These Heroic, Happy Dead

by Luke Mogelson

  “There’s something I want to ask you,” he said.

  Jeanne sat up. She waited.

  “Do you ever see them?” Rob asked.

  “See who?”

  “You know who.”

  “No,” Jeanne said, “I really don’t.”

  Rob made an impatient noise.

  “Sheila,” he said. “Neil.”

  Not lying never even occurred to Jeanne.

  —

  She saw them. Of course she saw them. There were only so many places to go in Grangeville. But then, there was also more to it than that. Not long after Rob had been transferred to Kuna, something odd had happened. Neil Leisure, who’d always done his shopping at the Harvest Foods—the Cash and Carry’s competitor—had shown up in the produce section. Jeanne was organizing the bins. She’d turned around and there he was: the father of the boy her boy had killed. Having torn a plastic bag from the roll, he was struggling to part the wrong end.

  Neil and Rob’s father, Clayton, had been acquainted through the American Legion, and long after Clayton left Grangeville, Rob and Derick had played together on the high school football team. Although Sheila rarely watched the games, Neil made every one. He usually came straight from the airstrip, where he did something mechanical that left black streaks on his clothes. He brought his own lawn chair and sat near the end zone, away from the other parents in the bleachers, where he could smoke and sip from a plastic cup. Jeanne could remember Clayton once attributing Neil’s unsociableness, alcoholism, and temper to “some real My Lai shit” from Vietnam. He often yelled at Derick and the referees, and Jeanne would never forget one particularly uncomfortable incident during which Neil had to be told to leave the field.

  In the produce section of the Cash and Carry, as she watched his large, stained fingers rub futilely at the plastic, Jeanne considered fleeing to the storage room. It was with surprise that she heard herself say, “You got it upside-down, Neil.”

  Neil hesitated before looking up.

  “Hi, Jeanne.”

  “Hi.”

  “Heard about Rob,” Neil said. “Eleven years. That’s a long time.”

  For a moment Jeanne didn’t know what he was talking about. Rob’s plea had come with an eleven-year maximum, it was true; the minimum, however, was five. Jeanne had only supported the deal because the lawyer had assured them, given Rob’s military record, that the parole board would be sympathetic. For Jeanne, eleven had never been a real number. The only number in her mind was five.

  “It is,” she said.

  “At least you can visit him,” Neil said.

  “Yes,” Jeanne said.

  Neil returned his attention to the bag in his hands, got frustrated, and balled it up. “Still,” he said, “it’s a long time.”

  He came back a couple weeks later. Jeanne found him perusing the lettuce heads. They repeated their stilted greetings—and this time Jeanne had the strong sense that there was something Neil wished to say. He gazed absently at the lettuce.

  “Sheila’s making salad,” he explained.

  More or less, it went on like that. About twice a month, Neil would betray his lifelong loyalty to Harvest Foods, and Jeanne would find him absorbed in the selection of vegetables or cereal or dairy, whatever section she happened to be working. Their interactions were always the same: brief, elliptical. Only once had it gone beyond that.

  It had happened recently, not long after Jeanne began spending Wednesday nights at the TO. She’d found Neil in the condiments, studying the nutritional information on a jar of mayonnaise. After she’d said hello, Neil had set the jar back on the shelf and asked her, “Seen Rob lately?”

  The question startled Jeanne. It was the first time since that first encounter that Neil had spoken his name.

  “I see him every week.”

  “How’s he doing?”

  “OK. Considering.”

  Neil nodded. Once again Jeanne felt that he was mustering the nerve to tell her something.

  “That’s good,” he said.

  —

  She didn’t have to stay. She could have moved south—to Boise or any number of small, perfectly fine towns closer to Kuna. She’d only come to Grangeville in the first place for Clayton and his Forest Service job. She had decided, though, that Rob should have the option to return when he got out. She knew that leaving would amount to a kind of admission, and she wanted that choice to be his. She wouldn’t make it for him.

