Ever After (26 page)

T
WENTY
-F
OUR

S
hane was dressed in uniform, his back straight as he stood between his daughter and his friend, Gary Baker. The rain had let up, but the air was damp and the sky over Tacoma was a lifeless gray. Shane had his arm around Emily, though neither of them spoke. Other than the rumble of planes landing and taking off, the only sound was the quiet muffle of tears.

Constant tears.

The return of a dead soldier was handled different ways. But in this case, they’d been given access to meet the plane on the tarmac. Justin’s body would be carried from the plane to a waiting hearse while a color guard stood by. The transfer would be brief, after which time the hearse would take his body to the funeral home in Kelso, where it would stay until the funeral two days from now.

Shane watched the plane come into view, probably the one they were looking for. Right on time. He willed himself to stand strong, to stay strong. The people on either side of him needed his strength. But inside — in the place a soldier always kept but rarely showed — Shane had no idea how he was going to survive what was coming.

He kept his eyes on the plane, because that’s what military men did when a fallen soldier returned home. But his mind drifted back to the moment when he first found out. He’d been at his desk, minutes away from observing a pilot on a testing mission, when the phone rang.

It was Gary, and for the first few seconds he said nothing. Finally, Carol took the phone. She sounded terrible, like she was fighting the flu. But somehow she managed to tell him the news. Justin was dead. One of the three soldiers killed in the most recent roadside bombing.

Death was part of life for the military. Shane had known that ever since he shied away from his father’s push toward banking and business and instead enlisted in the navy. The Gulf War brought news like this, as had the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. But no matter how often it happened, the news never came easily.

The phone call was short. Shane managed only to say he was sorry, and that he’d fly out in the morning, that he’d be there for them and take care of what they needed. When he hung up, he stood, shut his office door, and walked to the bank of windows behind his desk.

Of all the enemies a soldier faced, only one could ever truly threaten him: Futility. Soldiers were men of faith and family and conviction. They took the risks willingly, believing with every breath in the cause they defended. But futility could cut a soldier’s legs out from under him, take away his purpose and his passion all at the same time.

Shane looked to the distant sky, the clear blue over the mountains of Fallon. That was the problem in Vietnam. Young men who signed up to defend their country wound up in a war without support from the government or the nation. Futility. That terrible sense of waking up in a war-torn village, looking around at the broken men and thinking of the missing men — and having just one question.

What’s the point?

There had to be a purpose to military strength, and as long as Shane had been in the navy, he’d had one. Defending U.S. soil had never seemed more necessary than it had in the past decade. Especially for fighter pilots. The ones who swept in and eliminated an enemy in a twelve-hour campaign, the ones who left news anchors shrugging their shoulders and reporting to Americans that all the fear and worry about the men on the front lines was for naught.

Sometimes, fighter pilots finished the job before the ground battle even got started.

That’s the way it was with the Gulf War, and that’s the way the United States citizens expected it to go with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Quick and easy, a bombardment by U.S. fighter pilots, a dusting off of the hands, and everyone could notch another victory.

But the problem in the Middle East was more complicated than that. The enemy didn’t wave a flag or stay in one place. They were insidious and cowardly, hiding in clusters and striking in ways that were almost impossible to stop. It was like trying to eliminate fire ants in Texas or Oklahoma. They went underground, and when they surfaced — with a roadside bomb or a suicide attack — it was too late.

Even so, the war in Iraq did have a purpose, and with purpose came passion. The passion he took to work with him every day. The passion Justin Baker lived by.

But that day, standing there with trembling knees trying to absorb the news, looking out onto the airfield at the naval training academy, Shane pictured Justin — the photograph in
Time
magazine of the young soldier playing with the Iraqi children, pictured him playing hoops with the guys at the teen center and holding his daughter’s hand. Justin was everything good about the U.S. military, and now he was gone. And in that moment, Shane felt futility like he’d never felt before.

