“They’d been talking for hours, apparently, and were both a little tipsy. I don’t know if it was the alcohol or what, but Carey let it slip that he felt guilty for being in our home. He didn’t want to let himself enjoy it, he said, because he knew he was there only because Riley wasn’t.”
“Oh, God.” The ache in Jase’s chest flared into full-blown pain.
“He said that up at the ranch, on the retreat with the other wounded warriors, he’d felt guilty because so many of them were injured worse than he was. He’d ‘only’ lost half of one leg,” Byrney said, complete with air quotes, “when a couple of the people he’d met had lost two or more limbs.”
“Like he’s not allowed to grieve his own loss,” Jase whispered, remembering that night on the couch, and Carey’s pain—and the raw need that had arisen from that pain.
“That’s what Trevor said.” Byrney shook his head. “I’ll never forget, how he knelt in front of Carey and told him that he couldn’t compare his loss to anyone else’s, that he was allowed to grieve for the person he used to be—a boy who used to have two legs, and now he didn’t.”
Taking off his cap, Byrney raked his fingers through his sweaty, greasy hair before replacing it. “Then he said that even if Riley had been alive, there’d still be a houseful of his friends invading his home every Christmas, because that’s who Riley was.” He smiled. “I stopped lurking then and said it was true, that I came for a pool party and never left.”
Jase let out a snort as Byrney went on. “The point Trevor was trying to make was that Riley did die. No one who stayed there could ever take his place, but that didn’t mean Trevor couldn’t enjoy having them there, couldn’t spoil them a little, because doing that made him happy, and brought him peace.”
Jase cleared his throat. “And Carey enjoying himself didn’t mean that he was disrespecting Riley’s memory.”
“Right. Poor kid. He’d shown up wary of our motives for having him, wary of his motives for coming, and it all coalesced into him being one giant ball of distrust.”
“He trusts me, though. He loves me, Byrney. I know what a gift that is.”
“And by being here, by giving up something extremely important to you, you’re showing him you cherish that gift.” Byrney clapped him on the shoulder. “Let him cherish you in return, Jase, because by holding yourself back, you risk missing out on something that doesn’t come around very often.”
“That’s why I’m here,” Jase rasped. “To—”
“To?” Byrney said encouragingly.
Learn how to forgive myself.
But Jase didn’t say that. Byrney clapped him on the shoulder again and loped on ahead, leaving Jase alone.
He wasn’t for long. Soon Tom appeared beside him, and Jase cynically thought that this must be how he and Byrney operated, kind of a tag-team thing with each participant.
Byrney chats us up, and then Tom swoops in.
Strangely, Jase found he didn’t mind. The past four days had evened the playing field quite a bit, as every single one of them was now tired, hungry, and smelly. Egos had been kept in check by the difficulty of the terrain and the heaviness of their loads.
“This isn’t one of those trips where a five-star chef meets us at camp every night and cooks our meals,” Byrney had said. “No matter what it is, if you want it, you carry it.”
There’d been blisters, and a couple of mildly sprained ankles, but luckily no serious injuries. Other than sore muscles, everyone was healthy and had enjoyed the male bonding, Jase included.
“I’ve been meaning to ask you,” he said now to Tom. “Why aren’t there any women on this trip? Women are combat medics, too.”
“There’s a separate trip for women,” Tom said, and he held up his hand when Jase opened his mouth to protest. “It’s not that we think women can’t handle this particular hike, or keep up. Not at all. It’s just that, with women in the military, so many times an element to their trauma has to do with sexual assault.”
Jase winced. He’d seen that in garrison, more than once, Marines reporting a sexual assault by other Marines. If it happened at home, it certainly happened in a war zone, too. “I guess the last thing they’d want to do, then, is go out into the wilderness with a bunch of men,” he said.
“Yes. So they do their own trips, with leaders who’ve experienced what they have.”
Jase cast him a sidelong glance, wondering what Tom had experienced. In fact, he wondered what they all had experienced. Four days in, and he knew about the guys’ families, and their careers after the military, but nothing about what had brought them here.
