The Assyrian

Max Kruger-Dull

At the conference, there’s a click behind my head: a gun-like click an inch from my ear. I’m seated in a row of springy chairs with fifteen people between me and the exit. It can’t be a gun, I think, and think. I’m not a person who will die by gun. The panelists talk about Eurasian nomads. “The steppe dwellers were masterful horsemen,” one says. I’m not sure I know what a gun sounds like, or the noise a gun makes when cocked. I’m used to their supersonic pops in movies, but Hollywood uses hawk sounds to represent eagles. My fingers shake for a weapon. There’s another click. I yelp. I jump up and sit back down. Talk of the nomads stops. “Sit down,” someone says. “I am,” I whisper. I want to check behind me for the danger but my neck is stiff with worry. Then I tell myself I’m a silly man and turn my head. I look for a gun. I see no gun. Did I ever really think there was a gun? “What’s wrong?” a woman says. She cracks her finger: a click. I’m a stupid, stupid man. I face the panelists. They look assured, immortal, like they’ll always be here in the world. I sit up straight, as if the scared boy had been far across the room, not me.

For the rest of the conference, I feel I’ve revoked my right to participate. I’ve made myself into a humiliated kid. I wonder when I’ll return to being an adult.

Back on campus, I teach my Monday section on the Assyrian Empire. “Professor Dunn, they couldn’t all have been aggressive,” a student says. After class, my brother stops by. He sits where the undergraduates sat and I tell him about my outburst. “My yelp was too loud,” I say. “Fair reaction,” Seth says. He blows me a kiss as if to suggest being terrified is virtuous. “I haven’t been that scared in years,” I say. He throws his wallet at my head. “That wasn’t scary,” I say. “Sure it was,” he says.

I used to be a scared person. As a kid, I kept watch for stray bullets and swinging knives. On sidewalks, I put my mother between me and the unhoused. No, I didn’t really think my dad would poison me, but I trusted Mom more and believed a poisoning by him was possible. Then in college, I relaxed. And in college, Seth became the scared brother. Now at 38, he always leaves his house lights on. He’ll never ride a rollercoaster. Now at 36, I go running at night in dark clothes. I don’t mind the bats in my attic. I enjoy living alone. In the parking lot of Trombone, my favorite gay bar, I have sex with strangers in the backseat of my car. I take risks when crossing the street. I parachuted once; the drop was smooth. Most days, I feel I’ve mastered the world.

At 4 AM, Seth comes to hide in my house. He drove here after his ex-boyfriend messaged, Please, please, come see me soon. In his mind, a reality exists where his ex drops by and eyes or hands are lost. “Just in case,” Seth says when he sees my dismissive grin. “You’d feel safer in armor,” I joke. He pinches me and says, “Don’t be mean.” We put on a movie where bombs are survivable and CPR always works.

I have a pointy face. My chin is sharp. My ears are angular. My nose looks like it could pierce wood. But as a child, I had softer features. My cheeks spilled toward the floor and my lashes waved in the wind. If my face hadn’t turned hard, I worry I’d have remained a petrified person. Seth has developed a fleshy face. His skin looks moldable, squashable. On his 30th birthday, he stared in the mirror and said, “My face is designed to be stepped on.”

On Thursday, I stop by Trombone and wait for fear to take charge of me. Since the conference, I’ve worried that fear is slipping up my pant leg or down my collar, looking to reclaim its central spot in my life. I buy a beer and face the crowded room. A stringy man introduces himself as Victor but tells me his real name is Ed five minutes later. I ask, “Can I still call you Victor?” “No, Ed,” he says. I say, “I’m glad you feel safe enough with me to be Ed.” I do not find Ed pleasant to talk to. He speaks only of his dog and of the men in the bar he’s fucked. He squeezes his biceps after each sip as if he worries the beer will make them shrivel. Still, I ask questions about his dog. There’s no pressure in talking about dogs.

Ed and I fool around in my car. As he fucks me, a camera flash comes through the windshield. I imagine the photo of my crumpled, moaning face and laugh. I’m surprised by my nonchalance. I’m impressed with myself. But Ed ducks into my shoulder and digs down his forehead as if my skin could curl up and hide him. I’m not sure why I feel safe in this car. Maybe because it’s left unbothered for so much of the day. “Assholes,” Ed says to the windshield. I kiss him on the ear like my brother used to do when I’d predicted the end of the world and wept.

When I came out to my mother, she said, “No wonder you were scared all the time.” When Seth came out, she said, “Congratulations.”

