

The crunch of crushed stone under my feet, pebbles too big to be caught in the soles of boots. Plastic shopping bag hanging from my hand, stuffed with The Sopranos: Season 1 in full boxset form swinging there alongside pouches of Haribo bears. Why can’t I recall the PX?

How Mom & Dad sent a PS2 all the way over the continents and ocean so we could play GTA and NCAA Football in the sergeants’ rooms, where there was enough space to play tournaments together.

What did we breathe in looking out over fields salted with mines?

“Sopranos, huh?”

Just two words from the shit-eating grin of a man I considered my nemesis. So I was suspicious, but it turned out he loved the show and offered to watch it with me and I couldn’t think of a good reason which didn’t involve blurting I just don’t like you and sometimes wish you’d die. Also, he had a TV in his room. So I agreed and what else I remember is one night, well into Season 2—and I’d have to see the scene again to remember—how we looked at each other with glee in our eyes, and that shit-eating grin became real, as if to say, Wow, what a show we’re watching! What a story!

So after that, and after the time he sprinted down a road embankment into one of those mine-salted fields to pull a bevy of old Bosnians up and out of the driver’s side door of a tipped-over van, I felt we had an understanding and since then, after time, I may’ve even learned love for that man and his grin, though I only saw him once after those days and I am grateful he lives somewhere else.