One September Morning (8 page)

“It would be wonderful to see John honored that way,” Sharice goes on. “A military procession, twenty-one gun salute…”

“Arlington Cemetery…” Jim Stanton appears in the doorway, his gray-peppered head just clearing the arch—a tall man, like his sons. Since this morning’s news, his skin seems pale, his posture somewhat stooped, contrary to his usual proud military bearing. “I’ve read that they’re running out of real estate there, but no doubt they’ll make an exception for us. John was loved by all. If he’s there, people who don’t know him personally will have a chance to visit his graveside.”

“It can be tough to get into Arlington Cemetery,” says Sgt. Palumbo, stepping up beside John’s father. “But I don’t think it would be a problem getting John a burial there.”

“John wanted to be cremated,” Abby says, feeling as if no one is listening.

Ashes to ashes…he used to say.

She closes her eyes and suddenly she is viewing a young couple honeymooning in France. The dark-haired young woman walked arm-in-arm with her husband through a flower market, surrounded by towering stalks and colorful blossoms. In the market he bought her a single rose, a powdery shade of coral with a burst of sweetness. The satin petals were smooth against her cheek as she and John strolled through the sunny square of Montmartre, passing an artist at work, a vendor selling homemade jewelry, a kiosk.

“When I pop off, I want to return here,” he said. “Promise me you’ll bring me back and toss my ashes into the Seine.”

She laughed, happy to be by his side, amused at the notion of the two of them growing old together. “What makes you think I’ll outlive you?” she teased. “Besides, I don’t think you can dump someone’s ashen remains into a river like that. It’s illegal.”

“Who would notice?” he insisted. “And then you’ll be free to hook up with a Frenchman, a man who can feed you baguettes and café au lait every morning, make love to you every night.”

“Every night? When am I going to get my beauty sleep?” she’d argued….

“Abby? Are you okay, honey?” Suz’s voice breaks into her memory, and she opens her eyes and finds herself back in the kitchen, crowded with people fighting to preserve John’s memory, arguing for their notion of right.

“I’ve never been comfortable with cremation,” Sharice says. “Leave it to John to push for the extreme.”

“It’s done more and more often these days,” Sgt. Palumbo says. “The truth is, the space for cremated remains is more plentiful in most national cemeteries.”

“Arlington Cemetery would be quite an honor,” Jim says, nodding.

“Abby?” Suz leans close and rubs Abby’s back between her shoulder blades. “Maybe you need some fresh air.”

Abby nods and follows Suz out to the back patio, where a sunny autumn afternoon resounds with haunting beauty.

“I can’t do this,” Abby says.

“What? The military funeral? The in-laws? The mourners who are going to wear down your carpeting and consume all your chips and soda?”

“All of it,” Abby admits. “I don’t want any of this in my life. I just want my husband back.”

Biting her lower lip, Suz just nods, and Abby knows that she gets it.

Fort Lewis
Madison

M
adison can’t take one more minute of this coffee talk. She’s going to scream if she hears one more speech about what a great hero John was or how he made the ultimate sacrifice (like he had a choice!). And if she sees one more person rubbing their hands greedily over the prospect of the president awarding her brother a posthumous medal, she’ll go ballistic.

No way will she let that asshole present anything to John—not even to John’s memory. It’s the sort of thing that would have pissed her brother off if he were alive, and if they let it happen now, John is going to rise up and haunt them all!

“This is all happening so fast,” her mother says, fanning herself with a magazine from Abby’s coffee table. “What’s your take on it, Jim? Do you think the Congressional Medal of Honor…really?”

“I’d say it’s a distinct possibility.” Her father speaks in a lowered voice, probably so people won’t overhear him and know him for the greedy mercenary he is, counting his son’s medals before he’s even buried. He leans close to Mom to add: “Our son died a hero, Sherry.”

“Oh, my God, listen to yourself,” Madison says, unable to restrain herself any longer. “Do you hear what you’re saying? Don’t you remember that John didn’t believe in this war? He enlisted to stop terrorism and violence, not to encourage more war.”

“Madison…” Jim Stanton’s voice is a low growl. “That’s enough. Don’t muck this up with your personal politics.”

“My politics? What about what John believed? That war is wrong. Even back in college he wrote his senior thesis on the cost of war.”

Her mom is shaking her head. “He did not, and you were only eleven when he graduated. How would you know, Maddy?”

She points toward the door. “I know because I’ve got it in my room—right in the desk drawer.”

