You can’t be serious. She’ll make a fool of you.
Or—is she the homely one? He’s got two daughters.
By this time Brett had learned not to be upset or annoyed by his eccentric mother. He’d warned Juliet that his mother was “difficult” but “good-hearted” though he wasn’t sure that that was an accurate description of Ethel Kincaid.
He’d felt a curious little thrill of vindication, satisfaction—bringing Juliet Mayfield together with Ethel, not at Ethel’s sour-smelling house but on neutral territory, at a riverside café in Carthage.
The first glimpse Brett had had of Juliet Mayfield, all his resentment of the Mayfield family had faded. The quick connection between them—like a match struck into flame.
He’d seen her smiling eyes on him. He’d felt lighted-up inside.
In Brett’s young life there had been a succession of girls, and more lately women. He’d moved out of his mother’s house on Potsdam Street after graduating from high school, despite his mother’s protests; he’d needed to live alone, to breathe.
When he’d enlisted in the army, he’d given up his rented apartment in South Palisade Park. When he’d returned from the army, discharged and disabled, like trash tossed off the rear of a speeding truck, he’d had to move back into the house on Potsdam Street, which was like a death sentence to him. Back into his old, boyhood room which Ethel had left as it had been, the room of a dead child.
But that was in the future: when he’d first met Juliet Mayfield, he’d had a place to bring her to, where they could be alone.
Fuck he’d try to explain anything of the way he felt to Ethel. He would not.
He was crazy for Juliet and for her family, that was a fact. And they seemed to like him, too.
His heart leapt, when Zeno strode forward to shake his hand.
Hiya, kid! Great to see ya.
The Mayfields were the nicest people he’d met. Ever.
Even the funny little sister with the funny name—Cressida.
Which he’d heard wrong, at first—thought they were calling her something like Cressita, Cressika—the name of a foreign country.
Little dark-eyed girl with almost Afro-style hair, inky-dark hair, frizzing out from her head. Wiry little body like a child of eleven or twelve and with a deadpan-face, you couldn’t guess what she was thinking.
Of the Mayfield girls, the smart one.
But even Cressida was nice to him! Shaking his hand with a solemn smile that quickly faded though her inky-dark eyes remained on his, searching, startled.
We all love you, Brett. Mom, Dad, Cressie. You are the most wonderful person to walk into our lives—I swear!
Juliet slipping her hand into his. Juliet squeezing his fingers with hers. Juliet nudging him gently with her shoulder, to alert him to—something . . .
The guys never asked Brett about Juliet Mayfield. Guys he’d gone to high school with, and he’d outgrown—to a degree: Halifax, Weisbeck, Stumpf.
There was no vocabulary with which they could speak of girls or women who meant anything to them. And so, they did not try to speak of women except in the crudest terms. Cunt, tits, ass. Hot as hell. Slut.
So how could he speak of Juliet to them. He could not.
Just to say her name—to risk hearing her name repeated in the mouths of Halifax, Weisbeck, Stumpf—he could not.
Like a flower she’d opened to him. One of those roses with many petals wrapped around one another, enclosed in a tight little bud and then, who knows why, the warmth of the sun maybe, the petals begin to open, and open.
He’d been so happy. He’d said stammering I guess I love you, is it too soon—is it too soon to say? Don’t laugh at me, OK?
HE COULD NOT COMPREHEND, why he’d hurt her, then.
This girl he loved, he’d hurt—had he? (Had he?)
First, knocked her away from him. A sharp little cry like an animal kicked.
And her jaw bruised, dislocated.
No: in fact not dislocated.
At the ER they’d taken an X-ray. The bone hadn’t been dislodged. She’d said.
Explaining how she’d slipped, fallen. Clumsy! Her own fault, no one else’s.
Weird how everyone accepted this. Believed this.
Beautiful Juliet with a faint bruise like a purple iris rising from beneath the left side of her jaw into her cheek laughing insisting she’d slipped, she’d fallen, it didn’t hurt at all and anyway she could cover it with makeup—and no one had noticed.
