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That wasn't what bothered Ben the most, however. The girlfriends were okay--they tended to treat him more like a younger brother than a son. Nor was he truly upset about the chores. He might have to rake the yard or clean the kitchen and take out the trash, but it wasn't as if her ex treated Ben like an indentured servant. And chores were good for him; Ben had weekend chores when he was with her, too. No, the problem was Keith's childish, relentless disappointment in Ben. Keith wanted an athlete; instead he got a son who wanted to play the violin. He wanted someone to hunt with; he got a son who would rather read. He wanted a son who could play catch or shoot baskets; he was saddled with a clumsy son with poor vision.
He never said as much to Ben or to her, but he didn't have to. It was all too apparent in the scornful way he watched Ben play soccer, in the way he refused to give Ben credit when he won his last chess tournament, in the way he continually pushed Ben to be someone he wasn't. It drove Beth crazy and broke her heart at the same time, but for Ben, it was worse. For years, he'd tried to please his dad, but over time, it had just exhausted the poor kid. Take learning to play catch. No harm in that, right? Ben might learn to enjoy it, he might even want to play Little League. Made perfect sense when her ex had suggested it, and Ben was gung ho in the beginning. But after a while, Ben came to hate the thought of it. If he caught three in a row, his dad would want him to try to catch four. When he did that, it had to be five. When he got even better, his dad wanted him to catch all of them. And then catch while he was running forward. Catch while he was running backward. Catch while he was sliding. Catch while he was diving. Catch the one his dad threw as hard as he could. And if he dropped one? You'd think the world was coming to an end. His dad wasn't the kind of guy who'd say, Nice try, champ! or, Good effort! No, he was the kind of guy who'd scream, C'mon! Quit screwing up!
Oh, she'd talked to him about it. Talked to him ad nauseam. It went in one ear and out the other, of course. Same old story. Despite--or perhaps because of--his immaturity, Keith was stubborn and opinionated about many things, and raising Ben was one of them. He wanted a certain kind of son, and by God, he was going to get him. Ben, predictably, began reacting in his own passive-aggressive way. He began to drop everything his dad threw, even simple lobs, while ignoring his father's growing frustration, until his father finally slammed his glove to the ground and stormed inside to sulk the rest of the afternoon. Ben pretended not to notice, taking a seat beneath a loblolly pine to read until she picked him up a few hours later.
She and her ex didn't battle just about Ben; they were fire and ice as well. As in, he was fire and she was ice. He was still attracted to her, which irritated her no end. Why on earth he could believe that she'd want anything to do with him was beyond her, but no matter what she said to him, it didn't seem to deter his overtures. Most of the time, she could barely remember the reasons she'd been attracted to him years ago. She could recite the reasons for marriage--she'd been young and stupid, foremost among them, and pregnant to boot--but nowadays, whenever he stared her up and down, she cringed inside. He wasn't her type. Frankly, he'd never been her type. If her entire life had been recorded on video, the marriage would be one of those events she would gladly record over. Except for Ben, of course.
She wished her younger brother, Drake, were here, and she felt the usual ache when she thought of him. Whenever he'd come by, Ben followed him around the way the dogs followed Nana. Together, they would wander off to catch butterflies or spend time in the tree house that Grandpa had built, which was accessible only by a rickety bridge that spanned one of the two creeks on the property. Unlike her ex, Drake accepted Ben, which in a lot of ways made him more of a father to Ben than her ex had ever been. Ben adored him, and she adored Drake for the quiet way he built confidence in her son. She remembered thanking him for it once, but he'd just shrugged. "I just like spending time with him," he'd said by way of explanation.
She knew she needed to check on Nana. Rising from her seat, she spotted the light on in the office, but she doubted that Nana was doing paperwork. More likely she was out in the pens behind the kennels, and she headed in that direction. Hopefully, Nana hadn't got it in her mind to try to take a group of dogs for a walk. There was no way she could keep her balance--or even hold them--if they tugged on the leashes, but it had always been one of her favorite things to do. She was of the opinion that most dogs didn't get enough exercise, and the property was great for remedying that. At nearly seventy acres, it boasted several open fields bordered by virgin hardwoods, crisscrossed by half a dozen trails and two small streams that flowed all the way to the South River. The property, bought for practically nothing fifty years ago, was worth quite a bit now. That's what the lawyer said, the one who'd come by to feel Nana out about the possibility of selling it.
She knew exactly who was behind all that. So did Nana, who pretended to be lobotomized while the lawyer spoke to her. She stared at him with wide, blank eyes, dropped grapes onto the floor one by one, and mumbled incomprehensibly. She and Beth giggled about it for hours afterward.
Glancing through the window of the kennel office, she saw no sign of Nana, but she could hear Nana's voice echoing from the pens.
"Stay. . . come. Good girl! Good come!"
Rounding the corner, Beth saw Nana praising a shih tzu as it trotted toward her. It reminded her of one of those wind-up toy dogs you could purchase from Wal-Mart.
