Hold It 'Til It Hurts
Page 38
Vodka, riding shotgun, slapped the door. “Let’s go.” Scanning the horizon, he added, “He’s survived worse.”
“He could always ride on top,” said Bryant.
Vodka, Daddy Mention, and Achilles shook their heads.
“No one rides on top,” said Vodka. “Let’s get oscar-mike, B.”
“Hoo-ah!” they yelled.
Achilles waved until they were gone, already knowing it was farewell. The birds called him back to the aviary, their caws sounding like someone frantically crying Come! Come! He spent a few hours there, feeding the birds and listening to the river, trying to forget the tension that had swept through his body when he found himself looking at people through a scope again, automatically arresting his breath as he rested the crosshairs over their hearts.
A patrol boat coasted by, the crew of three soldiers unconvinced of Achilles’s status even after seeing his badge and military ID. The driver, a blond kid, radioed Charlie 1 for confirmation. Achilles imagined all three of them facedown in the river, turning lazily with the tide, the water crimson and hazy. He’d been mistaken for a looter six times that week alone. He sought out their eyes, but none could hold his gaze. The driver and navigator were preoccupied with the radio knobs. The gunner stood at the edge of the boat, his glances darting from Achilles, to his mates at the radio, and back to Achilles’s hands, as if Achilles might produce a weapon they’d overlooked when they frisked him, like he had an SAW snookered up his ass. By the time the boat left, he was taking shallow breaths, the exhalations longer than the inhalations. He didn’t see them leave. He knew they waved. He knew that he had waved in response automatically, which pissed him off. He knew they’d apologized halfheartedly—Can’t be too careful. You know that. There are some real animals here. He was still rigid with anger. He’d never been frisked before Katrina. For a moment, he’d wanted to jump on the gunner and bite his nose off, swing the M60 on the other two, spice them up. Had Vodka left him a gun, he might have.
On the walk home, he saw the postman again at Lee Circle, and they hugged like old friends. He learned that the postman was named Chester, had two children who were both safe, and that his parents had been lucky enough to evacuate early. Though it was only the second time they’d exchanged more than a nod, Achilles and Chester chatted at the base of Robert E. Lee’s statue until its shadow passed them, and for hours after, leaving only when the curfew approached. Even then, Achilles was sad to see him go.
CHAPTER 22
NO DILBERT CARTOONS HERE. THE MOST COMMON SIGN READ MORTUI Vivis Praecipant: Let the dead teach the living. The slogan was found in mobile refrigerated trucks, tents, walk-in coolers, and airplane hangers throughout the Gulf region, as well as over doors throughout the entire town of St. Gabriel—once a leper colony, and again a destination to be avoided at all costs. Often, there were more people attending the dead than helping the living. At each location a hodgepodge staff was assembled: coroners, pathologists, forensic pathologists, medical records technicians, forensic anthropologists, fingerprint specialists, funeral directors, medical examiners, crime scene investigators, forensic dental experts, dental assistants, x-ray technicians, mental health specialists, computer professionals, administrative support staff and security, all wearing badges reading Morgue Ops.
They worked out of warehouses, hangars, gymnasiums, schools, tents, and refrigerated vans. Webs of orange and yellow extension cords connected humming diesel and solar-powered generators, and one lot even had three kids running a hand crank. At some remote locations, autopsies were conducted outside, the sun being the only available light. Achilles had never been anywhere where there were so few families available to claim their dead loved ones. It was a massive effort to identify people whose bodies were often damaged beyond recognition, and often far from home. How had Mabel found Dudley? Achilles found himself wondering about Levreau, Detective Morse, Bud, Lex, Blow, and the Harpers. No one deserved this.
Ines and Achilles’s first stop was a temporary morgue in an old basketball court. Ines was reserved, her eyes darting at the tables for quick peeks and then back to the floor. After each table she shook her head slightly and breathed No, the surgical mask bellowing. Remains were arranged in descending order of completeness. The first few rows had entire bodies, then torsos. The last two rows held hands, feet, a head in a Styrofoam cooler. There were binders with photos of personal possessions. Ines flipped through them quickly, not knowing how Paul usually dressed or if he always wore a pocket watch or what his wedding band looked like. Achilles expected to make quick work of this, planning to cover one side of the room while she covered the other, but Ines held him back, squeezing his fingers numb. Other people, individually and in groups, moved about the room with the same slow shuffle, as if they had to will themselves to take each step.
