Kurth stepped to the fore. “This is my map of the minefields along this shore,” he announced as he held the folded map in the air. He placed it under the body armor of Sergeant Collins, their young squad leader, and patted the Kevlar on Simmons’s chest. “Do not leave this behind.”
“Yes, Staff Sergeant,” were the unanimous replies from the squad.
They dropped their heavy packs and proceeded into Stephie’s neighborhood with only combat loads — rifles, grenades, ammo, canteens, and first aid kits — hanging from their webbing. Stephie felt as if she were walking on the moon.
She considered informing Collins that they were approaching her childhood home. That she had lived every day of her eighteen years in the stucco house on Sea Sprite Drive. That she knew every nook, every cranny, every hiding place in the cluster of twenty-year-old homes. But the words were stuck in her throat. We really don’t own our house anymore, she reasoned. The bank had evicted them while Stephie was in boot camp. After twenty years of paying the mortgage, her unemployed stepfather had simply packed up and moved north like everyone else along the coast after the naval debacle in the Straits of Havana. Like all the real estate in the area, her mother had written her, the house was now worthless. “It never was worth as much as we paid for it” was her mother’s throw-away comment, which had triggered a torrent of sobs as an angry Stephie lay in bunk after lights out. That was my home! she screamed, but only in her mind.
They proceeded single file down the street, which was still warm from the oven of the mid-afternoon sun. Four months ago, on Stephie’s last trip home, it had been alive with kids beginning summer vacation. There had been boisterous play, music, and mothers calling their children to dinner. Everything had changed in the four months since the awful disaster at sea.
No one said a word as the soldiers nervously watched the mirrored windows for signs of movement. The street made a big U, with the base of the U resting on beachfront property. That’s where Stephie’s house was. At the bottom of the U, they made the turn. The breeze was stiff and heavy with humidity. Peter Scott was walking point. When he reached Stephie’s driveway, he stopped at their shell-covered, concrete mailbox. Sergeant Collins made his way up to Scott, then pointed at Stephie and waved for her to join them.
Collins pointed at the plaque reading The Roberts Family as he scrutinized Kurth’s minefield map. “This your house?” he asked. Stephie nodded. Scott said, “See? I tol’ ya.” Collins pointed at the houses — one, two, three, he counted from the turn in the U — and then did the same on the map. One, two, three. “Well, it’s safe,” Collins decided. “But stay away from that one,” he said, pointing two doors further down at Dr. Rodriguez’s.
Stephie couldn’t help thinking that Collins should have looked at the map before marching down the street.
“You wanta… take a look around?” Collins offered. Stephie shrugged, then nodded. Collins tasked her fire team — Sanders, Johnson, and Scott — to accompany her, then radioed an explanation to the LT.
Stephie hurried into the cool shade of the carport before Ackerman could countermand the offer. “This is yors?” Johnson asked in disbelief. Stephie decided not to tell him about the foreclosure. “Man, I didn’t know you was rich. I thought you was a farmer or somethin’. This changes the whole situation. What’s yer stepdaddy do?” Stephie told him he was an engineer — which was still true, even though he remained unemployed — then turned to peer through the grimy glass of the door. The darkened stairwell leading up to the kitchen looked lifeless and distant, but when she closed her eyes, she could smell the home-cooked meal that always greeted her just inside. The door, she found, was locked.
“You mean you could just walk out to the motherfuckin’ beach?” Corporal Johnson yelled from the small backyard. “You didn’t even have to cross no highway? Man, on my only trip to the beach when I was a kid, I burned theshit outa my feet on that hot motherfuckin’ highway.” Stephie could see in the window’s reflection that he was staring at the blue water.
“Let’s get goin’!” Sergeant Collins shouted from the street, not willing, if he didn’t have to, to leak even the faint radio signals of their short-range tac net for fear of some high altitude, loitering missile.
Stephie blinked to dry her eyes and compose herself, but when she turned they all stared at her anyway. Scott said, “Hey, I… I found this over there. You want it?” He dropped a pink plastic ring with fake jewels into Stephie’s hand. It was part of a bucket of jewelry Stephie had gotten as a child. One by one the colorful treasures had been swallowed up in the sand. She and Sally Hampton had taken turns overacting as they romantically asked for each other’s hand in marriage. The game was to draw “Ou-us” of disgust or excitement depending on which boy they revealed themselves to be in the end. Stephie dropped the ring into the cargo pocket of her camo trousers and bit her upper lip to rein in her fury and her tears. Her buddies lent mostly clumsy words of support, far missing the mark. Johnson put his arm around Stephie’s shoulder. “Hey, it’s okay,” he said over and over. “Fuck the Chinese, man. We gonna kick they motherfuckin’ asses!”
Grunts of “Yeah!” and curses of “Fuckin’ A!” came from Scott and Sanders. Stephie smiled.
“We gonna make the world safe again,” Johnson said, “so rich white folk like you can live in fine houses on the motherfuckin’ beach!”
“Not on this beach,” Scott commented on their way back to the street. “Did you see that map? They’ll never find all them landmines in the sand.”
Sanders asked, “So whatta ya think they got rigged up in that house?” He nodded at the Rodriguezes’.
Peter Scott, studying the structure, said, “I’d guess about a ton of C9 covered in half a ton or so of concrete and about a thousand of those real big nails.”
Johnson drew his head back and said, “You’re one of those fuckin’ deranged white kids from the suburbs, I can tell. My momma warned me about people like you. How’d you get outa high school without shootin’ the place up?”
They continued their loop around the U, crossing the street on passing the Rodriguezes’.
By the time Stephie’s squad returned to the highway, the entire platoon had heard of Stephie’s visit home. They all had words or looks of sympathy, even guys she hardly knew. Lieutenant Ackerman came up and asked if she were okay. Stephie shrugged and mumbled a noncommittal answer. Truth was, she ached to go back to her house, close the door to her room, and curl up in her bed. But the sun was low and noticeably redder. Darkness was fast approaching. The beach was a dangerous place at night.
The march back toward the trucks began uneventfully. They had already covered that stretch, and the sights had grown familiar. Plus there was the exhaustion. The feeling that your body — head to toe — was running on empty. Stephie’s head grew light just as her legs grew heavy. The simple act of breathing seemed to take all her might. The blisters on her feet seemed to sprout new blisters, and her ankles hurt where she walked awkwardly to avoid the pain on her soles like a car with a flat tire running on the rims. She began to long for a halt to the steady, slow march. She watched Ackerman, expecting him to raise his hand at any moment. The sight of him calling for a break swam in and out of the swirl of images both real and imagined. She slung her rifle over her shoulder and pulled a canteen from its pouch to quench her parched mouth.