Conrad wrote back:
Hey, Anderson, congratulations on the job. Any job sounds good, also the volunteering. I know what you mean about missing Iraq, weird, isn’t it? But we’re here now. It will take a while for things to feel normal, but all this will get better. Stay in touch. Let me know if you want to talk. Farrell.
Molinos wrote him from Anbar Province:
Hey, sir, wanted to let you know that we hit 120 degrees yesterday. I know how you love the heat, thought I would let you know. Otherwise all okay, LT. We are kicking ass over here. Semper Fi. Molinos.
Conrad answered everyone. It felt strange, writing to the men who were re-deployed. They were still right in the thick of it, IEDs and 110 degrees. (It wasn’t 120, everyone lied about the heat.) He was here, living on the third floor, in the same bedroom he’d had since he was fourteen. It gave him a lift to hear from them. He’d gone to the newsstand yesterday and chosen a stack of comics, mostly the heroes, but a couple of other ones for variety, Archie, and a strange one called Boxers he’d never seen before. He’d stood in line at the post office and sealed and addressed the mailing carton to Bradley. He wondered what the quarters were like: mostly they bivouacked in an existing building. Could be anything, a school, a factory, an unused garage.
There was an email from Captain Glover, his CO during the final months he’d been in service. Glover was just checking in, he said, to hear how everyone was. He asked what Conrad’s plans were.
Conrad wrote back:
All quiet, sir. Everyone good. I’m doing recon and training: looking at grad schools and running.
After emails Conrad checked the military blogs.
He read them every day. They were news from his tribe, living filaments connecting him to the life he had known. It felt natural to read them but also oddly shameful. A few days earlier he’d been reading one down in the library when Marshall came into the room. Conrad found himself clicking away from the site as though it were porn. As though this were a secret part of his life, not part of his actual life.
He read them avidly. There were hundreds of them. Some were online journals kept by people on deployment day by day in-country. Some were political forums conducted by people in the States. Some were kept by military wives and mothers. The responses were often volatile, digressive, and full of rage. The rage came mostly from vets back home; discussions usually turned ugly, no matter what the subject was. Anything would trigger it.
He checked a blog run by Joe Reese, the father of an Army sergeant in Baghdad. Reese was levelheaded and well informed, and the blog was like a forum. He insisted that people be civil, and he deleted comments that were not. Today he’d raised the question of the rules of engagement: Under what circumstances should a soldier use deadly force?
The subject was instantly inflammatory, but so was everything on the subject of the war. Everyone had something to say about the U.S. presence in Iraq. Everyone was an expert, everyone felt strongly, and everyone thought everyone else was full of shit.
Joe, I’m glad you raised this issue, because any institution that requires young men to kill other people in cold blood is asking for trouble. We are brutalizing our soldiers and creating murderers in our midst.
Joe replied that soldiers had to carry out a mission:
If people were shooting at them, they must be allowed to shoot back. Civilians don’t want to think about lethal force. Yet it must play a part in war.
There was a technological pause, and then a response appeared on the screen:
Joe, I have said this before and I will say it again. The only way we can win this war is to win it. I mean establishing a full military presence there, and not any of this chikcinshit 10,000 troops. What we need to do is to bring our full pwers to bear and that means not only Hellfire missils but curtain bombing if not nuclear. We have to make clear to the entire population that they have no choice in this matter.
Yeah, good, thought Conrad. Great. If you kill everyone in the fucking country, the war will be over. That makes sense.
Someone else wrote in:
The soldier who shot a wounded enemy should be court-martialed as an example. That is exactly what war does, it brutalizes our men. Like my lie. My lae.
The soldier in question had been caught on tape months earlier. He’d shot a wounded man who was lying on the floor. An embedded journalist had caught it on film, and the press went nuts.
