The Heart You Carry Home (33 page)

The guards beat their drums a final time. And then Bull began to speak. “‘I will not forget him, not so long as I am among the living and my knees spring up beneath me. And even if the dead forget the dead in Hades, still even there I will remember my beloved companion.'”

The men repeated these lines. Becca closed her eyes, listening to their voices and breathing in the sweet-sharp smell of gasoline.

“
Currahee!
” Bull pronounced, and the men said, “
Currahee!
”

Bull clutched the pouch and solemnly held it above his head. “The heart of Durga! As the victor of these funeral games, I have won the privilege and burden of its safekeeping. I will suck the poison-grief from your hearts and pour it into the earth. I will heal you as the heart of the goddess has healed me.”

Becca recalled those last minutes in the hogan: Bull bent over the CO, his hand deep in the old man's stomach.
Where's the heart?
She hadn't paid attention to his mumblings. She'd been focused on getting Ben out. Now she squinted, trying to gauge the shape and size of the pouch in Bull's hand. It did not appear to be empty, but Bull could have put anything in there. It could be a bunch of rocks for all anyone knew. As she contemplated the possibilities of Bull's deception, her attention was drawn away by an unfamiliar sound: King was crying. Fat tears dripped down his cheeks, dampening his beard. His back and belly shook as if a small earthquake were happening just beneath his feet.

“It should have been mine. I didn't even have a chance to try.”

Elaine folded him into a hug and let King shake against her body. She murmured into his ear. Becca had never seen her father accept love or tenderness from another person. She had never seen him cry. She felt embarrassed for him but also angry.
It's not real,
she wanted to tell him.
There's nothing magical inside that sack.

Her father pulled away. He clasped his dog tags in his fist and yanked them off. Then he threw them on the ground. As a little girl, Becca had climbed into King's lap and slid her fingers across the punched-out letters and numbers, reading them like they were reverse Braille:
Keller, King F., US53864910, O positive, Protestant.
She'd asked her father why he wore a necklace. “It's identification from the army,” he told her. “In case something happened to me.”

“Did anything happen to you?” she'd asked, not understanding the euphemism. At this question, King had pulled the tags away from her. “No,” he said, his voice heavy. “Nothing happened to me.”

It wasn't true, of course. And it was because of what
had
happened that King believed in the impossible story of Durga's heart and put so much faith in her specious salvation. King's country had asked him to experience unthinkable things. Nightmarish things. So it made sense that he would have little faith in ordinary medicine. In civilian medicine. He needed a remedy that was as powerful and terrible—perhaps as unthinkable—as his trauma. But now that remedy had been denied him too. Just like everything else that had been denied him, throughout his life.

Reno clearly shared Becca's anger, because he now said, “Why don't you show us the heart, Bull? Before you cut your own belly open and tuck your little prize into it.”

Jeanine pulled her cigarette from her mouth and snorted. “Yeah, Bull, why don't you show us.”

“Shush!” Becca hissed at them.

Reno and her mother were asking to see a god they knew full well did not exist. But they had not considered the consequences of proving this god to be a no-show. Her mother should have known better. She, at least, knew the result of testing believers. Reno wanted only to reveal the truth to King—to help his friend. He didn't see King's need to believe the way that Becca had seen it.

“Come on, Bull.” Reno grinned. “Let's see the source of your newfound power.” He took a step forward.

“Reno,” warned Ben and tried to grab his arm. But Reno shook Ben off. It was then that Becca noticed movement from the four corners of the pyre. The guards were closing in.

“Look at us. Look what we've done to ourselves!” Reno looked wildly at the other vets. “We've allowed ourselves to be mutilated. We allowed a man to die. We're not this sick. We don't have to be this sick.”

“CO Proudfoot sacrificed himself,” Bull said, clutching the pouch.

“It's not right, Bull. It's insanity.”

The guards reached for their guns.

“Reno, if you don't back off, these men are going to shoot you,” Ben said.

“Let them.” He kept moving toward Bull. “Show us the heart. If this is real, then fucking prove it!” Reno grabbed for the pouch.

