Lost Everything (18 page)

“Help us clear the road,” their commanding officer yelled.

They were on the highway passing through the city. The war’s incendiary edge was no more than a half mile away. Night flickered toward day with each rising fireball, the machine guns already getting more insistent. The streaked skeletons of cars stretched across the pavement, as though they had been straggling north and starved to death in their tracks. The dark buildings off the highway huddled together, trying to stay out of sight. They saw, then, what made the truck stop: a thick column of refugees, shambling across the road. Clambering over the guardrails, disappearing beyond the far shoulder. What was left of their lives tied to their backs, sometimes falling off. A path of worn clothes, pots and pans, cracking shoes under their feet. The commanding officer was yelling louder. The refugees closest to him turned their heads, gave him a quick look, proceeded as before, as though he were a spectacle they did not want to see, an accident. The rest moved along unchanged, dragging their children by their wrists. Pushed by the squall of crying babies, the fires behind them. A bomb went off close enough to feel the heat, and everyone moaned and flinched in the sudden light, the clap and roar. Coughed as the smoke swept over them and away. Too tired to stop or run.

The truck still could not get through. Another truck trying to get into the city was in the other lane, on the other side of the refugees, blasting its horn. Four soldiers tried to wedge their way in, make a wall, but the refugees flowed around them. The soldiers brought their rifles to attention. Stop and let us pass, or we cannot be responsible for what happens to you.

There was a keening in Ketcher’s brain. Everything was about to explode. This had happened to him once before, when he was a kid watching three men argue in the street over a wheelbarrow. The wheelbarrow’s owner was smaller than the other two men, but there was a coiled violence in the small man that the two larger men did not see. They bullied the wheelbarrow away from him, then turned their backs. A sound went off in Ketcher’s ears, and the small man pulled a blue metal spade from his pack, lunged and buried it in the neck of one of the larger men. The victim jerked, five times fast, flopped to the ground, and lay there, facing the sky. For an awful second, nothing happened, then blood poured, with great freedom, from the back of his head. The third man let out a cry like a child—the sound Ketcher should have made—then a series of
ohs,
falling off into nothing. Ketcher ran, faster than he thought he could, to the railroad bridge over the river. He ducked under it, sat among the large stones by the dark green water. Decided never to tell anyone, and did not. No one ever asked.

Stop, the commanding officer called to the refugees. They did not. He ordered the soldiers to level their rifles. The soldiers hesitated. They did not want to do it. The commanding officer did not want to, either. Then the firing started, and all at once, nineteen of the people crossing the highway seemed to lie down, as though they had decided to rest there. As if the oil-stained road was a copse of sorrel and milkweed, shaded by great elms, a brook running through it to slake their thirst. They settled down, and the survivors began to scream, bolted to the nearest shoulder, dragged their kids through the tall, scraggly grass. Left behind a litter of cooking utensils, socks, photographs. A bundle of pink clothes, a shirt with daisies on it. The nineteen people who had come to the highway only to cross it, move away from this place. The soldiers would never know where they were trying to go.

“Who fired?” the commanding officer said.

The soldiers looked at their guns, afraid of them. Would not look at the bodies.

“Who fired?” the commanding officer said again.

“I did, sir,” Largeman said.

“I didn’t give the order.”

“I’m sorry, sir. I thought you did.”

Another ball of flame rose from the city. Lit the quiet highway. They all stared at Largeman. Could not read him. The commanding officer shook his head, ran his hand over his face.

“Get these people off the road,” he said.

The bodies were heavy, uncooperative. Onc of them, a woman with streaks of white through mousy hair, lay in languid repose, as if for a painting. Tenenbaum took her legs, Ketcher her arms. When they lifted her, blood poured from her mouth and nose onto Ketcher’s legs, as if she were a bag of wine, emptying. He could not look at the children. The ones who carried them had blood across their chests, all up and down their arms. They did not look down at themselves, just went back to the truck and got inside. Do not ask me to do anything more today. Ketcher gave himself one more glance at the city before they closed the doors. The night was getting brighter with all the fires. Thick smoke sparking with the light below. Another bomb going off, another, another. Spurts of gunfire, screams and cries. The seething rush of buildings collapsing. The war an invisible monster, feasting on the city.