It was a good strategy, he thought, on Byrney’s and Tom’s part. Give everyone a chance to get to know each other, then smoke them on some rough terrain, and eventually, when it came time to share, they’d all be caught with lowered defenses.
He snorted to himself. Probably the only way you’d get a combat medic to talk.
Well, Jase was ready. Or at least he thought he was.
In camp that night, Tom built a fire, the first one they’d had.
The heightened tension in the air was subtle, but it was there. After they’d eaten their MREs, Jase dug in his pack for the baggie he’d stashed at the bottom of it. “Anyone mind if I burn one?”
Grunts and more than one “Nah, man” came from around the circle, and surprisingly, Tom said, “I think I’ll join you.”
He fished out a baggie of his own, and soon they were puffing away, the joints making their way from hand to hand, only Byrney and Cy abstaining.
Fortified by the high, Jase thought, Time to get this show on the road. He waited until Tom had taken another hit, and then said, “What brings you here? Why are you leading this trip?”
Tilting his head back, Tom blew a mouthful of smoke up toward the sky. “I shot a kid.”
The words were like a bullet to Jase’s own heart, and he choked, waving away Glen’s concerned, “You okay?”
“I was in Iraq,” Tom went on, his voice steady, “working with a SEAL platoon. One night we assaulted into a compound where a high-value target was supposed to be holed up, and we met a lot of resistance. Me and my buddy made it to a rooftop, where we surprised this dude who’d built a sniper’s nest there.”
Jase’s heart was pounding, his palms clammy. He wiped them on his filthy pants, trying to hide how his hands were shaking.
“There were non-combatants on the roof, too, so my buddy was trying not to shoot, and was trying to engage the bad guy hand-to-hand. I was watching the stairway leading up to our position when I saw a shadow on the wall. A shadow holding an AK-47.”
Around the circle, the firelight danced on everyone’s stricken faces as they pictured the unmistakable shape of the weapon.
“In the space of three seconds, I had to decide. Shoot or not shoot? The guy on the roof was bad news. He had his sandbags, his rifle, and was ready to rock our worlds. Whoever was coming up the stairs was armed, and I was not only protecting me and my buddy, I was protecting the non-combatants on the roof—a group of children.”
A wave of horror went through Jase. The insurgent sniper had been hoping that the children’s presence would keep the Americans from shelling him once he started shooting at them.
“So I shot. Boom, boom, boom. Three bullets. Dude went down hard.” Tom sucked in a breath. “I ran over to him, rolled him over, and I saw that he was maybe—maybe—thirteen years old. It was the guy’s oldest son, coming to protect his father.”
There came a few muffled exclamations from around the group. Jase’s chest tightened even more.
“I made the right decision,” Tom said, “and I’d make it again. But the fact was, a child was dead by my hand. A boy around my own son’s age, right down to the—” His voice roughened. “—right down to the peach fuzz on his upper lip.”
For a few minutes, the only sound was the snapping and popping of the fire.
Then Tom murmured, “That’s my story. Would anyone else like to share thei
rs?”
Silence.
Jase gazed around at the faces he’d come to know these past few days. He’d slept next to them, eaten with them, laughed with them, squatted behind the bushes with them. They were his community, his brothers, his tribe.
If he couldn’t unburden himself here—with them—then where?
He waited through the space of a few more heartbeats, to see if anyone else would speak.
When they didn’t, he clenched his fists on his thighs, reached deep down inside, and forced the words out through the constriction in his throat.
“I killed a kid, too. But he was also my friend.”
“What happened?”
Tom’s voice rang in Jase’s ears.
What happened?
In the four years since Jase had returned from Afghanistan, no one had ever asked him that question. Two simple words.
What happened?
In the silence after Tom’s question, the other men waited, giving space for Jase’s answer to appear. His breaths sawed in and out, hoarse and painful-sounding, but no one touched him. No one said anything.