  —

  One Thursday morning in August a woman Jeanne recognized entered the diner. It was the visitor with short-cropped hair who’d given her the quarters that first day in the prison. She wore the same leather jacket and under it a T-shirt with the image of a buffalo silhouetted by a low, orange sun. She spied Jeanne immediately and walked over.

  “I know you,” she said.

  Without waiting to be invited, the woman squeezed into the booth across from Jeanne, scooting toward the window with labored, seal-like thrusts of the torso. Once she was ensconced and, short of a fire, there was no question of her reversing the procedure, the woman said, “Mind if I join?”

  Before Jeanne could answer, the waitress appeared, raised her eyebrows inquisitively at Jeanne, and asked the woman what she wanted.

  “An OJ, maybe,” the woman said.

  The waitress turned to leave, and the woman added, “Actually, you know what, how about one of these too?” and pointed at a laminated photograph stuck in a plastic stand behind the jelly packets and the ketchup. The photograph showed a handled platter heaped with eggs, biscuits, hash browns, and gleaming sausage links and patties, all generously lathered with thick sausage gravy.

  “One Hungry Trucker?” asked the waitress.

  “Whatever you call it.”

  The woman introduced herself as Valerie Powell, wife of Gary Powell, Inmate 9852. Gary was halfway through a six-year minimum for credit-card fraud. He and Valerie were from Bonners Ferry, way up in the panhandle, an eight-hour drive, in good weather, from Kuna. When Jeanne told Valerie that she was from Grangeville, Valerie said, “Grangeville? Aren’t you a lucky one.”

  It had been a while since anyone had called her that. Suddenly, Jeanne liked the woman.

  “You drive through the night?” she asked.

  “Used to,” Valerie said.

  The waitress appeared, set down Jeanne’s omelet and Valerie’s platter, and extracted a mini bottle of Tabasco from the pouch on her apron.

  “Never like the picture, is it?” Valerie said.

  “What do you mean ‘used to’?”

  “How’s that?”

  “You said you used to drive through the night. You don’t anymore?”

  Valerie upended the Tabasco. “There’s a Super 8 a couple exits down from here. Some of us share a room.”

  Jeanne guessed she meant the other women from the picnic table; Valerie, though, said nothing more on the subject and Jeanne didn’t push. Later, when they left the diner, she noticed Valerie noticing the sunshades behind the Buick’s windshields, Rob’s sleeping bag unrolled across the seat.

  “I guess I’ll see you over there,” Jeanne said.

  “See you over there,” said Valerie.

  During the session, Jeanne was distracted. A few tables away, Valerie sat with her back to Jeanne, facing a wiry man with jaundiced skin and several missing teeth. The sleeves of his collared shirt were rolled above his elbows, the tattoos on his arms too faded to decipher. He and Valerie were holding hands, fingers interlaced in the air between them. It looked like Gary was a preacher exhorting Valerie to testify.

  Rob turned around to see what Jeanne was looking at.

  “You know them?” he said.

  “I met her this morning.”

  “Where?”

  “Here. They’re from Bonners Ferry.”

  “I know where they’re from.”

  “She seems nice.”

  Rob snorted. “You don’t want nothing to do with those people.”

  J
eanne had not really planned on having anything to do with the Powells; Rob’s scorn, though, provoked in her a defensive feeling. “Her name’s Valerie,” she said, “and she seems nice.”

  Instead of arguing with her, Rob turned on his stool again. This time he continued staring until Gary noticed. What happened next made Jeanne queasy. Gary, the more senior inmate, a man Jeanne would have crossed the street to avoid at night, released Valerie’s hands and averted his gaze, visibly unnerved by Rob’s attention.

  “Stop it,” Jeanne hissed.

  —

  Sometimes she wondered how many other people, if any, he had killed. Just as he’d never really told her anything about his life in prison, he’d never told her anything—not really—about the wars. Still, even during that brief interlude after his discharge and before his incarceration, there’d been clues. His unsurprised reaction to the news of Derick Leisure’s death; his maddeningly indifferent attitude throughout the hearings and the negotiations with the prosecutor; that terrible, capitulated way he’d held out his wrists for the manacles before being escorted from the courtroom to the van…All of it seemed to support Jeanne’s suspicion that she was missing something. All of it seemed to suggest that what for her had been a tragic fluke, for Rob made its own awful kind of sense.

