The Heart You Carry Home (17 page)

“You're bouncing again,” Lucy said.

Ben forced his knee to be still. “Sorry,” he said.

“So you must work out a lot.” Lucy nodded at his arm. “How much weight do you bench?”

“Two eighty.”

She was clearly impressed. “Ricky's such a lazy shit.”

“I realize it's none of my business,” Ben said. “But why don't you break things off? You don't seem to like him very much. And I'm sure you deserve better.”

“How do you know what I deserve?”

“You seem like a nice person, and he doesn't.”

“Wouldn't it make you feel good to be the hero who took me away from my drunk, verbally abusive boyfriend?”

“That's not what's going on here. You asked
me
for the ride—”

Lucy ignored his protest. “My whole life's entwined with that man. We've been together for nearly a decade and the business doesn't exist without him. Sure I do most of the cooking and the finances. But he's the one who
sells
. He can talk people up like you wouldn't believe. Me, all I can do is talk.”

Ben smiled. “I see that. But actually, I don't mind.” He was surprised to feel this way, but it was true. Lucy's jabber made the car feel lighter, brighter somehow.

They stopped for lunch at Sonic. Lucy ordered a large iced drink in a shade of blue that Ben doubted was available in nature. The boy—his name was Jacob, Ben had learned—gobbled down his burger and went to play in a ball pit attached to the restaurant. Ben watched him go down the slide and land in the tub of plastic balls with a perfunctory thud. Each time, Jacob just sat there for a second, like he was waiting for something to happen. When nothing did, he scrambled around and went back down the slide. He repeated this process three or four times. He didn't look particularly enthusiastic.

“When I was little I begged my parents to take me to one of those ball pits,” Lucy said. “But they suck, you know?” She slurped at her drink. Her lips had acquired a bluish tint. “You want some?” She offered Ben the massive plastic container. He shook his head. “So I noticed your Tennessee plates. Shouldn't you be on a base back east?”

Ben stared, but Lucy just continued slurping, sucking out the dregs.

“I know army muscles when I see them.” She shrugged. “Or maybe they're marine muscles? But you don't seem macho enough for that.”

Ben couldn't help but smile. “Do you have family in the service?”

“I've got cousins all over the Middle East. And in Asia. Every place American Indians have no business being, I've got family.”

“I'd rather not talk politics,” Ben said.

“Who said anything about politics?” Lucy waved her hand like she was shooing away a crow. “We're Indians. American wars abroad are none of our business. But everybody wants to be a warrior. I bet when you were a kid, you were obsessed with Hulk Hogan and GI Joe.” Ben nodded. “Well, white boys dream of being all-American heroes, and Indian boys dream of being Geronimo and Crazy Horse. But the domestic-warrior jobs dried up a long time ago. Our kids might as well become professional wrestlers.”

“I always thought the Indian guys signed up because they needed the money. Not for the patriotism.”

“That's why you went? Because you're one of those America-kicks-butt people?”

“Not so much. My dad went.”

“So, family expectations?”

Ben hesitated. “Yes.”

Lucy raised her eyebrows, clearly waiting for Ben to explain himself—and his reluctance.

“He died when I was sixteen and things didn't end well between us. I said a bunch of stuff I shouldn't have said.” Ben had never confessed even this much to Becca, but somehow it was easier to tell a stranger.

Lucy nodded. “So you enlisted as an apology?”

“That's one way of looking at it,” he said. Yet after Ben had enlisted, thoughts of his father had largely faded into the background. The “why” of his service held little importance amid the daily responsibilities of soldiering. And in the end, the army had not been about the past at all. In the most roundabout of ways, it had given him his future—given him Becca.

“And you don't regret it?” Lucy asked. “Doing this huge thing for your dad without his ever knowing about it?”

“I don't regret it,” Ben said. “Not for a second.”

After lunch, they drove for another few hours and then stopped at the Four Corners because Jacob wanted to stand on the intersection of four states. “The Four Corners isn't really the Four Corners,” he announced from the back seat as they pulled into the parking lot. “They told us in school. They got the measurement wrong.”