“That’s enough, Madison,” her father says in the authoritative tone born of military life. “Maybe you’d better step outside and calm yourself. You can return when the hysterics have ended.”

She has to bite back tears as she pushes herself out of the rocking chair and steps around them. What a nightmare! Her brother’s gone and already they’re trying to make him into the model soldier embodying all the crap be was fighting against.

Weaving through the throng of neighbors, she feels her face pucker, on the verge of tears. John would hate this! To be mourned by a bunch of army wives gossiping over casseroles and kids.

On her way out, Madison grabs the frosted glass from where she stashed it on the third shelf. She pushes the door to the back patio and takes a slug of the hard lemonade—the second one she’s pilfered behind her parents’ back. She thought it would dull the pain, but instead it seems to intensify it, as if someone took a photo of her edgy nerves and enlarged it ten times. Still, she takes another sip, liking the taste. She swallows until the cup is empty.

Behind her, the screen door creaks. Caught, Madison wonders what to do with the empty cup—the evidence—until she hears Abby’s voice. “Hey, you.”

Madison puts the cup on the table and turns to find Abby looking so incredibly calm in the midst of this storm. Her dark hair shines in the sun and her shoulders are set back, her head lifted high like a flower in the sun. “Oh my God, you look so normal.”

Abby tries to smile but her lips crinkle in a pucker. “I may look that way, but inside, my heart is breaking,” she admits, her voice cracking.

“Abby! I am so sorry.”

Abby opens her arms and Madison falls into them, and, for a moment, Madison feels like her true emotion can flow in front of this girl who loved her brother with all her heart. Loved him so much she gave up an exciting life in the capital to move to this army base and be a military wife.

“I can’t believe it, Maddy,” Abby says, her voice thick with tears. “I can’t believe he’s gone.”

“Barely gone, and already they’re screwing him over.” Madison steps back and swipes at the tears on her cheeks. “Are you hearing what they’re saying in there about him?”

Abby frowns. “The hero stuff?”

“They’re talking about medals and…and an audience with the fucking president!” Madison spins on her heel, stomps toward the back yard and takes a seat on the edge of the patio. “It’s disrespectful to John. They might as well kick dirt on everything he stood for. But when I point that out they act like I’m an idiot.”

“Everybody is out of sorts,” Abby says from behind her. “Grief does strange things to people.”

“They’re vultures. Did you hear my mother? It’s like she’s looking forward to the funeral. Giddy about John getting medals. Can’t wait to have Noah back so she can show him off to her friends.” Madison closes her fingers over a clump of crabgrass and tears at it. “Better show him off before he gets killed, too.” A sob rises in her throat and she hugs her knees, grateful to be able to wipe the hot tears against her bare legs.

“Oh, Maddy.”

She feels Abby’s hand rubbing her back, is conscious of her sitting beside her.

“This is hard for all of us,” Abby says.

“It sucks.”

“Harder for you in a lot of ways. You’ve grown up an army brat, but I came into this much later. And right now it’s really hard for me to face those people in there without feeling like they’re part of the problem, part of the system that took John’s life. You can bet I’m angry at the army, but I’m still cognizant of the fact that I can’t take that out on Sergeant Palumbo…or on the neighbors who are trying to maintain a normal life in the shadow of this war.”

“So what about my parents? Are they driving you nuts yet?”

“I’ve been trying to avoid them,” Abby admits, “but whenever your mother corners me I feel a panic rising. I don’t want to cross her, but it might come to that.”

“Welcome to my world.” Madison flings the handful of grass into the air, but some of the blades stick to her sweaty palm. “How could they not know that John didn’t want this war, that he was having doubts about his country?”

“I suppose they didn’t want to hear it. They don’t know John’s views on politics and war. That was something else they didn’t want to hear.”

Madison nods. “It does suck.”

Abby squeezes her shoulder, silently agreeing.

“You know, Mom is all excited about Noah coming home. A mixed blessing, she calls it. As if getting him out of Iraq for two weeks is going to save his life.” Madison turns to look at Abby, whose dark hair is tucked behind her ears. From close up she sees that Abby’s eyes are shadowed by gray sadness, shadows that might never go away.

Abby loved John so much. Madison doesn’t even have a boyfriend, and she can’t imagine losing the love of her life.

“Are you nervous about Noah’s trip?” Abby asks her. “About him traveling home?”

Madison shakes her head. “I’m nervous about him going back. I want to kidnap him, lock him in a closet so he’ll miss his flight, then throw him into my car and drive him up to Canada or down to Mexico.”