Not even the parents. Hadn’t seen.
See what you have eyes to see. All else, you are blind to.
Then, another time. Why she’d provoked him teasing him with—who the fuck was it—one of the guys he’d known from high school: Bisher. Teasing him Where’s Corporal Kincaid that cool dude.
Or she’d provoked him saying The only person who can understand you in Carthage is me. Because we are both freaks.
In a nightmare trying to resuscitate her. Pushing on her chest with the flat of one hand, as he’d been trained, leaning on her chest, trying to revive her breathing, sobbing and whimpering begging No no no no no don’t die.
Later, he’d found a shallow place for her amid marshy soil, rocks. Tried to cover her with rocks and handfuls of muck. Trying to think A body must be buried. A body must not be left for animals and birds. He wasted precious time searching for a marker—a cross.
Why was this, Corporal?
Because—it is the Christian burial.
Elephants bury their dead too. He thought this was so.
Maybe on Discovery Channel. Maybe he’d seen a documentary there.
Except elephants could recognize the bones of their dead, years later. A matriarch elephant bellowing and agitated seizing the great curved bones of her grandmother lying in the dried-up earth.
But no human being could recognize the bones of a relative. Could not recognize his own fucking bones set before him on a platter.
Of earthly creatures only Homo sapiens and elephants buried their dead. Out of anguish, and out of respect.
And out of a wish that the dead remain dead.
In one place, where you’d left them. Covered with mud-chunks, rock, earth. Dead.
IN THE LETTER to Juliet he’d asked her never to open except if he did not return from the war he’d written in the careful stiff handwriting of one who rarely wrote by hand Knowing a thing should give you the strength to do it but sometimes you are not strong enough. God does not make you strong enough.
Do unto others. Love thy neighbor.
Thou shalt not kill.
Confused he’d thought possibly he had buried the letter with her in the shallow marshy grave beside the river! In which case the (wet, torn) letter would be deciphered in his handwriting, signed Love, Brett and traced back to him.
Maybe this was meant to be so. Maybe this was why God had guided his hand writing the letter.
ANOTHER TIME ASKING the corporal what he’d seen. Whom he’d seen.
How close he’d been, and when.
Number of rifle shots. How many times the AK-47 fired.
If he’d seen the bodies inside the house. The body in the culvert.
Each pronouncement of Corporal was a mockery in his ears.
WHAT ARE YOU claiming, Corporal. Did you witness.
You were not there, yet you claim.
You were there, yet you claim.
How can you be certain. These are serious allegations.
Not what you have heard from others but what did you see.
Not what they told you. Not what you told the chaplain or what you remember. Not the pictures you saw or believed you saw.
Serious allegations, Corporal. Accusations.
EXACTLY WHAT DID you see. Exactly which men.
Not which men you “knew” were there but which men you saw and in what relationship to one another and to you and when. Not which men you “were told” were there but which men you saw.
Did you see the faces, Corporal. Ca
n you identify each individual.
Did you witness.
Were you there. If there, why did not you not intervene.
Why were you there if you could not witness.
Serious allegations. Accusations.
Corroborators?
THEY WERE SAYING Sure you did, Brett.
Corporal? Just tell us how it happened.
They were not uniformed. Their hair was not shaved at the sides.
He was confused, how his interrogators had altered themselves. Like they’d moved into a blurred patch in the center of his head and emerged on the other side and were different people and the fascination of this so drew his concentration he had no clear idea what was being asked of him still less how to truthfully reply.
Didn’t mean to hurt her—eh? Just, got out of control.
. . . led you on? These things happen.
And she’s the sister of the other one.
Fuck anybody’d blame you, son. After what you went through in the U.S. Army treating you like shit your own fiancée blowing you off you’re “disabled” then the sister in your face—hell man, you were provoked.
Wasn’t he provoked? The corporal? Sure he was—shit!
Want to tell us how? And what you did with her—with the body—after?
