Sand and Fire (9780698137844) (7 page)

By the time Blount drove out of Jacksonville, night had fallen. With his window down, he heard frogs singing in the sloughs just off the rural roads. He'd loved that peaceful sound since childhood. Soon cool weather would silence them for the winter. When he could hear the frogs no more, he raised his window, reached down to his cup holder, and took a sip of the bitter coffee. On 95 South he put the Ram on cruise control and turned on the radio.

The country station he'd listened to earlier began to crackle and break up, so he pressed the scan button. Pressed it again to stop the scan when he heard the buzz-saw chords of Guns N' Roses. He didn't much care for that kind of music, but this particular song brought back memories. Not necessarily good ones. Right before his Marines launched into Fallujah, somebody blasted “Welcome to the Jungle” to get their blood up. The song on the radio ended, and as if conjured by lyrics of chaos, an announcer broke in:

“This is an AP Network News live special report. The British Prime Minister's office says at least forty-eight people have died in an apparent chemical attack on the British territory of Gibraltar. Witnesses say victims fell violently ill this afternoon after an explosion rocked a densely packed street at the foot of the famed rock fortress. The Royal Air Force is flying in disaster preparedness specialists and medical teams. Hundreds of sickened residents and tourists have overwhelmed area hospitals. Authorities have not identified those responsible, but the attack looks similar to recent incidents in Sicily and Libya. In a video statement just this week, Algerian terrorist Sadiq Kassam claimed credit for those attacks and even vowed to strike on American soil.”

Blount felt dread close on him like a fist. The headlights of oncoming traffic appeared as malevolent eyes. He had recently taken his family to Gibraltar; if not for timing and the Good Lord's grace the dead might have included his wife and daughters. Less than a year ago they'd hopped a space-available ride on a C-17, flown to Rota, and driven a rental car down to the rock. The girls had laughed at the Barbary apes lounging on precipices above five-hundred-foot drops. It had been a clear day; the kids had pointed at mountains across the blue strait, and Blount had told them that was Morocco.

The thought of them suffering like that Italian girl at Sig, dying like Kelley . . . Blount shuddered, blinked his eyes. No doubt that
had just happened to somebody's kids. Somewhere some parents—French or Spanish or American tourists—were going through the worst thing Blount could imagine.

As he drove into the night, trying to get his mind around the horror, he thought of something he'd memorized in boot camp: the Marine Corps Rifleman's Creed. He'd vowed to master his rifle as he must master his life. To fire true, shoot straight. Until there is no enemy.

A
t the breakfast table, Blount poured a cup of coffee and tried to force himself to wakefulness. He'd not slept well after getting home last night from Camp Lejeune. Bernadette wouldn't like his decision to withdraw his retirement, not one little bit, and he'd tossed and turned beside her, trying to think of a good way to tell her. At one point he'd rolled onto his side and pressed his face into her hair. The lavender scent of her shampoo had only heightened his guilt.

No good way to tell her existed. She'd feel betrayed and jerked around, after all she'd already gone through as a military wife. And, oh yeah, she'd also have to worry about him going on another combat deployment. The spouses had the toughest job in the Corps, and they didn't even get paid.

Bernadette came into the kitchen, dressed for Saturday volunteer work at the county library. Burgundy skirt and vest, heels clicking on the hardwood floor. White blouse, and over the blouse a gold necklace Blount had bought for her at a souk in Kuwait. She sat at the table, picked up a butter knife, and spread strawberry preserves on a triangle of toast.

“You get all outprocessed, baby?” she asked. “Is that a civilian sitting across from me now?” Bernadette took a bite of her toast and winked at him.

Her good mood made what he had to say even harder. On top of everything else, he would spoil that mood.

“Uh, no,” Blount said. “Everybody in S-1 was working with people about to deploy.”

“So you drove up there for nothing? That must have irritated you. Bet you'll be glad to get all that kind of foolishness behind you.”

“Ah, well. That's what I wanted to talk to you about. I think I want to stay in a while.”

Bernadette drew in a breath. Looked at him with a tightened face and eyes drained of all good humor.

“What?”

She dropped the butter knife. Loud clink as it hit the table.

“Honey, I know this ain't fair to you. But the sheriff ain't hiring, and—”

“So what? I got a job. We got savings. Did you get up to Lejeune and somebody say something to you? You don't owe them nothing no more.”

Oh, Lord, she was mad. Bernadette always spoke with the perfect diction and grammar of somebody college-educated like herself. Except when she got angry. Very angry. Then the low-country farm girl in her came out.

“Bernadette, did you see the news last night? About that thing that happened at Gibraltar?”

“What are you talking about?” She shook her head like she was talking to the world's most annoying idiot—who'd just brought up something that had nothing to do with anything. “Yeah, I saw it. So what?”

“Remember when we took Ruthie and Priscilla to Gibraltar? You hear about all them people throwing up and dying? It could have been our girls.”