“I can see why you feel that way,” Abby says. “But honor and patriotism mean a lot to your parents.”

“Maybe. Or maybe they don’t have a clue about it. Maybe they don’t know what patriotism means. Just because you love your country doesn’t mean you have to go off and kill people.”

Abby nods. “I agree with you, Maddy, but it’s just not that simple.”

“It could be,” Madison says. “Peace is simple. It’s people who make it seem so complicated.”

Iraq
Lt. Peter Chenowith

T
he procedure is clear: the possessions of a soldier killed in the line of duty are to be secured and inventoried by his superior officer and transported home along with the remains. So technically, Peter Chenowith has every right to go through John Stanton’s belongings. Maybe it just feels wrong because Chenowith knows Stanton would have hated having his lieutenant go through his things.

Chenowith can almost hear Stanton grousing about invasion of privacy as he dumps the black plastic bag onto the table of the airless briefing room and starts making a list in his notebook. A wristwatch. One wallet with one hundred and ten dollars cash, one Amex card, a Washington State driver’s license, and assorted photos.

Whoa—apparently Stanton went for the dark, intellectual type. The brunette has to be Stanton’s wife, and though Peter figured a football star like Stanton could have done better, the Mrs. is tight. He’d definitely do her, though after a few weeks in Iraq, most guys would do just about anything on two legs. But the little blonde, there’s a hottie. She looks a lot younger than Stanton, and chummy in the photos. Probably the sister. He’s read that Stanton has a younger sister.

There isn’t much here, as Stanton’s stash of PowerBars was left in the bungalow for the other men. There is a homemade name tag with macaroni letters, and a bottle opener that had been decorated with glittery stars. A football, a bunch of books, letters from home, a box of pens, a framed photo of the wife. For such a superstar, Stanton didn’t own much.

Chenowith regrets the death of any soldier, but honestly, his job will be easier without Stanton in his platoon. This is Chenowith’s first combat assignment out of West Point, and it hasn’t been easy having the media breathing down his neck, always watching because he had a celebrity soldier in his ranks.

He tosses the books to see what Stanton was reading and notices that some of them are journals—those blank bound books you fill in. Stanton had written in two and a half of them.

Peter pulls out a chair and cracks open one of the journals, starting in the middle.

Many Iraqis don’t understand why American soldiers are still here, and I have to agree with them
.
We’ve overstayed our welcome. Saddam has been dethroned, and Operation Iraqi Freedom should now be called Operation Colonization.

Chenowith’s lip curls as he remembers the way Stanton always used to talk to the locals. What a schmoozer. You’d think the guy signed up for the United Nations instead of the U.S. Army. Stanton argued that it was good to let people vent, but Chenowith knows no good will come of stirring the pot, whipping these people into a political frenzy.

The more Chenowith reads, the more his teeth grind against each other.

Soldiers are programmed to follow orders without question. But I believe that if a soldier is given an order that he knows is not only illegal but immoral as well, it is his responsibility to refuse that order.

It’s this sort of philosophical bullshit that cripples the U.S. Army, Chenowith thinks, stewing over the pages. Peter Chenowith grew up wanting to serve his country, just as his father had done, and his grandfather before that. He was the third generation of Chenowiths to attend West Point, and he sees this deployment in Iraq as his opportunity to prove himself as a man, as a soldier, as a leader.

Unlike whiners like Stanton, he can handle the pressure. He follows orders, and he has the mettle to push his soldiers to make sure they follow, too. His company has suffered some casualties here—every unit has been hit—but that sort of loss is a fact of war, and a good soldier eventually learns that you carry on no matter what the adversity.

His eyes alight on another entry…his name.

The army wants “yes” men like Lt. Chenowith who do not question the legality of the policies of the administration. These warmongers will have the lifelong guilt of murdering innocent Iraqis on their conscience and the indelible images of seeing their friends blown up in a war whose purpose is illegal.

And if I stay, what am I? No better or worse than these warmongers.

Canada looks better and better every day.

A burn rises and blossoms in Chenowith’s head. So the bigshot hero was thinking of leaving. A sissy. How he’d love to give this to the media. But how can he, when the disparaging remarks about him are laced in those pages.

Goddamned Stanton.

No one is going to see these journals. No one.

This is one time when a rule needs to be broken.

He grabs a few pages and tears them out, cracking the first journal in the seams. The pages fit into the shredder without a problem. It will take a little while, but once he rips these journals up, everyone will be better off.

Stanton is not going to have the last word here. Let the resistance die with the man.