We know you put her in the river. See we found some of her clothes at Sackets Harbor. That far away, Corporal—hard to believe but happens to be true.
See, this is it—her sweater. That poor little girl’s sweater, some kids found in the rocks at Sackets Harbor too bad for you, Corporal, it didn’t get carried out into the lake like maybe her body is there—in the lake? Or maybe her body is in the river, sunk? You know anything about that?
We can find the body, you don’t cooperate and tell us, Corporal. It will take a while but we can find it, state troopers will help us drag the river and out into the lake. Poor little girl didn’t weigh one hundred pounds and her blood was in your Jeep and on your shirt and her hairs in your Jeep where you yanked at her head—that what you did, Corporal? Grabbed her by her hair and smashed her face against the windshield so there’s blood there? And her fingerprints, too. Just will take time for us to find her so you could save us the time and it will be a credit to you, the judge will be impressed if you cooperate, see Corporal—not like asshole meth-heads and fuckups too stupid to cooperate with the D.A. wind up on Death Row at Dannemora in a cell the size of a shitter and rot there for ten, twenty years till they wish they were dead and by that time their brains have rotted like Alzheimer’s. But if you say what you did with her could be the D.A. will drop the charge to manslaughter not homicide, that’s his call, could be the judge will give you twenty to life so you could be paroled in nine years—a pretty good deal considering what you did to that poor little girl, Corporal. You know and we know and you need to acknowledge it. And the girl’s family needs to be told and their minds put at ease. Everybody in Carthage is saying Corporal Kincaid was a good decent American kid got fucked up by the Iraqi-enemy—not your fault, Corporal. No one will blame you, or hardly.
HE WAS SICK with shame. Sick with guilt. Backed-up in him like a drain. He couldn’t purge himself.
Better to die. To have died—“in combat.”
Now it was too late. He’d been killed but hadn’t died—exactly.
Felt to himself like something carelessly made to resemble a human being—a mannequin-mummy. Scraps of original skin dried like leather, swaths of hair like something you’d see in a natural history museum exhibit.
In D.C. he’d visited museums—Smithsonian, National Gallery.
It was calming to think of a museum, for a museum housed dead things. People stared at the dead things which were appropriate in such places and did not arouse emotion or even much interest. It was a kind of embalming—cool air, marble floors, high ceilings.
During “exodus” break at Christmas—midway in basic training at Fort Benning—he’d had ten days he might’ve been home in Carthage but instead flew to D.C.
Alone he’d gone. Alone he’d wanted to see the Vietnam Veterans Memorial he’d been reading about for years. He knew the monument had been considered “controversial” initially. He wanted to see for himself.
He knew of an older relative—father’s cousin—who’d died in Vietnam. There’d been others in Carthage but he wasn’t sure of their names.
The first name was Tom, or Tim. A name he hadn’t paid much attention to, as a child.
He wished his father knew he’d enlisted in the army. That in BCT—basic combat training—he’d excelled, so far.
The drill sergeant seemed to like him. The other guys seemed to like him. He’d been chosen “platoon leader” in his training class.
Wished his father could know, he’d enlisted twelve days after 9/11.
Scared him to think, maybe his father would never know.
He’d be sent to the Middle East, probably. Infantry. That was his choice. Iraq, Afghanistan—he didn’t care which. It was a secret from Juliet, his mother and the Mayfields—how eager he was to go.
Eager to finish basic training. Then to advanced training also at Fort Benning, Georgia. With a part of his mind he knew it was crazy yet he hoped—like a child, desperately hoped—the war(s) would not end before he joined the U.S. troops there.
It wasn’t normal behavior, he knew. Every guy in basic training was desperate to get home after six weeks of exhausting boot camp but Brett Kincaid opted to spend the first weekend alone in D.C. where he didn’t know anyone. There was his fiancée waiting for him in Carthage, waiting to love him, not even knowing he wasn’t coming home directly.
Might’ve taken Juliet with him. He had not.
