He nodded. “Is there more?”
She refilled the cup and he saw that all of the beds in the infirmary were occupied. The men had gauze taped over their chests where they’d been branded. He looked down to see a small square taped over his own. Ben closed his eyes. “Is the CO alive?” he asked.
“He and Bull are still in the hogan. The guards are outside, waiting. Everybody’s waiting.” She paused to let him drink. When he’d drained the cup, she said, “Do you know what happened . . . ?” Her voice was tentative, reluctant.
Ben closed his eyes, and in the blackness, he could see it all in detail: the flames, the soldier who was Coleman lying on the ground, the limbs scattered across the street. Ben had counted them, just as he had the day of the explosion and so many days since. Part of him—a significant part of him—was unhinged. And Becca had seen it all. He saw the hospital bed with his father. Finally, he saw the CO hold out the knife. The old man had called him by a dead soldier’s name: Willy. It was as though the commander had offered himself up, but not to any goddess. Instead, he’d placed himself at the feet of a long-dead soldier—a mere mortal. How long, Ben wondered, had the CO been contemplating this exit? How long had he yearned for escape? And if Bull had not appeared, would Ben have been the one to set him free? He shuddered, imagining what it must have been like—the cut and the extraction.
He opened his eyes, eager to dislodge this awful picture. Becca was looking at him gravely. “How’s King?” he asked.
“He’s over his bout of heartburn.” This was a familiar and unwelcome voice. Ben propped himself up to see Reno lying a few beds over. He looked disastrous, his thin hair disheveled, his eyes bloodshot. Ben saw the kind—almost intimate—way that Becca observed him. He remembered what Bull had said to him in the desert. Becca and Reno. Something had happened, but whatever it was, Ben made up his mind right then to leave it alone.
“I didn’t know you were awake,” Becca said.
“I wasn’t going to miss the romantic reunion. Also, I was hoping for a thank-you?” He eyed Ben.
“You punched me in the face!” Ben retorted, which made Reno laugh. So Ben laughed too. Which made Becca smile. Seeing her, Ben felt that he would do anything—anything at all—to keep that smile on her face.
The infirmary door creaked open. Arne stood there, stiff and formal. He’d traded his blue jeans for olive-colored BDUs, typical battle dress. His hands were at his sides, his expression grim. Ben recognized this moment for precisely what it was: casualty notification.
“Bull has claimed the heart of Durga,” Arne said. “The CO is dead.”
39
MUMMIFIED IN WHITE blankets, the CO’s body was carried through the desert on a stretcher made from animal hide. Bull walked directly behind, and, as near victor, Ben was awarded the third place in the procession. He refused to go without Becca, however, so she walked beside him. Reno also refused to leave her side, so he followed close. Next came King and Elaine, then the vets who lived at Kleos, and, after them, those who’d ridden in on their bikes. Some of the men had not been able to pull themselves from their infirmary beds and many of those in line looked far too sick to be standing, let alone marching. But they pressed onward without complaint, good soldiers that they were. The Hands of God women took up the rear. Last of all, like the tail of a desert snake, came Lucy and Jacob, holding hands.
The remaining hoplites beat large drums that they wore over their bellies like shields. Thud . . . thud . . . thud. The procession walked in step to the monotonous pounding. Heat draped around them like the flaps of a tent. Becca felt her scalp burning, wetness spreading across her back. She prayed for a cloud, for even the fleeting shadow of a bird. After a while, they passed the remains of the fire that she and Reno had driven by the day before. Becca could see it clearly now: blood on the ground, dried to a coppery brown, and animal bones scattered atop the pile of charred wood.
“Ritual sacrifice,” Reno whispered. “Four times a month they kill an animal in honor of Achilles and his companion, Patroclus. They say some kind of voodoo prayers over it.”
The drums beat heavy and slow. Wind rose up from the vastness and blew the sand around their feet. A black dot appeared on the horizon. At first, it seemed to be a trick of the light, but then it grew, as though pushing straight up from the earth. Finally, they gathered in a semicircle around an intricately stacked pile of logs. The structure stood at least ten feet high and was roughly the length and width of a canoe. “We built this,” Ben said, marveling at the odd edifice. “We cut down the trees ourselves.”
