A Hard and Heavy Thing (24 page)

You're doing it wrong.

Okay. ACTS. Acknowledge. I acknowledge that you're God. You made me. You made all of us. You made the world. I acknowledge your attributes: almighty, omnipresent, omniscient, righteous, et cetera. You know all things. You knew this would happen. It would have been nice to get a warning. Would have been nice to get some sort of a sign, a little, Hey guys, you might not wanna take that road. Highway to the danger zone ahead. Even just a little warning. A tiny little one and we could take care of the rest. Couldn't mess up the dirt on the road a little bit? Give us a little sign that there was a surprise waiting for us down there? You know everything, so it would have been nice to have some heads up, big guy.

You're doing it wrong.

He squeezed the muscles of each hand as tightly as he could until the bones of his interlaced fingers ached with a dull pain. Forget it. Forgive me, God. Forgive me. I don't know how to pray and I don't know how to lead and I don't know how to soldier and I don't know what I'm doing here and I don't know how to not hate you for taking the one guy here who really believes in you, for hurting the only good guy among us. Forgive me forgive me forgive me. His shoulders began to heave. The tears rolling down his cheeks felt new. He did not remember the last time he had cried.

The burning and swelling in the back of Levi's throat felt foreign, almost as if he were choking. At first he tried to stop it, but as tears carved streams into the dirt and soot on his face, he felt strangely cleansed and refreshed. He realized he had nearly fallen asleep. He opened his eyes and saw that his white knuckles had relaxed their grips on each other. He did not know how long he had been talking to himself, but he felt oddly relaxed.

He tried to repeat the experience. He tried increasing the intensity of his prayer to increase the intensity of his tears, to intensify his weeping until his entire face and even his entire body were cleansed and refreshed in the same way. Forgive me. Forgive me. Forgive me. Crying for dead people is selfish. I'm selfish. Crying is selfish. And weak. Crying is weak. There are dead people and you're being selfish and weak.

You're doing it wrong.

He had stopped crying. He once again felt calm and in control of himself, so he stopped trying to pray altogether. He gave up and opened his eyes.

He heard a knock on his doorjamb so he set his rifle on his bed and stood up. “Just a second,” he said. He sniffed. He dug the heels of his palms into his eyes to wipe away the tears, and he lifted his T-shirt to wipe his running nose before he pulled aside his poncho liner.

Levi put his hands behind his back and stood at parade rest when he saw the lieutenant.

“Colonel's outside and wants a word.”

Levi's adrenaline reserves were gone, but a hollow pit in his stomach grew as he imagined what the battalion commander might say to him.

“Yes, sir.” He sniffed and wiped his eyes again.

Lieutenant Michaels began to walk away but paused. “Doing okay, Hartwig?”

“Yes, sir.” He turned and grabbed his blouse and patrol cap. His fingers shook as he tried to button his top.

Levi's voice felt feeble as he snapped to attention when he reached the commander outside. “Sergeant Hartwig reports as ordered, sir.”

“Stand at ease,” Colonel Bradford said. He placed a hand on Levi's shoulder. He towered over him. “I know it's been a long day and I'm the last person you want to talk to, but there are some things I couldn't leave unsaid.”

“Yes, sir,” Levi said as the emptiness inside him grew.

“I heard what you did out there.” He gripped Levi's shoulder more tightly.

“Sir?”

“We'll have to go through the steps, make sure everything is investigated, and we'll see what higher says.” The commander looked at the command sergeant major who nodded as if to give the commander permission. “But I want you to know you'll get what you deserve.”

Levi swallowed hard. Fear and guilt choked him.

“It may take time. These things do, but do you understand what I'm saying?”

Levi put on a stoic face and snapped back to attention. “Yes, sir.”

The commander released Levi's shoulder. “Get some sleep, Soldier. Carry on.”

“Yes, sir.”

Levi waited until the commander and his entourage loaded up in their soft-top Humvee and drove off. On shaky legs he walked up the stairs to the bathroom Cadillac. He put a toilet lid down and sat on it. He stared at the curtain in front of him. He listened to the whir of the air conditioning unit. He pictured handcuffs and interviews and courtrooms. He turned around, lifted the lid to the toilet, and vomited.

