“I do,” Ben said.
“No!” Becca shook her head madly. “Ben, no.”
“Specialist King Keller, do you agree to let this man take your place?”
King did not hesitate. “I do,” he said.
“Very well. Arne, take King to the infirmary.”
“Ben!” Becca cried again. But the CO’s voice boomed through the clearing. “There will be no further conversing with civilians.” One of the guards slung King’s arm around his own shoulder and walked him into the trees. The others led the vets in the opposite direction. Just as Ben was about to leave the arena, he turned. At the wedding they had stood apart and faced each other in just this way. “Ben, no.” Becca shook her head, tears budding in her eyes. But the guards prodded him with their guns and he turned away.
A rough hand touched her shoulder, startling her. It was Reno. “Listen to me,” he said. “I’m going with them. I’ll keep an eye on your boy. Okay?”
Becca nodded dumbly, not really understanding.
“Keep your wits about you. We’ll figure this out.” Then he jogged off after the group.
The Native American women began to file out in an orderly fashion, like congregants exiting church pews. And that’s when Becca saw the face, white like a patch of sun-faded stone in a brown canyon wall. Her mother.
28
YOU’RE NOT GOING to give your mother a hug?” Jeanine said.
Becca couldn’t move. The shock of seeing Ben had not yet worn off, and now here was her mother, who was supposed to be a few hundred miles to the northeast gardening organic vegetables in the name of Jesus.
“Are you a hunk of rock?” Jeanine asked. Becca put her arms around her mother, but the older woman’s hands on her were feathery and noncommittal. “What in God’s name are you doing here?” She pulled away from her daughter.
Becca was saved from having to explain herself by Elaine, who emerged from the departing crowd. The middle-aged women eyed each other, one buxom, one lean, and both equally guarded. The air was charged, crackling, as if two opposing forces were about to collide.
“So you’re Jeanine,” Elaine said with none of her typical good nature. Her mouth was cinched tight.
“Who are you?” Jeanine looked Elaine up and down with unchristian disdain.
Elaine seemed shocked. She and Becca exchanged glances. “That’s Elaine, Dad’s girlfriend,” Becca said.
“Girlfriend?” Jeanine snickered. She pulled a pack of cigarettes from her dress pocket, poorly affecting nonchalance.
“Of five years,” Elaine said, smiling.
As her mother lit up, Becca did the math. Five years meant that King had taken up with Elaine shortly after her mother had kicked him out. Jeanine must have realized the same thing just then, because a small fissure of hurt cracked open in her face.
“So that was Ben,” Elaine said, her eyes softening. “He’s handsome.”
“I suppose you’re in support of all this,” Jeanine said to Elaine, picking up on a conversation they hadn’t been having.
“I’m in support of King finding peace of mind,” Elaine said. “However he needs to.”
“Despite it being a huge mistake.”
“You’re here to bring him to Jesus, is that right?” Elaine shook her head. “King said you might show up and try to save some souls.”
“My sisters and I came here to save him, it’s true,” Jeanine said. “But that has nothing to do with Jesus.”
“Says the missionary.”
“I don’t need to explain myself to you. I know my own purpose.”
Maybe it was because Becca had not seen her mother in a long while, but suddenly she recognized herself in Jeanine’s stance, heard her own voice in her mother’s combative tone.
How much Jeanine had taught her, Becca realized now. How unfortunately alike they were.
“I know I never cared much for your husband, Becca—”
“You’ve never even met him!”
“But,” Jeanine went on, ignoring her daughter’s protest, “at least he had the selflessness to take King’s place.” And then Becca heard her mother murmur something that sounded like Better your man than mine. But that didn’t seem right.
“You heard the CO,” Elaine said to Jeanine. “King has to complete the final test on his own. He’s going to participate and he’s going to win.”
“We’ll see about that.” Jeanine threw her half-smoked cigarette on the ground and crushed it with her shoe.