Shooting the wounded enemy happened all the time, it was called double tapping. If you shot someone in combat and didn’t kill him and he was lying near you, wounded, and if he might still have a weapon on him or was anywhere near one, you shot him again. You didn’t want him grabbing his pistol, or even a piece of rubble, and whacking you while your back was turned. You shot him a second time to make sure he wouldn’t shoot you first. You were still playing by the rules that required you to shoot him the first time. That was what combat meant: lethal force. It meant killing the enemy.
Under ideal circumstances, of course, you did something else with a wounded enemy: you put him in zips and a blindfold and tied him up in a corner. But during a firefight, circumstances were rarely ideal. In combat, your responsibility was to the safety of yourself and your men. In combat you shot him, maybe twice.
But that wasn’t what had happened in this case. The soldier had fucked up.
It had been bad. The man on the floor was not an insurgent, but a wounded civilian awaiting medical attention. The medics had treated the wounded prisoners and were coming back for him. He was waiting for the corpsmen. The soldier had come into the room, seen him lying on the floor, and shot him point-blank. It was very bad, very fucked-up.
Everyone had a response.
AlphaWarrior92 blamed everything on the liberal press:
It’s the fucking media who put all this stuff out there, they are blowing up everything out of all proportion. It is they who are responsible for the deaths that occur over there, day after day, and they should fucking well take the blame.
Thunderhead188 disagreed:
This is a tyypical claim by someone who knows very little. Do you really think the liberal press is out in Fallujah setting IEDs? Or would that be the mujahideen? Get your head out of your butt and put the blame where it really lays.
Alpha replied:
You are pretending not to know what Im saying. The press CNN and Time and all of them are bloodsuckers, they only want to stir things up. They have been on that story of the sergeant shooting that wounded soldier now for six months, too long, they should find something else to write about. Enough is enough.
Thunderhead answered:
January to February is one month, March to April is two, April–May is three, May–June is four. That’s four months, not six. Stay in school.
Before Alpha could reply, Geostrategist185 appeared. He identified himself as a military historian who couldn’t give his ID for security reasons:
I WILL WRITE THE REST OF THIS COMM IN MILITARY CAPS. YOU ALL DO NOT HAVE AN INFORMED VIEW OF THIS FROM A GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE. YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND HOW THE INSURGENCY HAS PLANNED THERE LONG-TERM STRATEGIES. I HAVE HAD LONG EXPERIENCE AT THE TOP LEVELS (OF WHICH MORE LATER) AND KNOW MANY OF THE PEOPLE INVOLVED AND THEY ARE PLAYING A LONG AND CAREFULLY CALIBRATED GAME, WHICH PUTS THE US INEXORABLY IN A LOSE-LOSE SITUATION. WE WILL HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO BE BLED DRY BY THIS LONG-TERM WAR, WHICH IS EXACTLY THEIR INTENTION. YOU PROBABLY DO NOT KNOW THAT MOST OF THEIR TOP-LEVEL AUTHORITIES WENT TO SANDHURST, AND STUDIED MILITARY HISTORY AND TACTICS FROM THE BRITS. I WAS THERE.
The comments went wild, many of them deleted immediately by Joe. Strong and colorful language was used, and many suggestions were made about Geostrategist’s bodily parts and how they might best be deployed.
Shortly afterward Joe announced that Geostrategist had lied about his identity and was now banned from the site. Turns out he’s a troll, wrote the blogger, and he’ll have to make his little trollish way somewhere else.
But everyone was still enraged, e
ven after the troll had been banished.
It was interesting that the post had generated so much anger; Conrad wondered how much of it was due to the patronizing tone and how much to the all-capital letters.
Was there more rage on the Internet than anywhere else? Or was it everywhere now? Was rage the new black? Or was it only in the military? He’d seen a post someone who was just out of EAS had made. His New Year’s resolution was “Not to stab someone this week.”
The blogs made Conrad feel alive: angry at the fucking idiots, supportive of the smart posters, but engaged and back in the world. He thought about reenlisting himself: Why stand on the sidelines when the life he knew was still going on? For hours he drifted through the blogs. It was surprising how quickly the time passed.
