Broken Road (41 page)

“But I told him I didn’t remember anything. I told him I knew as much as he did, as much as everybody did after seeing that picture. But. . .”

“But what, Riley?”

“It’s a lie.”

It’s a lie.

She felt her entire body go cold from the inside out.
 

“What’s a lie?” she managed to ask.

“The whole thing, Brenda. It’s a whole goddamn lie.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I
remember
. I remember
everything.
” He cried. “Every single moment, every detail, every smell, every terrible thing. I could never forget it. I still can’t because I see it all the time. In
here
.” He tapped the side of his head with a finger.

“No. I don’t, I don’t want this. I don’t want this.” She heard herself repeat over and over.

“I can’t hold it in anymore. I can’t. I have to tell you what happened and then. . .”He reached inside his jacket. That’s when she saw the gun.

It’s time to end this. It’s time to tell the truth.
Riley could barely look at Brenda. The shame was too great.

“I have to tell you what happened.” He said and he tightened his hand around the handle of the gun. “This time I won’t mess it up. I’m only sorry I couldn’t tell you before and that it has to be like this.” Her heart was racing. She tried to think about what she could do,who she could call out to,but they were standing in the middle of a dark deserted alley with no one in sight. They were too far from the station for her to get help.

“It doesn’t have to be like that, Riley.” She said hoping she could talk him into changing his plan.

“You don’t understand. I shouldn’t be alive. I should have died on that road with the rest of them.” Brenda took a few steps toward him and he grasped the handle of the gun even tighter.

“Don’t come any closer!”He screamed at her then lowered his voice to a whisper. “Please.” Brenda remained where she was.

“Riley, shh. Shh now. Everything’s going to be okay.”

“Don’t! Don’t tell me to be quiet! Please don’t or goddammit, I swear I’ll pull the trigger right now!” He said pulling out the gun and pointing at his head.

“No! Riley, I’m sorry! I’m sorry! You can tell me anything, I promise.”

“I’ve lost it all anyway. Everything. And it’s all my fault.”He cried.

“No, Riley. That’s not true.”

“My grandpa’s dead, Brenda. The stress of taking care of me, of cleaning up after all of my shit. . .He trusted me to drive him into town that day. I killed him. And Misty. . .” He sobbed again.

“It’s not your fault.” She tried to reassure him but how could she understand?

“Is that why she’s having Brandon’s baby? No, Brenda. That’s my fault. If I’d just told the truth, yelled it so everyone knew about. . .about what I did. . .” He cocked the gun. The click made Brenda jump. She put out both hands and tried to keep his attention on her.

“Riley,I’m listening.”

“The truth?”

“Yes. Yes, tell me the truth. It’s okay to tell me. It’s okay.”

“The truth is I’m not a hero, Brenda. I’m not. I’m not.”He was shaking his head from side to side.

“Okay, I’m still listening.”

“I’m a murderer.”
 

“What?” she asked not quite sure she heard him. He looked straight at her.

“It was that damn camera guy, he. . .he took the picture. Just a picture of one damn moment. One moment and everybody just assumed.”

“Assumed what?”

“I wanted to die.
 
And he, he just started taking pictures. We were on the road to hell and he was taking pictures.”

“It’s okay, Riley. Just tell me what happened.”

“It’s not okay, Brenda. It’s never going to be okay.”

“I promise you. . .”

“Don’t. Don’t promise. I haven’t told you yet. Wait for the truth.”

“Fine, but please,
please
put the gun down. By your side if you want. You don’t have to do anything else. I’m having a hard time listening to what you want to say with the gun aimed at your head. I don’t like guns, remember? Please.”

“Not yet, Brenda. I can’t put it down. I have to make myself say the words,you know? Then I have to decide if I can live with myself after. . .after I tell you.”

“It won’t make a difference to me. You’ve already told Meagan McGuinnis. It’ll be okay whatever it is.”