  This idea—that Rob carried a burden of guilt and was therefore somehow relieved to have been formally charged and sentenced—accorded with Jeanne’s conviction that he was fundamentally a gentle person. That despite all of the pretensions to the contrary, his had never been a soldier’s constitution: he was not at all like Clayton.

  Jeanne recalled, for example, Rob’s reluctance, during the plea-bargain talks, to accept in principle the distinction between “murder” and “voluntary manslaughter.” Recalled the lawyer citing the presence or absence of “malicious intent.” Recalled Rob saying that his intent had not mattered to Derick Leisure, it didn’t matter to Neil or Sheila. The lawyer looking irritated. Asking: “Was I wrong to assume you preferred to be charged with the lesser crime?”

  “Of course not.”

  But it had been Jeanne who’d said it. What if she’d let Rob answer that question for himself?

  —

  Saturday, she was on her hands and knees, gathering the avocadoes someone had knocked down from her pyramid display, when a shadow loomed across the checkered tile. As soon as she stood up, she saw that Neil was drunk. He looked as if he’d just run a marathon—in his clothes and with a flu.

  Jeanne dusted off her pants. “What’s Sheila making tonight?” she said.

  “Sheila?” Neil squinted as if trying to place the name. He was holding something—a shoebox. He shifted it to his other arm and reached back to steady himself. Several avocadoes tumbled down.

  “Goddammit,” Neil muttered.

  “Why don’t we go outside?” said Jeanne.

  Neil followed her like a scolded child. Passing through the big automatic doors from the air-conditioned store into the blazing summer night was like transitioning between light and heavy elements. Jeanne led Neil to a bench underneath a bulletin board. The parking lot was crowded; more than one shopper recognized them, balked, and decided not to say anything. Gnats swarmed the lamps.

  Neil balanced the shoebox on his knees, his large hands resting on its lid.

  “Ever hear from Clay?” he said.

  Jeanne shook her head.

  “No idea where he’s at?”

  “No burning desire to either.”

  “He know about Rob?”

  “If he does,” Jeanne said, “it hasn’t made him poke his head out.”

  Neil nodded and fell quiet for a time. Or not exactly quiet. Every inhalation sounded like a chore he was only half-convinced warranted the effort. He said, “You should see the way Sheila’s gotten. All that woman does, anymore, is eat.”

  Nearby stood a miniature space shuttle with a seat for a child. Neil and Jeanne watched a young mother deposit her son and a quarter. The shuttle began to move in small circles on a mechanical arm. The boy tested the steering wheel and controls; realizing that they did not control or steer, he pouted sullenly while his mom talked on the phone.

  Neil patted the shoebox. “I guess you know what’s in here.”

  “No, Neil, I really don’t.”

  He didn’t seem to believe her. “Everything he’s done,” he said, “I’ve done a hundred times worse. Clay too, probably.”

  He handed the box to Jeanne. When she lifted the lid, she found that it was full of envelopes. They were all opened, all addressed to Neil, and all mailed from the same return address: a government PO box in Kuna. The top envelope was postmarked just a week earlier. Jeanne withdrew from it a handwritten letter that was several pages long. It was signed “SSG Robert Alan Dupree.”

  “It’s Sheila,” Neil was saying. “She found out and threw a fit.”

  “I don’t understand….”

  She’d put the letter back in the envelope without reading it and started flipping through the others, a sick feeling spreading in her body. They were stacked chronologically, the envelopes, a new one almost every week. They dated all the way back to the earliest days of Rob’s incarceration, right around the first time Neil had shown up in the Cash and Carry.

  “It’s Sheila,” Neil said again. “She wants it to stop.”

  They were both looking at the letters. Letters that even now Neil seemed to assume Jeanne must have known about. Letters that contained more words, by far, than Rob had spoken to Jeanne during all of her visits over the past year combined.

  And they weren’t about home repairs, either. She knew that. They were about the wars: Rob’s, Neil’s, and Clay’s.

