by John Renehan
—
He’d never been a good singer. Hardly could carry a tune. His sister made fun of him for it. But he’d never cared much.
Mostly he sang alone anyway. He’d sung through all his albums during the dark Land Nav nights in training. Sung himself all the way over the mountains and up here when the lieutenant told him to go. Sang when he was farthest from safety.
The rumbling surged in the distance. Corelli sang on, barely above a whisper, in a quavering boy’s voice.
See him in a manger laid
Whom the angels praise above
It must have been thunderous where they were. He listened to the awful far tumult and sang to the stone floor as the snow outside settled to the ground.
While we raise our hearts in love
Gloooooo-oooooo-oooooria
In excelsis deo
The shape filled the doorway, framed black against the early evening.
Only what I have earned.
“Sir!”
He turned his head. Fultz, rasping and clawing beside him, pointed upward.
He looked. The ridgeline, barely twenty feet further.
As they stomped and struggled upward through the last steps, he heard a new sound growing above and behind him.
They staggered and fell to earth at the crest, out of sight.
He collapsed in a heap just over the top, the noise rising stronger and more steady behind them. He rolled to his back, heaving gasps raking in and out of him, a fresh panorama of height and depth filling his vision. His body, ravenous for air, gorged at the meager feast up here.
Fultz lay on his face beside him, sucking in the mountaintop soil, one arm thrust out toward him holding the handset.
The noise resolved itself and roared over his face, faceless and unknowing. Heavy-lift cargo helicopters, on their way someplace in some other godforsaken valley, with twenty-foot concrete blast barriers hanging beneath them.
45
A hazy, brutal shape loomed before his vision, haloed in snowglare. He moved his hand, which had been holding his head, and squinted upward.
Shannon. Just looking down at him. Smeared in grime and sweat.
Behind him the courtyard and its walls were covered in a gentle inch of snow, which now threw the morning sun in Black’s eyes. The Humvees were gone, muddy ruts and bootprints the only sign of their former presence. He tasted multiple flavors of smoke.
Someone had propped him in a folding camp chair in the breezeway and put a field jacket on him. A fresh IV line snaked out from beneath the coat. His head pounded like a dozen hangovers. He realized he was shivering.
“Found your pack,” Shannon grunted.
Black lowered his head and saw his assault pack, which he had left in Pistone’s hootch two days before, hanging by its straps in the corporal’s huge hand. It sloughed to the stone in a slumping heap of canvas by Shannon’s feet. Black heard two dull objects move against each other inside it.
Black stared at the pack dumbly. His jaw felt slack, as though his mouth were hanging open.
He raised his head and looked up again. Shannon was looking away.
“Might need that,” he said to the breezeway wall.
Black looked past him at the silent hills, now mottled in gray. The side of his face throbbed.
“Corel—” he began, and erupted in a fit of coughing.
When he finished he saw Shannon looking down at him again in distaste, brow curled as though trying to solve a problem in his head. He produced a dirt-stained, half-drunk water bottle from a cargo pocket and held it out silently. Black took it and drank, water running down the sides of his mouth.
When he looked up Shannon’s hands were shoved in his pockets and he was looking away again.
“Empty pair of flex-cuffs,” he muttered.
Behind him the wind on the slopes raised white swirls from dusted tree limbs. Soldiers and medics hustled to and from the courtyard. Most carried ammunition and M.R.E. cases, which they stacked against the breezeway walls.
Black tried to remember how long he’d been watching them. How long he’d been conscious.
“Oswalt,” he croaked.
“He’s cool.”
“O.P.”
Shannon turned and eyeballed the soldiers coming and going before he spoke.
“Ain’t no O.P.”
Black looked past Shannon at the snow-powdered hills.
A medic sergeant appeared, the same one from the night before, informing him that his MEDEVAC flight would be arriving in a few minutes. His tone made it clear that there would be no dicking around and Black would be getting on the bird.
The sergeant stomped away, barking at his junior medics.
It took Black a moment to realize that Shannon was still standing there. He’d momentarily forgotten.
He noticed for the first time that Shannon’s body armor and weapon were stacked against the breezeway wall nearby. He looked up at the hulking soldier, who stared intently down the breezeway, hands in his pockets again.
Soldiers came by with cots and cases of medical supplies. Everything in the outpost was being assembled close to the courtyard.
“I didn’t—” Shannon blurted out suddenly.
Black looked up. Shannon, looking out at the hills, shook his head and exhaled in muscular exasperation.
“I didn’t know Sergeant Merrick was fucking investigating anything,” he said in an angry gush of words, “until he told you out there yesterday.”
He crossed his bulging forearms.
“I didn’t know who knew what or who wanted to know what.”
He glared at the soldiers hustling about the courtyard and shoved his hands back into his pockets.
Black watched the soldiers too.
“Bullshit,” he sighed wearily.