He went downstairs and made lunch, then went back upstairs. He checked email, glanced at a few blogs to see if anyone had gone nuts online, and then began to look at graduate schools.
This was part of his mission. It was a way to start to focus, even if he wasn’t ready to choose one. He began scrolling through the sites, ready to look everywhere: law, political science, international relations. Actually, they all sounded pretty much the same:
Offering a professional education that simultaneously adheres to the highest standards of scholarship and takes a practical approach to training students for international leadership.
That bullshit language. The phrases meant something serious, also they didn’t. Excellence and honor, duty and courage—those things were real. But there was another part of the reality, and what did these phrases have to do with the pattern on the wall, the boy in his pajamas, Olivera, whispering?
The two things seemed unconnected, but they moved together in his mind as though they were caught up in an invisible tide. What’s the first thing you feel when you shoot a civilian? The recoil from your rifle.
He scrolled through the descriptions, clicking through the pages about the schools. Our campus. Our faculty. Our program. He looked at the application forms. One problem was that he’d need to ask people for recommendations. The idea of getting in touch with his old professors—reconnecting in that hearty, friendly tone—made him nervous. How was he going to translate his own history into something that made sense here? He knew the schools were real, but they didn’t seem real. His head felt as if it were slowly being squeezed by a vise.
He clicked on the section on one of the sites that showed the campus. Looking at the old brick buildings, the broad green lawns and big trees, Conrad thought of Ali. It was possible that Ali had made his way out of Iraq. It was possible that he was here. There were government programs for people like him who had worked for the U.S. forces. It was entirely possible. Ali was smart, and it was possible that he’d end up at a graduate school. Looking at the majestic trees with their low, sweeping limbs, Conrad imagined walking among them and seeing Ali. Conrad would show him around, and they’d walk across the lawns. Some of the interpreters did get out. He could be here.
There were a lot of schools. A lot of fields. All right, they all made him feel as if he were crawling into a black box, but this was just the first day of his search.
When he turned off his computer, he sat down on the floor. Exercise was said to help maintain your mental health, and he was going to do whatever he had to. He did push-ups and crunches and mountain climbers, which were like push-ups, only it was running in place horizontally.
He put on a work shirt and went down to start the clearing. He got a bottle of water, and in the garage he found tools: work gloves, the big clippers, a pruning saw, rake, and shovel. He liked hefting them, liked the feel of useful objects.
He climbed up through the tall, silky grass of the meadow. Along the crest of the hill ran a tumbledown stone wall, fringed with hickory, wild cherry, ash. On the other side of the crest was the wide back field, two acres sloping down to the woods. An old split-rail fence outlined the space; pressing against it was the leafy crowd of trees. The slanting field was scattered with curving mounds of foliage: brambles and bittersweet had invaded the grass.
Conrad carried the tools to the northwest corner and set them down. He’d work his way across.
The nearest mound was made of bittersweet. It was a ravenous vine, its long waving tendrils snaking into the air and weaving through the grass. Conrad took hold of a shoot at the base and tugged, pulling up a nest of bright yellow roots. The color was surprising, almost fluorescent. They were damp, with dark soil clinging to them. He ripped up more, each surface shoot leading to a long fleshy string of yellow root, burrowing under the soil. He used the shovel, biting into the hard, dry sod. The roots were everywhere; the whole field was infested. He began to sweat, feeling good. He grabbed another piece at the base and yanked it up. The long, taut line of it rose from the ground like an anchor rope from the waves.
“Come on, you fucker,” he said cheerfully.
The vine snapped off near the base, and he picked up the shovel again. The air was hot and still. He worked slowly, yanking out the long green wands and the yellow root clusters and tossing them into a big, messy pile. At first the heart-shaped leaves were green and fresh, but they wilted quickly in the heat. He worked steadily, stopping to drink, wiping his face with the heel of his hand. He liked seeing the mass of green mounting higher and higher. He kept on through the afternoon, until the shadows broke over the crest of the hill, spilling down the field and marking the grass with twilight.
