The memorial repast was held across the street in the vestry. He excused himself and slipped into the church next door, a small one, just a nave and an altar. The brick walls were intact, but the cupola and the cross that once stood high above it were no more. In their stead, one perfectly round hole opened to the sky, through which the waters had rushed in, fading the pulpit and rotting the dais. The stained glass hadn’t yet been replaced, nor the clerestory windows, nor the side door, nor the pews, so there was no place to sit. It was dark, but he knew the church well. He and Ines attended every Sunday, because the diocese had decided that her church, St. Augustine, wouldn’t be reopened because it wasn’t profitable.
Twelve of Ines’s friends, including Margaret, were staging a sit-in, but the future looked bleak for the congregation. Achilles felt sorry for them. He’d never considered that people might actually need their church, but recently worship was the center of everyone’s life. Since returning to New Orleans, he and Ines had been to the same tiny, pewless church six times, gathered sometimes around a coffin, sometimes an urn, sometimes an article of clothing. He now understood that church helped people through tough times. It didn’t matter whether he thought the stories ridiculous, or preachers ostentatious, or the diocese despicable for declaring a church unprofitable. He likened this revelation to the experience of someone who had never known they needed glasses, and once fitted with a pair realized that the clouds of green above the trees were comprised of individual leaves. The storefront churches weren’t ridiculous. It never was about the building.
A whispering teenage couple dressed in a tux and formal gown ducked into one of the corners of the church. Seeing no one about, they started making out. Achilles knelt at the altar and thought about his father and mother, Troy, Merriweather, O’Ree, Dixon, Price, Wexler, Wages, everybody. He didn’t know if that counted as prayer, but he thought, visualized them, concentrating until he saw Wages, felt Wages’s hand on his head, heard Wages say, as he used to, Let’s get oscar-mike, Connie.
The teens were still tucked into the corner, kissing in the shadow of a stack of coffins. He pretended not to see them. Achilles wanted to say good-bye to Mrs. Wages before he and Ines left. He found her at the grave. She was tall like Wages, her hair even redder. She had stood with her back rigid and stared straight ahead while the preacher spoke, her hands clasped to her chest as if in prayer, remaining a few feet from the coffin even as everyone filed by to touch it one last time. Shoulders rounded, head down, she was relaxed, as if all she wanted was privacy. The vault had been sealed, the flowers and drapery removed, and she stood with one hand on the cool cement wall, her other tracing the names carved into the stone.
Achilles softly whispered his good-bye. He wouldn’t have recognized her from the pictures in which her hollow cheeks, combined with her broad forehead and large, piercing eyes, gave her an air of regency befitting an elder queen. Now, those cheeks red and puffy, the large brow furrowed, the eyes dull, called to mind his mother at his father’s funeral and at the funeral yet to be, the inevitability of his own duty, and his failing as a son. Forced to look away, he was surprised to see two tombs with Kyle Wages etched into them. He had thought the infant was buried with Bethany’s family. As if reading his mind, Mrs. Wages said, “His father. The first Gulf War.”
They hugged, Mrs. Wages squeezing tightly, as a mother would.
“Thank you,” she said. “I know how you all are about funerals.”
Achilles nodded. How could he not have come? “Have you been to the house?”
“I know you stayed there, that you know it. I was hoping … I know it’s terrible. I wanted his medals, but I couldn’t go … up there.”
Achilles held up his hands, halting her. “Of course. Where are you staying?”
She gave him the name of the hotel. “Thank you, Achilles. He said you were like a brother.”
“Yes, ma’am. He was too,” said Achilles. “I’ll bring whatever I can find.” Even as the tears welled up in Mrs. Wages’s eyes, Achilles regretted the promise. He had no intention of entering Wages’s house ever again. He saw Ines in the vestry entry and waved her toward the parking lot.
As soon as they were in the car, Achilles jammed the program into the glove box and Ines kicked her shoes off and rubbed her arches. “Here.” He extended his hands, offering his lap, and they drove like that, he rubbing her foot with his free hand, her sighing. They went home to change and then on to the phone bank, which had been relocated to a donated office in the Quarter.