“Well, it wasn't. Your daughters ain't in no Gibraltar. They're upstairs, getting ready to go with me to the library, thinking their daddy's finally home to stay. And you drop this on me right when I gotta go out the door.”

Tears glistened in her eyes. Blount got up and put his hand on her shoulder, but she shook him off. She scraped her chair back from the table and pointed her finger at him.

“Don't touch me,” she said. “And you're gonna tell this to the girls. I ain't telling them for you.”

Bernadette took a tissue from her purse, blew her nose, and stomped out of the kitchen. Blount heard her calling up the stairs to the girls: “Ruthie, Priscilla. Time to go.”

Two pairs of feet pattered down the stairs. Ruthie shouted, “Bye, Daddy!” The front door squeaked open, slammed shut.

Lord have mercy.

A minute later, the crunch of gravel announced his family's departure for town and the library. Blount walked to the porch with his coffee cup in his hand. At one time he'd looked forward to sitting out here and watching Ruthie and Priscilla ride in the pasture. But now, who knew when that would happen? He sat in one of the rockers and looked out over the marsh. An osprey glided over the water, wings outstretched and motionless in tranquil flight. That is, until the cawing of crows echoed across the lagoon. Blount saw a pair of crows flap over his house and begin to harass the osprey. The crows took turns diving and wheeling, mobbing the raptor. Blount couldn't tell if they got close enough to peck or claw, but at the very least they forced the osprey to dip and turn, to try to evade its tormentors. He knew crows nursed an ancient grudge against hawks; maybe hawks fed on their chicks. However, this osprey probably ate nothing but fish. Hadn't done a thing to those crows.

The aerial battle continued for a few minutes. Hawks didn't usually fight back when mobbed by crows. But eventually this osprey did something Blount had never seen before. It flapped hard to get several feet above the crows. Then it did what came natural to an osprey: The bird folded its wings and dropped toward its target like a laser-guided bomb. Struck with extended talons.

Black feathers flew. The wounded crow and its partner broke off the attack, flew away across the marsh. The osprey resumed its effortless glide, master of its own fate.

Blount drank the last of his coffee, still wrestling with allegiances
to family, Corps, and country. Competing loyalties could tear a man into shreds. He decided to look in on his grandfather. Maybe the old man would offer words of wisdom.

Grandpa had finished his breakfast by the time Blount knocked on the door of the old man's suite. The room still smelled of bacon. Blount's grandfather turned down the volume on The History Channel, adjusted his oxygen hose, and said, “Come on in, boy. Always good to see you.”

Blount took a seat in the recliner. He wondered why Grandpa even bothered to keep the recliner because he never used it himself. The old man stayed in his wheelchair so he could go back and forth more easily to the bookcase and magazine rack. The latest issue of
The Economist
rested in his lap.

“Grandpa,” Blount said, “you see what happened at Gibraltar?”

“I sure did. Terrible thing. You and Bernadette and the girls were there, what—about a year ago?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Scares me to think about what could have happened. What
did
happen to somebody's kids.”

“Me, too. And that's got me thinking about staying in. The Twenty-second MEU's about to ship out.”

Grandpa twisted his lips to one side, tilted his head back as he absorbed this news. Dug into his pocket.

“I see you come for a serious peppermint discussion,” he said.

Blount chuckled, caught the peppermint tossed his way.

“Guess I did.”

“What does Bernadette say about this?”

“Maddest I've seen her in a while.” Blount unwrapped the peppermint and placed it in his mouth.

“So what makes you think you need to do this?”

Blount recounted everything that had swirled through his mind—his buddies going into harm's way, his friend Kelley dying in the parking lot at Route One, the civilians poisoned to death. He
didn't say anything about the sheriff's department not hiring. Maybe that was a little part of it, too, but not nearly the main thing. So he didn't waste his grandfather's time with the money issue. The wise old sergeant major would have seen right through that one.

“What about your house?” Grandpa asked. “Would you sell it? You and Bernadette love that place. Working for Special Operations Command means either Lejeune or Pendleton. Lejeune's, what, five hours away?”

“I'll homestead the family here and get an apartment in Jacksonville if I have to. Divide the time between here and there. Bernadette's got a good job, and I wouldn't want to make the girls change schools again.”

“I thought you'd had enough after that last trip to Afghanistan,” Grandpa said. “That by itself would have been more than most men could take. So please don't talk like you got anything left to prove.”

“No, it's not that. It's . . . hard to put it into words.”

Grandpa unwrapped his own peppermint, studied it for a moment, put it on his tongue. Seemed lost in thought until he crushed the peppermint between his teeth. He chewed it, swallowed, and said, “You remember what I told you when you first enlisted?”

“Yes, sir. I do.”

