Savage Road

by Chris Hauty

  She strolls through the pointless garden of gravestones, returning to her car in the cemetery parking lot. Hayley prefers remembering Jessica for the giddy, scrappy girl of her school years. For that reason, she avoids the requisite conversations with the bedraggled funeral-goers that would only corrupt those memories. Her youngest sister, Tammy, lives in Chapmanville. Hayley points the car for the drive south. In passing the speck of a town that was once her home, Hayley once again feels nothing. She barely glances at the bland structures that jut from the green landscape. Green Shoals represents a prior life that has no connection to the one she lives now. This whole trip, it occurs to her, is a continued exploration of emotional detachment. She came because that’s what people do. They attend the funeral of their best childhood friend. But there’s no guarantee you feel anything in the process, right?

  Tammy answers the door, her girth enlarged with pregnancy in its eighth month. She is the only one of Hayley’s five siblings to have stayed local. Nineteen years old, Tammy married her high school boyfriend the day of their graduation. With a calm smile and freckled cheeks framed by long, straight red hair parted down the middle, she looks every bit the high school homecoming queen she once was. Hayley adores her little sister in a way possible only with siblings separated in age by nearly seven years. That adulation is mutual. Tammy never tires of telling friends her big sister works in the White House, rubbing elbows with the president and inhabiting a city that is a veritable Shangri-La in comparison to Chapmanville. The sisters hug with genuine affection. Hayley is relieved to feel a stirring within her heart. Finally! She feels something genuine. In an instant, she knows that thing is love.

  Tammy’s husband, Jeff, is at work at a Walmart in Logan, giving the sisters plenty of time to visit. Hayley tells Tammy about her job as Kyle Rodgers’s chief of staff, about the travesty of her romantic life, and, surprisingly, even about meeting Sam McGovern. Having talked plenty enough about herself, only something a favorite sister could draw out of her, Hayley goes silent and listens. Tammy opens up and relays the details of a small life by comparison but, in most ways, good. Jeff is proving to be a better husband than one might have considered possible of someone so young and inexperienced. The expectant parents are thrilled about the prospect of starting a family. They’ve enthusiastically outfitted their small rental home with items from Walmart for the baby’s arrival. Sitting in a chair in the kitchen—the cherry tree outside the window having bloomed a month earlier but offering the ghost of a sweet scent even still—Hayley is flooded with emotion. These robust feelings are a welcome change to the existential void she’d experienced at Jessica’s gravesite. A valiant sun has broken up the storm clouds’ monopoly of the sky. Hayley decides her younger sister is an angel on earth.

  Toward evening, Tammy retrieves a big cardboard box stuffed haphazardly with family photos. They are artifacts from a pre-smartphone era, and the two sisters delight in picking through the pile of random snapshots. So many photos of the six kids! The old photos incite more chatter between the sisters about their other siblings. Robert, second to the oldest, is stationed at Fort Benning, having washed out of Ranger School. Next is Harper, sickly like their mother was, who lives in Richmond and works at a Waffle House there. Sadie, a year younger, is shacked up with a biker dude in Florida. William, the youngest, hasn’t been heard from by anyone in more than a year. The unspoken truth is that, of the six siblings, Tammy and Hayley seem to be doing the best.

  Near the bottom of the pile, Hayley unearths a photo of four Marines grouped in front of a shrapnel-pocked armored personnel carrier. The man at the far right she recognizes as her father, glaring sternly at the camera in a clear effort to look sufficiently badass. Hayley holds the borderless photograph with reverence as if it were a religious icon.

  “Wow,” she says.

  “Look at Daddy. Such a stud.”

  “This could’ve been taken in Fallujah.”

  “Is that where… is that the place where he was killed?” Tammy asks. His death in combat occurred when she was barely walking.

  “Yeah. He’d been home just four months before. We had a party for him, down at the community center.”

  “That must’ve been really something,” Tammy says, wistful.

  Hayley continues to gaze at the picture, looking for answers. “I wonder who these other guys are.”