King was the infirmary’s only occupant. Laid out on one of the narrow beds, he looked like a giant in a child’s room. Jeanine sat beside him in a wooden chair, hunched over, her face close to his. Becca stood alone in the doorway, failing to make sense of the scene before her. Jeanine had been so relieved to get rid of King all those years ago. So why was she now smoothing his blanket and running her fingers across his forehead? What was she doing here, watching over him?
Over the years, Becca had periodically asked her mother about King’s leaving. What had finally caused the breakup?
It’s not about any single thing that happened, Jeanine would say. It’s about who your father is and what he is—and is not—willing to do for us. It’s about where his allegiances lie.
Now that Reno had filled in many of the gaps in Becca’s parents’ history, the question of allegiance took on new meaning. Perhaps the trouble between her mother and father was more about this place than the army. But Jeanine had known that King would run straight to Kleos when the marriage fell apart. So why, all these years later, was she suddenly trying to pull King back out?
29
ABOUT A QUARTER of the men at Kleos had arrived with King and were still wet from their swim across the river. The rest had been at the compound for some time and obviously considered themselves superior. Ben, meanwhile, was the FNG, the Fucking New Guy, the kid who showed up green to the infantry unit and was hated because he didn’t know how not to get them all killed. He was no better than the hapless Willy Owen from the CO’s story. Not even Reno, who’d somehow latched onto the mass of them like a parasite, was looked at with such obvious disdain.
But none of this mattered. In Iraq, Ben had fought for his men. Every single day, he’d risked his life for them and them alone. When King collapsed, Ben realized that he’d been given new orders. He would do for Becca—for their future—exactly what he’d done for his soldiers. This was his pledge to her.
As the hoplites led the vets through Kleos, Ben evaluated the CO’s guard force. They were all like Arne: old and beaten. Their hair was gray and their stomachs were soft, but they had real weapons and they’d been trained to use them.
After giving the competitors new clothes, the hoplites led the men toward the forest at the base of the great mesa. The group passed a couple of camouflaged guardhouses and headed along a dirt path into the gloom. It was hotter now, as though the cottonwoods’ canopy had trapped the heat. Long mess tables were set up beneath tarps. Something in the air smelled delicious, but all the hoplites gave them were bowls of steaming broth and slices of tough, tasteless bread.
Reno slid in beside Ben, so he shifted over, unhappily. He was eager to take a swing at the guy, but clearly this wasn’t the right time. One of the men who’d come with King’s group landed heavily on the bench across the table. He was tall with overly long arms, pockmarked skin, and cheekbones so high and sharp they looked capable of drawing blood.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” the man demanded of Ben.
“Like what?”
“Like I’m pissing you off.”
Ben wasn’t sure whether this guy was picking a fight or merely responding to Ben’s eyes. They frowned at the corners, made people think he was angry even when he wasn’t. “I don’t have a problem with you,” Ben said.
“Yeah, you do,” the man said.
“Bull, for Christ’s sake,” Reno hissed. “Just drink your soup.”
“I want to know how some stranger can just show up all
of a sudden and take King’s place.”
“You’re just pissy ’cause the kid’s younger than you are and in better shape,” Reno said. “You thought you were a sure thing and now you’re not.”
“This ‘kid,’ as you call him, has done some pretty awful things.” Bull held his eyes on Ben’s face. Ben let him look.
“Sergeant Thompson has been on this earth half as long as you and a third as long as me,” Reno said. “He hasn’t had the time to rack up enough bad behavior to come within shouting distance of either one of us.”
“Why the hell are you defending him?” Bull spat. Frankly, Ben wondered the same thing.
“Everybody, just drink your soup.” Reno scowled.
Ben lifted his bowl to his lips. He dipped some bread into the watery liquid. It tasted okay. It just wasn’t substantial. At least the hoplites had given him a decent breakfast: fresh eggs and bacon from Kleos’s animals, strong coffee.
After lunch the hoplites led the men into a large hogan deeper in the woods.
