Jean drove his old truck back to the hospital much slower than the trip out, for which Tory was profoundly grateful. Also, in the front seat, the bumping was less noticeable. She rocked back and forth, her elbow and forearm occasionally grazing the brown, leathery skin of Jean’s arm. They didn’t speak the same language, and for that, too, she was profoundly grateful. The ride was silent. Through the windshield the clouds parted and a hazy moon lit the road ahead.
She was so tired. She’d nodded off a few times in the truck, but sleep would have to wait. She had a lot to take care of if she was going to pull this off. A lot to take care of, then she could sleep. Later, much later. She would sleep then, deep and undisturbed. Sleep and sleep and—
Her head slammed into the dashboard of the truck. She’d dozed again. Jean offered her a banana.
He’d asked her, when they’d started, “TheCapitaine …he, uh…?” and through a series of hand gestures and translation guesses she figured he was asking if Marc would be joining him.
“No,” she said. “Non.”Shaking her head. “Just me.Moi.” He’d smiled sadly and with no more questions started his truck.
Dawn was coming. She could see the outlines of trees now. They were close to the hospital. She ate her banana. When they got to the hospital Tory thanked the older man and tried to hand him a ten-dollar bill. He refused it and gave her another banana, which she accepted. She walked through the hospital gate in the dim gray of early dawn, no one about, alone in the stone yard.
There’d been no goodbye with Marc tonight. There’d never been a goodbye with Junior either. He’d left her, and the one time she saw him again—at the diner in Norfolk, when he told her what he’d done to her—she’d seen no trace of the Junior Davis she loved, and she left him. She had no intention of seeing him now. If she hadn’t been sure on that before, she was now. And as tender as she felt for Marc this morning, she wondered the same simple but not simple question about him that she did about Junior: In the end, what is there to talk about?
Tory sat on Marc’s cot. Then she stretched out on it. She could smell him. She curled up, burying her nose in his poncho liner and the blanket. There was some crying to do and now is when she did it, her face pressed into the poncho liner, pulling in his smell and warmth, the feel of his smooth skin and hands. She slept, briefly, then she woke, a headache fierce behind her eyeballs. She rolled off the cot to the floor, breathed through it a few minutes. Then she kneeled in the corner, cleaning her equipment best she could, taking it all apart, fitting her LBE and ammo pouches and everything into her rucksack, tying the helmet to it, trying to make it as easy as possible for whoever would have to carry it and turn it in.
And that’s where Dick Wags found her, on the bare floor, using her toothbrush to clean the bolt of her M-16 rifle. She looked up, genuinely pleased to see it was him.
“Hello, Roomdog,” she said.
“I came in before but you were sleeping, so I went to get some chow.”
“They take care of you here?”
He nodded. “Yes. Me and Pelton. He’s waiting in the hummer.”
“Have a seat,” she said. “I’m just cleaning up here.”
He sat on Marc’s cot and asked if he could smoke then lit one for himself and one for her. She was putting her rifle back together now.
“You have to shoot that thing last night?” he asked.
“No. Just cleaning it.”
Tory gathered up all the cleaning gear into its little bag and shoved it back in the butt stock compartment.
“I’m really sorry, Rick,” she said.
“You should be,” he said. Then, “You have nothing to be sorry for.”
“I do, though. Especially with you,” she said. “Discharge and other death sentences aren’t an excuse for bad manners, are they?” She grunted. “That was a bad place to put you in.”
“No one held a gun to my head.”
She looked at him then. “No, no one did, I guess. Thank you.”
He took a drag off his cigarette, trying to keep his face clear. She did the same.
Tory handed him her rifle. Thinking something else, he stood and slung it over his shoulder. Then she picked up her rucksack and handed that to him, too. “Little bit lazy this morning, huh?” he said.
She smiled. “I’m not going back, buddy.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m not going back.” She began unbuttoning her uniform top. “I don’t know if I died going off the side of the road in that fucked-up Haitian truck or what exactly happened, but I’m sure it wasn’t pretty.” She pulled her top off, placed it on the rucksack in his arms. She reached down then and lifted her T-shirt up and over her head, putting that on the pile, too.
“What are you talking about, Tory.”
She pulled her sports bra off—onto the pile it went. She sat on her cot and began unlacing her boots.
“I can’t go back, Rick. I can’t face anyone, don’t want to face anyone, and there’s nothing for me there anyway. What is there? Bullshit or discharge or both. Skipper will know that soon enough.”
“He knows.”
Boots and socks off, she began to unbutton her pants.
“Well, you know. They can use me here, and I can use them. So I’m just not going back.”
“You can’t do that.”
“Sure I can.”
“They’ll want a body.”
“Yeah, but only a little, especially when there’s no family back home bothering them for it.” She pulled her pants off, folded them carefully into a square, and placed it on the pile in Dick Wags’s arms. She hooked her thumbs in the elastic of her underwear. “Mostly, all the Army cares about is property. And I’m giving it all back.” She pulled her underwear off, folded it neatly, and put it on the pile. She stood there, looking him dead in the eye. “What—you seeing something you haven’t seen before, Rick?”
“Does this make you feel better,” he said. She thought he might be mad. That was okay. She was mad, too.
“Yes,” she said. Tory reached up and laid her open palm on his cheek, holding it there a moment. “Yes, it does make me feel better.” She stepped around him then and grabbed the poncho liner from Marc’s cot, wrapping it around herself. “This was Captain Hall’s, so I don’t feel any personal responsibility in returning it.”
“It’s a grand gesture, Tory, but you can’t do this.”
“I’m doing it. Get that straight. I’m doing it. I’m not going back.”
“What the fuck are we going tell them?” he said.
“I don’t know. You and Mannino are pretty bright. I’m sure you’ll think of something. But I’ll be gone about two seconds after you are, and I’m going to stay gone for a while, until I know no one’s coming back to get me.”
He wasn’t even listening anymore, just staring at the floor. When he looked back up at her he said, “I don’t think it’s a good way to go out, Tory. This is not how you want to go out.” She said nothing to that, just held his eyes. Finally, he said, “You’ve got to get on a treatment program, whatever you call it. Can they do that for you here?”
She shrugged, then nodded.
Then she walked over and hugged him, as best she could, with the gear and clothes piled in his arms and the poncho liner around her body. She hugged him, held him tight with all her gear between them, and then he turned and walked out the door.
Wrapped in the poncho liner she found the cot again, and then it was time to cry again and she did a little of that.This is ridiculous, she thought.I don’t cry.
Tory lay for five minutes, regret growing stronger and stronger in her until finally she jumped up and stuck her head out of the hut and called after him but he was gone, long gone, the Humvee gone.
Brinia Avril came to the hut later, waking her from sleep, and when she saw Tory’s condition she left again and returned with a simple red and blue dress. Tory slipped it over her head, smoothing it out. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been in a dress.
“We’ll have to get you some sandals,” the doctor said, pointing at Tory’s feet. “You can’t walk around like that. You’ll get a tapeworm.”
Tory ate and then slept and it was later, much later in the day, when the hospital director knocked on her door. She opened it. In his arms was her gear. All of it. Rucksack, helmet, clothes, boots, rifle. He held it out to her.
“I was out, all day. In the camp. This was on my desk. Yours?”
She nodded and thanked him, taking it all from him. There was a note in the front pocket of her uniform pants, in Dick Wags’s scrawl. It read:You may need this more than you think. If not, bury it. See you around, either way. Your friend.