  Four Marines. High and tight haircuts. Tall, lean, and muscled. Two white. One black. One brown. The men represent the great melting pot that is the US military. Except for any differences in skin color, they are interchangeable. They are men at war. Brothers. One of them was their father.

  “I wish I’d had a chance to really know him.”

  “He was a good man, Tammy.” Hayley doesn’t know what else to say, wishing she could give her sister more. “He was a really good man.”

  It’s getting late. Hayley has to get on the road for the long drive back to Washington. She places the photograph to the side.

  “Mind if I borrow this?” she asks, gesturing.

  “Of course! Take it! Jeez, you have as much a right to it as I do. Take as many as you like.”

  Hayley shakes her head. “I just want this one.”

  * * *

  WELL PAST TWO a.m., after she returned to her apartment on P Street, a last name scrawled on the back of the photo and sleuthing on the Internet has led Hayley to determine the identity of at least one of the other Marines. Charles Hicks has retired from active duty in favor of a desk job at the Pentagon. He is the other white guy in the photo and resembles Tommy Chill enough to be his brother. They stand next to one another, arms thrown over each other’s shoulders. Without access to classified military databases, Hayley has never been able to gather details of her father’s death. Despite repeated requests, the military refused to divulge more information other than the barest essential facts. Thomas Chill was killed in action during the later stages of the Second Battle of Fallujah. The old snapshot has had the profound effect of igniting within Hayley a desire to know more. Answers are within reach, as close as across the Potomac River. Sitting behind a desk in the Pentagon.

  Hayley shuts down her computer and stands up from her seat in the apartment’s living room. She has restored order to the space since the break-in, replacing those few items that she couldn’t fix. Her place is a refuge again, familiar and organized. This new determination to learn more about her father’s death is a good thing, Hayley decides. Not knowing the whole truth for so long is a source of constant anxiety. She wonders if the damage done, like her belongings in the busted-up apartment, can ever be repaired.

  2

  THE BLUE LINE

  Monday, 7:56 a.m. Two days after returning from Jessica’s funeral in Charleston, Hayley catches a southbound train on the Washington Metro Blue Line. She arrives at the Pentagon subway station nine minutes later. Charlie Hicks had expressed surprise to receive an email from the daughter of an Iraq War buddy and, with some hesitancy, agreed to her request for a face-to-face meeting. Passing through a secured-access facility on the ground level, Hayley is soon in search of Hicks’s office in a building that is almost seven million square feet in size and the work site of more than twenty-three thousand civilian and military personnel. The pervasive orderliness and gleaming surfaces are a contrast to the West Wing’s cluttered, chockablock work space. Exuding competence and devotional caretaking by its occupants, the Pentagon is the US military’s mountaintop. Here warriors hold council.

  As much as she was reluctant to do so, Hayley requested more time off. Public and covert supervisors granted her leave—a few hours of the morning at most—but more grudgingly this second time around. Andrew Wilde’s text was terse in the extreme. No more. Her typical discipline and focus notwithstanding, Hayley feels compelled to take this small amount of time to search for answers regarding her father’s death in Iraq. As she prowls the gargantuan military headquarters in search of Charlie Hicks’s office, Hayley is confident the truth can be found so
mewhere within its walls.

  * * *

  SLID DOWN LOW in a chair by the door of a Starbucks on E Street in Foggy Bottom, he wears a Manchester United soccer jersey, black tracksuit pants, and snapback ball cap from the Iron Pony Tap Room. Outside the window to his right, morning in the nation’s capital unfolds with the promise of a gorgeous spring day. It’s perfect riding weather, but duties prohibit rolling his motorcycle out of the garage. Rafi Zamani considers ordering another tea, delaying a return to his dark apartment on F Street. With straight black hair, full eyebrows, a fine nose, and dazzling white teeth, he appears younger than his twenty-nine years. Effectively masking the clatter of the coffee shop with wireless Jabra earbuds, he thumb-scrolls the screen on his Pixel 3 XL, checking out custom motorcycles on Instagram. Rafi owns a Ducati Monster, but he pines for a BMW R nineT because that was Tom Cruise’s ride in the latest Mission Impossible movie.

