Carthage (22 page)

How many weeks, months. Sick with jealousy which she’d have denied was jealousy.

And now, Juliet was out of his life. So far as she knew.

. . .
two of us understand each other. Misfits, freaks—now you know what it’s like and it has deepened you and made you more like me. What has happened to you is visible, what happened to me is . . .

They were parked on Sandhill Road near the Point. He hadn’t been here in, how long?—not since Iraq.

Not since he’d died. This frantic buzz at the base of his skull.

The girl was clutching at him at first lightly, playfully—you could still interpret what she was saying as provisional. Then, with more force.

He understood: the girl had no idea what she was doing. What she was inviting. No idea what sex
was
.

For all her superiority, her exalted sense of herself, she was a child, basically.

Never had touched anyone as she was touching Corporal Kincaid. Never dared, for she’d feared being rebuked.

Trying to laugh telling her
Hey no—better not.

He was pushing her away. Not hard but hard enough so she’d know he was serious. And at once she pushed him back laughing, a wild sort of laughter, hurt, angry—
Brett please I know this: no one can love you like I can, now. Now you are—changed. I promise I can love you enough, I can love enough for two, it won’t matter if you don’t love me.

SEVEN

The Corporal’s Confession

October 12, 2005

H
E’S CONFESSED.”

“‘Confessed’—what?”

“About Cressida. What he—you know . . . What he did to her.”

But Zeno was having trouble comprehending.
Confessed what?

In the interregnum between a late supper and bedtime sprawled in his leather chair in the comfortably cluttered room that was his study Zeno glanced up over bifocal glasses at his wife who’d appeared breathless in the doorway but had not stepped inside.

In his hands an old college ethics text he’d been examining curious at the many highlighted passages in yellow, green, and red like faded neon—in the margins of Plato’s
Symposium
for instance were
How proved? Doubtful! Bullshit!

How earnest he’d been, Zeno Mayfield at the age of nineteen or twenty. How involved with these revered old philosophers as if any critique of his, any remark, any query could have the slightest bearing on their philosophies or reputations.

In the doorway Arlette stood uncertainly. Zeno registered a sudden strangeness in his wife: a look in her face stricken yet dreamlike as her lips trembled in a semblance of a smile.

No one would mistake his dear wife for a girl now, even at a distance.

Since July her hair had begun quite conspicuously to turn gray. Her face for so long young had begun to crinkle like parchment.

“McManus called. He’s coming over. He told me he had ‘news’—I made him tell me over the phone. He wanted just to come here, to talk to us—first. I think that’s what he wanted. He was emotional . . . You don’t expect Bud McManus to be emotional, do you.”

Zeno was fumbling to set aside the paperback. On the armrest of the leather chair glazed with age like varicose veins a can of lukewarm pilsner, that toppled onto the floor spilling beer.

Arlette stared at the fallen can, the wetted rug, without a word of reproach.

IT WAS 11:08 P.M.
, October 12, 2005. The Mayfields would note—the twelfth of the month.

Her ghost had been everywhere, these months.

Almost, so long
missing,
she’d come to assume a kind of ubiquity—imperviousness to harm.

Abruptly now, that had ended.

HE’D HURT HER,
yes.

Hadn’t meant to but he had. Yes.

Oh God he was sorry. God have mercy on his soul he was sorry.

HE’D HURT HER
he thought.

Seemed to think yes—he’d
hurt her.

Couldn’t remember—why . . .

Why he’d hurt her, then tried to bury her, couldn’t remember
why.

AT SHERIFF’S HEADQUARTERS.
In custody.

He’d been arrested out on Route 31. An altercation in a tavern parking lot, police were called, two men were fighting and one of them was Brett Kincaid, face bloodied, staggering and aggressive and in a rage initially attributed to alcohol, then to marijuana laced with phencyclidine—PCP.

Police backup was required. Three officers to subdue the corporal despite his injuries, throw him down onto the dirty pavement and cuff him.

And in the back of the police cruiser being taken into custody trying to tell the officers
I did it, I’m the one. I killed her. I want to make a full confession.

REFUSED TO SE
E
HIS LAWYER.
Refused to see his mother.

They would tell him to lie, he said. He was finished with lying.

SEVEN HOURS’ INTERROGATION.
Videotaped.

Couldn’t remember exactly why, the quarrel between them.