Shannon uncrossed his arms and looked down at Black a long time before he spoke.
—
From above, in daylight, it looked so ordinary. A valley like all the rest. Mountains like any others. From up here they could’ve been the mountains back home. Like with his dad and brother.
They flew just below the level of the ridges, hazy sunshafts winking, flashing across into his eyes. He watched out the chopper door as the coils of black smoke receded, its origin shrinking to a dot in the crook of the snow-dusted valley sides.
Did Brydon go with Caine, when he went out to do his business?
He had dreaded asking the question.
Naw. That wasn’t the dick Caine fucked him with.
Black looked around the interior of the helicopter. There were other soldiers there, strapped into the narrow seats. Lesser wounded like himself. After the criticals and the bodies.
One of them, caked in ash and dried blood, saw Black looking at him. He smiled and gave a flip of the chin. Black looked away.
What was Caine doing outside the COP?
You know what he was doing.
Where is he now?
Shannon had told him, watching Black’s reaction coolly. When he spoke it was without triumph and without pity.
I told you the day I met you, Lieutenant. You fuck with this valley and it will fuck you back.
“HEARD WHAT YOU DID, SIR,” the soldier in the bird called over the rotors and wind.
Black turned his head and looked at the kid blankly.
“HEARD WHAT YOU DID.”
What he did.
How did Caine know where to go looking for Corelli?
He hadn’t expected Shannon to know.
That was probably me.
Shannon’s big brows curled at him.
Thought you were a paperwork bubba.
Long story.
The soldier in the helicopter nodded at Black enthusiastically.
“FUCK YEAH, L.T.!”
They’d gotten below the snow line. Scrubby slopes sped past the open doors.
What were you gonna be, Lieutenant? Before you ran away from it to be in the Army?
It was the second time that week someone had asked him that. He said so.
Yeah, well, whatever it was, you might want to just go do that. Army ain’t for you.
The medic sergeant had come back then, and told Black his ride was almost there.
See you later then.
But Black called to Shannon, over the rising noise of the approaching helicopter.
Why did you refuse the order that night?
It was the only thing he’d really wanted to know from him.
When Caine told you to go after the girl?
Shannon had got a distant look in his eyes.
Didn’t know if it was a girl or boy.
Black told him. Shannon’s assessment was succinct.
Goddamn.
Two medics had come up the breezeway, ready to help Black aboard. Shannon bent to gather his gear.
Yeah, well, anyway, I don’t give a fuck about no hajji kid.
That Black believed.
But Caine was an asshole.
He shouldered his load.
And so are you.
And he’d turned and stumped away down the breezeway, a hulking, moving island of calm in the blowing snow.
Mountainsides fell away. The broad plain opened below them. The chopper banked and adjusted course, bound for home.
Clear of the valleys, they picked up speed. The sound of the wind and the engines was deafening in the open compartment. But all Black could hear was what Shannon had told him. About Caine.
Sergeant Merrick found him.
Where?
The big corporal looked steadily into his eyes.
Like Parsons.
Like who?
Their altitude was appreciably dropping, the air warming.
They crucified his ass.
Black looked out the door and saw Omaha in the distance.
46
He thumbed through the stack of bills then tossed them back onto the cot with the rest. A chilling breeze blew through the gaps and sent them swirling past the open trunk, brown rectangles lined up in its mouth. He’d only seen heroin bricks in person one other time.
He took a last look around Caine’s hootch and strode out, climbing over rubble and picking his way through the remains of the disemboweled outpost.
His lieutenant was waiting, silently. Everyone else was on board already. The two of them checked the timer and set the detonators together. Strode out to the hulking, crouching bird, rotors turning, whining, ready to claw upward.
They stopped at the base of the ramp. The lieutenant looked at him expectantly.
He knew it would come to this nonsense. He should let it go. Remember what Shannon said.
Goddamned Shannon.
Just let it go. Don’t let on.
No goddamned way.
He turned and looked in the lieutenant’s dark eyes.
“Get on the fucking helicopter, sir.”
The lieutenant looked back at him, long and probingly, before turning and stumping up into the troop compartment.
Shaking off the feeling of sudden nakedness, he turned back and looked at it. All of it. Looked up to the empty hills and mountainsides, which had taken all of them.
Not empty.
The crew gunner hollered at him through the rotor wash. He had the kid by several ranks, but helicopter crews, like medics, honor no courtesies and respect no rank. They respect the bird. It’s what keeps them in the sky.
Merrick turned away and put one boot heavily on the ramp, then the other, its sole scuffing a little cloud of dirt behind it as he stepped up.
He didn’t look out as they rose away. He looked at the ID card in his hand.
47
The recovery section of Charlie Med was subdivided with plywood and sheets into individual curtained bays for convalescing soldiers. Black wanted to rest at his hootch, but the doctors told him no way.