The hoplites hoisted the CO’s shrouded body onto the logs and circled the pyre three times. The other men followed. Then the guards cut off locks of their hair and scattered them over the corpse. The other vets stepped up, one by one, and did the same. Becca wasn’t sure what King would do when his turn came. He looked both indignant and despondent. Hurt. She ached for him—for the betrayal he must have felt after all these years of service to the CO. But at the appointed moment, King pulled his ponytail over his shoulder and cut it off. He pressed the gray clump to his heart and then threw it onto the pyre. Reno stepped up and pulled the scissors from the guard’s hand. He snipped a few thin strands from his own head and did the same. Becca was surprised. But the CO had once been Reno’s commanding officer. Maybe for that reason alone, the old man’s death deserved to be honored.
The guards poured red wine from water skins over the pyre and the CO’s body. Bull went last, walking fully around the structure, wetting the four corners with the wine. Behind him, the hoplites doused the structure with gasoline until the logs glistened and the blankets covering the CO’s body were soaked through. When this action was complete, Bull stood before the pyre, surveying his flock. He had washed the CO’s blood from his body, and around his neck he wore a leather pouch. Becca immediately recognized it as one of King’s.
The guards beat their drums a final time. And then Bull began to speak. “‘I will not forget him, not so long as I am among the living and my knees spring up beneath me. And even if the dead forget the dead in Hades, still even there I will remember my beloved companion.’”
The men repeated these lines. Becca closed her eyes, listening to their voices and breathing in the sweet-sharp smell of gasoline.
“Currahee!” Bull pronounced, and the men said, “Currahee!”
Bull clutched the pouch and solemnly held it above his head. “The heart of Durga! As the victor of these funeral games, I have won the privilege and burden of its safekeeping. I will suck the poison-grief from your hearts and pour it into the earth. I will heal you as the heart of the goddess has healed me.”
Becca recalled those last minutes in the hogan: Bull bent over the CO, his hand deep in the old man’s stomach. Where’s the heart? She hadn’t paid attention to his mumblings. She’d been focused on getting Ben out. Now she squinted, trying to gauge the shape and size of the pouch in Bull’s hand. It did not appear to be empty, but Bull could have put anything in there. It could be a bunch of rocks for all anyone knew. As she contemplated the possibilities of Bull’s deception, her attention was drawn away by an unfamiliar sound: King was crying. Fat tears dripped down his cheeks, dampening his beard. His back and belly shook as if a small earthquake were happening just beneath his feet.
“It should have been mine. I didn’t even have a chance to try.”
Elaine folded him into a hug and let King shake against her body. She murmured into his ear. Becca had never seen her father accept love or tenderness from another person. She had never seen him cry. She felt embarrassed for him but also angry. It’s not real, she wanted to tell him. There’s nothing magical inside that sack.
Her father pulled away. He clasped his dog tags in his fist and yanked them off. Then he threw them on the ground. As a little girl, Becca had climbed into King’s lap and slid her fingers across the punched-out letters and numbers, reading them like they were reverse Braille: Keller, King F., US53864910, O positive, Protes
tant. She’d asked her father why he wore a necklace. “It’s identification from the army,” he told her. “In case something happened to me.”
“Did anything happen to you?” she’d asked, not understanding the euphemism. At this question, King had pulled the tags away from her. “No,” he said, his voice heavy. “Nothing happened to me.”
It wasn’t true, of course. And it was because of what had happened that King believed in the impossible story of Durga’s heart and put so much faith in her specious salvation. King’s country had asked him to experience unthinkable things. Nightmarish things. So it made sense that he would have little faith in ordinary medicine. In civilian medicine. He needed a remedy that was as powerful and terrible—perhaps as unthinkable—as his trauma. But now that remedy had been denied him too. Just like everything else that had been denied him, throughout his life.
Reno clearly shared Becca’s anger, because he now said, “Why don’t you show us the heart, Bull? Before you cut your own belly open and tuck your little prize into it.”