This was how he’d do it, how he’d come back. Step by step, root by root.
13
For years the Farrells had rented a house in Cape Cod for the first two weeks in August. When the children were small, the whole family had gone together. As the children grew older and took summer jobs and went on trips, their visits were shortened and interrupted. But Marshall and Lydia always went during the same time each year, and the children came when they could.
This year, Ollie texted Conrad: Ur coming, rite?
The house was an old saltbox cottage, small and shabby, with peeling walls and mossy shingles. It stood on a rise overlooking a small pond. Behind the house was a field, and beyond that, pinewoods. At the edge of the woods stood an old water tower the children were forbidden to climb. Beyond the woods was an abandoned cranberry bog, big flat terraces bordered by narrow ditches.
The house faced a quiet road lined with wild beach plum bushes. Across the road were sandy fields of sparse grass flecked with dark juniper trees. The house stood at the top of a little rise. Below it was the barn, musty and cobwebby, full of the sour smell of bats. Narrow haylofts were on either side of the main space, and a single stall. The floorboards were soft and crumbling. A rope swing hung in the open doorway.
In Conrad’s childhood summers, stepping out the kitchen door and letting the screen bang behind you was to enter a landscape of infinite possibility. The air was buoyant and salty, the grass wiry underfoot. Everything beckoned: the dense tangle of honeysuckle leading down to the pond, the hot, tarry road, the water tower among the trees. Nearby was the beach, salt water slapping against you as you waded into the cold, bracing churn. The hot sun, the limitless blue sky.
He texted back: 4 sure.
Years earlier, playing some game, he had chased Ollie down the stairs, trying to catch him. The stairs were steep, nearly vertical, and Conrad’s fingers grazed Ollie’s shoulder as Ollie tripped and fell. He thundered to the bottom, arms and legs in confusion. For a moment he lay still on the floor; then he sat up and looked at Conrad. His face was crimsoned, blood spreading over his mouth and chin. He said, “You killed me.” For a moment Conrad had thought he had.
It was only a bloody nose. Lydia made Ollie lie down on the kitchen floor while she pressed a cold washcloth to his face, and the bleeding stopped. But after that, during any game, Ollie would give Conrad a zombie look. “You killed me,” he would intone.
“Yes,” Conrad would answer, “I killed you, and if you don’t watch out, I will kill you again.” Then they started str
uggling again, laughing and choking. Conrad was bigger, and he almost always won.
In the sandy meadows across the road the boys made a fort in a tree-ringed hollow. As they were digging a trench, they were attacked by streams of tiny stinging red ants crawling up their legs inside their jeans. They yelled, yanking off their pants. They slapped and scraped at themselves, jumping and shouting and laughing. “Oh, jeez! Oh, jeez!” they screamed, hopping about in their underpants. “Oh, jeezus! My nuts! My nuts!” They never went back to the fort after that.
The road was made of thick, sandy tar, and in the hot sun it melted, making shiny little black puddles. Conrad and Ollie made oily pellets from these and threw them at each other, dodging behind the beach plum bushes. They used the unripe beach plums as weapons, stripping them from the pungent leaves and pelting each other, laughing.
* * *
They all drove up from Katonah. Jenny and Ollie went with Marshall, Conrad with Lydia. Early start, Lydia had told them all firmly the night before.
By eight o’clock it was already hot. The early sun was reflecting off the white clapboards. The inlaid pebbles in the driveway gave off heat underfoot, and the willows hung straight and motionless. They loaded the cars, walking back and forth from the house, carrying suitcases, canvas bags, cardboard boxes of food. Conrad liked having a mission. He strode back and forth, carrying the largest things he could find. In the back seat of Lydia’s car was the cat carrier holding Murphy, silent and resentful, her pupils huge with alarm.
When the cars were loaded, everyone stood outside waiting for Lydia. She was famously the last to leave. Resisting departure, she went through the rooms in a last-minute fury, turning off switches, locking windows, carrying things from place to place, writing notes, performing small tasks that could not be delegated or even explained.
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