“When I tell you what happened, you might change your mind. And I didn’t tell her everything. I wasn’t with the convoy. The newspapers, the tv, the Army has me with the convoy. I wasn’t. I was at the checkpoint and I disobeyed orders. I left the checkpoint and went after the guy
I
thought was the trigger man for the IED. Captain Jenner was with the convoy. He was protecting it, he and the rest of the unit.”

“I was pissed about almost being shortlisted and sent home because they thought I couldn’t take the stress of being out there anymore. They wouldn’t let me drive the Buffalo anymore, you need steady hands and a pretty clear mind for that. No one was sure I could do it anymore. Not even me. So Captain Jenner gave me a second chance. That day, we were going through a checkpoint we’d already secured on our way to clearing another road. We secured the checkpoints constantly, but even then, we were always looking for anything. . .anything that clued us to a possible danger except. . .that God, we didn’t expect it. We should’ve known especially after what happened to Ricky Marcelino and some of the others.”

“What didn’t you know?”

“About the kids. We weren’t looking for the children.”

“What do you mean?” Brenda was confused. What was he talking about?

 
“A strangled sob escaped his lips. “
They
were the bombs.”

“The kids?” Brenda repeated trying to take in his words. It was unimaginable.

“Yes.”

“I don’t understand, Riley. . .”She said desperately wanting to so she could help him.

“The buddies I lost, some of them didn’t understand either. They didn’t get the whole war zone thing.They just couldn’t get it that they should be more careful. That they shouldn’t be playing with them like that or giving them stuff. You could tell the way the parents looked at their kids and at us. You just don’t go into somebody’s town with a gun in your hands and then expect them to warm up to you because you start tossing Snickers bars at their kids. But some of our guys thought they could be friendly and it got them killed. One minute one of our guys was giving them chocolate and the other was playing soccer with some of the boys. The
 
rest of us were coming up the street and we saw the snipers take them out. The day that Ricky got killed we were clearing a road called Dead Man’s Row. None of the units had ever managed to clear it before something happened and we were back to square one. We were driving up about a foot an hour when we came into a village. We had to go that slow because of the IEDs. Captain Jenner was the route commander that day too. He told us to be on the look out for anything, anything at all that might indicate anything suspicious. He was right. As soon as the people in town saw us they started to disappear. Then the Husky located a device buried in the road ahead and they called us over to dig it up. I was driving for the first time. It was my birthday gift from Ricky.
 
We. . .we drove up and dug then we drove back to a safe distance with the rest of the convoy. The EODs set the explosive to detonate and we just sat there waiting. That’s when Ricky saw the little boy.”

“No.” Brenda gasped.

“He was walking up by the detonation site and Ricky freaked out. We all did. He started to wave at the kid, yell at him but he just kept walking. So Ricky tells me that he thinks he can get to him before the explosives go off. I tried to stop him but I was driving that day. I couldn’t just get out and go. Ricky didn’t care even when Captain Jenner told him to stay put or when the EOD guys told him he didn’t have the time. He got out, he walked the distance between us and the hole and he got to the kid. We couldn’t believe it. None of us could. We were shouting and cheering for him when he got as far as the first vehicle-a safe distance from the detonation. Then. . .” He was sobbing hard, “then Ricky looked up at me and it was like he knew, we both did. There was an explosion and they were gone.
Gone
.”

Brenda was heart-broken as she listened to him recount the horrors he’d seen. She wanted to comfort him but was afraid that any sudden movement on her part might set him off and cause him to harm himself.

“The day Captain Jenner died. . .” Riley began but Brenda interrupted him. She wasn’t ready to hear this part of his story.

“No, you don’t have to go on. You’ve told me enough. It’s okay, Riley. Really. It’s okay. You don’t have to say anything else.” She pleaded but the haunted look in his eyes expressed a need to go on, to empty himself until there was nothing left inside of the memories.

