During the ceremony, Lieutenant Michaels gave an emotional and sometimes self-deprecating speech in which he relayed to the crowd an account of a ferocious and cool-under-pressure soldier willing to disobey orders to save his friends. He made no overt mention of his own physical assault at the hands of his subordinate, but he sprinkled the speech with plenty of idioms and metaphors. He referenced black eyes, busted jaws, and knockout punches. To Levi, the soldier he described sounded like a figment of someone’s imagination. “Sergeant Hartwig is the kind of soldier that every platoon leader needs,” he said. Before closing his speech, he paused and turned to make eye contact with Levi, who was sitting in the front row with his parents. “He’s driven. He’s fierce. He’s aggressive. I can tell you from personal experience that anyone who tries to stand in his way doesn’t stand a chance.” He winked. “I couldn’t be prouder to have had the honor of commanding him in battle.”
The words, and particularly the heartfelt conviction with which they were delivered, created in Levi his own emotional tumult. The room erupted into applause, and Lieutenant Colonel Bradford stepped to the podium. Before Levi had the opportunity to breathe, the colonel—who had indeed promised they would not forget about him and that he would get what he deserved—spoke into the microphone. “Sergeant Hartwig, could you please come up here?”
Members of the local press sat in the front corner of the crowd with their video cameras and microphones, leaning on the edges of their chairs, moving around to catch the best angles of the stoic soldier’s face. They ate up the juicy and violent narrative as a great hometown-hero feel-good piece, a success story in an otherwise disappointing and frustrating war.
Certain phrases jumped out at Levi as the colonel read, and Levi would stop listening to think about how their tone and spin ran in sharp contrast to how he had come to perceive the events in the long months since that tragic day. Since the day in question, Levi had mulled the events over in his head every night as he tried to sleep, during every conversation’s lull, during every shower, every workout, and every meal. Every morning’s foggy transition from sleep to wakefulness consisted of filling in the gaps where his memory failed him. He had never spoken of it, had never discussed it, and had never been pressed when he evaded the topic. He had lost his objectivity long ago, and he had accepted his own guilt-laden perspective—the one in which it was all his fault—without reasonable doubt or credible challenge.
Levi felt something inside growing softer and lighter as Lieutenant Colonel Bradford read on. The events still felt like nothing to be celebrated, but Levi had locked himself away in his own cage of guilt and regret for so long, the narrative made him feel something like grace. That day in Iraq had presented a terrible situation and he had done the best he could. The reading of the medal was something of a revelation. He listened with fascination and he thought, even if it was not true that he was a hero, perhaps it was true that he was not a criminal or a failure. The possibility existed for him for the first time that the past was mutable—that he might have a new truth, a new narrative that was truer than his own tortured memory. For the first time, he realized how subjective it all was and how the past was not as inviolable as he had come to believe. And didn’t the possibility exist that his own recollection and the Silver Star citation were equally true? Perhaps that single afternoon had manifested both his greatest failures and his greatest accomplishments.
It could not last. In the middle of the bleachers on his left, he locked on to the smirking eyes of Private Ott, the kid he never disciplined. The kid who saw him pop a few rounds into a corpse because he had been scared shitless. His feeling of levity—of grace—vanished. Ott leaned over and whispered something to the man in the bleachers below him, which elicited another smirk. Levi was reminded of his own long-held understanding of the incident: He had not been a hero, and he had not exhibited tactical prowess. Instead, he had exhibited indecision and fear, and nothing more than a failure of moral integrity had resulted in their being on Route Boa in the first place. Ott’s very presence, let alone his smirking and whispering, destroyed any vestigial thoughts that the Silver Star offered an alternative truth for Levi to carry—a truth that spoke of his exceptional reaction to an impossible situation. Only one truth remained: He was a coward and a fraud.
When Levi returned to Afghanistan, he put the medal away and he tried not to think about it, which proved impossible at first. There was some fanfare and some jealousy and many questions. He rebuffed questions with the answers that everyone expected: Everyone out there was just doing his best; I didn’t do anything extraordinary that anyone else wouldn’t have done; I just happened to be in position to get there first; it was no big deal; and finally, to his peers trying their hardest to disguise their envy, if anyone deserves a Silver Star, it’s you guys.
It wasn’t long before the medal was no longer news and it stopped being a conversation piece, which came as a relief because it meant that Levi no longer had to answer simple questions, the truthful answers to which no one would have wanted to hear on account of how complicated and morally ambiguous they would have been. Yet, the gradual slip of the medal into irrelevance in the collective memory of his peers also saddened him because it meant nothing was left to challenge his personal and long-held guilt about it all.
Things were so complicated, so mixed up all the time. Everything went in waves. Sometimes he would realize he was sleeping better; he was eating more; and he could not pinpoint with any precision the last time he had thought about May 15th, 2005. Other times, he would go through entire days in which he let his squad run on autopilot; he wouldn’t say a word unless it was to snap at someone for doing something stupid or reckless, and he’d hear his subordinates muttering, “Sergeant Hartwig’s on the rag again.” On these occasions, he would open his footlocker and pull out the medal. He’d read the citation, and he’d close his eyes and try to picture what had happened in minute detail. He would punish himself by picking his scabs until they bled. In a way, he hoped that by reading this new narrative and by trying to reconcile it with his own, the new scabs would be smoother, smaller, and less painful.
