Tragedy wasn’t entirely why it was so hard to come back to New Canaan. After she drove Cole past the high school that day, she took him out to the overlook where the Cattawa River flowed, a spot popularly known as the Brew, where her classmates had sometimes come to drink and where she’d sometimes made love to 56. She’d felt guilty next to Cole, but she wanted to return to all the memories so badly, even the ones that throbbed, that brought so much shame. Looking out over the steady murmur of the river, the setting sun turning the clouds pink, draping that soft, wonderful color over all the leafless trees clamoring at the sky, she began to cry.
“What’s a matter?” he asked.
She wiped her eyes. “Nothing. It’s just always been so pretty out here. Just sometimes I miss this place so much.”
She thought she’d want to be left alone with this thing only she could understand, but when he reached out and took her hand it felt in sync with the shiver of the sunlit water.
She checked The Office, then Honey Buckets, grew nervous. She reminded herself that there were only three bars he really ever went to, and his routine was so ingrained it would serve as a sign from God if by coincidence he had not gone out to drink tonight. He stayed, usually till close, nearly every night after he got off work at Cattawa Construction. Finally, she spotted his truck parked across the street from the Lincoln Lounge. In high school, when the truck had been new it looked like the gleaming transport of a futuristic military. Obsidian black with chrome door handles and a cap for the truck bed that kept the rain, leaves, and snow out. A lift kit gave it a bulked-up look, like the vehicle had been chugging the same protein shakes as its driver. Over ten years later the cap was gone and the truck was covered in a film of dust that gave it a sickly gray color under the streetlights.
She parked a ways down the street beneath a lamp fortuitously burned out. She felt safe in the shadows. Her mind worked furiously trying to puzzle out what she’d say. She turned off the dome light before she opened the car door.
After her parents finally agreed to let her ride with him, he began driving her to school, to the movies or the diner, to Ryan Ostrowski’s place. So much passed between them during their time together. Memories wonderful and not as wonderful. They spent the day that became very famous just driving. This was the day when classes stopped and all the boxy TVs affixed to the corner of the ceiling in each classroom got turned on, and the whole school watched as the towers burned and collapsed, that expanding cloud of cancer-gray smoke blooming through the city streets, turning all the fleeing faces to ash, coating the visible world. It had all felt very far away to her. New York City was a bright, colorful set in TV sitcoms. Terrorism was nothing she had ever considered before. She’d gone to an emergency service at church that night with her parents where Pastor Jack said that wonderful line that offered so much clarity (“In this moment of profound grief for our fellow countrymen, this will seem odd, but today I’ll paraphrase not Paul the disciple but Paul the musician: God makes His plans, and sometimes that information is unavailable to the mortal man.”).
Afterward, her mom dropped her off at Stacey’s, and then 56 picked her up down the street. They spent the evening traversing the square downtown as they sometimes did.
“I say we bomb those faggots back to first principles,” he said. “Whoever it is, China, Iraq, doesn’t matter. Just turn their country into a fucking crater.”
He drove slouched to the right, his elbow propped up on the center console, his hand in an L with the index finger on his temple, thumb thoughtful on his chin. His left hand guided the steering wheel with all the loose nonchalance of how he held his books in the hallway.
“It’s so crazy,” was all she could add. They were all unprepared for how this would unfold around them. Bill Ashcraft told someone that if Americans had to live like some of those people do, we’d probably want to fly planes into buildings too. Bill always said stuff to provoke people, but this would be the time he went too far, when his addiction to attention manifested as an easy way to wound the people around him. After all, they were still children by every measure, still reeling, in shock and mourning. She was glad when 56 knocked him down in the hallway. How frightened he’d looked, unable to even get up until a teacher came and rescued him.
“Why not use the nukes too,” 56 reasoned. “We got ’em for a reason, right? Put down a nuke on Mecca, and then the Arabs have an example set for them. It won’t be more clear what happens when you try to fuck with the most powerful military in the world.”
He looked over at her when she said nothing. He fingered the chain to his dog tags, drawing thumb and index along each little ball bearing.
“You wanna go out to Strow’s place tonight? The guys are out there.”
She swallowed, kept her gaze steady. “Not tonight.”
He kept looking at her, eyes flitting back to the road only momentarily. “I want to go out there.”
“Well.” She pondered a less obvious way to phrase it, came up with nothing. “I don’t.”
The square, abruptly awash in American flags wafting lazily in the breeze, glittered with light. Drivers laid on their horns in solidarity as they circled the town’s heart.
“That’s fine, but we’re heading out there soon. Maybe this weekend.”
When she didn’t respond, he returned to his previous line of thought.
“People without the Christian faith don’t view the sanctity of life the way we do. They think it’s disposable, which is why they can do the suicide thing. Don’t even realize it’s a sin, that’s how fucking backward they are. Maybe we can convert some of ’em, but I doubt it.”
She’d never say anything, but in the months that followed as the news filled with images of the men who did this, she’d think maybe people had it wrong. Maybe it was about being Muslim or hating America, but also maybe not. Maybe it was about the need to lash out at the world, to make someone listen to you and see that you are there.
They ended up going to Ostrowski’s place that weekend.
For the rest of the month as the news reported on anthrax and color-coded alerts, military recruiters set up tables in the cafeteria, and he took the pamphlets. A few of the other seniors on the football team simply began the sign-up process right there.
“It’s tough because I’ve got this skill,” he explained to her. “I’m a hell of a football player, and this’s been my dream since I was a little kid. I’d have to give it all up.”
She understood, and she felt for him with that mourning ache you feel for someone you love so much. When he didn’t score high enough on his SATs the first time, she’d seen how it rendered him helpless, how it made him so angry and sad, he was like a boy again. It made her care for him unfathomably. If the worst happened, and he couldn’t get a high enough score to play college ball, maybe the military would be another, better place he could make his mark. Of course, she didn’t want him to go fight in a war, but she knew he would be a hero. His bravery was practically written across his brow. He had something great inside of him.