After the camera flash, Ed gets dressed and I mostly do. I welcome the barlight’s glow on my chest. Then Ed launches into a jabbering proposition. Playing with the door handle, he says, “I know this guy in Springfield, Missouri. A guy who pays for sex.” Ed tells me Linus likes to fly in tall men to visit him, though I’m only five-foot-ten. Ed tells me Linus likes men from big cities, though we’re fifty minutes outside of Chicago. “When it comes to Linus, it’s mostly a lot of licking,” Ed says. “I trust him,” Ed says. As Ed talks, I’m confronted with fears of torn skin. But lounging in my familiar car, I do like the idea of visiting this man. I want to sit beside him without squirming. I thank Ed for the opportunity. Then I go home to prepare for tomorrow’s class. I’m to teach of the Assyrians’ might.

Being scared often felt like cheating to me. In my fear, I knew I was a person. I knew my tear ducts worked and my emotions could surge without effort. But I hoped to find larger ways to be human; to be scared got me there too easily. If I were human through laughter or human through strength, that would be a success.

Ed connects me to Linus. In my phone, I save the number as Harmless Linus. I send Linus photos of my face and ass. To these, he says, Let’s get you to Springfield. I ask Ed if Linus really is safe to visit. It takes him four hours to respond. When he does, he says, I’ve sent many, many dudes to Springfield. I’ve always seen them come back.

When I was young, I didn’t grasp how dangerous children can be to adults. To anyone threatening, I should’ve said, “Back off, the state of Illinois cares more about me than they care about you.” But I understood none of that power. My parents could’ve taught me about the protection provided by youth. I don’t think I would’ve abused it.

Seth and I replace lightbulbs in his living room. He hesitates before unscrewing the old bulbs, anticipating a burn. I try not to belittle his timidness. He values the nerves in his fingers. But if I could, I’d shove his hands toward the bulbs before he could pause and worry.

Now in Seth’s living room, light blasts every wrinkle in the carpet. “Good, I can see where I’m going,” he says. We don’t trip on our way to the couch, not that we did before. We put on the news and I tell him about my upcoming visit to Springfield. “The guy Linus already booked my plane ticket,” I say. Seth’s lips have always looked swollen and pullable. He pulls on them now and stares at me as if I’ve offered my leg to a butcher. I delight in his squirming. I feel more evolved than my brother. “You can’t go,” Seth says. “The guy who set it up seemed fine,” I say. Seth’s feet squash into the carpet. “Human trafficking is a real thing,” he says. “Academics don’t get trafficked,” I say. He ignores me and bites his cheek and says, “Poor women,” to the TV. More and more, I forget to follow the news. As a historian and human, I’m ashamed of this truth. But it’s hard for me to focus on the world’s troubles when they hardly raise my heart rate.

Even now, there are hitmen? Even now, infections kill? Most dangers feel far from my body, like they’ve gone to plague a distant world. But in bed tonight, with the comforter sliding off my hip, I imagine myself in Linus’s hotel room, drugged and then driven to a locked basement. I tug the comforter up to my throat. My blanket’s thick, and, depending on the knife, could protect against a stabbing.

My mother used to celebrate my fear. “A scared child is an imaginative child,” she’d say. Mom had me sketch out my worries in colored pencil, but I can’t draw; the kidnappers looked bumbling, the blood was too red. Whenever she asked me to draw my fears, I felt I was being tricked. “Not too scary,” she’d point to my work and say. “When I’m older,” I should’ve said, “I’ll have better control of my hands. The drawings will be menacing. They’ll rattle you.”

The day before my trip to Springfield, my brother calls as I teach. I don’t pick up. “The Assyrians pioneered the battering ram,” I say. But he phones twice more. “I’m teaching,” I say after answering. “I’m trapped,” he says in a whisper. Twenty minutes ago, Seth’s ex appeared outside his house. And now my brother’s kneeling out of view of the windows as his ex knocks, sometimes kicks, on the door. “I’m sorry for calling,” Seth says. His voice sounds pummeled. “I’m coming over,” I say. I don’t remember what led Seth and his ex to break up three months ago. But afterward, I held my brother on the couch. His body felt smaller than usual, unwilling to extend into the room. I told him he’d feel better if he sat up straight and spread his feet on the ottoman.

I park on the street. Seth’s ex is huffing outside the front door, a man who will be easy to push over. I get out of the car with the simple plan of saying, “Go away.” I charge the ex. I feel scary. I do say, “Go away.” But when this tired man looks at me, I flinch. And after I flinch, I feel I deserve to be punched. In middle school, I strove to quell any embarrassing, uncontrolled reactions of mine. When in chaotic rooms, I practiced getting stiller, stiller. I imagined myself to be made of rock. Yet I winced when the mean kids roared in my ear or walked too close behind me. If I could stop flinching, I’d think, then my muscles would feel brave enough to grow. “Please go away,” I say to the ex. “Let me talk to Seth,” he says. He speaks as if he’s shaking me. I fumble for my set of keys to Seth’s house. I hurry inside, sweating, panicking, shutting the door on my shirt.

