“Ortiz!”
A balmy hush filled the courtyard. I resisted the urge to scratch my shoulder blade. A finch sang in the day but was not answered.
“Private Diego Ortiz!”
Someone in the ranks whimpered. The finch called again, still with no answer. Into the dusk dripped the smell of yesterday’s blood.
“Private Diego Santiago Ortiz!”
The pale wind gasped. “He is no longer with us, First Sergeant,” Chambers said. A three-volley salute of fire followed.
Crack.
Crack.
Crack.
There were no more birdcalls.
Time melted. A bugle sounded taps. The Big Man gave a speech about sacrifice and duty. My throat was dry and scratchy for want of water. We lined up one at a time to say our good-byes. A portrait of Ortiz leaned against a stack of sandbags, in front of a pair of his spare tan boots. His rifle was black and shiny, wiped cleaned of blood and sand, and mounted into the ground, muzzle down, with the bayonet fixed. A helmet sat on top of the rifle’s buttstock and a set of stainless-steel dog tags was wrapped around the vertical grip. The tags read:
ORTIZ
DIEGO, S.
240-83-6230
O+
ROMAN CATHOLIC
I was last in line. For some reason, for no reason, for all reason. Hog finished ahead of me, whispering the words of the Lord’s Prayer before walking away. The words “kingdom,” “glory,” and “power” cut through the air with Protestant severity. I wondered if Ortiz’s family would appreciate a Cotton Belt Baptist’s supplication for their son. It probably didn’t matter.
I stared at the portrait. He looked older in the framed photograph than he had in person, his eyebrows more prominent, his chin fuller. The “Welcome to Iraq” speech I’d given him was the only meaningful conversation we’d had. He’d been a good soldier. That was what Dominguez said, anyhow. The burden of the moment felt like a boulder bearing down, and I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to feel more or less guilty than I did. I stroked the corners of his dog tags and wondered why there were still rubber sound silencers on them.
“I’m sorry,” I said. I tugged at the bracelet on my wrist, studying the pattern of the beads, red, green, yellow, red, green, yellow.
I started a Hail Mary, but stopped a few words in. I couldn’t remember all of it. I saluted and took a few steps toward the outpost.
“You all right, sir?”
I turned around. First Sergeant had been behind me the entire time, his hulking frame a silhouette against the swelling purple sky.
“I’m good. Thanks, Top.” I paused and tried to think of something worth saying. “We have a couple angels looking over us now, you know?”
First Sergeant’s face remained stiff. “Yes, sir.”
He grabbed Ortiz’s rifle by the rail guards and asked if anyone in my platoon needed it. I shook my head and said we were good. He told me to take it anyhow.
19
That summer, I learned the fate of a college friend named Randy Chiu. He’d been a few years ahead of me in ROTC, a fraternity brother, and, having grown up in Irvine, he was another suburbanite exiled to rural Oregon. He’d deployed to Afghanistan, but it was all the same war because the same people were fighting it — on our side, at least.
Most of the cadet class of 2005 had signed contracts in the days and weeks after 9/11. Some claimed they did it for honor or patriotism, while others kept hidden dreams of battlefield glory. Not Chiu. No, Chiu signed his ROTC papers on September 10, 2001, after his parents told him they’d lost everything in a poor investment and couldn’t afford a private liberal arts education anymore. The army could, though, and the recruiting officer was all too happy to bring in a cadet of Chiu’s academic merit.
Whenever the timing of his ROTC contract signing came up, Chiu talked like his immigrant grandmother. “Wahhndy,” he said, “you have wuck of wingless bird.” Then, back in his own voice, he’d add, “Growing up, when she said that, I always just thought Grandma was a mean, cranky B-word. Turned out, she was right.”
Of Taiwanese descent, Chiu was one of four minorities in our ROTC program, and the only Asian. Vietcong jokes were relentless. Chiu went along with them, often volunteering for the role of the enemy — the nefarious bad guys from our operations orders were always nationless and colorless — during field exercises in the woods behind the ROTC department.
“It’s awesome being the bad guy.” Chiu liked to brag about being a forest jihadi. “The cadre shows us where to attack, but never stays with us. Guaranteed nap, every time. Plus, one time I watched a soccer girl and a Sigma Chi hook up on a bench by the lake. They didn’t think anyone could see them.”
As fellow cadets, we learned to tolerate Chiu and his idiosyncrasies. Most of the cadre, though, as professional military men and women, didn’t know what to do with him — he couldn’t march, he couldn’t shoot, and he couldn’t help but turn every aspect of training into a circus. But Chiu could make people laugh, even adults, and that can take someone a long way. The only person Chiu could never crack was Sergeant First Class Miller. Sergeant Miller seemed to hate Chiu, which made sense, because Sergeant Miller hated everyone. A combat veteran of the famed Ranger Regiment, none of us could figure out how or why the Vein (a nickname we whispered behind his back, due to a huge blood vessel that bulged from his forehead) had been assigned to an ROTC unit in wartime.
The other cadre members were approachable and friendly, overweight and nearing retirement. The Vein was rarely approachable, never friendly, and as far from being fat as he was from retiring. A fist of a man, he led our 6:00 a.m. physical training sessions on weekday mornings, loudly conducting exercise drills outside the dorm windows of oversleeping cadets until they joined us. No one dared defy Sergeant Miller, not unless one counted Chiu’s detached perplexity as defiance.
We were more concerned about Chiu’s relationship with the Vein than Chiu was. He simply attributed it to some sort of existential difference. “We’re just oil and water. Fire and ice. Military service and Young Republicans!”
Leadership labs occurred every other Thursday afternoon for three hours. The first twenty minutes were spent drawing dummy rifles, made of a hard synthetic rubber, from the arms room. Then we marched to the woods and executed various drills under the guidance of Sergeant Miller. One bright spring day, at the beginning of training, the Vein asked for volunteers to serve as the enemy ambushers. Chiu’s hand shot into the air.
“Not today, Chiu,” the Vein said. “Today you’re going to learn some actual infantry tactics, whether you like it or not.”
“A simple no would’ve worked,” Chiu muttered. Three other cadets were selected.
Once the chosen enemy disappeared over a hill and into the forest to plot in secret, the Vein announced he’d be conducting a uniform inspection. Groans bounced from cadet to cadet like a pinball; uniform inspections meant uniform deficiencies, which in turn meant mass punishment.
Chiu, a frequent offender of uniform inspections, was third in line. We all held our breath as Chiu’s canteens were tapped, but miraculously, both were filled with water. We all winced as the Vein pulled at the straps on Chiu’s outdated flak vest and load-bearing equipment, but they held in place. The Vein straightened Chiu’s patrol cap, then gave him a toothy sneer — the closest thing to a smile he ever offered any of us — while slapping him on the back. Chiu almost fell over, rocking forward on his tiptoes to catch his balance. But just as Sergeant Miller seemed ready to move to the next cadet, he lifted the bottom of Chiu’s camo top to reveal a royal blue belt and shiny silver buckle. The groans returned. Army dress regulation called for a black fabric belt and a black buckle with field uniforms. Chiu instead wore a belt from a trendy surfwear company, and while we understood it was the only belt Chiu owned small enough for his narrow waist, Sergeant Miller did not.