But that exercise had failed, and he put the medal away for good.
•••
Fast forward to Christmas 2008. Levi had polished off two jugs of wine and he had thrown most of his belongings in the dumpster behind his apartment. He put all his clean undergarments and a few sets of civvies in a hockey bag. He moved an olive drab M183 demolition satchel—scored on his first trip to Iraq from the EOD guys—to the bathroom, where he hung it on the doorknob so he wouldn’t forget to pack his toiletries inside. He sorted through everything else that remained, putting anything bearing utility into a cardboard box to take to his neighbor Albie. He packed everything else into two footlockers. The entire ritual, the preparation, the counting of the socks and underwear into sets of sevens, the packing away and shipping off of the unessential, and the total abdication of anything excess or frivolous felt familiar; it felt like packing for war. But he wasn’t packing for war; he was packing for home. That was the night he had found the medal where his mattress had been. He reflected for a short moment and then he added it to the rest of his trash in the dumpster, the small ribbon and cheap metal star meaning nothing now that he was no longer a Soldier.
BOOK THREE
OF BIRDS AND BLOOD
3.1 THE STRONGEST VOICES OFTEN GO UNHEARD
Winter, Late 2008–Early 2009
She believed history was important, and history was bred from memory. And this is how Eris remembered her whole life: in short viral video clips. Viral as infection. Her memory was high-definition media swimming in a digital pool in her brain. Every once in a while, one of these clips floated to the surface. The sounds of the present faded into the background like the oscillating surf of the sea. The colors of the other images blurred and rippled, and the buoyancy of the one that floated demanded her attention.
Here is an image, from before the war: Nick sit
ting cross-legged on his bedroom floor on some wild night when Levi got him high and then punched him out. And she had been stupid too, but for good reason: for him. This was the night of the drinking, the bathtub, the hospital. He was heartbreaking with his boyish cheeks, his fuzzy blond buzz cut, and the confused but trusting hopefulness of an abused child. He rocked back and forth and looked her right in the eye. He listened to every word she had to say about why she couldn’t go home, about why her life had lost all meaning. He listened and he cared. That was important to her. She could hear him grinding his teeth, and yes, his eyes were so dilated she couldn’t see his irises, but she could hear the sincerity in his voice when he told her, “You saved me tonight.”
She leaned forward to kiss him and said, “No, you saved me.”
“Because I love you.” He said, “I don’t want to sound vulnerable, because I’m not, but because I love you.”
He didn’t know irony and he didn’t know lies, and she could hear that. When she began to take her clothes off, she could also hear him say, “No. Didn’t you hear me?”
By then, she had only heard no. And she felt confused. He probably sensed this because he had always looked out and not in. He reached his hand out to touch her face. He ground his teeth and smiled at her. “You have to understand.”
A tear rolled down her cheek. He had studied a bit of Greek at that little Christian high school of his, and it was this gibberish he used to explain himself. “There’s philos,” he told her. “And I love you like that. And eros. I want to love you like that. Believe me, I want to love you like that. I mean, how could I not? But I can’t love you like that. Not now. But the other love, it’s called agape. And that’s how I need to love you. That’s how I love you. So please don’t take your clothes off.”
She didn’t understand all of that back then. Didn’t care. She only heard, “I don’t love you like that.”
She didn’t like to think of all this as before the war—as if all time should be categorized by where he went and what he had done and how he had returned—because it seemed to legitimize it all and excuse it all, and it took her out of the equation. But the problem was this: She didn’t know how else to think of it. She would give anything to go back to the way it was before the war, back when he so nakedly expressed himself.
He smacked his dry tongue. “You have to understand what I mean. The words seem so inadequate, and I love you, but that doesn’t begin to cover it. I wish,” he said. “I wish Levi were back here because he’d have the words. He’s always the one for words.” He then hit his own head with an open palm trying to think of how to explain it.
“It’s fine.” And it was. It really was. And she was glad Levi wasn’t there. He may have had the words, but they always lacked love. She sat on the floor in front of Nick and looked into his eyes for an eternity. Each one a sea of glass, like unto crystal, and as deep and endless as the night.
She smiled. Sniffed. She stood up. “Let me tuck you in,” she said. “Let me put music on and tuck you in. You won’t sleep, but you can dream.”
She had pride back then. She held herself together with a sure hope that she’d have him.
And then when she least expected it, there was this: A letter from Brooke Army Medical Center announcing his return. And then another memory: Nick coming down the walkway at the airport.
She had been late. She wanted to look perfect. She ended up having to run from the parking lot, trying not to slip in her high heels. By the time she made it to the door, she felt a single bead of sweat run down her back. She wore a ribbed sweater and a long pearl necklace. A flower-patterned skirt that clung to her hips and thighs. Tall, high-heeled, black leather boots. She had ironed her hair straight. She wanted to look like a woman, not the teenage girl he’d left behind.