He wanted to be with Ines all day, every day, like it used to be, but she forbade it. She didn’t want him volunteering because it was too spooky. “You spook me. I look over and see you all scarred up, like you were when I first met you, and it’s like we’re in a play with one act that keeps repeating itself. Besides, Charlie 1 needs you.”
Ines didn’t know that he hadn’t patrolled with them for three weeks. During the day, he wandered around, or sometimes went back to the condo and slept. That day, he went to Wages’s house as promised.
Wages’s neighborhood had always been the opposite of Uptown, but never was that more evident than after the flood. Achilles hadn’t even seen a rat, and no military checkpoints regulated traffic. There were a few Humvees parked on the median at major intersections, but they were empty, only reminders or warnings, which one he was never sure. He’d gone the first day that the city cleared enough debris. The little red duplex was tagged with the spray paint circle and cross and the number three, indicating that three bodies were found. He’d assumed it was for the neighbor. It had to be. He’d pushed at the swollen door and it fell over, twisting on one hinge. The smell was awful, the kind of stench that carved dread in your heart and set the pulse racing before you entered a building. From the porch he could see the furniture piled against the back wall of the living room, as if swept there by a giant broom. Each visit thereafter, he had remained on that porch like a man mesmerized by an abyss, remembering the last time he saw Wages, and all the questions he wished he had asked him. On each trip, he planned to go to the attic and salvage anything that Wages’s mother might want because he knew it would eventually come to that, but he kept picturing Margaret and her book.
Margaret volunteered for the Eulogy Archive, a project dedicated to memorializing Katrina victims. Achilles had assumed Wages was okay and hadn’t worried about not hearing from him. Many people were out of communication. But after he didn’t hear from Wages for a couple weeks, he went to the archive. He found the ledger for the Wageses: Kyle, Bethany, and Kyle Jr. Trapped in the attic, Bethany tried to fit Kyle Jr. through the vent pipe. He got stuck and drowned shortly after she did. When Wages reached the house and found the bodies, he lay down beside his wife and shot himself. Achilles, knowing that, swore he’d never enter that house again, blue envelope or not.
This time he sat outside for almost two hours before going in. Stepping through the door he remembered his first night—the view from the rooftop across the street, the way he had been overwhelmed by the photos on the wall. Now, the walls were as bare as the ceiling, and both were scarred by a brown watermark. The plaster had fallen off in chunks larger than dinner plates. The stuffing was bursting out of the high-heeled shoe chair, and the sparkling strawberry settee was overturned. I know, dude. Somewhere a seventies van is missing a bench seat. Don’t come a-knockin’.
When he finally worked up the nerve—he had promised, Mrs. Wages was depending on him—he dragged the dresser to the wall under the scuttle hole and climbed up to the attic. George, Wages’s neighbor, had set up camp in the attic. He had a propane stove, flashlight, candles, sheets, a water bucket set up in the corner, and a row of empty two-liter bottles. He sat cross-legged with all his possessions arranged in a semicircle around him like acolytes. “What are you doing up here?”
“The ceiling’s out in my half,” said George.
“I mean why?”
“I couldn’t stay in Houston. This here’s my home. I mean the cit
y. I mean Nola.”
“I know what you mean,” said Achilles. Indeed, New Orleans natives loved their city like nothing he had ever before seen.
“You going to put me out?”
No, Achilles shook his head. He’d never spoken at length to George, but knew he was in his fifties, had three adult daughters that each had at least one kid, and they all lived with him. Achilles took a seat on the overturned bucket, brushing aside the ants on his pants. A trail of them ran across the trusses at chest height.
“Where are your daughters?”
George looked down. “I don’t know. You gonna put me out?”
“Stop asking that. No!”
Piled in the corner: winter clothes, photo albums, Bethany’s jewelry box, and Wages’s guns, all of which Bethany must have had the foresight to carry up to the attic.
“I didn’t touch Mr. Kyle’s stuff.”
“I’m sure he appreciates that.”
