Sparta (2 page)

Conrad looked away from the window, across the aisle. Those Marines were slumped in their seats, too, dead to the world like Anderson. The thing was that Conrad didn't want to see them, didn't want to think about the sandstorms or the other Marines or anything else from over there—the rattle of machine guns, the stink of the shitters, the hot, smoky air, the closed faces of the people on the streets; he wanted none of those thoughts in his head, but what else was there to think about?

The thing was that he was tired of himself, tired of his thoughts, tired of the anxiety that permeated his brain like a bad smell. Being inside his head, just thinking at all, just being conscious, was like walking across a minefield. At any minute something might detonate, hurling him into someplace where he didn't want to be. He was sick of it. There was nowhere to go.

He pulled the paperback out of the seat pocket again. It was a thriller he'd bought at the airport in Frankfurt. On the cover was a picture of a running man, silhouetted against a red hammer and sickle: the book was set during the Cold War, in Eastern Europe, the fifties. Spies meeting in cafés, getting on and off trains, shooting each other in dark alleys. It was like paintball; it wasn't war. It was bullshit. He'd tried several times to read it, to get his mind off everything else; now he found his place and tried again.

Harding sat down at an empty table by the window. From here he could see all the way down the block, nearly to the Bergenstrasse. The waiter came over to him, a thin older man with a gray mustache and a peremptory manner. Harding ordered coffee. He put his newspaper on the table, folded back to show its name. He lit a cigarette and sat, waiting.

It was Viktor who came first. Harding watched him making his way down the street toward the café. He wore sunglasses and a black leather coat, and he carried his own folded copy of
Der Sturm
. He pushed open the door, looking around before he stepped inside, but Harding could see from his movements that he knew already where Harding was sitting. It was the waiter, then.

Viktor came over and sat down.

“Welcome,” he said, taking off his sunglasses. His eyes were cold and blue.

All this was meaningless. It had nothing to do with walking patrol down a brown street, heart hammering, blood roaring in your ears, watching the point man ahead of you who was walking gingerly, all of you walking goddamned gingerly, watching the faces of the men in the doorways and waiting for the sound of gunfire, for the big orange bloom of an explosion. Lying awake at night and listening for incoming. Not knowing if you were actually hearing it, the first sound of it, or if your brain was making it up, over and over.

Conrad looked up from the book. His heart had begun racing. He looked around the plane: nothing, there was nothing to alarm him. In a way, that was worse; he was helpless. Anderson was still slumped beside him. Across the aisle were two sleeping Marines, legs askew, heads tipped sideways. Conrad was not on the streets of Haditha but on a commercial airline bound for Bangor, Maine. The airplane droned steadily, hanging in the air at thirty thousand feet, following the complicated hologram of international flight patterns. He was not in control here. There was nothing for him to check, no reason for alarm, and so what was it? He felt a high, choking presence inside his chest. His heart still pounding, he wondered if this was evident, if other people could see his racing pulse, the anxiety flooding through him, the way alarm was rising up through his body to take over.

He couldn't imagine what lay ahead: civilian life seemed unthinkable. He couldn't remember what it was like. The last time he'd been in the civilian world he'd been in college, but that was years ago, and everything was different now. He'd no longer be in college, no longer in the Marines. He couldn't think how to move on; it seemed like a cliff that he was approaching. Beyond was a dark drop.

He didn't want to remember what lay behind him in Iraq. He couldn't bear the images that rose up as soon as he closed his eyes. Olivera's whispering. The dog, its ears flattened, tail curved between its legs. Again he felt the uneasy plummeting. The woman, holding up the basket, walking toward them. The girl on the bed. The pattern on the wall.

The thing was to get away from all this, get the thoughts out of his head. That was the thing.

He put the book back in the seat pocket and rubbed his hands on his thighs.

He should think about his parents and Claire. He should prepare himself to see them. Though the thing was that he couldn't prepare himself, because he wasn't the person they were expecting to meet. He felt an obligation to be the person they'd known, the one they were expecting, but he didn't know how to change himself back. They wouldn't want this new person, the one he now was, but he couldn't remember what that other person was like. Even if he could remember, he couldn't become him again.