“Hoplites!” Bull shouted.

And then the pyre exploded. The bubble of orange and yellow flame was like the sun crashing to Earth. King grabbed his daughter and pushed her down so hard that she was momentarily stunned.

How long did they lie there cowering? When her head cleared, she pushed herself up and looked around. Smoke billowed from the pyre, and flames crackled between its wooden bones. Bull lay nearby on the ground, groaning. She did not see Reno or Ben or Elaine or her mother. But King was right beside her, coughing and gripping her arm for support. Becca brushed the sand from his face and beard. “Dad, are you okay? Can you breathe?”

“I'm fine.” King waved her away. She ignored this signal and threw her arms around him. “Becca.” He coughed. “Becca, please.”

But Becca didn't care what her father wanted or didn't want. She squeezed him tighter and tighter until he stopped protesting. And then, miraculously, he hugged her back. He rocked her, cupping her head with his large, wrinkled hand. Everything she had witnessed and felt and feared over the last twenty-four hours burst up from inside of her and poured out of her eyes in a rush. King held on tight, his beard scratching her face, his breathing lumbering and wet. He needed a shower. He smelled. They were both covered in sand and dirt. But they didn't care. Becca closed her eyes against her father's shirt and tried to let herself simply exist in this space, this small compartment constructed not so much from her father's body but from his comfort. It was like a shelter that they had built, painstakingly, together.

The smoke had begun to clear and Becca saw that Ben was helping Elaine to her feet. He brought her to King. Then he reached for Becca. His embrace was strong, but it did not compare to the fleshy fullness of her father's arms.

The guards flocked to Bull and lifted him onto the same stretcher that only moments before had held the CO. Hurriedly, they started back toward Kleos. Some of the vets followed, but most remained and stood watching the pyre. The Indian women prayed over the CO's body, now encased in a sarcophagus of flame.

As all this was happening, Becca finally spotted Reno, sitting dazed on the ground. He too was covered in dirt and ash. His face was purple; he'd swallowed a mouthful of smoke and was coughing uncontrollably. His clothes were scorched. Becca searched among the vets for a canteen and quickly brought it to him. Ben came over and offered his hand. Reno looked at it for a moment as though assessing whether this was some kind of trap or trick. But then he clasped Ben's hand and let the younger man pull him up.

“You almost got yourself shot,” King said, walking over.

Reno raised his eyebrows. “Yeah, but I was saved.” He nodded at Jeanine, who stood by herself, a wavering specter beneath the sun's glare. “Saved by the Hands of God.”

Jeanine watched the flames with a look of stoic resignation. Her arms hung listless at her sides. Her cigarette was gone.

The group kept vigil over the CO's body for some time, the wind blowing the smoke overhead in thick white plumes. The desert air was dry and sharp in their throats. When their water was nearly gone, most of them started the long walk to camp. Jeanine and the Native American women had already left, Lucy and Jacob with them. Twenty men remained at the pyre. They would watch over the body, King told Becca, until the flames finally died. Then they would collect the ashes and bury them in the graveyard. Whenever a man died at Kleos, he received a pyre cremation and burial among the letters. The CO had run Kleos for over thirty years, and in that time, several men had passed away, either from sickness or old age. But never suicide, he assured Becca. Never once.

“Did either of you see this coming?” Becca asked as they walked to the camp. “Couldn't this have been stopped?”

King and Reno looked at each other, then at their feet. Whatever they were thinking would remain locked inside of their heads, probably forever. And that was okay, Becca knew. Not all stories, not all feelings, were meant to see the light.

E
ARLY THE NEXT
morning, King crept out of his hogan and into the adjoining hut where Becca was sleeping. He shuffled as silently as his heavy feet would allow, past Lucy, who was zipped up to the top of her head in a sleeping bag, and Elaine, whose hair was fanned out on the pillow like a beauty queen's. Jeanine, who refused to share a room with Elaine, had chosen to sleep elsewhere with her fellow faithful.

