He grabs a beer from the fridge, then sifts through the drawer of nonessentials—matchbooks, various pens from various hotels, playing cards—for the bottle opener. He notices a card for a therapist in Bourne. Karen Shelby. He can’t recall Kirsten saying anything about a therapist. There’s a cell number on the back of the card, for emergencies. He picks up the house phone and, just as he’s about to dial, the phone rings in his hand.
“Kelly? Is that you?”
It’s Will McGrath, one of the VPs from Birken and Associates.
“Yes.”
“I’ve been trying to call you all afternoon.”
“It’s Sunday, Will. What couldn’t wait?”
“I guess you didn’t hear the news?”
Silence as Andrew waits.
“Birken’s dead.”
“What do you mean dead?” Andrew says, stunned.
“What else could I mean? He’s dead. Splat. Literally. He was skydiving over the Maldives, and his parachute malfunctioned. Was he Catholic? I think I remember seeing him—”
“I have to go, Will.”
“Sure. Right. Give my best to—”
Andrew hangs up the phone. He walks by Kirsten on his way upstairs. She, like most people, is more beautiful asleep.
TWENTY-ONE
Amazingly, the morticians have reconstructed Birken’s sixty-eight-year-old jaw, going so far as to paste hairs above his upper lip. Whatever else inside him that was knocked loose or spilled out from the free fall is unnoticeable; his chest is full, shoulders pushed back, hands placed one on top of the other in peaceful repose.
Kneeling at the coffin, Andrew looks at Birken, then at the line of impatient men and women in their let’s-get-this-over-with poses.
“Thank you, sir,” he says in a whisper.
He shakes hands with Birken’s wife, and his son, he guesses, a tall man with a thin mustache, who, in disregard—or protest—of his surrounding is dressed in jeans, wearing a derby hat. As he walks out of the hall, he regrets not having said more to his dead mentor, and then it hits him that Birken is dead. He is nervous about death, about becoming a dead man in a coffin people pray over. The nervousness makes him have to pee. He finds a fountain in the rosary garden and goes there.
Early that afternoon, Andrew drives up to Birken’s estate in Newburyport. In his newly leased BMW, he follows similarly expensive, freshly waxed cars through the high arching timbers adorned with ivy and clusters of red berries, to where the procession ends near the multicar garage built to resemble an old Cape Cod cottage. In seconds, a valet opens his door and gives him a ticket and says, “Sorry for your loss.”
Directed by another servant down a pebbled walk between the main house and the garage, Andrew catches a glimpse of a Birken through the window and stops suddenly. The Birken in the window doesn’t move.
“That is a wax statue,” the servant says. “I believe it was created by Mr. Birken’s son. He has a great affinity for his father. Please.”
Andrew follows the servant to the back lawn, which slopes down toward the ocean, where the white swell of waves seems frozen along the dark water’s surface. Round tables are assembled about the lawn, and he is directed toward one, where he sits and introduces himself to a group of old-timers who have flown in from around the country. They talk around Birken’s death, about the bad news coming down, layoffs, restructuring, branch closings, and the risk/reward of doing something like skydiving.
“A quick death is preferable,” one partner says with an easy nod.
After a while, Andrew excuses himself and walks toward the buffet table, which is sectioned into hot and cold food by a giant ice sculpture of Birken’s head. He pours himself some water, then takes the ice pick in hand.
“Drive it into his eye,” Birken’s wife says over his shoulder.
She’s wearing a garish black dress with diamond sequins. Her throat looks like a mangled hand.
“Miss?”
“They say when you’re with someone for as long as Lawrence and I were together, that when one dies, the other dies soon after. But I intend to stay alive for a very long time.”
Mrs. Birken laughs and takes the ice pick from his hand and stabs the sharp edge into the ice-crusted eye. Flecks of ice splinter into the air.
“This was my son Gordy’s idea. He’s the artist. There’s no doubt I’ll receive a bill before his father’s head even melts.”
