Home Front (16 page)

“He won’t talk to me,” Ed said. “He just sits there, staring at the wall.”

“To be blunt, Ed, that’s our real problem now. The only one doing the talking is the prosecuting attorney, and I don’t like what he’s saying. They’ve charged Keith with murder in the first degree, and they claim to have a witness who will testify that Keith confessed to the murder.”

Ed looked miserable. The man slumped in his chair. “He was such a good kid. Popular. Friendly. The kind of kid who asks you if you need help carryin’ in the groceries and how your day was. He dated lots of girls, cheerleader types, and had fun in high school, but when he met Emily, he knew right away she was the one.”

“When did it start going wrong?”

“What?”

“The marriage.”

“Oh. It never did.”

“Ed,” Michael said evenly. “Something went wrong.”

Ed looked down at his own hands. “We’ve asked ourselves that question a million times.
Did he seem depressed? Did you ever hear them arguin’? Did he ever say he was unhappy?
Our family has looked at it six ways to Sunday. They had a happy marriage; that’s what we think. She couldn’t wait for him to get home from Iraq. She wrote him every day.”

Michael looked up sharply. “Iraq? There’s no mention of him serving in Iraq in what I’ve got here. It just says he’s an honorably discharged marine.”

“He did two tours. When he came home the second time, he wasn’t the same.”

“What do you mean?”

“We all saw that he was changed. If you startled him—and that was easy to do—he could turn on you fast enough to take your breath away. I know he didn’t sleep much. Emily told me that he’d started keepin’ a loaded gun by the bed. God help me, I told her a man needed to protect his family.”

Michael wrote down
PTSD
and underlined it. “Did he ever hit Emily, to your knowledge?”

“In the last few days, before the … you know, I wondered about that. Keith was so edgy and upset. At a family dinner, he blew up at his brother over nothing. And the look in his eyes scared us all. It wasn’t our Keith. When I asked him about it, he told me he’d had too much coffee, but I didn’t believe him. I think whatever happened to him in Iraq is why he killed Emily.”

Michael added:
What happened in Iraq?
to his notes.
Diminished capacity?
“Did he get help?”

“He tried. The VA sent him away with a prescription for Prozac.”

Michael tapped his pen on the desk, thinking. So his client had tried to get help from the military and been denied. That was good. And hardly surprising. “Okay, Ed. I’ll do some research based on what you’ve just told me, but I need to talk to Keith, and I need Keith to talk to a psychiatrist. And I need it to happen quickly.”

“He won’t—”

“If he doesn’t, Ed, he’ll go to prison. Probably for life.”

Ed looked stricken by that, as Michael had intended. In the silence that followed, Michael sighed. “I don’t want to scare you, but I can’t help your son if he won’t talk to me. There are two sides to every story. I need his.”

“I’ll get him to talk,” Ed said.

Michael stared at him. “Do that, Ed, and fast.”

Ten

The first week at Fort Hood passed in a blur of classes, assignments, paper pushing, and lectures. It had been so many years since her active army days that Jolene had forgotten how much bureaucracy there was in ordinary military life, how much of a day was spent “hurrying up to wait.” She’d spent the last seven days standing in one line or another—or so it seemed. They stood in line for supplies, for lectures, for paperwork to be signed. There was the SRP—soldier readiness process—and more medical tests and examinations and shots, finance reviews, and updating of personnel records.

The day started early here at Fort Hood; breakfast was at 0430. Immediately afterward were classes on anything and everything they would need to know in Iraq: spiders and scorpions and IEDs—improvised explosive devices—sexual harassment, chemical warfare. The list went on and on. The worst of the lines were at the phones. Jolene had been advised to leave her cell phone at home, since it wouldn’t work in Iraq anyway. Following that advice had been a mistake. As it was, she spent much of her off-duty time standing in line to call home. More often than not, by the time it was her turn to use the phone, it was too late to talk to the girls. The few conversations she’d had with Michael had been short and stilted. Neither had said
I love you
before hanging up. Afterward, she felt more lonely than she had before the calls.

