by Trent Reedy
My father talked about not knowing much about life, but so much of what he’d said throughout his letters and videos made perfect sense to me. All my life people had called him a hero, and in recent years, I’d wondered more and more what that meant. But if persistence and never giving up was one requirement for being a hero, then my dad surely qualified. There he was, miserable, and stuck in the war even longer than he thought he would be, and what did he do? He kept soldiering on. He didn’t give up. And right then I knew that I couldn’t either.
I moved the cursor over the remaining video file and took a deep breath. My finger shook on the mouse. There was only one final video to watch now.
In the video window, Dad leaned forward, reaching out toward me. He didn’t seem to be in the guard tower. Instead his M16 leaned against a desk behind him, and a small American flag and a calendar with the days crossed off in red marker hung on the wall. I clicked the play button.
Dad smiled at me as he sat down in a plastic chair. “Hello, Michael. Today is August twenty-eighth, 2005.”
I paused the video and sat staring at him frozen on the screen. My heart hammered so heavy in my chest that I could hear and feel it up through my neck and ears. This video had been made on the very last day of my father’s life. I knew this and he didn’t. How could I watch this, knowing he was destined to die right after filming it? How could I not watch it?
I reached out to the mouse and moved the cursor over the play button again. Even as I thought it, I felt stupid, but somehow it seemed to me that if I clicked the mouse and let the video play, it would be like letting Dad use up the last few moments of his life. Like if I could keep the image still like this, he would be okay. He still had more to say. He was alive. Playing the video would be letting events take their course, events that led to his death.
But that was dumb. Illogical. I clicked the mouse.
“I stopped counting when our tour here was extended, so I don’t know how many days I have left.” He looked around him. “This is my room in the barracks. Not much to look at, really. I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to make another video. It’s been a rough month. The Afghan National Army soldiers who train near our base got hit pretty bad when they were on patrol up near Bala Boluk.
“We provided security for the presidential election back in October. Now we’re busy getting ready for Afghanistan’s vote for parliament. It’s pretty great helping these people get back on their feet after they’ve been at war for so long. Now they’ll get to vote for whoever they want to represent them in their government.”
He shook his head. “Of course, the Taliban hate voting and especially the idea of women voting. Basically, they want to destroy everything that is good, and they’re threatening to cause all kinds of trouble. There have already been a few bombings near the polling places. New death threats seem to come all the time.” He shrugged. “We just stay alert and do our best.”
Dad reached down off camera. “I have something for you.” He sat up, holding the faded tan bag with the two red-bull patches sewn on the flap. “I’ve been using this bag throughout my time here in Afghanistan. It’s great for carrying maps and notebooks and pens and things like that. I went ahead and sewed on these two patches. This is the patch for the mighty Red Bull of the Thirty-fourth Infantry Division. See?” He showed me the brown-and-tan version of the patch on his desert uniform. “This is my insignia, except the ones on the bag belong on the dress green uniform that we only put on about once a year for inspection.
“There’s also this.” He held up his hand, showing a big silver ring with a square red stone in the center. He slipped the ring off his finger. “I’ve been thinking a lot, and I want you to have this.” He turned the Army bag around and opened the flap. “I’m going to put it in this small pocket.” He slid the ring inside and then reached off camera for a moment, returning with a threaded needle. “Then I’ll sew the pocket shut with real loose stitching.” He was quiet for a long time while he poked the needle through the fabric of the bag and then pulled the thread through. “I never thought I’d sew this much, but the Army has had me sewing on all sorts of name tapes and patches on my hats and things.” He produced a jackknife from offscreen and cut the thread. “There. Done.”
He put the needle and thread aside, flicked his knife closed, and then placed it off camera. He held the bag up so I could see where he’d just been sewing. “So if you’re watching this, and my plan for you to get this bag and ring on your birthday has worked out, then you should find this last present from me inside this pouch.”
