Carthage (19 page)

Those guys didn’t act toward Brett Kincaid the way they acted toward other kids. They sort of sucked up to Brett, they were admiring of him. None of them was any kind of athlete like Brett.

Brett was the kind of guy you’d ask for a favor if you needed it. And he’d do it if he could—wouldn’t ask questions or act like it was some kind of imposition on him or afterward make some joke or snotty remark.

He wouldn’t lend money but he’d lend other things—his bike, for instance. He worked after school at least two jobs—grocery store bagging, tree farm—had to save what he could, his mother didn’t have any money she was always saying. Why Brett enlisted in the army—he’d get paid, he was going to apply to be an officer and take courses at one of the SUNY colleges, after a few years. He’d give his mother what money he could.

Brett’s crazy mother Ethel! She’d come outside front of their house in just a bathrobe—something like you’d see in a movie all shiny and silky and nothing beneath so you’d have a glimpse of her breasts and thighs shaking like Jell-O, and a snatch of hair between her legs you’d look away from quick not wanting to see.

In a porn magazine or video you’d want to see this but in actual life—another guy’s mother!—no.

Brett was embarrassed of her. But Brett was protective of her, too.

This time we were in tenth grade. Things were fucked-up at my house. My father was drinking and sick and my mother was always saying how she’d like to swallow all the pills she could get her hands on and I’d been missing school a lot. And Brett didn’t say much just kind of hung out with me. On his way home from work or football practice he’d drop by our house. He wouldn’t come inside, I didn’t ask him inside—we’d hang out in the driveway, or on the street. Or we’d go over to the 7-Eleven parking lot. Brett wouldn’t ask why I hadn’t been in school. He never asked any questions. He never wanted to smoke a joint with me—just said no thanks. He never criticized other people much. One day I was feeling pretty shitty and he said hey why didn’t I come over to his place for supper. He seemed to know there wasn’t likely to be any supper at our house, my mother wasn’t in any condition to make a meal, or even to eat a meal. I said no thanks! Nobody had ever invited me to supper at their house—not before, and not since. Brett said his mother would be OK with having me. So I said OK—it was, like, the nicest thing anybody’d ever asked me to do. The surprise was, that night Brett’s crazy mother wasn’t like what you’d expect. Maybe because it was just me alone and not other guys, too. Maybe she felt sorry for me, Brett must’ve told her about me.

We had frozen pizza Brett brought home from the ShopRite where he worked. Pepperoni and cheese and tomatoes and Mrs. Kincaid mashed up some canned tomatoes to add to it, so it wouldn’t dry out in the oven. The three of us sat watching TV—
ER
which was Brett’s mom’s favorite TV show. She liked seeing people worse off than her and how they dealt with it and later I thought—That’s why Mrs. Kincaid likes me around. But that was OK, I could relate to that.

That year I went over to Brett’s place maybe five times. It wasn’t always supper, sometimes we’d just hang out. One of those times Mrs. Kincaid was drinking beer and she said to me, Your name is Budny, isn’t it?—and I said yes—and she said this strange thing, I always remembered: Your mother used to be a friend of mine in high school. But I don’t hold that against her now.

Meaning I guess she was angry at my mom for not staying friends with her. I think that’s what she meant. But if Mrs. Kincaid had known my mom then, she wouldn’t have said such a thing. My mom was so fucked-up anybody was a friend of hers, or a relative, they’d run like hell in the opposite direction.

There never was anybody married and in a family, that we knew of, that didn’t get fucked-up sooner or later.

Brett was, like, a real Christian I guess you could say. He never talked about things like religion, he’d have been embarrassed as hell but maybe that was it. “Do unto others—” like they say. He tried that—why he got in over his head in Iraq, maybe. And then, “disabled” like he was, and taking some kind of powerful drugs—also drinking, which you aren’t supposed to do taking the drugs. This is what people are saying. But his main weakness was, he couldn’t say no to his old friends like Stumpf and Halifax and Weisbeck—just couldn’t.

If anybody wants testimony like in a trial—a “character witness”—I will do that. If there is a trial.

