CRATERSCAPE
WE DRIVE TO Camp Fallujah, the sun dropping lower on the horizon now. When we get inside the base, we climb out of our dust-covered Humvees looking like extras from a Hollywood horror film. We’re smoke-stained, bandaged, and covered with blood, vomit, gore, dirt, and concrete dust.
The rest of weapon’s company stands in a ragged line, anxious—no, almost desperate—to find out what’s happened.
Mimoso sees me and rushes up with Sergeant Martin at his side. “Workman, who is it?”
“Smith, Hillenburg.”
“Phillips,” somebody adds.
Mimoso’s face drains of color.
What else can I say?
Several of my Marines cluster near the back deck of our rig, talking in morose and hushed voices. “… Phillips almost fell apart. …”
I don’t want to hear this.
“… so many bullet wounds his gear’s keeping him together. …”
I step through the huddle and say, “Let’s go.”
Our three fallen Marines have already returned. They’re over at the morgue, body bags their shrouds, under harsh fluorescent lights.
The Humvees must be cleaned out. The back of the 998 that carried them home is a horror. Blood, gore, brain matter. The heat has congealed this all into one gelatinous mess. Gardiola steps up next to me and says, “I’ll help.” Kraft puts a hand on his shoulder. “We’ll do it.”
Kraft and I climb into the back. Ten minutes later, the nightmare task is done.
Lieutenant Butler, our platoon commander, comes over to us. I only saw him a couple of times during the firefight, but every time our paths crossed, he was fighting right alongside the rest of the men.
“Let’s head down to Bravo Surgical,” he says. That’s our base’s aid station. “Levine, Richeson, and Hebert are over there.”
He starts limping away from the vehicles. One by one, we sling our weapons and trail after him.
Bravo Surgical is full of random people. Staff officers stand around looking forlorn. Other Marines I don’t recognize are huddled in small groups, talking among themselves. As we arrive, our chaplain starts to circulate through our platoon. I see him take hands and whisper prayers with my men.
Phillip Levine, our Bronx lion, lies on an operating table in the ER. The battalion surgeon is just about to start working on him. There’s a civilian standing next to him, back to the rest of us. Seeing him there sends waves of anger through me.
Fucking reporter! He’s come to pick us clean.
Kraft nudges me. “Check that out,” he says, pointing to the civilian.
I want to start shouting, but then the civilian turns slightly and I go from furious to hyper-emotional in the blink of an eye. Don Rumsfeld stands next to Levine. He’s not interviewing him, he’s giving him a few soft words of comfort. I see him reach inside a pocket and produce a coin. For decades, this has been a tradition among America’s warrior class. Coins are a concrete means to express respect, and they come in many forms. We have our own battalion coins, regimental coins, division coins. Some of the men actually design their own and have them specially minted. The SECDEF has obviously done this as well.
He presses one of his coins into Levine’s ghost-white hand. When he turns to leave, I see his eyes are wet with tears.
Richeson and Hebert are in the OR right now. I want to go see all three and sit with Levine, but the corpsmen tell me no. That will have to wait for later.
“Corporal, do you want to call home?” I turn to see somebody from the battalion staff holding a cell phone out to me.
“Home?” I say as if that’s a foreign word.
“Yeah. Call your wife and family. Tell them you’re okay. This will be all over the news soon.”
I regard the phone with complete indecision. Part of me wants to refuse it. Who would I call? My mother? She’s fragile, and if I tell her that I’ve been wounded, she’ll fall apart. Since the day I called her from the roof of our hooch and that car bomb went off, she’s been living in perpetual dread. Telling her what just happened would only inflict more torment.
Who else could I call? My father? Who knows where he is. I haven’t heard from him since I graduated from basic training. I have no number, no address, and no clue how to track him down. At this point, I wouldn’t want to, either. Why would I want to share this day with a man who walked out on his son?
Jessica. She’s the only one.
I take the phone and flip it open.
Do you really want to do this?
Jess has always been there for me. When I got hurt in high school, she took care of me. When I graduated and couldn’t go to college on a football scholarship because of my knee, she was there to console me.
But what about now?
Since I deployed to Iraq, I haven’t received a single letter. Mail calls for me have been ordeals. I stand with everyone else, waiting, hoping to get a letter. Praying, really. By the time we left for Fallujah, I’d have been happy with a postcard that just had her name signed on the back. At least that would have been a sign I wasn’t forgotten. When I sent her the lyrics to “Angel,” each mail call afterward chipped away at the hope I had left.
What happened? I didn’t understand. I’d dwell and grow angry, morose, and self-pitying. Then I’d get mad for even caring.
I just wish I understood why.
“I love you. I’ll be here, waiting for you to get back.”
Those were her last words to me. They seem like such a lie now.
The few times I’ve been able to call her have not gone well. She either hasn’t answered, or has told me to call back later because she’s in the shower. She always has an excuse. Once, I could tell from the background noise that she was at a bar. She’s not even twenty-one yet, and it made me suspect that she’s been sucked deeper into the party crowd that orbits Camp Pendleton.
Come on, Jeremiah, this is different. This won’t be a “hello, how are you?” sort of call. No. This is the type of call marriages were created to handle. She’ll know that. She’ll be there for you.
That’s true. No matter what, we’ve always been there for each other whenever we’ve faced a crisis. That’s one of the bonds that we forged through school and beyond.
The staffer looks anxiously at me. He wants me to get on with this so he can pass the phone to another Marine, and my uncertainty leaves him puzzled.
“Gimme a minute,” I tell him. He takes a step back and disappears into the Marines around me.
I need her right now. I need her more than any other time in my life. Surely, her voice will be able to ease some of this pain. All my life, I’ve just wanted somebody to love me. It’s been like a hole inside me ever since I was kid. Then Jess came along, and her loyalty and devotion filled that hole.
I dial the number. As it rings, I wonder what time it is over in Ohio. I’m trying to do the math when she picks up.
“Hello?” Her voice sounds guarded and wary.
What are you going to say?
I try to speak, but I have no words.
“Hello?”
Tell her you love her. Tell her you need her right now like never before. Tell her she’s the only one who can bring you back from what you became today.
“Jess?”
Ten thousand miles away, her voice goes cold. “What do you want, Jeremiah?”
“I … um … I was wounded today. We lost three Marines.”
Static crackles and pops in my ear. I hang on her reply.
“Well, you signed the enlistment papers. You deal with it.”
I hear a click as she hangs up on me.
A sudden searing pain, like a last hope cast into a fire, flares inside me. The tattered edges of who I am burn to blackness until finally, I feel nothing at all.
I close the phone and hand it back to the staff guy.
At least I know where I stand back home. I have no one.
Kraft comes up to me. “Hey, you okay?”
“You won’t believe what just happened.”
“What?”
“Jessica hung up on me.”
Kraft scowls and mutters, “Well, you’re with us. That’s all that matters.”
That’s all I have.