I paused the video and opened the bag in my lap. Sure enough, the loosely sewn pouch was there. I grabbed the fabric and ripped hard at the stitches until I’d broken through. The metal inside felt cool in my fingers. I pulled the ring out and slipped it onto my finger. It fit perfectly.
My father was truly the last person to touch this ring. Now I wore it. Under the center of the red stone was an emblem of a golden castle, and on each side of the ring were the Red Bull insignia, just like the patches on the bag. Arched over the top of the stone was the word Essayons, and in a curve around the bottom was the phrase Let Us Try.
I resumed the video.
“The castle under the red stone is the emblem of the Army Engineers. That word, Essayons, is the engineer motto, meaning ‘Let Us Try.’ When I’ve been scared or when I didn’t know what to do here in the war, I’ve looked at this ring. It kind of reminds me of the Cowboy Way, you know. Don’t know how to do it? Not sure if it will work? Scared to get started? Well, let us try!
“That’s a motto I hope you’ll take to heart as you’re getting more into high school, this amazing time when you get to choose who you want to be and what you want to do with your life. I hope you’ll remember this. High school may be the best or the worst time of your life, but you will never completely leave it behind. You can have a lifetime of regrets, or good memories that go with you through the years. You write your own story. It’s up to you to make it a good one.”
Dad sat back in his chair. “There’s a big painting on the wall in the airport at our main airbase in Bagram. It’s the silhouettes of three soldiers with a quote underneath that I wrote down.” He flipped through some pages in a small tan notebook and then read, “ ‘This is a tribute to all who have fallen during Operation Enduring Freedom. Live a life worthy of their sacrifice.’ ”
Dad smiled and looked out of the screen at me. “I guess that says it all, Michael. If you’re watching this, then it’s too late to do anything for me, but there’s still time for you to do all those great things I always hoped you’d do. That’s your next mission from me, maybe the biggest mission of all. Take your chances, be bold, live a good life, and help others to do the same. I hope —”
There was a loud clanging sound. Dad rolled his eyes and sighed. “Hang on,” he said. “Someone’s at the door. Come in!” he called and looked to the left. “What is it, Mac?”
There were sounds off camera and then someone else walked into the shot. “Sorry, Sergeant, but I’m supposed to come get you. They just called for QRF. We have to roll out.”
I stood up and paused to freeze the image. The other guy. Mac. MacDonald. At first I didn’t recognize him. He looked so much younger. But after playing the video through again, listening to the guy’s voice and looking at him closely, I couldn’t deny it.
The guy in the background, the soldier with my father on my father’s very last day, was Derek Harris.
This was impossible. Derek had never served. He’d mentioned knowing my dad when they were in high school, but he had conveniently left out the fact that he had been with Dad in Afghanistan. What was going on here?
I played the video.
Dad pulled on his armored vest and helmet. “What do we got?” He grabbed his M16 with the big grenade launcher under the rifle barrel.
Derek threw his hands up. “Something about Taliban messing with the UN guys at a polling place they’re trying to set up.”
> Dad snapped his helmet’s chin strap into place. “Let’s go.” He headed for the door but stopped. Then he ducked down to look into the camera. “My turn for a mission,” he said. “I love you, son. Good-bye, Michael.”
“Good-bye, Dad,” I whispered.
A few minutes later, as I packed the hard drive into the bag my father had given me, I bit my lip and took deep breaths through my nose, trying to get control of myself. It was Derek all along. He had the answers to all my questions this whole time. I had to go see him.
Outside the library, I took the senior hallway as a shortcut out of the school. I didn’t want anyone to see my red eyes. Nick Rhodes came out of the bathroom with his hair wet from practice. “Hey, loser,” he said as soon as he saw me. “Oh, what’s the matter? Trouble with your raghead girlfriend?”
I stopped, my hands on the door. Dad had warned me to avoid fights — well, to avoid starting fights — unless I could find no way out of it without losing my honor. He’d also talked about and shown through his example the importance of sticking up for people. To fight or not to fight? That was the question. Right now every part of me wanted to crush this guy.