The single room was dim, lit by a wood-burning stove, and the walls were lined with a kind of white canvas. A network of lights and speakers hung overhead. The CO entered and arranged himself yogi-like on a pile of blankets. The men sat cross-legged on the ground before him, like schoolchildren.
“From this moment, the competition officially begins,” the CO said. His resonant voice seemed to emanate from everywhere. “Twenty-four hours from now, one of you will be selected to carry on Durga’s legacy. You will take my place as leader of Kleos and become the new CO. This is both a privilege and a burden. And it is the reason we compete. You must have enough strength to shoulder the responsibility.”
The CO unfolded his heavy body and stood up. Ben glanced to his left and right. All eyes were straight ahead.
“To prove that you are fully committed, you must be bound irrevocably to the service of Durga. Your willingness to do this is your first test.”
The CO walked to the wood-burning stove and pulled out a metal poker. The tip was the size of a child’s fist and had been fashioned into the shape of a Greek military helmet. Ben deflated. So these were the trials the CO had in store? Ben thought about how King had begged the CO for this opportunity to be branded with a hot iron.
“Stand,” the CO commanded, “and remove your shirts.”
Ben’s entire body tensed, but he could hardly think about himself, because the branding had begun. The men stuffed their T-shirts into their mouths and tried to stifle their cries. Their faces contorted. A few of the older vets fainted. A few ran from the hogan before it was too late. The poker approached.
“She doesn’t want you to do this,” Reno hissed between his teeth. “Drop out, for Christ’s sake.”
“You won’t get me disqualified,” Ben hissed back, certain that Reno wanted him kicked out.
“We can get out of here,” Reno said with new urgency.
We? Ben thought. But then he remembered his black eye and Reno dumping him on the roadside. “I don’t trust you.”
“Like husband, like wife,” Reno said and shook his head. But before either one of them could say more, the CO arrived. He held the poker like a monarch’s staff. The tip was so hot, it glowed white.
“This pain is for all the men you failed to save,” the CO intoned. “For all the brothers you disappointed. We receive our pain together, because only we know what it feels like to have entered the crucible of war and returned.”
“Thank God you did it too,” Reno said, forcing joviality into his voice. “Otherwise I’d feel like a sucker.”
The CO looked down at his own chest, which bore a similar brand, long healed. He nodded, completely missing Reno’s sarcasm. “This marks us forever as separate. No one outside understands what you have been through, Reno. Hear the words of Achilles: ‘My heart bids me shun the society of men.’” And then the CO pushed the iron into Reno’s chest. Tears poured out of Reno’s eyes and his face contorted, but he did not cry out.
“Say it!” the CO commanded.
Reno struggled to speak against the pain. “‘My heart . . . bids me . . . shun . . .’”
A loud voice in Ben’s head agreed with Reno: This was crazy. This was wrong. But Ben silenced the voice. It was his turn.
More men failed the CO’s first test. Some fought the pronouncement of their defeat, and once or twice a Taser was used to subdue them. There was something brutal about the Tasers. They degraded the men, turning them into soulless, sniveling creatures.
Ben sat on the hogan floor with the other victors, breathing through his pain. On two tours in Iraq, he’d received no substantial injuries. Nothing worse than sunburn, blisters, and some damaged olfactory nerves. He had no right to complain about this.
“Who among you burns with pain?” the CO asked.
“Not I!” Bull shouted. He staggered to his feet. “Not I, sir.”
“Who here burns with pain?” the CO repeated.
“Not I!” Ben jumped to his feet. If Bull was going to be his main competition, it seemed advantageous to follow the man’s lead. But no sooner had Ben spoken than hoplites seized the both of them and dragged them to the CO.
“Not you?” the CO asked, breathing heavily into their faces.
“Not I, sir,” Bull said, though Ben held back. If they’d given the correct answer the first time, the CO wouldn’t keep asking. It seemed that Bull had forgotten the unwritten rules of facing a drill sergeant.