Somebody said you can’t arrest anybody for murder if there isn’t a body so maybe there will never be a trial. But if there is, I will stand up for Brett Kincaid no matter what they’re saying he did. Or even if he says so himself finally. Because Brett Kincaid who is my friend would not ever have hurt anyone and if it turns out he hurt that Mayfield girl, then that wasn’t Brett Kincaid but somebody else not known to me.

AMID THE EARTH/RUBBLE
spilling off a shovel you’d see miniature bits of colored glass, might be “gems”—meant to signal
There is beauty within ugliness. There is good within evil. Have faith!

Hard to believe this wasn’t so. In his innermost heart, he could not believe otherwise.

As in basic training he hadn’t been scared like the others. Seeing how the drill sergeant cast his steely gaze over the recruits determining which ones are OK, reliable, mature, focuses his attention on the weaker recruits it’s his responsibility to toughen, plus a few inevitable fuckups he can humiliate, beat down and break in the presence of the others the way a triumphant boxer will keep hitting, bloodying his opponent’s face until the poor sap goes down, flat on his back,
out
. Seeing how the sergeant observed
him
—he knew he was OK, a man among men.

So when it was time, knowing, or guessing, that the guys in his platoon who knew what he knew about what they’d done to the Iraqi girl and her family and (possibly) what he’d been telling the chaplain were conspiring to kill him if not outright then to set up circumstances in which (possibly) he’d be killed—“in combat”—yet on patrol at the northern edge of rubble-strewn Kirkuk he’d come forward when summoned by his sergeant, obeyed his superior officer’s command as he’d been trained for he had seen no alternative as a soldier.

And now he’d died, he didn’t have to testify at the hearing.
Army Criminal Investigation Command
.

Neurologically impaired—“retrograde amnesia”—incapable of remembering with any degree of clarity, accuracy, confidence what had/had not happened in the early evening of December 11, 2004, at the northern edge of rubble-strewn Kirkuk, Iraq.

Not even who’d taken the knife, sliced the girl’s cheeks. No-face and no-name.

Wouldn’t need a lawyer.

Wouldn’t need to travel—to be “shipped”—to D.C.

Wouldn’t need an attendant to accompany him on the plane, in taxis and to the hearings in the Pentagon. Help him walk, count out his meds, keep him from alcohol and from killing himself in a hotel bathroom, wipe his leaky ass.

NOR DID HE
NEED
to beg Juliet to take him back so that she could accompany him to D.C.—help him walk, count out his meds, keep him from alcohol he’d lap like a dog if he could, wipe his sad sick leaky hemorrhoidal ass insisting she loved him, would always love him, sickness and in health and in the life to come if only he’d let her.

WHAT DID I
tell them honey I told the truth—it was an accident.

Slipped and fell and struck the door—so silly.

At the ER they took an X-ray. My jaw is not dislocated.

It’s sore, it’s hard to swallow but the bruises will fade.

I know, you did not mean it.

I am sorry to upset you.

I am not crying, truly!

We will look back on this time of trial and we will say—
It was a test of our love. We did not weaken.

HE’D SAID NO.
He didn’t think so.

Grinning-clown face so close to her, she was spared seeing it.

SERIOUS CHARGES. BETTER
be certain what you are claiming, Corporal.

Your safety and security can’t be guaranteed if you pursue these charges.

Lieutenant C_ staring at Corporal Kincaid as if a bad smell were leaking from him.

THE JEEP WRANGLER
had been impounded by police immediately. Every inch of the vehicle was examined. Only Jake Pedersen’s persistence resulted in the Jeep being returned to its owner who after all hadn’t (yet) been arrested.

Gathering evidence. Ongoing investigation.

Now it wasn’t clear that Brett Kincaid should have been driving. Or should drive now.

His therapist-friend Seth had said he thought it might be OK. If someone else was always in the vehicle with him.

Vision corrected to twenty-forty in the right eye. In the left eye
. Which met the minimum state requirement for a driver’s license.

Left leg wasn’t strong but right leg OK—the crucial leg: foot, gas, brake.

It was (possibly) true: the corporal’s reflexes were not so coordinated as they’d once been. Peripheral vision you could say frankly
shot to hell.

Still, he could drive a vehicle. Had the right to drive a vehicle.