The next two morgues were the same. People were slow to enter and quick to leave. Afterwards, clustering around their cars, some huddled in prayer. Others whispered and smoked, sighing between puffs, guiltily relishing the temporary reprieve. At the end of each stop, Ines bummed a cigarette. Achilles offered to buy a pack.
“I don’t even like the taste. I’m just doing it because … it makes me cough.”
Their fourth stop was a former convenience store, the large glass refrigerator doors suited for this new role. Of the overhead signage, only the billboard frame remained, but the name was clearly stenciled on the gray stucco: Victor’s Bait, Booze, and Beer. A few feet from the door, Ines vomited into her hand, retching loudly. People passed as if nothing was happening.
Rubbing her back, he suggested they stop. He was hungry anyway.
Ines shook her head. “I promised Mother.” She repeated it several times as he led her back to the car, bearing her weight. He bummed a cigarette and they sat on the hood, sharing it. They were only a few blocks from the point where the industrial canal levee had failed. In some places the land was flat, as if nothing had ever been there. On one block, two rows of houses remained facing each other, the fronts of the homes intact but the backs gone, like false fronts on movie sets. Bulldozers pushed houses out of the street, in the process sometimes damaging houses still on their foundations.
“If Katrina didn’t get you, Nagin will,” said Ines, referring to the mayor. “I don’t want to do this. I wouldn’t want anyone to see me like that. Just an arm. A leg. Your head in a fucking Styrofoam cooler, the cheap kind, not that you need a Coleman if only your head is left. Listen to me. I sound like you, don’t I?”
Achilles didn’t see any way to answer that safely.
“Afghanistan was different,” said Ines. “I once walked into a house to meet a group of women about to start a school. They were all there, all five, but dead, shot where they sat, except the leader. She was raped and strangled. I cried over that for a long time. But this is even worse, to enter each room hoping not to find what I’ve been sent to look for.” She ground out the cigarette. “Oops, littering,” she chuckled morbidly. “Let’s get this over with.”
“I’ll run in.”
“You don’t mind?” she asked.
He walked off. She looked surprised when he returned so quickly, and he made sure to shake his head as soon as she saw him.
“It’s not a big place,” he said.
“Are you sure? I should have gone with you. I want this to be done.”
“There’s only so much you can do in one day. Just because he’s not here today doesn’t mean he won’t be here tomorrow.” He searched for the word to describe it. It wasn’t a mission, or recon, or a task. It was a process. “It’s not like a job. It’s a promise, but not one you make or break in one day.”
She leaned against the car, glum and listless, tracing the air around the hood ornament with her fingers.
“If I were in there or there,” she said, pointing at the morgue and then at the river, “all I’d want is another cigarette, a beignet, a bad joke, another five minutes with you.”
“I’d want to be with you to
o. Cold dead fingers, remember, cold dead fingers. That’s what I want now, and I’m not there or there,” he said, pointing as she had. “I’m here, and I’ll go to every morgue in the Southeast for you.”
He reached for her hands, and she pulled away the dirty one. He held out his palm and waited.
“That’s gross.”
He waited until she offered her other hand, then pressed them both to his face and kissed every fingertip, watching her eyes. He recalled the movie screening, when he had first noticed how beautiful her eyes were. His stomach flittered, then grumbled.
“Was that?”
He nodded.
“Are you hungry?” she asked, looking baffled.
He took a chance. “Very!”
“Oh my god, Achilles,” said Ines, collapsing in laughter. “Actually, me too.”
As he was nodding off that night, she led him to the bed, where they slept together, too tired to do anything else. But to be in her arms, to hear her breathe …
He awoke the next morning as he had the past few weeks, tired. The dreams were vivid, bigger than memories. He could deny memories, ignore them, like running with a sprained ankle, or how you sometimes shit yourself but kept shooting, or held your breath while searching a dead guy’s pockets. He tuned memories out as he had tuned out the pleading.