“Not you?” the CO spat at Bull. “‘When Hector saw great-hearted Patroclus fall back after being wounded with sharp bronze, he went down through the ranks, up close, and struck him with a spear-thrust to the belly, drove the point straight through . . . Now vultures will devour you here, poor wretch’!” The CO made a stabbing motion into the air that caused both Ben and Bull to flinch. The CO smiled. “You feel no pain?” he said, still directing his ire toward Bull. “How about you, Sergeant Thompson?”
“I feel pain, sir.” He did not understand why this was the correct answer, only that it was.
The CO nodded. “You lie to me and to yourself,” he said to Bull. “All you feel is pain. And if you ever hope to achieve catharsis, you must give yourself over to it. Do you understand?”
Bull nodded vigorously.
“Do you understand, Sergeant Thompson?”
“Yes, sir.” Ben nodded and the movement made him horribly dizzy. He squeezed his eyes shut, willing himself not to faint. His chest burned. It throbbed. He felt pain, all right.
“You are blind, all of you,” said the CO. “But within the day, every single one of you will be made to see.”
30
BECCA LEFT HER mother at the infirmary and began to explore Kleos. She peeked inside the hogans and found the most basic of living quarters. She used one of the composting toilets. Then she visited the animal pens. She bypassed the cows and pigs and stood for a while at the chicken coop watching the birds pecking around and the roosting poles crowded with hens. Ben’s uncle in Kentucky kept chickens, and she and Ben sometimes drove over for fresh eggs. On their first visit, the animals had flocked around Becca’s ankles like she was one of their own. They were like dogs or cats, the way they rubbed their plump bodies against her legs. Had anyone ever known chickens to act this way? “Did you rub your jeans with feed?” Ben joked. Unfamiliar with the ways of livestock, Becca was afraid the birds would start pecking her, so she stood there, paralyzed, in the center of the chicken swarm as Ben laughed and laughed. From that moment on, Becca was his chicken. I love you, Chicken. Don’t worry, Chicken. What’s the matter, Chicken? Let me compete for your father, Chicken.
Becca left the birds and wandered toward the camp’s northern edge. Then she stopped, her mouth open wide. Before her, a massive graveyard of wooden crosses stretched beneath the hot sun like a field of desiccated crops. Could these crosses actually mark bodies? And whose bodies? But the crosses were so close together. Maybe they marked remains? King said there were people who searched the jun
gles for remains to make sure the men missing and killed in action—the MIAs and KIAs—received proper burials. Even a strand of hair deserved a burial, he said. But would those men have ended up here?
She turned from the graveyard and walked toward the mesa on Kleos’s eastern boundary. A broad stretch of matted grass tapered off around a forest of cottonwoods. No sounds came from the woods, although, as she approached, a guard materialized. Only then did she pick out the guard stations, camouflaged among the trees. He shouted at her to stop. She resisted the urge to raise her hands above her head.
“I’m just taking a walk,” she said.
“You’d best get back to the guest quarters,” the guard said.
“Sure.” Becca turned around. She felt his eyes on her. Whatever was happening, she thought, was happening in those woods. Whatever it was, it could not be good.
31
FROM THE HOGAN, the CO led the men deeper into the woods and stopped in a small clearing. “‘They carried woodcutting axes and stout ropes, and the mules went before them. Far they traveled, uphill, downhill, sideways and aslant, until they reached the shoulder of Mount Ida of the many springs,’” the CO recited. “‘And there they set in haste to felling towering oaks with their long-pointed bronze. With a great crash the trees came down. These the Achaeans split and tied behind the mules, which measured the earth with their feet in striving through dense brush to reach the plain. All the woodcutters carried logs . . . and cast them down in a row upon the shore, where Achilles planned a great funeral mound for Patroclus and himself.’”
When the CO fell silent, Arne stood before the group. “Form teams of two and then chop up the trunks according to these specifications.” The hoplites held up long logs. “You will not stop for any reason.”
“You’re with me,” Reno said to Ben and picked up the saw without giving him the chance to argue.
The Heart You Carry Home Page 21