When he finally did disrobe and climb into his sleeping bag at three in the morning, he had no trouble falling asleep. Until the instant he woke an hour later, his sleep had been dreamless, but then a singular image of Weber's face in death floated in front of his eyes. He woke in a violent, febrile shock. In life, he didn't know if he had ever noticed Weber's features, and he couldn't have had more than a few seconds to take them in when he had gone into the Humvee after Nick, but the image that flashed in front of his eyes before he woke could not have been more detailed or etched into his memory than if it were his own mother. The Mute now forever mute.

Weber's skin already matched the pale ash of burnt charcoal. His mouth hung open, revealing a bloated and deep purple tongue. His eyes stared through Levi, opened wide. Levi didn't expect that lifeless eyes could register emotion, but the brown glass of Weber's eyes betrayed shock, and they begged an answer for the eternal question: Why? Why are we even here? And this was an answer Levi didn't have. Wide awake and convicted by Weber's unblinking gaze, it was an answer Levi would never have for Weber's parents. Or Hooper's brothers. Or Jalaladin's wife back in Dearborn, Michigan.

And apart from the few, no one would remember. No one would care. They would get five words and a one-inch photo in the newspaper, a perennial
Faces of the Fallen
tribute in which their faces and names flashed with the thousands of other faces and names, and the people who saw these tributes and even the editors who produced them would callously skim over them and not even notice that these guys—these guys with their all-American names like Hooper and Weber and their bland unsmiling faces backdropped by the American flag in their official photos—were real people that meant something to someone.

Levi's sleeping bag was soaked with sweat. The same had drenched his boxers and the brown T-shirt he used for a pillowcase. He winced at the pain in his chest. His heart had never beaten so hard. He sat there in the cool moist fabric for a time, his bare torso exposed to the chilly air inside the bunker, and his damp sleeping bag bunched around his waist.

When he was able to calm his breathing, he got out of bed and dried his face and chest with a towel. He changed into dry boxers. He put a new T-shirt over the plush soccer ball he had been using as a pillow. He turned it over so the damp side was down. He then turned his sleeping bag inside out.

He slipped on his flip-flops and went outside, easing the door closed so as not to wake anyone. He pulled down his boxers and sat on the toilet. He rested his elbows on his thighs and his chin on his folded hands. He didn't know how long he sat there. Without ever going, he stood up and went to wash his hands, but while standing at the sink, he refused to look at himself in the mirror.

He climbed back into his sleeping bag, grateful to be warm and dry. He turned the day over in his mind, examining every detail he could remember. The thing was, it had all felt so utterly normal, even inevitable as he experienced it. He tried consoling himself with the fact that from the time the explosives detonated until help arrived and it was out of his hands, he had done everything he thought he should. He made snap decisions to leave those who couldn't be helped; he put himself in harm's way to help Gassner; he helped pull Nick from the wreckage. He had been perfect for those twelve minutes. But by that time, it was already too late. He could not find consolation in having simply done what he had been trained to do in a horrific situation, when he himself was responsible for the situation. The compounding of his tiny mistakes and missteps and failures in leadership had led to a devastating tragedy he could never undo, and he would carry that with him always.

He tried remembering the details, but it was difficult to piece together what he remembered into something coherent. He saw the moments, if he remembered them at all, in little snapshots. Yellow and hazy, it was hard to see them clearly, but every once in a while one would push its way past the others. Weber's face on Jellybean's shoulder, his arms wrapped around him in a hug. Tom Hooper's silhouette, suspended indefinitely against the cloud of smoke and flames, his one arm acting as a useless wing that would never succeed in keeping him from falling and landing and dying. A view through his scope of a man's head popping back and opening before dropping out of sight. Gassner's stump oozing blood. Three holes appearing in quick succession in a still and spongy chest.

The next day a pall hung over him, and he waited. He waited and he waited, but night fell and no one came for him. Miraculously, the sun came up the next day also, and the world continued to turn. He woke. He put on his reflective belt and went for a run. He showered. He dressed. Despite his best effort to deceive himself, he had to face the fact that as the world went on, so too did the missions. Casualties or no casualties, the three infantry platoons on FOB O'Ryan continued their three-day rotation of missions, guard duty, and QRF.