Jeanine pulled her cigarette from her mouth and snorted. “Yeah, Bull, why don’t you show us.”
“Shush!” Becca hissed at them.
Reno and her mother were asking to see a god they knew full well did not exist. But they had not considered the consequences of proving this god to be a no-show. Her mother should have known better. She, at least, knew the result of testing believers. Reno wanted only to reveal the truth to King—to help his friend. He didn’t see King’s need to believe the way that Becca had seen it.
“Come on, Bull.” Reno grinned. “Let’s see the source of your newfound power.” He took a step forward.
“Reno,” warned Ben and tried to grab his arm. But Reno shook Ben off. It was then that Becca noticed movement from the four corners of the pyre. The guards were closing in.
“Look at us. Look what we’ve done to ourselves!” Reno looked wildly at the other vets. “We’ve allowed ourselves to be mutilated. We allowed a man to die. We’re not this sick. We don’t have to be this sick.”
“CO Proudfoot sacrificed himself,” Bull said, clutching the pouch.
“It’s not right, Bull. It’s insanity.”
The guards reached for their guns.
“Reno, if you don’t back off, these men are going to shoot you,” Ben said.
“Let them.” He kept moving toward Bull. “Show us the heart. If this is real, then fucking prove it!” Reno grabbed for the pouch.
“Hoplites!” Bull shouted.
And then the pyre exploded. The bubble of orange and yellow flame was like the sun crashing to Earth. King grabbed his daughter and pushed her down so hard that she was momentarily stunned.
How long did they lie there cowering? When her head cleared, she pushed herself up and looked around. Smoke billowed from the pyre, and flames crackled between its wooden bones. Bull lay nearby on the ground, groaning. She did not see Reno or Ben or Elaine or her mother. But King was right beside her, coughing and gripping her arm for support. Becca brushed the sand from his face and beard. “Dad, are you okay? Can you breathe?”
“I’m fine.” King waved her away. She ignored this signal and threw her arms around him. “Becca.” He coughed. “Becca, please.”
But Becca didn’t care what her father wanted or didn’t want. She squeezed him tighter and tighter until he stopped protesting. And then, miraculously, he hugged her back. He rocked her, cupping her head with his large, wrinkled hand. Everything she had witnessed and felt and feared over the last twenty-four hours burst up from inside of her and poured out of her eyes in a rush. King held on tight, his beard scratching her face, his breathing lumbering and wet. He needed a shower. He smelled. They were both covered in sand and dirt. But they didn’t care. Becca closed her eyes against her father’s shirt and tried to let herself simply exist in this space, this small compartment constructed not so much from her father’s body but from his comfort. It was like a shelter that they had built, painstakingly, together.
The smoke had begun to clear and Becca saw that Ben was helping Elaine to her feet. He brought her to King. Then he reached for Becca. His embrace was strong, but it did not compare to the fleshy fullness of her father’s arms.
The guards flocked to Bull and lifted him onto the same stretcher that only moments before had held the CO. Hurriedly, they started back toward Kleos. Some of the vets followed, but most remained and stood watching the pyre. The Indian women prayed over the CO’s body, now encased in a sarcophagus of flame.
As all this was happening, Becca finally spotted Reno, sitting dazed on the ground. He too was covered in dirt and ash. His face was purple; he’d swallowed a mouthful of smoke and was coughing uncontrollably. His clothes were scorched. Becca searched among the vets for a canteen and quickly brought it to him. Ben came over and offered his hand. Reno looked at it for a moment as though assessing whether this was some kind of trap or trick. But then he clasped Ben’s hand and let the younger man pull him up.
“You almost got yourself shot,” King said, walking over.
Reno raised his eyebrows. “Yeah, but I was saved.” He nodded at Jeanine, who stood by herself, a wavering specter beneath the sun’s glare. “Saved by the Hands of God.”
Jeanine watched the flames with a look of stoic resignation. Her arms hung listless at her sides. Her cigarette was gone.