“Ashram was twelve years old,” he finally rasped. “Whip-smart. Wily. I think he knew exactly seven English words. ‘Gimme stuff,’ ‘Fuck you,’ and ‘You my bitch.’”
Some wry snorts went around the group.
“I met him when I’d given him candy one time, while we were on an op.”
The memories crashed over Jase’s head with the force of a tidal wave. The woman. The baby. Carey…
He swallowed hard. “After that, whenever we patrolled in that village, Ashram would come up to me. ‘Gimme stuff,’ he’d say. Always with the fucking ‘gimme stuff.’ Of course if I had candy, I’d give it to him. Once I even slipped him a pair of sunglasses my sister had sent me that I didn’t want. After a while, it started to be like a game.”
Ashram’s face, with his snapping, intelligent eyes and smooth cheeks, still plump with baby fat, swam into Jase’s vision.
“I started bringing him things like coloring books and stickers, whatever I could scrounge up. Anything to make him smile. When I left, he always called me his ‘bitch.’ ‘You my bitch, Jase.’” The tears welled up. “Yeah, I guess I was.”
Someone handed him the joint, and Jase took a shaky drag. “I’ll never forget, one day I was running a sick call for the people in the village. I’d been busy stitching up wounds, setting a few broken bones, all minor, routine stuff.”
The other guys nodded. Medics in a war zone usually tried to set aside a few hours a week to treat the local population, part of the “winning hearts and minds” strategy the coalition had adopted.
“I’d forgotten to eat lunch, and by the time I was ready to close up shop, I was starving. I went outside and there was Ashram, sitting there with a ceramic tea set, of all things. For once he didn’t say ‘Gimme stuff.’ He just waved for me to sit down.”
Jase shook his head wonderingly. “He served me hot, strong tea, and some flatbread. God, it tasted so good. For those few minutes, we weren’t in a war zone, we just were friends sharing food and drink. I was cool Uncle Jase again.” His voice broke.
The faces around the circle were still, the firelight revealing glistening eyes that for once, no one tried to hide.
“A couple of days later, we were coming back from patrol. It was daylight, and we were walking along a road that was swept often by our explosives ordnance guys. There hadn’t been a lot of enemy activity in the area lately, so I wouldn’t say we’d let our guards down, but we didn’t feel under imminent threat.”
Jase could still taste the dust in his mouth from the long patrol, feel the ache in his back from carrying his heavy pack and weapon. Like a horse nearing its barn, the promise of being safely back at the outpost had lent a spring to Jase’s weary steps. He’d grab some chow, and then, if the spotty internet connection held up, see if Carey had replied to the email he’d sent him at Walter Reed.
“As we passed the outskirts of the village, I looked over and saw Ashram on the berm next to the road. That wasn’t unusual. The kids liked to gather there sometimes and watch us go by.”
Anyone on the berm had to be considered a threat, kids or not. Jase had tightened his fingers on his weapon, his gaze scanning Ashram’s hands. He didn’t hold anything alarming, like a cell phone or anything else that could be a detonator, but his eyes appeared stony, almost full of…hate? They locked on Jase’s, and then Ashram bent and pulled something…
The blast wave from the explosion knocked Jase down, sending him sprawling. As he choked on dust and debris, his ears ringing, he became aware of screams, gunfire, and the desperate shouts of “Medic!”
He’d struggled to his knees, his horrified eyes taking in a scene of such carnage he almost couldn’t process it. Two of the Afghan Army guys they’d been patrolling with had been standing directly over the IED , and were torn almost in half. Bone shards, metal, and other projectiles had ripped into the nearby Marines, causing grievous injuries.
“It was chaos,” Jase croaked. “I was up to my armpits in blood and body parts. Enemy fighters appeared out of nowhere to start shooting at us. We were shooting back, trying to get close air support…”
The firefight had raged for a solid hour. Jase, along with the other able-bodied Marines, fell back into a blocking position behind a wall and set up a casualty collection point where Jase started treating the wounded.
“At one point, I looked up and saw this insurgent go down, shot multiple times. As I watched to make sure he wasn’t going to get up again—”
A roaring started up in Jase’s ears, bile burning the back of his throat.