Almost everyone they had dropped off for interrogations pled for release. Merri said the more they pled the guiltier they were. Wages said the opposite. Either way, you didn’t need to be fluent in Pashto or Persian or Arabic or what-fucking-ever to know what they were saying: Allah, love, please, kids, wife, daughter, mother, father, son, brother, cousin, please, please, please. Cousin, no! Brother, no! They would say when they saw Achilles or Merriweather. No, Cousin! No, Brother! Sincere, imploring, beseeching. Sheepishly acknowledging the wet crotch, sweat, red eyes, pointing to the sky, especially the dark ones, as if their common skin was a badge of kinship.
He had heard none of it, not a word.
The dreams, though, were alive, like a switch from black and white to straight in your face 3D, from the peep show to the harem. He remembered the IED, holding Jackson’s hand. But in his dreams he sees every wound and gash on Jackson’s face—the abrasion under his eye, the cut on his chin, the missing right ear—and that his left hand has only two fingers on it, like the little girl with the burned arm. He sees Merriweather on the gurney, his foot attached by a thin white tendon. He sees Merri’s kid, looking back to make sure he isn’t being chased, running almost fifty yards before bleeding out, mouthing “Papa.” And that look of confusion. He probably hadn’t even understood why he was suddenly so tired. He remembers Troy saying, more than once, “I could have come alone.”
Achilles, arms sore as if he’d been doing pull-ups all night, made his usual breakfast times two: protein powder and bottled water, three energy bars, and a spotted apple he scored from Charlie 1. He arranged the disaster zone special on a tray, fanning the energy bars out like an asterisk, and tiptoed back to the bedroom, but Ines was not in the bed, nor the bathroom, nor any place in the apartment. He found her on the roof, wearing a pair of blue fuzzy slippers with horns.
“My old favorites. The rest were in my mom’s basement. All ruined. That little skirt you liked, my spiked heels.” She listed a few other items, such as her velour tracksuit, his personal favorite. Under it, her tits felt so soft and furry.
“The list keeps adding up.”
“Speaking of that, you’re counting at night. Slow and deliberate. You go to the forties and start over. Repeatedly. You went to 112 once, but only once.”
He asked her to write the numbers down.
“Who says I’ll be sleeping with you again?”
“No one. I expect you to be awake. If not, your findings will be unreliable,” he said in his best military voice.
She laughed. “I’m sorry about yesterday.”
“I understand. I mean, I can go alone.”
“I don’t want to make you go through this.”
“Ines, I’m used to it. I saw it every day for two years.” And I’ve done it for the last year.
“This isn’t your battle.” She stared as if considering for the first time the full depth of his experiences. “Listen to me.”
He hoped she would allow him to go alone, to be useful, to do what she couldn’t do for herself. He also wanted to use an overnight trip to a distant morgue as an excuse to be gone long enough to make one last trip to Atlanta to take care of Pepper. But Ines insisted on accompanying Achilles to the morgues, even if she didn’t go in. Achilles argued this point, claiming she would be more useful at the phone bank.
“So you’re saying that because I can’t go all the way, I shouldn’t go at all?” asked Ines, her face red. “This is man’s work, is that what it is?”
They finally agreed they would put up flyers with her grandfather’s picture and return to the morgues the following day. The city was dotted with community bulletin boards where people had posted photos and notes. Their first stop, on Canal, was near the substation where Achilles had filed the MPR. Wanting to check on Morse, he felt imprisoned by his lies. For the first time he thought of them not as lies, but omissions, which were somehow worse. Lies filled space, creating a livable history, while omissions left him feeling incomplete, like phantom limbs.
That was certainly how everyone who posted these flyers must have felt, incomplete without these dogs, cats, a ferret, relatives. Ines touched each face, reading the names. Yearbook pictures, six mug shots, vacation photos, two boudoir shots, photo booth strips, prom pictures, wedding pictures, Xeroxes, color copies, group photos with one head circled, a mother with two children in her lap and both kids’ heads circled, a Santa photo, a Halloween scene, a bar mitzvah. The lettering was typed, printed, block print, cursive, English, Spanish, French, German, Russian, and, at the very bottom, labeled in crayon, an old man in a wheelchair holding a teddy bear, each wearing a birthday hat. Like most in this morbid collage, they are smiling. Written in crayon underneath: Lester Newman. Last seen at St. Louis Cathedral. Answers to Papi.