In the first months of the war, Ketcher thought, when reports of fighting crept up from Georgia, Virginia, there had been reasons for it. He had heard it was over land, it was over water, political difficulties. Too many people fighting over too little. Some high-flown, contradictory language about cutting down or breathing life into principles that already hung from the gallows that a century of chaos built. Remember when we used to be a country? The propaganda beginning early. But it seemed by the end of the first year that the reasons did not matter so much anymore. The war was an earthquake, destroying towns and cities. Or it was a job, three square meals a day. Why are you doing this? the guerrilla by the side of the highway had said, just before they shot her. They had all joined, Ketcher knew, because they did not know what else to do. They’d been squatting in houses losing pieces with every storm. Sleeping in the backseats of abandoned cars. They were staring at flooded fields of wheat, the grain rotting on the stalk, the plants wilting and dropping into the water. They could justify it all to themselves then, putting on the uniform, picking up the gun, eating the rations and sending home whatever they could, whatever helped. The larger reasons for joining were long gone, lost in the smoke, the ruined bridges, the fires. The personal reasons, the wives, the husbands, the families, shone ever brighter. But sometimes even that was not enough.

The doors closed and the truck gained speed. The soldiers inside sat against the walls, limbs splayed. Too exhausted to do more than breathe. The truck stank with blood, thick, tangy. Ketcher closed his eyes, pinched his nose. He was shutting it out, or trying to, and then it got him and he was kicking, stomping, as if the blood would fly off his clothes if he thrashed hard enough. A bomb went off, very close, and the truck jolted, swerved. Talked about coming apart, here, in the war’s jaws. He had to believe, then, that there was a place of cool, hushing breezes, unbroken glass. There had to be. Perhaps it lay behind what was coming from the north. They were all so afraid of it, would not talk about it, even as it made them frantic. But maybe it would sweep over them and make them whole again. Put all the cities back together, put the rivers back in their beds, and we would wander across the land, down wide boulevards, with open hands, like children. Marveling at the gift of the world, promising not to squander it again.

Then they were clear of the front and the light and sound faded, until there was only the fanning hum of the truck’s motor, the
lum-dum
of the tires over the road, a stuttering heartbeat. Ketcher could not see who anyone was. Just a curve of shoulder, the mountainous wrinkles of a pant leg. Every few minutes someone struck a match to smoke that showed that almost everyone else was asleep. But Tenenbaum was still awake, eyes hardened into glass. Ketcher made sure Largeman was snoring before he spoke.

“Sir.”

“Ketcher.”

“About him, sir.” A finger pointed at Largeman.

“What about him.”

“…”

“What about him, Ketcher. I’m not going to make this easy for you.”

“Do we need him to be with us, sir?”

Tenenbaum squinted. “You mean that there should be a stronger reckoning for what he has done.”

“Yes.”

“A trial. Perhaps a hanging. Or no trial, and a bullet to the head. Because some of those he killed today were children.”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry,” Tenenbaum said. “We need everyone we have.” Also, you are complicit, you sorry son of a bitch. Do not pretend that because you did not fire, you can go home clean.

Ketcher wanted to go back, to shoot Largeman before he opened fire. To shoot Largeman on the highway through Ravine, or kill him with a stone. To desert the army on the shore of the Susquehanna in Marysville, before they ever started north. He could have done it while they were oiling the truck. Walked through the tunnel lined with rusting beds and dying soldiers, slipped into the river, put his legs out in front of him, and floated, under the long bridge, under the broken roads and highways. Even if they saw him from the banks, the flooded spit of City Island, they would have mistaken him for a corpse, borne too fast to stop. He could have eased past Three Mile Island, toward the country. Touched ground near a swollen strand of trees, a field rising out of the flood. A new name, or no name, until the war was over, and then back to his parents. I’m so sorry I disappeared, he would say, and his parents would cry with joy. We don’t care. We’re so glad you’re here now. But he knew there was no time for any of that, anymore.