"What are you doing, Nana? You're not supposed to be out here."
"Oh, hey, Beth." Unlike two months ago, now she hardly slurred her words anymore.
Beth put her hands on her hips. "You shouldn't be out here alone."
"I brought a cell phone. I figured I'd just call if I got into a problem."
"You don't have a cell phone."
"I have yours. I snuck it out of your purse this morning."
"Then who would you have called?"
She hadn't seemed to have considered that, and her brow furrowed as she glanced at the dog. "See what I have to put up with, Precious? I told you the gal was sharper than a digging caterpillar." She exhaled, letting out a sound like an owl.
Beth knew a change of subject was coming.
"Where's Ben?" she asked.
"Inside, getting ready. He's going to his dad's."
"I'll bet he's thrilled about that. You sure he's not hiding out in the tree house?"
"Go easy," Beth said. "He's still his dad."
"You think."
"I'm sure."
"Are you positive you didn't mess around with anyone else back then? Not even a single one-night stand with a waiter or trucker, or someone from school?" She sounded almost hopeful. She always sounded hopeful when she said it.
"I'm positive. And I've already told you that a million times."
She winked. "Yes, but Nana can always hope your memory improves."
"How long have you been out here, by the way?"
"What time is it?"
"Almost four o'clock."
"Then I've been out here three hours."
"In this heat?"
"I'm not broken, Beth. I had an incident."
"You had a stroke."
"But it wasn't a serious one."
"You can't move your arm."
"As long as I can eat soup, I don't need it anyway. Now let me go see my grandson. I want to say good-bye to him before he leaves." They started toward the kennel, Precious trailing behind them, panting quickly, her tail in the air. Cute dog.
"I think I want Chinese food tonight," Nana said. "Do you want Chinese?"
"I haven't thought about it."
"Well, think about it."
"Yeah, we can have Chinese. But I don't want anything too heavy. And not fried, either. It's too hot for that."
"You're no fun."
"But I'm healthy."
"Same thing. Hey, and since you're so healthy, would you mind putting Precious away? She's in number twelve. I heard a new joke I want to tell Ben."
"Where did you hear a jok
e?"
"The radio."
"Is it appropriate?"
"Of course it's appropriate. Who do you think I am?"
"I know exactly who you are. That's why I'm asking. What's the joke?"
"Two cannibals were eating a comedian, and one of them turns to the other and asks, 'Does this taste funny to you?'"
Beth chuckled. "He'll like that."
"Good. The poor kid needs something to cheer him up."
"He's fine."
"Yeah, sure he is. I didn't just fall off the milk cart, you know."
As they reached the kennel, Nana kept walking toward the house, her limp more pronounced than earlier this morning. She was improving, but there was still a long way to go.
4
Thibault
The Marine Corps is based on the number 3. It was one of the first things they taught you in basic training. Made things easy to understand. Three marines made a fire team, three fire teams made a squad, three squads made a platoon, three platoons made a company, three companies made a battalion, and three battalions made a regiment. On paper, anyway. By the time they invaded Iraq, their regiment had been combined with elements from other units, including the Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, Firing Battalions of the Eleventh Marines, the Second and Third Assault Amphibian Battalions, Company B from the First Combat Engineer Battalion, and the Combat Service Support Battalion 115. Massive. Prepared for anything. Nearly six thousand personnel in total.
As Thibault walked beneath a sky beginning to change colors with the onset of dusk, he thought back to that night, technically his first combat in hostile territory. His regiment, the First, Fifth, became the first unit to cross into Iraq with the intention of seizing the Rumaylah oil fields. Everyone remembered that Saddam Hussein had set most of the wells in Kuwait on fire as he'd retreated in the First Gulf War, and no one wanted the same thing to happen again. Long story short, the First, Fifth, among others, got there in time. Only seven wells were burning by the time the area was secured. From there Thibault's squad was ordered north to Baghdad to help to secure the capital city. The First, Fifth was the most decorated marine regiment in the corps and thus was chosen to lead the deepest assault into enemy territory in the history of the corps. His first tour in Iraq lasted a little more than four months.
Five years after the fact, most of the specifics about that first tour had blurred. He had done his job and eventually was sent back to Pendleton. He didn't talk about it. He tried not to think about it. Except for this: Ricky Martinez and Bill Kincaid, the other two men in Thibault's fire team, were part of a story he'd never forget.
Take any three people, stick them together, and they're going to have differences. No surprise there. And on the surface, they were different. Ricky grew up in a small apartment in Midland, Texas, and was a former baseball player and weight-lifting fanatic who'd played in the Minnesota Twins farm system before enlisting; Bill, who played the trumpet in his high school marching band, was from upstate New York and had been raised on a dairy farm with five sisters. Ricky liked blondes, Bill liked brunettes; Ricky chewed tobacco, and Bill smoked; Ricky liked rap music, Bill favored country-western. No big deal. They trained together, they ate together, they slept together. They debated sports and politics. They shot the breeze like brothers and played practical jokes on each other. Bill would wake with one eyebrow shaved off; Ricky would wake the next night with both of them gone. Thibault learned to wake at the slightest sound and somehow kept both eyebrows intact. They laughed about it for months. Drunk one night, they got matching tattoos, each proclaiming their fidelity to the corps.