I could shove open the door and walk out, leaving that moron behind. That’s what Isma would want me to do. But could I do that and keep any honor at all?
“Hey, Mikey,” Rhodes said. “Thanks for wimping out and quitting the team.”
I remembered how that guy in Afghanistan had wanted to fight Dad and how Dad refused to get violent that day. Sullivan was one of the coolest guys I knew, and he thought Rhodes was a joke. Laura didn’t like him either. Why did I have to fight this loser to prove anything? What difference did his stupid words make?
I turned and faced him. “I feel sorry for you, Rhodes.”
He might have said something back, but I wasn’t paying attention. I rushed out the door and hurried to the Falcon. I had more important things to deal with.
As I drove up the hill toward the farm, my feelings veered among shock, excitement, and anger. Derek had served with Dad? That meant I might finally get some answers. But how could he have kept so much from me, especially when he knew how desperately I wanted to learn more about my father? That anger built into fury as I got closer and closer.
I rolled into the driveway just as Derek drove the tractor around the corner of the barn, Annie trotting alongside. He waved when he saw me. I hit the brakes and skidded to a stop right in the middle of his gravel drive, throwing open the door and jumping down as soon as I killed the engine.
Derek climbed down from the tractor. “Whoa, buddy. You’re going to get in an accident driving like —”
I held up my right hand to show him the ring. “Recognize this?”
He frowned. “You get a class ring or something?”
“It’s an Army Engineer ring. It belonged to my father.”
Derek froze right where he stood. Except for a few wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, a few flecks of gray at his temples, he looked exactly as he had in the video. “Where …” He seemed to choke on the word. He cleared his throat. “Where did you get that?”
“It came in a package with my dad’s Army bag and a hard drive with videos. You should know. You sent me the box. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Tell you what?” He pulled his cross necklace out from under his shirt and rubbed it. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You were with him on the day he died!” I shouted so loud that my voice echoed around the farm. “You were there! It’s on video. I saw it.”
“Mike, this isn’t …” He stepped back, holding out trembling hands. “I can’t —”
“I want to — I need to know what happened to my father. You were there. Tell me what happened.”
He seemed to be having trouble breathing. He bent over and rested his hand on a front tractor tire. “I don’t know what you’ve been told, but you have to understand —”
I took a few steps closer to him. “Nobody’s told me anything. Nobody will talk about it. Why won’t you tell me?”
“Mike, you have to —”
“Tell me how my father died!”
“I killed him! He’s dead because of me!” Tears welled at the bottom of Derek’s wide, wild eyes as he staggered back a few steps. “I messed up and it got your father killed! I killed him! It was my fault! My fault! My fault!”
I thought maybe I should stop right then. This was obviously very hard for him to talk about. Maybe I could ask again later. But that’s how it always was about Dad. The topic would get shut down before I ever learned anything. It had to be different this time. “Derek,” I said, “I have to know.”
He looked at me in horror as the tears rolled down his red face. He wiped his nose with the back of his hand and took a deep breath. “Okay. Okay. We were on Quick Reaction Force, QRF. They called us out. When they scrambled us like that, they didn’t waste time telling us the mission until we were rolling out in our Humvees.” He breathed so heavy that his shoulders heaved. “I was reassigned to your dad’s squad after one of their guys had to go get his appendix taken out. I was the driver for B-team’s Humvee. Your dad was alpha team leader, with his team and the lieutenant in their Humvee. We had reports that there was some kind of trouble at a polling place in this village halfway to An Daral. I don’t even remember the name of the stupid town.