“I’m sorry” is all Andrew can contribute, and as he mills around the patio he grows depressed by the idea that when he dies, the best he can do with a ton of money is have his friends and family and coworkers throw a party for their own amusement.
Suddenly, he can’t breathe. It feels as though a thousand tiny insects are crawling up his spine and over his shoulder, gathering in his chest and gnawing away at the meat between his ribs. He drops to the ground and holds his hand over his breast. Then he blacks out.
He wakes in a hospital bed, his gown bunched up, blanket twisted around his legs. He’s had a restless, dogged sleep. The tube lighting overhead partially blinds him. He turns his head toward the window. It is night.
He calls for a nurse.
She explains he’s had a panic attack and asks if Andrew has been experiencing a high level of stress at work, if everything is going well at home, if he may have experienced any suppressed emotional trauma as a child.
“Who hasn’t?” Andrew says.
Rest is the recommended course of action.
* * *
For the next three days, after the incident at Birken’s funeral, something lingers in Andrew’s chest, near the heart, a nerve ending pinched, and this something spreads throughout his body, arresting him so that at times he can do nothing but lie in the antique tub Kirsten loved so much she had specially ordered it, with his arms across his chest in an attempt to hold himself together, feet dangling over the rim, a warm washcloth on his forehead. When he has the energy, he performs small jobs around the house. He repairs the rusted hinges on the cabinet doors; tills a small plot in the backyard and plants seeds for basil and tomatoes and lettuces; builds a shed out of scrap wood to house his gardening supplies as well as the pot and the tiny green bong he has recently bought off a hippie in Harvard Square. He takes long walks through town to the park and sits on a swing, absentmindedly kicking his feet out, stoned.
When he returns to work the following Monday, Andrew feels there is nothing left inside him. He can’t concentrate when the other VPs hold a conference call to discuss the company’s fourth-quarter fiscal outlook. At lunch, he walks to the deli on the corner with only a faint beat in his heart. He eats from the sad buffet until he’s tired again and goes back to his office and sits in his high-back leather swivel chair, turning slowly, then stopping to look out at the city, at the fog of heat that swamps the buildings. He thinks about how easy it would be to disappear.
In bed that night, Andrew hears a faint sound from somewhere else in the room. He gets up and listens closely. It’s coming from the iPod player on the bureau. “Soothing Ocean” is playing on Kirsten’s iPod. The white noise seems to work for her, as do the pills, because she’s sleeping heavily, wrapped in the comforter like a cocoon. But “Soothing Ocean” has the adverse effect on Andrew, because “Soothing Ocean” sounds nothing like the ocean. The ocean is a beast growing stronger, moving toward the shore, smashing the shore with its fists.
TWENTY-TWO
Great clouds of breath rise from the San Francisco Peaks. An American flag hangs limp from a thirty-foot flagpole in front of a Jack in the Box. For Lease signs hang crooked on storefront windows, abandoned malls and office parks empty and decimated like some kind of ancient ruins. On his way to the 7-Eleven down the street from his motel room, where he’s been living for the past year or so, since returning from his fourth and final post, this time in Kandahar, Afghanistan, Nathan Kelly imagines how hundreds of years from now people will pay good money to see these national treasures, take flippant, humorous photos, and purchase
commemorative junk.
Two police cruisers are parked behind a rusted truck in back of a fast-food restaurant, blue and red lights spinning. The driver of the truck is bent over the hood, handcuffed, his head pressed against the metal, eyes crazed, dark and venous, like cracks in clay. Nathan lights a cigarette and fishes through his duffel bag for a prescription bottle, shakes the half-full bottle like a rattle, and tosses it back in the bag. He looks at his watch, quarter past, flicks the cigarette out into the road. At the 7-Eleven, he buys a six-pack and a candy bar and sits on the curb drinking. The cool wet stream enters his belly. The candy bar is old and stale. There’s a number on the package to call if you’re not satisfied. He presses the candy bar between his palms and sucks the chocolate away from the peanuts before tossing it in the trash bin. He licks his fingers, staring at the mountain in the distance. An orange tinge of light blankets the peaks as the sun begins to rise.