First and last, his grandfather had said, a warrior is a protector. You use force when you need to, and a big boy like you can do that real good. But in the main, you take care of folks. You go into a situation and think to yourself, the people here—at least the good people—are safer because I'm here.

“I can't tell you what to do about withdrawing that retirement,” Grandpa said. “Nobody but you can know where your heart is and what you gotta do. But I do know this: If you go back out there to fight, don't do it for payback. You don't like it that they killed your old platoon commander. You don't like what they made you do in Afghanistan. But revenge will burn you alive, boy. It'll turn you into something you don't want to be.”

Then Grandpa told a story from World War II that Blount had never heard. Blount thought that after all these years, his grandfather had related every incident, every moment he could remember about the Marines' bloody island-hopping campaign across the Pacific. But this one, he had kept to himself. And after hearing it, Blount could understand why.

As a young corporal on Iwo Jima, Grandpa Buell watched his fellow Marines raise the American flag on Mount Suribachi. Cheers went up; at first he thought the battle for that sulfurous, godforsaken chunk of volcanic rock had ended. But weeks of hard fighting remained. The Japanese had built a network of caves and pillboxes—hardened positions easily defended. Especially by troops loyal unto death to their emperor, troops who knew that with Iwo Jima in American hands, the B-29s could burn Japanese cities more easily.

“We had to dig those bastards out across every foot of that island,” Grandpa said.

He explained that he had a close buddy at the time, another corporal by the name of Mason. Buell and Mason had gone through Montford Point together, had heard all the foolishness about how coloreds wouldn't fight. Mason came from Alabama. Before the war, he'd studied at Stillman, wanted to go into the ministry.

“Mason grew up poor, though,” Blount's grandfather said. “He used to hunt squirrels with a twenty-two, not for fun but to help keep meat on the table. My lands, that boy could shoot. Never seen somebody so deadly with a Garand rifle.”

Grandpa's eyes glistened as he spoke of his old friend. He said the brass intended for black Marines to serve only in support roles such as delivering ammo, but he and Mason wound up fighting anyway. Blount had no idea where this story was going, but he knew it couldn't be good.

One night, Mason vanished. Nobody saw him go down. Nobody heard him scream. Nothing. Just gone. Wasn't like him to run off, and on Iwo Jima, where would you have run off to, anyway?

Two days later they found him in a cave. The Japanese must have wounded him, or maybe come up behind him and grabbed him unawares. With all the caves and tunnels on Iwo, the enemy could just pop up out of the ground anywhere around you.

Mason's broken, naked body hung from ropes. They had cut off his ears. They had gouged out his eyes. They had sliced off his penis.

“You wouldn't die from none of that, though,” Grandpa said, “nor from any other single wound on him.”

His arms, legs, chest, and back were striped with hundreds of knife cuts. Mason had bled to death, very slowly. Missing for two days, and the body still warm.

“Back during the Depression, I seen a man who got lynched,” Grandpa said. “Blood all over him. But this was worse than any lynching I ever heard tell of. After that, I kind of lost my mind.”

Buell fought on with the fury of a man possessed. He even wondered if he and Mason and everybody else around him had died and gone to hell. The whole place smelled like sulfur and death, and there wasn't nothing but blood, pain, sand, and fire. How could you tell it from hell?

“There's fire in hell,” Blount's grandfather said, “and by God, I brought fire.”

Buell picked up a special weapon, an M2A1 flamethrower. Two tanks of jelled gasoline on his back, propelled by compressed gas. That thing could throw a stream of burning napalm fifty yards.

“Nobody said a thing to me about it, either,” Grandpa said. “At that point we were all the same race: Marines. And we all wanted the same thing: payback.”

The day after the Marines found Mason's body, they encountered a team of Japanese inside a concrete pillbox. From inside, the Japanese fired a Type 92 heavy machine gun. The pillbox sat atop a hummock, and the machine gun's field of fire stopped the American advance on that little section of the island.

Buell came up with an idea. If the platoon could pour rounds at
the pillbox's embrasure and make the enemy keep their heads down, he could climb the side of the hummock. Under suppressing fire, the Japanese would have a difficult time bringing the 92 to bear on their flanks.

From whatever cover the Marines could find behind rocks and in depressions in the sand, the platoon opened up. With his flamethrower, Buell charged up the right side of the hummock, the treads of his boots throwing up black sand. Another Marine went up the left side, holding a grenade.

Somehow the Japanese managed to hit the man with the grenade. He'd already pulled the pin; when he went down, the grenade exploded and tore him up. But that distracted the Japanese enough for Buell to get into position. Buell dropped to the ground only about fifteen yards from the pillbox.

With his left hand, he pointed the nozzle and squeezed the igniter trigger. With his right, he pressed the firing trigger and felt hell in fluid form course through the hose. Buell aimed the jet of burning napalm through the embrasure, and fire filled the pillbox. The four men inside began to scream, and two of them ran outside, flames in the shape of sprinting men.