The group kept vigil over the CO’s body for some time, the wind blowing the smoke overhead in thick white plumes. The desert air was dry and sharp in their throats. When their water was nearly gone, most of them started the long walk to camp. Jeanine and the Native American women had already left, Lucy and Jacob with them. Twenty men remained at the pyre. They would watch over the body, King told Becca, until the flames finally died. Then they would collect the ashes and bury them in the graveyard. Whenever a man died at Kleos, he received a pyre cremation and burial among the letters. The CO had run Kleos for over thirty years, and in that time, several men had passed away, either from sickness or old age. But never suicide, he assured Becca. Never once.
“Did either of you see this coming?” Becca asked as they walked to the camp. “Couldn’t this have been stopped?”
King and Reno looked at each other, then at their feet. Whatever they were thinking would remain locked inside of their heads, probably forever. And that was okay, Becca knew. Not all stories, not all feelings, were meant to see the light.
40
EARLY THE NEXT morning, King crept out of his hogan and into the adjoining hut where Becca was sleeping. He shuffled as silently as his heavy feet would allow, past Lucy, who was zipped up to the top of her head in a sleeping bag, and Elaine, whose hair was fanned out on the pillow like a beauty queen’s. Jeanine, who refused to share a room with Elaine, had chosen to sleep elsewhere with her fellow faithful.
Becca was curled up in a tight ball, her hands folded up beneath her chin. She looked delicate and childlike. Peaceful, King thought. And this made him happy. She deserved more peace than she’d had in her young life. He tapped her gently, and her eyes snapped open, almost as though she hadn’t been asleep at all. “What’s wrong?” she asked in an urgent whisper.
King put his finger to his lips and motioned for her to follow him. They walked through the slumbering camp until they reached the spot where Reno had parked his bike. “Hop on,” King said and inserted Reno’s keys into the ignition.
“Reno gave you his keys?” Becca hesitated.
“I’m riding his bike. I’m not sleeping with his woman,” King said.
“Exactly!” Becca said, which made King laugh.
“Unless you want me to swim back across that river, climb on,” he said.
They sped east. White light pooled along the horizon like the froth that collects on waves. Here were spindly bushes tipped with small yellow buds, flowers that resembled sea anemones. King had always loved riding out here. He loved the combination of space and isolation. Nothing to hem you in or slow you down. He loved feeling like
he was close to the earth’s center. He tilted his face to the wind, letting his beard whip against his throat. The cold air chafed his lips, but he didn’t care. He’d felt so heavy ever since the CO had betrayed him and passed him over in favor of Becca’s husband or Bull or however it had happened. But it had happened, and time was moving on, and what could King do about it? He was resigned. Resigned to that betrayal, just like he’d resigned himself to the war and its aftermath and everything he’d lost. He was thankful to be healthy enough to ride. And he was conscious, in a way that he’d never been before now, that the girl sitting behind him was a product of himself: the ruined parts, the good parts, and even the parts that were ruined for good. She was a young woman who, for reasons he felt intuitively but could not explain, had chosen her husband because of him.
It remained to be seen whether that decision was the best thing she could have done or the worst. Probably it was somewhere in between, like most things. But he was partly responsible for the outcome, which meant that he had to step up. He had to stick with her and see it through. And the reason he had to do this was so simple, it was a wonder he’d failed to see it before: Leave no man behind.
They were a good ten minutes outside of Kleos and coming up fast on the mining tunnel.
Tracks lined the floor, and King went slow, his headlights barely piercing the dark. They rode downward, then upward again. The darkness echoed with water crashing from a great height. Finally, they rumbled out into the open. King turned right and proceeded down the center of a wash. He wove around scrub bushes and cacti in the riverbed and then gunned up the bank. Within five minutes, they hit highway and the silky pavement, which provided a clear view of the river and the buildings of the two ghost towns, old and older. Somewhere beyond was the graveyard of crosses, and Kleos. Out past that, the CO’s body still smoldered.
King pulled in beside the Death Star. It was covered with dust, as if it hadn’t been washed in years. “Not in the worst shape,” he said.
The Heart You Carry Home Page 25