The last book he listened to from start to finish was a gift from Kipling, a collection of poems from the Great War compiled in the late sixties, read by actors who were famous at that time, all of them English and all of them active, public supporters of Americans protesting the war in Vietnam. And yet they had all agreed to donate any proceeds from the tape’s sales to veterans. “Do you think it’s strange,” Jason had asked Kipling, “that this is antiwar art, but the benefits will go to those who fought the war?” And Kipling had said, “It’s about the poems.” He also told Jason he had bought it on eBay for four dollars, so he doubted much benefit had accrued to the vets.
Should he have told his mother he was leaving? He had tried to sleep, but once in his bed, he started to feel anxious, like he was losing time. The bed didn’t quite fit right anymore. Was this place still his home? For how long? The choice quickly became simple: either drive now, or pray yourself to sleep, only to wake up too soon, eat some cereal, hate goodbye, and then take half a day driving. He decided it was better just to go. They had had their time together. She had seen that he was whole and unchanged. He had artfully avoided talking about anything too pressing. And he would be home for Christmas. He would be home to see the snow on the trees.
After Vanessa Redgrave reads Rupert Brooke, Jason ejects the CD. He sets the dial to cheap pop songs for the duration of the drive. The light is starting to come up.
INFIL
DOWNTOWN WILMINGTON, DELAWARE,
MAY 11, 2011
If you blink on the drive to the train station, the landscape shifts, from horse country to suburbs. Blink again, and you’re in an inner city. In the tall buildings bankers signed contracts and insurance brokers parsed their actuarial tables, minding the arc of loss. Outside the station the men in navy suits walked very fast, but the smokers, forced into exile outside under law, lingered. It was an odd combination of rush and stray.
Sam had driven fast, so fast that Sara was sure they’d be pulled over. He navigated her city’s streets with the confidence of a native, although he’d never been there; she had a vague impression he was watching the GPS more than he was watching the road, opting for back streets and quick diversions away from upcoming red lights—driving intelligently, as opposed to simply following the road, which was what most people did, certainly what she did. She looked at his hands. He held his left on the wheel and moved his right back and forth between the gearshift and her keys, twisting them around his finger. She was afraid he might rip them right out of the ignition but didn’t want to say so. She didn’t want to say anything.
Her keychain was a gold orb, the size of a golf ball. Engraved with a world map, it had two tiny stones, almost imperceptibly tiny diamonds; one marking Mecca, and one marking Rome. It was a gift from David not long before he’d disappeared, one whose meaning she’d never cared to ask after. She simply loved it because it was so unusual, and so precious. Jason had played with it as a child, displacing it from its chain and rolling it along the floor, like a die.
“Eleven eleven,” Sara says.
“Eleven eleven?” asks Sam.
“Eleven eleven: that’s the number of my train,” she says.
“Eleven eleven eleven, like the Armistice,” Sam says.
“Right. The side car armistice.”
“Side car?”
“The French forced the Germans to sign in the forest, in the railway car. Was it … the Fôret Compiègne?”
“Can’t say I remember,” Sam says, and he laughs.
“Yes, well, it was eleven a.m. Paris time, that was the third eleven in ‘eleven eleven eleven.’ And the French forced the surrender—”
“Not technically a surrender.”
“Well, right, but they forced the Germans to sign the agreement in the railcar, in the forest.”
“I remember the car, but not the forest.”
“Well, the forest was famous. It was a place for Napoleon’s formal hunting parties. Napoleon I.”
“What’s a formal hunting party?”
“You know, linens on the tables and beaters for the birds.”
“Better guns,” Sam says.
“Yes, better guns.”
They pull into the parking lot in the station, and Sara tries to protest, asking Sam to let her out at the curb, and leave her, but he insists on coming inside. He wants to walk her onto the train, be sure she has a seat. They get her ticket, but they still have awhile to wait. He buys her a coffee in the shop, where Mother’s Day cards are on sale for half price. They find a place to sit and Sara leans back in the small plastic chair, pulling her knees into her chest for a stretch. She’s anxious not to get upset in front of him before she says goodbye. The train is delayed.