  —

  All week she avoided the shoebox. At first she had it on the kitchen table, then she moved it to the top shelf of the linen closet in the hall. Wednesday night at the TO, cicadas smacked against the tubes; Jeanne lay awake with Rob’s unzipped sleeping bag draped on her like a blanket. For the first time since Neil had given it to her, she opened the lid of the box. She removed the pages from an envelope. She held the pages up. All she had to do, to betray Rob, was read.

  Someone was knocking on the window.

  Jeanne pulled down the shade to find Valerie Powell standing in the neon.

  —

  The motel was one in a row, near the entrance to the airport. Jeanne followed Valerie’s station wagon as it pulled into a parking lot crowded with rental cars, flanked on three sides by two-story wings, a balcony running the length of each. Valerie led Jeanne past a covered swimming pool and around the back of the rear wing to a ground-floor room facing a concrete retaining wall. She inserted her keycard and opened the door on two women sitting atop the floral-patterned duvets of a pair of queen-size beds.

  “Found her,” Valerie announced.

  One of the women was much younger than Jeanne, closer to Rob’s age, and sat cross-legged on the bed in plaid pajama bottoms and a tank top. The other was older, wore a cotton nightgown, and sat with her legs extended, her hands braced against the mattress on either side of her. She turned up her eyes without lifting her head, and smiled. The girl went into the bathroom without a word.

  Both of them, Valerie explained, were also from the northern reaches of the state. Gloria, the older woman, was from Sandpoint; Stacey was from Coeur d’Alene. They’d all been carpooling for the past several years, along with a fourth woman, from Moscow, splitting the cost of gas and the room. The Moscow woman’s husband had recently been transferred to Orofino, and they needed someone to replace her.

  The toilet flushed and Stacey reemerged. “You’re not a snorer, are you?” she said.

  Gloria gave Jeanne a reassuring look. “You shouldn’t sleep in your car, Jeanne,” she said. “It’s dangerous.”

  —

  Unused to sharing a bed, she woke early. Watching Gloria, her thin frame and shallow breaths barely disturbing the sheets, Jeanne thought of all the nights, more than a hundred of them, that she ha
d slept beside the Moscow woman, now gone. In the morning Gloria and Stacey rode in Valerie’s station wagon, and Jeanne followed in the Buick. At the prison, after checking in, they walked together through the doors and down the halls. Eventually, along with the other visitors, they found themselves standing between two chain-link fences, one paralleling the other, creating a fifteen-foot gap between. For thirty seconds or so—after the outer-perimeter gate had closed and before the inner one opened—you were trapped. It was here that Valerie Powell looked at the shoebox under Jeanne’s arm. Jeanne prepared herself to explain. Valerie, though, just said, “We’ll see you next week?”

  Stacey and Gloria turned to her.

  The gate opened.

  By that time every local knew that Kansas—the wide track of barren earth and upturned trunks surrounding the patrol base, where we’d bulldozed the trees and razed the bushes to deprive would-be waylayers of cover—was a no-man’s-land across which, absent permission, one did not proceed. Nonetheless, according to Dupree, the kid climbed right over the berm of logs, which the bulldozer had pushed to the edge of the clearing and the locals, accustomed to burning dry cow patties in winter, had immediately ransacked, leaving smooth poles like driftwood heaped along a tide line. He climbed over the logs, said Private Dupree, set down the object, looked at the tower, and waved. Dupree raised his weapon and peered through the scope. The kid was skinny, barefoot.

  “But the object,” I said. “The object.”

  “Like…a lunch pail?” said Dupree.

  We were in the box, a converted shipping container that served as our tactical-operations center, huddled over Murray, the contractor from Raytheon.

  “Show me Kansas,” I said.

  “Kansas, coming up,” said Murray, toggling the joystick that controlled the camera.

  “Go get Sergeant Parker,” I told Dupree.

  “Ain’t no lunch pail,” Murray said.

  I leaned to the monitor. There, smack-dab in the middle of Kansas, equidistant between the logs and the entry-control point, sat a five-liter jerrican.