They attended church that afternoon, as well. It was a small brick structure. The four of them were the only ones there. They sat in a row and prayed for Zachary and Matt and all of the other soldiers in the Philippines as well as those deployed in Kuwait and Afghanistan. It was hard, but they all had faith. Then Meredith helped cook for all of the well-wishers who stayed after the funeral and visited with the family. Many people stayed late into the evening, and she enjoyed the company, but the pall of Matt’s and Zachary’s absences hung over the room like a deadly fog. No one could concentrate.
After the mourners departed, Meredith went out to her car and changed back into the pair of sandals she had driven down in. There were cups and dishes everywhere, and Karen looked at Meredith, noting her change in footwear, and plopped onto the sofa.
“Thanks, Meredith. You didn’t have to do all of this.”
“Why don’t you just go to bed,” Meredith said, holding an armful of plates.
“No. Just leave it. I’ll get it later. I think I’m gonna go sit on the porch for a while,” Karen said in an exhausted voice.
“Okay But I want to help, so just accept the fact that I’m gonna do this,” Meredith said. Karen looked at her and smiled for the first time in days. There was nothing self-serving about Meredith. She was all give and no take. She was just like Karen. Karen walked up the stairs, then came back down.
“Here,” she said, tossing Meredith a pair of blue jeans and an old flannel shirt. “You’ll be more comfortable in these.”
“Thank you, Lord,” Meredith said, looking skyward. “My first prayer of the day has been answered.” The two women laughed, but it was a fleeting moment, gone like a rabbit into the bush. Nonetheless, Meredith changed into the more comfortable clothes, noticing that they fit rather well.
Karen walked onto the porch and sat on the steps while Meredith busily cleaned the rest of the dishes. When Meredith was done putting them away, she walked into the cool mountain air, letting the screen door slam against the door frame. Karen looked up.
“Sorry,” Meredith said.
“No bother. Daddy’s a sound sleeper,” Karen replied. Meredith sat on the steps next to Karen. Two women cut from the same cloth. Neither knew the depths of the Depression or world wars that their parents had experienced, but they recognized that life was polarizing. They maintained a source and sense of idealism, the lure of the majestic Blue Ridge, while having the grit to perform the tasks at hand. They were driven by lofty ideals but not stymied by the idealism.
“What’re you thinking about?” Meredith asked. She could see lights in the small town of Stanards-ville about a mile to the south.
“I want my brothers back,” she said softly, her voice floating into the night. Crickets chimed rhythmically. Two bullfrogs barked at each other in the pond.
“I want them back too,” Meredith said, quietly. She had known Matt for one day, had never met Zachary and yet, strangely, she felt bonded to them. She found Matt to be one of the most interesting people she had met, and she wasn’t sure why. Perhaps there was a bit of electricity there when he had woken up and asked her if she was one of the virgins. She smiled at the thought.
They watched the stars blink at them from the heavens and hoped that the Man in charge up there would be good to them. They believed in so many things. They had faith in God. They believed in their country, and they believed that people were basically good.
“Thanks for all your help today. You really made a difference during a difficult time,” Karen said. After a pause, she said, “You see that light just beneath the moon?”
Meredith looked, and said, “I think so.”
“It’s blinking, sort of.”
“Yeah. I see it,” Meredith said, leaning over to gain Karen’s perspective, her hair falling across Karen’s shoulder.
“I read somewhere, can’t remember now, that you could see satellites in the sky. Never believed it, but that doesn’t look like a star, and it sure isn’t an airplane,” Karen said. Meredith didn’t respond. She just watched the dark sky flutter with millions of lights. She looked at Karen, still fixed on the bright moving object. Meredith felt a kinship to her. She was drawn to her strength. A man and a set of circumstances had brought them together.
“You can sleep in Matt’s old room,” Karen said. “You shouldn’t drive back tonight. His old twin bed is still in there.”
“Thanks. That’s sweet,” Meredith said, smiling and remembering her and Matt’s goofy conversation in Palau. It was unusual because Matt had been on heavy doses of morphine and Percocet. Rathburn had briefly joined them poolside and was playing the Rolling Stones’ “Beast of Burden” on his iPod loud enough for them to hear.
“You, okay?” Karen asked.
“Just thinking of Matt for some reason,” Meredith said.
“He’s like that, Matt is. Whatever you do, don’t get hooked on him, he’s trouble.”
Meredith smiled. She could see that in him, but there was something …
“Thanks for the clothes,” she said, as they both stood and walked up the stairs. They hugged one another before retiring to their separate rooms. Meredith was lost in her thoughts, and Karen just needed to sleep.
Sitting on Matt’s old bed, she studied the room. Half of it had an angled ceiling from the A-frame. The other half was flat. Pictures of Zachary and Matt hung on the knotty pine wall. Other than the bed with cowboy-and-Indian sheets, there were three boxes in the room. They stood stacked on the tongue-in-groove floor. She stood and looked in the top box, pulling back the cardboard flap. She saw a manila folder inside, labeled: what is going on?!
She took the folder and sat back on the bed, opening it. Several pages of yellow legal paper were folded so they would fit in the undersized folder. Beneath them was a stapled packet of about fifteen pages, once again labeled: what is going on. Though this time there was no question mark or exclamation point. “Huh,” she said to herself as she began reading.
Iraq and Afghanistan … I just don’t understand. We had just commandeered several mules from a local farmer and took the path just north of Torkum gate. We knew we were in Pakistan, but we had a solid lead on two specific persons of interest, shall we say. Then I’ve got the shot. Then someone is screaming at me denying my kill chain. Next thing we know a JDAM lands closer to us than to the AQ and we get the call on sat phone ordering us to turn around and come back. Less than two days later my team is in Iraq, and I’m on my way to the U.S. for a makeover to chase some phantom Predators in China. What the hell is going on?
My thought is that these political appointees have their head so far up their asses they can’t see straight. We’ve got a clear mission in Afghanistan. With no forces to block the passes, though, as we requested, well, the big fish have trickled away downstream. This is personal for me, and it’s personal for the country. The one time the nation has asked for a head on a platter and we can’t deliver. Bin Laden and his cronies dealt us a sucker punch and we must destroy them.
Where will this lead? There’s no question about the rightness of killing Saddam, but it’s a tougher problem than anyone can imagine. Hell, give me the mission and I’ll go do it. There is no question that a democratic Iraq may be a game-changing entity in the Middle East. Who wouldn’t want that? But is it feasible? They should take a look at the Balkans and all the warring factions there to see what might be in store for a fractured Iraq. Post — Cold War Yugoslavia is a good model to think about, but Iraq will be far more kinetic. One thing is for certain; we are treating Afghanistan and Al Qaeda as an economy of force mission. Maybe that’s the right thing to do, but I can’t see how.