What
was
the point? Maybe Lauren had been right all along. They were spending millions of dollars and losing lives every day, and for what? If so many Iraqi people were still bent on fighting against freedom, then fine. Let them live in their mess, and let’s get the American boys home. Safe where they belonged. So that not another Justin Baker would ever return to his family and loved ones in a coffin.

And so he stood there, futility breathing its ugly, putrid breath down the back of his neck. During the Gulf War, Shane was in terrible firefights, times when he and his wingman barely made it out alive. He’d taken part in wicked combat, dodging tracer missiles and ground-to-air rockets. But no battle ever felt more fierce than the one he fought in that moment.

The one taking place inside him.

Lord …
He hung his head, the claws of futility sharp around his neck.
Give me my purpose back. Give me a reason to wear this uniform, please … Everything I’ve done, everything Justin fought for, it can’t all be for nothing, can it?

Then — slowly at first, but then fast like a music video — images ran through his mind. God’s people fighting for righ teousness time and time and time again. Joshua and the battle of Jericho, Moses leading his people from captivity in Egypt, David and Goliath … Every time men took a stand for what was right, God had given them the strength to prevail.

He stood straighter, held his head higher.

It was wrong to hijack a plane and fly it into a building full of people. Wrong for any possible reason. It was wrong to strap on explosives and walk into a crowd of people, and wrong to plant roadside bombs along the streets of Baghdad in a cowardly attempt at killing U.S. soldiers.

The war against Iraq wasn’t a battle of wills, wasn’t a matter of differing opinions. It was the United States stepping up to the plate and taking on a form of evil that threatened to destroy anything in its way. He felt God’s presence around him, inside him, and futility slouched its way to the corner of his office.

There was a purpose in what they were doing. If the United States didn’t take action against countries of terror, the whole world would pay the price. And if along the way it cost the life of someone good and golden, someone like Justin Baker, then the fight would become all the more dear, all the more full of purpose.

Because the cost was so high.

Shane felt the victory that day, minutes after Gary’s phone call, felt all sense of futility leave him and his office and the job all of them were doing on behalf of the United States. He drew in a full breath and pushed his shoulders back. He would wear his uniform proudly, standing strong for the Bakers and his daughter, and for everyone who would attend the funeral. Everyone who would feel the loss of the young soldier.

He would be strong, but he would carry Justin’s loss with him until the day he died. Because in Justin’s loss, there was purpose all by itself. To accomplish what the boy had set out to accomplish. Victory and freedom and a world without terror.

Shane blinked, and the memory of that day faded. The jet plane came to a stop a safe distance away, and airport security officers motioned for the small group to come forward. He was right; it was the plane they were waiting for.

“Dad …” Emily clutched his arm. “I can’t do this …”

He braced her, held her up and pressed her to his side. “We’ll do it together.”

Gary and Carol huddled around their daughter Jill, the three of them taking slow steps toward the place where the hearse had pulled up and the color guard now stood. Justin’s family reached their places, and Shane and Emily stood beside them. After a minute, the door to the plane opened. For what felt like an eternity, there was no movement.

Then, a lone figure appeared near the door, and then a second. Both were soldiers, and they exited the plane holding the front end of a coffin. The soldiers saluted the color guard, the flag, and then moved the coffin through the door and onto the plank.

Tears poured down Emily’s cheeks and her body shook, racked by sobs. She didn’t cry out or wail, but in her whimpers Shane could hear what she was saying. “Justin … No, God … not Justin.”

The loudest one in their midst was Jill Baker. She was a senior that year and busy at school. Gary had told Shane that Jill had deep regrets for not taking time to drive up to Fort Lewis more often. For not making a habit that year of sharing lunch or a conversation with Justin.

“My brother!” She wailed and held out her hand toward the coffin. “Just one more day, God … why can’t I have one more day?”

Shane fought tears, stiffening his back until he saw the person trailing the coffin, holding up the far right corner.