“Yes,” she says, “formal hunting parties. The kings then even had a position on their staff, something like le grand veneur—”
“I failed French.”
“Well, it was like chief of hunting. It was basically a cabinet-level position, with better pay.”
“Just to run the hunts?”
“Just to run the hunts. And, you know, coordinate the army of staff required to run them well. And the best hunts were in that forest.”
“And then they caught the Germans there.”
“They didn’t catch them. They invited them. To sign.”
“Invited—like to a party.”
“Yes. But the Germans got their revenge,” Sara says.
“How was that?”
“With another party. The second armistice at Compiègne. Nineteen forty. Hitler forced the French to return to the same spot. He sat in Foch’s chair. That’s when they turned over their freedom; after that, the Germans held northern France.”
“And the car?”
“Hitler brought it home, showed it off in his garden as a trophy. He had the entire rest of the Armistice site destroyed.”
“Wow.”
“Yes, he didn’t fool around.”
“Well, I guess that was his choice. But after the war—”
“After the war the French made a new carriage, returned it to the forest, and rebuilt the site as a kind of shrine.”
“Have you been there?”
“No. But I—we had a picture of that railcar in our house at one point, a gift from a German friend. I can’t even remember the circumstances, exactly. There was some celebration happening there. We’d been invited—or Jason’s father had been invited, and I was given the chance to tag along. But didn’t.” She looks around the station; she used to take this train once a week. She used to know the porters’ names, and they’d save seats for her when she ran late. “You know the Armistice—the first one—went into effect at eleven a.m., but they’d signed it earlier that morning. They must have been up all night.”
“Yeah?” Sam says, looping the orb’s long chain into a knot, then untying it—with one hand.
“Interesting only insofar as there wasn’t much art in the agreement. It was basically a wholesale destruction of the German forces—and economy.”
“No wonder they wanted to—”
“Make the French pay.”
“Yes.”
“The symbolism of it all is …”
“Is what?”
“It seems like such a different time.”
“There’s still a lot of symbolism in diplomacy.”
“Railcars?”
“I can’t think of the contemporary equivalent of railcars off the top of my head, but I’ll give it some thought.”
When her train is called, Sara again asks Sam not to escort her to the platform, but again he insists. He has his arm around her, and he wants to walk the length of the train to find a car that looks quiet, a tall order when boarding an Acela (the fast train, the only train with open seats at this time) on the Northeast Corridor at rush hour. They find space in the car closest to the café, and Sam walks onto the train, still holding on to her.
“Please, you’ll get stuck here,” she says.
“Are you sure
you don’t want me to come?”
“You don’t have a ticket,” she says.
And he gives her a look that says, Not the biggest problem I’ve ever solved. “Are you sure you have your ticket?” he asks.
“I have it.”
“Passport?”
“Yes.”
“And—”
“Sam, I’m more pulled together than I look. Slightly, but still.”
“Are you sure?”
“I promise.”
“Bring him home.”
“I will.”
“I’ll be here.”
“I’ll call you.”
Sam looks like he has something to say, but he does not move.
“Sam. You okay.” She opens her arms for a hug. She wants him to believe that she believes.
“Facebook,” he says into her ear.
“What,” she says, and laughs.
“The contemporary equivalent of railway cars. Facebook.” And just as the conductor moves toward them, Sam slips away and doesn’t pause on the platform. He’s off down the stairs and disappears.
The train is hot; the air conditioning tends to work sporadically this time of year, so a space of three hot days can make the cars compress with stale air. Sara used to like to walk the length of the train during these trips, moving between cars and catching the change in temperature in the spaces where each connects to each. That change was especially bracing in winter. Afraid she might fall asleep, she moves to the café car to get another coffee. This is where she sees the Marines.