He passes an abandoned house with broken windows and a front door boarded up with plywood spray painted in different colors—signs and symbols of local gangs. A cracked toilet lies in the yard. Cautiously, he steps off the curb and surveys the roadside, his eyes moving back and forth, swaying steadily. He can still feel the padded lining of his helmet and the green cloth chin strap snug across his jaw. His clothes are already damp underneath the body armor. He’s out on patrol. It’s April 2008 in Sadr City, Baghdad. Or is it just after Thanksgiving in 2006, when those retired cheerleaders came over swinging their saggy tits over the turkey and stuffing? Either way, it was early on in his tenure, early enough that he still believed there were rules in modern warfare. But on the ground now, everything he has read and learned about warfare is wrong. The hajjis strip dead soldiers of their uniforms and weapons, wear and use them in battle. In the smoke and flame and dust you can’t tell what’s what or who’s who. Missions have no beginning and no end.
PFC Quinton serves as the Tank Commander in the lead Humvee, Recon Group 1 (RG1). They call him the Principal, because he knows every army regulation in the book. It would almost be nerdy if it wasn’t so impressive. He refers to himself as an American Fighting Man, because that is what the manual tells him he is. Staff Sergeant Rodrigo, squad leader, rides in the backseat near the radio. He smokes two packs of cigarettes a day but still holds the company record for the fastest mile. Specialist Everitt, a twenty-nine-year-old from East Texas, mans the .50-cal up in the turret. He has hooked up for a two-year enlistment solely for the action. And Private Silk is the driver and mechanic, the least desired position, but that’s what he’s asked for; he tells the platoon leader that if he isn’t driving on the lead truck, he’ll lose his fucking mind.
The PL is in RG2, the second RG in the patrol, trailed by the Buffalo, a boat-shaped truck with an armored arm and claw used for handling IEDs, and RG3, which is helmed by PFC Stanton, with West in the passenger, Nathan in back on the radio, and a medic whose name nobody knows. He has a faded cross on his helmet. It doesn’t mean anything out here in the desert.
The mission is the same as always: clear the assigned routes to provide freedom of movement for US and Iraqi security forces, and local nationals. There’s one new road on the patrol tonight, route Shamrock, a road used by US patrols traveling between BIAP (Baghdad International Airport) and FOB (Forward Operating Base) Crazy Horse.
When they’re moving in single file, Nathan can’t see the convoy unless he looks around the driver’s head, so he just stares out the window to his nine. Any cars that come too close, unless they’re in heavy traffic, on a side road, are warned through intercom. You never know if any of the cars are loaded with explosives. If a car doesn’t heed the warning and continues to drive close to the patrol, a warning shot is fired. If that doesn’t do it, the next shots are fired with intent to disable the vehicle. The next shots after that are to kill.
Piles of empty cartons of milk, canned foods, used diapers, chicken parts, fruit rinds, and the like create a median between the two lanes on the new route. Some shops are open for business. Here a fish market to their right, carts with huge orange and gold carp on them. Here a small herd of sheep near an open area between two buildings and a slaughter station where a couple of unlucky animals hang by their legs, blood draining into a pool on the ground.
Crowds of people cling to their vehicles as the unit rolls past. Nathan closes his eyes for a moment, tries to imagine he’s a rock star and these are his fans. But it doesn’t work. They aren’t really people to him anymore. They’re potential threats, no different than a sack left by a curb or a curiously erected pile of rocks.