“—I saw Ashram break cover, scoop up the guy’s gun, and start running toward our blocking position. The other Marines behind the wall were fully engaged elsewhere. No one saw him. It was up to me.”
He’d put his M4 to his shoulder, sweat and tears obscuring his eyes. He’d squeezed them shut, praying that when he opened them again, he’d see that Ashram had darted back behind the building.
Instead, he was gaining speed, his bare feet churning up little puffs of dust as he ran.
“I couldn’t tell if he was wearing a suicide vest or not,” Jase said, his voice cracking. “But he’d just clacked off an IED that’d taken out half my guys. In those few split seconds, I hesitated, desperate for a reason not to shoot, but then he lifted the AK and I killed him.”
Jase’s breaths came almost in pants as he relived it, Ashram’s legs crumpling as his body folded in on itself. Then a terrible, forever stillness.
Staring into the campfire, Jase refused to blink, as if the flames could burn the images off of his retinas. A heavy, warm hand came to rest gently in the middle of his back.
Tom.
Jase shuddered, but he didn’t move away.
“You made a call,” Tom said quietly. “He’d set off an IED. He’d picked up a weapon, and he was running toward your blocking position. You processed all that information—the best information you had at the time—and you made your call.”
Jase didn’t reply, still staring into the flames.
Squeezing his shoulder, Tom murmured, “Jase, look at Byrney.”
Jase shook his head, and Tom gave him another firm squeeze. “Look at Byrney,” he repeated.
When Jase dragged his gaze to Byrney’s, Tom went on, “Now look at Cy. At Glen.” He went around the group, and as Jase met each pair of solemn, understanding eyes, his own filled with tears.
“What you did that day, it’s out in the open now,” Tom said softly. “You’ve acknowledged it here, in front of all of us. You’ve told us how you eliminated a threat, someone who’d just killed several people.”
Jase’s voice was harsh. “He was a child—”
“He was an armed combatant, Jase. His age isn’t relevant, not in that context.”
Jase flinched, flashing back to the hatred he’d glimpsed in Ashram’s eyes.
“War splits us into two differe
nt versions of ourselves,” Tom went on. “The man who knows killing a child is wrong, and the soldier in a war zone who’s making a call in order protect the lives of himself and his men.”
Jase’s shoulders slumped. “But how do I reconcile the two?” he asked quietly. The healer and the killer. “How?”
“To start, by having compassion for yourself. Compassion for the man who made that split-second decision in that context, under extreme stress, under circumstances most people couldn’t or wouldn’t understand.”
Jase bit his lip. “I don’t know if I can.”
Patting his shoulder, Tom said, “That’s what we’re going to work on. It doesn’t end here, with this trip. What we’re doing right now is simply bringing these memories out of the darkness and into the light.”
“And supporting each other,” Byrney said softly. “We need to support each other. No one should ever feel alone.”
As Jase took his seat around the fire again, there were murmurs of “Got your back, brother,” “You’re a good man, Jase,” and “Here for you.”
The sentiments warmed him, and he forced himself to focus on Cy as Tom encouraged him to tell his story. All throughout the night, one by one, they went around the circle, each man haltingly—reluctantly—revealing wounds that had burrowed deep into their souls.
At the end of it, when their voices had gone hoarse and the sky was turning light grey in the east, Tom produced pieces of paper and pencil stubs from his pack.
“This is gonna seem a little corny, guys, but I’d like you to write something about the memory you’ve shared here. It can be anything—an apology, forgiveness, anger, sadness. Anything. Then burn it away.”
As the other guys started to write, Jase closed his eyes, letting the memories of that day fully wash over him once again.
Grief, shame, self-loathing, and anger all fought for dominance as the many expressions he’d observed on Ashram’s face swam into view—the mischievousness and sly humor, the pleasure he seemed to get from the verbal sparring, the joy when he scored something from Jase.
Then the hatred. The deliberate act of violence. The snatching up of the gun…
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