Another problem: he couldn't exactly remember what everyone looked like, his parents and his girlfriend. If Claire was his girlfriend. He wondered if this was part of what had happened in Iraq, and did it mean that he had post-traumatic stress disorder? Was losing your memory, or part of your mind, some kind of PTSD symptom? He didn't want to ask. Could you lose a part of your mind? That was all in the bleak, broken wilderness beyond the cliff drop, ravines and rocks—what was wrong with his mind.

He could remember only parts of their faces. He could call up his mother's mournful dark eyes, the glossy sheen of Claire's red-brown hair, his father's closemouthed smile, but he couldn't seem to produce a whole face. Was this going to be permanent? Was this what it would be like? Would he keep discovering things he couldn't fix? He felt the uneasy drop.

He couldn't imagine talking to any of them. What would they say? At least Claire wasn't coming out to Pendleton. He'd see her when he flew back east; he could dread that later. His brother and sister weren't coming out to meet him, either. He thought of the thicket of braces crowding Ollie's mouth, Jenny's look of frowning intensity. He remembered a time, years before, when they were little kids. One summer morning they were out on the lawn in their pajamas, playing leapfrog and singing at the top of their voices. He couldn't remember the song. That was all; nothing had happened. Why did he remember that, and not the way his brother and sister looked now? Frustrating.

Anyway, they wouldn't be there; it would be only his parents. Conrad had another whole flight, from Bangor to San Diego, to summon his parents' faces and to think of things he could say. He'd try to talk as if he were the person he'd been four years ago.

The plane was dropping fast now, through intermittent clouds. The window went suddenly dark, then bright again, the light flickering. The strobing flashes made Conrad uneasy, and his chest felt tight again. He thought of the woman in the car, the sudden bloom of flames against the windshield, and the noise blotting out the world, that silent echo that seemed to go through your body, though these were exactly the things he was trying not to think about. It was like having to watch a movie: the movie was inside his head, and he couldn't stop it by closing his eyes. He had strategies, but he was never sure they'd work or how long they'd last.

The plane slid suddenly into a dense layer of cloud, and the sound of the engine turned loud and urgent. The windows were closely sealed with gray. Conrad's chest tightened further and he began to count backward from ten. He could feel his heart—big, pounding beats. He focused on the numbers,
nine
, breath,
eight
, breath,
seven
, spacing them evenly. With each one he drew a deep, slow breath. By the time he reached six, the plane had passed through the cloud layer and the windows were no longer sealed. Conrad stared out at the drifting wisps of mist, the view below. More green forest, now closer, the texture of the trees becoming sharper and clearer. Everything seemed more dangerous the closer they drew to the ground. The plane's racing descent seemed full of risk. He listened for gunfire: they shouldn't be coming down like this, so obviously, so slowly, in broad daylight, with no defensive maneuvers. He drew long, measured breaths, counting slowly until the air was entirely clear of clouds. His heart was still pounding.

They were approaching the airport, making a long loop over Bangor. The landscape now was semi-urban: roofs, buildings, a grid of roads and highways. Tiny cars moved steadily along like markers in a game.

When the plane banked hard, heading for final approach, the roar of the engines became deafening. Conrad felt his heart respond, his pulse rising.

Anderson opened his eyes, closed his mouth, sat up.

“We landing, sir?”

Conrad nodded. He didn't want to risk speaking, didn't want to let Anderson know what was happening to him.

Anderson rubbed at his face, his eyes, his pale rabbit's lashes. Everyone around them was waking up; Marines were starting to talk and laugh, excited. Conrad's heart thundered.

The airport runways and buildings stretched out below them, straight axial lines, like a mechanical drawing. The plane dropped rapidly, and the long flat buildings, the dark tarmac, rose up alarmingly to meet it. The engines became louder, the pitch ascending toward some unbearable climax. The plane fell sickeningly toward the earth. There was a pounding inside his skull.