There are five of them. They’re large, six feet three at least, to a man. They’re drinking beers—Heineken, in bottles. She empties half her coffee cup in the trash and fills the rest with milk. And then she stands by the window and eavesdrops. They are talking about girls and about their plans for their holiday.
“The critical aspect of armistice is that no one surrenders,” David had said, after that invitation had arrived in the mail. “Armistice is not surrender. Armistice is simply a cessation of hostilities. From the Latin arma, meaning weapons, and stadium—stopping. Stopping arms.” And he told Sara the story of the couple giving the party, two people who had fallen in love, then fallen out of love, then fallen back in again. He was French and she was German, hence the tiny brass railcars they would hand out as favors, one of which David brought back for Jason, who’d added it to his arsenal. He taught the boy to say “armistice,” which sounded like “I miss this” in toddlerese. “Mommy’s going to sign my armistice agreement,” he’d said to their son, lying on her floor, pushing the toy back and forth.
Sara moves back through the cars and finds her seat, although it doesn’t really matter where she sits back down. Everyone else on the train looks highly occupied, phones and laptops plugged into side sockets. She has her phone but no computer, nothing to read, not even a paper. She closes her eyes and considers sleep, but her mind won’t comply. Her mind wants to remain on high alert, while her heart wants the entire system to shut down until she can open her eyes and hold her boy.
Out the window, the light changes to the kind of bright dark you can get in late spring and early summer, still light enough to drive around without lights but not quite light enough for reading without assistance. Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington: having lived in such close proximity to these places, it sometimes amazed her how little she knew them. At the station in D.C., she thought, she would stop and get something to eat. There was never anything edible on airplanes, and she knew they were in for a long flight, perhaps several flights. She would buy something to eat and something to read. She had the same feeling in her stomach she’d had each time she knew Jason was about to come home; the feeling of anticipation and relief that before long she would be laughing with him as they had always done together, and hearing what was new in his life. It was the feeling that coupled the ease of being with family with the comfort of no longer being alone.
He would leave again, but at least for a while he’d be home, and this time she’d be able to take care of him. She thinks if he is injured badly, she can always organize a bedroom on the first floor of the house, off the living room. There is a porch there but she could move out all the furniture and bring his bed downstairs. She could ask someone to install a television for him; he would have a view over the whole yard. It was a very pretty view, a therapeutic view. And if needed, for a while, she could sleep on the couch in the living room, to be near him. She would have to think of a list of new things to cook, things he might not expect but would like. New things, alongside his old favorites: shirred eggs, pepper steaks, BLTs with avocado. Maybe the neighbor would market for her if she sent a list, by e-mail, on the way home. Yes, she would make a list for the neighbor to send, and perhaps new sheets for his bed, and some extra pillows. And ice. They were forever running out of ice and perhaps she should have a new ice machine installed.
These were the things on her mind as the train pulled into the station.
There was a man on the platform holding a sign with her name; he had a cart to expedite the trip. “I can walk,” she says, but he insists, and so she sits, like an invalid, in the backseat of the little car while he drives her past the shops and restaurants and through the evening crush. At the entrance, looking up, she sees the godfather standing by his car. He looks concerned until he spots her, then his mouth breaks open into a wide smile. The last time she’d seen him in person was just after Christmas. He’d undergone another breakup and, as was his habit, had come north for Sara’s solace and a home-cooked meal. They’d stayed up late talking about life and how odd it was that they had both become such loners, though in different ways. They talked about the musical chairs on the Hill and where he might go next should he leave his current role. They talked about today, and about the future, following the unspoken rule of their bond, which was not to dwell on their strange pasts, the person who bonded them and who—lover to her, mentor to him—had left them both emotionally in the lurch and unmoored.