He’d lost a significant amount of blood in the twenty-four hours between being shot and his first contact with the medics at Vega. The bullet had made a lucky pass-through, but his wound was fairly messed up from lack of prompt treatment and inadvisable physical activity. He had been severely dehydrated when found by Shannon, and the doctors told him he had suffered multiple significant concussions. He rated a bed in the hospital for a few days.
When they began asking questions about how he’d suffered his injuries, he kept his answers as perfunctory as possible. What information he did provide was so bizarre and confounding that they invariably shook their heads and waved him off, leaving him for the inevitable investigators to talk to.
Never mind, I don’t even want to know. U.S. nine-millimeter pistol wound, got it. Banged your head falling onto a stone floor, got it. Wandered in the woods with no water, got it.
Then they would leave, which was fine with him. By the end of the first morning he was tired of the place.
“Goddamn, L.T., I thought I told you!”
The violinmaker.
“Sorry,” he replied, grinning.
She’d just shown up for a shift, with a pack slung over her shoulder. She’d seen his name on the incoming roster the night before.
She grabbed a stool and peppered him with gruff questions about the aid he’d received from the medics in the field and the treatment he’d gotten once he’d made it to Charlie Med. Since he didn’t remember much about the first part, those questions were easy to answer.
When she’d satisfied herself that his care was not being neglected, she sat back against the plywood partition and looked at him, brow furrowed.
“What the hell, man? What happened out there?”
He looked down at his sheets, saying nothing and shaking his head.
She eyed him another moment then shrugged, letting it go.
“Anyway, I brought you some stuff,” she said, digging in the pack. “Continue the classical portion of your woeful musical education.”
Out came a portable CD player with an expensive-looking pair of headphones and a stack of discs. She handed them over and Black commenced thumbing through them.
“Charles Ives . . . ?” he mumbled.
The violinmaker rolled her eyes.
“American,” she said. “Everyone knows about him now, so you should know about him.”
He kept flipping.
He held up a disc reproachfully.
“I know who Beethoven is,” he complained.
“You’ve heard his Fifth Symphony?”
“C’mon,” he said. “Da-da-da-DUM.”
“Hey, I don’t know, man. There are some serious holes in your music.”
Black looked away.
“We were sheltered.”
She eyed him sidelong, waiting for more, but he offered no more.
“I bet,” she said, shaking her head. “Anyway, no, you haven’t heard it. Not till you hear that recording.”
She pointed at the CD in his hand.
“Wiener Philharmoniker?” he read. “Carlos Kleiber?”
“Veener, not Weener,” she corrected, exasperated. “Vienna Philharmonic. 1975.”
She pointed at the headphones.
“Put it on in the dark with those on. You’ll see.”
“Thanks.”
“No sweat,” she said, rising to go. “I’ll check on you during my shifts. And if you decide you wanna tell me what the hell happened, I’m around.”
“Cool.”
“Cool.”
She went. She came by daily to check on him and break his balls about one thing or another, but she didn’t ask about the Valley.
She must
have told Kourash he was at Charlie Med. He made his way over from the Green Beans Coffee the next day, fretting over Black like a doting parent and generally wringing his hands at the threadbare condition of his young friend.
“I am sorry, my brother,” he told Black sadly. “I wished that you do not go in this war.”
Sergeant Cousins came by to visit, which was good of him. Smoke Toma didn’t show, which was probably for the best.
—
Late on the third day, the person Black had most hoped for and most dreaded walked in.
He appeared unannounced and lingered in the doorway a long time. His arm was bandaged but he didn’t look bad physically. When he lowered his angular frame into a chair, Black saw the dark circles under his eyes and the ashen pallor of his skin. He wondered if he looked that bad himself.
He sat in the chair with his elbows on his knees, glaring at a far point on the floor. When he finally spoke it was in a voice so hollow and gray it startled Black. He hardly recognized it.
“What the hell,” Merrick said, eyes unmoving, “is the end of the world?”
Black felt very tired.
He pointed at the wheelchair in the corner.
“Give me that thing.”
48
They got their coffees from Kourash, who fussed over Black and gushed hospitality all over the startled, surly sergeant.
“A friend of Breedman Will is my brother,” he said graciously.
“I’m not— I’m . . .” Merrick stammered.
“Can we have the deck for a bit?” Black asked his friend, thumbing over his shoulder toward the back door.
Kourash palmed his chest.
“Yours, my brother.”
Merrick pushed Black’s chair through the door, which Kourash latched behind them, and out onto the empty deck. The air was chill, but the snow in the mountains hadn’t made it down this far.
They situated themselves at a metal table in a corner. Merrick lowered himself into a plastic deck chair and squinted out at a bleak amber horizon.
The late afternoon sun hung above the mountains, sending long shadows across the plain toward Omaha and inching across the wood planks where they sat.