Patrick knew that there were other men here who, like him, had derived no meaning from the death and destruction. And he believed that this was a wound too — the shock of being hit by a truth that was difficult to speak and painful to hear — that these deaths and mutilations, these last full measures, had gained nothing. He remembered patrolling the enormous fields of opium poppies not to destroy them but to protect the crop and the farmers from the Taliban. And he remembered realizing, as the weeks wore on and they patrolled and fought and died for meager portions of ground, that after they went home the Taliban would come down from the mountains, and the poppies and the profits and Sangin would be theirs again and there would be no one strong and generous and brave enough to fight them off.
Then some of the returned men came to the mic and spoke of their brothers-in-arms, and these tributes were tearful and filled with love and respect and gratitude.
“McClellan was a brother to me...”
“I think Corporal Lavinder was personally sent to me by God. He saved my life and because of that, his is gone...”
“Fenwick was one of those guys, he walked into a room and lit it up...”
“What hurts most is knowing that Randy isn’t here...”
Patrick thought of Myers and Zane and the many others he had known who had died, and as the sunlight warmed his face he closed his eyes for just a moment and endured again the flash and the sound that strew Myers and Zane like rags to the steep rocky hillside. He let the sound ring in his ears until it quieted and he offered an open prayer to any God willing to hear it.
Then the families spoke. Wyatt Chukas, the brother of Private First Class Paul Chukas, brought Paul’s bomb-sniffing Labrador to the podium with him. Buddy was yellow and small for a lab and he sat with calm alertness as the man spoke. Wyatt told of his brother being mortally wounded by a Taliban sniper, and how when he fell, Buddy ran to him and stood over him until help could arrive. The Marines had brought the dog back and delivered him to the Chukas family and Buddy had gravitated to Wyatt. Patrick wished he had Zane back here and thought, You feel the tears piling up behind your sunglasses because Buddy was Zane, and Myers was Chukas and you were all in hell together but only Buddy and you are alive to remember it and who was it, exactly, got to make that fucking decision? You stand here now but you can’t be blamed for living. You pray: don’t blame me. Your throat aches and it feels like something inside is going to break loose but it doesn’t. It hasn’t yet. The breeze cools your face and your back aches from standing in one place for so long.
Later Patrick excused himself from his family and Iris then drove Bostik, Salimony, and Messina to a liquor store in Oceanside, where they stocked up. They doubled back to the beach on base, which was open only to military and their guests. Today there were few people. Patrick used four-wheel and drove right down onto the sand. The waves were small and the surface of the water was burred by the breeze. They drank bourbon and tequila mixed with soft drinks and played two-on-two football and got soaked to their knees in the cold water. They dug into the sand around a concrete fire ring and slept.
By late afternoon the day was cool so they got to drinking again. They built a fire with wood they’d bought and found some sticks to cook the hot dogs on. They talked about the war and the women they’d fucked since coming home but mostly the war. Patrick said nothing about Iris Cash because he hadn’t even kissed her and he didn’t like that word applied to her, even though he’d do that with Iris in a heartbeat. And he suspected that his friends were mostly just talk anyway.
“Well, how about the hottie that was with your family back there, Pat?” asked Messina.
“She’s just a friend.”
This brought chortles and around went the bottle again, each man in turn upending it. “To friends, then,” said Bostik. “To fuckin’ Myers, man.”
“And fuckin’ Zane,” said Salimony. He had a nervous leg that bounced whenever he sat and even now in the sand it twitched rhythmically. Salimony balanced the bourbon bottle on his knee and watched the liquid slosh. “I wish he could have made the party today. I loved that dog.”
“I read this made-up fiction book once,” said Patrick, “that said heaven is a big barn where you get to live forever with all your dogs and every woman you ever had.”
“It’d just be one fucked-up brawl,” said Bostik.
“Yeah,” said Salimony. “Like when we grappled Sergeant Pendejo. And then, goddamn, two days later he’s at the cooker yelling for us to come and get a burrito and the sniper hits him right between the eyes! I mean the spatula’s still in his hands and his brains are actually on the wall! On it! Oh, man!”
“So here’s a toast to Sergeant Pendejo,” said Messina. “He was an asshole but he was our asshole.”
“To our asshole!” they called out.
And so it went past dark and into the night until they saw headlights down by the waterline bouncing toward them. What with the wild up and down of the lights and the liquor swirling through him Patrick saw an entire enemy convoy but it turned out to be only two jeeps. The jeeps stopped and the headlights seared into them and four MPs got out and came to them. “Drunk Marines,” said one of them.
“Says who?” demanded Bostik.
“You guys going to be cool? Because if not, we’re getting out the batons right now.”
“We’re cool,” said Patrick.
“Look how fuckin’ cool we are,” said Messina.
“All right. Get out your IDs, you drunk jarheads.”
“Excuse me but we’re United States Marines,” said Bostik. “And we served in Helmand and we don’t take one drop a shit from boot POG rent-a-cop cherries like you.” Patrick watched him take a swig of the second bottle of tequila, then hurl it at the lead MP.
The bottle missed badly but smashed the left headlight of the front jeep. Patrick saw the glittering shower of glass and light, then the fight was on. He was drunk and stupid and slow against the sober MPs with their truncheons. The first time he went down he thought he’d just stay down, but he could hear Bostik moaning and Salimony cursing and a baton landing hard, so he stood up and surged forth. Bostik was swinging into the blows and Salimony advancing on his attacker with a bottle he held by the neck, and Messina was besieged from two sides. Patrick whirled, realizing too late that the fourth MP could only be behind him.
He woke up on a concrete slab with a thin mattress on it and a scratchy olive green blanket bunched up under him. There was an unexplained and weird tightness to the back of his head. He sat up then eased himself back down, so great was his headache.
“You may as well stay up,” said Bostik. “They’re letting us out at o-six hundred.”
Patrick looked at his watch but it was gone. “What is all this?”
“This is morning,” said Salimony. “Before was beach. Drinking. Fight. Hospital. Brig. You got ten stitches in the back of your head. They’re not going to charge us because they beat the shit out of us so bad.”
“That seems fair,” said Patrick. He sat back up and reached a hand toward the agony. He felt gauze and tape and shaven scalp. He heard a steel door open and shut, then the sound of footsteps coming toward their tank.
Chapter twelve
With an iron headache and occasionally blurred vision, Patrick worked a full day on the groves. His father and brother offered him the easier tasks, but Patrick worked even harder than usual. It was the Marine thing to do. He was black and dripping sweat after an hour and his scalp burned along the stitches. He guzzled water to help his brain fire right. The three men finished off the irrigation repair and half of the remaining trunk painting. But there was a heavy quiet among them as they rode back to the house in Archie’s work truck, because Escondido Farm Credit Bank had refused to loan on the replacement trees.