Now, Charlie Company was out beneath the blazing hot Texas sun, in full gear, walking along a dirt road the color of old blood. Jamie was in the lead. A lone hawk circled overhead curiously, no doubt wondering why these uniformed, helmeted adults, armed with M-16s and 9 mils, were running around in this heat. They kept pulling to the side of the road and looking for fictitious IEDs.

She knew it was important, lifesaving, even, but they were an aviation unit going in to provide support—backfill—for a combat aviation brigade. If she found herself on a road in Sadr City or Baghdad, in a Humvee, something had gone wrong enough that an IED would be only one of the worries.

And man it was hot.

By the time they finished that drill and made it out to the rifle range, Jolene was sweating so badly under her helmet that moisture ran into her eyes.

“Zarkades, get the hell down here!”

“Roger that, sir.”

She hustled to her place on the gun range and lifted her rifle. Aiming, she pulled the trigger.

“Good shot, Chief. Ten more just like that and you can start the live-fire course.”

For the next four hours, Jolene did as she was ordered: stand, sit, crawl, shoot, run. Afterward, she and Tami headed across the post, hoping the phone lines would be a little shorter at this hour.

They were wrong. At least forty soldiers were already in line, standing under the waning heat of the sun, reading, talking, listening to music.

Jolene slowed. “Damn.” She was about to turn around when she saw Smitty wave at her. He was fourth in line. Even with dirt and sweat running down his face, he looked young enough to be her son.

“Hey, Smitty,” Jolene said, heading toward him.

He smiled, showing off his braces. “Hey, Chiefs.”

Tami came up beside Jolene. “Are you calling your mom or is there some girlfriend pining away for you?”

“I’m holding this spot for you two,” he said. At their surprised look, he added: “I just remembered, my girlfriend’s still at work. I can’t call her for another hour. And besides”—he gave them both a sheepish grin—“I know I’d want to hear from my mom.”

Smitty backed away, leaving an opening in line.

“You sure you don’t have anyone you want to call?” Jolene asked. “What about your folks?”

“Nope. They’re driving to see my grandma today.”

Jolene looked at Tami, who gave her a big smile. “You’re the man, Smitty,” Tami said.

The women stepped into line; Smitty walked away, whistling.

When the phone was free, Tami stepped forward and made her call. As Jolene listened to the singsong sound of her friend’s voice, she tapped her foot impatiently, flicked her fingers against the rough fabric of her pants, and then, finally, it was her turn. Tami hung up, and Jolene lurched forward, picked up the old-fashioned receiver, hot from so many hands, and called home.

Betsy answered, said “Hello?” and then yelled, “It’s Mom.”

Jolene leaned against the sun-warmed side of the building, trying to ignore the line of soldiers behind her, but it was impossible. She could hear them moving around, talking, laughing. “Hey, Bets. How’s your week been? I’m sorry I couldn’t call yesterday. They had us busy all day and night.”

Betsy launched into a breathless story about a trauma at school. Apparently Betsy had been chosen last for volleyball teams in PE. Sierra and Zoe had been behind the humiliation, had pointed and laughed until Betsy screamed at them to shut up and then received detention for her outburst. “Me! I got detention and it was all their fault. Can you call my PE teacher and get me out of it?”

Jolene had ten minutes on the phone, and Betsy had already used up six of those minutes telling her story. “Oh, honey, I can’t do that, but if you—”

“I get it. You’re too busy. Don’t worry about it, Mom. Lulu! Your turn!”

“Don’t be that way, Betsy,” Jolene said, her guilt surfacing again. “We get so little time to talk.”

“Obviously.”

“I’ll write you an e-mail as soon as I can, okay?”

“Like I said, Mom, don’t worry about it. I don’t need you. Here’s Lulu.”

“Betsy. I love you.”

There was only breathing on the other end; then Lulu was on the phone, sounding like a mouse on helium. At the end of a story about something she made for Jolene out of macaroni and string, Lulu said, “I want you to read me a story tonight.”

“I can’t, baby.”

Lulu burst into tears. “Daddy, she’s not coming home yet…”

“Hey, Jo,” Michael said a second later, sounding as tired as she suddenly felt.

“Lulu didn’t say good-bye or ‘I love you.’”

“She’s upset, Jo. She’ll be fine. How are you?”