Cold-raining Saturday morning yet there were visitors to the memorial. Most were families, a few couples hand in hand, but apart from Private Brett Kincaid, not one other person there alone.
Juliet didn’t know where he was. No one knew.
Moving with others facing the long horizontal monument-walls down a gradual descent you didn’t realize was meant to suggest a communal grave in the shape of a V. No wonder he’d begun to feel strange—halting and breathless.
So many names!—stretching beyond his range of vision.
Visitors—had to be relatives of dead soldiers—searched for names then stopped to stare for long minutes like sleepwalkers. With a childlike sort of wonder they touched the names engraved in the black granite. Some had to stand on their toes straining to touch names almost out of reach. There was a stepladder you could use, to climb higher. For it was not enough to see, you had to touch.
In the ground at the base of the memorial were small flags wet from the rain, photographs, flowers both artificial and real. He’d read that, each evening, these precious objects were cleared away.
When had his father’s cousin died? Brett wasn’t sure but he believed it was nearer the end of the long war than the beginning.
Scanning columns of names seeking out KINCAID.
His father’s name would not be here of course. Brett knew that. His father hadn’t served in Vietnam but in the first Gulf War and in any case his father hadn’t died in any war.
More than fifty-eight thousand soldiers had died in Vietnam! You could not comprehend such a sum, your brain was struck blank at the prospect.
Passing years 1959, 1963, 1967, 1970 . . . His eyes blurred with moisture, it was difficult to see. No name leapt to his eye as familiar until near the end of a column beneath 1971 there was TIMOTHY KINCAID.
That was him!—his father’s cousin.
Brett stopped dead. He stared at the name, that was at about the height of his shoulder. He leaned forward to touch it—to move his fingers over it.
He swallowed hard. He had no idea why he was so deeply moved by what was essentially a stranger’s name.
“Excuse me?”—a woman was speaking to him. An older woman walking with a cane, in a transparent raincoat, younger people accompanying her—must’ve been asking Brett who TIMOTHY KINCAID wa
s to him and he murmured something vague and polite to her even as he turned away blinking tears from his eyes.
“God bless.”
Quickly moving away. Not a backward glance.
He hadn’t even taken a picture with his cell phone as he’d planned.
When he returned to Carthage he would tell no one about his visit to D.C. Often he would recall the name TIMOTHY KINCAID as one might recall the name of a lost relative, a brother not seen in many years.
Even his fingertips recalled—TIMOTHY KINCAID.
IN THAT PLACE, the Land of the Dead.
His mother, his fiancée and her parents. His friends.
High school buddies/brothers. Soldiers in his platoon.
They are all silent, the color has drained from their faces.
Like faded Kodak snapshots in his grandmother’s old photo-album.
Brett? Come here.
Yes you are in the right place.
Yes we have been waiting.
PORNOGRAPHY, CHEAP CANDY, tooth-rotting candy.
Drugs. Dope. Smoking joints like shit. Dog-shit. Dried, mummified. Sandstorms.
He’d died when the grenade exploded. When the wall exploded.
He’d been called. Commanded to hurry forward. With his rifle at the ready cradled in his arms rifle butt pressed into his shoulder hard and firm, prepared to fire. Enemy sighted! The last voice he’d heard was braying Sergeant Shaver—Get here, Kincaid! Get here! Jesus Christ get here fast!
He’d died and gone to that place. There, he’d seen figures huddling together for warmth.
Still, they’d shoveled and swept the parts of him together. Ingeniously stitched and glued and inserted wires to hold him together. He saw a pattern of figures—shapes like clouds passing high overhead—and knew he had to deduce, from this ever-shifting pattern, a focal point, a self, that saw it; a self that possessed the mechanism that registered it.
Call this self some convenient name—Brett Kincaid. Timothy Kincaid.
Trying to trick him asking him to “lift” his right leg, left leg, right arm, left arm he couldn’t figure out how to do this, how you could manage to “lift” whatever it was they were asking you to “lift”—how could a part of the body “lift” a part of the body?—trying to explain You would not have leverage.