I like to think that, at any moment, I’m ready to catch a frisbee should one be flying at my face.

I’ll always be a scared person. I was scared for too long not to be. Inside Seth’s house, I hug my brother as if the floor might drop us. We sit against the wall. “I don’t think he’d hurt me,” Seth says. “I don’t think so either,” I say. Every so often, shadows of the ex’s arms creep through the window and tickle the floor. The shadows are faint. If they turn dark and solid, I’ll cry. The ex begs to be seen. He kicks the door handle. “I’m sure we’re fine,” my brother says. We lean into each other. I tell him to be ready to run.

I wish there was more than one way to be scared. I wish fear could attack only my throat or chest and leave the rest of me focused on the bright spots in the world

My brother and I stare at the ceiling as if it’s warning us not to stand up. Seth’s biting his lip, which I then realize I’m doing too. I’ve never before been scared alongside my brother. When I had been scared, he held me, and when his fear came, I teased him. I’ve never before been scared alongside anyone. Or if I have, I didn’t make note of it. I’m not sure I like being scared with Seth. Yes, it feels less risky to be huddled together, too big to shove in a closet. But I don’t want fear to feel safe. Fear should be something I’m desperate to wash off my skin.

Soon enough, the ex leaves. But my brother and I sink further into the floor. I hold him until we figure out how to hold each other equally. He grips me no less desperately than I grip him. Any bullets would fly over our bodies. Any cemetery would bury us together. Seth says, “We’ll always be babies.” In our coiled state, I think of us as hugging the bottom of the world. No one can see us down here. But then he lets go. We poke up our heads.

During middle school, I gained fifty-five pounds. I estimate forty of those were due to changes in height. The other fifteen added to the puffiness of my face, my arms, and the rest of me. I liked the weight. “It’ll be harder to choke me now,” I said to Seth with my hands testing the girth of my neck. Still, I continued to talk at quiet volumes. I never drew attention to my throat.

Seth walks me out of his house. We glance around for his ex but spot a wandering, bony cat looking hungry for our calves. Seth slouches. It’s hard not to return to the ground. I say, “I wish you could come with me to Springfield.” He says, “There are men here who would pay for you. Don’t cross state lines.” The cat comes too close to us. I kick to warn it away. “I’ll buy you a ticket,” I say. He jokes about my profit margin. Then he tugs on my arm and says, “Don’t go.” Do I want to go to Springfield? I watch out for the cat when I head to my car.

A year ago, Seth went for a run. Four miles from his house, he began to worry about hypothermia and called me. When I picked him up, his nose was barely pink. We argued about fear on the ride back. I said that outrunning fear is an admirable goal: “Fear pushes you into new parts of the world.” But Seth spoke as if fear was grounding. Without fear, he insisted, a person will float too high off the earth. “Up there,” he said, “you make an easy target.”

My students don’t like to discuss the warfare of ancient Assyria. On an evaluation form, one wrote, Professor Dunn is too fond of sieges.

I pack light for Springfield. I’m scheduled to fly there and back on the same day. On my drive to the airport, Linus texts, At the hotel, you’ll have 15 minutes to get ready. The closer I am to O’Hare, the dryer my mouth becomes. My gums feel like they’ll crack. But I continue forward. I’m a brave man. I bounce and skip through the world, confident and durable. At the airport, I park and go to security. TSA ushers me through as if to promise I’ll survive Springfield. I buy a pizza and sit at my gate. My body feels frail. I’ve felt frail all day. My limbs would be simple to break.

As a teenager, I thought of telling my parents, “I’ll be tougher when I’m older. Please, please, just give me time.”

I don’t want to go to Springfield. I don’t want to go to Springfield. I face my flight and tell myself I’m a strong man. But then I text Linus, Sorry, sorry, I’m not in the right mindset to visit. To this, he offers more money. But I want to be free of him. He’s sitting on my head. So I apologize by sending a farewell photo of my face looking warm, repentant, too gentle to harm.

I’m a daring man. Most wouldn’t have made it to the airport. I’m a Hercules. Most wouldn’t have signed up for Springfield. I could survive a knife to the spleen. I could’ve invented the battering ram.

Max Kruger-Dull holds an MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. His recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in AGNI, West Branch, The Greensboro Review, the minnesota review, Quarterly West, Bat City Review, and elsewhere. He lives in New York with his boyfriend and two dogs. For more, please visit maxkrugerdull.com.

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