Maybe it feels right this way, being numb to the human element. The chatter on the radio, gunshots echoing through the streets, explosions in the distance all give him a chance to forget the past. He’s supposed to be playing ball; it’s all he’s ever been good at. But he’d fucked that up, and, so, what were his choices? He’d been recruited by Syracuse, Rutgers, and UMass. In Amherst, the night before he was to meet with the head coach, he went out with a group of juniors and seniors to a house party somewhere off campus. One of the players put two fifths of Southern Comfort in his hands, then duct-taped his fists and said he’d either have to drink or risk severing a finger trying to break the glass. So he drank. He kissed two girls, who then kissed each other. He rolled in the mud outside. He danced, and broke the bottle over his head, tasted the blood, like tongue against metal, and someone tied a red dish rag around his forehead so that he looked like Rambo. In the morning he woke up to use the bathroom and saw someone had drawn a penis on his cheek, the tip pointed at his mouth. He undid the rag around his head and scrubbed his cheek vigorously. Some of the ink remained, but it could easily be mistaken for dirt. As he walked back to campus, the fog of drunkenness wore off, but a new pain shot through the bottom of his left foot, making it impossible to keep his weight distributed evenly between both feet. He limped toward campus and sat on a bench outside the practice facility. When he took off his sneaker, he saw the purple rings around the swollen bulb of his ankle, and he knew it was broken. He remembered the story his father would tell him when he was a boy, how he’d had a spike driven through his leg during a rugby scrum. His father had a scar. Nathan, a hangover.
He hobbled to a nearby convenience store and called for a cab. The driver took him to the local emergency room. The doctor gave him painkillers, a brace for his foot, and a crutch. He called another cab, and the driver took him to the bus station. He had eight dollars left of the forty his mother had given him for the trip. He bought a six-dollar ticket, one way, to Chicago. The other two dollars he spent on fried eggs and hash browns. When he was finished with his breakfast, he asked the cook for a bag of ice. He sat on the bus with the bag of ice tied around his ankle, the painkillers pulling him under. Every so often he opened his eyes to the purple light that shone through the darkened windows.
Maybe he could’ve gone in the following year, but his first step was never as fast as it was in high school, and he’d already blown off his potential recruiters, making him a low-end Division Three prospect at best.
Instead, he did some light demolition work for a local crew, working his body back into shape. He bought a truck for a thousand dollars cash, and when the cold came, he drove south to El Paso and found work digging trenches for an irrigation company. He was big and strong and healthy. He ran five miles a day, and every day he passed the same billboard for the army. They were offering a hundred bucks and a free watch just for coming in to talk. Depending on how nice the watch was, Nathan thought, he could pay his weekly rent just to listen to some guy bullshit him about sacrifice and freedom and sacrificing his freedom. He couldn’t tell his mother, though. She didn’t believe in fighting, or war, or guns.
* * *
Baghdad isn’t a city. It’s a killing field with buildings. People walk around blast craters and dead bodies as though they’re construction sites or fruit carts. Armored vehicles mounted with .50-caliber machine guns crush everything beneath their tracks.
/> Nathan doesn’t really know what he’s looking for. Do any of them? To properly disguise and hide a roadside bomb, one must conceal them, so if the insurgents do it right, then they shouldn’t be able to find any. When they do find them, it’s a mistake.
On route clearance they never have face-to-face interaction with people. They are a mounted patrol, scanning the roads through their beat-up RGs—cracks in the bulletproof glass from gunfire, divots in the armored V-hull the size of baseballs—the battle scars of route clearance. Nathan has heard stories about explosively formed projectiles (EFPs). How they go in one side of the RG and out the other. They are the weapon of choice in Shiite neighborhoods. Sunni sections of Baghdad only mess around with deep-buried IEDs. EFPs are usually encased in a curb or a curb-like structure and placed along the roads, angled up toward the height of the Humvee, RG, or Stryker. They usually come in multiple arrangements, so you’ll have anywhere from three to five molten copper projectiles being fired, covering the entire length of the vehicle. When the patrol leaves the Sunni neighborhoods, they stop looking for signs of deep-buried IEDs and start looking at the curbsides, scanning for cracked cement, command wires, unearthed dirt.
And it still frightens him, even now, walking along the curb down West Fine Avenue in Flagstaff, Arizona, that if a molten copper slug the size of a softball can penetrate the side of an armored RG, imagine what it does to human flesh.
The Outer Cape Page 16