George was as good as his word. Wages’s trunk was unopened, though it easily could have been. A few tools were scattered about: a small hammer, a few pipes, a pair of pliers, but no axe. He could see where Bethany had dug at the walls, pulled down the insulation, and clawed at the boards to get out. The vent was knocked out, the hole open to the sky, barely eight inches in diameter. No one could have fit through there. What did it take for Bethany to do that, to believe that the only chance to save little Wages was to send him up the air vent? She couldn’t have known it would turn, he would get stuck, he would hear her drown, and he would soon after drown himself.
He beat the lock off Wages’s footlocker. The cedar lining had separated from the tops and sides, and wood chips were mixed in with Wages’s BDUs.
Achilles pocketed the Bronze Star for Wages’s mom. The photos looked like watercolors. There was Wages’s laminated birth certificate. With a wife, child, and real job, Wages had always seemed so much older than twenty-six. The label had soaked off a bottle of Maker’s Mark. Achilles’s blue envelope was a cake of damp paper. He picked it up and it lay limp in his hand, unsalvageable. He didn’t see anything Wages would want him to save, so he shut the locker back up. He sat on the floor, dropping his legs down the scuttle hole.
“Leaving already?”
He tossed the Maker’s to George. George tossed it back. “Don’t drink.”
“Me neither, these days.” Achilles tucked it in his belt anyway.
“I’ll watch this stuff,” said George.
He considered inviting George to stay in one of the empty condos, but that was probably a bad idea. Achilles nodded his thanks. As he lowered himself to the first floor, he saw a fingernail stuck in the wood between a rafter and the sheathing, and choked. The ant trail ended at the fleshy tip.
On the ground floor, he nudged one of the little cushions—though it was already dirty, he couldn’t bring himself to kick it—revealing one of Bethany’s épées. He decided to take that too. When he reached for it, he saw the starfish, with three legs missing. Soon his arms were full: the starfish, the épée, a pair of her Crocs, a somewhat salvageable photo of them at Disney, a cushion from the white couch, Wages’s hunting hat, and the Maker’s Mark. Though it smelled terribly, he put the hat on. If he had had a crazy straw, he would have downed the entire bottle of whiskey.
Achilles and Ines were at Harrah’s Casino trying their luck at the quarter slots when Achilles felt someone watching him and looked up to see Wages tromping over. Without thinking, he scratched his right ear and looked skyward, meaning stay away. In Goddamnistan, it meant keep a safe distance and keep your eyes open, but it started in a bar outside of Fort Benning, where it meant stay the fuck away, I’m on the prowl. Wages didn’t change his stride. He kept on walking without saying a word, passing close enough that Achilles felt the air move. That was the last he saw of his friend.
The last time they spoke at any length was the afternoon Wages tried to explain the Zulu warrior ritual to him. Achilles hadn’t understood it at the time, but he thought he did now, after watching all the people wander through the streets of New Orleans like zombies, forever changed by what they had seen: the man in the checkout line sniffling as if he had a cold; the guy at the corner of Canal and Camp Street, whose eyes watered when he was mistaken for someone else; the vet in the bar with Charlie 1 who suddenly teared up and didn’t hide it, as if he didn’t really know he was crying, sobbing, shoulders shuddering as if he were being electrocuted. How had Achilles become those men, not even realizing what was happening unless Ines was there to wipe his cheeks?
That was Wages’s point. Even if you don’t remember, you never forget. They were in the attic for that final conversation, Achilles standing and Wages stooping, putting his last bottle of liquor into his trunk, Achilles denying it when Wages said he understood that the Bethany incident made Achilles uncomfortable.
“No way,” said Achilles. Who am I to judge? he wanted to say. I impersonated my brother, and spent time stalking ass when I should have shown Ines Troy’s photos and asked for help. “I don’t ever think about it.”
“I do every day. That’s the only time that shit ever happened. Ask Bethany.”
Achilles shrugged off the suggestion.