  His French bulldog, Yazat, strains on his leash lashed to the chair leg, toward a crouching coed from Georgetown—long blond hair, dimpled smile—who offers a friendly hand. She says something to Rafi, but he makes no effort to hear her. So fucking annoying. Can’t she see he’s busy? For maybe the hundredth time, he opens the Signal app to see if the message he has been waiting for has come from the Boss.

  Sure enough, it’s there. A two-word message.

  Do it.

  Finally! He’ll make a quick dash back to the apartment and tap a few keys on his laptop. The rest of the day will be his to fill as he pleases. Maybe ride up to Bob’s Motorcycles in Jessup and road test that BMW. Why the fuck not?

  He slips the phone into his pants pocket, unlashes Yazat from the chair leg, and stands. The blond chick is saying something to him, about the dog no doubt. Rafi taps one of the earbuds, pausing playback.

  “So cute!” the coed says in regard to Yazat.

  Like, he hasn’t heard that before?

  Rafi says, “Thanks.”

  “Just. So. Cute.”

  He checks her out from head to toe. What he could do with her, Rafi muses. Man, how incredible would that be?

  “What’s his name?” she asks.

  They never want to know what his name is.

  “Yazat,” he says without expression, staring at her with hollow eyes.

  Same old story. Why believe it would be any different this time? He’s a handsome guy, with an insanely adorable dog. Good-looking women are friendly to him… initially. But within moments of meeting—and the inevitable awkward conversation that always follows—that look came over their faces. Disinterest. Rafi has learned from experience that attractive females won’t give him five minutes of their precious time, let alone any sex. Fuck ’em. He taps the earbud again. Music resumes playback. This dumb blonde won’t let up, though, cooing over the dog like she’s never seen one before. Stupid fucking bitches. He’s outta here.

  * * *

  MONDAY, 8:48 A.M. She finds Charlie Hicks’s small, windowless office, 2B513, on the second floor, B ring. Rapping gently on the open door, Hayley strolls into the cramped office—repository to stacks of stuffed file folders, binders, and loose papers—and finds it empty. Hicks isn’t in. She steps back into the gleaming hallway and looks in both directions for her father’s war buddy. There’s no sign of him. Hayley reenters the office and stands just inside the doorway, contemplating her next move.

  Her vetting of Charlie Hicks revealed that he had been a Marine scout sniper with seventy-eight confirmed kills in three tours of duty, bouncing between Iraq and Afghanistan. Never married, Hicks seemed to have little life outside the military. Taking a desk job at the Pentagon pushing paper following his discharge several years earlier seemed the logical solution for a man with few other interests. Hayley knows a small army of keyboard punchers is required to spend $680 billion a year. The resultant mountain of paperwork has given Charlie Hicks a job for life. But why stand her up? Hayley checks her phone for the email confirming their meeting time.

  The office phone on Hicks’s desk jangles. After three rings, Hayley goes to the desk.

  “Charlie Hicks’s office,” Hayley says into the phone.

  “Oh my gosh. Hayley Chill? Is that you?” The voice of a middle-aged male possesses the same sort of twang of the Southeast shared by so many of the US military’s members. It is the accent that Hayley will ease back into after a few too many shots of tequila. From Hicks, though, there is a brittle edge. Fear creeps in from the corners of his voice.

  “Yes, sir. This is Hayley. Am I speaking with Charlie Hicks?”

  “Yes, Hayley. I’m sorry. Something called me away from my office. And I… I didn’t have your cell phone number on me. Truly, I couldn’t avoid this. I’m really very sorry.”

  “Are you in the building, sir? I can come—”

  “No, Hayley. I’m sorry. I can’t even talk long here on the phone. Maybe if we reschedule another time? I’m really sorry about this mix-up. I was really looking forward to meeting Tommy’s daughter, all grown up. And working at the White House! My gosh, that’s really something!”