He stood at the top of the ramp looking nervous and unsure of himself. He was thin and pale, but even from across the airport she could recognize him. Could recognize the way he looked around at everyone and everything as he moved. He did his best to mask his limp, and he carried himself with his shoulders back and his chin up.
His Oma stood against the wall by the bubbler between the restrooms. She stood there wringing her hands together, as if she were washing them. She wrinkled her eyebrows and scanned the line of people coming down the ramp. When Eris spotted her, she couldn’t believe how frail and tiny and wrinkled she had become. She was half the size and twice the age as the last time Eris had seen her. From a distance, Eris saw Nick light up and wave to the woman who raised him. He lost all sense of himself and he started shuffling down the ramp, running as well as he could.
Eris wanted to cry at how they had broken him, but she thought, “It’s okay. I can still love this. I can still love him.”
He wrapped his small grandma in his arms, and he hugged her face to his chest. She rubbed his back, and he held her. He looked like he might snap all her bones. She hugged him to the point of awkwardness, to the point where Eris thought she’d never let him go.
Eris stood still then. Stopped moving toward them. It was a silly thought, she knew, but as she looked at Nick’s grandma pressed against Nick’s chest she thought, “Is he capable of loving any woman besides her?”
The two turned and Oma locked her arm in Nick’s as they started walking. In that moment she’ll always remember, it was as if his limp disappeared and his face had healed. He may not have been at home in his skin, but he was at home in his role as protector. And she saw that.
She waited to give them their space, and her stomach fell when Nick didn’t recognize her, though he had locked eyes with her for a moment. They couldn’t have been more than ten feet away when Oma tapped his arm.
He tapped the hand that tapped his arm, and he gazed into the old woman’s eyes. She tapped again. “Yes.” He smiled at her.
Oma nudged him with an elbow in the ribs. She pointed up at Eris. “Aren’t you going to say hi?”
He looked up. “Hmm?”
At that point, recognition crossed over his face. Oma let go of his arm. Eris rushed forward and thrust her arms under his and she buried her head in his chest and she hugged him. “You’re home. You’re actually finally really home.” She pulled her arms from around him and put her hands on his chest. “Let me look at you.” She took a step back. “Oh my,” she whispered, wiping her watering eyes.
“I know.” He looked down at the ground. “I look like I got blown up.”
“You look beautiful,” she said, embracing him again. “I’ve never seen anything look so beautiful.”
She thought it would be perfect like that forever; she was still a naïve, foolish, stupid little girl.
To prove it, this is a memory from the last Thanksgiving, when things were really bad: Nick limping away behind a foggy windowpane. She stared at the condensation on the window in their living room. Her elbows leaned against the back of the couch that sat against the wall. The rough brown fabric felt like burlap on her knees. She looked down, wondering why she wasn’t wearing pants. She didn’t move, but she still lost her balance and had to brace herself. She fought to keep her bobbing head up. She wiped her hand against the cold glass so she could see outside.
She didn’t hear his footsteps, and she didn’t hear the screen door, yet she could see him running away again. She watched Nick limp to his car, his mouth set. He didn’t slam the door. He didn’t peel out. He just drove away. She would have preferred that they scream and throw things at each other; but no, he was always content with silence. A man of action with little use for words. For hours, for days, for weeks, he was happy running away to his bar to work eighteen hours a day, to come home only for a shower and a bed, or as he called it, a hot and a cot.
She turned and slid down the couch until she sat on the floor. She screamed out curses at him, although he was already gone. She could smell her own vomit on her breath as she wailed. Eris was sure Nick believed there was dignity in the way he fought, in the way he refused to be sucked into arguments, in the
way he would never yell at her. She beat the floor with her fist and she threw herself down, her tears and drool wetting the fibers of the carpet. She was no longer capable of such dignity.
She crawled into the guest bedroom, the carpet burning her knees. She found a plastic bottle of cheap vodka tucked into one of Nick’s old combat boots, and she drank it. Choked it down like medicine. Even after Uncle Thomas slapped her awake, she refused to pull herself together.
“Nick is hurt,” he said. “I mean hurting. He’s hurting.”
“You’d never know it talking to him,” she said. “He’s a tree. A solid tree that doesn’t listen or talk.”
The real truth was this: Then, as now, she felt unheard. The words she said seemed no louder than the thoughts in her own head. Her conversations indistinct from her dreams.
She laughed without mirth. “He’s not a tree; you can burn a tree down. They couldn’t do that. But they tried. They sure as shit tried to burn him down, didn’t they Reverend?”
Uncle Thomas nodded.
“He’s a rock. You can’t burn down a rock.”
“No,” Uncle Thomas said. “But you can burn down a marriage.”
And that was true.
It was also true that if you ignored your wife hoping she’d just go away, she probably would.
A Hard and Heavy Thing Page 20