After so much time together, they got to the point where they could anticipate what the others would do. Each of them in turn had saved Thibault's life, or at least kept him from serious harm. Bill grabbed the back of Thibault's flak jacket just as Thibault was poised to move into the open; moments later, a sniper wounded two men nearby. The second time, a distracted Thibault was almost struck by a speeding Humvee driven by a fellow marine; that time, it was Ricky who grabbed his arm to stop him. Even in war, people die in auto accidents. Look at Patton.
After securing the oil fields, they had arrived at the outskirts of Baghdad with the rest of their company. The city had not fallen yet. They were part of a convoy, three men among hundreds, tightening their grip on the city. Aside from the roar of Allied vehicle engines, all was quiet as they entered the outlying neighborhoods. When gunfire was heard from a graveled road off the main thoroughfare, Thibault's squad was ordered to check it out.
They evaluated the scene. Two-and three-story buildings sandwiched together on either side of the potholed road. A lone dog eating garbage. The smoking ruins of a car a hundred meters away. They waited. Saw nothing. Waited some more. Heard nothing. Finally, Thibault, Ricky, and Bill were ordered to cross the street. They did so, moving quickly, reaching safety. From there, the squad proceeded up the street, into the unknown.
When the sound of gunfire rang out again that day, it wasn't a single shot. It was the death rattle of dozens and then hundreds of bullets from automatic weapons trapping them in a circle of gunfire. Thibault, Ricky, and Bill, along with the rest of the squad across the street, found themselves pinned in doorways with few places to hide.
The firefight didn't last long, people said later. It was long enough. The blizzard of fire cascaded from windows above them. Thibault and his squad instinctively raised their weapons and fired, then fired again. Across the street, two of their men were wounded, but reinforcements arrived quickly. A tank rolled in, fast-moving infantry in the rear. The air vibrated as the muzzle flashed and the upper stories of a building collapsed, dust and glass filling the air. Everywhere Thibault heard the sounds of screaming, saw civilians fleeing the buildings into the streets. The fusillade continued; the stray dog was shot and sent tumbling. Civilians fell forward as they were shot in the back, bleeding and crying out. A third marine was injured in the lower leg. Thibault, Ricky, and Bill were still unable to move, imprisoned by the steady fire chipping at the walls next to them, at their feet. Still, the three of them continued to fire. The air vibrated with a roar, and the upper floors of another building collapsed. The tank, rolling forward, was getting close now. All at once, enemy gunfire started coming from two directions, not just one. Bill glanced at him; he glanced at Ricky. They knew what they had to do. It was time to move; if they stayed, they would die. Thibault rose first.
In that instant, all went suddenly white, then turned black.
In Hampton, more than five years later, Thibault couldn't recall the specifics, other than the feeling that he'd been tossed into a washing machine. He was sent tumbling into the street with the explosion, his ears ringing. His friend Victor quickly reached his side; so did a naval corpsman. The tank continued to fire, and little by little, the street was brought under control.
He learned all this after the fact, just as he learned that the explosion had been caused by an RPG, a rocket-propelled grenade. Later, an officer would tell Thibault that it had most likely been meant for the tank; it missed the turret by inches. Instead, as if fated to find them, it flew toward Thibault, Ricky, and Bill.
Thibault was loaded into a Humvee and evacuated from the scene, unconscious. Miraculously, his wounds had been minor, and within three days he would be back with his squad. Ricky and Bill would not; each was later buried with full military honors. Ricky was a week away from his twenty-second birthday. Bill was twenty years old. They were neither the first casualties of the war nor the last. The war went on.
Thibault forced himself not to think about them much. It seemed callous, but in war the mind shuts down about things like that. It hurt to think about their deaths, to reflect on their absence, so he didn't. Nor did most of the squad. Instead, he did his job. He focused on the fact that he was still alive. He focused on keeping others safe.
But today he felt the pinpricks of memory, and loss, and he didn't bury them. They were with him as he walked the quiet streets
of town, making for the outskirts on the far side. Following the directions he'd received from the front desk at the motel, he headed east on Route 54, walking on the grassy shoulder, staying well off the road. He'd learned in his travels never to trust drivers. Zeus trailed behind, panting heavily. He stopped and gave Zeus some water, the last in the bottle.
Businesses lined either side of the highway. A mattress shop, a place that did auto body repairs, a nursery, a Quick-N-Go that sold gas and stale food in plastic wrappers, and two ramshackle farmhouses that seemed out of place, as if the modern world had sprouted up around them. Which was exactly what had happened, he assumed. He wondered how long the owners would hold out or why anyone would want to live in a home that fronted a highway and was sandwiched between businesses.