Wasn’t going to beg. Ethel would beg for him.

Saying
You can’t take my son’s driver’s license from him, too!

All that you already took from him, his health, his life—the rest of his life—capit’list bastards can’t take that, too.

MUST’VE BEEN A DREAM
he had buried her alive.

Mouth filled with earth but trying to scream.

He woke screaming in terror struck at her with the shovel.

Threw rocks onto her until she was still. Then more rocks, pebbles, clumps of mud carried in his two hands and dumped onto the little body until it was still and the face covered.

OR MAYBE IT WAS STUMP
fooling around. You had to laugh at Stumpf—Stump. One day in ninth-grade civics which was on the second floor of the school they looked out the windows—across a concrete walkway—and there, on the roof, was Stumpf! He’d climbed some stairs only the custodian was supposed to use. Found a way out onto the school roof where he was walking kind of stooped-over so he wouldn’t be detected, or detected too quickly. “Hey! Look!”—Rod nudged Brett.

At the front of the room Mrs. Nichols was talking. Or some girl was giving a presentation at the blackboard. And out the window, and on the tar paper roof across the way, there was Duane Stumpf and what does the crazy fuckhead do, crouched behind a brick chimney it looks like
he’s pissing down the side of the building
.

Before he got to high school, Stumpf—“Stump”—was famous.

Senior yearbook he’d be voted class clown.

Sometimes Stump wasn’t so funny. But sure, Stump was
fun-ny!

The guy with the sewer-mouth. The guy who farts in class.

Dead maggoty squirrel he’d carried on a shovel, dumped in the front seat of Mr. Langley’s car behind the wheel.

Things he did to girls. Female teachers.

Some of it Stump did with other guys but mostly alone.

Some of it was never revealed. No one ever knew.

One of the stuck-up girls in their class. Good-looking, cheerleader, beautiful face, fluffy angora sweaters. Her daddy owned the Cadillac dealership. They lived up on Cumberland Avenue near the fancy limestone church. Valentine’s Day Stump left for “Debbie” a clump of
actual dog shit
in a velvet wrapping tied to her locker.

Mrs. Gordiner, tight little drum of a (pregnant) belly clearly visible through her clothing they’d tried not to stare at, and some of them resented, some of the guys resented, but also some of the girls. So anyway—lots of jokes about Mrs. Gordiner who taught junior-senior English and advised the Drama Club. Crazy Stumpf downloaded a photo of an
actual human fetus in formaldehyde
he’d found on the Internet and this, in a pink envelope, also a quasi-Valentine, he’d left on Gordiner’s desk on Valentine’s Day.

Pictures of girl classmates—girls’ faces on nude female bodies—some of the bodies
really fat, really nude
—Stump emailed, posted on the Web. Still, Stumpf had girlfriends, later in high school. And later, after high school. Mostly
pigs
,
he called them.
Sluts
.

Brett didn’t think Stump was so very funny. Didn’t think “Coyote” was funny.

Once, they were alone together, Duane Stumpf told Brett something he’d never told anyone else, he said.

“When I was a little kid, my father taught me words like
shit—cocksucker—motherfucker
—to make people laugh. He’d take me with him drinking, like we’d go to Herreton Mills and get some things for the house or the yard and afterward he’d drive out to Wolf’s Head and he’d lay me out in the backseat of the car so I could sleep, sometimes he’d forget me—wouldn’t get home till way after dark. My mother didn’t know where the fuck we were, she’d be real upset. The summer before I started school they’d had a fight and Pa walked out and took me with him—like he’d just thought of it and hadn’t made any plans. He’d call her, he hadn’t kidnapped me exactly, but we didn’t get home much. I cried a lot at first then it got so I really dug it, surprising people and making them laugh. I mean—really shocking them, like. And women, too. Girls. They’d call over other people to hear me, a crowd would gather around us at the bar, Pa was really into it, like somebody on TV, and I felt so—it was so—great . . . A little kid saying these ‘dirty’ words like he didn’t know what he was saying, that’s really funny. There was a joke we did together kind of—forget how it went but I was ‘little cocksucker’—people laughed like hell. Pa said, my little cocksucker’s gonna be on TV someday, you wait.