Jackson sat facing the soldiers passed out on the other side of the truck, his own eyes wide open. He heard everything. Thought of his son, who had died three years before the war began. The boy was four years old, rambunctious, joyful. Threw things out the windows of the house, jumped up and down when he heard the crash, then ran into the kitchen laughing. An infection had developed in his eyelid, first puffed it, then painted it red, as if someone had hit him. They had no idea what caused it. The doctor passed his hand over the angry skin with gentleness. There’s nothing we can do now, he said—he had not seen antibiotics in years. Just make him rest. Give him what he needs and hope for the best. The infection spread fast, across half the boy’s face, shot into his blood. He died in a wilting haze, unable to see his parents, who held his hands and wailed as one when he was gone. The years they had him were the best of their lives. Every year after, the worst. They promised not to leave each other, regretted that at first, then grasped that no one else would have them, that they wanted no one who could not share their ragged sorrow. When the war began, he enlisted. Told his wife maybe it was better for them to have a little time away from each other, then thought of her every day. Wished he had told her what he had been thinking for years: that he knew how to get past it, if only they had the courage.

The River

IT WAS A QUESTION
of belief, Sergeant Foote thought. If she believed, she could forget about her mission, stay with her man, forever, on this ship. It was noon and the con artist was asleep beside her, his breath flirting with a feathery snore. The light from outside fading the room into a pale print, as if it were halfway to vanishing already. She had watched the people moving in the theater last night, the orgy, and was tempted. They all believed. They had bent their lives to the coming storm, were all going upriver for something: a grandmother with asthma, a farm, a house, the land from the road to the slope on the other side of the dry creek bed. A silver necklace in a pine dresser drawer. A great-uncle’s grave. Towanda, Towanda, Towanda. It was a shared understanding, an acceptance of each other and the time they had left, even given the violence, the killing they had done, the pasts they had. And there was repentance in that, enough to hold the
Carthage
and themselves together until the war or the storm came for them.

But she did not believe yet. The storm would pass, and the war would soon be finished. She could complete her last mission, find her targets and dispatch them. There would be medals, a pension, and then no more war for her. Just a house—on a riverbank, she thought for the first time, for the
Carthage
had started to get to her. On a river, and her on a blanket under the thick shade of trees choked with vines. Her toes digging into the sandy soil. She could live herself out like that, she thought, by the water, until a stroke took her, as her grandmother had been taken. They would find her body twitched off the blanket, her face inches from a rusty bottle cap, a waterlogged plastic bag. The last images from her head still in the air above her: the light off the small waves, her wrinkled hands on the blanket’s wool. Then nothing more, for the stroke would come so fast. It did not seem like so much to ask.

So she stole away from the con artist sleeping next to her. Dressed in the half dark. Began to wonder where else she might look, caught herself moving her lips, forming the words. Talking to herself, for it was getting harder to keep her mission secret. When she left the room, the con artist rose, checked her bag. Felt the handle of the pistol nestled among her clothes. He did not know what she was doing, but figured that as long as the gun was still there, he did not need to.

In the hallway to the steel door of the galley, she questioned someone who she thought for a minute might be one of her men. Brought him to tears when she forced him to recollect his wife, who had died in a truck accident in Emmitsburg, Maryland, far from the river’s shore. In the hold of the ship, amid lumber, a trove of paintings, six telescopes, a pile of clothes, and a high stack of windows, she thought she heard someone in the corner. Only found two teenagers, startled, scared. His hands on her face. Her hands up the back of his shirt.

“What are you doing here?” the boy said. Too frightened to be angry.

“Sorry,” she found herself saying. “I’m sorry.” Felt the mission slip from her a little then, but pulled it back. In the theater she heard music, calm and light, an ambling bass, strolling piano, walking through “Night and Day.” In the middle of the floor, on a steel frame bed, a woman dying of pneumonia. The first mate, the closest thing the
Carthage
had to a doctor, tending to her. Reverend Bauxite standing by, for she would not last much longer. All the woman wanted was the old songs, the ones her great-grandmother sang to her when she was a small girl, standing in the kitchen while the old woman peeled potatoes, chopped onions, skinned rabbits. Billie Holiday, Fats Waller, Dinah Washington. The band did what they could, but they knew they were doing a bad job. The woman smiled anyway, nodded after every song. Falling away, the taste of sweet fruit in her mouth already. I’m coming, grandmama. She passed two hours later.