Carthage (21 page)

EACH CUT OFF A FINGER,
and each an ear.

From other bodies they’d cut other bits of flesh. A small square of skin dries swiftly in the desert heat—instant “mummification.”

An almost-entire face. He’d had a glimpse of a pouch made of three civilian faces, looked like male faces, carelessly sewn together. Muksie had said it was something the Sioux and the Iroquois did.

Cell phone pictures of corpses, and guys goofing off. Secret pix you wouldn’t want to get into the wrong hands.

Don’t show Kincaid. Not for the corporal!

Still he’d seen. Had to see. No way not to see.

Everybody in the platoon knew. Mostly it was just—
Jesus that’s sick. You assholes are kind of disgusting y’know?

But you wouldn’t inform. Not even the chaplain. You just wouldn’t, you
would not
.

Except, Kincaid believed in his heart he must. Could not sleep knowing
I must.

Like sand sifting through your fingers. Nothing to grab onto. Nothing to give a name to. When you return home you will confide in just your special friends, possibly a brother, but no one else in the family. Guys who understand, know what you endured and why these matter—
trophies.

Your mom, your girlfriend or wife, sister, cousin—you don’t show these trophies which are private. No female could understand. Even a female pretending not to be one of her sex like Juliet’s fierce-faced younger sister could not understand. You don’t show them any trophies just “picturesque” photos, trinkets, mementos, souvenirs. Nobody knew where Iraq was or had any knowledge of the country, you could buy Middle Eastern–looking jewelry or miniature African animals carved out of ivory in the Frankfurt airport, Indian shawls—who’d know the difference?

First deployment, on his return home he’d bought things like that for Juliet, for his mother and Mrs. Mayfield. Second deployment, on his way home he was shipped in an airtight Ziploc body-bag.

In Halifax’s car they drove out to Route 31 to score some pot.

God-damn strong dope, does weird things to your brain.

He’s wheezing like asthma. Halifax thumps his back.

Jesus Christ! Don’t fucking die on me Kincaid!

THE FANCY LAWYER
who’d taken on his case had a way of speaking of Corporal Kincaid in the third person even when he was present like you’d speak of a brain-dead person, or a corpse.

My client acknowledges the girl might have been in his vehicle which accounts for the prints, the blood and the hairs. But not that night. Another night.

My client is neurologically impaired. That is a medical fact. Medical records are here provided. He cannot remember clearly since he was injured in Iraq—“traumatic brain injury.” No jury would ever convict him.

IN THE BARRACKS
lavatory at the post north of Kirkuk. He did not think
I will kill him now. This must be done
. In his hands he was wielding his rifle with just enough space to raise and swing and so that the butt struck Private Muksie on the side of the head, one, two, three swift strokes as with a look of utter surprise Muksie grunted and sank to his knees, sank to the befouled cement floor spouting blood. Not thinking
God has directed me. This is the first.

But somebody had seen him. One of the guys hurrying to help him—to help Brett—taking the rifle from him, wiping the butt clean.

Gone to hell. This is the first.

He was laughing. Stumbling. His friends were hauling him back to the barracks.

Later seeing Private Muksie—“Coyote”—returning from patrol.

Fully awake then rubbing his temples feeling the fat arteries inside beat, beat, beat close to bursting.

Can’t guarantee your safety, Corporal. Take precautions.

SHE’D WANTED HIM
to tell her these things—
Secrets you can’t tell anyone else. I know—you have them.

In her lowered voice assuring him
I am the only one who understands you, Brett. No one else can know what we know, they are beloved of God and we are—misfits.

In the Jeep he was driving. Gripping the wheel tight in both hands because he’d been drinking and a nasty buzz permeated his skull like a hive of hornets.

Crucial to him—to get the girl home: Juliet’s sister.

Saying desperate things to him, even drunk he knew to be embarrassed—
Juliet didn’t deserve you. Juliet is one of those who “lives in light”—hasn’t a clue what we know. I am the one who can love you, Brett—please believe me.

He was shocked. Juliet’s sister!

Didn’t know what to say to her. Though feeling a stirring of—remotely—as if at a distance—what might’ve been, in another lifetime, sexual yearning.

. . .
the one who can love you. Brett please.

His first thought was—too young.

And Juliet’s sister who would’ve been, if they’d gotten married, like a sister of his.

Desperately he wanted to be rid of her.

Safely rid of her—take her home.

If Juliet knew . . . Juliet would be shocked.

He’d never felt at ease with the younger sister. Possibly he’d never once spoken her name:
Cres-sida
.

He’d gotten along with her OK at the start. He’d known her, encountered her, when she’d had a bicycle accident a few years before—seemed like she’d been another person then.

Younger, then.

Later, she’d changed. Held herself apart from others, observing, judging; never quite smiling or laughing when Brett spent time with them. Thought herself
superior
.

Frequently in Brett’s presence she seemed to be looking at
him
—in a way he hadn’t wanted to decode.

For Cressida’s
will
was a force in the Mayfield household—Brett had gathered.

From remarks Juliet had made, Brett had gathered that this was so.

Even bossy Zeno deferred to her. Arlette rarely contradicted Cressida and often in her company grew quiet as if hoping to avoid a sharp or sarcastic remark from the “precocious” younger daughter.

Cressida rarely helped in the kitchen. If she was inveigled into helping clean up after a meal she slung dishes and cutlery into the dishwasher without troubling to rinse them, with a kind of spiteful glee.