“Then why do you want to stand there?” Lucy said.

“Because,” Jacob said, as though his reasons were obvious.

“I think we'll have to take a picture of you every place you step,” Lucy said. “Just in case you happen to land on the actual Four Corners.”

In the rearview mirror, Ben saw Jacob screw up his mouth. “That's stupid,” Jacob said and pushed his way out of the car.

Aunt and nephew got in line so Lucy could take a photo of Jacob in the spot that might have been the Four Corners but probably wasn't. Ben didn't follow. The landmark was circumscribed by a ring of vendor booths. The Indians inside them sold jewelry and blankets, but Ben instinctively saw each stall as an offensive position. The mere possibility of such exposure made his heart pound.
There are no snipers,
he told himself. But he skirted the circle anyway, tracing the outside perimeter until he reached the picnic area. It sat on a flat peninsula that stuck out like a thumb over the rocky hills. At the very tip was a single rust-crusted grill.
The grill at the end of the world,
Ben thought and stopped just short of the drop-off.

He dug his foot into the earth, kicking up a cloud that settled on his face and stung his eyes. The feeling was familiar. He felt the weight of his body armor, a heaviness like the doubling of gravity. Or maybe he was feeling the weight of his invisible load, the mysterious thing he'd been dragging through his dreams. Ben closed his eyes and saw Coleman's blasted Humvee. Part of him knew that nothing could have stopped that IED. But what if? What if he had been there? What if he'd spotted the device? What if Coleman were still around to give Majid his Corn Pops?

But in any alternative scenario, Ben would likely be the dead one. And so his desire to have gone out that day was pretty fucked up. If someone had said to him,
Who lives, you or Coleman,
would he really have picked Coleman? Would he have done that with Becca at home waiting for him?

The three other soldiers had been severely wounded and were flown to the Green Zone. They were lucky—luckier than Coleman—they'd been blasted out of the vehicle when the bomb detonated. But Coleman . . . well, Ben saw what had happened to Coleman when the vehicle was finally hauled back to the COP. He'd nearly puked at the sight, but he forced himself to keep his sick down. Relief? Ben deserved no such thing.

This is Coleman,
he said to himself.
This is Coleman's hand. This is his foot.
He named every piece of Coleman's body that he could see as though he were capable of putting his friend back together. But there wasn't all that much. Most of what remained was a sticky black substance of organic matter and metal.

Ben demanded a mask, smock, and gloves. The sanitization team tried to send him away. “This isn't your job, Sergeant,” they told him. But he got angry and refused to leave, and, finally, they relented. He got to work with the rest of the team, collecting what was left of Coleman so it could be placed in a coffin, covered in an American flag, and buried. He tried to focus on the task, but his mind kept drifting to Majid. What if the kid turned up? What was Ben going to tell him?
Your friend is dead. He wanted to help you and look what your people did to him!
But Ben wouldn't say those things. He'd say that Coleman went home to America. He'd say Coleman's tour was over. And he'd sneak Majid some Corn Pops, because that's what Coleman had asked him to do.
“Fuck!”
Ben shouted. Because here was Majid himself, standing not five feet away. Ben wanted to throttle the kid. He wished the kid were dead so he wouldn't have to carry out Coleman's last request. He moved forward, his hands flexing. But someone was in his way; someone's hands pushed against his chest.

“Hey, now!” Lucy said. She'd stepped in front of Jacob, was shielding him with her body. “What's the matter with you?”

Ben felt like he'd come out of a trance. The taste and smell of the Humvee remained in his mouth. Jacob cowered behind his aunt, shrinking into his puffy silver parka like a turtle hunching into its shell.

“You can't threaten a child like that!” Lucy chastised him. And before Ben could apologize, she led the boy away.

After the Four Corners, they continued west in strained silence. Ben wanted to blame Lucy for imposing herself and the boy on him. But it was his fault. He shouldn't have taken them along. He tightened his grip on the wheel. He could feel the engine of the car pumping hard like the heart of a galloping horse. He had to believe that he was getting closer to Becca. Maybe he wasn't on the most direct route, but he was moving forward. He couldn't entertain any other notion or he'd simply give in to despair. More than ever, he wanted a drink. Many drinks.