He could feel it coming: the moment in which you heard the sound. It was before anything had hit, when the air was full of ozone, the moment in which you understood that something was happening but not yet what. It was the moment that you knew in your body before you knew it in your mind, the moment when you felt the sound, like a great silence taking you over, the shock wave rolling through your body, your heart and lungs, time stopping around you. Everything flying apart into fragments. That limitless radiant moment, glittering behind your eyelids, before you knew.

He was frozen and still, his muscles clenched. His palms were sweating. Inside, he was huge and cavernous, and his heart was doing something monstrous and unnatural. Tears, horribly, brimmed at his eyelids. Some avalanche was poised, ready to break loose. He couldn't stop it. Something was running riot through him, some cloudburst of panic and confusion, noise and smoke and terror. He was consumed by fear. It was sweeping through him as though he'd been overtaken by fire, as though he were now rippling and radiant with flames. Somewhere he was screaming. Terror was blowing him apart.

He was counting and breathing, making his chest rise and fall, rise and fall, in, out, silently saying the numbers.
Nine,
he told himself desperately, breath,
eight,
spacing them evenly, breathing in, out, and then they were no longer over the runway but on it. The plane came down hard and fast, thundering roughly onto the tarmac, making the miraculous transfer from element to element, from air to earth at a hundred miles an hour. Undecided, the plane bounced twice, up into the air, then settled on earth, transforming itself from something free-floating and weightless into something massive and ponderous, lumbering, ungainly.

As the plane settled onto the tarmac, the cabin exploded with cheers. Relief flooded through Conrad, a wild wave of gratitude loosened him inside. Tears still threatened, but they were now from relief. It shamed him, but he was helpless before these towering gusts of feeling.

The plane raced down the runway, roaring and rattling. As they neared the end of the pavement, the engine scream rose further, revving to a wild, unthinkable pitch. The plane braked hard, flinging everyone forward. An empty can ricocheted down the aisle. The plane slowed abruptly, a weird, unnatural deceleration, and came to a sudden rolling stop. Conrad was sweating, his body damp and hot inside his uniform.

The pilot's voice came over the intercom. It sounded like God, deep and annunciatory. “Gentlemen, welcome home.”

The cabin erupted again into shouts and whistles.

“Oo-rah! Back in the USA!” The Marines stamped and hooted, clapping. Conrad heard them from a great distance, through the louder pounding in his ears. He was actually on fire—was that it? He felt stunned. He turned to Anderson. He was trying to breathe normally and wondered how his face looked. He wondered if this showed.

“We made it,” Conrad said. He hoped he was grinning.

Anderson looked at him, his gaze sober. “You okay, sir?”

Conrad nodded.

He was shaking. He didn't dare lift his hand or speak. What he wanted was to lean back against the seat, close his eyes, and let this thing, whatever it was, roll through him, take him over, and close him down.

 

2

Near the barracks, a low temporary grandstand had been set up. The seats were mostly empty, but kids were running up and down the empty risers, chasing one another. The bleachers overlooked the parade deck, a big square field of scuffed dirt, now partly filled with waiting families. When the buses appeared from beyond the barracks, people began gathering. The buses were unmarked, but everyone knew who was in them. People turned to face them, holding balloons, waving tiny American flags. Homemade signs were raised:
WELCOME HOME BOBBY. WE LOVE YOU JESUS
. Behind the families, towering over the crowd, were inflated balloon figures: a purple castle, rigid pennants fluttering from its turrets; a huge red and yellow smiling bear. They swelled against the sky, weirdly smooth, like giant babies.

Conrad's parents were both tall; they stood out among the others. Marshall was lanky and spare, with wide shoulders and a concave chest. He wore an old narrow-striped polo shirt and khaki pants. He stood with his hands jammed into his pockets, his head thrust forward, his fine, colorless hair falling across his forehead. He was oddly awkward, his elbows and wrists always prominent, always at the wrong angle.

Lydia was nearly his height, also lean and long-boned. She wore dark pants, a loose light jacket. Her hair was short and thick, deep brown, but graying slightly. Her eyes were dark and deep-set, with a mournful slope. She stood next to Marshall, her arms folded against her chest, her dark eyes searching for her son.