It had been his idea—to drive her home.

They had not been at the Roebuck Inn together. She had come later, alone.

Somehow, in the Nautauga Preserve.

She’d slapped at him, maybe. Pushed at him and he’d lost control, he understood now that’s what had happened.

Lost control. Didn’t mean to hurt her. Then, it was over.

How?—he wasn’t sure. His fists maybe. Or she was so small like a child he’d maybe just pushed her too hard against something, the windshield, the passenger door window, like a lighted match tossed into something you don’t anticipate is going to explode and it explodes and you can’t retract the match nor even a clear memory of why you’d done such a thing—who it was who’d made such a mistake.

Many mistakes he’d made. Can’t retract.

Or maybe he’d strangled her. Now it seemed possible, his hands had done
that.

WHY?
—THIS WAS HARD
to compute.

Like an object too large and sharp-edged being shoved inside his head making him wince.

On the videotape the corporal’s young-ruined face like layers of onionskin beginning to peel, scabby with dried blood.

Saying maybe it was—why he’d killed her—because she wasn’t happy.

Or maybe—he’d killed her because she was saying he was a freak like her, she loved him that he was a freak like her.

And he could not stop himself.

He’d warned her, he might hurt a civilian.

Why a civilian, why would you hurt a civilian, he wasn’t sure. Except civilians are afraid of you. In their eyes you can see they expect you to hurt them.

He had warned her. And her sister—his fiancée.

He’d hurt
her
—Juliet. He hadn’t meant to but it had happened.

She’d made him angry never judging him, never seeing who he was, what he’d done, terrible things he’d done, he’d witnessed but also he’d done and she had not wished to see or to acknowledge. What was unbearable to him,
she did not know what he’d done but forgave him anyway as if none of it mattered and if none of it mattered then nothing mattered including her and what there was between him—Juliet and Brett. Like it was a sacred marriage, Jesus had blessed them. And if what he’d done or witnessed over there was bullshit then this other too was bullshit which was why he had to laugh, his mouth hurt with that special twitchy laughter.
So Christ he’d hit her, or maybe he’d shoved her. She’d fallen the way they all do, that look of surprise but also embarrassment, even shame—
Oh! this is not happening to me.
Struck her jaw against the edge of a table and stumbled away crying and he’d wanted to drive her to the—what’s the name of it—“ER”—the hospital he’d wanted to drive her but she’d said no no she would drive herself, she’d run from him afraid of seeing in his freaky face what their life together would be and he’d hoped she would not return to him but she had for she forgave him you could see the forgiveness and the fear shining in her eyes.

But—he hadn’t strangled
her.

YOU HAVE TO
ASCERTAIN
if an enemy combatant is actually
dead.

It isn’t enough to shoot him you must shoot him
dead.

The sergeant would give the command usually. Or any officer at the scene.

Finish him.

Finish!
It was a word to lodge in your brain. A word at the back of the throat like the rotted date he’d almost swallowed. And at the checkpoint. The command to fire and several rifles had been discharged into the (fleeing?) vehicle, unclear whose shot or shots actually struck any of the Iraqi family though all were dead or dying by the time the gunfire ceased.

These are the
rules of engagement.

Operation Iraqi Freedom.

SOME OF THE
INTERROGATORS
had come to his room, he was saying.

Which interrogators?—he thought they were the military police.

In fact they were—(he realized now)—the Beechum County police.

In his room on Potsdam Street. Where they hadn’t a warrant.

Or maybe he was mixing them up with—wasn’t sure . . .

One of them, he’d wakened the corporal in his Jeep, where he’d passed out. Scared the shit out of him he’d thought he was back in Iraq he’d fallen asleep on patrol.

No idea where he was except it wasn’t Iraq. Taste of vomit in his mouth making him want to puke again.

Vomit and bloodstains on the front of his shirt that was pulled out of his pants. Every joint and muscle in his God-damn body aching and that dull pulsing ache behind his eyes—as soon as he awakened, it returned.

An officer in a gray-blue uniform was asking to see his driver’s license, car registration. He was trying to wake up but didn’t move fast enough for the officer and so somehow it happened, the officer had drawn his billy club and was prodding the corporal with it, then restraining him with it, laid against the corporal’s straining left forearm.

Don’t want to do that, son. Don’t want to force me to cuff you.