Of all the godfathers, this was the one who had held on and worked hard to stay involved in Jason’s life after David died. He was closest in age to Sara, so it made sense. And absent a family of his own, he could prioritize hers. He would never forget an occasion and would move heaven and earth as needed not to miss a game or even, in the rare case, a doctor’s visit. He might well be the reason she’d never married, as he’d fulfilled just enough of the spousal functions. And he filled them with creativity and fun; his default setting was wit. He was handsome but too ambitious to put much stock in something he would consider as superficial as appearance, too consumed with being identified as other things, like wise.
He was always missing a button on his shirt or wearing a stained tie, little wrecks that humanized the maniacal precision he applied to all other aspects of this life. And while he had dipped in and out of a lifelong dalliance with recreational drugs, as drugs waned in popularity he fought harder to control his addictions. Sara periodically offered alternatives (“Have you tried peanut butter? Or bicycling?”), but as any addict knows, substitution is not the solution. Nor, in his case, was prayer. Or abstinence. Failing to kick it was his one flaw, the one thing that kept him away from elected office, and likely the one thing that kept him away from the altar. But it was a flaw that, ironically, he held on to like a great achievement, a flaw he nurtured even as it ran right up against the things he professed to want most in life. Discovered with drugs in the Senate cloakroom once, he’d been told to keep his habits off the Hill.
They had become like siblings. This was a great relief to her, as she’d never had a sibling, and a great novelty to him, the last of seven sons. She felt entirely at ease around him. He was the one person with whom she could make this trip and retain her sanity.
He gave her a long hug and then pulled back and looked at her. Her eyes were red and tired, but her affect was as always: aloof, thoughtful. It was this affect that had always put some people off and drew others in. Those close to her knew
: it wasn’t aloofness, it was simply shyness.
“Do you have a raincoat,” he said.
“Yes,” she said, holding it up.
“Sweater?”
“Yes.”
“Pulse?” he said, folding his hands around her wrist.
“Yes,” she said, and smiled.
“On y va,” he said, and opened the door of the car for her to duck inside.
INK
VIRGINIA BEACH, VIRGINIA,
NOVEMBER 2010
Jason walks into his Team CO’s office. The elder officer has a photograph up on the screen of his laptop: a series of fire trucks, ten or twelve of them, parked perpendicularly along a leafy suburban street, their ladders lifted and—hung across and between each pair of facing trucks—an American flag. Looking down the line was like looking into an Escher print; the way the flags were arranged made them seem to go on forever, a neat trick of the eye. The flags that day had been thirty feet by thirty feet each, to give some sense of the scale of the scene.
Jason has seen this picture before. It is from a funeral procession given for an operator KIA in 2005, an operator who risked his life to save the lives of his colleagues (only one of whom would survive), and who went on to receive the Medal of Honor posthumously—the fourth of five MOH recipients from the NSW community, two of whom came from these latest wars, the other three from Vietnam. The medal was created in 1862, when war was more central to the culture’s psyche, and not only because it was occurring on our own ground. Six hundred twenty-five thousand lives were lost in Civil War combat when the U.S. population was at 31.4 million. Those dead were 1.988 percent of the population. For the Global War on Terror, to date, that same number stood at 0.002 percent. And it was not standing still. Jason remembers Kipling reading out loud one night, “Due to the nature of its criteria, the Medal of Honor is often awarded posthumously.” Its ribbon is blue, like water.
What happened that day in ’05, in Kunar Province, is well known within the community; it’s another celebrated story of heroism, battle, and courage, of how wars are fought now against enemies who don’t always look like threats, in places where you wouldn’t want to honeymoon. It’s also emblematic of how operators don’t leave their men behind. That day was a tragedy that involved a moral lesson. Across Teams, guys would argue and analyze the story of the goat herders and their goats, and how the guys that day—there were only four of them—had to decide whether to slaughter the goats, and the herders, or let them go and risk that they talk and betray the operators’ presence to the Taliban. The vote that day came down on the side of conscience. It came down on the side of the herders, who were civilians. You cannot kill civilians.
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