“You told me they have a funny sense of humor, but this is cruel. I’m telling them what I think.” She had her phone out before Achilles saw the flyer: a picture of him and Troy taken three years before at the Baltimore water park, before basic and infantry training, before jump school, before their tour of duty. Troy smiles, the gap in his front teeth prominent, his green eyes razors in the sunlight. He wears flip-flops and shorts, no shirt. It was hot that day, or so they’d thought. Against Troy’s broad shoulders, the swim towel around his neck is a mere cravat. He has hair. Achilles wears a DC United soccer jersey. His hair is shorn close to his head, but it’s clear he has a widow’s peak. His right hand is on Troy’s shoulder. His flip-flops are in his left hand because as soon as his father says, “Got it,” Achilles and Troy will hit the water slide. Achilles’s eyes are hidden behind Ray-Ban aviators, the glasses they thought all military men wore, and they smile as if they’ve won the lottery. At the bottom of the flyer there is a website, a toll-free number, and a local number.
“It’s okay,” he croaked, the paper trembling in his hand. “That’s what they want, for you to call.”
But there was no consoling Ines. “I don’t get this soldier’s humor! I just don’t! Who is this anyway?” she asked, jabbing Troy’s face. “It’s got to be his idea. He’d be the only one with the photo, wouldn’t he?”
Achilles nodded.
They put up a few more flyers, the mood growing heavier at each stop. The Circle Food Store, Jackson Square, the French Market; every bulletin board held at least one flyer with Achilles and Troy. Each time, Ines jabbed Troy’s face, complaining. “Who is he? The one who tells the jokes? I know there’s always a so-called joker. Who is he?”
“Troy.”
“Oh baby. I’m sorry. I thought he looked familiar. That’s poor taste.” She cradled his face. “Doesn’t Charlie 1 know?” She sighed heavily. “Didn’t you tell
them?”
Achilles shook his head.
“Okay, baby, I understand. I would be polite, of course. I wouldn’t even tell them you saw it. But Troy is dead, and to keep bringing it up is painful. Okay?”
“I’ll take care of it.” Achilles dropped Ines off at home and spent the afternoon removing all the flyers he could find. He counted forty-three at the end of the day, forty-three copies of the photo he originally brought to New Orleans, enlarged so that Troy’s face was about the exact same size it had been on Levreau’s flyer, not life-sized, but close enough. He went to the website and saw the same picture there, and a few more. The website was hosted by a company that charged a fee to create and post these flyers. Must have been a good business, but never one he’d want to own.
The next morning while dressing, he asked Ines, “Did your grandfather, I mean Paul, have any distinguishing marks?”
“I’m going with you.”
“I’m only asking.”
Ines looked doubtful. “I’m going with you. But no. And you can call him my grandfather now. I guess you forgive people, or get closer to them, when they die. Did you feel that way about Wages and Troy?”
Achilles nodded.
Ines said, “I shouldn’t have brought that up.”
She was right. He was closer to them all in death, recalling things he had forgotten. When Ines went to the bathroom, Achilles left. It would be easier to move through the morgues without her.
He carried his mother’s flyer in his pocket, obsessed with Wages’s ritual theory, with his certainty that until you let the shit go, it ate your life. Wages was on his mind because Ines had stayed up late enough to write down his numbers: 37, 40, 112, 76, 32. That’s a hell of a combination, she had joked. But it was no mystery. It was the list from Wages’s combat report. He was counting in his sleep, confirming Wages’s numbers.
Morgue Ops personnel were like spies. Prohibited from discussing work, they even removed their badges upon leaving the facilities, the logic being that the general public should never identify them as morgue workers. Alone, flashing his military ID, Achilles was one of their tribe. Faced with someone who didn’t eye them like lepers, they gladly explained the process to him. The body, or what’s left of it, is moved through stations. A forensic pathologist looks for deformities, scars, tattoos, unique dental features like crooked teeth. They are fingerprinted, x-rayed, dental x-rayed, and DNA samples are taken. Then an autopsy, then they are embalmed and shipped if already identified. If not, they are warehoused for people like Achilles and Ines to identify. When only bones remained, they are shipped to the forensic anthropologist. A DNA test is usually reliable, but if the body’s been underwater too long, bacteria start breaking down the proteins, making them harder to identify. A full body x-ray is helpful because it reveals shrapnel, broken bones, pacemakers, and the like. When you have only limbs, it’s tough.