Jolene had been on the phone eleven minutes. The soldiers behind her were starting to get restless. “Is she having nightmares again? Because if she is, she needs her yellow blanket and her pink ribbon.”

“Come on, Jo. Did you think the girls would say good-bye to their mother, watch her march off to war, and be fine?”

Behind her someone yelled out, “Come on, ma’am. We all have families.”

There was so much she wanted to say and no time to say it. Michael’s silence gnawed at her nerves. “I’ll write Betsy an e-mail tonight. Can you make sure she reads it before school?”

“Sure. So, your time’s up now?”

“It is.”

“Great talk, Jo,” he said in a voice she could barely hear.

She whispered “Good-bye,” and hung up the phone. Another soldier moved in next to her, picked up the receiver.

Jolene backed away; she felt Tami coming up beside her. They began the walk back to their barracks.

“Betsy spent ten minutes telling me about her day and asking if I’d call her teacher to get her out of detention,” Jolene said.

Tami laughed quietly. “So we go off to war and motherhood pretty much stays the same. And Michael?”

“He asked me why I thought the girls would be fine after I went off to war.”

“We’re not even at war.”

Jolene sighed. “How’s Seth?”

“He loves me and misses me and he’s proud of me. At least that’s what he says. According to Carl, he isn’t sleeping and he unplugged his Xbox and won’t play video games anymore—he doesn’t want to see cartoon people getting blown up. And when I think of how many times I told him to get off that idiot box…”

“How are we going to get through this?” Jolene asked quietly.

Tami had no answer for that. At their barracks, they grabbed their dopp kits and headed for the showers. Afterward, they walked over to the dining facilities—DFAC—and sat down with several of the members of Charlie Company, including Jamie and Smitty. They were surrounded by the smell of gravy that had been on a burner too long and sweet corn cooked down to mush. The drone of soldiers’ voices was like a jet engine.

Smitty was shoveling creamed corn into his mouth at an alarming rate, talking at the same time about the rifle range. Jamie stared down at his food, poking the meatloaf with his fork. He seemed far away from all of them, and Jolene understood his distance.

“We need to get our heads in the game, Jo,” Tami said. “We’re soldiers first now. That’s the way it has to be or…”

“We’ll die,” Jolene said softly. She knew Tami was right; she’d thought the same thing several times. No doubt it was what occupied Jamie’s thoughts now, too. The point of war games was, ultimately, war. Jolene needed to put her feelings for her family in a compartment and hide it away. “I don’t know how to stop missing them. I feel guilty all the time. I keep thinking that if I can say just the right thing on the phone, we’ll all be okay.”

“Carl and I talked about this before I left. He told me I had to stop being a part of him and start being a part of this. He said he knew I loved him and that my job was to think about me and the men and women around me.” Tami looked at her. “Two weeks from now we’ll be in-country, Jo. You’ve got to cut yourself loose from Poulsbo. Trust Michael to keep everything together.”

“Trust Michael,” she said dully.

“You have no choice.”

Jolene knew Tami was right, but letting go was easier said than done. She knew how it felt to be abandoned in childhood, and although this was different, profoundly different, she wasn’t certain her children would really understand why she had left them. “How have men done it all these years, gone off to war and left their kids behind?”

“They had wives,” Tami said simply.

*   *   *

Late that night, after Tami had fallen asleep, Jolene opened her laptop. She was so tired, she had trouble keeping her eyes open, but she had to write to her daughter.

Dear Betsy:

I’m so sorry I can’t help you with your detention. You won’t want to hear what I have to say about it, either. The bottom line is that you broke the rules. There’s always a consequence for our actions. You might as well learn that early. Of course Sierra and Zoe are wrong to have goaded you and mean to have made fun of you. But how you respond is what will make you who you are.

I have so many things to say about that, and it kills me that we aren’t together. Mothers and daughters are supposed to curl up on the couch and talk about anything and everything. And we will soon. You’ll see. Until then, I wish I knew how to tell you how to get through the tough times in middle school. I know so much about mean girls.

When I was your age, no one liked me. I was always the girl with the ratty clothes and no lunch money. I was too ashamed to invite anyone home, so I didn’t make friends. It was terrible. Lonely. I don’t want that for you.