He sat at the edge of the culvert to watch the sun finish rising. He had planned to take Wages’s hat, and Troy’s boots, and Teddy Ruxpin, and bury them all at the old asylum near the water tower, but he had left empty-handed. He looked back at the house, and it seemed so far away, everything felt as if it was all so far behind him, as if it had happened to another person.
His mom had mailed notices to Wexler, Merriweather, Dixon, and the others. God, how he’d wanted to see them, but he knew they wouldn’t show. The night they’d pledged revenge, they’d made another promise, spurred by Wages saying, “Remember me like this!” He clambered atop the Bradley to scan the ridge below, scaly as a reptilian spine. He stood there, binocs in one hand, M4 in the other, goggles off, red-faced and raccoon eyes smiling. Achilles preferred to remember him at City Park, feeding ducks and pigeons alike; Wexler hanging his head out of the chopper, mouth open, eating the sky, grinning to beat the band; Merriweather, teary-eyed, bouncing a little girl on his knee; Dixon wearing that balaclava with face holes in the back so you never knew if he was coming or going; Ramirez sweating over those mixtapes — should John Legend be followed by Marvin Gaye or that old Jeffrey Osborne joint? — his father snipping that fence; Troy at the kitchen table that night, thinking he was in a foster home, one moment asking how long they’d be there, the next yelling, Daddy, stop! If he had loved them any more, they would have held hands.
He found Ines in his room wearing jeans and a T-shirt, and packing. “Reagan?” he asked, attempting a joke. The nearest major airport was named after a president of whom Ines was not fond.
“I don’t know.” She shook her bag over the bed, dumping her belongings out, then starting repacking.
He took a deep breath. “I want you to stay. Or take me with you.”
“I don’t know, Achilles. I feel like I’ve been up for a month straight. I can’t decide anything right now. I’m happy to meet your family. Dreadfully sad, too. Your mother must think I’m crazy. Sometimes I was talking to her and just found myself staring, seeing so many of the little things you do. No matter what, children are like their parents. No matter what.”
He reached for her hand, and she let him take it. What if he and Ines had a boy? Would it be dark like him or light like Ines, playful or sullen, reserved, cool, and withdrawn, or, like his brother, damned near tireless?
“I’m confused about one thing: didn’t you say you identified Troy’s body in Atlanta?”
“I did. I did.”
She shivered. “Oh, Jesus. Achilles … the morgues.”
“I went back for the body, and it was gone. They’d cremated it already.” He told her the entire story, crying through half of it, his words unintelligible even to him. It was as if something twisted in him, something tightly knotted finally broke, and wave after wave of deafening, roaring grief washed over him.
After wiping his face, he smiled weakly. “I’m probably dehydrated.”
“Poor Troy. Poor Achilles.”
“I love you, Ines.” Maybe it was all like stepping into the void and hoping the night catches you. He didn’t know how he expected her to react to these magic words, but it wasn’t what she did next: dropping down to Troy’s bed as if she was exhausted, and groaning. “I know, but it’s not that easy.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know, Keelies. I don’t know,” said Ines. “Read it to me again, please?”
“What?”
“Your eulogy.”
She pulled the blanket high around her neck. Achilles unfolded the square paper he had been carrying in his wallet since the morgue.
I wet the bed until I was ten, if I had soda with dinner. So every night I drank Coke, I slept on the floor and washed my underwear out in the bathtub the next morning. But I kept asking for soda. Mrs. Tolson, I’m the one who broke your mailbox. I was deathly afraid of guns until twelve. These are things only my brother knew about me. When he died, I felt like most of me died too. Because we did everything together. But I realize that works both ways, that I have to let you know things about Troy, things that only I know. He was brave, you know that. He stood up to everyone. He never surrendered. He walked right into a minefield and carried one of our buddies out like it was nothing. Like it was a fly ball in the backfield. But here’s the crazy part: he never mentioned it again. Ever. Even that night, when Wexler was being medivaced. We’d walked him to the medivac copter and he’s teary-eyed. Troy had just saved his life hours before, that’s not an exaggeration. Our buddy says, “Thank you, man.” He’s full of thanks, but Troy says, “Never mention it again. Ever.” Later that night, I punched him. I’m sorry. I did. I was so mad. I’m the older one. I was supposed to be protecting him. He could have died. “Are you crazy?” I asked. “No,” he said. “Then why’d you do it?” He said, “Because you are who you make yourself, who you will yourself to be, against the odds. Because if we’d left him there, a part of ourselves would have stayed there forever, we would have died with him. We would have been haunted by it.” Then he kissed me on the forehead. I didn’t want to believe him at the time. In fact, I forgot all about this conversation until recently. But, he was right. The sign in the morgue where I found him reads Mortui Vivis Praecipant — Let the dead teach the living. That’s Troy’s lesson for us all.
If Achilles hadn’t enlisted, would it have been easier to deliver that eulogy? But if he hadn’t gone, Achilles would have forever followed behind his younger brother, maybe even driven the float that carried him through town for his hero’s welcome, making an extra loop around the roundabout in the center of downtown. Troy with his picture up at the VFW. Troy with his Bronze Star, his secrets, his memories, his stories, and no matter how often Achilles said, I know, I understand, I get you, I see it, he would have really been wondering, Did you get to kill anybody? Troy would have worn that look he always had, the smug grin that said, Achilles, you don’t get it at all. Troy would have been a man, and Achilles forever a child. Troy would have had a hero’s welcome, and Achilles would have been among the groupies, the hero worshippers, bearing his younger brother on a litter. It would have driven him mad, yet strangely enough, it was exactly what happened, and seemed somehow fair.
Ines coughed softly and it echoed in the small room. Had she ever slept in such a tiny house, in such a tiny bedroom, on such a tiny bed? In such a tiny town? Even her mother’s maid’s quarters were larger than this room. Even that damned cave he had been stuck in had been bigger. It had the same view, a low valley dotted with houses and shrouded in fog. He had thought that Earl referring to the VFW as the Batcave struck the flint of that memory. Instead it was the last thing Earl yelled as Achilles’s father steered him out of the bar that night before he shipped off to basic training: “You’re one of us now.”
Was he really, he wondered, rereading the obit and then the news article where he was mentioned as a survivor. Was he? He felt more like a ghost.
Ines was already snoring, her feet tangled in a sweater, her bag overturned, and her socks and underwear scattered on the bed. Achilles pushed the beds together. She was hot under the blanket — he loved that sensation, like mornings, when she was so warm. Survivor. But what else? And who else, he wondered as he slipped in next to her, into Troy’s bed, one arm around Ines, the other around Teddy Ruxpin, feeling the pounding in her chest, a drum that beat so much faster and stronger than his, and willed and prayed for his own heart to catch up. God, to be alive.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS