“You told me they have a funny sense of humor, but this is cruel. I’m telling them what I think.” She had her phone out before Achilles saw the flyer: a picture of him and Troy taken three years before at the Baltimore water park, before basic and infantry training, before jump school, before their tour of duty. Troy smiles, the gap in his front teeth prominent, his green eyes razors in the sunlight. He wears flip-flops and shorts, no shirt. It was hot that day, or so they’d thought. Against Troy’s broad shoulders, the swim towel around his neck is a mere cravat. He has hair. Achilles wears a DC United soccer jersey. His hair is shorn close to his head, but it’s clear he has a widow’s peak. His right hand is on Troy’s shoulder. His flip-flops are in his left hand because as soon as his father says, “Got it,” Achilles and Troy will hit the water slide. Achilles’s eyes are hidden behind Ray-Ban aviators, the glasses they thought all military men wore, and they smile as if they’ve won the lottery. At the bottom of the flyer there is a website, a toll-free number, and a local number.
“It’s okay,” he croaked, the paper trembling in his hand. “That’s what they want, for you to call.”
But there was no consoling Ines. “I don’t get this soldier’s humor! I just don’t! Who is this anyway?” she asked, jabbing Troy’s face. “It’s got to be his idea. He’d be the only one with the photo, wouldn’t he?”
Achilles nodded.
They put up a few more flyers, the mood growing heavier at each stop. The Circle Food Store, Jackson Square, the French Market; every bulletin board held at least one flyer with Achilles and Troy. Each time, Ines jabbed Troy’s face, complaining. “Who is he? The one who tells the jokes? I know there’s always a so-called joker. Who is he?”
“Troy.”
“Oh baby. I’m sorry. I thought he looked familiar. That’s poor taste.” She cradled his face. “Doesn’t Charlie 1 know?” She sighed heavily. “Didn’t you tell them?”
Achilles shook his head.
“Okay, baby, I understand. I would be polite, of course. I wouldn’t even tell them you saw it. But Troy is dead, and to keep bringing it up is painful. Okay?”
“I’ll take care of it.” Achilles dropped Ines off at home and spent the afternoon removing all the flyers he could find. He counted forty-three at the end of the day, forty-three copies of the photo he originally brought to New Orleans, enlarged so that Troy’s face was about the exact same size it had been on Levreau’s flyer, not life-sized, but close enough. He went to the website and saw the same picture there, and a few more. The website was hosted by a company that charged a fee to create and post these flyers. Must have been a good business, but never one he’d want to own.
The next morning while dressing, he asked Ines, “Did your grandfather, I mean Paul, have any distinguishing marks?”
“I’m going with you.”
“I’m only asking.”
Ines looked doubtful. “I’m going with you. But no. And you can call him my grandfather now. I guess you forgive people, or get closer to them, when they die. Did you feel that way about Wages and Troy?”
Achilles nodded.
Ines said, “I shouldn’t have brought that up.”
She was right. He was closer to them all in death, recalling things he had forgotten. When Ines went to the bathroom, Achilles left. It would be easier to move through the morgues without her.
He carried his mother’s flyer in his pocket, obsessed with Wages’s ritual theory, with his certainty that until you let the shit go, it ate your life. Wages was on his mind because Ines had stayed up late enough to write down his numbers: 37, 40, 112, 76, 32. That’s a hell of a combination, she had joked. But it was no mystery. It was the list from Wages’s combat report. He was counting in his sleep, confirming Wages’s numbers.
Morgue Ops personnel were like spies. Prohibited from discussing work, they even removed their badges upon leaving the facilities, the logic being that the general public should never identify them as morgue workers. Alone, flashing his military ID, Achilles was one of their tribe. Faced with someone who didn’t eye them like lepers, they gladly explained the process to him. The body, or what’s left of it, is moved through stations. A forensic pathologist looks for deformities, scars, tattoos, unique dental features like crooked teeth. They are fingerprinted, x-rayed, dental x-rayed, and DNA samples are taken. Then an autopsy, then they are embalmed and shipped if already identified. If not, they are warehoused for people like Achilles and Ines to identify. When only bones remained, they are shipped to the forensic anthropologist. A DNA test is usually reliable, but if the body’s been underwater too long, bacteria start breaking down the proteins, making them harder to identify. A full body x-ray is helpful because it reveals shrapnel, broken bones, pacemakers, and the like. When you have only limbs, it’s tough.
“The reality,” said Sergeant William Bose, “is that most of these parts won’t be identified.” Bose had just returned from a tour in Iraq. He had been off only a month when they assigned him to the mobile morgue. He was a bear of a man with a friendly smile, and when Achilles told him what he was doing, and that he was military, Bose led him to the back room so he could take a look at a few of the recently delivered corpses. Achilles was astounded at the number of loose limbs. Apparently drowning hadn’t accounted for a majority of the deaths. People had died when weakened buildings collapsed on them, from falls, and many of exposure.
“No one to sue,” said Bose.
That was true. The death toll on the Gulf Coast since Katrina was higher than the U.S. casualty rate during the first two years in Afghanistan.
“What’s the difference between killing people and letting them die, except one’s cheaper?” Bose said, looking pissed, “Man, it’s the most heartbreaking thing I’ve ever fucking seen, and I’ve seen shit. And I’m not saying this just because you’re here, but you know damn well if this were Malibu or Key West or Galveston, they would have evacuated these people in a heartbeat. It’s some dark shit when your country lets you sit out on a highway in hundred-degree weather and die just because you’re black and poor. It’s some fucked-up shit, man. It ain’t a natural disaster when a manmade object fails.” Bose was red in the face, stuttering, trying to explain the feeling of witnessing destruction on a scale usually reserved for wartime. “Sorry. I have to vent twice a day.”
Achilles understood what he meant, and wished Ines were there to hear. “No problem.” They were alone in a smaller room where bodies and limbs were held until transferred to the main room.
“So today’s your lucky day. Savor it, brother,” said Bose.
“Tomorrow it only gets worse,” they said in unison.
Achilles stopped at the sight of a gnarled hand across the palm of which ran a scar similar enough to the one he had given Troy on that birthday.
“Oh shit, man,” whispered Bose. “I’m sorry. Sit down.” He picked up his phone. “I need some paperwork back here.”
Achilles was finished within fifteen minutes. The call was the hard part. Holding the flyer in his hand, he dialed his mom using Bose’s phone, wondering if she was at her green desk, her glasses on. But she was in town, at the market buying portabello mushrooms, treating herself to her favorite meal. She liked that market because the farmers who came in from over the hill were real farmers, she said, “Straw in their teeth and cow patties on their boots.” His mother shopped at the farmer’s market less frequently now that the beltway bimbos had discovered it, driving the prices up.