Once, in the wake of a meal, when even Zeno was helping in the kitchen, Cressida drew Brett away upstairs to her room, insisting upon showing him her “Esch-er drawings” on display on a wall, and in a portfolio on a shelf. He hadn’t known what to expect and he’d been surprised and impressed by these highly detailed, obviously very skillful works of art like nothing he’d ever seen executed by anyone in Carthage.

In her room which he would remember as crammed with books and weird drawings, nothing at all like Juliet’s feminine room, Cressida told him that her drawings were a way of exploring the “interior” of her own brain.

When you pick up a pen, dip it into ink, there’s a kind of thrill like an electric current that runs up your arm. You go into a kind of trance. Like dreaming with your eyes open.
Pausing then to add, with a shrug of her small shoulders
Oh but—it’s lonely there.

She told him what she hadn’t told her family: when she’d been away in Canton, she was surprised how she’d missed them. And him.

I missed you all. I guess I was homesick! It sounds so banal, corny.
You
were in Georgia—yet I felt close to you. Closer than to my ridiculous suite mates. Juliet forwarded your emails and cell phone pictures, or most of them . . .

Brett thought it was odd, Cressida had been surprised by being homesick. He’d been wracked with what must’ve been homesickness—and missing Juliet—for most of boot camp at Fort Benning.

Cressida had emailed Brett, too. Terse and coy and he hadn’t taken much time to puzzle over her riddle-like letters. Probably he hadn’t answered most of them. Boot camp had been exhausting and intense and when he had time to think it was Juliet of whom he thought—Juliet whom he missed.

He hadn’t wanted to think that Cressida had been jealous of Juliet and him. Jealous of her beautiful older sister whom everyone adored. It was in mockery she spoke of those
beloved of God—
which certainly included Juliet.

Yet he couldn’t believe she was serious now, claiming to love him!

Seeing her at the Roebuck Inn, in that crowd—what a surprise it had been to him! Then realizing she’d come to see
him
.

He hadn’t encouraged her. He hadn’t responded to her. Yet he’d felt responsible for her.

She’d insisted upon sitting with him in one of the booths, alone.

He’d told her that he wanted to drive her home and she said
Oh thank you Brett but not immediately—oh please
. Shyly, daringly, she’d laid a hand—a small, tremulous hand—on his arm.

Which he should have eased off, or shaken off—but didn’t.

He was used to girls and women coming on to him—or had been, until recently. But this was different.

It was hard to look at her, he was so—shocked.

Disapproving, embarrassed.

Yet he’d complied with her wish. Her will.

He’d decided to leave the lakeside tavern and not return. Take the girl home, as he told his friends.

They’d stared at Cressida. Only just waiting for Brett to take her away so that they could make crude jokes Brett didn’t want to hear repeated.

He’d had to help her up into the cab of the Jeep. She’d been excited, anxious. Unsteady on her feet as if a single can of beer had gone to her head.

In the Jeep he’d driven a little too fast.

Windows rolled down so the rushing wind made it difficult to hear what she was saying.

She seemed to be pleading
We have so much to say to each other Brett. I don’t think you know me at all, I am not really one of them—the “Mayfields.”

Behind the wheel of the Jeep he felt slightly better. Fresh air in his face and lungs, a smell of the lake, pinewoods.

. . .
had to see you. If you want to talk about Juliet, or . . . about us. What I think I could bring to you, how I could help you . . . not “adjust” . . . I don’t mean any silly cliché like “adjust” . . . I mean in your life now your life is so changed and I am the only one who understands, I think.

He’d listened to her: that was the mistake.

He’d listened, he’d been persuaded. Not that what she said was attractive to him, or that she was attractive to him, but that the surprise of her words was
hopeful
to him, who did not believe—(he would have claimed)—in anything so unlikely as
hope
.

She’d asked him please not to drive back to Carthage. Not yet.

She’d asked him please to drive into the Preserve, and along the river—by moonlight.

(It hadn’t been a clear moonlight but muggy, hazy. A smudged-looking sickle-moon past which thin fingers of clouds moved like dazed fish as if self-propelled. Beyond the Jeep’s headlights was a penumbra of faint, faded light like blindness in which the straight tall trunks of pines emerged with dramatic suddenness.)

He’d wanted to warn her—
What’s between Juliet and me—I’m not talking about. But I can’t be near people, I will hurt them.

Somehow it happened, though he knew it was a mistake, the Jeep turned into the Preserve.

Somehow it happened, the Jeep turned onto Sandhill Road.

Making its way along the rutted dirt road by moonlight. And the river only a few yards away, beyond the passenger’s window, frothy white water in glimmering patches, the sound of the water confused with wind rushing through the Jeep’s windows.

She’d asked him please to stop the Jeep. Just—stop.

He would remember this—(not immediately, not when he’d been questioned by the Beechum County sheriff’s detectives, but weeks later)—but not what he’d said trying to reason with her while not looking at her, as in boot camp you learned not to look at the drill sergeant who was yelling at you, it was forbidden to look, to lock eyes, as if you were his equal; whatever she was saying to him, touching his arm, causing the hairs on his forearm to stiffen; leaning closer to him, frightened of him, trembling with her own audacity—
Of course she’s a virgin: she’s terrified. But of course this has to happen, for her it is time. Can’t turn back.

More forcibly he wanted to tell her—he couldn’t risk it, hurting her.

She was his fiancée’s sister. He could not hurt
her.

Fuck fuck fuck this is such a fucking mistake Kincaid. Get out before it’s too late.

There were tears on Cressida’s cheeks. She was heedless, distraught. Pushing herself at him as if, having made a decision in violation of all that she believed and was, it was not comprehensible that he could deny
her
.

How long she’d planned this, or something like this, rehearsed and plotted, feverish, silly and sad—he couldn’t have guessed.