Becca was curled up in a tight ball, her hands folded up beneath her chin. She looked delicate and childlike. Peaceful, King thought. And this made him happy. She deserved more peace than she'd had in her young life. He tapped her gently, and her eyes snapped open, almost as though she hadn't been asleep at all. “What's wrong?” she asked in an urgent whisper.

King put his finger to his lips and motioned for her to follow him. They walked through the slumbering camp until they reached the spot where Reno had parked his bike. “Hop on,” King said and inserted Reno's keys into the ignition.

“Reno gave you his keys?” Becca hesitated.

“I'm riding his bike. I'm not sleeping with his woman,” King said.

“Exactly!” Becca said, which made King laugh.

“Unless you want me to swim back across that river, climb on,” he said.

They sped east. White light pooled along the horizon like the froth that collects on waves. Here were spindly bushes tipped with small yellow buds, flowers that resembled sea anemones. King had always loved riding out here. He loved the combination of space and isolation. Nothing to hem you in or slow you down. He loved feeling like he was close to the earth's center. He tilted his face to the wind, letting his beard whip against his throat. The cold air chafed his lips, but he didn't care. He'd felt so heavy ever since the CO had betrayed him and passed him over in favor of Becca's husband or Bull or however it had happened. But it
had
happened, and time was moving on, and what could King do about it? He was resigned. Resigned to that betrayal, just like he'd resigned himself to the war and its aftermath and everything he'd lost. He was thankful to be healthy enough to ride. And he was conscious, in a way that he'd never been before now, that the girl sitting behind him was a product of himself: the ruined parts, the good parts, and even the parts that were ruined for good. She was a young woman who, for reasons he felt intuitively but could not explain, had chosen her husband because of him.

It remained to be seen whether that decision was the best thing she could have done or the worst. Probably it was somewhere in between, like most things. But he was partly responsible for the outcome, which meant that he had to step up. He had to stick with her and see it through. And the reason he had to do this was so simple, it was a wonder he'd failed to see it before: Leave no man behind.

They were a good ten minutes outside of Kleos and coming up fast on the mining tunnel.

Tracks lined the floor, and King went slow, his headlights barely piercing the dark. They rode downward, then upward again. The darkness echoed with water crashing from a great height. Finally, they rumbled out into the open. King turned right and proceeded down the center of a wash. He wove around scrub bushes and cacti in the riverbed and then gunned up the bank. Within five minutes, they hit highway and the silky pavement, which provided a clear view of the river and the buildings of the two ghost towns, old and older. Somewhere beyond was the graveyard of crosses, and Kleos. Out past that, the CO's body still smoldered.

King pulled in beside the Death Star. It was covered with dust, as if it hadn't been washed in years. “Not in the worst shape,” he said.

“Dad, it's filthy!”

King laughed. “I did right handing this car over to you, huh?”

Did her father really not know what the car meant to her? What the
gifting
of the car meant? She rubbed away some dust with her forearm. The surface was newly scarred, covered with nicks and cuts.

“Broken beer bottles,” King said with the certainty of a forensic detective.

Becca's excitement sank back to her stomach. But then King did something unexpected: he picked up his daughter's hand. She turned to him, surprised to feel the roughness of his fingers. Two physical displays of affection in just twenty-four hours. Who was this man? He even looked different now, without the ponytail.

“Listen to me, Becca,” he said. She listened, watching his marcasite eyes sparkle. He pressed his thumb against her palm. “I'm a disappointment. I know.”

She shook her head.

“No, I am. Because I don't have any good advice. I'm sure Ben got blind drunk and did that to your car.”

“Yeah.”

King looked at her sternly. “I'm also sure that he followed you here when you ran. Kind of like your mother ran after me.”

“You're telling me that I'm like you, and Ben's like Mom?”

“All I'm saying is that Jeanine wouldn't let me go.” King looked down, bashful. Discussing important, painful topics, he always felt as though he were walking along a ledge; one wrong step and he'd tumble. “I'm just laying things out for you, Becca. In case you have so much muck in here”—he tapped his chest—“that it's clouded up your head.”