“I’m seeing somebody to make sure it doesn’t happen again. The guy’s pretty good. He’s a real old cat, a vet himself. Korea at fifteen, then Vietnam. He’s seen it all.” Wages closed the trunk and sat on the lid, patting the space beside him.
“I’m fine, dude.”
“Whatever.”
“That shit ends up on your record. What if you get the chance to go back? You’ll be flagged as …” Achilles hesitated, trying to find the right word.
“I don’t say I drink,” said Wages. “If I did that, they’d blame the booze.”
“You’re still flagged.”
“I’ve thought about that,” said Wages. “I don’t want to go back.”
At the time, Achilles still wanted to go back, to be with his friends and brother. “We were kings.”
“Don’t look at me like I’m making bitch eyes.” That hung in the air a moment before Wages continued. “I have so many fucking dreams it’s a wonder I sleep. It’s because we don’t have any rituals. That’s how the doctor explains it. That’s why I have the dreams. I never had them over there. Know anything about the Zulus?”
“No.”
“After a battle, the witch doctor takes you through the ritual so you can reenter society. The doctor says that because I didn’t go through any ritual, my addiction to risk keeps me at the casino where my job is the perfect cover for my propensity to gamble.” He said this last part through his nose.
“Are you going to quit?”
Wages lit a cigarette for emphasis, jabbing the evening air with the angry red eye. “I don’t quit shit. I’m just telling you what he said. It explains my dreams and shit.” As Wages explained it, the ritual involved a shaman helping warriors readjust to domestic life. “Even the Greeks had this problem. You have to get back into the community.”
“Like redemption?” asked Achilles.
“Impossible,” said Wages. “Redemption is out. Besides, it would mean we did something wrong.”
Chaplain Weidman was known for his practical penance. Merriweather had admitted to once helping some friends steal a truckload of computers destined for an elementary school. His penance: do something nice for some children. Ramirez had admitted to cheating on his girlfriend, just to stay “free.” His penance: If he loved her, tell her. If not, let her go. Jackson, a onetime cab driver, often claimed that his meter was broken on Friday nights. His penance: give the occasional free ride when he returned. “Is it like practical penance?”
“It’s not a religious thing. It’s more spiritual-like.”
“Like confession?” asked Achilles. “Or therapy?”
“No and no,” said Wages. “It’s none of that, nothing like that at all. It’s just a ritual, letting go.”
“Forgetting?” asked Achilles.
&nbs
p; “No!”
“Being forgiven?” asked Achilles.
“We didn’t do anything to be forgiven for,” groaned Wages. “We were hired to do a job. If there’s a hell below, you know.”
You’re exasperated? Achilles wanted to grab Wages and shake him. “What the fuck is it then? Is it like Merriweather?”
“He just had bad luck.”
“The kid,” whispered Achilles. “The knife?”
“What are you talking about?” Wages stared at him. “You mean trying to dig that shrapnel out?”
Achilles listened quietly after that.
“Another person helps you let go of what you hold. Some tribes believe that the warrior is haunted by his knowledge. We call it memory, but really it’s knowledge. We know how motherfuckers really are. The things we know, the things we’ve seen, the things we carry are a burden but also a gift, our gift to everyone else. We carry the terror so they don’t have to. It’s about getting back on even footing.” Wages handed Achilles a sheet of paper. “It’s my combat exam. Everyone should get one.” He said this in an offhanded manner, as if he were referring to a platinum card with mileage rewards.
A single sheet of blue paper with two columns, it detailed his experiences on active duty. The left column listed questions: Number of times under fire? Number of times seen people hit? Number of times seen people killed? Number of times in direct danger of being killed? Number of times involved in ambushes or house-clearing missions? Number of times killed people? The right side held the answers. Under fire over 37 times. Seen people hit 40 times. Seen people killed at close range 76 times. In direct danger of being killed 32 times. Participated in 112 ambushes or house-clearing missions. Killed 12 people.
“I can’t believe you don’t dream about this shit.”
Achilles couldn’t believe it either, because he had been there for almost all of it.
CHAPTER 21
Hold It 'Til It Hurts Page 36