“The day that Captain Jenner died there was a crowd near the checkpoint. It was our job to sort it out, disperse the crowd and get everything under control. None of us were sure why they’d gathered. They were arguing with us but none of us knew what they were saying. We didn’t know what they wanted. Then a car came up to the checkpoint and we knew instantly that it wasn’t supposed to be there. The locals knew that too, you could tell, they were tense and they kept staring at the car. Some of them started walking away pretty fast and we were trying to put two and two together. It didn’t make sense. We’d secured the checkpoint, there hadn’t been any trouble for weeks. But there was a family crammed inside and we made them get out so we could search it. There were these little kids in there with some of the women and we had to make them get out because they were slow. Captain Jenner ordered two other guys to search the vehicle and he ordered me to watch the crowd. You have to watch for distractions. If they distract you,you die. That’s what they taught us. There could be snipers anywhere. So you had to do the searches quick. In and out and get the people back inside and on their way. But there was this little kid. . .and he’s wearing the ugliest damn sweater I’ve ever seen and I’m thinking how messed up it is that I’m sweating to death in my uniform and he’s dressed like he’s going sledding. But we saw a lot of strange things over there so I didn’t think anything of it at first. So this kid was like 5 or 6 and he’s holding his mother’s hand and he looks scared. And I’m thinking how scared I’d be if some guy with a gun was shoving me out of a car and yelling at me and my mom in a language I didn’t understand. I’m watching him and I’m thinking how lucky I am that I grew up in a place where that doesn’t happen and it’s all so unreal because I’m there and I’m doing it to
them
. That’s when I see the convoy coming up the road. I can see some guys from the unit and I can tell Captain Jenner’s in the first vehicle and they pull up behind the car and I look away for a moment. I see that the Captain’s jumped out and he’s headed our way. And then I realize that I’ve taken my eyes off the boy and the woman and I’ve lost them in the crowd. I turn back and I can tell that the people from the car seem really nervous when they see the convoy. They start moving away from us and around the car and we start trying to round them up again. You see, our orders are pretty clear at the checkpoint. We stop traffic, we don’t ever, ever get distracted by the crowd, we clear the scene before snipers have time to get into position if a convoy or checkpoint is ever compromised. It’s how we were trained. We had manned several checkpoints in the area since we got there and never had any trouble. But it happened just like that. It was like it was happening in slow motion. Except now when I see it in my head it’s like some big choreographed number, like everyone had a part to play and knew exactly what to do and where to stand-except for
me
.”

Riley gripped the handle of the gun for strength. He needed to tell her what happened that day. There was no going back now.

“We had them all rounded up, except for the kid. The woman, his mother, was over by me and the others but the kid, somehow he was back by the convoy. He was all by himself in that ugly sweater in the middle of that road. That’s when the Army dismount standing next to the first truck reached down to pick him up because he was crying. He should have known better than to touch that boy. But they’d left him there, standing all alone, next to our guys. And when I saw him, I panicked. It was just like what happened to Ricky all over again and I knew I couldn’t let it happen. I was yelling at the guy to put down the kid and run. That’s when out of the corner of my eye I saw somebody crouched down right inside the entrance to one of the nearby houses where the convoy was stopped. I could just see him peeking out. It looked like he was holding something. It could have been a trigger. I thought I could get to him, stop him, so I started to run but the IED went off and I went down. When I opened my eyes, everything and everyone was
gone
. There was debris, fire and people screaming but I wasn’t dead. I had a pounding headache, massive ringing in my ears, gashes on my head but I needed to get up. When I did, I could see that the armored vehicles on their sides, smoking and burning. The car was gone, and the people inside were too. There was no sign of the dismount or the kid, but there was a soldier on the ground, his leg had been blown off at the knee and there were a couple more at the checkpoint that were injured. There were other guys from the unit at the back of the convoy already moving, trying to secure the area and a medic giving first aid. I just stood there. I didn’t know what to do, until I saw something move again by the house and I left the convoy in pursuit. I knew that the IED had to be manually detonated. We’d seen it happen before. The Captain and the EOD guys suspected that it’s what happened to Ricky and the kid. The kid was just the bait and Ricky fell for it. When he ran back toward the convoy somebody must’ve triggered the explosion that killed them.”