Lauren, his only love, her eyes downcast.

Everything about her looked different. She was broken. He could see it in the way she held herself, the way she hung her head. And even from where he stood, Shane could see that she was weeping.

His eyes clouded over and he tightened his hold on Emily. Somehow in that moment, he knew Lauren truly had changed. It wasn’t just the way she’d been reporting on the war lately. The change must have been in her heart — and he had the strongest sense that sometime that week he would know his prayers had been answered.

Lauren lifted her head and looked around, and then their eyes met. She hesitated, but only for an instant. Her cheeks were red and tear stained, but she focused on the task ahead, staying with the coffin, walking behind it. When the procession was halfway to the hearse, the soldiers stopped. The color guard approached the casket, performed a salute, and then retreated to a spot near the hearse again.

Shane could almost feel Emily straining against his arm, wanting to break free and go to him, to the young soldier she loved. But that wasn’t protocol, and Emily knew it. Instead she pressed her head against Shane’s shoulder, and between low sobs she whispered, “This … this wasn’t how it was supposed to be.”

Shane turned his focus to the coffin, to the flag draped across the top. If futility was going to have something else to say, this would be the moment. The moment when reality stood before him, looming as large as the pine box. Instead Shane felt his heart swell with pride. The red, white, and blue had been what prompted a kid like Justin Baker to enlist in the first place. Shane had heard the stories from his buddy, knew about the patriotism that ran deep in Justin from the time he was a young boy.

And Justin was right to believe in the meaning of the flag, same as Shane was right and every American who held pride for the red, white, and blue was right. Because with all its flaws and differing opinions, the United States really was the greatest country on earth — the birthplace of freedom.

The flag would always evoke a sense of purpose and passion and pride in Shane, whether it was flown in front of a school or government building, waved at a high school football game, tattered in battle, or planted on a heap of rubble where once a towering office building stood.

Or whether it was draped across a coffin.

He watched as they reached the hearse, and Shane noticed that one of the soldiers, the one at the front right corner of the casket, was crying. A big guy with a bandaged forehead. Then Shane remembered. Gary had said something about a kid named Joe, a soldier who had been Justin’s best friend, a guy who had been riding with him and survived the bombing.

The soldier at the front of the casket had to be Joe.

When they slid the coffin into the hearse, the color guard retired the flag and the hearse pulled away. Beside him, Emily’s sobs shook her body, and finally, when she could no longer see the funeral car, she turned and buried her face against his chest. Shane stroked her back and watched as Lauren and Joe said something to the other three soldiers. The three nodded, shook hands with Joe, and headed for a waiting car.

Lauren and the wounded soldier walked slowly, reverently toward Shane and the others.

As he watched her, he felt a surge in his heart. The body in the coffin could just as easily have been hers, she’d been in that much danger. He wanted to run to her, take her in his arms, and breathe in the nearness of her, the reality of her. She was here, and she was home!

But Emily needed him, so he waited. Lauren came closer and her eyes held his. When she reached them, she put her hand on Emily’s shoulder. “Honey …”

Emily eased away from him and turned around. For a few seconds she looked at her mother, her eyes flooded with tears. A mix of emotions played on her face, and Shane understood. There was hurt and grief and even a little anger. Maybe because of the way Lauren had viewed the war last time they were all together.

Whatever her hesitation, it fell away and she melted into Lauren’s arms. “Mom …”

Shane folded his arms, his feet shoulder-width apart, the stance of a soldier. But he couldn’t tear his eyes off them, mother and daughter, grieving together. He had been there for Emily, no doubt. After she’d broken the news to the people in Tacoma, they’d had almost a full day to talk about Justin and for her to cry in his arms.

But she needed her mother.

After a long time, Lauren released Emily and put her hand on the shoulder of the soldier, the boy standing awkwardly a few feet away. “Emily … this is Joe Greenwald.”