It was quieter than usual in Archer Platoon's bunker, but the men talked some. They ran. They lifted. They dressed. They ate. They started the Humvees. They checked fluids and tire pressures and lights. They oiled weapons. Then they waited for the field telephone to ring, letting them know that someone needed the QRF.

After Levi's squad did their preventative maintenance checks and services, he personally checked the lights and fluids. He opened up ammo cans to ensure the links hadn't rusted. He opened the feed tray cover on the 240B up in the turret to personally verify the cleanliness and proper lubrication of the weapon's mechanisms. He walked around to each man assigned to his truck and he made them disassemble their weapons so he could inspect their bolts and firing pins. When everyone else went to lunch, he took a Motorola handheld radio out to the line of Humvees and he personally tested each Duke in the platoon. He put fresh batteries in his GPS. He opened the combat lifesaver bag in his truck and verified that no saline bags and no packages of QuikClot powder had reached their expiration dates. He replaced the batteries in his night vision goggles, and he made sure that all his men did the same. He went to the supply NCO and got an ammo can full of extra batteries. He did all of this and then he did it again to verify that he had not missed one single thing that could mean the difference between life and death if he somehow failed to recognize the significance of some seemingly insignificant detail.

For the first two days of their QRF stint, he obsessed over everything, checking and rechecking. He was terrified that the field phone would ring. He was terrified that Lieutenant Michaels would yell, “Mount up,” and they would all don their twenty-six-pound vests with the ballistic plates that would do nothing to stop the blast overpressure of a two-hundred-pound IED hidden under the road or the molten copper slugs of an Iranian EFP array.

By the third day, he had grown so anxious and fearful that he prayed the phone would ring just so it could be over and he wouldn't have to worry anymore.

It did ring. The LT did yell, “Mount up,” and first and second squads did leave the comfort of their bunker. Their mission was to escort the EOD team to an IED outside Al Abayachi.

Levi's guts bubbled as they made the short drive to the staging area. His skin grew hot as they gathered around the lieutenant for the pre-convoy briefing. Levi forced himself to listen to every word. When his mind began drifting, he reached inside his pocket and he felt the rock he had dropped down Nick's body armor several days earlier. He ran his thumb over its smooth surface to remind himself that a war zone was no place for insouciance. He listened to the ROE. He made note of his place in the chain of command, fourth behind the lieutenant, Staff Sergeant Roper, and Tech Sergeant Cazalet. Though he had heard them before—had lived them before—he did not let his mind drift as the lieutenant described actions on contact.

When the briefing had been completed and each man returned to his own truck, Levi quizzed the men in his charge on what had been briefed. When they departed the gate to the FOB, they put magazines in their rifles and the fear left Levi's bowels. He turned on their Duke and he scanned the road. Rather than letting his mind drift, Levi listened to every word that crackled over the radio. Rather than singing songs in his head, composing lyrical poetry in his mind about the landscape and the sky and the trees, or daydreaming about looking up Eris when he returned home he scanned the road for disturbed earth, for black wires, for animal corpses, for the glint of copper wire against the sun. When they arrived at the bottlenecked stretch of canal road that held the IED, he secured the EOD team, and he watched his sector. He ignored the robot screen. He avoided eye contact. The only time he took his eyes off his sector was to verify that the men in his squad acted in kind.

When the EOD team conducted their controlled detonation, he did not allow himself the luxury of ooohs and aaahs. He kept his back to the blast and his eyes out, looking for threats. He did not allow his attention to waver on the way to the scene, at the scene, or during the return trip. After returning, he went through the same rituals he had gone through before the mission so they would be prepared the next time.

For months, his attention did not waver and his anxiety did not abate. He held a hard and heavy thing in his chest and the weight pressed on his stomach at all times. He slept little and ate less, but he soldiered on. Every day he waited for someone to relieve him of his duties and to punish him for his derelictions. In the meantime, he allowed himself no respite from the work of keeping his squad alive. No longer did he think of himself. No longer did he allow his ego or romanticism or grand ideas to keep him from performing in the way he knew he should. He stopped thinking about the merits of the war. If war was bad, it didn't change his mission to keep his brothers alive. If war was good, it was only because it taught you how to survive; it taught you how to endure; it taught you how to wait; it taught you how to abide.