“They got” — he held his hands about a foot apart — “thick walls, you know, everywhere in Afghanistan. So the streets are lined with walls on both sides. I drove the lead vehicle down a dirt street that was actually wide enough for two lanes. There was this wet spot in the road ahead, and this Afghan guy at the side of the road pointed at what looked like the muddier side, like he wanted me to drive through the muddiest part. Someone said something like, ‘We should probably drive where the local guy says it’s best. He must know the road,’ but I thought I knew better. I drove on the opposite side. In three seconds we were stuck up to the axles.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“The Afghan guy threw his hands up in the air and said something that must have meant, ‘You idiot! I told you to drive on the other side of the street.’ We were there for hours trying to dig out, some of us digging while others formed a security perimeter around the vehicles. And then …” Derek wiped his eyes. I felt bad for making him relive all this, but I had to know. I watched helplessly as he went on, “We were stuck next to this broken-down wall in front of a little poppy field. Behind the poppies was a high mud-brick wall. That’s where they started shooting from. Andrews and PFC Weebly had been pulling security over in that field, and the first shot nailed Weebly in the leg. He hit the dirt. Andrews took cover behind a big rock. We ducked behind our vehicles and tried to return fire, but there were dozens of Taliban. It was raining bullets.” He put his hands to his ears like he was back there again. “So loud. A rocket-propelled grenade flew over and blew up somewhere in town. If the aim had been a little lower, a bunch more of us would have been dead right there.”
He stood up and paced the grass. Annie followed him, her tail hung low. “Your dad … Your dad got things together. He shouted to everybody to abandon the stuck vehicle. We’d be crowding into alpha team’s Humvee.
“Still, we couldn’t move. The Taliban had us pinned down. Your dad yelled that we had to get Weebly. Then he ran out into that field, launching a grenade out of his 203. That hit the wall and stopped the firing for a little while. But he took a round to the arm.” Derek winced as though he himself had been shot. “He fired off so many rounds to keep the enemy down. He ducked behind a boulder and threw a grenade over their wall. That stopped them long enough for us to destroy the stuck vehicle and remove all the weapons from it. Andrews and Ortiz ran to Weebly, firing the whole time. Gardner rushed out there too, and while your dad kept firing, the three of them carried Weebly back to the vehicle.
“They started shooting full force at us again pretty soon, though. Ortiz got hit in the arm and the upper thigh. I d
on’t know how he kept moving. Your father took another round in the shoulder, kind of by his neck. There’s not a lot of armor protection there and he was bleeding pretty bad by the time he got to the Humvee. When we were finally loaded and Freddy took off, we were stuffed on top of each other, us guys who weren’t hurt scrambling to get field dressings on the wounded guys.”
Derek sobbed and pressed his fists to the side of his head. I reached out and gently put my hand on his shoulder. After all this time, I had the truth, and it was tearing Derek up to tell me.
“So much blood everywhere! When we … When we … got away from the village, we stopped and called for a medevac helicopter. We’d got Weebly’s wounds under control, but …” He cried. “Ortiz went first. He just kind of looked off into space with these wide eyes. I’ll never forget that look. Then he was gone. Your father. He kind of … went to sleep … right out there in the empty desert … before the … before the medevac bird reached us. The other guys made it. Thanks to your dad.”
Derek sobbed with his face in his hands. “If I had just listened to that Afghan guy, instead of thinking I knew better. If I hadn’t got us stuck like that … It was my fault.” He fell to his knees. Annie licked his cheek, and he looked at me with red, tear-filled eyes. “I’m sorry, Michael. I’m so, so sorry.”
I shook my head. I’d come here harboring so much anger over the way Derek had hidden the truth and my father’s messages to me. But how could I hold on to that anger? For all these years, he’d not only carried my dad’s letters, but all that guilt. That’s why he paid me so much for working out here, why he always somehow found some work for me, even if all he had were simple chores he could have easily done himself. Why he worked so hard fixing up the Falcon only to sell it to me so cheap.
What a horrible, painful secret to have to live with for so long. No wonder he didn’t want to be identified. No wonder he never told me about any of it.
“You have nothing to apologize for,” I said. “You did what you thought was best. For all you knew, that Afghan was pointing you to the muddiest part because he wanted to make sure you got stuck in an ambush zone.”