Here was a surprise: the Jeep was at an acute angle partly off the road. Right front wheel in a ditch. And it appeared to be morning—in some wilderness place, the corporal didn’t recognize.

Didn’t know the name of the road though later he would learn it was the Sandhill Road. And he was in the Nautauga Preserve not far from the front entrance.

The Jeep’s front doors were open as if they’d been flung wide. The door on the passenger’s side had opened downward into a tangle of briars.

In the other vehicle, the sheriff’s deputy’s cruiser, a two-way radio was emitting a crackling noise you might confuse with the fierce cries of jays.

The river was about twenty feet from the Jeep, on the passenger’s side. The water level was high, the river was rushing splashing and glittering in the early-morning sun.

The deputy commanded the corporal to step away from the vehicle. Step away from the vehicle and kneel on the ground, hands on his head and elbows pointing out.

The deputy glanced into the vehicle, front and back.

Anything here he should know about? Guns, drugs, needles?

Somebody with you in this vehicle? Was there?

Looks like—what’s this—blood? Blood on the windshield?

Who scratched your face and why are your clothes torn?

The deputy called for backup. The Jeep was secured and the corporal silent, dazed and unresponsive was taken into custody like one of the enemy not understanding the words shouted at him, something in his eyes
gone out
.

FINISH HER! FINISH
the job.

No. He’d tried to resuscitate her. He knew CPR: in basic training he’d learned.

Then, he tried to bury her in a grave but could only dig with his hands. There was no shovel or any other implement in the Jeep. Tried to use flat moderately sharp rocks but these were awkward. He could not dig a grave deep enough. The land here was marshy, yet pebbly as you approached the river. The water level was not predictable. In early spring as snow melted in the mountains there could be flooding, in late summer it could be only a few inches deep. But now after last week’s thunderstorms the depth was ten, twelve feet close to shore.

Finish! Asshole did you finish her.

The grave was too shallow with stones and pebbles he’d placed on top of her. He did not want to cover her face with dirt (for possibly she was breathing, she would inhale the dirt) so he placed a rag over her face he’d found in the Jeep. There was the fear too that birds would come at daybreak and peck out her eyes—hawks, crows. Or in the nighttime, owls. But as soon as the filthy rag was in place, he felt better.

Then, he wasn’t sure who the girl was. The girl who’d come to the Preserve with him against his wishes.

Laying a hand on his arm, rousing him to desire.

The angry desire of the cripple, whose potency is fury charged hotly in the throat.

In any case the grave was too shallow. A poorly dug grave, a fuckup of a grave. He hadn’t been so stupid, so clumsy and such a general asshole in Iraq. He’d been one of the reliable guys, look an officer in the eye when he responded, always a reliable soldier but now, he’d been fucked up bad, wasn’t thinking logically he knew. But—anyway—this was good: he’d found a broken tree limb, that could be broken again to fashion a crude sort of cross.

Christian burial. It was the decent thing to do.

The Mayfields would appreciate this. The mother, and Juliet. They would know what the cross meant.

He
didn’t believe any longer. Tried to explain to the chaplain who’d seemed bored. Or maybe he believed there was God, and there was Jesus Christ, but not for
him.

Not for the girl, either: God had not “succored” her.

Why God did for some, and not for others, you could not know.

The girl was so still now. She had infuriated him with her heedless words and she had dared to touch him, who could not bear to be touched any longer. Her eyes were beautiful eyes but the life had drained from them. He lifted the greasy rag to see—yes, the life had drained from them.

So ashamed! He could not ever face the Mayfields again, who had loved him.

It was good, he would not see any of them again. Their love for him was a burden. Their love for him choked and suffocated him. Made him nauseated. In civilian eyes you see the fear, there is no remedy for this fear except to kill them.

If one civilian is killed, why not all.

Why would you stop with
one.
And why with
two.

Why with
three, four, five . . .
Why the fuck would you
stop.

HOPED HE MIGHT
DIE
by firing squad. In the interstices of his seven-hour confession to Beechum County detectives he spoke of this wish.

Only in Nevada, son. This is New York State not Nevada.

In New York State at Dannemora, he would sit on Death Row forever.

Few Death Row prisoners were executed any longer in New York State.

Lethal injection. Not electric chair. Not firing squad.

THROUGH THE NIGHT
he spoke with detectives. Sporadic, rambling, not-always-coherent confession to having killed
the girl
.