  How else is it possible to make the dead tangible again but through their offspring? Cognizant of the fact she is her father’s surrogate, Hayley allows for Hicks’s emotionalism.

  “I can wait a bit, if—”

  “Gosh darn it. I’m going to be hung up here, on another floor. Just a ton of paperwork, as you can see. Now you know where old Marines go to die!” he says, too brightly.

  “Not all of them,” Hayley says with flat intonation. She doesn’t care if he suffers from survivor’s remorse. Fuck that. What about her survivor’s remorse?

  The silence over the phone line is abruptly mournful. She has struck a nerve.

  “Your father was a good man. Saved plenty of lives over there. Tough-ass Marine.”

  “Thank you, sir…”

  “Please, everyone calls me Charlie.”

  There isn’t a chance of that. “I hoped you might help me out with something, sir.”

  “Oh, man, I only have a few more seconds here. So sorry, really.”

  She retrieves the snapshot and studies it. “The photo I emailed you, sir. Where was this taken? Do you recall?”

  His voice regains some strength. “Sure, I do! Camp Fallujah. The Eighty-Second Airborne took it from the Mujahadeen-e-Khalq in 2003 and the First Marine Expeditionary came in a year later, in 2004.”

  “Okay…” She doesn’t need a history lesson.

  “Gosh, Hayley, I’m sorry but I really gotta be going…”

  “Can you identify the other two men?”

  “Of course, I can. Ernesto Miranda, my sniper team partner, is one. And Eugene Davis. He was in Tommy’s company and probably your dad’s best buddy. Good Marine.”

  Hayley jots down the names in a small notebook. Over the phone, Hicks continues talking, unprompted and somewhat nervously. His agitation seems beyond his control. As he talks, Hayley considers a strong possibility the combat veteran suffers from post-traumatic stress.

  “Ernesto and me were assigned to Tommy and Eugene’s unit, Alpha Company, First Battalion, Seventh Marine Regiment. We were pretty popular, to tell you the truth. Everybody likes a sniper team on overwatch, know what I mean? We saw some shit in Anbar, excuse my French.”

  “I was in the army, sir,” Hayley says, dismissing Hicks’s flimsy attempt at decorum.

  “You never thought about joining the corps?”

  “I wanted to serve in combat arms, and the Marines seemed a less likely opportunity for that.”

  “No longer the case!” Hicks says with pride.

  “Do you know where I can find Mr. Davis or Mr. Miranda now, sir?”

  “Both in Arlington, I’m sad to say. Gene was killed in action less than a month after Tommy. Ernesto, car crash about two years back, in Oklahoma City.”

  Hayley nods, taking a beat before asking her next question. “Can you tell me about the day my father died?”

  “The day he died?” His voice sounds distant, as if h
e’d lowered the phone away from his mouth.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What do the brass hats have to say about all of that?”

  “I’m curious what you have to say, sir. And I’m having trouble hearing you now. Can you—?”

  Hicks’s voice is louder and more emphatic. “Did you read the battle report? Did they give the family that much?”

  Hayley files away Hicks’s use of “the” rather than “your.”

  “Yes. I’ve read the report. Years ago, when I was at Fort Hood. There wasn’t much to it. Second Battle for Fallujah. The date. Contractor Bridge. KIA. That was about it.”

  “That’s all, huh?”

  She can feel the rush of blood under her skin. A quickness of breath. The anger. There has always been that. And Hicks’s brittle evasiveness is doing nothing to mollify it.

  “You were there, sir. You must know something more than what’s in the official battle report.”

  “Hayley, I really wish I could help. But I wasn’t there. Ernesto and me were tasked to a different unit that day. We were all on the same operation, infiltrating the city, sector by sector, gunning after fleeing enemy forces. By mid-November, it was mostly a mopping up exercise. Almost every day we would stumble on pockets of resistance. It was a hot mess, ya know? Lotta confusion. After ten days straight of fighting, we were all bone tired. Tommy’s unit was sweeping a block just to the west of our unit. I heard the explosions. We all did. By the time we got over there, well…”