The speedometer climbed as the lumbering car charged the horizon. And the horizon—coward that it was—retreated.

December 13, 1978

Dear Willy,

A year ago, Durga led me here, to the river between two dead towns. The first town, near the road, is old, and the second town, on a slope across the river, is much, much older. They're both deserted, so I've made them my own personal kingdoms. There's plenty of fish and time to read. Now and then, when I get lonesome, I pick up odd jobs in the closest human outpost, about thirty miles away. I don't need to work. I'm growing and selling plenty of the hippies' hash and cultivating their incredible hallucinogen. It's over an hour to the nearest library, but I ride out every few weeks and come back with a bag of cash and a stack of books, mostly classical history and ancient religions. And, of course, I have your
Iliad
. I glued the book back together, so the sections are now as one. I read it nightly, like my own personal Bible.

All in all, I'd be happy if it weren't for the nightmares. I can't remember when they started. I think to myself:
Did I have them at the dairy farm or at the hippie commune or at the colleges?
I can't recall. Nor do I remember the last time I slept a full night.

A few months ago, unable to sleep, I swam across the river and began to walk through the older town. I passed the last deserted house and kept on climbing. And when I reached the top, I stood with my back to the river and faced the horizon. I saw a great mesa and, beyond it, a desert plain. It reminded me of that day we stood on the ridge overlooking Li Sing. And then I realized that Durga had willed me to come here. She brought me to this spot precisely to reveal a new future—to anoint me. “Anointed for what?” I shouted. But the empty land had no answer and Durga, too, was silent.

The very next night, a couple of teenagers showed up. In the year I'd been here, Willy, I'd never had a single visitor, and suddenly, two kids were poking around my kingdom. I guess I was in the mood for company, so I made myself known. When they saw me standing on my porch with my bushy beard and my hippie clothes and a candle in each hand, they looked dumbstruck. They were so wasted, they didn't know their asses from their ears. “He came from thin air, man!” I heard one of them say. “He's a ghost.”

“He's not a ghost,” the other kid said, “he's a shaman.”

“Are you a shaman?” the first kid said.

I led them inside and offered them drugs in exchange for a favor. “Anything, shaman,” the boys said, close to hysterics.

“When you go home, you must find the soldiers. The ones who fought in the jungles. Tell them you've seen Durga's anointed. Tell them to find the wise man between the two dead towns and he will help them.”

I didn't know what I was saying, Willy. I was halfway to the moon myself. But Durga was my voice. She became my words. And she must have said the right things, because sure enough, within the month, a young man arrived. He'd been a Huey pilot. His wife had left him. He had nowhere to go. He was skinny and had eyelashes just like yours, Willy. Dark and thick and long. And when I recognized your lashes on this man's face, I knew that Durga had brought him to me. I didn't know why yet, only that he was meant to stay.

Currahee!

CO Proudfoot

T
HE SUN ROSE
bright and hot over Motorcycle Mountain. Carrying her new leather jacket, Becca found Elaine, King, Bull, and some others sitting at a picnic table beneath a tarp shelter, eating cereal from Styrofoam bowls. “How was your night?” Bull said, grinning his sharp-toothed smile. “You and Reno were getting cozy.”

Becca sat down beside Elaine. She ransacked her mind for a picture of Bull on the dance floor or at the campfire or near Reno's tent. What had he seen? What did he
think
he'd seen? She poured herself cereal and turned her attention to the new men eating beside them. Some wore vests, some jackets, and many had their bandannas folded up like napkins beside their bowls. At least half had long hair intricately braided or bound, like they were warriors out of the Scottish Highlands. Others resembled modern-day cowboys or frontier-town sheriffs, their beards sculpted into muttonchops and Winnfields and Vandykes. A handful were clean-shaven, but most had stubble at least a few days old. It was an eclectic and colorful crew, almost like a pack of movie extras, except their clothes weren't nearly so pristine, and their faces showed the wear of age and weather. “Are they all coming with us?” Becca whispered to Elaine.